Another thing in terms of “consequences” is that for the next 100 years children will learn that Trump was the worst president in US history. Will it have been worth it if your ultimate fate is a trivia answer about shitty presidents?
And, if he loses the election even the GOP will throw him under the bus and back over him a few times. Literally no one likes the guy who isn’t a cult member.
This seems incredibly naive to me.
If Trump runs a 3rd time it will be a Putinesque fake election. The time where it is possible to do anything through non violent means will have passed. The idea of Obama running a 3rd time to save the country and that somehow working in an era of no rules is just sweet summer child territory.
Oh it would be soooo logically inconsistent for states and the supreme court to let Trump on a ballot and keep Obama off, they’d be total hypocrites. Impossible! Come on man it’s Calvinball all the way. It won’t be anarchy no rules. It will be Kafkaesque rules for Democrats and no rules for Republicans without any shame or concern. Establishment Democrats seem to think that there’s some balance and “if they can do it, so can we” It won’t be like that at all, it never has been like that at all.
Conservatism in America has been best defined by Frances Wilhoit’s proposition since before our country’s founding
To see this idea in action.
See Supreme Court justice nomination process.
I’m shocked we have not seen a rise in assassination attempts with all the kooks with guns running around.
If we get Trump v Obama, surely someone would try.
Yeah, gonna file this one under “not a consequence” also.
Why do you think that? He lost in 2020, then did the whole January 6 thing, and the GOP still didn’t put the knife in him.
He lost an election and got MORE support among the GOP. Sometimes I just think people are too good at making up their own world of facts for society to survive.
Your argument is that of the hundreds of crimes and norm violations he has done, losing this election will somehow break the cult. Best part is you wrote this the exact same day that DeSantis agreed to work with trump to get him elected.
Edit: lol jinx eyebooger.
Very interesting discussion on Vox this week about how the fractured narrative world that has arisen from social media can be looked at as a return to the social structures of the 1800s when people didn’t share a common mainstream view of reality.
I am fairly sure that we are actually already living out the monkey’s paw result in that I’m fairly certain all the attention and hate directed at Trump sustains him such that, if everyone had just ignored him from the jump, he would have passed away years ago.
This just smells like another “Both sides are bad” centrist take. We’re not “all in a cult,” we’re in a situation where the conservative wing of America has become a cult, the MSM has decided it’s impolite to point this state of affairs out, and ordinary people get gaslit with these kinds of both-sides thinkpieces.
The bold is wrong. He lost the last election and the GOP distanced itself from him for like one news cycle and then went back to full throated support. The GOP won’t leave him until the base does, and as you correctly point out, his base is a cult, so that ain’t happening.
Did you read it? My impression is that it’s not nearly that accusatory or both sidesy, it’s just making some interesting generalized statements about pre and post 20th century history. The title if more provocative (to get clicks, one imagines) than the actual discussion.
Yes. It’s interesting that we don’t have a monoculture anymore, but saying we’re all in little cults just because some of us have niche interests is weird. My coworker who’s into K-pop isn’t a cultist.
It’s annoying because we’re living through an actual right-wing personality cult that’s dismantling democracy and bringing back polio and all that gets minimized when we pretend everyone is equally in a fake reality bubble.
1800s: too little information. Current: too much information. Apparently people need just the right amount of information.
You really missed my point in your entire post to get where you did. If you think that post was about Obama and Clinton, you should read it again. It’s about people acting like everyone’s just going to roll over and accept Trump dictator. The last time they tried that (the GOP was literally trying to get voters to endorse Trump as King in 2020), one of the worst presidential candidates in history got the most votes in history. When they tried to overtly do it by trying to rig SOS offices/elections, they got smacked down left and right both in court and in elections in 2022 where wins would be needed for the Trump dictator next steps. Trump has zero power inside the overall system right now, when he had a ton of power in 2020 and it did not work. He is not a genius at all, and people here still act like he controls everything and can do anything he wants to get back in power.
The point is that one side still has to play by the rules until there are no rules. Once the rules have truly changed to no rules, the other side has to adjust and I guarantee you it will. The GOP has been running on open corruption for the last 6 years. They.Keep.Losing. If they win and can put the mechanisms in place, the ‘game’ will change. You’re out of your mind if you think most federal level Democratic politicians aren’t capable of playing extremely dirty with no shame (see: Menendez). We’re just not there yet, and I’m not ceding we are until an election shows we are. I highly doubt the election where that happens will be 2024.
it’ll just be “an incumbent may run for a 3rd term”.
then, if/when a democrat wins a 2nd term, they’ll change it back.
If it gets to that point, there won’t be any rules. Calvinball will be over. It will get ugly.
i’m gonna slightly disagree, in that i think they’ll still try to make specific “rules” so that just in case they miss something and lose power, they won’t have to deal with the same rules.
They’re trying to install the mechanisms to never lose power. There won’t be rules once those are installed. The soonest that can happen is 2026.
To be clear, I am talking about potential 2028 election riggage if he can win this one fair and square, not this year being rigged. And to your points, I have a completely different interpretation of how it went down in 2020.
I think our institutions hung on by a thread in 2020 and if either the Georgia Secretary of State + Governor or Pence had been willing to support Trump on Jan 6th or in the ensuing months I am not sure things would have worked out. And Trump is dumb but he’s not dumb about this. He knows how to play mob boss, it’s one of the few things he understands. He knows how to figure out who stopped him from maintaining power last time and will have 4 years to get sycophants and loyalists into those positions this time. I am highly confident that willingness to support Trump during the next Jan 6th will be the single most important criteria to Trump when selecting VP candidate.
The rules have already changed to no rules. It’s just being done one court case at a time with an appearance of rules until the other side needs them to be gone and then they’re thrown out one by one on technicalities. It’s double standards on states rights to run elections or clearly illegal Republican gerrymanders upheld or decisions disregarded while the other side is dutifully redrawing maps. Voting rights act being gutted. Mark my words… Trump will be allowed to pardon himself and co-conspirators in the next Jan 6th.
To me it’s clear that by the time the other side has decided they need to adjust, it will be too late. And these guys know how to play dirty within the current paradigm. I have zero faith that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi will be able to handle a truly rigged election, or violent takeover supported by a rigged supreme court. It will be a completely different game than any they’ve ever played, a power game not a political game
You should write movies, because that is quite a story of what could have happened vs. what did. Trump is dumb. The GOP is incompetent. They took generational advantages and turned them upside down in 4 years. And the SC has f*ed up so bad, that it’s probably going to cost the GOP a trifecta. What the SC does on the back of that is anyone’s guess but even dumba Alito knows how vulnerable they’ve made themselves.