So the story of the United States is in some respects, "who is subject to the tyrannical impulses of our authoritarian classes." And initially it was "almost everyone who isn't a landed white dude, but Black people most of all" and we've kind of lensed through different versions of it where particular geographies and particular groups and classes were variously subject to those tyrannies. And we've never quite gotten to "nobody" as the answer for it but came close enough at least in terms of de jure arrangements that said authoritarian classes maybe finally entirely lost their minds and decided to bring the temple down on all of us.
We see the speedrun and miniature version of this in the techlord class - social media giving us plebes the ability to tell them, directly, that they kind of suck, has led to them deciding to maybe just destroy the Internet and whatever of our social systems remains and they can get their hands on.
I've moved away recently from thinking about any of the prior arrangements as a stable equilibrium per se - they weren't and especially weren't stable for all those under the heel of the boot - but rather what were the limiting factors that kept the tyrannies from being more generalized, and how those have shifted. And some of those shifts have been because of actually good things and some have been bad and some kind of just randomized moves that because of the crazyquilt design of our Constitutional system end up at Very Bad Indeed.
But the one thing that the Trump years show about our system being far more contingent and fragile and vulnerable than we thought, that is good, is that we can also change the Bad Things just as easily given the motivation. The Benjamin Park tweet is an example of how *not* to think about it - it takes for granted that the contemporary GOP has ripped up prior arrangements but doesn't imagine that we might just, say, stop listening to the Supreme Court. Things not only can change but inevitably do, in every direction!
The point, (and I am so pleased to see it being said said out loud), is that in this current environment with a Supreme Court in the United States, being so steadfastly against any semblance of ethical oversight, that THAT Supreme Court which is currently experiencing the lowest approval ratings in my memory, that THAT Corrupt, Partisan, Self-Exalting, Immune from Consequence Court; who refuses to self-recuse when optics are horrendous and then proceed to cherry pick precedence from a past we have all collectively evolved from, (Originalism, fancy word for I found an instance that supports my prejudices so we do it this way now) that THAT court sees fit to justify the systematic removal of rights which were achieved after decades of honest deliberate debate, careful thought, and the most current unpartisan experts in their fields.
That Supreme Court has lost its privilege of Trust in existing as the Highest Court in the Land. If the SC is to recover and return to being trusted to decipher the complexities of the rule of law, the highest court in the land can not be seen as being compromised or worst in the thralls to Dark Moneyed Interests.
And at the heart of your arguments both Dave Karpf, and Jacob Kramer-Duffield, I believe the Supreme Court has very much lost the faith of the people over whom it rules through mutual consent. The relationship in which those with training and study will do what is best for the population. The Supreme Court is intended as the last guardrail against corruption, if the court is perceived as bought and paid for, it can not exist as a guardrail.
It instead exists to fatten judges pockets by peddling influences and undo what law and lower courts fight and deliberate everyday to achieve, justice and fairness, for those who lack the power to affect change and stand up to power. The courts opinions are accepted by the consent of the population.
When is the time to withdraw consent from a corrupt Supreme Court? Their agenda is painfully obvious, it is to rule, but not through Justice, to rule only through Law, Harsh made up on the spot Law, Justice Alito Law, Justice Clarence Thomas Law, Justice Amy Coney Barrett Law, Justice Neil Gorsuch Law. The Law of the Christian Right (apparently, you guys have some crazy religious-wingnut-stuff going on down there)!
Known for his tyrannical and erratic behaviour, Caligula believed he was a living God, and compelled his subjects to worship him (allegedly). Over time the Romans could no longer tolerate his insanity... just saying.
I am not suggesting Anarchy, I am saying that an institution that has lost its way, and refuses to curtail its baser urges, like a Power Hungry Emperor, must not rule. And I love that people are saying the opinions they opine are no longer the opinions of the people they are suppose to rule over.
If the young people don't believe in the system, fix the bits that are most broken, beginning with the Supreme Court. Expand the court, pidder-patter, and get those most corrupt inline by diluting their power, sort your selves out America, the world is watching. And so are the kids. Put an end to the lying by making sure the last check, in your legal system, isn't bought and paid for.
I've heard this from a few former GOP Hill staffers actually. They've talked about how many Republicans on the Hill, first staff, and then electeds, have only known the Republican party under Trump. Part of it is the brain drain from folks who left, but part of that just happens as people start their careers. I hadn't thought about this in terms of voters under 30 but that makes complete sense.
I also worry that our understanding of business leadership has been conditioned now by the last 15, maybe 20, years of Silicon Valley and Big Tech, and that is establishing itself as a new unaccountable norm of corporate behaviour which acts with impunity against established laws and practices.
This is not a new phenomenon. Greed and unaccountability have always been core to corporatism. The only difference now is who is doing it. In the 80s, we had Wall Street traders. 200 years ago, we had oil barons, and before that we had plantation owners.
I don’t know whether to be concerned or calmed that today’s tech bros are just as greedy as people before them.
Yeah I uh...you kinda got it in one. In 2016 I was a senior in high school, and my faith in political institutions to get us out of this nonsense is basically zero at this point.
“The historian Rick Perlstein mentioned in his New Republic column last week that the best summary of his work on American conservatism comes down to ‘There’s always more, and it’s always worse. But it’s never new.’ He continued:
‘The most important part of that formulation is the “always worse” part. Right now, that means three things. First, there is no going back to some more innocent conservatism of the past. Second, if Donald Trump wins the majority of electoral votes and accedes again to the White House, this will obviously be very bad. But third, if he does not win the majority of electoral votes—well, it might be worse... The question is not just how many votes Donald Trump gets, but how many are willing to take up arms for him if he loses.’
“He’s right, of course. (Perlstein is basically always right.) But I keep getting hung up on the temporal rupture.”
NO! He is not right. It won’t be worse if Trump loses.
Here’s Trump on jail time:
“I’m OK with it. [But] I don’t think the public would stand it. I’m not sure the public would stand for it… I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
We’re supposed to be intimidated. We’re supposed to fear an outbreak of violence if Trump gets the jail he earned for himself.
We’re supposed to be likewise intimidated if Trump loses another ‘stolen’ election.
So his cult will turn violent? Let them. The apparatus of the state isn’t in Trump’s hands. If they become violent, arrest them. If they violently resist, suppress their rebellion by any means necessary. (Fuck Trump’s little implicit threats.)
Even with the MAGA infiltration of the police and the military, they are not in the majority. There are many more who are still loyal to the Constitution.
A rebellion of Trump’s cult is NOT WORSE than Trump and MAGA in power. A rebellion is NOT WORSE than Project 2025 or Trump’s ‘vengeance 47’.
I grow weary beyond words of this nonsensical false equivalence between threats.
On the one hand, we have a threat of violence by Meal Team Six and their neo-fascist adherents. On the other, we have the complete destruction of the US system of constitutional governance, and a journey down a path nearly impossible to come back from.
You are actually exactly right. (& btw it's not just an artifact of your being in your mid-40s, I achieve three score and ten tomorrow and I perceive it the same way over the same period)
I think lots of Democrats believed that all the norms, conventions & processes of politics and government would hold basically the same after the achievement of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, EPA, etc--when the hegemony of the old line conservatives was overcome politically. In retrospect, that was naive.
(I don't think this means we are permanently cooked. I do think, that it will take the destruction of the Republican Party to exorcise Trumpism. The result wouldn't be an absence of conservatism from electoral politics, but perhaps a redefinition of what comprises conservatism.)
I keep saying that there is a long and proud history in America of denegrating and mocking politicians and politics. From Mark Twain to South Park, politicians are corrupt incompetents and politics is Hollywood for ugly people. Detaching yourself from politics seems like a good idea, things always just work in spite of it, right? Republicans are betting the seed corn and the mortgage on the farm that the passion of their base, the propaganda machine that's been running for decades, their gaming of the system at the state and federal levels, and the billionaires and their foundations executing their plan to stack the judicial system all add up to seizing control of the federal government and dismantling the federal administrative state. All it takes is enough apathy and alienation in the voting population to eliminate the wild card of voter accountability, and making politics an insulting and depressing game that means nothing is the best possible way to achieve that. Frankly, the plan was working fine until Trump showed up, took over the Party, and drastically accelerated the process. They could have neutralized him by convicting the impeachmemt (twice!) but chose to back him, betting they could survive his reign or recover from his loss, without potentially losing their base completely. So it's up to the voters, and the deciding percentage simply don't understand or care. This is the new normal for the forseeable future. The only things that could break the current Republican Party are another Great Depression or losing a war on their watch, with the side effect of breaking the country. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
This is as succinct a statement of the Right’s strategic goals and their main tactic in achieving them that I’ve read in a long time.
The plan is plain to see, yet few ostensibly intelligent folk appear to recognize the play.
ANY contest with players like Trump (and, for that matter, GWBush before him) on one side should not even be close. Yet here we are, apparently accepting someone like Trump as a serious candidate.
The great struggle for liberals has been accepting that a plurality of the voting public wants or at least will accept an authoritarian theocracy that punishes the right people, i.e. them. The implications of that are pretty cold, but they're real. Trump has woken up a monster the Republican Party has been building for decades, and they will not be ignored. No matter what happens in Nov, it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
That said — and I agree with your remark— a November Trump victory and a January inauguration would be a much worse outcome than a Trump defeat.
Even humiliated, until genuinely traitorous MAGA leadership are indicted, and the entire movement fashionably disgraced and ridiculed, we’ll be going through this cliff-hanging exercise every 2-4 years.
The first important stop-gap defeat of MAGA is in just under 5 months, tho’.
>What must it look like to Scott and his peers? What would you think of our political system if you were approaching 30 and, for your entire adult life, Trumpism had simply been the way things were in the Republican Party? The unending rage. The administrative incompetence. The lack of material consequences. The sheer absurdity of it all.
Don't forget the utter incompetence - or worse - of the Democratic party. Democrats have held the Senate, since Obama was elected, in 2009, '13, '15, '19, and '23. You have to believe one of two things:
* senate democrats are brain-dead stupid and just keep getting hoodwinked in the _exact same way_ by those tricksy Republicans; or
* senate democrats prefer mostly vetoing the supposed democratic agenda.
Those really are your two options. Now vote harder so they can do fuck-all harder. A 60 vote threshold and continuous cloture vetoes is what Democrats prefer.
My point is that the House is very very close right now, (could even flip to D in 2024), and accuracy is very important in these prognostications. It is certainly inaccurate to conclude definitively that the House would not certify a Biden win on Election Day, with the tiny majority Rs have now.
Trump is everywhere! You can’t open a page on your device and not see him, can’t turn the channel and not see him, can’t drive around and not see him! Makes me want to read about him to make sure we don’t see him ever again after November 2024 except in orange overalls!
I agree with all the above posts. If you don’t know any different, how do you understand how abnormal the GOP is now. Corrupted RW media, Big corporations who benefit from thus fund and encourage Trump, and actions of Silicon Valley big tech as a previous poster outlined.
“A GOP controlled house will never certify the election” of a winning Democrat for POTUS. This is just plain wrong. The current House would definitely have enough R votes to get over the line and would absolutely certify a D winner. I’m can’t speak for what would happen with many more Rs in the House, but I’d like to see betting odds on what the House would do in this scenario.
Relying on “the few remaining sane R’s” to vote with D’s is a leap of faith I wouldn’t make for a million dollars. They’ve shown us who they are as a party time and time again. Why trust any of them, at all, with anything? Where is this idea of “sane Republicans” coming from? They don’t exist. And this may just me splitting hairs, but they’re not insane—Republicans are perfectly lucid and mean what they say. Calling them “insane” is just a cop-out.
Voting to ratify an election doesn’t make you any more sane than believing abortion is murder makes you “insane” — the word you’re looking for is DANGEROUS. They’re not insane, they’re dangerous. And believe me, in this context, there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ Republican.
I’m not sure I disagree. Living in a State represented by one of the “saner” Rs in the Senate (and a centrist D in the house), I find myself often worried about which way my “sane” R Senator will go.(The other Senator is long gone.)
I was only suggesting what the reply toward which you remarked may have intended.
So the story of the United States is in some respects, "who is subject to the tyrannical impulses of our authoritarian classes." And initially it was "almost everyone who isn't a landed white dude, but Black people most of all" and we've kind of lensed through different versions of it where particular geographies and particular groups and classes were variously subject to those tyrannies. And we've never quite gotten to "nobody" as the answer for it but came close enough at least in terms of de jure arrangements that said authoritarian classes maybe finally entirely lost their minds and decided to bring the temple down on all of us.
We see the speedrun and miniature version of this in the techlord class - social media giving us plebes the ability to tell them, directly, that they kind of suck, has led to them deciding to maybe just destroy the Internet and whatever of our social systems remains and they can get their hands on.
I've moved away recently from thinking about any of the prior arrangements as a stable equilibrium per se - they weren't and especially weren't stable for all those under the heel of the boot - but rather what were the limiting factors that kept the tyrannies from being more generalized, and how those have shifted. And some of those shifts have been because of actually good things and some have been bad and some kind of just randomized moves that because of the crazyquilt design of our Constitutional system end up at Very Bad Indeed.
But the one thing that the Trump years show about our system being far more contingent and fragile and vulnerable than we thought, that is good, is that we can also change the Bad Things just as easily given the motivation. The Benjamin Park tweet is an example of how *not* to think about it - it takes for granted that the contemporary GOP has ripped up prior arrangements but doesn't imagine that we might just, say, stop listening to the Supreme Court. Things not only can change but inevitably do, in every direction!
The point, (and I am so pleased to see it being said said out loud), is that in this current environment with a Supreme Court in the United States, being so steadfastly against any semblance of ethical oversight, that THAT Supreme Court which is currently experiencing the lowest approval ratings in my memory, that THAT Corrupt, Partisan, Self-Exalting, Immune from Consequence Court; who refuses to self-recuse when optics are horrendous and then proceed to cherry pick precedence from a past we have all collectively evolved from, (Originalism, fancy word for I found an instance that supports my prejudices so we do it this way now) that THAT court sees fit to justify the systematic removal of rights which were achieved after decades of honest deliberate debate, careful thought, and the most current unpartisan experts in their fields.
That Supreme Court has lost its privilege of Trust in existing as the Highest Court in the Land. If the SC is to recover and return to being trusted to decipher the complexities of the rule of law, the highest court in the land can not be seen as being compromised or worst in the thralls to Dark Moneyed Interests.
And at the heart of your arguments both Dave Karpf, and Jacob Kramer-Duffield, I believe the Supreme Court has very much lost the faith of the people over whom it rules through mutual consent. The relationship in which those with training and study will do what is best for the population. The Supreme Court is intended as the last guardrail against corruption, if the court is perceived as bought and paid for, it can not exist as a guardrail.
It instead exists to fatten judges pockets by peddling influences and undo what law and lower courts fight and deliberate everyday to achieve, justice and fairness, for those who lack the power to affect change and stand up to power. The courts opinions are accepted by the consent of the population.
When is the time to withdraw consent from a corrupt Supreme Court? Their agenda is painfully obvious, it is to rule, but not through Justice, to rule only through Law, Harsh made up on the spot Law, Justice Alito Law, Justice Clarence Thomas Law, Justice Amy Coney Barrett Law, Justice Neil Gorsuch Law. The Law of the Christian Right (apparently, you guys have some crazy religious-wingnut-stuff going on down there)!
Known for his tyrannical and erratic behaviour, Caligula believed he was a living God, and compelled his subjects to worship him (allegedly). Over time the Romans could no longer tolerate his insanity... just saying.
I am not suggesting Anarchy, I am saying that an institution that has lost its way, and refuses to curtail its baser urges, like a Power Hungry Emperor, must not rule. And I love that people are saying the opinions they opine are no longer the opinions of the people they are suppose to rule over.
If the young people don't believe in the system, fix the bits that are most broken, beginning with the Supreme Court. Expand the court, pidder-patter, and get those most corrupt inline by diluting their power, sort your selves out America, the world is watching. And so are the kids. Put an end to the lying by making sure the last check, in your legal system, isn't bought and paid for.
Great post!
I've heard this from a few former GOP Hill staffers actually. They've talked about how many Republicans on the Hill, first staff, and then electeds, have only known the Republican party under Trump. Part of it is the brain drain from folks who left, but part of that just happens as people start their careers. I hadn't thought about this in terms of voters under 30 but that makes complete sense.
Great post.
I also worry that our understanding of business leadership has been conditioned now by the last 15, maybe 20, years of Silicon Valley and Big Tech, and that is establishing itself as a new unaccountable norm of corporate behaviour which acts with impunity against established laws and practices.
Yes, this too. Major factors
I wonder how much they have contributed to Project 1025. Which is a terrifying document
This is not a new phenomenon. Greed and unaccountability have always been core to corporatism. The only difference now is who is doing it. In the 80s, we had Wall Street traders. 200 years ago, we had oil barons, and before that we had plantation owners.
I don’t know whether to be concerned or calmed that today’s tech bros are just as greedy as people before them.
Yeah I uh...you kinda got it in one. In 2016 I was a senior in high school, and my faith in political institutions to get us out of this nonsense is basically zero at this point.
“The historian Rick Perlstein mentioned in his New Republic column last week that the best summary of his work on American conservatism comes down to ‘There’s always more, and it’s always worse. But it’s never new.’ He continued:
‘The most important part of that formulation is the “always worse” part. Right now, that means three things. First, there is no going back to some more innocent conservatism of the past. Second, if Donald Trump wins the majority of electoral votes and accedes again to the White House, this will obviously be very bad. But third, if he does not win the majority of electoral votes—well, it might be worse... The question is not just how many votes Donald Trump gets, but how many are willing to take up arms for him if he loses.’
“He’s right, of course. (Perlstein is basically always right.) But I keep getting hung up on the temporal rupture.”
NO! He is not right. It won’t be worse if Trump loses.
Here’s Trump on jail time:
“I’m OK with it. [But] I don’t think the public would stand it. I’m not sure the public would stand for it… I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
We’re supposed to be intimidated. We’re supposed to fear an outbreak of violence if Trump gets the jail he earned for himself.
We’re supposed to be likewise intimidated if Trump loses another ‘stolen’ election.
So his cult will turn violent? Let them. The apparatus of the state isn’t in Trump’s hands. If they become violent, arrest them. If they violently resist, suppress their rebellion by any means necessary. (Fuck Trump’s little implicit threats.)
Even with the MAGA infiltration of the police and the military, they are not in the majority. There are many more who are still loyal to the Constitution.
A rebellion of Trump’s cult is NOT WORSE than Trump and MAGA in power. A rebellion is NOT WORSE than Project 2025 or Trump’s ‘vengeance 47’.
I grow weary beyond words of this nonsensical false equivalence between threats.
On the one hand, we have a threat of violence by Meal Team Six and their neo-fascist adherents. On the other, we have the complete destruction of the US system of constitutional governance, and a journey down a path nearly impossible to come back from.
Like. WOW.
You are actually exactly right. (& btw it's not just an artifact of your being in your mid-40s, I achieve three score and ten tomorrow and I perceive it the same way over the same period)
I think lots of Democrats believed that all the norms, conventions & processes of politics and government would hold basically the same after the achievement of the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, EPA, etc--when the hegemony of the old line conservatives was overcome politically. In retrospect, that was naive.
(I don't think this means we are permanently cooked. I do think, that it will take the destruction of the Republican Party to exorcise Trumpism. The result wouldn't be an absence of conservatism from electoral politics, but perhaps a redefinition of what comprises conservatism.)
Sad perspective. The US is the biggest, not the purest or best working democracy on earth. Problem is its size - it’s too big to fail.
Then, why is it failing?
Oh no it's not. Like bankruptcy, it's slowly then all at once.
I keep saying that there is a long and proud history in America of denegrating and mocking politicians and politics. From Mark Twain to South Park, politicians are corrupt incompetents and politics is Hollywood for ugly people. Detaching yourself from politics seems like a good idea, things always just work in spite of it, right? Republicans are betting the seed corn and the mortgage on the farm that the passion of their base, the propaganda machine that's been running for decades, their gaming of the system at the state and federal levels, and the billionaires and their foundations executing their plan to stack the judicial system all add up to seizing control of the federal government and dismantling the federal administrative state. All it takes is enough apathy and alienation in the voting population to eliminate the wild card of voter accountability, and making politics an insulting and depressing game that means nothing is the best possible way to achieve that. Frankly, the plan was working fine until Trump showed up, took over the Party, and drastically accelerated the process. They could have neutralized him by convicting the impeachmemt (twice!) but chose to back him, betting they could survive his reign or recover from his loss, without potentially losing their base completely. So it's up to the voters, and the deciding percentage simply don't understand or care. This is the new normal for the forseeable future. The only things that could break the current Republican Party are another Great Depression or losing a war on their watch, with the side effect of breaking the country. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
This is as succinct a statement of the Right’s strategic goals and their main tactic in achieving them that I’ve read in a long time.
The plan is plain to see, yet few ostensibly intelligent folk appear to recognize the play.
ANY contest with players like Trump (and, for that matter, GWBush before him) on one side should not even be close. Yet here we are, apparently accepting someone like Trump as a serious candidate.
The great struggle for liberals has been accepting that a plurality of the voting public wants or at least will accept an authoritarian theocracy that punishes the right people, i.e. them. The implications of that are pretty cold, but they're real. Trump has woken up a monster the Republican Party has been building for decades, and they will not be ignored. No matter what happens in Nov, it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.
That said — and I agree with your remark— a November Trump victory and a January inauguration would be a much worse outcome than a Trump defeat.
Even humiliated, until genuinely traitorous MAGA leadership are indicted, and the entire movement fashionably disgraced and ridiculed, we’ll be going through this cliff-hanging exercise every 2-4 years.
The first important stop-gap defeat of MAGA is in just under 5 months, tho’.
>What must it look like to Scott and his peers? What would you think of our political system if you were approaching 30 and, for your entire adult life, Trumpism had simply been the way things were in the Republican Party? The unending rage. The administrative incompetence. The lack of material consequences. The sheer absurdity of it all.
Don't forget the utter incompetence - or worse - of the Democratic party. Democrats have held the Senate, since Obama was elected, in 2009, '13, '15, '19, and '23. You have to believe one of two things:
* senate democrats are brain-dead stupid and just keep getting hoodwinked in the _exact same way_ by those tricksy Republicans; or
* senate democrats prefer mostly vetoing the supposed democratic agenda.
Those really are your two options. Now vote harder so they can do fuck-all harder. A 60 vote threshold and continuous cloture vetoes is what Democrats prefer.
My point is that the House is very very close right now, (could even flip to D in 2024), and accuracy is very important in these prognostications. It is certainly inaccurate to conclude definitively that the House would not certify a Biden win on Election Day, with the tiny majority Rs have now.
Trump is everywhere! You can’t open a page on your device and not see him, can’t turn the channel and not see him, can’t drive around and not see him! Makes me want to read about him to make sure we don’t see him ever again after November 2024 except in orange overalls!
I agree with all the above posts. If you don’t know any different, how do you understand how abnormal the GOP is now. Corrupted RW media, Big corporations who benefit from thus fund and encourage Trump, and actions of Silicon Valley big tech as a previous poster outlined.
Toxic and diabolical combination
“A GOP controlled house will never certify the election” of a winning Democrat for POTUS. This is just plain wrong. The current House would definitely have enough R votes to get over the line and would absolutely certify a D winner. I’m can’t speak for what would happen with many more Rs in the House, but I’d like to see betting odds on what the House would do in this scenario.
What in the world? What are you basing this take on? I can’t tell if this is just wishful thinking or just incredibly obtuse.
I think he’s referring to the few remaining sane Rs joining the Ds to certify in the House as it now is,
Relying on “the few remaining sane R’s” to vote with D’s is a leap of faith I wouldn’t make for a million dollars. They’ve shown us who they are as a party time and time again. Why trust any of them, at all, with anything? Where is this idea of “sane Republicans” coming from? They don’t exist. And this may just me splitting hairs, but they’re not insane—Republicans are perfectly lucid and mean what they say. Calling them “insane” is just a cop-out.
Voting to ratify an election doesn’t make you any more sane than believing abortion is murder makes you “insane” — the word you’re looking for is DANGEROUS. They’re not insane, they’re dangerous. And believe me, in this context, there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ Republican.
I’m not sure I disagree. Living in a State represented by one of the “saner” Rs in the Senate (and a centrist D in the house), I find myself often worried about which way my “sane” R Senator will go.(The other Senator is long gone.)
I was only suggesting what the reply toward which you remarked may have intended.