After Charlottesville, didn’t Godwin himself say that ‘Godwin’s Law’ basically no longer applies, because there’s been such a resurgence of actual Nazis?
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I love the point (made elsewhere) that this would make a wonderful precedent for a future Dem President to declare a national emergency over climate change
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It’s not that it no longer applies but that, as i say above, the law was never about whether the comparison is valid, just whether the comparison will happen. But he definitely gave his seal of approval for early “Godwinning” of any discussion of the current cadre of creeps.
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Well the GOP Senate already did option 1 once. On assurances that Trump would sign it. And he flaked after they passed it. McConnell and the GOP Senate have not really been pushing for increased wall funding, or proposed more money for border security than was included in the bill they e already signed.
And their running around everywhere saying it’s not a wall. It’s not concrete. And so forth.
Like you said it seems very much like leaving it hanging. They aren’t doing much and are letting Trump swing in the breeze taking the blame and making it worse.
In other words McConnell isn’t pushing back on Trump, but he sure as shit isn’t helping.
The “sources” on this are saying McConnell took Trump’s last minute about face on the funding bill as a personal affront. And is specifically unwilling to help Trump out on this. You notice the negotiations with Congress have been between the DNC and the White House. Not between the parties in congress.
He’s also repeatedly claimed Mexico has already paid for it. Via his NAFTA replacement that is just NAFTA with a new name that hasn’t passed Congress and isn’t in effect yet.
He doesn’t. Trump’s defining characteristic is endlessly misunderstanding then roll and power of the president. And lack of knowledge about US law.
The people around him know it, and have been purportedly telling him the emergency declaration won’t work for weeks.
The NYT reported last week that the whole wall idea was invented by a campaign aid as a way to keep Trump on the topic of immigration. They knew immigration could be a winning issue but worried about Trump’s ability to talk about it consistently.
They landed on the wall because it involved something simple for Trump to understand, something big he could put his name on, and it involved building something. Which he wouldn’t shut up about anyway.
It was never intended as policy. Just some old, half forgotten right wing pipe dream they restructured to suit Trump’s ego. And most of the details, claims, and plans we’ve now got on it are just horse shit that fell out of Trump’s mouth unbidden and unplanned for.
They don’t need to revolt. Thus far the military hasn’t shown any interest in following Trump off a cliff. We saw that with the whole sending the army to the border. Trump made all sorts of wild demands. All the military had to do was go to the border and do what they were legally allowed to do. Dig trenches and provide transport to defuse that. And they were active about pushing back on Trump’s claims. He started going on about troops enforcing customs and immigration law. And the DOD went directly to the public with press releases saying “We aren’t allowed to do that, we aren’t going to do that”.
I don’t think we need to worry about the military. They won’t be doing anything illegal, and aren’t amenable to helping Trump out.
The majority of soldiers as of the election supported the guy. But Trump hasn’t exactly made hay with that. He keeps bragging about a 10% pay raise that never happened. HR McMaster was basically military Mick Jagger and Trump absolutely ruined him, the clash with Mattis and his exit is viewed really badly by the military. The military parade he tried to back them into was insanely unpopular. And the Syria withdraw is disliked at the soldier level and universally considered a bad idea in the brass.
The emergency threat initially involved taking military funding, always unpopular, and our military culture has a deep antipathy to being used this way. Both in soldiers being used as manual labor, and in leadership to the idea of breaching the divide between the military and domestic governance.
And his repeated threats to go after people’s pensions. And the fact that he really did go after McCabe’s. Is I think an under valued detail. Pensions are a big, big, big thing in the military and law enforcement. I hear a lot of talk about that from military folks I know. A whole lot.
His classless and nasty statements about John McCain and attacks on “goldstar” Families, and Muslim soldiers. The whole attempt to revoke the service for citizenship programs leaving a bunch of active duty soldiers on the verge of being discharged and deported.
So what I think people need to understand is that a lot of these “but will the military really push back on that?” Moments from Trump are very often the exact things that make it less likely that the military will go along with it.
Thus far they’ve stuck with the usual order of staying out of politics and domestic policy discussions. Instead softly pushing back via press release, and doing things that are pointless. Like the border trip. But making a point to do only what is legal. While letting Trump think or claim it was what he ordered. And the DOD was incredibly vocal and active pushing back on Trump’s reversal on trans soldiers.
There’s zero indication that the military would back Trump in one of these crisis situations. And a whole shit ton of clear signals from the military that they don’t intend to. Including some no so quiet shit like members of DOD leadership shit talking about Trump and specifically saying they won’t be following him on anything like this in conferences and private events. Leaks about how they’re insulating themselves from the White House.
It would take a pretty big top down purge to turn our military into a Trump military.
CBP/ICE on the other hand have been vocal and open about their direct support for Trump. And lack of support for the government overall. Up to an including a few tense stand offs with US Marshals back when Trump did refuse to back down when the courts threw out his first Muslim ban.
And DHS (where CBP/ICE lives) has been much quieter than other federal departments.
So if we see that sort of clash. Trump’s jack boots aren’t gonna be the military. It’s gonna be CBP and ICE. If not Homeland Security entirely.
And if we’re talking that level of Constitutional Crisis, the math on Impeachment becomes much much different. I don’t know that anyone could claim which way it would go in that circumstance.
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That’s the thing; for decades people disingenuously used it as hyperbolic metaphor to allude to people and events being ‘the worst atrocity you can possibly think of,’ (thereby marginalizing the actual horror of the Holocaust, but that’s another topic.) So the prediction that any internet argument that goes on too long will eventually end up with someone using the ploy was usually accurate.
But since the Clusterfuck of 2016, the subject of Nazis is no longer merely historical, hyperbolic or metaphoric; it’s currently factual, which completely negates the use of that manipulative framing device in conversation.
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My favorite new thing is Trump claiming he never ever said that Mexico would literally pay for it with a lump-sum check for $10 million or anything… despite the fact that an actual memo is easily available on his campaign website [PDF link] in which Trump lays out their plan to have Mexico send a $10 million lump-sum check. So now he’s lying about lying.
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Just once, I really want someone to go all ‘Walter Sobchak’ on him about such flagrant lies:
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If McConnell’s plan is to let Trump twist and come out of the whole thing smelling like daisies, it’s not working.
Still, when it comes to how each group is handling the shutdown, congressional Republicans actually fare the worst. In the most recent HuffPost/YouGov poll, for example — conducted Jan. 4-7 — more Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the shutdown (52 percent) than they did of the way Democrats were handling it (46 percent), but 56 percent of Americans expressed disapproval of the congressional GOP’s performance. [emphasis added]
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OMG, an actual honest-to-dog emergency! Although proving that a flood or hurricane is actually the result of climate change to certain numbnuts will remain a hard sell.
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"sweep aside the recalcitrant left in this country"
This man is a historical GENIUS! It always works out when you completely ignore and neuter the opposition…
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Whatever else is driving it, Trump is throwing money at CBP and Ice and letting them play big boy with the tanks. Telling them their the most important thing, and it’s a war. So whatever elements were uncomfortable with leadership and the unions nasty, full on endorsements for Trump early on seems to be all for it now.
But they’re rather out numbered out trained and out equipped by the real millitary. Even if we’re just talking the National Guard. Who seem to be FAIRLY uncomfortable with this situation. And it’s perfectly legal to deploy them domestically for something like an insurrectionist federal law enforcement agency.
So if things really do shift towards the post apocalyptic, I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m not aware of any fascist dictators who managed to do their thing without significant control of the military. And Trump just isn’t making himself friends there.
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Not to mention erasing the “stain” of a black man in the White House by following him with the absolutely worst and lowest form of Republican life they could find.
By all the Gods, I wish that we could get powerful and compassionate and savvy Dems as POTUS for the next six elections, and that every one of them was a woman, a “minority”, or both. For inflicting the Redcap In Chief on the world as well as the US citizenry in particular, the GOP and all their donors deserve to die of apoplexy while Healthcare For All hospitals and tended by all-female-identifying staff…
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From your lips, to The All’s ears.
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Done in one
So, which one gets to be the SS and which one is will be stuck with being the SA?
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I still don’t truly understand their thinking. “How dare you put a black man in charge, we’ll burn our homes to the ground if we have to” followed by “We’ll show you, this white guy is so incompetent it reflects badly on our entire species… that’ll set things right.” I do think that white people and white men in particular should from this day onward in the US always be tagged with a little “is America safe with a white leader?” scare quote. It’s obvious we need the disclaimer.
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Perfection!
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Of course, none of those disaster areas deserve any relief funding, it’s entirely their fault those disasters happened! In California the fires were their fault for miss-management of the forests, the floods were the residents fault for living anywhere where it might, possibly, flood if it rains…
/s
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