Thanks to the Federalist Society and over 70 years of concerted effort by the oligarchs to take control of the Supreme Court we are watching in real time how democracy ends.
The RW activist justices took away female privacy and self-determination and state a clump of nonviable cells are humans with rights but the woman carrying those cells is not worthy of the same consideration and rights. Then they gut the federal government’s ability to enforce regulations through agencies established under the executive branch.
Now they seek to take away federal oversight over the electoral college and even state’s courts to consider state constitutions when ruling in voting cases which would allow legislatures to ignore the popular votes in their state and select a slate of electoral college electors regardless of the vote. This is the same playbook used to attempt the coup of Jan 6 in tandem with the violent insurrection (meant to indicate the traitors mean business while also delaying the process for select states to produce and present the alternate slates of electors to steal the election from Biden. If the SCOTUS rules as we know they were appointed to rule they will make this totally legal and remove the guard-rail of state supreme courts protecting the majorities in states from having their votes disregarded by state legislators as they certify their preferred slate of electors to the electoral college.
This process has been in play since the 1960’s and accelerated in the past 40 some years since Raygun’s term.
Good reads on this subject:
"Dark Money" (2016),
"Democracy in Chains" (2017);
"Evil Geniuses" (2020)
These tomes expose a stealth plan, overseen by radical right-wing billionaires determined to "liberate" themselves from all effective government limitations on their actions and accumulation of wealth.
Although Roe and Wade is vitally important, blowing it up was all a distraction and decoy that flooded the information zone from the fact that the bastard Oligarchs want to NOT pay taxes, get more tax breaks and subsidies, remain able to use fossil fuels, enact more deregulation and fuck the world at our expense. That is why they voted for LOSER45 and still will. He is just like them.
Hey that is nothing new, but with their trillions in tax breaks they have even more incentive to pay people to join the political arena ... the GQP arena. That and now they have an even happier and more loyal base of ultra religious morons... willing to vote thinking that these rich bastards care about them and their "pro-life" stance.
PS: With elections on the horizon, the flooding of the zone will continue. Try not to be distracted from reality.
You and I are like-minded on this topic. I am following as of now, but busy this sec. They anointed KBJ as SCJustice, maybe Justice Breyer should have changed his mind about retirement and stayed on ...our side has no Evil Geniuses 👹
You and I are like-minded on this topic. I am following as of now, but busy this sec. They anointed KBJ as SCJustice, maybe Justice Breyer should have changed his mind about retirement and stayed on ...our side has no Evil Geniuses 👹
article about political violence on the Right, sanctioned by GOP - (gifted from wapo, no paywall) - good article check it out: https://wapo.st/3yV8Rur
Excerpt:
Sargent: This is the moment when the hearings really talk about political violence as a threat to our future. What do we need to see the hearings dramatize on this score?
Kleinfeld: They need to show how the GOP is using organized militias. They also need to show that political violence is much more mainstream now. The types of people committing political violence on the right are no longer criminal demographics.
The kinds of violence we’re seeing at political events — Jan. 6 and so on — the majority of people are older men, they’re married, they have children, they have jobs. Often white-collar jobs.
Americans need to realize that paramilitary groups could become a normal part of our political life. We could start seeing it becoming vastly less safe to exercise freedom of speech and assembly. It’s already much less safe than just a handful of years ago.
A major effort by this administration is underway, yet very under-reported, to remake our government more responsive and supportive of our middle class and by extension, everyone. This support is absolutely necessary to maintain a functioning democracy. I do not have confidence the rubes and easily influenced will ever be able to overcome the propaganda tsunami to understand the value of this shift in federal governance priorities.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-10-2022/
Why I think a "benevolent dictator" may be the best form of government.
And why I suspect that "controlled" economies and governments such as the ones in Asia will eventually dominate "democracies", like what we have in the US and India.
Based on Singapore's experience with Lee Kuan Yew.
We don't have any leaders like this in the US and probably never will.
Our system would not even allow their development, much less allow them to reach or remain in power.
Here's an interview with him back in 1965...
His criticism of the US government lacking depth and wisdom are just so true. And he speaks of US corruption from his own personal experience with the CIA trying to undermine the Singapore government in the early 60s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=142FbTYeK7k
Background for the interview...
"In 1960, fearing that Singapore was falling to the Communists, the CIA tried to put the head of Singapore’s Internal Security Department on its payroll. The American who made the offer quickly found himself in jail. Then the United States sent a highranking official—to this day, Lee won’t reveal his name—to offer Lee $3.3 million to keep the affair quiet. Lee countered that instead he would take $33 million in economic aid for Singapore. He didn’t get it. Five years later, when Lee made the story of the bribe public [in the interview shown here], the State Department denied it. The Americans directed at Lee what from his point of view were probably the two greatest insults possible: first, they treated him as a banana-republic dictator; then they branded him a liar. A furious Lee called reporters into his office and said he would show them incriminating documents and play them incriminating tapes if the State Department didn’t admit the truth. The Americans “are not dealing with Ngo Dinh Diem or Syngman Rhee,” Lee told the reporters. “You do not buy and sell this Government.” The State Department thereupon confirmed the charge."
Seeing how easily manipulated the general population is, can we EVER be confident that a "democracy" based on "popular vote" (even if we had such a thing) would work well?
I seriously doubt this.
It just means the puppet masters need a new set of skills. The real problem will ALWAYS be the puppet masters. And we will NEVER be rid of them as far as I
can tell. The old ideals of "virtuous" leaders seem laughable today.
The existence of groups like QAnon, Evangelicals, and such convince me that the puppeteers already know how to play the game to their advantage (whoever "they" may be).
We are being run by various "influencers" now.
Basically, most people are actually too stupid to know what they are doing with their vote.
I'm not sure that we will ever work out that deficiency. We seem to be going in the opposite direction daily.
In this environment, a Kardashian or TikTok "influencer" could end up running our government. Nothing would surprise me.
I should have never watched the movie, Idiocracy, I guess...
Our system of government was never meant to be a popular democracy.
It was designed from the beginning to be run by elites.
At first, only free, white male property owners could vote, for example.
I think the FFs knew that the general population wasn't smart enough or educated enough to understand what an entire country needed.
And while their original ideas sound sexist, racist, classist, etc., etc., maybe they were
sensible considering the people of that time. (And given today's population, they might have been even more restrictive in deciding who could vote in a new form of government , but I don't know how they'd "qualify" voters.)
They also understood that the "unwashed masses" were more likely to be influenced by appeals to their basic needs or even promises of free money.
We are now at the stage where people can literally vote themselves money and that was seen by some as a likely cause of our downfall.
Just remember that we did not have "direct election" of our Senators until the
17th amendment was ratified in 1913.
The idea before then was that "knowledgeable" people were best equipped to
elect people to the more powerful branch.
Of course, that had its issues, but when you look at how things are now, I'm not
sure it was worse than what the rabble has put into office.
When you consider that India is supposedly the "world's largest democracy", then
democracy isn't looking so great.
Especially when you compare the results to places like Singapore and, perhaps,
even China. Singapore, for example, has been nothing but amazing since WWII. Mostly due to the efforts of one leader, Lee Kuan Yew, a "benevolent dictator" of sorts.
Immediately after WWII, Singapore was at about the same level of poverty and development as Mexico. Today, there is no comparison.
Lee Kuan Yew was a very interesting leader. There were interviews with him during the 1960s and 70s which show how much smarter and wiser he was than probably ANY politician the US has had. In the US, he wouldn't have had more than 8 years to do his thing, and would have been replaced by the next popular hack who came along.
Similarly, China has done more in the last 40 years to raise hundreds of millions of people out of poverty than any other country. And they do this not only in China but in places like Africa where they have been on the ground doing work for decades.
I've lived in China and visited China many times since 1997. It has been amazing to watch their progress. Lately, they've reined in a bit of their "freedoms", especially the
more socially destructive ones, but in general it is a MUCH SAFER place than the US on a daily basis.
One big difference in China is that they actually execute high officials who are corrupt.
This makes a difference.
BTW, Benjamin Franklin is often given credit for the saying:
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.“
And that certainly rings true today, but I think a more likely source of this is this fellow - or someone similar - who was around at the same time:
He has some interesting ideas which seem to be true about democracy.
This graphic is interesting. We seem to be somewhere around 9pm on this "clock"...
Thank you Pro! You took time out , with all your extremely difficult, heroic, quest as first poster, to scare the hell out of me! For reals, great read.
The Kochs were big in this. They were founding members of the John Birch Society and pushed for putting members in positions of power so they could change government from the inside - quietly.
There is embedded damage big time that I too think would be nearly impossible to find and remove. These freaks live among us and work to subvert democracy for a religious theocracy. Now with trump raising disinformation to an art form, so many have swallowed the hook and sewed their yaps shut so the hook can’t be removed.
At this point, the only consolation for me is that I’m old. I’ll get to see it happen but hopefully won’t have to live the consequences. I really feel bad for those who are going to live this coming slow-motion nightmare. It’s not even so slow-motion anymore. The fuckers smell blood.