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[TamerVirus]

It’s time to bring back….JEB!

[Starver]

I'm still waiting for President Johnson (A.B.dP.) - but there's the small matter of residency.

(And, at least at 50ppp, happy 1000th,  everybody!)

[anewaname]

Trump was never the problem; the problem always was who he could bring into power.

The people he did bring into power are now the problem.

Fascism is not lawlessness... The first thing fascists attempt to do is become "legitimate" and create new laws. Laws are how you de-legitimize other people. Laws are how you legalize the seizing of other people's bodies, their time, their life, their wealth.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In large part, I'm paraphrasing/summarizing from Jason Stanley's talks/interviews that I've been listening to, where he says "we're in the legal phase of fascism now", "where the courts have been taken over largely", "many laws are in place, so we're well beyond fascist rhetoric", "unless a miracle happens, the US is lost to democracy", and "I still have hope but you have to have massive structural change and the will for massive structural change".

and not TLDR, but TSCHI (Too Serious Can't Hear It)...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

you and I just watched the movie's protagonist emerge from the water after a fight with something below and it seems like it is over but that itch in the back of my mind is saying, "where's the triumphant music?" Do you have that itch?

-and-

when you're in a boss fight with Trump, if you kill him before you kill his minions, they all get massive level-ups.

[BurnedToast]

fair enough. I guess I just don't think massive decisions should be made one week out from an election. Like put a pause on things, unless its an emergency. But maybe realistically that isn't a thing. I guess the economy could be considered an emergency, its just, while they had to do it, waiting until after the elections I don't think make a massive difference. Then again I'm not an economic expert, but from what I see, dunno why they did that so soon before an election. Two weeks before, thats fine to me thats a ways off. But dunno, don't like it was so soon.

Well either way, it doesn't seem like it makes much a difference anyway who people vote for. And democrats still kicking butt (again especially what was assumed how we'd do) in most polls if polls matter.

I'm uh.... not sure what polls you're looking at, but the republicans are currently *heavily* favored to win the house, and slightly favored to win the senate. 538, for example, is giving the GOP an 85% chance of taking the house and a 55% chance of taking the senate. I'm not sure in what world a 54% chance of losing both the house and senate is considered "kicking butt".

Well, first I want to apologize in particular to The_Explorer, but also to everyone else. Because here we are several days later and while it's exceptionally unlikely, it's still possible the dems hold the house. They managed to hold most of the seats they needed to, and even managed to flip a few extremely unlikely ones - at this point it's even still possible they flip boebert's seat which was considered safe and she had a projected 97%(!) chance of holding. And while it's still possible the GOP takes the senate, it's looking increasingly unlikely. This is one of the worst mid-terms for the party out of power in living memory.

My smug proclamation that the dems were not going to do well was unwarranted, and also it seems it was completely wrong. So I'm sorry for that.

"Trump is going to cause the Republican Party to fracture and eventually dissolve."
"Trump is going to lose the primary and run third-party and split the vote."

I feel like I just stepped out of a time machine and into February of 2016; all we need at this point is an issue of National Review specifically condemning him. It's still only 2022 and as far as I'm concerned the reports of Trump's death are highly exaggerated.

You're absolutely right, but on the other hand you also have to consider how badly trump (indirectly) did. Last I checked, every single candidate he personally endorsed lost  - and many of them lost big. In addition I'm starting to see a lot of "dump trump" sentiment in conservative social media spheres and here's the key point - nobody is shutting it down anymore.

Trump has become a loser, so the right is making a hard shift to desantis. Which is actually probably bad for the dems because desantis is just as awful, maybe worse (in different ways) but he's also not as stupid and big-mouthed as trump. The only saving grace is that trump probably won't go down quietly and probably still has enough support to do serious damage to the party.  At this point the higher ups in the GOP are probably seriously considering pivoting and fully supporting the jan 6th commission. Locking him up and throwing away the key might be an extremely convenient way to shut him up and get rid of him.  I don't know if they will end up doing it or not, but there's a real possibility.

Interesting times.

[Telgin]

We may see them testing the waters with Average Joe before they dump him totally, but that will probably depend heavily on how things shake out with him potentially announcing a 2024 presidential election bid.  If he does that before they can start shifting messaging, it may be too late to dump him.

Or maybe not.  I only have anecdotal experience about it.  I've seen a number of people in person who essentially thought that Trump was the second coming of Jesus Christ and was literally blessed by God to retake American politics, and I don't know how quickly they'll change their minds just because the people on Fox News say they need to move on to DeSantis.  It might be just that simple, but I'm not going to make predictions.

[hector13]

Trump is announcing something big on the 15th so they don’t have much time if he is announcing his candidacy.

[Dostoevsky]

General word was that he was planning on announcing his candidacy after riding high on the midterms, and now things are awkward. He still wants to announce, but aides are trying to make him change gears.

[Lord Shonus]

The other critical difference from 2016 is that Trump hadn't lead the GOP into three straight electoral defeats yet. 2018, 2020, and now 2022 have been unmitigated disasters largely because of Trump. Even if the GOP ends up (which seems likely) with a 3-5 seat majority, it is going to be very difficult for them to exploit (Boehner had trouble managing his caucus way back when, despite having a comfortable ~60 vote majority and the Tea Party being far less disruptive), and is so small that the normal congressional death rate could flip it.

Trump was never the problem; the problem always was who he could bring into power.

The people he did bring into power are now the problem.

Fascism is not lawlessness... The first thing fascists attempt to do is become "legitimate" and create new laws. Laws are how you de-legitimize other people. Laws are how you legalize the seizing of other people's bodies, their time, their life, their wealth.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In large part, I'm paraphrasing/summarizing from Jason Stanley's talks/interviews that I've been listening to, where he says "we're in the legal phase of fascism now", "where the courts have been taken over largely", "many laws are in place, so we're well beyond fascist rhetoric", "unless a miracle happens, the US is lost to democracy", and "I still have hope but you have to have massive structural change and the will for massive structural change".

and not TLDR, but TSCHI (Too Serious Can't Hear It)...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

you and I just watched the movie's protagonist emerge from the water after a fight with something below and it seems like it is over but that itch in the back of my mind is saying, "where's the triumphant music?" Do you have that itch?

-and-

when you're in a boss fight with Trump, if you kill him before you kill his minions, they all get massive level-ups.

Stanley's a philosopher, not a historian, and it shows. None of the major fascist states (Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan) had the sort of gradual slide into it that he discusses. Mussolini took power in a military coup, Sanjurjo and Franco launched a military coup that escalated into an all-out civil war, and the Japanese variety was in many ways a return of the old shogunate system in modern trappings. The closest thing to what Stanley describes was Hitler, who gained power by losing a coup but maintaining just enough power in the Reichstag that Hindenburg thought he could used the "defanged" NSDAP to gain a legislative majority. At which point he promptly use a terrorist attack to justify crackdowns, giving him the ability to "elect" yes-men that would agreeably cede all the legislative power to his "cabinet".

[nenjin]

Hey Shonus, can I just say....

I've always appreciated your grasp of things.

[Lord Shonus]

I share a Discord server with a lot of people who are a lot smarter than I am, some of whom study this stuff professionally.

[anewaname]

Slow or fast? Isn't that the difference between having the backing of the military or not? If you have the military's support, it goes quite a bit faster than if you need to rely just on gaining political dominance. Hitler attempted to gain the support of the military for his first coup and failed, but Franco was a high-ranking military leader who ended up on the winning side of the civil war, and Mussolini was supported by the Italian King who forced the resignation of Mussolini's predecessor and refused to raise the military to stop Mussolini's militia.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I did not mention that Jason because I felt his ideas/assessments were different or better, but because his "legal phase of fascism" hit the radio and was something that interested me. I listened to a number of his talks in an attempt to understand and the audience Q&A's shifted my perspective and influenced my post, so I spoiler'd it. I didn't read the book, does he say it happens slowly?

Once the nationalists captured political control in Germany, Italy, and Spain, they all changed the law to ensure they'd stay in power. I understand this to be the "legal phase of fascism" and that phrase hit the radio in different countries after Trump took power and started inserting judges that McConnell wanted.

[Lord Shonus]

Backing of the military doesn't matter that much - Hitler didn't have it when he actually took power, and was relying on the SA for most of his muscle when he needed it. Successfully imposing that sort of rule only works when it is done fast, because doing it slow virtually always allows people the chance to stop you. Most countries had fascist movements in the 30s and 40s. Most of those movements failed because they never got the chance for a knockout blow.

Note that all of the successful fascist takeovers relied on very weak institutions. The Second Spanish Republic only came to power in 1931, and almost instantly began pissing everybody off. That helped create a legitimacy vacuum as well as a stability one, which gave Sanjurjo's cabal an opening to move. The Weimar Republic was formed after a series of revolutions following the defeat in WWI - none of the various factions had the legitimacy previously enjoyed by the House of Hohenzollern, most of the disparate groups behind them hated one another, and the state they set up was fundamentally unstable as a result. This resulted in a legitimacy vacuum as well as a stability one, which gave Hitler's cabal an opportunity to move. Italian fascism was spurred by public discontent with Italy (an Allied Power!) being left out of much of the spoils of WWI and poor treatment by the Allied Powers as a whole, combined with poor economic performance and a growing lack of confidence in the Crown. This helped create a legitimacy vacuum as well as a stability vacuum that gave Mussolini's cabal a chance to move.

In France, Britain, the US (the other Great Powers of the era)? All had fascist movements. None were taken over because the institutions were strong enough that the "Only a Strong Man can guide us from this dark time, I am that strong man, I now rule entirely!" moment never came.

[anewaname]

Backing of the military is everything when political dominance cannot be achieved. Look at Myanmar...

Are there any fascist parties who were in the minority and did not seek to weaken the institutions of the state? Are there any fascist parties who were in the majority and didn't seek to strengthen the institutions of the state against the fascist party's political opponents? The legal phase of fascism begins after a rise to political dominance, through political or military means.

The reasons for the rise of fascism in Italy included public discontent but the cause of that public discontent is not important. While fascists are in the minority, they attempt to weaken the state institutions to gather support to their cause, by creating "reasons for public discontent" through their own actions.

History provides names to groups that seek the authority to de-legitimize others and commit violence against them, but while the nation name and party name changes, the patterns of dominance through political or military means and the intent to enslave or murder remains the same.

How can the historical differences in the methods used by two violence-promoting-minority-parties make them different in anything other than their political environment?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

To be clear, I consider this a discussion.

[Lord Shonus]

Are there any fascist parties who were in the minority and did not seek to weaken the institutions of the state?

Yes. All of them. Not one of the successful fascist movements created the conditions they used to take power -the weakness in the German system had nothing to do with Hitler, the Spanish weakness wasn't caused by Sanjurjo, Mussolini didn't cripple Italy. None of the failed fascist movements in Britain, America, and France made any real effort to cripple those governments - they all sought to take over the thing intact.

[MorleyDev]

So the Dems held Nevada and in doing so the Senate, it seems. And if Georgia goes their way in December they may actually be one seat up in the Senate even. So that's a plus.