It’s paradoxical, too, that liberalism allowed them to safely criticize the government they are actively working to destroy. Once they are “in charge” it’s show trials and gulags all the way down.
They think that they themselves won't be taken. And they're right. They won't. They're in the autocratic in-group, white, straight Christians.
We need to show them what living in a country without the rule will mean to them personally: If their car is stolen or their daughter is raped, they will have to bribe the legal system to give them justice. If they're well-to-do, no problem. But if they're not? Well, be prepared.
"They want Trump not in spite of the fact that he's a massively corrupt, massively racist, massively violent authoritarian. They want him because of all of those things."
This seems to be the #1 thing that people comfortably opposed to Trump (they don't like him but they're not going to actually do anything about it) simply cannot understand. And it's hard. It goes against a lifetime of assumptions, belief and training. But believe it or die, perhaps literally.
I vaguely remember this from college well back in the last century: Can a liberal democracy defend itself from its overthrow by enemies using liberal democratic means? Must that defense use only liberal democratic means or can it include illiberal, undemocratic means? Sorry, I'm gonna guess I only got like a B+ on that one.
The “knife to a gunfight” problem, compounded by the discovery that so much of what we liberals took as “lawful” was really just “norms”. I don’t advocate illegality, but hewing to a set of norms the other side has abandoned with prejudice is not meeting the moment.
It’s paradoxical, too, that liberalism allowed them to safely criticize the government they are actively working to destroy. Once they are “in charge” it’s show trials and gulags all the way down.
They think that they themselves won't be taken. And they're right. They won't. They're in the autocratic in-group, white, straight Christians.
We need to show them what living in a country without the rule will mean to them personally: If their car is stolen or their daughter is raped, they will have to bribe the legal system to give them justice. If they're well-to-do, no problem. But if they're not? Well, be prepared.
"They want Trump not in spite of the fact that he's a massively corrupt, massively racist, massively violent authoritarian. They want him because of all of those things."
This seems to be the #1 thing that people comfortably opposed to Trump (they don't like him but they're not going to actually do anything about it) simply cannot understand. And it's hard. It goes against a lifetime of assumptions, belief and training. But believe it or die, perhaps literally.
I vaguely remember this from college well back in the last century: Can a liberal democracy defend itself from its overthrow by enemies using liberal democratic means? Must that defense use only liberal democratic means or can it include illiberal, undemocratic means? Sorry, I'm gonna guess I only got like a B+ on that one.
The “knife to a gunfight” problem, compounded by the discovery that so much of what we liberals took as “lawful” was really just “norms”. I don’t advocate illegality, but hewing to a set of norms the other side has abandoned with prejudice is not meeting the moment.
Here's the asymmetry.
Democrat: "I belong to a party of free speech. I can say without fear that many Democrats are crazy and far left"
Republican: "My party is also all about free speech. I can say without fear that all Democrats are crazy and far left".
This is Fox News' entire business model.