Bill: "The assault on our political liberties and our civic decency, on our polity and on our society, is happening."
The electorate doesn't care about civic decency. If it did, Trump wouldn't have won in 2016 after the "Access Hollywood" story came out. Look how many indecent people the electorate has sent to Congress. Look at how many indecent people that have been elected at the state level. The sooner we admit the electorate is rotten to the core, the better off we'll be in the long term.
That's pretty much what hard-core MAGAs say about us. It's hard to see how reconciliation can occur when both sides are "otherizing" each other.
My attitude is that we should stop wallowing in vagueness. If folks want a national divorce, then how about starting to do the hard work -- and it would be very hard work -- of making it happen? And if that's not the direction one wants to go, then we need to tone down the otherization and look for ways to rekindle American democracy . . . often with people we may strongly disagree with on a lot of issues.
When the MAGAe say something like that about the non-MAGAe, they're full of shit, Steve. The MAGAe resort to using false equivalencies in order to avoid accountability for their choices. The **facts** are as follows:
* The MAGAe voted for a guy who mismanaged a pandemic to the tune of 700K excess deaths
* The MAGAe voted for an insurrectionist
* The MAGAe voted for a 34x convicted felon
* The MAGAe voted for an adjudicated rapist
Full stop. And frankly, I don't give a fuck about what the MAGAe say about me because when it counted, I did the morally decent thing by voting for Harris two years ago. The MAGAe voted for Trump to hurt the people they hate as was their right to do. And I'm entitled to make judgments about their character.
You do you, Tim. I'm simply making the argument that if you have given up trying to co-govern with the American right wing, then you would do well to help develop a coherent strategy for moving forward. Vague expressions of righteous indignation can feel good but it doesn't actually get us down the road.
Tim and Steve, you're both right! In the end, it is truth that shall set us free.
There's no shortage of corruption and incompetence in the current GOP to ridicule on a daily basis, in ways that garner max media attention.
See Ossoff or Slotkin or any # of other reasonable voices making republicans look silly every day. More of this. Less center vs. Left vs. Harder Left. Until Nov 6th 2026, I have little ill to say of anyone left of John McCain (RIP).
This seems right. We are at a crossroads. Both paths are difficult and treacherous. Right now, I don't see a third option. Which road will we choose? I don't know the right answer.
The electorate is not rotten to the core. Some people are, and many of our politicians are, but to tar the entire US electorate as rotten or corrupt or somehow evil is not useful or particularly accurate.
People are frightened, often ignorant, easily manipulated by propaganda, too busy living their daily lives to pay the kind of close attention to the minutiae of politics and public affairs that political junkies pay: but they are not rotten.
More than half of US voters voted against Trump in 2016; his loss in the popular vote was only offset by the horrors of the Electoral College, which allowed Trump, the RNC and (as we know from the documents the president shared during his speech last week on election fraud) the Russians, to manipulate voter sentiment and turnout in three key EC states to give the old goon an EC win.
Let's face one cold, hard truth. "The Clintons" are a toxic brand, and Hillary--in thrall to the consultants--ran a sub-par campaign. If the Democrats had not anointed her in 2016, the outcome might have been different. We'll never know.
What we do know is that many 2016 Trump voters and third party voters saw rank corruption in the idea of returning "The Clintons" to the White House. Ironically, they believed themselves to be voting FOR civic decency by voting against a Clinton.
Mind you, I voted for Hillary, as I would vote for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024: but even someone like me, horrified by Trump and Democratic-leaning in my politics, wished for a better option--all three times.
Trump was elected in 2024 because millions of voters, disgusted by all the options, appalled by the Biden administration's tin-eared indifference to bread-and-butter issues, frightened by Biden's visible decline, unimpressed by Harris, chose either to sit out the election or to vote for third party candidates, while millions more voted for Trump, often as what they perceived to be "the lesser of two evils."
This was naive and incredibly destructive, but it wasn't proof of indifference to civic decency; it was proof, if anything, of how profoundly democracy and the Democrats had failed the people.
In any case if you believe the American people are fundamentally rotten then you should be happy with the rise of Trumpism and the death of our democracy. Us rotten Americans are just getting what we deserve, no?
It still boggles my mind how most evangelicals didn't just forgive him for "Access Hollywood," and adultery, but even worshipped him, as the very "false god" a Commandment warned about. For years I had been well aware of how irrational evangelicals could be, particularly about denying (or pretending to deny) biological evolution, even though most major Christian religions had accepted it. But I always thought they'd draw the line when the sins are not just lying and stealing, but also about sex.
I’ve often quoted Lincoln’s Young Men of Lyceum address to show how he had warned of national suicide. And this Morning Shots is completely correct that for far too many people, the concept of it happening was alien as something that “couldn’t happen here.”
It was why, in the run up to the ‘24 election, I warned repeatedly on social media that the claim that it couldn’t happen here was the last words uttered by every nation where it did happen.
Throughout 2024 I pleaded to as many people that would listen that America was in danger of becoming normal. Normal human behavior is leaders presiding over sham elections in corrupt attempts to retain power. The idea that John Adams willingly walked away after his defeat to Jefferson…HW’s musing “we respect the majesty of the democratic system” after his loss to Clinton…that’s what made America from 1787 to 2020 EXCEPTIONAL.
LOL! More like Adams huffed out of DC before Jefferson was sworn in--- and interestingly he wasn't invited by Jefferson to attend either. He didn't like it but he did the right thing.
This "I have been better for you than your parents" quote left my jaw on the floor of my car yesterday, and yet I immediately knew it either would be shrugged off by his followers or embraced as some kind of warm and fuzzy truth. On the other hand, maybe a lot of them really did have shitty parents - and MAGA is what you get when that's the case.
Studies do show that many MAGA voters come from messed up families like JD Vance's. Ugly divorces, multiple marriages, substance abuse, domestic violence, and absent parents either from choice or work. Not the profile of the best Americans, but it is the profile of a lot of Americans.
Anything in those studies comparing the messed-upness of MAGA’s families to non-MAGAs, self-identified Republicans, voters overall, US overall, or others?
I'm sure there must be studies that have done comparison populations, but I was interested in the ones directly interviewing rabid Trump voters. Dysfunctional is the best description of these voters and their family situations. In that sense they do mirror Trump and his family.
In reaction to Bill's piece, yeah, we are fucked. Domestically, we're fucked. Internationally, we're fucked. We are totally and comprehensively fucked. But, it's never been a better time to be a billionaire, so there are a couple thousand Americans who have nothing to complain about, but I suspect they'll still do plenty of complaining, and keep pouring money into politics in an effort to keep Republicans in power. Lucky for them, the electorate is replete with suckers who are easily fooled, and will likely continue voting to keep their oppressors in position to keep them oppressed.
And while we're fucked today, we'll be even more fucked tomorrow, as jobs go away and no plan to handle the disruption materializes. As bad as things are now, they will get worse. And Trump still has over two years of damage left to do, with no reelection concerns to restrain him. He is operating wholly outside the bounds of political gravity. It's all smash and grab for the next two and a half years.
It'll be smash and grab until the nation collapses and breaks up. The Constitutional Republic is already gone, we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this point.
They'll take everything... Even if it's nailed down. They'll convince their working class rube followers to do it for them. All in service for some meaningless fight against Trans or immigrants. The nice thing about being doomed as a nation means I don't have to care about it anymore.
Maybe it’s because 99% of the time reading on Substack(?), but I’ve missed the whole rebranding thing. You say there are new fonts? News to me. Of course I’m the one who couldn’t tell you what color shirt you were wearing 5 minutes after seeing you.
Viewing The Bulwark via Substack is not different. It’s when you go to the Bulwark webpage, which I do often on my iPad, that you see the changes. The worst change I’ve noticed, so far, is the font used for comments. They are unreadable to me.
Are the letters skinnier, taller, and more pressed together to you? That's how they look to me. I have astigmatism, I wear glasses which make reading a world easier but this new font really messes with my eyes. The words seem to blur together.
I love the comment section, I love this smart community but I can't get through as many as I used to.
“Well, it’s happening. The assault on our political liberties and our civic decency, on our polity and on our society, is happening. The pace and degree at which it’s moved is hard to believe.”
Is it really hard to believe? Seriously? Some of were we screaming at the top of our lungs for years, while many others downplayed the severity of MAGA Inc:
“it can’t happen here, the guardrails will hold!” Blah, blah, blah…….
Wishful thinking, but glad you’re finally able to utter these words: it’s happening here in real-time!
Trump has corrupted everyone in his orbit and not an institution has been spared. And with a complicit SCOTUS, Trump will complete the coup by 28. Whether he chooses to use the nuclear option for the midterms (manufacture a crisis and use emergency powers) is debatable. He has other avenues to stop the certification process—red counties refuse to verify based on irregularities and Johnson refuses to seat members of the new Congress, etc…what’s not debatable is 28’. He and his party will never concede the executive—EVER!
If anyone is still under the delusion that there will be a peaceful transfer of power in 28’—you seriously need to find a good therapist or stop sniffing glue—or whatever drug of choice your using! IMHO…:)
he hasn't exactly taken very good care of his health. And in all of his pictures he looks like he's really packed on some weight, both in front and in back. Baby got a lot of back. Someone needs to buy him some bigger, ill-tailored suits.
he's got the very sweaty face of a very unhealthy older man.
Actually, I think he'll be only too happy to leave. He's turned around the unbearable - losing an election -has made more $$ than ever before, and doesn't like to work. Golf and applause at Maralago await the twice elected crazy guy.
I've often said physically dragging him from office may be necessary. *Bullets and blood may be what it comes down to. When is enough going to be enough for people to risk their lives to get back to what we once knew? And who is doing to do it? Who is going to step up?
Agreed, violence won’t work though, which is why ANTFA is now labeled a domestic terror organization—which doesn’t exist. It won’t stop them from labeling every dissent as such though and charging them with domestic terror—even for peaceful protests.
What also worries me is how many federal judges he’s appointing this term. At this rate between his last election and this, he could put close to 2/3’s of the justices on the bench. Be afraid, be very afraid!…:)
"Ten years of Trumpism mark not only a failure to preserve that order, but the infliction of real harm done to it. As we look around at the state of our institutions laboriously built up—a comparatively fair system of justice at home, a relatively honest federal government, an attempt to live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants, and an international order that was comparatively stable and friendly to the forces of freedom—it’s hard to believe how much damage has been done in the past decade. With a dramatic acceleration, of course, in the past eighteen months. It is hard for many of us—and I include myself in this number—to believe that this is the situation we face. But it’s time to believe it. Only then might we rise to the occasion."
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I submit that there are two primary reasons why we are so complacent as a culture relative to the threat around us:
1) Beyond a few pocketbook issues, most Americans haven't suffered any real harm or deprivation yet, so in their eyes it isn't real so much as it is someone else's reality -- a very different thing in our daily lives. If you are American-born you feel little fear of recriminations for past words and actions. All the more so if you are a white male. Maybe they will come for you someday, but until then you can walk and talk freely while others are vulnerable. But try walking the many miles in the shoes of those who were born elsewhere, especially in nations that the administration deems unfriendly. Or are dark-skinned. Or are transgender. Or gay. Or to some extent if you are a woman instead of a man. Suddenly this nation is a very different place, and your daily existence is much more uncertain, knowing that there are fewer rules to protect you and less chance of others coming to help you. Most people can only imagine what it is like to live that way, and they do so seldom if at all, until it is their turn too.
2) Technology has been a wonderful addition to our lives, but it also has doped us up and duped us about what is happening out there, beyond our immediate field of vision, as people increasingly choose their own daily reality. News sources are customized as we look for outlets that tell us what we want to hear more than what we need to know, influence our basic perceptions on a daily basis, and wall us off from each other. They make it all too easy to be intellectually lazy and compliant in a time when critical thinking is more important then ever. And bad actors from elsewhere, bots and otherwise, plant bad ideas in our minds and undermine our understanding of important issues and concerns. In theory it is easy to unplug and remove the threats. In reality it is hard to do so, so intertwined are we with our online existence and addicted to the social media that often do much more harm than good to our perception of the world around us.
There is more, of course, but as long as we cannot or do not try to overcome these two factors, we already are in a very deep hole in our ability to grasp the true magnitude of the current administration's threat to our awareness and understanding, not to mention our willingness and ability to do something about it. Which of course is exactly where they want for us to be. The rest of the free world anxiously waits for us to find a solution to these problems before the damage done is irreparable to them as well as to us. We have much work to do.
Sadly, there is now the fact that open corruption is ruining the reputation of the workings of capitalism. Trump has established a pay-to-play system that he uses for tariffs, taxes, visas, regulations, laws, and regulations. Pay him, and you can be exempt from all of those. -- even pedophilia is being protected.
People are feeling helpless, knowing how the system is now more stacked against them.
I'd add to point 1) that several generations haven't known deprivation. Yes, the recession that started in 2008 was bad, but it wasn't The Depression of the 1930's that scarred most of America. There is knowledge of bad times that can be passed via grandparents to their progeny. This phenomenon extends to vaccinations too. Many people do not have grandparents who knew life before vaccinations nearly eliminated diseases that frequently killed or maimed people.
Good point. The vast majority of Americans have never known any real sense of societal hardship in their entire life. We have been much luckier than many other cultures on this Earth.
I think you are correct that most MAGA, because they're White, haven't really felt the effects of anything in their lives yet. The pickumups still drive out my road in the morning to work and come home at night. Maybe their grocery bills make them grumble but no one of them is starving along the street yet. Until a 2x4 hits them over the head, there will be no interest in doing anything about anything.
"But our failure is one for which we have less of an excuse."
What defense is there against an ignorant voting public? Most of them have no clue what is happening. And if they did, they would find a reason to blame everything on "those people." We truly are witnessing the beginning of American collapse.
In the vein of complacency, I think we need to update the saying, "The moral arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice" to be followed by "but nothing bends without formidable, consistent pressure"
"He has repeatedly asked Kennedy this year why he hasn’t prioritized finding a connection between vaccines and autism, and has told aides his secretary “will be a failure if he doesn’t make progress on the issue.”"
This is a part of Trump's neediness. Nobody can be allowed to be above Trump on anything. Even if a person has spent a lifetime building expertise on a subject, like the medical researcher, they must be made small. Trump does all he can to foment distrust out of a pathetic need to hoard all honor for himself.
You, sir, will be a failure since the connection between autism and vaccines has been well researched already with results that do not favor Kennedy.
This one bemuses me as Trump was for vaccines, think Covid, before he was against them. I doubt the old Orange Narcissist is really an anti-vaxxer and it is hard to believe he really cares that much.
It's just a sign we will need a Reconstruction 2.0 after this whole Trump thing ends. And we will need to finish Reconstruction, not fail completely like they did in the 1870s.
I'm going to be that person today and point out that when Lincoln made those remarks in 1838, the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans in the Southeast had already been underway for several years, and they were just getting around to driving the Cherokee out of their ancestral homeland. I was born a Tennessean because some of my ancestors got the spoils of that atrocity, courtesy of the U.S. government.
I'm not saying this to suggest there's nothing worth saving about this country or even that we aren't in an especially dire moment. But if Americans are having a hard time rousing themselves to sufficient alarm about what's happening, maybe it's because they've been soothed and sedated their whole lives with a false sense of superiority. Maybe our attachment to pretty words about our glorious origins is part of the problem. We were never "a political edifice of liberty and equal rights," except for the lucky few among us. At our best we've aspired to be such, and the U.S. is in many ways an amazing place, but every single thing built here was made possible by the deprivation, suffering, enslavement, and death of real human beings. If all of us could fully grasp that and feel the weight of it, perhaps it would be easier to see that Trumpism is not an anomaly but a manifestation of something rotten at the core of this country, and the rot is as much a part of our legacy as the beautiful ideas about liberty.
"an attempt to live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants":
Been doing some family research. Among my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, seven immigrant families received free farmland under the Homestead Act of 1862. Only one was a citizen when they moved on to the land; the others just needed to pledge to become citizens before taking full possession. Which they all did. I realize circumstances change. But one would think
this heritage would inspire something other than Trumpian cruelty.
RFK Jr won't find any link between vaccines and autism, because there isn't one. Both he and Trump are too stupid to understand this. The HHS secretary is already a failure. There is no reason to wait for him to fail at this job to further clarify the failure.
I'm sick of the whining and faux outrage from conservative/moderate Dems over language and the breaking of decorum of how politics used to be.
Politics is now a fistfight and they need to get over it. The before times when fake-ass civility was presented in public while the dirty laundry was selectively leaked behind the scenes are over. If you're going to run for office in the present and the future, you're going to have to swing a few verbal fists in public.
Bill: "The assault on our political liberties and our civic decency, on our polity and on our society, is happening."
The electorate doesn't care about civic decency. If it did, Trump wouldn't have won in 2016 after the "Access Hollywood" story came out. Look how many indecent people the electorate has sent to Congress. Look at how many indecent people that have been elected at the state level. The sooner we admit the electorate is rotten to the core, the better off we'll be in the long term.
Hard agree Tim. We have to start acknowledging that a decent portion of the population are people that do not give a damn about other people.
We learned that from COVID.
Not only has there been a dumping down in America, but that of decency as well.
I assume you meant "dumBing down," but "dumping down" works very well, too.
I can think of another word that starts with "T" and rhymes with the original version and maybe seen to fit even better.
That's pretty much what hard-core MAGAs say about us. It's hard to see how reconciliation can occur when both sides are "otherizing" each other.
My attitude is that we should stop wallowing in vagueness. If folks want a national divorce, then how about starting to do the hard work -- and it would be very hard work -- of making it happen? And if that's not the direction one wants to go, then we need to tone down the otherization and look for ways to rekindle American democracy . . . often with people we may strongly disagree with on a lot of issues.
When the MAGAe say something like that about the non-MAGAe, they're full of shit, Steve. The MAGAe resort to using false equivalencies in order to avoid accountability for their choices. The **facts** are as follows:
* The MAGAe voted for a guy who mismanaged a pandemic to the tune of 700K excess deaths
* The MAGAe voted for an insurrectionist
* The MAGAe voted for a 34x convicted felon
* The MAGAe voted for an adjudicated rapist
Full stop. And frankly, I don't give a fuck about what the MAGAe say about me because when it counted, I did the morally decent thing by voting for Harris two years ago. The MAGAe voted for Trump to hurt the people they hate as was their right to do. And I'm entitled to make judgments about their character.
You do you, Tim. I'm simply making the argument that if you have given up trying to co-govern with the American right wing, then you would do well to help develop a coherent strategy for moving forward. Vague expressions of righteous indignation can feel good but it doesn't actually get us down the road.
So what's the plan, man?
Tim and Steve, you're both right! In the end, it is truth that shall set us free.
There's no shortage of corruption and incompetence in the current GOP to ridicule on a daily basis, in ways that garner max media attention.
See Ossoff or Slotkin or any # of other reasonable voices making republicans look silly every day. More of this. Less center vs. Left vs. Harder Left. Until Nov 6th 2026, I have little ill to say of anyone left of John McCain (RIP).
This seems right. We are at a crossroads. Both paths are difficult and treacherous. Right now, I don't see a third option. Which road will we choose? I don't know the right answer.
The electorate is not rotten to the core. Some people are, and many of our politicians are, but to tar the entire US electorate as rotten or corrupt or somehow evil is not useful or particularly accurate.
People are frightened, often ignorant, easily manipulated by propaganda, too busy living their daily lives to pay the kind of close attention to the minutiae of politics and public affairs that political junkies pay: but they are not rotten.
More than half of US voters voted against Trump in 2016; his loss in the popular vote was only offset by the horrors of the Electoral College, which allowed Trump, the RNC and (as we know from the documents the president shared during his speech last week on election fraud) the Russians, to manipulate voter sentiment and turnout in three key EC states to give the old goon an EC win.
Let's face one cold, hard truth. "The Clintons" are a toxic brand, and Hillary--in thrall to the consultants--ran a sub-par campaign. If the Democrats had not anointed her in 2016, the outcome might have been different. We'll never know.
What we do know is that many 2016 Trump voters and third party voters saw rank corruption in the idea of returning "The Clintons" to the White House. Ironically, they believed themselves to be voting FOR civic decency by voting against a Clinton.
Mind you, I voted for Hillary, as I would vote for Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024: but even someone like me, horrified by Trump and Democratic-leaning in my politics, wished for a better option--all three times.
Trump was elected in 2024 because millions of voters, disgusted by all the options, appalled by the Biden administration's tin-eared indifference to bread-and-butter issues, frightened by Biden's visible decline, unimpressed by Harris, chose either to sit out the election or to vote for third party candidates, while millions more voted for Trump, often as what they perceived to be "the lesser of two evils."
This was naive and incredibly destructive, but it wasn't proof of indifference to civic decency; it was proof, if anything, of how profoundly democracy and the Democrats had failed the people.
In any case if you believe the American people are fundamentally rotten then you should be happy with the rise of Trumpism and the death of our democracy. Us rotten Americans are just getting what we deserve, no?
It still boggles my mind how most evangelicals didn't just forgive him for "Access Hollywood," and adultery, but even worshipped him, as the very "false god" a Commandment warned about. For years I had been well aware of how irrational evangelicals could be, particularly about denying (or pretending to deny) biological evolution, even though most major Christian religions had accepted it. But I always thought they'd draw the line when the sins are not just lying and stealing, but also about sex.
Unfortunately true .
I’ve often quoted Lincoln’s Young Men of Lyceum address to show how he had warned of national suicide. And this Morning Shots is completely correct that for far too many people, the concept of it happening was alien as something that “couldn’t happen here.”
It was why, in the run up to the ‘24 election, I warned repeatedly on social media that the claim that it couldn’t happen here was the last words uttered by every nation where it did happen.
Throughout 2024 I pleaded to as many people that would listen that America was in danger of becoming normal. Normal human behavior is leaders presiding over sham elections in corrupt attempts to retain power. The idea that John Adams willingly walked away after his defeat to Jefferson…HW’s musing “we respect the majesty of the democratic system” after his loss to Clinton…that’s what made America from 1787 to 2020 EXCEPTIONAL.
LOL! More like Adams huffed out of DC before Jefferson was sworn in--- and interestingly he wasn't invited by Jefferson to attend either. He didn't like it but he did the right thing.
This "I have been better for you than your parents" quote left my jaw on the floor of my car yesterday, and yet I immediately knew it either would be shrugged off by his followers or embraced as some kind of warm and fuzzy truth. On the other hand, maybe a lot of them really did have shitty parents - and MAGA is what you get when that's the case.
Eric and Don Jr certainly had shitty parents.
Donald had shitty parents, too. Fred Trump was a bad man, and his wife was emotionally unavailable.
Generational abuse is generational for a reason. Something about the sins of the fathers and seven generations.
Add Roy Cohn to the mix.
Yup , a poisonous person if there ever was one .
I'm thinking our nation's problem is bad parenting - by more than the tRump family.
Uda, Kusa and Sadam
Studies do show that many MAGA voters come from messed up families like JD Vance's. Ugly divorces, multiple marriages, substance abuse, domestic violence, and absent parents either from choice or work. Not the profile of the best Americans, but it is the profile of a lot of Americans.
probably 1/3 , many come from twisted views, or develop them. Guess we are all susceptible to certain things at points in our life.
Anything in those studies comparing the messed-upness of MAGA’s families to non-MAGAs, self-identified Republicans, voters overall, US overall, or others?
I'm sure there must be studies that have done comparison populations, but I was interested in the ones directly interviewing rabid Trump voters. Dysfunctional is the best description of these voters and their family situations. In that sense they do mirror Trump and his family.
Basket full of intolerables
Jaw dropping indeed.
Just like he has been 'better' for blacks and all of us as well. :(
In reaction to Bill's piece, yeah, we are fucked. Domestically, we're fucked. Internationally, we're fucked. We are totally and comprehensively fucked. But, it's never been a better time to be a billionaire, so there are a couple thousand Americans who have nothing to complain about, but I suspect they'll still do plenty of complaining, and keep pouring money into politics in an effort to keep Republicans in power. Lucky for them, the electorate is replete with suckers who are easily fooled, and will likely continue voting to keep their oppressors in position to keep them oppressed.
And while we're fucked today, we'll be even more fucked tomorrow, as jobs go away and no plan to handle the disruption materializes. As bad as things are now, they will get worse. And Trump still has over two years of damage left to do, with no reelection concerns to restrain him. He is operating wholly outside the bounds of political gravity. It's all smash and grab for the next two and a half years.
Ah Don, you are channeling your darkest JVL possible!
Oh he's mister Don Gates sunshine . 🌝 Where myself I am a
" It's always darkest before it goes completely black " adherent . 😁
It'll be smash and grab until the nation collapses and breaks up. The Constitutional Republic is already gone, we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic at this point.
President lardbutt and family will steal the deck chairs too .
They'll take everything... Even if it's nailed down. They'll convince their working class rube followers to do it for them. All in service for some meaningless fight against Trans or immigrants. The nice thing about being doomed as a nation means I don't have to care about it anymore.
"It just goes to show: Not all rebrands are as smooth, painless, and universally appreciated as The Bulwark’s has been."
I'm glad you didn't rebrand your sense of humor when you redesigned the home page. Thanks for a good chuckle to start the day.
Maybe it’s because 99% of the time reading on Substack(?), but I’ve missed the whole rebranding thing. You say there are new fonts? News to me. Of course I’m the one who couldn’t tell you what color shirt you were wearing 5 minutes after seeing you.
I had to log on via my laptop to see what all the rebranding kerfuffle was about. Didn't look that different on my iPad (my usual way of reading it.)
Viewing The Bulwark via Substack is not different. It’s when you go to the Bulwark webpage, which I do often on my iPad, that you see the changes. The worst change I’ve noticed, so far, is the font used for comments. They are unreadable to me.
Are the letters skinnier, taller, and more pressed together to you? That's how they look to me. I have astigmatism, I wear glasses which make reading a world easier but this new font really messes with my eyes. The words seem to blur together.
I love the comment section, I love this smart community but I can't get through as many as I used to.
I know, I know, progress doesn't stop.
Same boat
Thank God for my app , no wacky changes there . Yet .
“Well, it’s happening. The assault on our political liberties and our civic decency, on our polity and on our society, is happening. The pace and degree at which it’s moved is hard to believe.”
Is it really hard to believe? Seriously? Some of were we screaming at the top of our lungs for years, while many others downplayed the severity of MAGA Inc:
“it can’t happen here, the guardrails will hold!” Blah, blah, blah…….
Wishful thinking, but glad you’re finally able to utter these words: it’s happening here in real-time!
Trump has corrupted everyone in his orbit and not an institution has been spared. And with a complicit SCOTUS, Trump will complete the coup by 28. Whether he chooses to use the nuclear option for the midterms (manufacture a crisis and use emergency powers) is debatable. He has other avenues to stop the certification process—red counties refuse to verify based on irregularities and Johnson refuses to seat members of the new Congress, etc…what’s not debatable is 28’. He and his party will never concede the executive—EVER!
If anyone is still under the delusion that there will be a peaceful transfer of power in 28’—you seriously need to find a good therapist or stop sniffing glue—or whatever drug of choice your using! IMHO…:)
Yeah, I have long thought the only way he leaves is feet first.
We should be that lucky. His parents lived into their 90's.
True, but all of his siblings except one are dead, so hope remains.
he hasn't exactly taken very good care of his health. And in all of his pictures he looks like he's really packed on some weight, both in front and in back. Baby got a lot of back. Someone needs to buy him some bigger, ill-tailored suits.
he's got the very sweaty face of a very unhealthy older man.
And into the trash dumpster ! And to the landfill we go hi ho ! !
Actually, I think he'll be only too happy to leave. He's turned around the unbearable - losing an election -has made more $$ than ever before, and doesn't like to work. Golf and applause at Maralago await the twice elected crazy guy.
I've often said physically dragging him from office may be necessary. *Bullets and blood may be what it comes down to. When is enough going to be enough for people to risk their lives to get back to what we once knew? And who is doing to do it? Who is going to step up?
Have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVkrhHebz1Q
The timing feels right. Seems like Greengrass is planing a seed of inspiration.
*Not what I want or advocate for. I don't even own gun. Just seeing things as they are.
Agreed, violence won’t work though, which is why ANTFA is now labeled a domestic terror organization—which doesn’t exist. It won’t stop them from labeling every dissent as such though and charging them with domestic terror—even for peaceful protests.
What also worries me is how many federal judges he’s appointing this term. At this rate between his last election and this, he could put close to 2/3’s of the justices on the bench. Be afraid, be very afraid!…:)
As is often said, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. So, let them label. They are going to do it anyway.
We have the numbers. But organization would be needed.
His judges (including six members of the SCOTUS) would have to be among the first marched to the gallows.
"Ten years of Trumpism mark not only a failure to preserve that order, but the infliction of real harm done to it. As we look around at the state of our institutions laboriously built up—a comparatively fair system of justice at home, a relatively honest federal government, an attempt to live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants, and an international order that was comparatively stable and friendly to the forces of freedom—it’s hard to believe how much damage has been done in the past decade. With a dramatic acceleration, of course, in the past eighteen months. It is hard for many of us—and I include myself in this number—to believe that this is the situation we face. But it’s time to believe it. Only then might we rise to the occasion."
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I submit that there are two primary reasons why we are so complacent as a culture relative to the threat around us:
1) Beyond a few pocketbook issues, most Americans haven't suffered any real harm or deprivation yet, so in their eyes it isn't real so much as it is someone else's reality -- a very different thing in our daily lives. If you are American-born you feel little fear of recriminations for past words and actions. All the more so if you are a white male. Maybe they will come for you someday, but until then you can walk and talk freely while others are vulnerable. But try walking the many miles in the shoes of those who were born elsewhere, especially in nations that the administration deems unfriendly. Or are dark-skinned. Or are transgender. Or gay. Or to some extent if you are a woman instead of a man. Suddenly this nation is a very different place, and your daily existence is much more uncertain, knowing that there are fewer rules to protect you and less chance of others coming to help you. Most people can only imagine what it is like to live that way, and they do so seldom if at all, until it is their turn too.
2) Technology has been a wonderful addition to our lives, but it also has doped us up and duped us about what is happening out there, beyond our immediate field of vision, as people increasingly choose their own daily reality. News sources are customized as we look for outlets that tell us what we want to hear more than what we need to know, influence our basic perceptions on a daily basis, and wall us off from each other. They make it all too easy to be intellectually lazy and compliant in a time when critical thinking is more important then ever. And bad actors from elsewhere, bots and otherwise, plant bad ideas in our minds and undermine our understanding of important issues and concerns. In theory it is easy to unplug and remove the threats. In reality it is hard to do so, so intertwined are we with our online existence and addicted to the social media that often do much more harm than good to our perception of the world around us.
There is more, of course, but as long as we cannot or do not try to overcome these two factors, we already are in a very deep hole in our ability to grasp the true magnitude of the current administration's threat to our awareness and understanding, not to mention our willingness and ability to do something about it. Which of course is exactly where they want for us to be. The rest of the free world anxiously waits for us to find a solution to these problems before the damage done is irreparable to them as well as to us. We have much work to do.
Sadly, there is now the fact that open corruption is ruining the reputation of the workings of capitalism. Trump has established a pay-to-play system that he uses for tariffs, taxes, visas, regulations, laws, and regulations. Pay him, and you can be exempt from all of those. -- even pedophilia is being protected.
People are feeling helpless, knowing how the system is now more stacked against them.
I'd add to point 1) that several generations haven't known deprivation. Yes, the recession that started in 2008 was bad, but it wasn't The Depression of the 1930's that scarred most of America. There is knowledge of bad times that can be passed via grandparents to their progeny. This phenomenon extends to vaccinations too. Many people do not have grandparents who knew life before vaccinations nearly eliminated diseases that frequently killed or maimed people.
Good point. The vast majority of Americans have never known any real sense of societal hardship in their entire life. We have been much luckier than many other cultures on this Earth.
I think you are correct that most MAGA, because they're White, haven't really felt the effects of anything in their lives yet. The pickumups still drive out my road in the morning to work and come home at night. Maybe their grocery bills make them grumble but no one of them is starving along the street yet. Until a 2x4 hits them over the head, there will be no interest in doing anything about anything.
"But our failure is one for which we have less of an excuse."
What defense is there against an ignorant voting public? Most of them have no clue what is happening. And if they did, they would find a reason to blame everything on "those people." We truly are witnessing the beginning of American collapse.
In the vein of complacency, I think we need to update the saying, "The moral arc of the universe is long but bends towards justice" to be followed by "but nothing bends without formidable, consistent pressure"
"He has repeatedly asked Kennedy this year why he hasn’t prioritized finding a connection between vaccines and autism, and has told aides his secretary “will be a failure if he doesn’t make progress on the issue.”"
This is a part of Trump's neediness. Nobody can be allowed to be above Trump on anything. Even if a person has spent a lifetime building expertise on a subject, like the medical researcher, they must be made small. Trump does all he can to foment distrust out of a pathetic need to hoard all honor for himself.
I think RFKJr set himself up by saying a year ago that in September 2025 he would have the proof.
You, sir, will be a failure since the connection between autism and vaccines has been well researched already with results that do not favor Kennedy.
This one bemuses me as Trump was for vaccines, think Covid, before he was against them. I doubt the old Orange Narcissist is really an anti-vaxxer and it is hard to believe he really cares that much.
Thank you for the write up of Lincoln and his quotes—greatly appreciated.
It's just a sign we will need a Reconstruction 2.0 after this whole Trump thing ends. And we will need to finish Reconstruction, not fail completely like they did in the 1870s.
I have said several times before, we need a reconstruction on the order of after the civil war and 1932 and FDR.
I'm going to be that person today and point out that when Lincoln made those remarks in 1838, the forced removal of tens of thousands of Native Americans in the Southeast had already been underway for several years, and they were just getting around to driving the Cherokee out of their ancestral homeland. I was born a Tennessean because some of my ancestors got the spoils of that atrocity, courtesy of the U.S. government.
I'm not saying this to suggest there's nothing worth saving about this country or even that we aren't in an especially dire moment. But if Americans are having a hard time rousing themselves to sufficient alarm about what's happening, maybe it's because they've been soothed and sedated their whole lives with a false sense of superiority. Maybe our attachment to pretty words about our glorious origins is part of the problem. We were never "a political edifice of liberty and equal rights," except for the lucky few among us. At our best we've aspired to be such, and the U.S. is in many ways an amazing place, but every single thing built here was made possible by the deprivation, suffering, enslavement, and death of real human beings. If all of us could fully grasp that and feel the weight of it, perhaps it would be easier to see that Trumpism is not an anomaly but a manifestation of something rotten at the core of this country, and the rot is as much a part of our legacy as the beautiful ideas about liberty.
"an attempt to live up to our heritage as a nation of immigrants":
Been doing some family research. Among my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents, seven immigrant families received free farmland under the Homestead Act of 1862. Only one was a citizen when they moved on to the land; the others just needed to pledge to become citizens before taking full possession. Which they all did. I realize circumstances change. But one would think
this heritage would inspire something other than Trumpian cruelty.
RFK Jr won't find any link between vaccines and autism, because there isn't one. Both he and Trump are too stupid to understand this. The HHS secretary is already a failure. There is no reason to wait for him to fail at this job to further clarify the failure.
What a ship of fools.
I'm sick of the whining and faux outrage from conservative/moderate Dems over language and the breaking of decorum of how politics used to be.
Politics is now a fistfight and they need to get over it. The before times when fake-ass civility was presented in public while the dirty laundry was selectively leaked behind the scenes are over. If you're going to run for office in the present and the future, you're going to have to swing a few verbal fists in public.
" When they bring a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. When they put your guys in a hospital, you put them in the morgue"...... The Untouchables