Mark Hertling: "Never heard of anything like this; an affront to the ship’s namesake (Sen McCain) . . .
The ship was initially named in the early '90s after John S McCain Sr and John S McCain Jr, both admirals in the US Navy, and grandfather and father (respectively) of Senator John S McCain III
"On 11 July 2018, just 1+1⁄2 months before he died, at a rededication ceremony, Senator John McCain was added as a namesake, along with his father and grandfather" (Wikipedia)
I am grateful to so many fellow Bulwark readers that the comments here say the amount of money a person has shouldn't be the deciding factor on bail, the threat the person poses should be the deciding factor. Thank you all for making this point over and over again!
You're welcome, but it strangely seems lost on a lot of people, including those who like to point out how much damage that notion is causing to Barnes.
Perhaps one of the most odious stooges for the King Reagan "Anything Goes" Regime's policy in its Contra-backed atrocities in 1980s Nicaragua.
To the end, Kirkpatrick and her ilk defended the Contra "freedom fighters" raping, torturing, and killing of nuns and priests as part of its efforts to return the Nicaraguan government to a right-wing dictatorship.
And let us not forget the Iran-Contra debacle in which the treasonous Ollie North had a "shredding party" of government classified documents, defended by Kirkpatrick.
It's amazing how many insider Republicans have a generational disrespect for classified government documents.
Regarding Bill Lueder's piece on the Trump grift...I won't stop receiving those grift requests. I think we should all, penny by penny, try to drain the digital campaign budgets for the NRSC or Trump or whatever GOP digital campaign is reaching out to us and let them bombard us with their texts...and encourage others to sign up to receive these grift requests too. :).
Secondly, recently some of those requests have had 15X (1500%) matches in their marketing...How can that NOT be fraudulent?. No one anyone is matching 15X and if so WHO?? Why are there not legal actions taken on such over the top marketing claims like that?
Strictly speaking, denying bail based solely on the gravity of the charges is of questionable constitutionality. That's because defendants are presumed innocent so there's no actual legal basis to predict future criminality from present charges. Linking the charges to flight risk is another matter, though, again, it's not at all clear that defendants charged with more serious crimes are more likely to jump bail than those accused of lesser ones. BTW, Wisconsin is now a big time bail jumping state, which may explain the issue's political resonance there. https://captimes.com/news/local/neighborhoods/walk-the-line-how-bail-jumping-became-wisconsins-most-charged-crime/article_8349851a-f8cd-5fc3-a659-7fc5c1885e25.html
As for the late beloved Jeanne Kirkpatrick, there's some karmic irony there, as I vaguely recall that she wrote a famous essay entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards," in which she argued that the US should support foreign authoritarian regimes in places like Chile and Nicaragua - because the Leftist alternatives, being allegedly less respectful of private property, were so much worse. Not to bad mouth Jeanne, but with the advantage of forty years' hindsight, that has an uncomfortable ring in the present political moment. Of course, I doubt she ever dreamed that her logic would be applied to the United States. So I guess the moral is, be careful what you wish for.
Well, that's probably a good thing, overall. Pure logic would have no one in jail at any point until convicted. Pure logic would have slander and libel laws ruled unconstitutional. Etc., etc.
No it wouldn't, because there's still a legitimate state interest in not letting them arbitrarily flee the jurisdiction. It's perfectly logical to want defendants to show up for trial even if they're presumed innocent. Otherwise the legal system can't function. It can certainly function without locking people up the way they do in authoritarian countries, simply because the regime accuses them of crimes against the state.
The Johnson ads remind me of Trump commercials warning of the chaos and devastation of a Biden administration using footage of chaos and devastation that took place during the Trump administration.
So, if Wisconsin puts Ron Johnson in the Senate it will prevent tragedies like the one that occurred when he was already a longtime Senator?
I thought we were voting pro-democracy, not for guys who literally flew fake electoral ballots on a private plane to Mike Pence and then lied and lied and lied.
The scathing, unrelenting criticism is obscuring the importance of our democracy. Perhaps we can find a way to highlight both.
The Republican thought leaders like Carlson are talented for inventing the most bizarre delusion and running it straight to the heart of MAGA and Tucker’s bank account. It’s hard to believe that Democrats could nominate a candidate who could lose to RonJon but they have. The issue should t be how much an inmate pays in bail but whether they should remain in jail to protect the public safety. It’s the part about public safety that Barnes appears not to understand or care about. The Dems are really taking the pooch to the prom w Barnes.
"The issue should t be how much an inmate pays in bail but whether they should remain in jail to protect the public safety."
But those are two separate questions. Someone murders a dozen people and they will be held without bail. Someone who 'merely' assaults or rapes someone will get a cash bail amount just like someone who is arrested for drug use. The amount will differ of course, but then again, so will the defendant's resources. We're currently letting out violent people with means and locking up (at great cost) non-violent people without means. Not only is that unequal justice, it is also making us less safe than we could be with a better system.
I do. I oppose Barnes. The factor, and only factor, determining retrial incarceration is danger to public safety. My opinion is judges are letting out people who are extremely dangerous. Judges must be able to assess dangerousness and to continue incarceration.
As a Wisconsin resident with a vested interest in the outcome of the Johnson vs. Barnes Senate race, I refuse to have my attention drawn away by the bright, shiny object that the GOP waves in front of me and its call of "Look, squirrel!"
Those with a sufficiently long attention span instead will stop to think that Johnson is a 12-year incumbent with a track record. The vote should be foremost a referendum on his job performance and whether he deserves to continue in that position. Beware any candidate who chooses aggressive attack ads over promoting his/her own body of work and telling us why he/she deserves another term. It reeks of having something to hide. And as we know, Johnson has a great deal to hide, starting with his lack of control over his own mouth and his record of failure in adequately representing our state and nation and ending with his stance as a Trump apologist and the blind eye he has turned toward the January 6 Capitol riot. That is what really is on the ballot. Unless we choose to ignore it.
How sad for us all that so many people can be duped and manipulated so easily by irrational fear and hatred, instead of taking an objective look at all of the issues on the table and the job performance of the person who already is being compensated to do the work. In this case Johnson is our second-worst enemy. We ourselves are the foremost offenders when we allow such a slimy and disingenuous tactic to gain traction and ultimately decide the outcome. Shame on us collectively if we enable Johnson for another six years with no accountability for the many serious mistakes that he has made in our name.
Re: Cash Bail. The QMAGAnons in my neck of the words act as if the notion of bail at all was invented by Joe Biden last year. "What, possession of drugs and she's back out on the street"? The also don't get that bail is not punishment.
That said, my view of bail is that bounty hunters working for bail bonds persons are a force multiplier for the justice system. There must be a way to keep them in the picture while taking the financial resources of those charged into account.
I'm not sure how being for getting rid of cash bail, which is basically the federal system as others have pointed out, has any bearing in a case where somebody was out on bail in a child support case.
The failure in the Brooks case seems to be that there were a couple of jurisdictions that didn't put Brooks's other legal problems into their system, lack of communication and not using the systems that did exist to see Brooks had other holds put on him.
But, squishy R's are still looking for whatever figleaf they can find to pull the lever for the Republican and still sleep at night.
If the federal system does not rely on cash bail and there hasn't been an apocalypse of criming committed by people out waiting on their federal trials why would we expect that to happen in Wisconsin?
Either someone is worth keeping in custoday for safety or flight-risk reasons or they're not. If they're not just let them out to await their trials. If they are then hold them with no opportunity to buy their way out.
"Either someone is worth keeping in custoday for safety or flight-risk reasons or they're not. If they're not just let them out to await their trials. If they are then hold them with no opportunity to buy their way out."
Seems so simple, and likely something that most would agree to if they took the time to really think about it.
The only place where the bail system is working for public safety is from the some of the mistakes. The problem is that the cost of the system is way too high for the benefit.
Part of the problem with the Waukesha case specifically is that the case the suspect was out on bail for was charged in Milwaukee County, which has a long history of not properly setting bail. Lots of people in Wisconsin blame Milwaukee County for basically everything in Wisconsin. It is not completely fair by any means but like all large cities the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County have long, long track records of doing really dumb things when it comes to probation and parole.
Barnes was the pick of the progressive left in Madison and Milwaukee and he just doesn’t resonate with a lot of suburban voters and that’s a huge problem, along with he needs votes outside of metro Milwaukee and Madison to win and as someone who lives in Wisconsin I don’t see how he gets there. I can see a lot of people voting for Evers in the Governor’s race and simply skipping the Senate race because neither candidate appeals to moderate voters for different reasons.
Calling out America for its own poor choices shouldn't be demonized--in fact, it's *exactly* how you turn your little "America can do no wrong" mob into a political cult. That's another direct tie from Reaganism to Trumpism: the idea that American leaders (unless they are democrats) can never do anything wrong--especially not the military--and that America should not look at its past failures (unless done by democrats) in an attempt to make itself better in the future, because any kind of negative self-assessment about the US is *wrong* (apparently). This is exactly how Trump gets people to turn away from this country's loooonng history with racism and conspiracy theories: by making America and Americans themselves off-limits for criticism. Well, that's *exactly* how a country goes on to make the same mistakes it has always made, because it refuses to look at itself in the mirror and address its deficiencies.
Lebanon *was* a disaster. Ronald Reagan got some 243 servicemembers (an a whole bunch of French paratroopers) killed when he sent them to a civil conflict and put them in a barracks that was weakly-protected from suicide bombers--a threat that had grown more persistent with Reagan's refusing to negotiate with terrorists (when you refuse to negotiate with terrorists who typically take hostages, they just suicide bomb things in the future because they know hostage-taking is now futile). And *after* the Marines and French paratroopers were killed, Reagan *withdrew* the Marines back onto ships and then promptly withdrew all forces from the conflict with his tail tucked between his legs. Beirut sent a message to Bin Laden at the time (who was on his way to Afghanistan) that actually, these big militaries were inherently weak when it came to "martyrdom operations."
Reagan's feeble intervention in Lebanon set us up for failure and exposed the weaknesses in our armor that Bin Laden would go on to exploit via "martyrdom operations" in Africa (suicide bombings at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania), in the Near East (the USS Cole suicide bombing in Yemen, 2000), and finally at home (the use of commercial aircraft as massive suicide bombers against domestic targets in the US). How's that for off-limits criticism of America?
Going to say it again... the violence is coming. Be prepared.
And people should (strangely enough) hope that it arrives BEFORE 2024 election mess, when we have adults in charge who might do something (legally) about it. If it goes down during the 2024 election or transition period, who knows where we will end up.
I am hoping beyond hope that the GoP has managed to screw themselves over enough through candidate selection and stupidity that the D's retain the Senate and MAYBE even the House. D's have been working fairly hard to not make that happen in some respects, as usual.
Were they always that inept and lazy? Or did they just get that way through decadence and inertia?
I am sometimes amazed at how much control these seemingly two rather inept institutions have over our politics... and even more amazed that we willfully and happily let them have that control so we don't have to actually think much.
If it wasn't them, though, I guess it would just be two similar groups (and only two).
I hear and have heard you. So... will it be violence everywhere or only in the purple states? Your thoughts? And if you've expressed in earlier comment sections, apologies. I'm don't read the comments on a daily basis. Those pesky life choices get in the way.
Hard to tell exactly where or how widespread... you can certainly expect riots tending to violence at specific sites associated with "attacks" on MAGAts or Trump. Attacks against enemies of the people (politicians, journalists, prominent anti-Right spokes people).
Attacks outside of urban areas in red states are unlikely--who would they be attacking (maybe some woke teachers/school administrators seem the most likely).
It will take the form initially of riots and terroristic attacks. Even if it isn't spontaneous, the narrative requires it to look spontaneous and to be directed at specifically egregious examples of the enemy. Righteous anger spontaneously addressed, needful action to uphold law and order (even though you are attacking courts, police, and government).
A lot of this will be testing the waters--to see how the authorities respond and whether it triggers action by others (and to what degree).
The RWM (Tucker et al) will respond with, it is so horrible that these patriots and great Americans have been forced into this, if you don't do what they want who knows what further terrible things will happen...
This won't be like the Civil War--there are no clear dividing lines on a state administrative basis (states). It will be akin to what you see in third world countries that aren't quite to the point of state collapse--endemic low level violence. occasional larger attacks and riots, targeted assassinations.
Yeah, our system is set up for two parties. That may not have been intended, but that is definitely how it works. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of ranked choice voting. It won't solve every problem, but it might just allow for the emergence of more political options.
Being educated at a very left liberal arts college, it’s been wild to see the Republican party accuse the media of non-stop of lying. That was a totally leftist stuff even 10-15 years ago. it’s also wild to watch the Republicans embrace full-throated election denial. While not embraced by the Democratic party, the de facto position on the very left was that W stole the election from Gore. I was even assigned “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” by Greg Palast in my first politics class.
Also popular among the very left was that Bush knew and 9/11 was planned. Conspiracies are part and parcel with Republican thought today.
So blaming America first? This party is truly embracing the left’s worst impulses. And yes, the Democratic party had made progress in drifting away from them. Not enough and not in a unified enough way, but the contrast is stark. MAGA Republicans are simply unpatriotic. Straight up.
What's wilder is that the Blame America First right-wingers are people who have presented themselves as more patriotic than their opponents. They told us that Trump is great first of all because he truly, unapologetically "loves America," unlike his critics. Maybe they didn't notice that he calls America a laughingstock when he's not in charge and corrupt when he doesn't get his way.
Or they did notice, and they agree. They too believe that every institution that doesn't submit to Donald Trump and doesn't give him and them what they want is corrupt. They love the America of the past, or a more prefect America of their imagination, but not the actual America of the present. They'll say that the majority of Americans today are "not Americans in any meaningful sense," or that anyone who opposes the left cannot side with America because America today IS the left.
Add in the conviction of being on God's side, and you have the rationale for a "righteous remnant" to wage war on America -- while ostentatiously waving the American flag.
.
Mark Hertling: "Never heard of anything like this; an affront to the ship’s namesake (Sen McCain) . . .
The ship was initially named in the early '90s after John S McCain Sr and John S McCain Jr, both admirals in the US Navy, and grandfather and father (respectively) of Senator John S McCain III
"On 11 July 2018, just 1+1⁄2 months before he died, at a rededication ceremony, Senator John McCain was added as a namesake, along with his father and grandfather" (Wikipedia)
.
I am grateful to so many fellow Bulwark readers that the comments here say the amount of money a person has shouldn't be the deciding factor on bail, the threat the person poses should be the deciding factor. Thank you all for making this point over and over again!
You're welcome, but it strangely seems lost on a lot of people, including those who like to point out how much damage that notion is causing to Barnes.
Re. The McCain: If memory serves, the ship was actually named for the senator’s grandfather, also named John McCain. So, petty on multiple levels.
Originally named for both the grandfather and father. In 2018 the senator was added.
So, maybe just petty, disprespectful, unpatriotic, and pathetic on just the one fundamental level. ;)
RE: Jean Kirkpatrick.
Perhaps one of the most odious stooges for the King Reagan "Anything Goes" Regime's policy in its Contra-backed atrocities in 1980s Nicaragua.
To the end, Kirkpatrick and her ilk defended the Contra "freedom fighters" raping, torturing, and killing of nuns and priests as part of its efforts to return the Nicaraguan government to a right-wing dictatorship.
And let us not forget the Iran-Contra debacle in which the treasonous Ollie North had a "shredding party" of government classified documents, defended by Kirkpatrick.
It's amazing how many insider Republicans have a generational disrespect for classified government documents.
Regarding Bill Lueder's piece on the Trump grift...I won't stop receiving those grift requests. I think we should all, penny by penny, try to drain the digital campaign budgets for the NRSC or Trump or whatever GOP digital campaign is reaching out to us and let them bombard us with their texts...and encourage others to sign up to receive these grift requests too. :).
Secondly, recently some of those requests have had 15X (1500%) matches in their marketing...How can that NOT be fraudulent?. No one anyone is matching 15X and if so WHO?? Why are there not legal actions taken on such over the top marketing claims like that?
It's up to the FEC to investigate those issues. And right now the Chair is a Trump appointee.
So there you go.
I could beat Ron Johnson in my sleep. And I'm disabled.
How can the Dems blow that gift?
The "Dems" aren't. They're voting for Barnes.
It's the center-right voters that are blowing it by saying they support Johnson.
Strictly speaking, denying bail based solely on the gravity of the charges is of questionable constitutionality. That's because defendants are presumed innocent so there's no actual legal basis to predict future criminality from present charges. Linking the charges to flight risk is another matter, though, again, it's not at all clear that defendants charged with more serious crimes are more likely to jump bail than those accused of lesser ones. BTW, Wisconsin is now a big time bail jumping state, which may explain the issue's political resonance there. https://captimes.com/news/local/neighborhoods/walk-the-line-how-bail-jumping-became-wisconsins-most-charged-crime/article_8349851a-f8cd-5fc3-a659-7fc5c1885e25.html
As for the late beloved Jeanne Kirkpatrick, there's some karmic irony there, as I vaguely recall that she wrote a famous essay entitled "Dictatorships and Double Standards," in which she argued that the US should support foreign authoritarian regimes in places like Chile and Nicaragua - because the Leftist alternatives, being allegedly less respectful of private property, were so much worse. Not to bad mouth Jeanne, but with the advantage of forty years' hindsight, that has an uncomfortable ring in the present political moment. Of course, I doubt she ever dreamed that her logic would be applied to the United States. So I guess the moral is, be careful what you wish for.
"Strictly speaking, denying bail based solely on the gravity of the charges is of questionable constitutionality. "
In 1789 the US congress first established that judge's had discretion in capital cases.
Further, in 1987 United States v. Salerno the SC upheld the (1984 Act's) provision providing for pretrial detention based on community-danger.
As JVL likes to say, the SCOTUS isn't a logic machine. 😉
Well, that's probably a good thing, overall. Pure logic would have no one in jail at any point until convicted. Pure logic would have slander and libel laws ruled unconstitutional. Etc., etc.
No it wouldn't, because there's still a legitimate state interest in not letting them arbitrarily flee the jurisdiction. It's perfectly logical to want defendants to show up for trial even if they're presumed innocent. Otherwise the legal system can't function. It can certainly function without locking people up the way they do in authoritarian countries, simply because the regime accuses them of crimes against the state.
The Johnson ads remind me of Trump commercials warning of the chaos and devastation of a Biden administration using footage of chaos and devastation that took place during the Trump administration.
So, if Wisconsin puts Ron Johnson in the Senate it will prevent tragedies like the one that occurred when he was already a longtime Senator?
I thought we were voting pro-democracy, not for guys who literally flew fake electoral ballots on a private plane to Mike Pence and then lied and lied and lied.
The scathing, unrelenting criticism is obscuring the importance of our democracy. Perhaps we can find a way to highlight both.
The Republican thought leaders like Carlson are talented for inventing the most bizarre delusion and running it straight to the heart of MAGA and Tucker’s bank account. It’s hard to believe that Democrats could nominate a candidate who could lose to RonJon but they have. The issue should t be how much an inmate pays in bail but whether they should remain in jail to protect the public safety. It’s the part about public safety that Barnes appears not to understand or care about. The Dems are really taking the pooch to the prom w Barnes.
"The issue should t be how much an inmate pays in bail but whether they should remain in jail to protect the public safety."
But those are two separate questions. Someone murders a dozen people and they will be held without bail. Someone who 'merely' assaults or rapes someone will get a cash bail amount just like someone who is arrested for drug use. The amount will differ of course, but then again, so will the defendant's resources. We're currently letting out violent people with means and locking up (at great cost) non-violent people without means. Not only is that unequal justice, it is also making us less safe than we could be with a better system.
Evidence that Barnes doesn't care or understand public safety?
Do you know what the no cash bail policy actually is?
I do. I oppose Barnes. The factor, and only factor, determining retrial incarceration is danger to public safety. My opinion is judges are letting out people who are extremely dangerous. Judges must be able to assess dangerousness and to continue incarceration.
And this is happening under the current bail system.
It seems to work federally. Is Wisconsin just not up to the task?
Pretrial incarceration. Damn iPhone.
As a Wisconsin resident with a vested interest in the outcome of the Johnson vs. Barnes Senate race, I refuse to have my attention drawn away by the bright, shiny object that the GOP waves in front of me and its call of "Look, squirrel!"
Those with a sufficiently long attention span instead will stop to think that Johnson is a 12-year incumbent with a track record. The vote should be foremost a referendum on his job performance and whether he deserves to continue in that position. Beware any candidate who chooses aggressive attack ads over promoting his/her own body of work and telling us why he/she deserves another term. It reeks of having something to hide. And as we know, Johnson has a great deal to hide, starting with his lack of control over his own mouth and his record of failure in adequately representing our state and nation and ending with his stance as a Trump apologist and the blind eye he has turned toward the January 6 Capitol riot. That is what really is on the ballot. Unless we choose to ignore it.
How sad for us all that so many people can be duped and manipulated so easily by irrational fear and hatred, instead of taking an objective look at all of the issues on the table and the job performance of the person who already is being compensated to do the work. In this case Johnson is our second-worst enemy. We ourselves are the foremost offenders when we allow such a slimy and disingenuous tactic to gain traction and ultimately decide the outcome. Shame on us collectively if we enable Johnson for another six years with no accountability for the many serious mistakes that he has made in our name.
Somebody will be along shortly to say it's akshually the fault of the Democrats for not putting up a nearly perfect candidate.
To my squishy R friends, it's not the Democrats that have put us in this position.
Re: Cash Bail. The QMAGAnons in my neck of the words act as if the notion of bail at all was invented by Joe Biden last year. "What, possession of drugs and she's back out on the street"? The also don't get that bail is not punishment.
That said, my view of bail is that bounty hunters working for bail bonds persons are a force multiplier for the justice system. There must be a way to keep them in the picture while taking the financial resources of those charged into account.
I'm not sure how being for getting rid of cash bail, which is basically the federal system as others have pointed out, has any bearing in a case where somebody was out on bail in a child support case.
The failure in the Brooks case seems to be that there were a couple of jurisdictions that didn't put Brooks's other legal problems into their system, lack of communication and not using the systems that did exist to see Brooks had other holds put on him.
But, squishy R's are still looking for whatever figleaf they can find to pull the lever for the Republican and still sleep at night.
If the federal system does not rely on cash bail and there hasn't been an apocalypse of criming committed by people out waiting on their federal trials why would we expect that to happen in Wisconsin?
Either someone is worth keeping in custoday for safety or flight-risk reasons or they're not. If they're not just let them out to await their trials. If they are then hold them with no opportunity to buy their way out.
"Either someone is worth keeping in custoday for safety or flight-risk reasons or they're not. If they're not just let them out to await their trials. If they are then hold them with no opportunity to buy their way out."
Seems so simple, and likely something that most would agree to if they took the time to really think about it.
The only place where the bail system is working for public safety is from the some of the mistakes. The problem is that the cost of the system is way too high for the benefit.
And, as I understand it, not appearing to court on e.g. a felony is another felony.
Part of the problem with the Waukesha case specifically is that the case the suspect was out on bail for was charged in Milwaukee County, which has a long history of not properly setting bail. Lots of people in Wisconsin blame Milwaukee County for basically everything in Wisconsin. It is not completely fair by any means but like all large cities the City of Milwaukee and Milwaukee County have long, long track records of doing really dumb things when it comes to probation and parole.
Barnes was the pick of the progressive left in Madison and Milwaukee and he just doesn’t resonate with a lot of suburban voters and that’s a huge problem, along with he needs votes outside of metro Milwaukee and Madison to win and as someone who lives in Wisconsin I don’t see how he gets there. I can see a lot of people voting for Evers in the Governor’s race and simply skipping the Senate race because neither candidate appeals to moderate voters for different reasons.
Calling out America for its own poor choices shouldn't be demonized--in fact, it's *exactly* how you turn your little "America can do no wrong" mob into a political cult. That's another direct tie from Reaganism to Trumpism: the idea that American leaders (unless they are democrats) can never do anything wrong--especially not the military--and that America should not look at its past failures (unless done by democrats) in an attempt to make itself better in the future, because any kind of negative self-assessment about the US is *wrong* (apparently). This is exactly how Trump gets people to turn away from this country's loooonng history with racism and conspiracy theories: by making America and Americans themselves off-limits for criticism. Well, that's *exactly* how a country goes on to make the same mistakes it has always made, because it refuses to look at itself in the mirror and address its deficiencies.
Lebanon *was* a disaster. Ronald Reagan got some 243 servicemembers (an a whole bunch of French paratroopers) killed when he sent them to a civil conflict and put them in a barracks that was weakly-protected from suicide bombers--a threat that had grown more persistent with Reagan's refusing to negotiate with terrorists (when you refuse to negotiate with terrorists who typically take hostages, they just suicide bomb things in the future because they know hostage-taking is now futile). And *after* the Marines and French paratroopers were killed, Reagan *withdrew* the Marines back onto ships and then promptly withdrew all forces from the conflict with his tail tucked between his legs. Beirut sent a message to Bin Laden at the time (who was on his way to Afghanistan) that actually, these big militaries were inherently weak when it came to "martyrdom operations."
Reagan's feeble intervention in Lebanon set us up for failure and exposed the weaknesses in our armor that Bin Laden would go on to exploit via "martyrdom operations" in Africa (suicide bombings at our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania), in the Near East (the USS Cole suicide bombing in Yemen, 2000), and finally at home (the use of commercial aircraft as massive suicide bombers against domestic targets in the US). How's that for off-limits criticism of America?
Going to say it again... the violence is coming. Be prepared.
And people should (strangely enough) hope that it arrives BEFORE 2024 election mess, when we have adults in charge who might do something (legally) about it. If it goes down during the 2024 election or transition period, who knows where we will end up.
I am hoping beyond hope that the GoP has managed to screw themselves over enough through candidate selection and stupidity that the D's retain the Senate and MAYBE even the House. D's have been working fairly hard to not make that happen in some respects, as usual.
Were they always that inept and lazy? Or did they just get that way through decadence and inertia?
I am sometimes amazed at how much control these seemingly two rather inept institutions have over our politics... and even more amazed that we willfully and happily let them have that control so we don't have to actually think much.
If it wasn't them, though, I guess it would just be two similar groups (and only two).
I hear and have heard you. So... will it be violence everywhere or only in the purple states? Your thoughts? And if you've expressed in earlier comment sections, apologies. I'm don't read the comments on a daily basis. Those pesky life choices get in the way.
Hard to tell exactly where or how widespread... you can certainly expect riots tending to violence at specific sites associated with "attacks" on MAGAts or Trump. Attacks against enemies of the people (politicians, journalists, prominent anti-Right spokes people).
Attacks outside of urban areas in red states are unlikely--who would they be attacking (maybe some woke teachers/school administrators seem the most likely).
It will take the form initially of riots and terroristic attacks. Even if it isn't spontaneous, the narrative requires it to look spontaneous and to be directed at specifically egregious examples of the enemy. Righteous anger spontaneously addressed, needful action to uphold law and order (even though you are attacking courts, police, and government).
A lot of this will be testing the waters--to see how the authorities respond and whether it triggers action by others (and to what degree).
The RWM (Tucker et al) will respond with, it is so horrible that these patriots and great Americans have been forced into this, if you don't do what they want who knows what further terrible things will happen...
This won't be like the Civil War--there are no clear dividing lines on a state administrative basis (states). It will be akin to what you see in third world countries that aren't quite to the point of state collapse--endemic low level violence. occasional larger attacks and riots, targeted assassinations.
Yeah, our system is set up for two parties. That may not have been intended, but that is definitely how it works. That's one of the reasons I'm a big fan of ranked choice voting. It won't solve every problem, but it might just allow for the emergence of more political options.
Being educated at a very left liberal arts college, it’s been wild to see the Republican party accuse the media of non-stop of lying. That was a totally leftist stuff even 10-15 years ago. it’s also wild to watch the Republicans embrace full-throated election denial. While not embraced by the Democratic party, the de facto position on the very left was that W stole the election from Gore. I was even assigned “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy” by Greg Palast in my first politics class.
Also popular among the very left was that Bush knew and 9/11 was planned. Conspiracies are part and parcel with Republican thought today.
So blaming America first? This party is truly embracing the left’s worst impulses. And yes, the Democratic party had made progress in drifting away from them. Not enough and not in a unified enough way, but the contrast is stark. MAGA Republicans are simply unpatriotic. Straight up.
What's wilder is that the Blame America First right-wingers are people who have presented themselves as more patriotic than their opponents. They told us that Trump is great first of all because he truly, unapologetically "loves America," unlike his critics. Maybe they didn't notice that he calls America a laughingstock when he's not in charge and corrupt when he doesn't get his way.
Or they did notice, and they agree. They too believe that every institution that doesn't submit to Donald Trump and doesn't give him and them what they want is corrupt. They love the America of the past, or a more prefect America of their imagination, but not the actual America of the present. They'll say that the majority of Americans today are "not Americans in any meaningful sense," or that anyone who opposes the left cannot side with America because America today IS the left.
Add in the conviction of being on God's side, and you have the rationale for a "righteous remnant" to wage war on America -- while ostentatiously waving the American flag.
Well yes, for sure. The faulty beliefs from the very left still pale in comparison to the fascism of the MAGA right. You described it perfectly.
1. The term 'real American' (that they use) is disgusting when even the briefest of thought is put to it.
2. For the right it seems to be No True Scotsman all the way down.