Mona Eltahawy has witnessed the dictatorship in Egypt, so she has some expertise in diagnosing what’s happening in the US. She says that the US has become a fascist state. She’s right.
I moved to the United States from Egypt in 2000 and I have spent the past 25 years watching the US turn into Egypt – from encroaching state power to the increasingly unchecked role of religion in politics.
After each travesty – the lies used to invade Iraq, the zealotry that destroyed abortion rights, the arming and financing of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza – I thought: “Any minute now, there’ll be a revolution, they’ll burn things down.”
And here is Trump, finessing that state power into a regime that, as with the regime in Egypt, is targeting culture, education, media, judges, students and any group or entity that poses a threat or even the potential of dissent to the regime. And I’m still waiting for the revolution.
Me, too. I was deluded, as were so many of my peers, into thinking it couldn’t get this bad, that the rule of law and our revered state institutions would put the brakes on the excesses of a tyrant. Boy, was I wrong. The Republicans undermined the judiciary, wrapped themselves in flags and waved a Bible, and took over congress. They just needed a president who would ride that power straight into hell, and they got one. Aided by the quislings who thought students shouldn’t allowed to protest and that DEI was a conspiracy to take away their privilege, academia and the education system as a whole are being trashed by a president who loves the uneducated and believes in a mythical genetic superiority of the white race.
The DEI-hatred was the hint to what this whole fascist movement was rooted in — it’s racism. It’s an inescapable observation. The Republicans have come to power by harnessing the resentment of millions of bigots, and they’re having a grand time using that power to do great harm to everyone who isn’t a white man. That’s all it is. That’s the key to understanding what they are doing. They’ve got God’s permission to oppress everyone who doesn’t look like them, think like them.
Mona Eltahawy sees it clearly.
White Americans are the largest voting bloc and the group most responsible for bringing Trump to power both times – and they are the least enraged. The privilege of whiteness means that for many in the US, the loss of rights only happens to people who aren’t white, far away somewhere, in places such as Egypt. Only Black and brown people in faraway countries end up with an authoritarian ruler. But, if anything, where the Trump regime is taking the US is infinitely worse than what is happening in Egypt, because Egypt’s footprint on the world is not nearly as damaging as that of the US. This is why I’m enraged at the lack of rage.
White people in the US have a delusional amount of confidence in their government and institutions. They are childishly naive in believing that institutions will save them from autocratic power. That stubborn belief in their exceptionalism undergirds the refusal to see the fascism that Trump brought when he was first elected and that he is now cementing. Black and Indigenous people and people of colour have no such delusions. They do not expect institutions to protect them because they are so often hurt by those institutions. To people like me and others who have lived in and survived autocracies, white state power and its institutions have always functioned like a regime – so we are well versed in scepticism of anything that politicians say.
No matter how often those of us from authoritarian countries, who know to be suspicious of state power, and those of us who have fought fascism – whether implemented through military rule or the rule of religious fundamentalists – warned and warned, white people in the US arrogantly shook their heads and said it couldn’t happen here. Because the US is like a teenager who is stubbornly determined in their own self-destruction.
As a white American man, I have finally moved into a state of rage. It took me a while, I tried to be complacent, and dream that this too shall pass, that we’d wake up and restore normality in the next election…always we’ll get it right next time.
I no longer believe there will be a next election. There will be martial law, and a state of emergency, and the appointment of MAGA party masters to guarantee total control of the state. Before that, there will be rising protests at the incompetence of the MAGA government, but those will just be used as the pretext for cracking down on the citizenry.
WAKE UP.
Police state confronts students at UCLA
My fellow Americans: please please please prove me wrong.
All the “Trump 2028” coverage wants to talk about what novel legal argument they will make to try to get around the plain text of the constitution.
When really, the plan is clearly that the constitution will no longer apply.
PZ: “Me, too. I was deluded, as were so many of my peers, into thinking it couldn’t get this bad, that the rule of law and our revered state institutions would put the brakes on the excesses of a tyrant.”
A lot of this is the fault of Biden, who deludedly believed that the rule of law, due process and the institutions would magically sort things out, while the DOJ stalled and blocked. They had 4 years to put away the insurrectionists including Trump, and they didn’t. All the democrats, all of them, confirmed Marco Rubio. They are complicit to what is happening now, which btw was clear since 2016 to anyone paying attention.
It is possible that there will be future elections,just not meaningful ones. A regime will allow rigged elections as a cover for its true nature. The ballot will be rigged, candidates screened for loyalty to the regime and the secret ballot abolished-vote wrongly and you disappear. Remember even Putin has elections which he wins handsomely.
Not yet, but there’s a lot of potential for the US to become totalitarian in the near future.
As of now there’s a fast-fading toddler demolishing everything he can lay his grubby fingers on and a court of simpering bootlickers… but he has not yet full power. (Mussolini started by grabbing unopposed the functions of eight ministries and had many more core followers).
What is worrying is that many USians are not seeing it:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c807d4n0npeo
the across-the-board failure and grave danger should be obvious to anyone, and yet it isn’t.
Difficult to remain optimistic when voters are so blind – to their own interests even.
If we survive, we’re going to need generations of correctional education for the public to prevent the next Trump from happening.
Well we are death-spiraling or circling the drain into the state of exception (sensu Schmitt) aided and abetted by under the radar philosophical cranks like Land and Yarvin who have influence over key techbros who have the ear of a vengeance obsessed anti-intellectual president. Remember the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner? This is partly an echo of that and it turned out to be not very funny. We are also caught up in the weaponized Friends/Enemies binary (sensu…ummm…Schmitt), though that has always been with us. Remember Dubya’s Manichean with us or the terrorists? I recall some official recently saying that those who are upset by the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garci are on the side of the terrorists. Thanks Dubya for your simplistic rhetoric.
Over on another blog they are pearl clutching over Larry David’s indirect slam on has-been comedian Bill Maher (and friend of Kid Rock) meeting with Trump because the implied comparison to Hitler. Meanwhile in the White House…
At least Hitler’s birthday has passed us by without the feared martial law thing happening yet if that’s any consolation.
Oh, it’s not entirely about racism. There’s class war too, with the ruling oligarchs moving to further entrench their power and immiserate the workers.
Oh wait. The military parade? Will it be the greatest military parade?
I pointed out the opposite long ago near the time of the Bush administration.
George Bush once accidently said somethng correct.
The US constitution really is just a piece of paper.
It is the people of the USA who vote for people who make up our government and follow it and our laws that make it into a ruling document.
Pieces of paper are just pieces of paper. They can’t do anything on their own.
I pointed this out over a decade ago on this forum, Freethouthtblogs.
IIRC, I got a few insults out of it, with some people calling me a fascist or Republican or something.
I was right then and I’m right now.
And, I wish I wasn’t.
If you aren’t a cis het white male xian, this is not a good a time and place for you to be living in.
cartomancer@8,
And of course misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, islamophobia…
@11: So many dimensions of hate.
I was thinking that an economic recession might convince the cult that they were wrong but I’m not even sure about that now.
One of the few US institutions still fighting back is the Judiciary, the Judges.
A few days ago, ICE arrested one, quite illegally.
The creepy US Attorney General, Pam Bondi is well aware of this and has been attacking the Federal judges for months now.
She should be in jail right now, not running the US Department of Justice.
Obama campaigned on Hope. Bill Clinton was “The Man From Hope”, but that is beside the point. Trump thrice campaigned on Hate. When he said “I am your retribution” he was addressing the man in the mirror.
He is the embodiment of white identity politics where gains made by people previously held down or ostracized (DEI hires) are seen as threats not commendable accomplishments. That explains birtherism and Trump’s embrace of that conspiracy theory, as an example. Kegseth’s actions at DoD are mere extensions of the same mindset.
For my part, I have a standing bet with a friend of mine that the US will cease to be an actual democracy by 2030. I made this bet during Trump’s first term. Nothing I’ve seen since has caused me to doubt that I will win it.
Biden is actually the best president the US has had in my lifetime (born while Reagan was in office). But ultimately his legacy is going to be complete failure, since he was unable, unwilling or simply too naively in love with the institutions of power and control that he was briefly in charge of to change them. While he did take many positive actions, he was unwilling to do anything that might reduce the amount of power/control that he and his eventual chosen successor might have. He could have worked with the other branches of government to meaningfully reduce the power of the executive – but in the end he would rather see the US fall back into the hands of a mad-king-wannabe than dilute the power of his office.
The biggest red flag for me, other than the choice of fucking Garland as AG, was the decision to completely ignore the serious evidence of criminality in the US’s various police institutions. The cop-riots that followed the murder of George Floyd showed the utterly rotten state of US policing and the justice system. Any subsequent president with an ounce of moral courage should have first rapidly purged the federal police force of it’s own rotten elements (probably would need to completely disband ICE/CBP) and then use whatever core was left to investigate and prosecute every local and state cop who participated in those riots. All the snatch squads, random pepper-ball shooters, mace freaks, abusive riot cops, etc…. Those are a core of trumpist loyalty that should have been ripped out of the heart of the US’s armed services.
The Secret Service mass-deleting their texts should have been a cue to dissolve the agency completely. Vet and hire back any actual professionals who might have been there amidst the Trumpist bro-culture that seemed to run that organization.
He had four years, and he preferred to spend it dicking around with antitrust and regulations that (while I think he was right to do those things) did nothing to address the country’s serious issues. And so he’s a failure – his four years meant nothing at all and Trump will go out of his way to undo/destroy any successes of Biden, Obama and even Clinton when he gets around to it.
PZ, sadly, the accurate assessment of your article, all the points made by the comments here and the inert fossils running the DNC trying to suppress the progressives who are the only ones battling the magat make it impossible for me to even think of a way you can be proved wrong. I do what I can to resist and protest. It is difficult to feel anything other than rage, sorrow and fear. And, when another commenter uses the phrase ‘death spiral’, that I have often written in the past, that seems conclusive.
#14 raven :
George W. Bush never said that. As bad as he was, unlike Trump, he still believed in the Constitution.
https://www.factcheck.org/2007/12/bush-the-constitution-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/
I lost most of my hope for this country when a 20 y/o walked into a school and blew away 20 six and seven y/o with an assault rifle. Post Sandy Hook the only thing that changed was my outlook. If Americans couldn’t be aroused after that, I figured it was useless to continue to care.
If it fits on a bumper sticker, it fits comfortably in the minds of white Americans. The collective mentality of white Americans has been conditioned over the last 40+ years. A not-so-subtle brainwashing by the right and the religious. White Americans love to be told what and who to hate. And they think all the hate and anger is a good thing and will MAGA.
I lack the more in-depth knowledge of others here. Many of the states where Trump support is highest, seem to have an awfully large population who found out that they were part of the “but the leopards won’t be eating my face” party. And this is also the group of Americans who are the most heavily armed.
My optimism/naivety tells me that those people will more commonly lose their belief that they’d die for their dear leader, increasingly becoming more willing to seek vengeance. But I’m also assuming the possibility that America’s future terrorists will see that as permission to start becoming more violent in their attacks against those who might be against Trump and the Banana Republican party.
In short, I see democracy returning to the US, but only after a long (un)civil war which goes on for too long where too many people get killed in the process. Am I wrong to believe this to be a possibility?
Yeah, according to Google it is apocryphal.
I remember it when it was first reported in 2005.
At the time, it seemed like something Bush would say.
The Bush years weren’t all that great for the USA, a long drawn out pointless war in Iraq, costing two trillion dollars, where two of my friends died.
Followed by the Great Recession which killed millions of 401(K) plans, one of which was mine.
If things don’t get as bad as they could get it will still be far worse than any previous period of US history. I’m ‘optimistic’ about the growing resistance, but the attempts by the Magats to hold onto and consolidate power will involve a lot of crimes and a lot of people are going to die….and that is a best case scenario (unless some completely unanticipated and likely impossible things happen*).
I have some lovely delusions about what those unanticipated/probably impossible things could be, but all they are is delusions.
Sadly, two more indications that there is no political party opposing tRUMP
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/26/2319026/-He-wanted-to-primary-Democrats-who-roll-over-and-die-Now-the-Democratic-Party-wants-to-oust-him?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
He wanted to primary Democrats who “roll over and die.” Now the Democratic Party wants to oust him
AND
https://mockpaperscissors.com/2025/04/27/area-man-sends-letter-to-illiterate-degenerate/
“Schumer on the Democratic response to [The Orange Magat] shakedown of Harvard: “We sent him a very strong letter just the other day asking eight very strong questions.””
Also, did you see that schumer is using the tRUMP toddler word ‘strong’. I guess he doesn’t even bother to think and us his own vocabulary. LOSER.
Now you’ve noticed?
People can’t say they weren’t warned pre-election..
But not enough voted for Kamala Harris when they could. Not enough voted at all.
(Those whose votes were suppressed & weren’t allowed to vote obvs excused.)
.Too many fools thought voting third party spoiler would somehow do something other than help Trump’s fascists take power despiet allwellknown logic and history.. So here we are.
Now what?
I’ve done more than Democratic Senate leader, Chuck Schumer.
Been to two demonstrations, made some strongly worded posts on Freethoughtblogs, and donated to Wikipedia and the local animal shelter.
Yeah, it isn’t much. Nevertheless, it is a lot more than Senator Chuck Schumer has done.
Schumer is too old (he is my age), too out of touch, not able to reason any more, and completely useless.
His one remaining talent is doing a great imitation of a tree stump or a deer in the headlights. He needs to go.
He will be primaried, perhaps by AOC, and I will donate to his opponents even though I live on the other side of the continent.
@ Raven, # 18: Thanks for that, Raven. Fact checking is always important. Not only to verify what’s real, but also because MAGA is against it.
One thing I don’t like about Mona Eltahawy’s piece is the inherent defeatism. Just because you don’t see resistance doesn’t mean it’s not there. And I’m seeing a hell of a lot more initial resistance than happened in 1930’s Germany.
If someone tells you you’re fighting a lost cause and you should give up, that advice is most likely from a Trump supporter meant to demoralize you.
Droopy Dog Schumer moaned, “We sent a strong letter.”
OMG, a strong letter! What’s next, the Spanish Inquisition? Torture by dish rack or comfy chair?
The decline and fall of the American empire will be carried on the soft shoulders of men with feet of clay.
The periodic table is a bunch of woke bullshit!!! 🗣
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BpmM83dnH/
I’m sorry, but she has one thing absolutely wrong – “White people in the US have a delusional amount of confidence in their government and institutions. They are childishly naïve in believing that institutions will save them from autocratic power.” No, this is dead wrong. “White” people have had the GOP lie to them for decades about how the current institutions are corrupt, filled with traitors, filled with DEI and this unqualified people, etc., and core to the entire MAGA movement, and the Tea Party before them, is the mass delusion that far right conservatives, religious fanatics and fascists will, “save us from these enemies within.” There, for more than half the country, a complete and utter lack of respect for, or trust in, any of our institutions, and sadly, many of the GOP that are still not 100% in favor of what is happening, and far too many Democrats, who have held office by always looking for an out, in which they can work with the people dragging us farther and farther right, and have been allowed to spread lies about our institutions, almost unchecked, either can’t, won’t, or cannot comprehend how to, do anything about this. Part of it is that the damage is already so extensive that it seems impossible to reverse, but part of it is that they literally are part of the problem, because, like the saying goes, “They are trying to fight the last war, not the one they are actually in.”
Doc Bill @ 30
Democratic voters need to wake up to the fact that Democratic leaders are a bunch of privileged millionaires with no clue of what is going on. They have no skin in the game.
Their vision of Utopia is America under Bill Clinton, but with a few band aids.
.
Schumer has done great things in the past, but he is no longer the right man in the right place.
General Petain was a decent general once, but his record 1940-1944 was ‘problematic’.
…And I fear Obama has also been left behind by history. He has consistently allied himself with the Democratic old guard, sometimes putting his finger on the scale at nominations. When the people he support underperform in the fight for democracy, some of the responsibility is on him.
@13 “I was thinking that an economic recession might convince the cult that they were wrong but I’m not even sure about that now.”
The problem is, between the fact that tariffs where not even being collected, which meant prices only went up a small amount in reaction to what “might” happen, not what “was” happening, the actual effects overall have not truly hit us yet. We are looking at, as one person described it, “The sea moving away from the beach, in warning of the on coming tsunami.” We felt a quack, and was ignored, we saw the sea retreating, and most just stopped to gawk at it, or like the idiots that showed up this weekend for the big annual boat show, ironically named the same as one of the Iraq campaigns, ran to the beach to see what was there. The wave hasn’t actually arrived yet.
The only good thing about this, imho, is that Trump has, while making some wins from his cronies in SCOTUS, and other places, also had massive losses, and more and more people are pissed (if not yet the right people). Its… unclear at this point, but maybe hopeful, especially with them pulling crap like attacking voting from soldiers over seas, and other betrayals from the military, that when/if they moron decides he has no choice but to attempt to make the military take everything over all he will be left with is militias, and many of them will neither be enough to avoid the military when maybe it does act, and against him, nor will all of these nutjobs turn out to even be on his side at all.
The problem with trying to do anything like this is that you have to offer people something they want more than they want your respect, and/or actually show them respect. All Donny does is disrespect everyone, commit petty acts against them, any time they even attempt to call him on something, and shit on everyone and everything he doesn’t like, and that has included the military, more than once. That doesn’t leave a lot of people he can be sure will absolutely, “just follow order”, if/when he crosses the final line(s). It might be the shortest dictatorship in history, and I am not sure how many of the idiots that helped him get there won’t end up going down with him, instead of trying to step up and help fix them mess, to save their own power, and literal asses.
We are dealing with someone that experts have already described as a sociopath with malignant narcissism. He is not capable, I don’t think, of functioning as a true dictator, because he cannot, and will not, avoid pissing off someone who will end him, the moment they have the power to do it, or their own ambitions get derailed by his latest insanity. Its precisely what remains of the rule of law, such as it is, and barely functional government, which is stopping this, I think. Take all the shackles off entirely….
@3 rorschach YES
A while back I read a piece – I wish I could find it again – that said that the sane response to an insurrection is to arrest and try the leaders while letting a lot of the foot soldiers reintegrate back into society. That way, society itself has a chance to heal. We did exactly the opposite.
Not just Biden, tho – all the Dem leadership. The Clintons, Obamas, Pelosis, etc. all got filthy rich (in both senses) selling us out. I’m sure they think their wealth will insulate them from the coming storm.
But I have a special animus to Biden, who in 2015 came to our MI swing district, and while we were all out volunteering our time like simps to campaign for the Dem candidate, took a $200K check to campaign for the GOP one, a particularly odious one who was a leader in the fight to defund the ACA, supposedly Biden’s own signature achievement. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/us/politics/biden-speech-fred-upton.html
Biden and Harris were the least popular and least fit of the major 2020 presidential candidates, by a long shot, and yet somehow through corrupt DNC/DCCC magic, wound up on the ticket.
The GOP are vicious and depraved and evil, but centrist Dems, and the “Stockholm Syndrome” libs who reflexively defend them are also a huge part of what got us here.
#35 @ kageshi
We know, because such things are tracked and registered, that the number of ships laden with goods headed to the US has been dropping, and the companies that engage in transpacific shipping have not been leaving some of their ships idle (because that’s a money loser) but are instead directing them towards India and Australia instead of the United States. There is a similar effect in the Atlantic. The true “what our government actually does actually in fact actually” about tariffs and imports is technically correct. Technically correct is the best kind of correct, but it does not matter here. Money and property talks, and the people with the money are acting-as-if it will be imposed instantly any day now.
Respect isn’t the issue. Violence is. The people who support the fascist agenda and the plans of convicted criminal and serial sex offender Trump don’t believe in respect. At all. They believe instead that joining the team that deals out the violence (which to their mindset this violence MUST EXIST) instead of the team that is taking it. “team” in this case has to do with the State’s monopoly on violence as an extension of its power.
My 2 pennies worth from across the Atlantic FWIW:
History rhymes, but it doesn’t repeat: comparisons with what has gone before can be indicators but are rarely direct translations. In some ways this is like 1930’s Germany – but the USA is not trying to recover from a hyperinflationary economic collapse nor are MAGA openly murdering members of the Democratic party with the assistance of the police.
The USA is really, really big: so things that worked in smaller countries won’t work there. Mass protests aren’t so massive when they are spread across an entire continent and the people in Washington can generally ignore what’s happening in Dogsbreath Arkansas (sorry Arkansas – but you get my drift). Mass protests in the UK can be very effective since it’s perfectly feasible to bus every protestor to London (they can frequently end up as riots though – see my next point).
The USA has guns: even the most peaceful of protests can end up violent, especially if the police are deployed to make the protest violent for political purposes (Thatcher is dead with much cause for celebration over here). I personally have been caught in the edge of several riots, it’s bloody terrifying. However, whilst people get hurt it’s pretty rare for people to actually be killed over here. In the USA, with armed rioters and law enforcement (who may well instigate the riot remember), any hint of riot will result in deaths.
I could go on (yeah, I know, “please don’t”) but the upshot is that the sane people in the USA need to come up with their own solutions. Things that worked in Seoul, Kyiv, London or Paris won’t necessarily work in Washington.
Oh and one more biggie: Yesterday’s gone. FFS Stop castigating people for what they did and didn’t do in the past, what they do in the future is far, far more important. Obama, Biden, etc may yet surprise you and certainly won’t be able to help from inside a trashcan.
(Ironically this has just reminded me of historical example of a useless bloody British politician who gassed tribespeople from aircraft for dubious imperial gains and presided over the utter disaster of the Gallipoli campaign).
@PZ
i’d say racism shares common deeper connections with some other things, such as patriarchy
I am a 64-y-old Swede.
I realised the American train had jumped the rails when Reagan was elected. Since them, the authoritarians have moved ahead with their appointments of judges, a long game that even Swedish newspapers adressed, but American media apparently did not. For them, it was just another horse race with which to gain more readers/viewers.
I have made comments elsewhere about how USA might save itself.
Remember: Poland and Czechia have recently kicked out their mini-Trumps.
If they can, you can.
PS. Primary every ‘legacy’ Democrat that is ineffective! An existential threat to democracy leaves little space to worship the heroes of yesteryear.
The whole tariff idea is just plain cuckoo and wrong.
Tariffs are just a national sales tax.
.1. No one knows why we even have tariffs now.
The original claim was that they were going to replace personal income taxes.
.2. Which was impossible. The math doesn’t work out.
US personal income taxes are $2.4. trillion a year.
US imports of goods in 2024 were $3.2 trillion.
If the tariffs are overall 20% that means we collect $640 billion.
.3. So, we can’t replace $2.4 trillion in income taxes with $.640 trillion in tariffs.
(This is BTW, calculated using grade school level math.)
.4. We won’t collect $640 billion in tariff taxes.
There are so many exemptions for importing things we really need like cell phones, materials, and computers.
There are exemptions based on who has bribed the GOP and Trump.
There are a lot of ways to dodge tariffs anyway. Smuggling, shipping to third party countries, negotiating special deals. etc..
We also are just going to stop importing a lot of stuff because it is too expensive and no one wants to buy it. Which was the whole idea for tariffs anyway, reshoring US jobs.
.5. So, my best guess is that the tariffs will raise around $200 billion.
Which isn’t going to replace the US personal income taxes of $2.4. trillion.
The whole idea makes zero sense in terms of replacing US income taxes.
.6. The tariffs are also going to cost the USA a lot.
Our imports are going to drop as other countries retaliate.
Our imports are also going to drop as other countries decide they don’t like us making threats and kidnapping their citizen tourists and boycott US products.
There will also likely be a recesssion.
The tariffs won’t replace US income taxes.
They also might well end up costing the USA a lot more than the revenue they bring in.
Are we winning yet?
Not sure where she got this information, but… “Not a single international cargo ship at the Port of Seattle. The port is dead. The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. After that, there will be no more shipments arriving from China. We’re screwed.”
rabbitbrush, https://www.seattletimes.com/business/tariff-tit-for-tat-has-seattle-waiting-for-the-ships-to-come-in/
PZ, take heart. We will vote again and again and again. Don’t believe everything Stupid Idiot says. He’s lying and projecting like preachers in a partially empty seedy church.
Other countries besides China can find loopholes to where they can still bring in goods and fill up the stores with them without being affective by those stupid tariffs.
@ 36. hillaryrettig1 : “Biden and Harris were the least popular and least fit of the major 2020 presidential candidates, by a long shot, and yet somehow through corrupt DNC/DCCC magic, wound up on the ticket.”
Because there were these things called primaries where Democratic party voters went and voted. A majority of those who voted in the primaries decided that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the best choices of those on offer. Hardly “magic.” Moreoevr, Biden won the 2020 election and Kamala won last year’s but was robbed by voter suppression – i.e. she was the legitimate winner and the Repugs and Trump cheated. We’ll never know if other Democratic party candidates eg Bernie Sanders could have done better because its a fictional hypothethical not reality but remember that Sanders or whoever could well have done worse.
It is clear that had Biden stepped aside mid term and handed over to his VP then the USA would have had Kamala as the incumbent and had a female POTUS and she might then have been able to win last year.
I think the Seattle story is nothing more than fake news all made up for entertainment and without any shred of credible evidence to confirm this.
StevoR:
No. Due process, such as it exists, was duly followed.
Even then, you presume every single one of those people who were allegedly disenfranchised would have voted for Harris, which is clearly mere wishful thinking.
—
Quite honestly, it is futile to try to argue away the fact that out of those who did vote, more voted for Trump.
Again, roughly thirds; one third could not be fucked to vote (they were still eligible, and perforce not disenfranchised), and one third (half the remaining voter base_ each voted for Harris and for Trump, but more for Trump than for Harris.
It is the way the system is supposed to work. That you don’t like the outcome does not change that.
(So. No robbing; that’s Trumpish talk._
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, relevant since 1935.
And you think that these countries have just vast stockpiles of these ‘goods’ hanging around their otherwise unoccupied ports just waiting to be shipped into the ravenous maw of the USA?
Like: Alice has a factory that imports raw materials from china and uses them to manufacture deep fried butter balls, an essential dietary staple for much of the us. Her cost on these materials has just gone up by 145% (this week, next week – who knows). Luckily, the advanced manufacturing economy of the Heard Islands has a massive pile of these materials just sitting in a warehouse next to their state-of-the-art port facility and Trump is only tariffing them by like 20%. She hasn’t previously bought from them because she’s racist against the penguins, the goods are otherwise completely meeting her requirements and are competitively priced with the Chinese ones….
I don’t think you understand just how complicated and interconnected the world’s supply chains are. Sure: they will adapt to Trump’s tarriff tantrum. But there is no particular reason to think that adaptation will be quick or painless for the US. Anyone who now can ship into the us can just price their goods to be slightly competitive against China’s tariff laden ones, and US customers will still be forced to take a haircut – this time with the profits flowing out to these new international vendors instead of being hoovered up by the Trump admin to fund his rich-people-only tax cut scheme.
Do you find that a vibes-based epistomology works well for you in other areas of your life? The article actually quotes some sources on the topic – while current shipping in port is only down 12% over last year, ships aren’t loaded and transited immediately – there is quite a bit of inertia in the system. The thing to look for would be for bookings for future ships to drop off. Handily, the article talks about that as well:
Of course, your hunch is probably a much more credible source than those above. So I suggest that we should all just believe whatever you happen to assert.
Seachange @ 37
Re. violence.
In ‘Hitler’s table conversations’ he reminicences how he watched the elder boys of the village get in a fight with the elder boys of a neighboring village.
“…and that is when I realised violence is a prerequisite for ‘gemeinschaft’.
(‘togetherness’, a sense of belonging)
@51– I highly recommend The White Ribbon, imo one of the best movies made in the last 50 years, even for those who usually dislike Michael Haneke’s work. Nails that observation.
@48. John Morales : “No. Due process, such as it exists, was duly followed.Even then, you presume every single one of those people who were allegedly disenfranchised would have voted for Harris, which is clearly mere wishful thinking.”
Oh for pities sake! I know that I have already repeatedly linked the Greg Palast article proving that voter suppression robbed Kamala but once again for the record the facts and numbers here :
Source : https://sdvoice.info/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-here-are-the-numbers/
Ofc, the Voter Suppression was targeted at Kamala voters and it wastheir votes that were deliberately & purposefully denied.
That voter suppression denied and cheated Kamala Harris of the Presidency is now established fact and NOT Conspiracy theory..
@ StevoR
So you’re just going to pretend this isn’t a controversial claim by a crank?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BC2Z19KWpQSkoNcebeO0x?si=qqi0P10sR72HW0ICZItS9Q&nd=1&dlsi=4963ea73713f409eb
Hm. https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Palast_says_Trump_lost,vote_suppression_won_the_2024_elections#Claim_that%22Trump_lost%2C_vote_suppression_won%22
Hm, that comma is breaking this site’s hyperlink processing.
Check if wrapping it in an anchor tag fixes it: Claim that “Trump lost, vote suppression won”.
The top story on the front page of the Financial Times today is Demand slump fuelled by Trump tariffs hits US ports and air freight:
@55-56 John Morales :
Source :https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Palast_says_Trump_lost,vote_suppression_won_the_2024_elections#Claim_that%22Trump_lost%2C_vote_suppression_won%22
Okay, that is a bit of a worry. It does NOT though make those numbers necessarily wrong.
Anyone got an alternative set of numbers from a better source refuting that?
Ibid.
That seems if anything to be a likely underestimate to me. The whole point of the Repugs Voter suppression was to reduce the Democratic party vote and the minorities getting their votes to count. It could well be that the number of Kamala votes suppressed – a form of cheating Democracy – is actually much higher. Say, 80% or 85% as, perhaps, a more likely figure. Which would mean Trump lost by more and Kamala actually won by more and more Americans were robbed.
The EC etc .. already tilts and warps the USoA’s electoral system far too much towards the regressives as it is and, yeah, this would not surprise me though does anger and disgust me.
@54. Silentbob : “@ StevoR So you’re just going to pretend this isn’t a controversial claim by a crank?”
Are you calling Greg Pallast a “crank” here? I don’t think that’s fair or at all justified given he’s a reputable journo and author with a long history in the election analysing field :
Plus :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Palast
Or did your reference to a “crank” refer to your own source in an hour long podcast – which, no, haven’t yet had time to see / hear.
( https://open.spotify.com/episode/4BC2Z19KWpQSkoNcebeO0x?si=qqi0P10sR72HW0ICZItS9Q&nd=1&dlsi=4963ea73713f409eb )
I note Dr Jenessa Seymour does NOT have a wikipage at least not one I could find and suspect Palast’s credentials and expertise may be better than hers but then why you’d call your own source a “crank” well, I dunno. Another question i guess you won’t answer eh?
Anyhow, do you have any other reason to dispute Greg Palests credibility and, if so, with what actual evidence? Preferably evidence that doesn’t demand hours of time and summarised clearly by reliable sources.
@47. Owosso Harpist : “I think the Seattle story is nothing more than fake news all made up for entertainment and without any shred of credible evidence to confirm this.”
Okay, why do you think that? Where’s your evidence for it?
Why would they make that up if it’s so lack in evfact and is that really something ëntertaining” ya reckon?
StevoR, here: https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/2025-01/EAC_2024_Annual_Report_FINAL_508c.pdf
John Morales@60,
I don’t see how that document refutes any of the claims StevoR (and Palast) have made. As far as I can see from a quick scan, it doesn’t even raise the issues of voter suppression or failure to count valid votes – it’s just a bunch of officials patting themselves on the back. I haven’t looked into this issue, so I remain on the fence, but I see nothing implausible in the claim that Republican state authorities would have done their best to impede likely Democratic voter by any means possible. (And I’m both astounded and amused to find you and Silentbob agreeing on something – surely a sign that The End of Days approacheth.)
KG, it’s only one source. It’s the specific source given by Palast.
#61 is the annual report by the agency credited with that data.
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