All purpose news and politics thread part VII: News & Politics Total Landscaping

[aja_christopher]

Just because Republicans nominate someone to the Supreme Court does not mean that they are qualified.

[Jack Dracula]

I would think Republicans saw their opposition to the Garland nomination as within their power, and in the context of moves from both parties before.

Republicans have been reason to be upset at things Democrats did regarding courts. For example, Chuck Schumer led the first partisan filibuster of a nominee to the circuit court against Miguel Estrada, early in Bush's term.

https://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS...ada.withdraws/

Internal documents from Dick Durbin's office suggest that part of the reason for the opposition to Estrada was that Democrats were concerned he would be a potential Supreme Court nominee, which made him especially dangerous as he is latino. It seems outrageous that he was targeted in any way for not being white.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-sta...-in-memo-leak/

Republicans will say that they were nicer to Democratic nominees to the Supreme court than Democrats were to Republican nominees. Breyer and Ginsburg went through with less opposition than Roberts and Alito (Obama voted against Roberts, and was rewarded with the presidential nomination. Democrats did what they could to vote against Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barett, but the main difference is that unlike Republicans with Garland, they didn't have the votes. The least contentious of the last five Supreme Court nominations was Ketanji Brown Jackson.

I do not see any reason to conclude that if the situation had been reversed, a Democratic Senate majority leader would have automatically allowed a vote on an election year for the Supreme Court nominee of a Republican president.

I wrote this before, but I think Democrats had a bad hand (It was nine months before a presidential election, Republicans held the Senate, it would have flipped Supreme Court control to the liberal justices) but they played it poorly. There were still some things they could have done. They could have gone with a justice from a more valuable constituency, someone who inspires voters. The candidates for President could have gone to bat for Garland, making the case for why he deserves to be on the court more than whoever the Republicans nominate. Instead, Hillary and Sanders played coy about whether they would renominate Garland, which undercut some of the arguments for him (that the Supreme Court nominations should be above politics, that he is a remarkable nominee, etc.) They could have recognized Republicans had the Senate, and gone with an old center-right figure (Ted Olson, Orrin Hatch) who would be confirmed easily, would be to Scalia's left and not be on the court long. Instead, they ended up giving skeptical Republicans a big reason to vote for Trump. Voters had a chance to punish Republicans, but the party kept the Senate and took the White House with a god-awful candidate.

You’re attempts to spin the argument into “both-sides” and “it’s the Democrats fault” isn’t going to work.
The reality is that the US is on the verge of authoritarianism because of the Republican Party abandoning democracy for political gain.
Again, it isn’t a fluke that Trump rose to prominence as a Republican candidate. He took advantage of the anti-democratic and divisive attitudes Republican politicians, media, and think tanks had been pushing for decades. You all set the table and he sat down.
And, McConnell and senate Republicans, all experts on political theory, knew him for what he was and still handed him three SCOTUS appointments and denied TWO chances to impeach him, the second being an attempt to overthrow an election where an officer defending THEM died and many others were nearly killed.

[aja_christopher]

Again, it isn’t a fluke that Trump rose to prominence as a Republican candidate. He took advantage of the anti-democratic and divisive attitudes Republican politicians, media, and think tanks had been pushing for decades. You all set the table and he sat down.
And, McConnell and senate Republicans, all experts on political theory, knew him for what he was and still handed him three SCOTUS appointments and denied TWO chances to impeach him, the second being an attempt to overthrow an election where an officer defending THEM died and many others were nearly killed.

It works both ways as Trump knows his base.

[Dalak]

I still have Republican friends. It’s important to understand that the US will not be free of the threat of authoritarianism until the majority of the public can come together in support of the democratic system. We don’t have to agree on everything, but if most of us can’t at least all agree on democracy we’re totally screwed.

This is so true, bipartisanship shouldn't be seen as a weapon to get the other guy to give up something and then go back on your word. For negotiations to be worth a damn they need to be relied upon to stick to their words rather than continuing to obstruct any governance regardless of concessions. Working with Democrats for the good of the country should be the norm rather than something seen as worth throwing out any politician from the local level to the Speaker of the House.

So, a rapist who sells himself to the highest bidder - even a collector of Nazi ‘art’ and memorabilia… - for personal enrichment while his wife participated in treason and gets away with it (because she’s white, rich, and has connections) is whining because people call out what they see, despite his callous ass pretending we’re all too poor and stupid to figure things out without ‘the media’…

Nothing would make me happier, regarding Thomas, than to find out that his RV did a few flips on the freeway.

Because their money and their religion and their party affiliation tell them that they’re better than us.

So when they have to stoop to explaining, for example, how Thomas accepting millions of dollars in bribes - I mean ‘gifts’ - from, and pushing the extremist agenda of, the far right, Nazi-loving billionaires paying his ACTUAL salary (not the ‘pittance’ that tax payers pay him to do his job) isn’t corruption? Or how a series of texts supporting the insurrection and the false narrative that Trump won 2020 doesn’t reveal that his wife is a fucking traitor?

He gets annoyed and whines about ‘lies’ without specifying which claims are lies. Because he knows none of the claims are lies and has nothing but whining.

I might not endorse the hope that he flips his RV as I think that might take others with him, I think if he left the court and was allowed to be replaced things would be better for the country. As for the rest I think you are pretty much on the money.

At least when Robert Picardo's character collected Hitler's pairings it was so he could burn them. I can respect that. There isn't many other reasons I can think of for anyone else to collect nazi stuff outside of museums and memorials to their victims.

I just saw that episode recently. My dad - a trump voting Republican who wants to live in the Star Trek universe ‘because they did away with money, religion, racism, sexism and all of that!’…(parse THAT if you can…) - and I laughed our asses off at the rows and rows of jars of ash that are all that Nazi ‘art’ is worth.

New life goal for lottery winners: buy up as much Nazi art as you can, hold a show, and burn it all down at the end. The world’s on fire…let the Nazis be the first to go.

What show is this? I'd love some more material that isn't the same-old to watch.

Racist white people are gonna be racist, and for no reason other than to ‘stick it to the libruls’

This right here? And the idiots getting arrested for being idiots at the border? These are examples of why I frustratedly made my comment about voting tests. Not because I want voting tests, but because these examples are the same kind of people who call for poll taxes and other hoops for minorities to jump through in order to vote.

And THIS right here? This is the result of delusional self-assurance in the racial superiority of a large swath of white people, and the lack of civics or history education that gives the worst among us the power to honor racists and rapists and terrorists as ‘American heroes’..

What can you do anymore, except shrug, roll your eyes, and shriek gibbering, inchoate madness to the moon that this cruel stupidity - and this is nothing BUT cruelty and stupidity - is still a thing in the 21st century (thanks to ONE political party and ONE brand of religious expression)?

Some people want the freedom to be the worst people they can be, and Trump gave it to them. They don't have his support network of people pulling strings openly to prevent him from seeing any justice, so they will go to jail more often. Unless of course Trump gets elected again and pardons so many of these extremists which will probably have been more radicalized due to the prison culture folks like he has encouraged.

They absolutely have. My grandparents were lifelong Eisenhower Republicans. They recycled, they happily paid their taxes, knowing those taxes were being used to uplift people who needed help, and enrich lives. They participated in their community, both at church and at home, and worked hard to support the community they were a part of move into the present and out of the dim past.

They wouldn’t recognize the religious extremism, the embrace of fascist rhetoric and symbolism, the misogyny. My grandmother in particular was born in 1928, had friends across religious and racial lines, opened her home up to strangers, stood with women when it came to their right to work, have a bank account, control their own destiny. She didn’t like abortion personally, but that was for her. She supported Planned Parenthood, though, because.she understood the array of services they offer for the women and girls out there who didn’t have the same luxuries and privileges she had. She grew up poor in a holler in Kentucky, and moved to California with her big sisters and mother after her only brother killed himself, all before she was a teenager. She walked out - with her two daughters - on an abusive husband, worked for the city of San Jose, interacted daily with criminals - both in the government and outside it, and never lost her love for life and for others. When I came out to her, I was terrified that she would reject me because of her religion and her political affiliations, but she just hugged me while I cried and told me God doesn’t make mistakes. She met my partner (going on 25 years now, him and I), welcomed him into her home, and loved him the same as she loved me.

She died in 2008, but even back then, she was disturbed by the backwards momentum of the party she had been a member of for decades. She voted Democrat for the first time AGAINST Bush 2, and was planning to vote for Obama.

The Republican Party USED to stand for something. Used to be reputable and honorable. Their associations and choices and platform and elected officials NOW, however, have proven the party that USED to stand for personal accountability and small government has become an authoritarian nightmare that points fingers at everyone but themselves as they rob the treasury and work hard to undermine the nation’s founding principles into something unrecognizable.

My Dad was born in 48 while my Grandad was fighting in WW2, was in school when Kennedy was assassinated and told me of the reaction of teachers & students alike, and was a lifelong Republican even after he got to Texas in his 30's, shortly before I came about. I think the first time he broke with that was with Bill Clinton, but from then on he remained registered as a Republican and would vote for who he saw was right in the races. He encouraged people to speak to their representatives for things outside of politics, as it was part of their job to assist citizens with getting things done through government red tape if possible. Before he passed in 2010 he was able to vote for Obama and passed before he saw quite how much that warped the party of his youth.

He is who I see when I imagine who a truly Moderate Republican is, someone willing to put their money where their mouth is and back up their principles for the good of the country and the beliefs they individually hold. He listened to me when I was a teenage firebrand and while we didn't always see eye-to-eye he never took things too far and we respected each other through the worst of it. He also wouldn't tolerate anyone abusing another, animals or people, and would make his displeasure known should the offender persist. I'd like to think that is a big part of why his voting habits changed, but he was a very complicated man.

[Dalak]

Members of the GOP are pushing to remove ‘democracy’ from the language. Members of GOP leadership - and their constituents - don’t want a democracy. They want control.

Republicans have proven over the last four or five decades that they cannot effectively lead. Or govern. Or adjudicate. Or speak in public.

They are not operating for the public good, and haven’t been for a long time. They prove, over and over again, that they have no respect, as a party, for democracy, or the American people, or ANY people (who don’t properly lick their boots, anyhow).

The GOP needs to be allowed to go the way of the Whigs. It needs to die, and a new conservative movement - maybe one one based on actual conservatism instead of bigotry, greed, and terrorism - needs to rise in its place.

The way this current election is going? I, unfortunately, don’t see that happening before their environmental policies (or their foreign policies, or their economic policies, or their social policies, or…) kill us all.

Considering Lindsay Graham's recent issues, this is made more true.

I know at that the individual level, not a lot can be done about the climate change…

My position is that I do what I can not to add more pollution when possible… To make decisions in regards to that.

What we need are alternative models, people who are happy with consuming less…

Agreed. My buddies and I go camping every year. We get a nice group site where all of us can set up our tents together, and we spend a week being trash people. Loud, drunk, partying, messy trash people (the only thing we make sure to put away at night is food. No one wants bears in the campsite. Or Wolverines...)

The day it’s over, we clean our site with rakes and brooms, divide everything responsibly into trash, compost or recyclables, and leave the site clean for the next people. We often wind up going to neighboring sites to clean THEIR left-behind trash, since apparently, not everyone knows (or respects) the basic rules of camping…and life: “Leave things better than you found them.”

Somewhere along the line, people seem to have stopped caring about leaving a better world for their kids. The focus became themselves, and having the best life they can have NOW, no matter what it costs, and who cares about the future?!

Ways to encourage less consumption should be encouraged alongside ways to improve green energy and mandated additives to animal feed to cut down on their additions to our greenhouse gasses. There are people who aren't going to want to change, and with things like this we can work around some of the obstructionists.

He claims they're just "friends" doing him "favors", but it's funny how all his "friends" are conservative billionaires with social agendas and multi-billion dollar interests to protect/promote.
By funny I mean corrupt.

Were they friends with him before he became a SCOTUS Justice? No? Then their friendship has nothing to do with who he is as a person and is all about his position.

Well, for a lot of young progressives the other option is just not voting at all. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Trump would be significantly worse than Biden when it comes to Israel/Palestine. If someone is genuinely interested in the wellbeing of Palestinians then Biden still seems like the best option despite his failings.

At this point, not voting at all because there isnt a candidate who is perfect? Is as good as voting for Trump.

Period.

The same way that protest votes in 2016 were votes in favor of a Trump presidency. No matter how badly Ron Johnson/Jill Stein/Bernie Sanders/Deez Nutz voters wanted to pretend that their votes were 'on principle', they helped give us Trump in the first place, and they will help him get power again, by continuing to insist that perfect be the enemy of good.

And then, there's Republicans like this, who don't want to discuss reality, and openly admit it. They want to pretend, and they will burn the planet down if they're not allowed to play shitty games with peoples lives...

I agree. Single issue voting is almost always dumb, but especially this election when there's so many domestic issues directly affecting progressives who refuse to vote.

I'm glad to see you feel this way Joy Boy. What do you think would be some ways I could use to convince people I know who don't want to vote but agree on almost everything else? Some friends I've given up on convincing, but people who want to sit things out due to Biden not being BLANK enough is something I want to address when it comes up in casual conversation and I'm always looking to expand my repertoire there.

Arguably, our flaws go back to the origins of our species.
Complex systems typically make adjustments based on feedback received from outside. Our brains' neural systems are similarly shaped by our experiences.
Humans evolved thinking in the short term because our worlds were smaller, concerns were local and immediate and we were much closer to our environment. As hunter-gatherers, we relocated seasonally and the local environment had a chance to recover from our presence before our return, so long-term thinking about environmental preservation wasn't a priority and the cognitive parts of our brains we'd have used for that weren't as necessary for our survival. Also, since predators were common the early humans who stopped to think about the consequences of their actions while a lion was charging them seldom survived to pass on their genes. Fast, impulsive thinking also takes less caloric energy so evolutionarily, long-term thinking wasn't a priority.
Thanks to the advent of agriculture and the cultivation of higher-calorie grains and fruits, over thousands of years we've developed the cognitive ability to think in longer terms, but because of our evolutionary beginnings our brains still mostly default to the original, low-calorie short-term thinking and we struggle with overcoming our greedier, short-term impulses.

Everything you never wanted to know about why we're so f**d up.

It just stands to reason, as we're as much an animal as every other lifeform on this planet that qualifies and a product of evolution to boot. We just need ways that aren't inhuman horrors or grave risks to humanity to work on that and we'd be golden.

Saw this video from a woman who went undercover to a Moms for Fascism rally. Fascinating, terrifying, utterly unsurprising stuff coming out of the mouths of so-called ‘conservatives’ and ‘christians’…

Speaker: “One of our moms quoted Hitler…”
Audience: *multiple cheers*
Speaker: “yeah! I stand with that mom!”

I mean…

[Dalak]

Thank you for the compliment, but I hope you will forgive me for making this one suggestion. Perhaps you (and others do the same so you are not alone) could next time respond to individual posts indivdually. As soon as any poster responds to muliple posts all at once at whole lot of context and content gets lost and it is hard to figure out to whom the responses are going to or are intended for.

I have probalbly done it myself, but I try to avoid grouping people togther as much as possible. One of many reasons why I have such a high post count. Just a suggestion.

I think that’s a good suggestion.

In practical terms, for example, it makes it easier for whoever has been cited to spot that one of their posts is being referred to/questioned. And then easier to reply to…because a load of of other posts don’t need to be edited out before replying.

The flow of debate would be clearer.

I disagree that it would make things simpler and avoid clogging up the flow, because if I'd replied to each of the posts contained within the posts I'm making I'd eat up at least a page worth of this thread to anyone running on defaults. I'll try to make my replies smaller and reply to less of a conversation, but that runs into the problem that there'll just be more. As I work data entry at home I can type a bit but not for too long, so creating replies can sometimes take a long while to make leading to several more posts I'd like to reply to being made in the meantime, leading to more time to reply and resulting in a viscous cycle. I also have other reasons, but I cannot get into those or I'd be breaking rules. If anyone has any clarification they'd like me to make regarding anything, feel free to respond here or PM me and I won't mind (Assuming I believe you are genuine) taking a moment to clear things up for you.

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Meet The Press today completely incoherent...saying things like "This is not Viet Nam!" and somehow bringing up multiple times the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima as justification for what's going on in Gaza and then saying we're not giving a single penny to Isarael...?

He was faced with the historical fact that Reagan had withheld military aid multiple time from Israel when they went too far, a thing he now wants to hang Biden for. Of course, he had to distract by being outrageous.

It's these sorts of things that highlight the dangerous lunacy that we are left with when GoP voters reward hypocrisy, lies, denial of reality, and slavish devotion to the party over America.

I have no problem with criticizing Trump and all Republicans, including moderates in the same breath since he is the inevitable result of all your actions. Would I have a problem criticizing the failures and mistakes that resulted in a nuclear meltdown? No.
The truly disgusting thing about the Republicans drive towards partisanship, divisiveness, and hardball politics is that the party leadership and experts in conservative think tanks like The Heritage Foundation are all or do employ political science experts who have studied history and are familiar with the inevitable results of the kind of politics they’ve been implementing over the last three decades.
There is no way the people in charge weren’t aware of where their efforts were leading. Mitch McConnell and the other Republican senators who blocked Obama’s nomination of Garland to the SCOTUS did so fully understanding they were violating a cherished democratic norm and then, by seating their own hand-picked judges, were corrupting one of the three branches of our government and dismantling a major gaurdrail against authoritarianism.
So, you can try to refocus the argument on Trump in an effort to distract from the responsibility all Republican voters including moderates carry for bringing us to this point, but until you all accept your culpability and reverse your parties course, the US will always be on the verge of authoritarianism.

Very well said, and before the hyper-partisanship that has ramped up thanks to Newt, Mitch, Rush, and so many other elected & unelected conservatives past & present, I don't think Garland would have been considered in any way unsuitable for the SCOTUS. The Extremists can only hold power as long as those considering themselves moderate continue supporting them.

Just because Republicans nominate someone to the Supreme Court does not mean that they are qualified.

The Thumbnails & Titles seem to be descriptive enough, and it appears to be Chuck speaking himself in the first video. I think Trump's impact on the courts speaks for itself, but they were all handed to him by the people who tell Mitch what to do, but as one of the major qualifiers of being a Judge is impartiality I don't think many of them are qualified regardless of ABA ratings.

The reality is that the US is on the verge of authoritarianism because of the Republican Party abandoning democracy for political gain.
Again, it isn’t a fluke that Trump rose to prominence as a Republican candidate. He took advantage of the anti-democratic and divisive attitudes Republican politicians, media, and think tanks had been pushing for decades. You all set the table and he sat down.
And, McConnell and senate Republicans, all experts on political theory, knew him for what he was and still handed him three SCOTUS appointments and denied TWO chances to impeach him, the second being an attempt to overthrow an election where an officer defending THEM died and many others were nearly killed.

They saw they needed the voters he brought in to continue to hold any power and would sign any unconstitutional laws they put in front of him, so they enable the hate, lies & greed. GoP voters enable it too.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

It works both ways as Trump knows his base.

Exactly. And that base wants its presidential candidates lily white. I’m surprised more right wingers don’t come right out and say what Coulter did, I mean, it’s not like the party is hiding its racism anymore.

[aja_christopher]

Exactly. And that base wants its presidential candidates lily white. I’m surprised more right wingers don’t come right out and say what Coulter did, I mean, it’s not like the party is hiding its racism anymore.

Without accountability Trump has no reason to change -- this is why he fits in well with the Republican party.

It speaks volumes that Republicans would rather defend racist bigotry (and not just Trump) than admit the truth about their "conservative" values.

[zinderel]

Dalek! The show in question is Justified, with Timothy Olyphaunt. It’s not my general jam as I don’t tend to like westerns or cop shows, and it’s kinda both…but also, kinda neither…?

But I do love Tim, and it has episodes like this one that play to an audience statistically more likely to need to see anti-fascist messaging like ‘collecting Nazi memorabilia is bad, burning it is good’.

[scourge]

Just because Republicans nominate someone to the Supreme Court does not mean that they are qualified.

I'd argue that being nominated by the modern Republicans is a big flashing neon sign that someone is 100% unqualified and should not be anywhere near the job.

[zinderel]

I'd argue that being nominated by the modern Republicans is a big flashing neon sign that someone is 100% unqualified and should not be anywhere near the job.

Anyone with a modicum of decency and a handful of functioning brain cells capable of doing grade school level research would agree with that. Just looking at the legislation the right has pushed over the last 50 years ALONE tells us that.

And the caliber of people they choose to represent their interests - from racist fools like Higgins and Gosar and Greene, to hypocritical blowhards like Gingritch and ALL their talking heads, to raging psychopaths like Greene and Boehbert and Jordan and Gaetz, to bought-and-paid-for politicians like McConnell and Thomas and Alito, to religious extremists like Barrett and Britt, to callous opportunists and cowards like Cruz and Graham and Rubio and Hawley, to Avatars of the Seven Deadly Sins like Trump - shows us all exactly what the GOP thinks of us.

And we KEEP letting them get away with it…it’s maddening.

[Mister Mets]

Dalek! The show in question is Justified, with Timothy Olyphaunt. It’s not my general jam as I don’t tend to like westerns or cop shows, and it’s kinda both…but also, kinda neither…?

But I do love Tim, and it has episodes like this one that play to an audience statistically more likely to need to see anti-fascist messaging like ‘collecting Nazi memorabilia is bad, burning it is good’.

I'm not sure my input on this is welcome, but I like Justified.

They had a decent mini-series sequel a few months back which is rather self-contained, although the whole damn thing is good.

There is a trend of the even seasons being better. Season 2 has a fantastic performance by Margo Martindale as the matriarch of a white trash crime family, although it builds on the first season.

You’re attempts to spin the argument into “both-sides” and “it’s the Democrats fault” isn’t going to work.
The reality is that the US is on the verge of authoritarianism because of the Republican Party abandoning democracy for political gain.
Again, it isn’t a fluke that Trump rose to prominence as a Republican candidate. He took advantage of the anti-democratic and divisive attitudes Republican politicians, media, and think tanks had been pushing for decades. You all set the table and he sat down.
And, McConnell and senate Republicans, all experts on political theory, knew him for what he was and still handed him three SCOTUS appointments and denied TWO chances to impeach him, the second being an attempt to overthrow an election where an officer defending THEM died and many others were nearly killed.

I don't like Trump and that's why I've consistently voted against him, but I also don't think we're on the verge of authoritarianism. Frankly, neither party is acting like we are.

From a partisan lens, it does appear that Democrats are treating Trump as an opportunity rather than a crisis. He is a controversial ineffective leader who hurts the Republicans. He barely won a race he should have won (There has only been one time since Eisenhower's election that a party kept the White House for more than two terms), and then lost a race he should have also won (There has only been one other time since 1900 that a party got kicked out of the White House after just one term). I haven't seen much effort from Democrats to moderate, which is what I'd expect if the party were more afraid of Trump winning than they would be if the nominee were Nikki Haley or Doug Burgum. There have been no Sistah Souljah moments to model to Republicans how they should treat the far-right.

There seems to be an effort by Democrats and their supporters to taint Republicans with any association with Trump, which is politics as usual. An implication seems to be that anyone who is associated with Trump in any way should be kept from office, and that only someone who is explicitly anti-Trump should have any future in politics, but there don't seem to be many willing to explicitly make that case because it's going to alienate voters they need in November.

Trump's Supreme Court choices do seem to be relatively typical for any Republican in the same position, since he outsourced it to the Federalist society. Here it would be important to distinguish what's uniquely bad about Trump as opposed to what President Mitt Romney would have done.

There is a potential problem with right-wingers who think that the originalists are too constrained; they're looking for right-wing judges who will find any pretext to rule in ways that benefit Republicans, which is their caricature of how Democrats use the living constitution approach. A term I've heard is that they're looking for judges who know what time it is. That's scary, but it doesn't describe Gorsuch, Kavanaugh or Coney Barrett. It may describe individuals Trump, or his sycophants, would want to nominate in the future. This is one reason I want Trump to lose.

Vox had a piece on disagreements between traditionalist judges and MAGA judges.

https://www.vox.com/scotus/24117949/...judge-shopping

If traditional Republican judges are treated as equivalent to the MAGA judges, that makes it harder to persuade anyone that the MAGA judges are especially bad.

One factor is that Trump hasn't changed things for partisan Democrats. They were always going to vote against Republican nominees for any office. But they're seeing an opportunity to do better than they normally would.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Dalek! The show in question is Justified, with Timothy Olyphaunt. It’s not my general jam as I don’t tend to like westerns or cop shows, and it’s kinda both…but also, kinda neither…?

But I do love Tim, and it has episodes like this one that play to an audience statistically more likely to need to see anti-fascist messaging like ‘collecting Nazi memorabilia is bad, burning it is good’.

If memory serves, he played Agent 47 in a movie version of Hitman.

[aja_christopher]

I don't like Trump and that's why I've consistently voted against him, but I also don't think we're on the verge of authoritarianism. Frankly, neither party is acting like we are.

From a partisan lens, it does appear that Democrats are treating Trump as an opportunity rather than a crisis. He is a controversial ineffective leader who hurts the Republicans.

He tried to overthrow the government with the support of the Republican Congress and had it been up to Republicans he would have gotten away with it.



Now Republicans are trying to put the same person who attempted to overthrow the government back into office.

And -- true to your history of gaslighting others -- you are trying to tell people that they are overreacting to something that Trump and the Republican party have already attempted.

If it hadn't been for the January 6th commission he wouldn't even be on trial for said treason -- and even those cases are being obstructed by conservative Republicans like Cannon.

You aren't viewing from a "nonpartisan lens" -- you are deliberately overlooking actual criminal, unethical, racist, homophobic, sexist behavior that has become standard within the Republican party.

Trump is just the symptom of a much larger issue -- he is a white nationalist who took over your party by giving them exactly what they wanted in calling Obama and other non-whites "un-American".

[Gray Lensman]

If memory serves, he played Agent 47 in a movie version of Hitman.

An the Marshall from The Mandalorian.

But here is the Justified scene.