Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
Try to stay on topic... and the actions of the candidate for president apparently didn't matter to you.
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Why I believe America will soon lose its democracy.
- Thread starter Evangelicalhumanist
- Start date
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
If that were the case he would have been impeached... Obviously they didn't have evidence of what you claim.
So you have changed your mind since you posted this:
This is part of the set of lies Trump has said about the election, and you believed it.
Why don't you read the full story of the Wisconsin 2020 Presidential election here? You might find some very interesting stuff. Not least of which is that whatever people "think" (or have had implanted in their gullible brains by Trump's lies), no evidence has ever turned up supporting election fraud that could change the results. The polling throughout the year had Biden leading consistently, although he did not win by as much as the polls suggested. That never seems to happen in Wisconsin.
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
That part is demonstrably true. Stories were suppressed by both the MSM and social media giants.
Methylsulfonylmethane?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
They do matter. But you only appear to have false claims against Biden.
Do you realize that you are being inconsistent? One more time there is less evidence against Hunter Biden than there was against Trump. If you want to convict Hunter then to be consistent you need to want to convict Trump.
He *was* impeached. Twice.
He wasn't *convicted* because his supporters didn't want to vote against him.
Clearly you don't understand how impeachment works.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Trump was impeached. Twice.
It’s unthinkable that he would be re elected and somehow he’s remained like Teflon,nothing sticks.
The absurdity is how many Republicans who have testified that Trump lied and committed election fraud and corrupt acts, yet would still support him if he was nominated for president in 2024. Bill Barr has said this. The GA secretary of state who has testified to Trump's corruption in GA said he supported Trump, but I'm not sure if he would now, but he has supported election laws that limit access to polls. So even the ethical Republicans are murky in whether they would vote for a nominee they know is corrupt and unfit for office. My only thought is that conservative rhetoric that Democrats are evil has crept into the subconscious of even ethical Republicans, and they would prefer a corrupt Trump over any Democrat.
What is notable is the wide divide between the few Republicans that have not tolerated Trump's corruption and the conspiracy that he engineered to the conspirators for Trump. There are many White House lawyers and insiders who did not go along with the election fraud scheme, but didn't blow the whistle as they saw it happening. These people are only talking now that the election fraud scheme didn't work and there is a deep investigation happening with many talking. It seems these middle ground actors who knew about the fraud are talking now to avoid being complicit with the conspiracy.
What remains to be known is if these people would have enjoyed the result of the election fraud if it had worked, even if they didn't cooperate with it.
I think this pretty much cuts to the core issue of what is ailing America. I recall back during the 1980s, the theme song of the Republicans was "Don't Worry, Be Happy," but there were some who could see the writing on the wall and knew that we were heading down the wrong path. It's almost like the whole country (or most of it) became zombified during the Reagan era, entranced by consumerism and mollified by shiny objects.
It was still "democratic" in the sense that people's votes were counted and there were elections conducted in such a way that one could have good reason to believe that the vote counts were being reported accurately. Although it's not always the case. Close elections might cause some squabbles, as has been the case in the past. Claims of "ballot box stuffing" aren't exactly new.
One safety feature we have is that Presidents are only limited to two terms. If ever that stops being the case, then that will be the sign that we're really in trouble. But the President is just one person heading up the entire Executive Branch of government, which itself is a huge organization. I remember a quote attributed to J. Edgar Hoover that "it doesn't matter who becomes President. Presidents and Senators come and go, visitors to Washington. I'm a resident." Nobody actually elected him, yet he somehow wielded a certain degree of power within the government.
Then there's also been questionable activities of the CIA, NSA, the military - all in the name of national interests and national security. We're making the world safe for democracy. But a militaristic, quasi-nationalistic government which has a culture of intense secrecy is, at best, a hobbled democracy. This is especially true since the people are often denied information or given limited information about what the government is actually doing. Even the President or Congress may not always know.
This has had the effect of making people believe that this is all okay, because it's all for our own interests. Of course, there are some who would openly admit that our government has done some very bad things, but in the end, we've been somewhat more restrained than the fascists or the communist regimes. We never thought of ourselves as that bad, even if some people tend to overuse extremist terms to describe their opponents. But we have made some moral compromises, and in doing so, we've risked the possibility of sliding down that slippery slope towards outright fascism.
With the kind of ideas which have been prevalent in our political culture - including the patriotic and quasi-nationalistic bent which is conditioned to accept the idea that it's okay to cross the line on occasion as long as it's done for freedom, it shouldn't really be any great surprise that there might be a growing number of people who want to amp it up and take it to the next level.
The only way to really deal with it is acknowledge the flaws in our own culture and political system which led us to this, but instead, people seem to want do everything but that. Because we don't want to admit that we made any mistakes or that some aspects of our worldview might be erroneous. We created a monster which has gotten out of control.
One thing that might help a great deal is to change the culture in how information is disseminated and made available to the public. The best way to counter lies is to tell the straight truth, but it should also be transparent, adding and withholding nothing. But a lot of times, information is withheld from public view, oftentimes for reasons of national security. Sometimes evidence and information is released selectively and it may be some time before all the facts are known before someone can make a reasonable conclusion. Then there are other things which can be mere annoyances, such as paywalls or having to pay to get access to some academic articles and reports. I realize that we live in a capitalist system and we all have to make money, but it does no good to tell ignorant people to "study and read the facts" when they may not necessarily have the time or the money to pay for it. They're going to look for something easier to access.
Maybe if some of these news organizations and academic institutions truly wish to save democracy, then perhaps they need to bite the bullet, remove the paywalls and other money-driven barriers, and make their information more freely available to the general public. If only to counter all the BS out there. America needs them to stop being greedy capitalists, if only just for a little while.
GardenLady
Active Member
Nah. I think it's just about holding onto power and influence.
The movie I watched “Unfit:the psychology of Donald Trump” was very murky,he has no loyalty to anyone so anyone who disagrees on his staff are kicked out and even cheats at golf.
Hopefully this will all come out and all these people involved will be brought to account,I doubt it though as Trump still hasn’t.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
He was like that in NY too back then. Strangely enough, that is what made him famous or infamous however one wants to look at it.
Agreed, but as others have noted, American democracy is already faltering. What is also failing, and I think possibly with even greater consequences, is the promise in the Constitution's preamble. The Republican vision for America is one where wealth, power, and privilege are maximally concentrated leaving a class of wage slaves and poorly paid professionals, where ordinary citizens are viewed as capital that exist for the benefit of oligarchs, essentially the same as slaves, business machines and farm animals. They've already made a great deal of progress there, a class war having already been waged and won largely unnoticed by the public.
You've probably noticed the trend in recent American history, where Republicans take power (Reagan, Bush II, Trump) and the nation races toward this vision of rollbacks of environmental protections, the social safety net, regulatory and oversight capture, IRS/State Dept/Post Office gutted, and the like in preparation for this vision, interspersed with periods where the Republicans have so terrified the electorate that they as we saw in the Clinton, Obama, and now the Biden years. It was essentially two steps to the right followed by one to the left, creating a sawtooth kind of effect as America toggles between two visions and ideologies.
I also agree with those who predict that if the Republicans take control again, they will never cede it again thanks to banana republic kind of elections that keep the Democrats out of real power indefinitely. And I fully expect the American people to do just that. They are subjected to conservative disinformation 24/7, and you can see in this thread how effective that is and what a significant fraction of RF posters are in that camp, which is skewed toward underrepresentation of such people, most of whom I have difficulty seeing participating in discussion boards that aren't all Qanon type conspiracy theories, own the libs sites, and the like.
And like you, I have been making this argument for well over a decade, more so then than now. This comes from something I wrote in 2006, when we had already decided to expatriate for greener pastures based on the writing on the walls then: "There's a better life in a healthier milieu somewhere else. That's my hope: to restore a relationship with a people and a purpose that I can feel hopeful about and to which I can actually make a contribution. I don't want to work for America. It seems pointless, and its people seem undeserving and ungrateful."
As you may know, we chose Mexico, and moved here three years later in 2009 based on that vision of unending malaise and deterioration characterizing American life for the foreseeable future. That was early in Obama's first term, but my attitude then was the same as it is now: count on the American electorate to make poor judgments and for ongoing corrosion of American life and culture.
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That's not realistic. Think 9/11, a conflict against America. America stopped infighting for about ten minutes.
Perhaps you are unaware of just how sharp the divide is and how strong the antipathy. as my comment above suggests, I had no interest in working with the American right or even living among them, and even now, have no interest in their opinions. I mean that literally. Supporting the Republicans or opining that the election was stolen or any mention of Hunter Biden or misuse of the words communism, socialism, or Marxism are all litmus tests for me. Likewise with climate denial, election hoax, and antivax comments. If one holds any of those positions, I don't have any further interest in anything they say.
And you can see that it's the same in reverse. What liberals want and need is of zero interest to them. There is no compromising, no sense of fellow American, and zero empathy (you can recognize that when you see the word "woke," to derisively describe empathy in others). The divide is insurmountable in my opinion. There is almost no common ground between the two groups despite living in the same country. There are no universal American values any longer, including democracy, forbearance, the rule of law, or even what's true and real. The morality of the right, which largely supported and still defends Trump, is appalling to a humanist, and hopefully, a Baha'i as well.
If this were a marriage, it's past counseling and reconciliation. You'd divorce. If this were a job, you wouldn't talk to the boss that you realize has no interest in you except to exploit you. You'd leave it. If this were a home or a car, you wouldn't try to repair it. You'd replace it. And that's what I did. I view expatriation as akin to divorce or secession. I now live among people with whom I have much more in common than Republican America. I no longer have to wonder if when I patronize a restaurant or shop if it's owned by a MAGA and I am supporting somebody that despises me. I'm trying to paint a picture for you of how utterly uninterested I am in repairing any divide, and I don't think I'm alone.
PureX
Veteran Member
I remember back in the early 80s I had occasion to work with and get to know a couple of young men just out of college and entering the job market in Chicago. And I have to tell you that I had never met any more shallow, selfish, ignorant, materialistic, amoral humans in my life. And not only that, I could tell by the way they lived and the friends they ran with that their view of the world was shared by many of their generation. It was a generation poisoned by the whole "greed is good" mantra of the later 1970s that came of age in the "go-go-80s" under Reagan and the neo-conservative "hot-shots" that got into the white house behind him. The Carl Roves, and the Dick Cheneys, and the Donald Rumsfelds, and a dozen other nasty, selfish, radicalizes hyper-capitalists that were looking to install a "new republican 100 year reign" by any means and methods necessary. And boy have they tried! And are still trying! Even if it rips the nation to bits, and leaved us a broken, fascist husk. The Frankenstein they created has gotten loose and run away from them and threatens to kill us all. And like yourself, I could see this ugly future in the eyes of those stupid young materialistic 'boys' as they were looking to 'score big money' by any means and method they could think of in the capitalist nirvana they were about to enter. Because money was all and only what it was about for them. BIG money! They had been taught, and they had learned well, that "greed is good". Which meant that selfishness was righteous. And that success justified whatever you had to do to get it.
God only knows where those two idiots are now. Probably running fortune 500 companies and laying waste to anything and anyone that gets between them and 'maximized profiteering'. Capitalism was always the poison that was going to destroy this country, but in the past we'd always been able to reign it in just enough when we had to, to keep it from taking the whole system down. But not any more. It has taken on a life and reality of it's own, now. You join it or you die, these days. No mercy.