US could be under rightwing dictator by 2030, Canadian professor warns

The main vehicle of Trump's plan was a congressional coup in which they manufactured legal justifications for not recognizing the slates of electors determined in the states so they can declare Trump the actual victor. But, the mob was incited to raise the temperature on the whole process, to put pressure on congressmen and Pence to submit to his will, and to create an air of popular legitimacy to the grievances about the election results. I think the mob succeeded too much for Trump's plan, really, and what he really wanted was a strong showing on the lawn and not in the halls. I wonder, in fact, if the storming of the Capitol actually undermined the coup attempt by scaring the bejeezus out of Mike Pence. It in any case made it pretty difficult to declare a state election fraudulent on top of all the news of the invasion of the Capitol. But pointing at the crazies and ignoring the congressional efforts to overturn the election is rather missing the point.

 

Maybe.... maybe not. Chavez rose to power in Venezuela without money at first.

Having said that, I agree with you - there is a really good chance that the person we would get from the left would be someone that would decay and destroy the system from the inside. Had FDR lived, that may have happened as he would have been in control for nearly two decades and would have appointed and placed enough people to largely do most of what he wanted - and he may have kept running.

 

related article by Damon Linker:

How close is America to a new civil war?
It's not inevitable. Maybe not even likely. But it's still worth debate.

https://theweek.com/us/1008573/how-close-is-america-to-a-new-civil-war

relevant excerpt:

Believing the threat comes solely from the right leads many Democrats to put their faith in a legislative solution to the danger of civil unrest — usually through the reform of election laws. But in truth there is no such legislative solution, Millman claims, because "the deepest problem threatening American democracy" is "the profound lack of trust in the legitimacy of the opposition."

We saw Democrats reject this legitimacy in 2000 and to some extent again in 2016, while the GOP went even further in 2020. The suspicion is mutual, and, as long as it stays that way, we run the risk of a buckling system and the outbreak of violence in response.

Yet that doesn't mean a civil war is inevitable or even likely. In a long essay in Vox, Zack Beauchamp reviews a wide range of scholarship and case studies of democratic breakdown across the world in attempting to think through possible scenarios for the American future. They range from the U.S. muddling through its troubles without much change to the outbreak of several forms of political violence to the rise of outright authoritarian government to something much more like an actual civil war.
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more

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one more

Democracy is not in crisis just because Democrats are losing

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2022/01...sis-just-because-democrats-are-losing-n439271

excerpt:

Hopefully at this point you see the glaring inconsistency between what media partisans say they are worried about and what is actually likely to happen. Democrats could lose a bunch of elections this year fair and square. No one has to cheat to beat Democrats at this moment. But instead of dealing with that looming disaster, some media partisans keep shouting about a counter-factual in which Democrats were poised to win if not for dastardly Republicans stealing elections and ending democracy. This is being taken very seriously by people on the left who don’t seem to notice how much it sounds like their own version of “the election is rigged!”

It sets up a scenario in which the legitimate results (Democrats losing) are considered illegitimate and possible even a crisis when in fact they are perfectly understandable. Simply put, Democrats losing elections is not a crisis of democracy. The party in power losing in the midterms is literally what’s expected to happen and it probably will happen this year. But some partisans see a chance of holding that outcome at bay if they can whip up enough frenzy about an existential crisis of democracy which can only be stopped by Democrats.

There is a more productive path they could take. Democrats could move to the center. They could fight inflation, keep schools open, support the police and generally embrace the mainstream while telling the socialist left and the woke culture warriors to buzz off. I don’t see it happening anytime soon but it is possible.

Absent that kind of fresh approach, here’s what is likely to happen: Republicans run a change election against an unpopular status quo president (or an equally unpopular Vice President) and win handily. It turns out you don’t need to end democracy when your opponent is stuck at 40% approval, you just need to run.
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more at the link

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Democracy is not in crisis just because Republicans are losing...

Isn't that literally what a large chunk of this country believes?That democracy ended because Trump didn't get releected?

I would call you guys masters of spin, but reality is much more sad as it's so obvious and blatant.

 

what do you mean, you guys?

 

and as luck would have it . . .

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archi...pting-than-republicans-of-election-defeat.php

POLLS: DEMS ARE LESS ACCEPTING THAN REPUBLICANS OF ELECTION DEFEAT
POSTED ON JANUARY 4, 2022 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF

Democrats and their mainstream media allies express dismay, if not alarm, over a poll that shows 58 percent of Republicans don’t believe Joe Biden was elected legitimately. However, Byron York points out that in the Fall of 2017, the same pollster found that 67 percent of Democrats said Trump was not legitimately elected.

Given the drumbeat of unfounded claims by mainstream media outlets of Russian collusion in the election of Trump, as well as supposed “voter suppression,” I’m surprised that even more Democrats didn’t view his election as illegitimate.

It’s true that, unlike Trump in 2020, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. But if Democrats believe in the Constitution, they must, perforce, acknowledge that Trump’s victory was not rendered illegitimate by the fact that he lost the popular vote.

It wasn’t just rank-and-file Democrats who wouldn’t accept the result of the 2016 presidential election. A number of Democratic congressmen objected to the tally of Electoral College votes. One of them was my congressman, Jamie Raskin, an influential member of the Dem caucus who led the second Trump impeachment.

To his credit, then-vice president Biden wasn’t having it. But neither was then-vice president Pence in 2021.

2017 wasn’t the first time modern-day Democrats tried to obstruct the certification of a Republican presidential victory. In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Stephanie Tubbs objected to George Bush’s electoral votes in Ohio, forcing their fellow lawmakers to leave their joint session and debate whether to reject the state’s electoral votes.

Yet, following the objections to certifying the 2020 result, some House and Senate Dems refused even to speak with Republican colleagues who objected. They also engaged in other infantile measures to demonstrate their displeasure. So reports the Washington Post.

According to the Post, congressional Dems blame some of their Republican colleagues for the rioting at the Capitol on January 6. Or at least they pretend to. Conflating objecting to certification — something Democrats have done in the past — with promoting an “insurrection” is so absurd that it’s difficult to believe the Dems are sincere.

Nonetheless, the Post reports that House Democrats have gone so far as to pass a rule requiring members to go through metal detectors out of an alleged fear that Republicans pose a threat to the physical safety of Democrats. In addition, a handful of House Democrats vote against any legislation whose main sponsor is a Republican who opposed certifying Biden’s election. This practice extends to noncontroversial matters such as naming post offices.

In the Senate, Chris Coons, who masquerades as “bipartisan,” went more than six months without saying a single word to the eight Senate Republicans who voted against signing off on Biden’s win. Another masquerader, Amy Klobuchar, says she thinks about the January 6 “every time I see or work with” a Senator who didn’t sign off.

As ridiculous as all of this is, I’m not sorry if Democrats have become more overtly and rudely hostile towards, and less likely to work with, Republicans on Capitol Hill. The two parties have radical, and probably irreconcilable, differences about what America is and what it should be going forward.

These differences aren’t just between, say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene. They extend to Coons and Klobuchar on the one hand and nearly every Senate Republican on the other.

Given this profound ideological divergence, there’s no good reason to expect members of one camp to get along with, or respect in any deep sense, members of the other. If they do, that’s okay. If they don’t, that’s okay too. It might even be preferable, since bipartisan legislation on matters of significance often produces more harm than good.

Who cares, for example, whether Chris Coons says hello to certain Republican members? I doubt that any Republicans lost sleep over the snub. If any did, that’s a worrying sign.

My only objection is to the claim that this lack of courtesy and comity has anything to do with Democrats favoring democracy and Republicans being its enemy. The two parties differ so fundamentally these days that even their conceptions of democracy, or at least what they say about it, can’t be reconciled.
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Oh I don't even wonder anymore. Actually in the moment I didn't either. Senators like Lankford are probably the clearest example where out of shame essentially they reversed course on the Congressional coup attempt we know he was in on just minutes prior.

I would say though that the organizers certainly had plans and some level of organization to know where to go, and clearly the gold mine was the electors vote box. Steve Bannon and Roger Stone aren't as smart as they think they are, but the are smart enough to know how to coach these people on what to do if and when they got in assuming the goal was to get in the building and "just disrupt & delay" long enough to force a House vote.

You are dead on though that focusing on the crazies, and ignoring what even "sensible" Republicans like Lankford were obviously prepared to do just minutes ago is missing the point entirely. When you see what the rank and file Republicans were willing to do that day it really is what scares everyone like me the most about what will happen in 2024 when Kevin McCarthy holds to gavel. Is there really one person here who doesn't think he'll use every bit of power he has to force a 12th amendment vote??

 

I missed the part where the Democrats tried to overturn the 2000 election and sent a violent mob down to Florida to stop a recount??? .... oh wait that was Roger Stone.

Show me the evidence that Democrats are actually the party of overturning elections they don't like the results of please.

 

People fantasize about fighting against the "evil fascist dictatorship" when we already live in a international-capitalist oligarchy.

Then dream about "being the resistance" when they know damn well that they'd report their own family to the secret police for brownie points.

You want to see the future of America? Combine the very worst of the PRC, Latin America, and Europe. Stifling repression, paralyzing corruption, and multi-national power-broakers insulated from any popular influence. All with a people either begging for the boot to press on their face harder, or too fat and lazy to do anything about it.

We will see man-made abominations beyond our understanding. Welcome to the God-State.

 

Yea, no. Democrats do favor democracy and Republicans do not.

2016 election involved foreign interference that Trump personally invited live on air. That and facts that came out later confirming Russian were indeed meddling in our 2016 election drove quite a bit of 'he's not illegitimate' feeling. This view isn't just among Dem. A large segment of Republicans and Independents had that view that Trump wasn't legitimately elected due to foreign interference. 42% of Americans, in that WP-UoM, said Trump's election as President was not legitimate. That's a shockingly high number justifiable due to actual Russian interference, Trump's invitation of it, and cloud over the many contacts among his groups of convicted criminals with the Russian.

None of the above is related to the US election system is full of fraud that Trump and his allies are claiming with zero evidence (or more correctly, plenty of evidence that there is no widespread fraud - why it's called the Big Lie). None of the above is also about actual written plans and actions taken to pressure officials to overturn results and to steal the election.

We have witnessed over multiple years that Trump and his allies do not give a crap about traditions, laws and would go to the extreme. If they could have overturned the election in 2021, they would have done it. Frankly, only idiots would not see that they will try again in 2024. Now, try to argue that Biden will do the same.

 

Civil War too costly for the 1%....why inflate asset prices only to blow it all up? Can't store useless paper in Bermuda that way!

There will likely be a Weinmar-esque breakdown of our financial system before a civil war. It happens when the party holding the bag either fails to stop the wildfire or overreaches its authority.

The debt clock is ticking. Percentage wise it'll be more than what we had during WW2.

People (or banks) gonna find someone's ass to kick and shake down. Better hope it's a ferriner who crosses party lines.

I guess that could parallel the FDR situation @Nook alluded to in the posts above.

 

Totalitarianism is not about left or right, but the authoritarian mentality itself which uses safety as a Trojan horse.

If I were you I would pay more attention to other instances of concentration camps and how it could happen here. There are plans in motion in NY to use public health concerns to establish concentration camps. This type of thing shouldn't be permitted because it can be abused by someone left or right very easily. The bill is worth a read.... pay attention to the wording. I put the link below, but in case it's TLDR:

• It states people can be abducted for public health reasons without specifics so it's a blank check that could be applied in many ways. There is also no time limit on it or limitations to a specific pandemic.
  
• It says authorities can target people or groups.
• It can be used to put people under detention at facilities or "premises" for however long it wants.
• It holds provisions that imply they will contact people on the outside for you. I am assuming if they detain you, your phone and Internet will likely be cut off if they are making rules about contacting "a reasonable number" of people for you.
  
• It establishes the use of court orders to force medication.

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2021/a416