When Jason Stanley starts to freak out, we’re in big trouble:
https://twitter.com/jasonintrator/status/1371470638104334336?s=21
If you didn’t catch it the first time, here is a rerun of Jason Stanley’s conversation with Vox about how fascism got a foothold in America.
I could swear this stuff was covered in Problems of Democracy class in 12th grade. Am I the only one who remembers that?
Anyway, I think it’s time to break the glass on the filibuster with respect to voting rights. We may not have a choice. Time for Manchin and Sinema to get on board.
Filed under: General |
The Confluence 
i completely agree! And I also feel this sense that we are living in this bubble of calm following the awful previous four years, but that there are forces which are carefully setting up to forever make it disappear, and actually leave us with no way to escape.
It simply cannot be that way. People have to wake up. i know that we have gone through so much turmoil, and sleepless nights; and we just want to relax a bit, and enjoy the Biden years. But Republicans never sleep, when it comes to trying to effect a permanent takeover of our country. We came so close to losing it, and it is tempting to take a deep breath and figure that we have gotten though it. But not a t all; it is more like winning an early skirmish, but the enemy is briefly regrouping, and has stockpiles of weapons. In some sense that is what happened to Europe in the 1920’s.
HR1 must pass, and a new Voting Rights Bill. We cannot just let this go, even for a while. They’ve already got it set up to defeat Warnook and Kelly, and they would take over the Senate, and that would be the last bill we ever get through, just like Obama did not after 2010. And if their planned destruction of the right to vote, holds up, we won’t win in 2024, either. That is so depressing to contemplate, but it is true, nonetheless. Someone or other has to get through to Manchin and Sinema, and get them to see that a misplaced belief in bipartisanship and keeping the filibuster, would be the equivalent of Neville Chamberlain thinking he had achieved “peace in our time.” One slightly hopeful thing, is that I saw someone on TV, I can’t remember who, say a few weeks ago that he thought that when it came down to it, those two senators would come through. I wish that I were confident, though.
No, if our fascists succeed, it will be only briefly–and then it will be their end.
Like all fascists, they think they are invincible if they can make the struggle a physical struggle. They will learn they are not.
The original fascists were not invincible in 1945.
Their proto-fascist precursors were not invincible in 1865.
However, I don’t think they’ll succeed even initially. This is not the 1940 Ardennes offensive, but rather, the late 1944 Ardennes offensive (the “Battle of the Bulge”). This is their last hurrah, before their defeat.
Your historical analogy gives me some hope in that regard! Though if they are successful in keeping a large amount of people from voting, it is going be hard to defeat them through the ballot box.
However, yes, the filibuster must go.
My “conservative” fellow Borderers, and the Cavaliers whom they serve, must learn that they are not the Deity’s special favorites, but rather, we are all precious in Hir sight.
Good news is here in GA large employers like Coca Cola and Home Depot are against restricting voting. The businesses can apparently read tea leaves that the idiots in the gold dome cannot. So if they pass this nonsense their money is going to dry up and if they think that the Trumpers are going to fund regular Republicans they will shortly find out they only give money to the cult leader-Trump.
Like Joe Manchin (mirabile dictu!), I’m willing to see a restoration of the honest-to-Cthulhu “talking filibuster” as a compromise solution.
After all, we’re not going to hold the Senate forever. We might need that sucker in a few years.
I think that if Republicans take the Senate in 2022, McConnell will immediately get rid of the filibuster, and say that the Democrats wanted to do so first. What another very predictable bit of non-irony. Plus, when has the filibuster ever helped the modern day Democratic Party? Democrats simply cannot keep deluding themselves in this way, My suggestion would be, to get rid of the filibuster, get the all-important voting bills through, and then take our chances with who controls the Senate going forward. I think it would be the Democrats, but if we keep the filibuster, we will lose the Senate, the House, and the filibuster.
I do remember reading Lovecraft and Derleth, who created the Cthulhu mythos.