Feel-Bad Politics Stories
December 6, 2021 11:06 AM   Subscribe

Barton Gellman,
who was right in his September 2020 Atlantic cover story
when he made you feel bad about a coming election and democracy in America
has a new Atlantic cover story
to make you feel bad about the coming election and democracy in America.
Read it to feel bad!
Like Pandora keeping hope alive inside her box,
David Atkins writes in The Washington Monthly about steps to take to feel good about American democracy, and the reasons to believe those steps are conceivable.
posted by Going To Maine (76 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
That ain't the Washington Times, it's Washington Monthly. Very different publications. But thanks, I'm def reading these.
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:26 AM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


eep! Yes! I kept crossing my eyes when typing, sure I was getting something wrong.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:29 AM on December 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


The nice thing about the Atlantic is that you have those sweet, sweet Audm recordings so you can feel bad while at work. I’m going to feel bad twice!
posted by Going To Maine at 11:31 AM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


Trump has built the first American mass political movement in the past century that is ready to fight by any means necessary, including bloodshed, for its cause

Has he really? Hmm. I guess technically it all hinges on the definition of a "mass" political movement, sure.
posted by viborg at 12:14 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


Metafilter: Read it to feel bad!
posted by genpfault at 12:24 PM on December 6, 2021 [44 favorites]


From the Washington Monthly:

the key challenge is this: Democrats would need to win every single election from here to prevent the destruction of democracy, while Republicans only need to win one.

The problem with this analysis is that it is basically saying that one-party rule is inevitable, and our only hope is to make sure that one party is the democratic party.
posted by thedamnbees at 12:27 PM on December 6, 2021 [7 favorites]


Yeah I had just finished reading the new Atlantic story before coming here. As advertised, it definitely made me feel bad, though it's a great, and thorough, piece of writing. Let's see about that hopeful story then!

Blue America needs to start thinking about and planning for what “Break glass in case of emergency” measures look like—because it’s more likely a matter of when, not if. It not only can happen here; it probably will happen here. Conservatives are guaranteed to make every attempt to turn America into the next Russia or Hungary. It will take coordinated, overlapping solidarity among both regular people and elites across various institutions to stop it.

Wait, this is the feel-good article?!? Yeesh. Here's a couple other articles by Atkins from September that I found a little more hopeful:
Donald Trump May Still Destroy the GOP, After All
The GOP's Reckless Approach to COVID Is Backfiring on Them
(though YMMV on the latter one; hoping that the Republicans lose elections because they got thousands of people needlessly killed by COVID feels pretty ghoulish to me).

Honestly though, the pundits (including in the "hopeful" article) have been making a big deal out of the fact that big business has become increasingly, openly woke and leftist, at least rhetorically, and as a result there's a growing rift between business leaders and the MAGA cult, and suggesting that will be the thing that saves our democracy from rising fascism, and -- look, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, whatever saves democracy saves democracy, fuck yeah! -- but at the same time, it would still feel kinda bad to know that the thing that stemmed the tide of rising fascism in our country was the fact that nothing in the USA can actually change, unless the corporate money is on board with it.

Meanwhile, France is "helpfully" providing a reminder that this far-right power grab is global.
posted by mstokes650 at 12:29 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


Terrifying, and no ideas in either article for what specifically we should do about this. How the hell am I supposed to get any work done now for the rest of the day, or year?
posted by PhineasGage at 12:29 PM on December 6, 2021 [6 favorites]


Yah is there anything we can do? I feel so helpless when I see this stuff. I'd move, but to where? I can work, but does anyone have tips about where to take a family, which countries are cool w/ visas, etc.?

Then again, is this really as bad as it seems? Am I freaking out too much? Because I am freaking out.
posted by nushustu at 12:45 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


The Democrats did not see that Fox News was an existential threat during the W years. This decision has come back to haunt them. The Republicans and Trump in particular have an entire network that spouts anti - Democratic Party propaganda 24/7. Their viewers believe it. After all, they are seeing it on TV - how could it be a lie?

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's response to the imminent loss of Voting Rights and Roe vs Wade is to throw up their hands and say they can do nothing. How are voters (particularly in Georgia) who worked so hard to get Democrats elected supposed to feel motivation to vote again when the party holding the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives can't seem to protect these two most basic rights? (I know the party can't do anything because of a few Democratic Senators- and if you are on Metafilter, you know it too, but voters who don't follow current events like we do only see the party they elected seemingly powerless.)

I was already depressed even before reading the article.
posted by wittgenstein at 12:51 PM on December 6, 2021 [24 favorites]


Wait, this is the feel-good article?!?

I don’t feel very good!
posted by Going To Maine at 12:54 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


Blue America needs to start thinking about and planning for what “Break glass in case of emergency” measures look like

I'm just going to leave this here.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:24 PM on December 6, 2021 [10 favorites]


I'm always a bit surprised that nobody's made a grift out of anxiety over Democratic dithering. A whole lot of people are really worried about Republican authoritarianism, and with the blue team seeming incapable of putting up much of a fight, it seems like a real opportunity for a smooth talker to swoop in with some big ideas about how the "good guys" will notch some wins for a change. For a price.

If your instinct is to say "oh well non-Trumpists are too smart to fall for that" then I don't think you're making the point you think you're making.
posted by Chef Flamboyardee at 1:26 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


(I know the party can't do anything because of a few Democratic Senators- and if you are on Metafilter, you know it too, but voters who don't follow current events like we do only see the party they elected seemingly powerless.)

Is it "seemingly" powerless? I mean it might be the fault of just a couple of people (although I think Manchin and Sinema are providing cover for a lot of other pusillanimous Dems) but it seems like they are not, as a practical matter, able to wield any power.

As always I vote for Democrats, I'll keep voting for Democrats, please don't yell at me, but with all the bad things (drones, kids still in cages, horrible immigration policy) and lack of good things (healthcare, debt forgiveness, abortion) I certainly understand why anyone would feel at minimum discouraged and at worse actively horrified and unwilling to help put or keep Democrats in power.
posted by an octopus IRL at 1:32 PM on December 6, 2021 [9 favorites]


Despite controlling the House, Senate, and White House for the first time in a dozen years and being on the cusp of passing historic legislation, Democrats are in a sour mood. I get it. The pandemic rages on, the Republicans are getting worse, and Trump lurks in the background. A few months ago, we thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just another oncoming train as the nation appears to careen from crisis to crisis. Like everyone else, I am so sick of talking, tweeting, and thinking about Joe Fricking Manchin. Never before in American history has someone so uninteresting held the nation’s attention for so long.

When Pod Save America sent out a call for questions for our annual Thanksgiving Mail Bag Episode, the hottest topic was some version of “are we doomed?” The impulse to expect the worst is certainly understandable after a brutal 2021, but it is also the fastest way to guarantee an even worse 2022. To have any chance to hold or expand our majorities in 2022, we must resist the Democratic doom loop.
From author/strategist Dan Pfeiffer's newsletter, The Message Box.

Also, just two places where your support may make a difference:
Stacy Abrams for Governor of Georgia.
Vote Save America's No Off Years fund.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:39 PM on December 6, 2021 [7 favorites]


When 2020 came around and the best the Dems could do was Biden-Harris, I gave up. I don’t care who runs the shitshow, I have a hard time seeing anything big much different between the two bad comedies.
posted by lometogo at 1:45 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


Americans like to think they don't live in Texas, but Texas is the reason.

We all live in Texas. Just because there's relatively very little press on the decisions made there...but it still amazes me how little Texas' influence is discussed.
posted by eustatic at 1:46 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


The cynical part of me thinks these articles are going to sound real quaint when Trump wins outright.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:56 PM on December 6, 2021 [9 favorites]


"The problem with this analysis..."
That's a good point, and reason to consider the analysis as possibly colored by partisan feeling. Gotta note though that reinterpreting a conclusion does not refute an argument. Also, I've been thinking about how much Gellman got right in his article before the 2020 election. That makes me take his reporting more seriously.
Personally, I don't think one-party rule by either party is desirable, and I'm interested in hearing about ways to avoid it.
posted by Arctan at 2:00 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


I guess my point was more that arguing that we need one-party rule in order to save democracy is like arguing we have to destroy democracy in order to save it. If that argument is correct, then isn't it already too late?
posted by thedamnbees at 2:21 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


Personally, I don't think one-party rule by either party is desirable, and I'm interested in hearing about ways to avoid it.

Step 1, structurally disarm the Republican party (yes, "then draw the rest of the owl", but it's a precondition to avoiding step 1 be "rebuild after Gilead")

Step 2, let the tensions of the Democratic party attempting to house everybody remaining play out with the emergence of a new party to its left, so a new centrism set-point can emerge somewhere more in line with our international peers.

Step 3, hopefully somewhere in the middle of all that there's enough interest in electoral reforms & people feel less existentially worried at the prospect of losing power long enough for that to go through so we aren't stuck in our current voting structure that discourages third-parties from surviving?

Stretch goal: Repeat as needed until we reach a humane baseline for our society?
(again, to be clear, I understand just how wildly pie-in-the-sky this is as presented)
posted by CrystalDave at 2:21 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


in terms of what to do, besides obviously voting and ordinary activism, if your main concern is to just protect yourself, then move to a city in a blue state. that should insulate you from direct political violence if you want to avoid it. the most dangerous place to be is likely a state capital in a purple state in 2024, or in DC.

in terms of how to break open the political space or head off the coming goon squad from overtaking washington, i'm not sure it's possible. i doubt the goons will be able to hold power for long, but i don't think the fever will break, so to speak, without a major cultural realignment that upends political alliances. something big and sad like a major war or depression where a new mass movement with popular resonance is born. something significantly more immediate in the average person's mind than climate change, and with significantly more widespread effect on more people even than covid, since we've seen those things are not deemed serious enough to cause realignment, and have just settled into the existing grooves of conflict.

til then, i don't know that individuals can wield much power on this. any more so than one person quitting meat or stopping driving can affect the natural environment. it's just not that sort of problem.
posted by wibari at 2:26 PM on December 6, 2021 [3 favorites]


but with all the bad things (drones, kids still in cages, horrible immigration policy)

Here's one thing to feel good about, as far as the Biden administration goes:
Biden nearly ended the drone war, and nobody noticed (The Week)
(And here's a tweet showing it in graph form)
posted by mstokes650 at 2:29 PM on December 6, 2021 [14 favorites]


That is a very good thing indeed. Still, 'not murdering people in foreign countries with drones on a daily basis' is a pretty low bar.
posted by thedamnbees at 2:34 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


The cynical part of me thinks these articles are going to sound real quaint when Trump wins outright.

I'm not especially sanguine about 2024, but bear in mind that the party that loses the presidency almost always has a wave in the following mid-terms. Trump has good numbers against Biden now, but that may well change in the next three years. Democrats' biggest challenges will be ending the pandemic (so that right-wing anger over vaccines and masks can dissipate) and finishing the economic recovery so that the ~3 million people who left the workforce can return to well-paying jobs.

That said, those are pretty tall orders, and I have higher hopes that Trump dies, is bankrupted/goes to prison*, has a debilitating heart attack or stroke, or simply becomes too obviously physically and mentally frail for the job. Republicans are putting an awful lot of faith in the health of a man who will be 78 in 2024 and who is already obviously in mental and physical decline.

Which leads unfortunately to the question of whether Biden will or should run in 2024 given that he'll be almost 82. Harris is the natural successor, but her approval numbers are abysmal (albeit for reasons that are at least partly manufactured). Buttigieg, maybe, but he has his own problems, especially if Harris runs.

* Though I think both of these are pretty unlikely. If serious indictments ever come, Trump will probably manage to either skirt the worst of it or drag the cases out until his death.
posted by jedicus at 2:38 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


One weak point in Gellman's argument is that there's only a small number of Trump supporters willing to resort to armed violence. He admits this, but argues that it makes no difference as long as there's a critical mass of Republican voters who think that violence is justified:
Pape drew an analogy to Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, at the dawn of the Troubles. “In 1968, 13 percent of Catholics in Northern Ireland said that the use of force for Irish nationalism was justified,” he said. “The IRA was created shortly thereafter with only a few hundred members.” Decades of bloody violence followed. And 13 percent support was more than enough, in those early years, to sustain it.
But that's a pretty dubious historical analogy (e.g. it ignores the fact that Irish Catholics in 1968 had legitimate grievances about religious discrimination, police violence and state repression). I suspect a lot of Irish Catholics, whatever their views on the Troubles, would be deeply insulted by the comparison with Trump Republicans.
posted by verstegan at 2:43 PM on December 6, 2021 [5 favorites]


Still, 'not murdering people in foreign countries with drones on a daily basis' is a pretty low bar.

You are not wrong, but I still hope maybe observations like that can head off some of the seemingly-inevitable "both parties are exactly the same!" complaints. Who we vote into office makes a difference. Maybe not an immediately obvious difference, maybe not as big a difference as we'd like to see, but it's nice to be reminded that voting can do more than just hold off fascism for a minute.

The cynical part of me thinks these articles are going to sound real quaint when Trump wins outright.

I think it might be quaint to think any President will ever "win outright" again in our lifetimes. Any Republican who loses will conjure up the Big Lie and explain it away as Democratic voter fraud, and any Democratic candidate who loses will be able to blame voter suppression and all the other shenanigans that Republicans are currently putting in place, as Gellman laid out at length. To really incontrovertibly win the Presidency and have both sides acknowledge it as legitimate, at this point, I dunno, a candidate would probably need to carry something like 65-70% of the popular vote. Or run as an independent and win by a strong margin against both major-party candidates. Hard to see either happening anytime soon.
posted by mstokes650 at 2:54 PM on December 6, 2021 [9 favorites]


verstegan: One weak point in Gellman's argument is that there's only a small number of Trump supporters willing to resort to armed violence.

Sorry, where are you getting this from? Robert Pape's findings are that 21 million Americans "agreed that Biden was illegitimate and that violence was justified to restore Trump to the White House." It's a small percentage of the adult population (8%), but a large number of people. To me this seems like an extremely dangerous situation.

Barton Gellman usually reports on national security. The scenario he's outlining is basically America becoming a failed state, like Yugoslavia. If you were living in Yugoslavia a few years before the outbreak of war and knew what was likely to happen, what would you do? Conversely, if you were reading about a country in Europe where a former leader was planning to retake power by breaking the democratic process, what would you advise? (Would you advise barring him from future elections, for example?)
Back in June 1989, Pape had been a postdoctoral fellow in political science when the late president of Serbia delivered a notorious speech. Milošević compared Muslims in the former Yugoslavia to Ottomans who had enslaved the Serbs six centuries before. He fomented years of genocidal war that destroyed the hope for a multiethnic democracy, casting Serbs as defenders against a Muslim onslaught on “European culture, religion, and European society in general.”

Milošević, Pape said, inspired bloodshed by appealing to fears that Serbs were losing their dominant place to upstart minorities. “What he is arguing” in the 1989 speech “is that Muslims in Kosovo and generally throughout the former Yugoslavia are essentially waging genocide on the Serbs,” Pape said. “And really, he doesn’t use the word replaced. But this is what the modern term would be.”
When Pape's team analyzed the January 6 insurrection, they found something similar:
Only one meaningful correlation emerged. Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline. For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.
posted by russilwvong at 3:03 PM on December 6, 2021 [14 favorites]


But that's a pretty dubious historical analogy (e.g. it ignores the fact that Irish Catholics in 1968 had legitimate grievances about religious discrimination, police violence and state repression).
mstokes650

To add to russilwvong's excellent comment, it doesn't really matter whether the grievances are actually legitimate, just that a chunk of the population believes they are enough to be willing to use violence. Milošević rode to power convincing Serbs that Muslims were engaging in a genocidal campaign against them to replace them. Was that a legitimate grievance? Of course not, but it worked in motivating segments of the population into empowering Milošević and using brutal violence.

Is there a campaign against America by evil, shadowy groups to replace white people that has manifested as Joe Biden illegally stealing an election? Tens of millions of American adults demonstrably appear to fervently believe so and say they will use violence to stop it.
posted by star gentle uterus at 3:14 PM on December 6, 2021 [9 favorites]


As always I vote for Democrats, I'll keep voting for Democrats, please don't yell at me

It bothers me that you felt like you had to put this in small text and ask MeFites not to yell at you. Democrats are Good, Actually (at least, the ones that want to pass good laws, which is most of them!) and voting and electoral are also Good, Actually.

I'm to the left of Bernie, btw.
posted by pelvicsorcery at 3:24 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


Honestly, it should bother you that they did actually have to put that in there, not that they felt they had to. I've had that fight before. I suspect I'll have it again.
posted by evilDoug at 3:36 PM on December 6, 2021 [5 favorites]


Which leads unfortunately to the question of whether Biden will or should run in 2024 given that he'll be almost 82.

So who should run? Current VP is not winning any popularity contests. Mayor B? Meryl Streep? Oprah?
posted by sammyo at 3:43 PM on December 6, 2021


The Republican Party of the United States of America's decades long terror campaign must not be allowed to pay off. They are a terrorist organization and it's long past time to start acting like it.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:21 PM on December 6, 2021 [14 favorites]


I'll keep voting for Democrats, but in terms of volunteering and donation, mutual aid and direct action seem like a lot more useful places to put energy.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 4:51 PM on December 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


I think it might be quaint to think any President will ever "win outright" again in our lifetimes.

Guess 2012 was the End, all right: the end of boring presidential elections.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:03 PM on December 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


Shit, Trump dieing is almost worse than him living - in particular if he implicitly or explicitly annoints an heir. Like a healthy, young Trump (imma look at you Hawley) is not a fun speculation. Even if not, yeah, necines gonna war but fascists coalesce. Verily I am concerned especially in light that these societal movements have no immediate response than #resist which hardly feels productive
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 5:29 PM on December 6, 2021


I don’t care who runs the shitshow, I have a hard time seeing anything big much different between the two bad comedies.

Anybody who genuinely thinks this way has allowed the propaganda to win.

Resist it. The options are indeed shitty but only one of them contains a pathway toward genuine improvement.
posted by flabdablet at 5:41 PM on December 6, 2021 [19 favorites]


The Milošević analogy is pretty good. There's the appeal to ethnic nationalism. There's the argument about replacement (here's where "ethnic cleansing" came in). There's the willingness to incite and support violence at many levels.

Obvious differences are easy to spot. But it's a good and scary heuristic.
posted by doctornemo at 5:51 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


So who should run? Current VP is not winning any popularity contests. Mayor B? Meryl Streep? Oprah?

They should try someone who believes in something enough to fight to get it done.

You don't get what you don't fight for.
posted by Gadarene at 5:56 PM on December 6, 2021 [4 favorites]


in terms of what to do, besides obviously voting and ordinary activism, if your main concern is to just protect yourself, then move to a city in a blue state. that should insulate you from direct political violence if you want to avoid it.

No, the political violence will be in blue cities, as we have seen. Political violence will convoy into blue cities to confront dissent.
posted by ryanrs at 6:54 PM on December 6, 2021 [8 favorites]


Political violence will convoy into blue cities

Bingo. People sometimes forget that the most organized violence besides branches of the armed forces are large municipal police forces.

The early ones will be done with optics that anesthetize a critical response from middle class suburban types.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:06 PM on December 6, 2021 [7 favorites]


The Milošević analogy has use but it's limited. Yugoslavia did not become a violent failed state; it became several effective and competing states, violently.

The Yugoslav wars were fundamentally the question of who would live with who, within which borders, with the context that the soldiers and arms of the former Yugoslavian Army were also part of the partition. The United States had that argument in the 1860s (and the essentially related argument of 'who counts as a human'). The Civil War was very firmly decided, and there's really nobody proposing to reopen it on those 1860s terms—least of all and most importantly the US military itself, for whom the Civil War is a founding moment and a lesson in capital-U Union. For the same reasons, Pape's comparison to the PIRA's campaign during the Troubles fails; the Republican paramilitaries wanted a wholesale change in national sovereignty, they rejected and abstained from any forms of NI democracy well into the 1980s. The present argument is really only whether the USA will be a multiracial democracy, or a limited democracy of a very restricted franchise (though that's plenty for violence).

An analogy I haven't seen used, but which I think fits far better, is the kind of stochastic mob terrorism, assassination campaigns, and abuse of smaller city and State government that went along with desegregation in the c.1945–1970s era; the argument then as now was who would dominate civil life, not whether civil life would exist. In the twentieth century the National Guard, the rest of the US military, and [most of] the Federal US law enforcement agencies stayed loyal, and enforced the [desegregating] orders of the courts. That level of unified State power can't really be resisted, and isn't really even in contest.

It's the domination of the courts that counts.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:07 PM on December 6, 2021 [5 favorites]


"but i don't think the fever will break, so to speak, without a major cultural realignment that upends political alliances."
Yeesh, depressing to think that as awful as the recent past has been, it's not enough to galvanize widespread change. But I think that's right. There's decades worth of damage to be repaired. The efforts to erode credibility of institutions like journalism, academia and the courts peaked during the Trump administration, but started decades ago.
I like CrystalDave's steps. I think some of Lawrence Lessig's campaign finance and electoral reform proposals would help. The huge wealth inequities and outsize political power of big money harm our system and make it harder to get anything done.
I'd like to see a third party, with one of the major parties devoted to centrism, reform and compromise.
That may not be a very compelling motto.
posted by Arctan at 8:15 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


Somebody needs to go all Rowdy Roddy Piper on Fox News, too.
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 PM on December 6, 2021 [2 favorites]


My only hope out of all of this (and I really don’t know if it’s a good idea for de-escalation or not) is that a high profile article in The Atlantic forces this to be covered in the news just as frankly, and that it forces Biden/Harris/someone to respond and say that yes, this is the deal. I would like to see the public Overton window shift on this, and see it move beyond Twitter and take-mongers.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:46 PM on December 6, 2021 [8 favorites]


The problem with this analysis is that it is basically saying that one-party rule is inevitable, and our only hope is to make sure that one party is the democratic party.

Your only hope is to make sure that one party is not the Republican Party.

Because a system that permits the Republican Party to hold power at this point in history is a system that will literally destroy human civilisation.

We are all out of time for a Party resolutely committed to the acceleration of the greenhouse effect such that the planet becomes uninhabitable. We are also out of time for any Party that merely aspires to alternate in and out of power with them.
posted by moorooka at 9:17 PM on December 6, 2021 [11 favorites]


Oh yes, the other interesting thing about the 8% of Americans who approve violence in the piece (and which is unmentioned) is, of course, the Three Percenters, who incorrectly subscribe to the notion that only 3% of Americans fought in the Revolutionary War. In other words, those groups have surpassed their target numbers -if not in speciic membership- and are perhaps a live threat.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:48 PM on December 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


If you really think republican one party rule is possible/likely/inevitable then announcing your distaste for it in an age of telecom-panopticon is mighty self-defeating, no?
posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 1:32 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Both parties are nowhere near equal. And the Democratic party definitely does some food shitting, but the Republican party is blatantly vowing to lie cheat steal terrorize riot and insurrection to prevent the Democrats from doing anything ever again. How is that equal?

The Republican party has almost successfully gutted abortion rights and is carving out massive holes in voting rights. I bet you a dollar they're going to go after LGBT rights next, which makes my life significantly less safe. They tried to cut healthcare and social safety nets and Medicare. If she was still alive to witness this, they would be putting my handicapped girlfriends safety at risk again. There's a metric ton of systems in place to punish people for being poor, and most of them are Republican policies.

The Republicans have advocated for destroying the environment and sacrificing old people in pursuit of nothing but profit. How expendable does that make humans? How is this anywhere comparable to democratic desires?

The Republican party has committed insurrection at best..... But sure give us more both sidesism. Because God knows the Democratic party isn't perfect. But hey, if we can equate Benghazi and emails to refusing covid protections and threatening to hang their own party's vice president and everybody looks equally guilty, huh?

At what point does a vote for republicanism mean a vote for actual treason?

And as for the panopticon, fuck them. If they don't already know my queer civil rights supporting feminist ass should be against the wall in their second waves of executions, I doubt they're going to catch on from metafilter. And funny how I used to be only vaguely uncomfortable about the concept that one party actually literally wants me dead, and now I'm seeing increasing numbers of people who would probably agree with the statement that I deserve to die for my sinful lifestyle or some nonsense. Both sides are bad, sure.
posted by Jacen at 3:22 AM on December 7, 2021 [21 favorites]


I feel bad enough already, do not need to read any of this. I keep getting emails from the Democrats saying if I just give a little more (we already give) we can win, but if it is just about money, we can't compete with evil mega-rich Republicans. I feel utterly helpless and depressed.
posted by mermayd at 6:26 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Kadin2048: I'm just going to leave this here
- quote was from an article by John Lanchester in LRB for those who can access.
posted by aeshnid at 6:41 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Blue America needs to start thinking about and planning for what “Break glass in case of emergency” measures look like

I'm just going to leave this here.


Of course, climate change generates its own terror incidents without anyone's help.
posted by Billiken at 7:37 AM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


The problem is not so much Fox News as the rest of the so-called "liberal media," whose steadfast bias in favor of Republicans is so bad that even Dana Milbank called them out on it.

Milbank's comments focus on the media's coverage of Biden as opposed to Trump, but in the negotiations over the reconciliation infrastructure plan, the media focuses on the conflict among the Democrats without noting that the reason we even care what Kristen Sinema might do is that not one Republican will vote for it, thus giving them a free pass on their obstructionism while creating negative attention for the Democrats. (In some cases, NPR for one has run with the lazy "Democrats in disarray" narrative without even mentioning Republicans once!, or barely so if at all.)

Republicans have thoroughly worked the refs with their decades-long, bad-faith "liberal media" propaganda campaign, to the point where the press is reluctant to report the mere facts of what Republicans do -- say, cynically oppose COVID mitigation measures, resulting in increased deaths among their own constituents -- because to do so might sound biased.

We need a better media.
posted by Gelatin at 7:41 AM on December 7, 2021 [19 favorites]


Bart has always been this super serious guy, even back to his college days, which can come off a little dark, but the scary part is how often he is right about things. I have a very bad feeling about the upcoming elections. I don't buy the end of democracy doomsaying coming out of some on the left, but that all really depends upon how you define "end." The Republicans have shown that they care more about power than country and have no qualms using any means necessary to take power.
posted by caddis at 8:56 AM on December 7, 2021


We need a better media.

I can assure you that as soon as you get one, the forces of darkness will attack it relentlessly.
posted by flabdablet at 9:28 AM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Oh! If you aren’t done feeling bad, it turns out Gellman had another Atlantic story on January 16, 2021 that I skipped in my timeline.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:50 AM on December 7, 2021


“The Accommodation Is The Supremacy,” A. R. Moxon, The Reframe, 06 December 2021
posted by ob1quixote at 10:46 AM on December 7, 2021 [3 favorites]


That A.R. Moxon article is worth reading, as it gets to an interesting look at what's going on, but I also like that there's a useful call-to-action there at the end. For all of the "ok, no really, what do we do?" above (and it's understandable, with how much of this is structural vs. individual), it has a useful individual-level call:
Shut the supremacy down—within yourself. Stop accommodating, and—this especially—stop demanding accommodation.
Don’t make your personal comfort a prerequisite for supporting those who are fighting for equality and liberation. Get comfortable with discomfort. Be willing to hear challenging words from marginalized people. Be willing to accept disruptive actions designed to disempower the large and vocal minority of vocal, mostly white, who are acting as civic terrorists and vandals. Be willing to suspend your preference for order over justice, to support leaders who will use extreme means to abrogate the rules that prop up supremacy. Be willing to create uncomfortable relationships with people in your lives who want to support or accomplish unacceptable things. Resist the urge to tell people whose perspectives deserve no respect that you respect their point of view. Make it clear to supremacists and their enablers that they can’t keep their preference to destroy our shared society and still share in society. Make it clear to them and their enablers that their false reality is not something we will be entertaining.
Even if you've got no other levers to pull, being willing to sit with discomfort & avoid "they have the right idea, but they're going about it all wrong" is something. It's a reminder I could stand to hear myself, to redouble in this.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:09 AM on December 7, 2021 [7 favorites]


We need a better media.

I can assure you that as soon as you get one, the forces of darkness will attack it relentlessly.


Of course the right will attack the media that exposes inconvenient facts about them (such as, their policies have wildly negative effects). That's what they've been doing for my entire lifetime -- Republicans said Watergate was made up by the liberal media to get Nixon. (Ron Howard narrator voice: It wasn't.)

So part of the trick is to get the media to understand that modern movement conservatives do not act in good faith. Thus, their attacks are not in good faith. (Which means that they can stop hiding behind "herp derp if both sides attack us we must be doing a good job" -- the Republicans are working the refs, and Democrats and those aligned with them are complaining about the media allowing themselves, if not eagerly participating, to be worked.)

Part of the media's problem is a shift from their former standard of objective reporting to one of balanced reporting. (One can see why, as objective reality has a liberal bias.) Thus, reporters keep allowing Republicans to claim that tax cuts pay for themselves when we now have years of objective evidence that they do not. It isn't objective, but it's balanced. It's also a heck of a lot easier -- one doesn't have to be a reporter, just a stenographer with a Rolodex.

(And as long as I'm wishing, they can drop the stupid standard of reporting "$EVIL_CORP declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in a statement that..." Stop. Getting both sides of a story involves allowing both sides of a story to be challenged by the report's questions. Reprinting a press release does not do so. If they want to deny your story, let them do so in a forum where you can challenge them.)
posted by Gelatin at 11:39 AM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


The idea that everything would be okay with an even-handed media is as delusional as the idea that the media can ever be even-handed.

To just point out the most obvious of the system’s irredeemable features: the Senate as it is currently designed ensures that - even without insurrection or dirty tricks or the destruction of voting rights - the Republicans are guaranteed to hold power far out of proportion to their electoral support, now and at every election to come. The Constitution enshrines unequal representation skewed in favor of the white, rural and conservative.

So if your politics doesn’t involve, at the minimim, the abolition of the Senate (which effectively means the abolition of the constitution), it is a politics of resignation, or of accommodation, to permanent minoritarian rule by a racist death cult committed to the destruction of the planet. That’s the facts.

And that describes the politics of the Democratic Party. It is not a Party that countenances Senate abolition, or even fucking filibuster abolition. How hard is it to recognize that they - as an institution - are enablers of all of this? The stakes have never been higher in human history. If there is any hope for the United States or for the world, this constitutional order needs to be put out of its misery.
posted by moorooka at 12:52 PM on December 7, 2021 [4 favorites]


The idea that everything would be okay with an even-handed media is as delusional as the idea that the media can ever be even-handed.

Who said that everything would be okay with an even-handed media? In fact, part of our problem is an all too even-handed media: One that is relentlessly wedded to the "both sides" narrative and allows a party that marches ever rightward -- that'd be the Republicans, thank you -- to define the "center" and "far left," which of course also get revised rightward.

A media that does its job is necessary for a functioning democracy, and right now we don't have the former and are rapidly losing the latter. Which, of course, will eventually harm the media as much as the rest of us.

A functioning media might, for example, focus on the built-in bias of the Senate toward rural conservatives and not invent a new "60 vote threshold to pass legislation" when McConnell starts abusing the filibuster.
posted by Gelatin at 1:09 PM on December 7, 2021


A functioning media might, for example, focus on the built-in bias of the Senate toward rural conservatives and not invent a new "60 vote threshold to pass legislation" when McConnell starts abusing the filibuster.

What’s a bigger problem. The fact that the media doesn’t focus on this point, or the fact that the Democratic Party doesn’t focus on this point? How do you have a “functioning democracy” when only one Party has any real interest in power?
posted by moorooka at 1:19 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


Remember when everyone was saying Trump would wither away after he lost the election? Mainstream Republicans would reject him and he'd be mired in endless lawsuits and criminal prosecutions? His only hope to run out the clock and avoid prison by dying?

lmao
posted by ryanrs at 3:55 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


O! I’ve also just realized that the Atlantic has devoted their entire current issue to feel bad politics stories! So if you want more, just go to their homepage. (Or, I guess, buy a copy?)
posted by Going To Maine at 4:25 PM on December 7, 2021


Thanks, Going To Maine. Gellman's January 16 article seems much more positive. I guess Trump's staying power wasn't evident then.

It's always difficult to imagine and prepare for a disaster that's never happened before. That's why it's helpful to think about the breakdown of democracy in other countries. The Republican Party's surrender to Trump, with dissidents like Liz Cheney removed from positions of power, is a bad sign - see Ziblatt and Levitsky's How Democracies Die. It's hard to see how American democracy can recover without a Republican Party (or some kind of replacement) that's able to reject Trump.

Democracy allows for the transfer of power without violence. If democracy breaks down, there's likely to be violence. This could take a number of forms. Trump supporters attempting to seize power and being violently repressed (like a large-scale version of the January 6 attack); Trump successfully winning power and repressing his opponents; in the worst case, civil war.

Perhaps Trump's most significant weakness is the array of civil and criminal cases pending against him. Litigation Tracker. But that wasn't enough to bring down Berlusconi.

A novel aspect of the current political situation is the influence of the Internet and social media, which is largely run on the basis of free speech. Liberal principles like freedom of speech became dominant after the 16th-century wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants made it clear that pluralism of values and beliefs could not be eliminated without enormous bloodshed. Joseph Heath on the myth of shared values in Canada - see pp. 17-19 especially. That doesn't extend to tolerating a large minority that seeks to overthrow the political system through violence. Expect to see a lot more pressure on Facebook and YouTube to police speech on their platforms, and the emergence of parallel Trump-friendly platforms.

The survival of American democracy is an immediate short-term problem. Longer-term problems like climate change are unfortunately going to have to take a back seat.

In a worst-case scenario, if Trump does succeed in retaking and holding power by breaking the democratic system, what does that look like? Maybe something like Putin's Russia: an unpredictable and aggrieved power repressing opponents at home and acting aggressively abroad.
posted by russilwvong at 5:28 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Another indispensable commentator and seer is historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. In addition to her insightful Twitter stream, her Substack newsletter is aptly named Lucid.
posted by PhineasGage at 6:06 PM on December 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


If Republicans seized power by whatever means, with whatever legal fig leaf, I don't think the Democrats would really fight it. There would be lawsuits filed and articles written, but I'm not sure any of that will matter.

At this point, it's probably better for the country to have Trump win outright, just so he doesn't try to steal it.
posted by ryanrs at 6:55 PM on December 7, 2021


A functioning media might, for example, focus on the built-in bias of the Senate toward rural conservatives and not invent a new "60 vote threshold to pass legislation" when McConnell starts abusing the filibuster.

Wait, are you saying there is not a 60-vote threshold?
posted by joannemerriam at 7:18 PM on December 7, 2021


ryanrs: At this point, it's probably better for the country to have Trump win outright, just so he doesn't try to steal it.

I think that only delays the problem. What happens in 2028 if it looks like the Democrats are going to win and the Republicans are still unwilling to accept defeat?
posted by russilwvong at 7:23 PM on December 7, 2021


Trump will be older and unhealthier. Term limits are more concrete than myriad voting laws. There is opportunity for succession infighting within the party.

A delay would be good.
posted by ryanrs at 8:04 PM on December 7, 2021


Get ready for President Taylor Greene. The Republicans that follow Trump are going to make Trump look like whatever Michelle Obama sees when she’s cuddling George W Bush
posted by moorooka at 10:36 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


If Republicans seized power by whatever means, with whatever legal fig leaf, I don't think the Democrats would really fight it.

Al Gore would like a word with you.
posted by moorooka at 10:39 PM on December 7, 2021


About what?
posted by ryanrs at 10:23 AM on December 8, 2021


About the importance of acceding to flagrant election theft in the interests of national unity
posted by moorooka at 11:40 PM on December 8, 2021


About the importance of acceding to flagrant election theft in the interests of national unity

As an extreme outsider looking in, this is what bothers me about British politics - that the fights and battles become the focus to the expense of whatever the fights are about. So, in the end (and The End) we actually lose the American Revolution? I, for one, welcome our new Tory overlords!
posted by Chitownfats at 11:02 AM on December 9, 2021


So, in the end (and The End) we actually lose the American Revolution?

Uh, yeah. If the war had gone the other way, British America would likely have eliminated slavery in the 1830s or perhaps 40s, triggering the southern secession crisis early, and pitting the Alternate Confederate States of America against the whole of the British Empire. And Mexico. And I rather suspect that Queen Victoria's idea of Reconstruction might have involved more involuntary relocations to Australian penal colonies than ours did.

But you'd probably need a passport to fly to California.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:02 PM on December 9, 2021


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