President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

[britwrit]

What a f*cking embarrashment. How can anyone think this f*cker is presidential?

Watched part of the rally on C-Span. He really doesn't look all that good. I sense some actual pressing health issues.

 

[garrow]

"Eric Zemmour, a talk show pundit turned conservative politician, and his partner, Sarah Knafo, a member of the European Parliament, said they will attend. Zemmour was convicted multiple times of inciting racist or religious hatred."

Trump's inauguration will be first attended by foreign leaders

 

[HanSenSE]

Watched part of the rally on C-Span. He really doesn't look all that good. I sense some actual pressing health issues.

MS?

 

[britwrit]

MS?

Certainly not from working too hard.

 

[dixiehack]

Godspeed to all those who will continue on into the new thread. I may glance at it now and again but I don't aim to be a regular and certainly not a completist like I was with this iteration and the last. Here's hoping that there's an America worth recovering on the other side and we are just enduring technical difficulties.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

Watched part of the rally on C-Span. He really doesn't look all that good. I sense some actual pressing health issues.

Now ... to see if the MSM covers it the way everyone tried to connect dots with Joe Biden.

 

[2muchcoffeeman]

Watched part of the rally on C-Span. He really doesn't look all that good. I sense some actual pressing health issues.

It's called "dementia."

Let's use it in a sentence: "Donald Trump has dementia."

There. Was that so hard?

 

[WriteThinking]

"I pray with all of my heart that, if he enacts these evil policies, may God darn Donald Trump and may God darn all of us if we don't do anything about it," he said as the congregation applauded.

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/...calls-for-resistance-to-trump-in-fiery-sermon

It almost seems too late for resistance now.

I want to ask everybody to read this article from The Atlantic -- "How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days." Tell me you don't keep seeing, thinking about and placing Trump, and us, into the scenarios that went on in Nazi Germany just before it became Nazi Germany as they read. This article has been sitting on TheAtlantic.com's front page/screen for almost two weeks now -- seemingly longer than usual, so I'm guessing it's an intentional move to allow as many people to look at it as possible, if they have the will. I know I'd been consciously avoiding it the whole time. And now, I know why.

How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days

It is an astonishing, frightening article, with a terrible feeling of familiarity to it, as well as a scary sense of dawning fear -- even terror -- when read with what's been going on here in America lately in mind. All the signs and similarities are there -- the Germans had a legitimate chance to keep Hitler out of power; the eventual capitulation of even the staunchest of Hitler's opponents to his will; the uneasy reservations of holdouts in supporting Hitler who spoke up against what he was doing right up until, literally, the last moment, and then gave in and voted for his pointedly dictatorial decree, anyway; the curtailing and closing down of media organizations that were in opposition; the rhetoric, oh, the constant rhetoric in his and his supporters' speech; the threats, and then the carrying out of those threats of using the German military against its own citizens, and the expansion of "policing" through use of Nazis then granted the same powers to detain, arrest and kill, all in the name of the government (and one of Hitler's top lieutenants).

It's a lengthy piece, so read it when you have some time. But please read it. It is stunning how familiar it feels. You'll be seeing and hearing Trump and his Cabinet cronies in the scenes and the words. It's sickening.

Some excerpts:

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country's democratic structures and processes in less than two months' time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.

And this:

Hitler opened the meeting by boasting that millions of Germans had welcomed his chancellorship with "jubilation," then outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists. At this point he turned to his main agenda item: the empowering law that, he argued, would give him the time (four years, according to the stipulations laid out in the draft of the law) and the authority necessary to make good on his campaign promises to revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were "poisoning" the blood of the nation, and exact revenge on political opponents. "Heads will roll in the sand," Hitler had vowed at one rally.

Here's more:

When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing "that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent." As a career officer, Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler's (or any other German) government.

Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the "parliamentarian swamp"—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.

On empowering the army and government to police with unrestrained violence:

A Schiesserlash, or "shooting decree," followed. This permitted the state police to shoot on sight without fearing consequences. "I cannot rely on police to go after the red mob if they have to worry about facing disciplinary action when they are simply doing their job," Göring explained. He accorded them his personal backing to shoot with impunity. "When they shoot, it is me shooting," Göring said. "When someone is lying there dead, it is I who shot them."

Göring also designated the Nazi storm troopers as Hilfspolizei, or "deputy police," compelling the state to provide the brownshirt thugs with sidearms and empowering them with police authority in their street battles. Diels later noted that this—manipulating the law to serve his ends and legitimizing the violence and excesses of tens of thousands of brownshirts—was a "well-tested Hitler tactic."

When the Germans got the voting wrong:

On Sunday morning, March 5, one week after the Reichstag fire, German voters went to the polls. "No stranger election has perhaps ever been held in a civilized country," Frederick Birchall wrote that day in The New York Times. Birchall expressed his dismay at the apparent willingness of Germans to submit to authoritarian rule when they had the opportunity for a democratic alternative. "In any American or Anglo-Saxon community the response would be immediate and overwhelming," he wrote.

The next day, the National Socialists stormed state-government offices across the country. Swastika banners were hung from public buildings. Opposition politicians fled for their lives. Otto Wels, the Social Democratic leader, departed for Switzerland. So did Heinrich Held, the minister-president of Bavaria. Tens of thousands of political opponents were taken into Schutzhaft ("protective custody"), a form of detention in which an individual could be held without cause indefinitely.

When government leaders bowed down, instead of fighting Hitler anymore:

A week later, Hindenburg's embrace of Hitler was on full public display. He appeared in military regalia in the company of his chancellor, who was wearing a dark suit and long overcoat, at a ceremony in Potsdam. The former field marshal and the Bohemian corporal shook hands. Hitler bowed in putative deference. The "Day of Potsdam" signaled the end of any hope for an Article 53 solution to the Hitler chancellorship.

That same Tuesday, March 21, an Article 48 decree was issued amnestying National Socialists convicted of crimes, including murder, perpetrated "in the battle for national renewal." Men convicted of treason were now national heroes. The first concentration camp was opened that afternoon, in an old brewery near the town center of Oranienburg, just north of Berlin. The following day, the first group of detainees arrived at another concentration camp, in an abandoned munition plant outside the Bavarian town of Dachau.

Something to be learned from this article, and the Germans' experience, is that things are likely to happen fast for us, too. Stephen Miller has already said that Trump et al plan to "flood the zone," so that any possible opposition won't even be able to keep up with all that's going on. I guess we'll see.

Starting tomorrow.

 

[wicked]

Here's hoping that there's an America worth recovering on the other side and we are just enduring technical difficulties.

Same. Not feeling too optimistic at the moment given the capitulation of almost every part of society.

 

[garrow]

FFS, what would they have done if he won 67 percent of the vote instead of 49.8?

 

[Tarheel316]

So, there was fraud?

It's different when it's their fraud.

 

[Starman]

FFS, what would they have done if he won 67 percent of the vote instead of 49.8?

The general consensus of the online screechosphere is that he won a decisive sweeping dominant victory, rendering all resistance futile and in a way pathetic.

Why worry about winning 60 percent when you can win 49.8 and act like it anyway??