I'll take CONVERSATIONS THAT NEVER HAPPENED for $200 Alex.

The closing paras from a Tom Nichols (The Atlantic) article from today.  Lays it out there and we should all give it a look.  

"But I have to admit that I welcome Trump’s candidacy.

I know that Trump reentering the political fray is a threat to our political system and a pollution of our civic hygiene. I know that if he wins again, he will bring with him people who might be far less stupid, and therefore much more dangerous, than the gang of goons and opportunists who infested our institutions the last time around. And yet I think he should run.

It’s time for us to once and for all declare who we are as a people. There is still an illness lurking in our political immune system. We discovered (or rediscovered) in our elections last week that American democracy has great regenerative power. But the elections of 2022 only suppressed a fever. The people of the United States, until now, have been reluctant to lance the boil, cleanse the wound, and just get it over with.  

America needs a reckoning. If Trump were to slink off into the night—that is, if he had even a microgram of decency—his supporters would never have to come to grips with what they, and he, have done to this country. Even worse, if Trump stayed in exile in Florida, Trumpists and their cowardly Republican enablers could quietly nurture a 21st-century version of a GOP Dolchstoßlegende, a modern stab-in-the-back theory in which Republicans and the conservative media could continue muttering darkly about how Trump was unfairly defeated in 2020 by The Swamp, or The Lamestream Media, or the “China Virus.” Some of them could even pretend they never liked him. All of them could bloviate at will while safe in the knowledge that they would never have to defend voting for Trump again.

To pretend, however, that Trump is irrelevant is not only a mistake; it provides no resolution to our democratic crisis. It is denial, the equivalent of a drunk driver telling us to ignore the whiskey bottles on the lawn and the damage to the family car, whining that dents can be fixed and that no one got killed—not this time, anyway.

Trump’s candidacy, by contrast, is an opportunity for a moment of clarity. We now know about Trump’s many offenses against the American nation. We now know, according to the January 6 committee, that Trump instigated an attack on the government of the United States; that he endangered the lives of elected leaders, including his own vice president; that he put national security at risk, repeatedly, for his own ego.

We now know, without doubt, that Donald Trump is every bit as unhinged and reckless and dangerous as his critics warned back in 2015, and that there can be no more excuses, from neither voters nor elected Republicans. Trump’s supporters should now say that they are with him, and admit that they care not a damn for democracy; Republican officials should now declare that they will support him—or oppose him—without burrowing into weaselly excuses about “the past” and “moving on.”

Trump’s candidacy is what millions of voters and many Republican officials claim to want. Let them have it, and let the contest begin to decide who we are and what we value."

lousubcap said:

The closing paras from a Tom Nichols (The Atlantic) article from today.  Lays it out there and we should all give it a look.  

"But I have to admit that I welcome Trump’s candidacy.

I know that Trump reentering the political fray is a threat to our political system and a pollution of our civic hygiene. I know that if he wins again, he will bring with him people who might be far less stupid, and therefore much more dangerous, than the gang of goons and opportunists who infested our institutions the last time around. And yet I think he should run.

It’s time for us to once and for all declare who we are as a people. There is still an illness lurking in our political immune system. We discovered (or rediscovered) in our elections last week that American democracy has great regenerative power. But the elections of 2022 only suppressed a fever. The people of the United States, until now, have been reluctant to lance the boil, cleanse the wound, and just get it over with.  

America needs a reckoning. If Trump were to slink off into the night—that is, if he had even a microgram of decency—his supporters would never have to come to grips with what they, and he, have done to this country. Even worse, if Trump stayed in exile in Florida, Trumpists and their cowardly Republican enablers could quietly nurture a 21st-century version of a GOP Dolchstoßlegende, a modern stab-in-the-back theory in which Republicans and the conservative media could continue muttering darkly about how Trump was unfairly defeated in 2020 by The Swamp, or The Lamestream Media, or the “China Virus.” Some of them could even pretend they never liked him. All of them could bloviate at will while safe in the knowledge that they would never have to defend voting for Trump again.

To pretend, however, that Trump is irrelevant is not only a mistake; it provides no resolution to our democratic crisis. It is denial, the equivalent of a drunk driver telling us to ignore the whiskey bottles on the lawn and the damage to the family car, whining that dents can be fixed and that no one got killed—not this time, anyway.

Trump’s candidacy, by contrast, is an opportunity for a moment of clarity. We now know about Trump’s many offenses against the American nation. We now know, according to the January 6 committee, that Trump instigated an attack on the government of the United States; that he endangered the lives of elected leaders, including his own vice president; that he put national security at risk, repeatedly, for his own ego.

We now know, without doubt, that Donald Trump is every bit as unhinged and reckless and dangerous as his critics warned back in 2015, and that there can be no more excuses, from neither voters nor elected Republicans. Trump’s supporters should now say that they are with him, and admit that they care not a damn for democracy; Republican officials should now declare that they will support him—or oppose him—without burrowing into weaselly excuses about “the past” and “moving on.”

Trump’s candidacy is what millions of voters and many Republican officials claim to want. Let them have it, and let the contest begin to decide who we are and what we value."

100%

lousubcap said:

The closing paras from a Tom Nichols (The Atlantic) article from today.  

...It’s time for us to once and for all declare who we are as a people. There is still an illness lurking in our political immune system. We discovered (or rediscovered) in our elections last week that American democracy has great regenerative power. But the elections of 2022 only suppressed a fever. The people of the United States, until now, have been reluctant to lance the boil, cleanse the wound, and just get it over with.  

This paragraph in particular struck me.  
 
Two things during cheeto's rise/run really surprised me.  First, when there were 17 repub candidates, the videos came out of him deriding Mexicans, and then women, in short order.  I figured that was the end of him, but instead he rose to 20% against that large field, and ended up winning the nomination and then the presidency.  wtf.
My second surprise was cheeto's military parade (the one in Charlottesville).  Where did all these white, almost-uniformed (white polos and khakis, bearing torches) fascists come from???  Hate-filled assassins barreling into a crowd of people with their car??  Did traitor stir up this much hate, that quickly?!?  An extensive set of articles in Time magazine stepped me thru it, a few weeks later.  There had been a festering, anti-government movement around ever since Bundy, Kazinski or Waco (whichever came first), that had exploded in numbers, not during cheeto's time, but during President Obama's! (this was fueled by faux news, et al, propaganda)  I had no clue about this until Time's articles; traitor's 4 years only lifted up the rocks and gave permission for the racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, "they're not Exactly Like Us" vermin to crawl out into the daylight.  

Tom Nichols said
He's right, but sometimes I wonder if "who we really are as a people" is such a good thing.  Pres Obama's election night looked to me like we had really advanced as a culture, but obviously it infuriated so many others, off-camera.
Others, that are Exactly Like me.  F*ck.  

Excerpts for an article in The New Yorker by Susan Glasser:

"The week since the midterm elections has underscored an important but often overlooked fact about Trump: it was the Republican Party that made him President and it will be only the Republican Party that can kill him off politically. General-election voters—that is, Democrats and independents—have made clear over multiple elections what they think of Trump. They don’t like him. Never have, never will. He’s lost the popular vote twice, by millions. He’s dragged down candidates in the 2018 midterms, the 2020 general election, and now in the 2022 midterms. It’s the G.O.P. that has continued to support and enable him. In primaries this year, Republican voters repeatedly chose Trump-anointed, election-denying extremists in competitive primaries as their nominees—flawed candidates such as Mehmet Oz, in Pennsylvania, and Herschel Walker, in Georgia, who came up short where their more conventional Republican opponents might not have. And Republican officials, including Trump skeptics like Mitch McConnell, then went ahead and endorsed those Trumpian nominees anyway, and spent millions of dollars promoting their candidacies. Trump led Republicans down the path of electoral folly; they didn’t have to follow.

Sure, there are some reassuring signs that self-preservation, if nothing else, might finally cause Republicans to forgo the chance at another four years of Trump. But a divided Republican Party is actually very much in Trump’s interest right now. It’s exactly how he came to power in the first place, beating out a field of seventeen other G.O.P. candidates in the 2016 primaries. They did not unite behind a single rival to defeat Trump then, nor are they likely to do so now. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—already anointed “Ron DeSanctimonious” by Trump—is being set up as Trump’s logical successor, a sort of Trump without the baggage. Polls since the midterms suggest DeSantis has gained ground with Republican primary voters beyond his home state. But Trump remains the clear leader in national surveys—including a new Politico/Morning Consult poll out on Tuesday, which had Trump leading DeSantis, forty-seven per cent to his thirty-three per cent. And there will be plenty of other Republicans who run, once again setting up a situation in which the anti-Trump vote is splintered. Pence, in book-tour mode, gave every appearance of running. Even Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State who was Pence’s rival in Trump-era obsequiousness, said on Tuesday that he would not step aside just because Trump is officially in the race.

“We’re going to bring people together. We’re going to unify people,” Trump said at one point in his speech Tuesday evening. It might have been his biggest whopper of the night. Still, there has been a surprisingly bipartisan consensus this week about the advisability of Trump running again: Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans now seem to agree they’d prefer that he not do so. Sixty-five per cent of Republicans in that Politico/Morning Consult poll, in fact, said they didn’t really want Trump to run again in 2024. But so what? He is running, and their lack of enthusiasm for Trump never stopped them from voting for him before.

Donald Trump does not care if they don’t like him. He does not care if you call him a liar, a cheat, a fraud, and a huckster. But, as the past two years have shown, he is willing to do anything, including blow up the foundations of American democracy, if you declare him a loser. ♦"

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/what-i-would-tell-my-five-year-old-if-he-said-the-things-trump-said-in-his-speech-announcing-his-run-for-president-in-2024

JohnInCarolina said:

Starting to think this guy is every bit as dumb as his fans:

http://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1593781984966352896?s=20&t=GX8QJi3bfr3J4NyX0Jd8rQ

If he just says enough words, then you can build a coherent clip.

Almost expected him to say, "We are so good, I mean like the best good ever, that we stormed the capital.  And I was proud, like hugely proud.  Covefee proud.  So proud that we did it, our plan worked, and then they tried to say it was bad.  It wasn't bad, it wasn't so bad that it was good.  The Senate even said it was good.  It was great.  See, if it had been bad, then Alwx Trebek wouldn't have died.  But he did, so we were right."