[davidm]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

In trying to neutralize a truly stupid line of attack, she engaged Trump in Trump's game. She cannot win it. It hardly matters, though. Even without the unforced error, assuming Trump survives and runs again in 2020, she is not viable to oppose him. Neither is Biden or Harris or Booker. They are good people and would make fine candidates if 2020 were 2016. But it will not be and they will fail. If Trump makes it to 2020, he will be re-elected. If he does not, the mini-Trump that rises to the top of the ticket will very likely win. To think otherwise is to deny the corrosions happening on every side only to cling to the notion that, somehow, 2020 will not be warped by the acid that Trumpism forces into every vein of American politics. Like the United States itself, reactionary state white nationalism may not last forever, but it is hardly a flash in the pan.

As much as I hope you are wrong, I fear you might be right.

I think we may underestimate how much, and how far, the rot and corruption of Trump has spread. The rot is a virus attacking facts, truth, and rationality itself — and not just among his yahoo supporters. We have seen it here on this forum, where the New York Times, which Trump despises and unceasingly attacks, has been repeatedly characterized as a Vichy collaborator of Trump! We see it in the claim that The Times, and other news outlets, should not have done their duty-bound job and reported the news — incredibly, the claim that news outlets should not have reported Comey’s announcement that he was reopening the Clinton e-mail probe; should not have reported that Rosenstein talked about wearing a wire while talking to Trump; the implicit and breathtaking claim that everything, everywhere, should be based on an empire of lies.

In his first Inaugural Address, Lincoln said this:

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.

I have bolded the key point.


The rule of a minority, which Lincoln dismissed as “wholly inadmissible,” is now an established fact. It began with the stolen election of 2000. It accelerated with 2016. In both cases, the minority vote prevailed over the majority — it reminds me of that scene in Gangs of New York, after Bill the Butcher kills the Irish barber elected sheriff and says, “That, my friends, is the minority vote.” The Trumpitistas are Bill the Butcher.

The minority vote is now enshrined on the Supreme Court with two justices appointed by this filthy monster in the White House, the second of whom is beyond the pale for reasons not even worth rehashing.

You mention that the U.S. may not last forever. Exactly. There is no reason to put up with this, with permanent minority rule and the spreading of a culture of lies and irrationality, a culture that may even be spreading even among the left.

Lincoln deprecated secession on the grounds that rejecting the majority principle leads to anarchy or despotism. But he also pointedly noted that the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is “wholly inadmissible.” But that is where we are!

On these grounds, secession is wholly acceptable. There is no reason why a state like California, which has the seventh-largest world economy, should have to put up with the Red-State yahoos who depend upon the taxes of the residents of California and other blue states, the exact opposite of how Red State residents, force-fed Fox News propaganda, think things really are! There is no reason why any blue state should be subject to the demented Supreme Court rulings that are to come, on a court that has now been contaminated with a turd like Kavanagh. There is no reason why any rational or humane person should any longer consent to live under a government in which Trump is president, the Republicans are in charge, and the Supreme Court has been lost to Red-State minority rule, likely for decades to come.