Dissident Politics: News bits: The warnings get more desperate; Germaine’s war update; Free speech battles

Another warning comes in a really long WaPo opinion by Robert Kagan (not behind the paywall):

A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending.

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence. The fact that many Americans might prefer other candidates, much ballyhooed by such political sages as Karl Rove, will soon become irrelevant when millions of Republican voters turn out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants.

For many months now, we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites. Such hopeful speculation has allowed us to drift along passively, conducting business as usual, taking no dramatic action to change course, in the hope and expectation that something will happen. Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge. But now the actions required to get us to shore are looking harder and harder, if not downright impossible.

The magical-thinking phase is ending. Barring some miracle, Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. Until now, Republicans and conservatives have enjoyed relative freedom to express anti-Trump sentiments, to speak openly and positively about alternative candidates, to vent criticisms of Trump’s behavior past and present. Donors who find Trump distasteful have been free to spread their money around to help his competitors. Establishment Republicans have made no secret of their hope that Trump will be convicted and thus removed from the equation without their having to take a stand against him.

In fact, it has already begun. As his nomination becomes inevitable, donors are starting to jump from other candidates to Trump.

Kagan’s opinion piece goes on at length like that. Notice that some (most? nearly all?) Trump donors are more concerned about their wealth and power than democracy, civil liberties or the rule of law. And, some things bear repeating:

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States .... we have been living in a world of self-delusion, rich with imagined possibilities. Maybe it will be Ron DeSantis, or maybe Nikki Haley. Maybe the myriad indictments of Trump will doom him with Republican suburbanites .... Trump will soon be the presumptive Republican nominee for president. When that happens, there will be a swift and dramatic shift in the political power dynamic, in his favor. .... In fact, it has already begun.

____________________________________________________________

Update in Germaine’s war on (defense against?) dictators, grifters,

liars, aggressors, irrational emotional manipulators and traitors

In view of the increasing likelihood that DJT will be the next president with a central goal of killing democracy to establish his vision of an American authoritarian kleptocracy, I’ve ramped up my efforts in defense of democracy. I’m now writing emails to authors at NYT, WaPo and other sources who either (1) still don’t see the threat, or (2) maybe unknowingly continue to normalize and validate the intent of America’s the radical right’s authoritarianism and deep corruption by calling it stupid, inaccurate stuff like “conservatism”, “conservative”, “the right”, “traditional” or “moderate conservative.” I try to send out one respectful, fact- and logic-supported dart every 2-3 days. I am careful about who gets pick, what is written and why. Some of those folks do not want to be contactable by email (I don’t do traditional big social media), so they can be hard or impossible to track down.

I suspect that targeting authors at actual journalism sources will have more pro-democracy impact than engaging in hand-to-hand combat with radical right trolls, cranks and conspiracy freaks at online news and politics sites that still have not banned or blocked me, e.g., BN&R, National Zero and reddit. Most of the radical right politics online world has banned or blocked me, so that's not an option.

____________________________________________________________

In an interesting analysis piece, WaPo author Philip Bump mused about Musk’s latest outrage over the alleged infringement of his sacred free speech rights. This is about a key propaganda point that authoritarian radical right liars and haters constantly raise as they howl in self-righteous moral outrage about things they don’t like. Musk doesn’t like losing money or advertisers on X that pay him money. He’s losing some now because of his recent virulent outburst of anti-Semitism. Bump writes:

Once again: Speaking freely doesn’t mean
speaking without consequence

Elon Musk’s fury at advertisers is a microcosm of a prevalent view of speech and primacy on the right

On Wednesday, Elon Musk appeared at the New York Times’s DealBook Summit, where he was interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin (whom Musk at one point called “Jonathan”). Sorkin asked Musk about companies pulling their ads from X (formerly Twitter) in the wake of a report showing ads sitting next to pro-Nazi content and after Musk’s endorsement of antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

Musk was indignant. He claimed that he wanted those companies to stop advertising.

“If somebody’s going to try to blackmail with advertising? Blackmail me with money?” he said. “Go f--- yourself.”

Musk has framed his social media company as a battleground in the war over honesty and truth, insisting that any criticism of the company or his decisions is rooted in a fear of an unfiltered reality. But those advertisers aren’t leaving because they are terrified of forbidden truths and desperate to get Musk to silence those they fear. They’re leaving because they don’t want their brands associated with Nazis. They’re probably also leaving in part because Twitter’s audience is shrinking, whatever bespoke metrics the company invents to give a different impression. If you’re Coca-Cola, the cost-benefit analysis here isn’t that complicated.

An advertiser boycott was “going to kill the company,” Musk insisted to Sorkin. “And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”

For a long time, Musk — and many others on the right — have labored under the misapprehension that the right to free speech also means facing no repercussions for what you say.

Advertisers aren’t “blackmailing” Musk to get him to make X less toxic or to encourage him not to post endorsements of hateful rhetoric. They’re just leaving because Twitter has changed. If anyone is trying to extort anyone, it’s Musk and X chief executive Linda Yaccarino.

“Information independence” is a terrific phrase, in the same way that “alternative facts” is. It’s a cloak of seriousness that nonsense can wear around the public square. The next time my kids get in trouble for lying at school, I’ll simply remind the principal that they were exercising “information independence.”

Musk accuses advertisers of blackmail for leaving X. They leave because is a toxic hellscape. The irrational arrogance and blatant lies here are off the charts. Musk is free to spout anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi hate, racism, anti-vaxx crackpottery and whatever other filth and harmful lies he chooses to poison America with.

This is just one part of the beliefs and thinking of America’s authoritarian radical right kleptocratic wealth and power movement. For rancid radical right elites like Musk and the quieter ones with adult-level emotional control, it’s always about their wealth and power and nothing much else. Well, maybe except maybe for the out-of-control monsters like Musk, feeding gigantic egos is a part of the wealth and power thing.

____________________________________________________________

Elite Christian Republican family values on parade:

Christian Ziegler, the Florida GOP Chair and husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is under criminal investigation over allegations of sexual battery by a woman who claims to have been involved in a long-term sexual relationship with both of the Zieglers. The investigation was first reported by the Florida Center for Governmental Accountability’s news division The Florida Trident.

Moms for liberty is a crackpot far right hate group of nice White ladies that advocate against school curricula that mention LGBQT rights, non-White race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and faux discrimination against Whites, i.e., inconvenient history.