Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Is inflation partly business-inspired?



An article by staunch liberal Thom Hartmann at RawStory posits that our current inflation is at least partly due to politics and the power of big business cartels with at least semi-monopoly power to control prices. Hartmann writes:
“[T]he monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us … like an overgrown standing army, has become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

How is it possible that the rest of the world is recovering from the Covid/Oil/War inflation bump, but things are getting worse here in the USA?

The one variable nobody seems to be positing — but I’m going to go there — is that it’s political, at least in part.

So how did we get here?

Prices in America used to be regulated by something called competition.

If one company raises prices above a reasonable level, another company will offer products at a lower price and take away their customers. As long as there are multiple companies in every market sector, and new businesses can easily enter the marketplace to compete with larger companies that have gotten lazy or greedy, competition regulates prices very efficiently.

What blows this up is when companies get large enough that they can use their size and market dominance to keep competitors out of the marketplace.

All of that anti-trust activity came to an end in 1982 when President Reagan appointed William C. Miller III, his former executive director of the Presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief, to take over the FTC. Miller was the first pro-corporate leader in the nation’s history to corrupt the agency that was supposed to regulate corporate misbehavior.

That year (as it had been since the 1930s) most of this nation’s business activity was centered in the cash registers of our small- and medium-sized companies. The total value of America’s largest corporations — those listed on stock exchanges — was equal to just 39.4% of the entire nation’s economic activity or GDP in 1981.

Miller, however, declined to continue enforcing our anti-trust laws and in 1983 Reagan instructed the DOJ to, essentially, stop prosecuting companies that were violating those laws through mergers and acquisitions, and to only go after the most egregious and flagrant acts of corporate collusion and price-fixing.

As a result, large companies became behemoths, and pretty much every industry in America is today dominated by a small handful of companies that carefully monitor each other to function, essentially, as cartels. When United raises ticket prices by $50, for example, American does the same three hours later.

As Jonathan Tepper pointed out in The Myth of Capitalism, fully 90% of the beer that Americans drink is controlled by two companies. Air travel is mostly controlled by four companies, and over half of the nation’s banking is done by five banks.

In multiple states there are only one or two health insurance companies, high-speed internet is in a near-monopoly state virtually everywhere in America (75% of us can “choose” only one company), and three companies control around three-quarters of the entire pesticide and seed markets.

The vast majority of radio and TV stations in the country are owned by a small handful of companies, and the internet is dominated by Google and Facebook.

This has handed enormous power to the CEOs and senior managers of America’s largest companies, all of them multi-multi-millionaires and many billionaires.

These are not people who want to pay more in taxes. Nor do they want unions or to have their industries regulated in any meaningful way; they’d like things to stay the way they’ve been since the Reagan Revolution.

But President Joe Biden has been working with Senator Bernie Sanders (Chair of the powerful Budget Committee) to create a whole plethora of progressive legislation that would raise corporate and billionaire taxes and increase corporate regulation. Not to mention Democrats’ advocacy of those hated unions.

Is there any doubt in your mind that most of these titans of industry don’t want monopoly breakups, unions, regulation, and higher taxes? Every president since Reagan, Democratic and Republican, has gone along with this neoliberal deregulation, anti-union, and low-tax scheme.

Big business doesn’t want the Reaganomics gravy train to stop and, so far, they’ve been able to buy enough politicians to keep it that way. Until this unholy alliance of Biden and Sanders.

So, is it really possible that our largest corporations and their leaders are ripping us all off and jacking up inflation on an ongoing basis just to stick it to the Democrats and hand the GOP the reins of power in 2022 and 2024?

If political power was the only thing they got out of it, the answer is “possibly.”

But when you realize that they also get massively larger profits at the same time, and billions of that will flow down to CEO compensation, that twofer raises it to “probably.”

.... much of the explosion in corporate profits is made possible by market consolidation: giant companies no longer subject to the pressures of inflation.

I’d add that there’s a big reward down the road for all those CEOs if they can help America dump the pesky Democrats who want to tax those windfall profits and replace them with Republicans who are again demanding more tax cuts for the morbidly rich.

Last Tuesday, Nobel Prize-winning economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote a particularly fascinating op-ed wondering out loud why the economic data for the United States doesn’t make sense any more. If the economy is in trouble, so should be American companies; if the economy is doing well, so should the American consumers.

But the companies are doing great while consumers are getting screwed.

Qs: Is Hartmann basically right, or as Republicans and big business would all say, he is simply paranoid and wrong at best, and a bald face, slandering liar at worst? Do Republicans and big business deserve much or any credibility in view of their past history and disregard for inconvenient truth?


The businessman's moral mindset


Monday, July 18, 2022

To punish or not to punish?

Same concept, different context?


A New York Times article, Biden Administration Retreats on Threat to Withhold Arizona Relief Funds, raises the question. Despite Arizona using aid money to undercut school mask mandates, the Treasury sent $2.1 billion in pandemic aid anyway. That came after a federal warning warning that the aid might be withheld for Arizona fighting against measures to deal with COVID. 


Don't punish and send the aid
Sending aid is a no-brainer. By sending aid, the government signals it is trying to be reasonable. Sending aid signals there is no ill-will and Americans are all in this together. The federal government is not the aggressive tyranny that the radical right constantly paints it to be. This is an open gesture of unity and trust. Acts like this slowly build trust and good will.


Punish, don't send the aid
Not sending aid is a no-brainer. By sending aid, the government signals it is weak and unconcerned about wasting tax dollars on unjustifiable, stubborn stupidity. Arizona committed irrational acts that directly undermines public health. Arizona's irresponsible acts unjustifiably killed some and caused others to suffer from serious long-term diseases. Sending the aid signals capitulation to an aggressive brand of anti-democratic, anti-science culture and politics that can reasonably be called theocratic fascism. Signals of unity are ignored and change no minds that believe the federal government is tyrannical. Appeasing Arizona is similar to (a lot like?) Neville Chamberlain[1] trying to appease the intractable tyrant of his time.


Qs: Should Biden have sent the aid? Is sending the aid an insult to people who believe in trying to reasonably defend public health on the basis of science (not politics, tribe or culture)? 


Footnote: 
1. Arthur Neville Chamberlain (1869 – 1940) was a British politician of the Conservative Party who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler. Following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.

Sunday, July 17, 2022

A Republican insider steps back and takes an outside view of himself

In this fascinating 18 minute interview, Republican insider and political operative Tim Miller describes how something caused him to step outside himself and look with fresh eyes. IMO, the something can be called moral courage. 

Two critically important points bubble up in this interview. First, one cannot escape human cognitive biology and its power to rationalize inconvenient reality into fantasy. Second, human social behavior is reflected in an insatiable human need to belong to a group, tribe or cult. Fear of being ostracized by the social group and pushed out of the room, e.g., in RINO hunts, is right out in the open in this interview. 

Miller does not speak in terms of either cognitive biology or social behavior. Neither term is mentioned. But that is exactly what he is talking about. T**** and what Miller calls the evil (~1:18 - 1:29) he inspired in the Republican Party flows from both human cognitive biology and social behavior. This is the best interview I can recall that clearly points directly at those two key sources of political thinking (reasoning) and behavior.

This is a truly great interview.




Two points exemplify what I am talking about.
  • Cognitive biology: Miller is openly homosexual, but he nonetheless worked hard for Republicans he knew to be bigoted homophobes. The interviewer asked why he did this. The response is pure cognitive biology. He compartmentalized and rationalized the disconnect to make inconvenient reality fade into a non-issue. At ~3:49 - 5:15, Miller said he told himself a BS story that allowed himself to keep working for Republicans he knew would take his liberties away if they ever got the chance.
  • Social behavior: At ~5:16 - 7:06, Miller described another Republican operative he knew well who fell into T****'s orbit. She could not bring herself to publicly or privately admit that T**** lost the 2020 election. Her fear was that if she spoke the truth about the 2020 election, she could be "cast out of Trumpworld." In other words, her need to be part of the tribe or cult caused her to deny what was and still is the inconvenient, unspeakable truth about the 2020 election in Trumplandia. She could not break free of that deep human need to be in good standing with the social group she became attached to. Tribe (or cult) loyalty demanded that truth had to fall to the lie.

One other topic Miller discusses is the overriding lust for power that drives some Republicans who support T****. He discussed Lindsey Graham who in 2016 said he hated T**** as a racist and demagogue monster (~9:20 - 11:11). But after T**** came to power, he reversed himself and is now a staunch T**** supporter and defender. Graham's lust for power and the spotlight caused him to simply blow off his political principles. Miller knew that after T**** won the 2016 election, Graham would flip, calling it a disease that is not uncommon in Washington. The disease is a need to be near power. Not in power, but near power. That too, is cognitive biology.

This interview exemplifies beautifully how the profound moral rot that T**** inspired and fought for has transformed many good, informed elites who know better than to support evil. The rank and file never had much of a chance. They were duped, abused and betrayed. Early on, ~2016-2017, that absolved them of some responsibility for their mistakes. But now, like with the elites, they have no excuse to absolve them. Their mostly understandable mistakes are now inexcusable sins. 



Acknowledgement: Thanks to PD for bringing thus interview up in one of his comments here

Saturday, July 16, 2022

Ongoing attacks by Republicans in the 2020 presidential election

Republican groups in various states are passing resolutions that call Biden's victory illegitimate. 

In Montana:
Republican central committees in Ravalli and Lewis and Clark counties have in the last two weeks passed near-identical resolutions that “reject” the results of the 2020 presidential election and claim Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected” to the presidency of the United States. The resolutions urge the Montana Legislature to do “everything in their power” to put “the responsibility of election integrity and accountability back into the hands of We the People.”

Resolution 1 
2020 Election: We believe that the 2020 election violated Article 1 and 2 of the US Constitution, that 1582 various secretaries of state illegally circumvented their state legislatures in conducting their elections in 1583 multiple ways, including by allowing ballots to be received after November 3, 2020.We believe that 1584 substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in 1585 favor of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. 1586 

We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph 1587 Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States. We strongly urge all 1588 Republicans to work to ensure election integrity and to show up to vote in November of 2022, bring your 1589 friends and family, volunteer for your local Republicans, and overwhelm any possible fraud.
Maricopa County Arizona Republican Committee Executive Board:
Be it resolved by the Executive Board of the Maricopa County Republican Committee:

WHEREAS In solidarity with the Republican Party of Texas and their recent Resolution on the 2020 Election;

WHEREAS We believe the 2020 Election violated Article 1 and 2 of the US Constitution, that various secretaries of state illegally circumvented their state legislatures in conducting their elections in multiple incorrect ways, including allowing ballots to be received after November 3, 2020;

WHEREAS The 2000 Mules Documentary irrefutably proves election fraud occurred in Maricopa County during the 2020 Election in the form of ballot trafficking through drop boxes;

WHEREAS We believe that substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.;

WHEREAS The Arizona Senate audit of the 2020 Election found significant inconsistencies and discrepancies;

NOW, THEREFORE, We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States. We strongly urge all Republicans to work to ensure election integrity and correct all fraud and weaknesses identified in the 2020 Election.


The Republican Party of Langlade County Wisconsin:
A Resolution to reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election
Date: June 30, 2022
Be it resolved by the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Langlade County:


WHEREAS In solidarity with the Republican Party of Texas and the Republican Party of Maricopa County AZ and their recent Resolutions to reject the 2020 Election;

AND WHEREAS We believe the 2020 Election violated Article 1 and 2 of the US Constitution, that various Secretaries of State throughout the Country and the Wisconsin Election Commission (WEC) illegally circumvented their State Legislatures in conducting their elections in multiple illegal ways, including allowing ballot harvesting, ballot trafficking, the use of ballot boxes not under the observation of election officials, encouraging people to register as indefinitely confined, not following the law related to voting at nursing homes, encouraging clerks to cure ballots with incomplete information, and registering voters without verified picture identification;

AND WHEREAS The 2000 Mules Documentary, using publicly collected evidence of geo tracking and municipal video surveillance, irrefutably proves election fraud occurred in Milwaukee County during the 2020 Election in the form of ballot trafficking through drop boxes;

AND WHEREAS We believe that substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key States in favor of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.;

AND WHEREAS The Legislative Audit Bureau report, The Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections investigation and hearings, The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) investigation and report, and Michael Gableman’s investigation and Second Interim Investigative Report, which was presented to the Assembly Committee on March 1, 2022, all found significant inconsistencies and discrepancies in the 2020 election;

NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, The Republican Party of Langlade County Wisconsin formally rejects the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States. We strongly urge all Republicans to work to ensure election integrity and correct all fraud and weaknesses identified in the 2020 Election.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, We ask and encourage the Wisconsin State Legislature to do everything in their power to dissolve and de-fund The WEC and put the responsibility of election integrity in the hands of the elected position of Secretary of State, and that the Wisconsin Legislature also do everything in their power to complete all ongoing investigations of the 2020 election, including Michael Gableman’s investigation, to ensure no cheating happens in future elections.

AND BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, We encourage every other Republican County Party in both the State of Wisconsin and all other States that experienced voter fraud and cheating to issue a similar resolution to reject the 2020 election results.

This resolution approved unanimously by the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Langlade County on June 30, 2022

This kind of Republican Party lies- and hate-fueled propaganda and fascism is not going to end. These are direct, public attacks on a free and fair election. The 2000 Mules Documentary has been discredited as lies based on no evidence. Detailed refutations of the lies and the allegations of fraud (e.g., here, and here) makes no difference at all. None. Much of the Republican Party is a radicalized cult focused on (1) worshipping a deranged, corrupt tyrant wannabe, and (2) replacing democracy with fascism.




An open question is what portion of Republicans are principled conservatives who believe in facts and reason and what portion is radical cult who believe in lies and crackpottery? 60% principled? 40% principled? Less? What Republicans tell polls now may not fully translate into what Republican voters do in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

What about the Libertarian Party?

What about the LP? It's gone full-blown MAGA!!

I post this rather wonky blast to (i) point out that the Republican Party and its poisonous ex-president have unleashed something that has a poisonous life of its own, and (ii) suggest where some or most of the moral responsibility for their anti-democratic poison should lie. 

Ex-libertarian Andy Craig, complains:
I was an active member of the party for nearly 10 years, until I resigned last year along with many others unwilling to stick around for a takeover by the illiberal far right. During that time, I was a party officer at the state and local level, served on national committees, including the ones responsible for writing the party’s platform and bylaws, was twice a candidate for office myself, and also worked as a senior staffer on the Johnson campaign in 2016.

Under the direction of the so-called Mises Caucus, the LP has become home to those who don’t have qualms about declaring Holocaust-denying racists “fellow travelers” and who don’t think that bigots are necessarily disqualified from the party. They even went out of their way to delete from the party’s platform its nearly 50-year-old language stating: “We condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant.” The caucus is also reversing the party’s longstanding commitment to open immigration policies in favor of border enforcement. The new chair, Angela McArdle, proclaims that the party will now be dedicated to fighting “wokeism.” People with pronouns in their Twitter bios aren’t welcome anymore, but, evidently, white nationalists and Holocaust deniers are.

But that’s not all. Various members of the new leadership have averred that: Black folks owe America for affirmative action; Pride Month is a plot by degenerates and child molesters aiming for socialism; and a country with zero taxes but more trans murders would be more morally acceptable than the reverse. Though some Mises Caucus figures insist they want to offer solutions to the culture wars, in practice, that means obsessively weighing in on the side of the far right.

Former Republican congressman Ron Paul has been paleolibertarianism’s most visible promoter. His 2008 and 2012 bids for the Republican presidential nomination initially ignited considerable grassroots enthusiasm, even among non-libertarians, thanks to his staunch opposition to war, among other things. But eventually Paul’s candidacy went down in flames in no small part due to the emergence of racist newsletters penned under his name some 20 years prior by a Rothbard acolyte. The author, Lew Rockwell, founded the Mises Institute, from which the Mises Caucus gets its name. (It can’t be emphasized enough that Ludwig von Mises, the Austrian economist after whom the institute is named, was a liberal champion of toleration and cosmopolitanism who would have roundly condemned his namesake’s twisted agenda.)

To believe that there was a kumbaya compromise possible with those whose vision is fundamentally incompatible with liberal values speaks to a profound moral confusion. You can have an organization that welcomes bigots or one that welcomes the targets of their hate, but you can’t have both under the same tent.

The same pathology that afflicts the GOP now also afflicts the LP, namely, orienting itself not by reference to its principles but by single-mindedly focusing on its enemy: progressives and anybody else to the left of the far right. This alignment bodes ill for the future of American politics, now that the nation’s largest third party is an adjunct of Trumpism rather than an opponent of it.
From that, one can see the authoritarian mindset has been with us for a long time. At least since the US Constitution was ratified by my reckoning. It also hints at the influence that corrupt or authoritarian elites have on many Americans. They have convinced millions to embrace lies, bigotry, theocracy and fascism. They have normalized vulgarity, incompetence and corruption. Surely they deserve some responsibility for what radical right authoritarians have done to us.



Off topic
An American Pica gathering food 
to store for winter


Friday, July 15, 2022

An additional important point regard the pending Moore v. Harper Supreme Court case

Moore v. Harper could go a long way to killing the role of voters in deciding elections. It is a long-standing dream of fascist Republicans to diminish the power of both elections and voters. They want to shift power to themselves and other chosen radical right elites in American society. A decision will most likely be made public in June of 2023.

The Week published an article on the Moore case that brought up a couple of fascinating and terrifying facts in this case that I was unaware of. The Week wrote:
Could this SCOTUS case push America toward one-party rule?

North Carolina House Speaker Timothy Moore (R) is suing a voter named Rebecca Harper as part of a dispute over a federal electoral map drawn by the state's Republican-controlled legislature. According to The Carolina Journal, the case will test a legal theory known as the "independent state legislature doctrine," which asserts that "only the state legislature has the power to regulate federal elections, without interference from state courts."

Proponents of the "independent state legislature doctrine" argue that this clause gives state legislatures the power to draw congressional districts, set rules for federal elections, and appoint presidential electors, and that state courts have no power to interfere — even if the legislature blatantly violates the state constitution.

Which, in this case, it totally did. The North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in February that the proposed map, which would have guaranteed Republicans easy wins in 10 of the state's 14 districts, was "unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt under the ... North Carolina Constitution."

The situation in North Carolina is not so clear-cut, however. Robert Barnes noted in The Washington Post that the state's General Assembly passed a law two decades ago empowering state courts to review electoral maps and even create their own "interim districting plan[s]." Moore's lawyers must therefore prove that the legislature violated the U.S. Constitution by abdicating its own authority over redistricting.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case in March but agreed on June 30 to hear it. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh have all signaled their openness to Moore's argument. The Washington Post's editorial board suggests that Chief Justice John Roberts — who three years ago left open the possibility that state courts could override partisan gerrymanders — is now "poised" to side with Moore as well. The board considers Justice Amy Coney Barrett "a possible swing vote." All three of the court's liberals are expected to reject the independent state legislature doctrine.

The case will be heard during the term beginning in October 2022, with a decision expected in the summer of 2023 — just in time to upend the 2024 elections.  
In January, Ryan Cooper wrote for The Week that the state of Wisconsin "effectively exists under one-party rule." Democrats can still win statewide elections — say, for governor or U.S. Senate — but state legislative districts are hopelessly gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. If the Supreme Court sides with Moore, GOP-controlled legislatures in states like Wisconsin would have full authority to rig not only their own states' legislative elections, but elections to the U.S. House of Representatives as well.  
And it might not stop there. Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution empowers each state to "appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors" equal to that state's number of senators and representatives. The clause doesn't say anything about the popular vote. This means, in theory, that state legislators can appoint whoever they want to the Electoral College. If SCOTUS side with Moore next summer on the question of federal redistricting, they're likely to apply the same reasoning to presidential elections. This interpretation was floated by conservative justices — including Thomas — during the Bush v. Gore (2000) case that handed George W. Bush the presidency.  
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 stipulates that each state's slate of electors must be certified by the governor of that state. In states like Wisconsin— which has a Democratic governor — this law could prevent the Republican-led legislature from handing the state's electoral votes to a losing Republican candidate.

But wait — if the independent state legislature doctrine is correct, then the governor has no right to usurp the legislature's constitutionally granted powers. That provision of the Electoral Count Act (ECA) would be struck down.

This idea "is quickly becoming dogma among Republican legal apparatchiks," Cooper wrote. Convincing Republican-controlled states won by President Biden to submit alternate slates of Republican electors was a key part of Trump lawyer John Eastman's strategy to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His plan also rested on the assumption that the ECA is "likely unconstitutional."  
"It is difficult … to see the desire to put sole control of election rules in the hands of a partisan legislative body as anything more than a power grab," argued Christine Adams in The Washington Post. Laurence H. Tribe and Dennis Aftergut were even blunter in the Los Angeles Times: "Adopting the independent state legislature theory would amount to right-wing justices making up law to create an outcome of one-party rule."
I was unaware of information in the parts of the article I highlighted. Republican fascists are going after the entire Electoral Count Act (ECA). 

Think about that. The fascist Republican Party is now arguing in the Supreme Court that a state legislature cannot delegate any of its allegedly exclusive authority over redistricting. That is the narrow point. The broader, catastrophic point is obvious if the fascists win this case. As I see it:
If a state legislature cannot abdicate any of its asserted essentially sole authority over elections and the ECA itself is unconstitutional, state legislatures can simply override the results of any state legislature, House or White House election result the legislature does not like. Contrary majority votes will be subordinated to the will of the gerrymandered legislature. The radical right's argument is that the independent state legislature doctrine cannot be infringed by any state law.
This is hard core radicalism and authoritarianism coming from the Republican Party. Based on the article, it looks like there are probably enough Republican votes for this new, authoritarian electoral landscape. That is enough to usurp democracy as we know it. It would allow Republicans to install fascism in the federal government and red states. Over time, blue state resistance will be worn down by adverse federal court decisions and every other kind of assault that radical right fascists can bring to bear on them. 

Blue states are in a troubling, apparently weak defensive posture. They cannot break out and go on a pro-democracy offensive unless voters vote Republicans out of office in 2022 and 2024. If 2022 leaves Republicans in power, even if it's just enough power to filibuster bills to death in the Senate, what the fascists want to do to this country and democracy may be unstoppable. Both of those elections must be significant losses for Republican candidates. If that doesn't happen, we and democracy are in deadly serious trouble

The fascist threat here is significantly more deadly and urgent than I believed.


Besieged American democracy
The more I understand it, 
the more terrifying it looks