America is truly in decline if this remains a competitive race. I say that with love for this country but also with a deep trauma regarding the last several years and how our system has enabled such a man because of the nation's inability to reckon with historical deficiencies.
America is truly in decline if this remains a competitive race. I say that with love for this country but also with a deep trauma regarding the last several years and how our system has enabled such a man because of the nation's inability to reckon with historical deficiencies.
Biden can do only so much to combat this because of handicaps of being on the other side politically and other handicaps. Less so his age lately as he is showing he is not sleepy Joe. But the Israel/Gaza war is a real negative with younger voters... those who don't realize that Trump would be worse and Trump, in fact, with his Abraham accords brought on or certainly helped bring the Hamas attack.
Biden needs help....the media..... surrogates..grass roots. That this is not about politics has to get across.
People just waking up need information and Truth. Our system has been gamed. WE never had such a threat. And we are being forewarned, we have experience of this man. This is a test on us.. the people. This experiment is about the people, the owners of "the system" and our involvement or not in it. If we the people do not act, then the system has failed. Don't give up and blame "the system" please...
PS. there are two standards being used-- one for Biden, one for Trump. Trump is clearly mentally unfit. Biden is not mentally unfit. That is the fire that needs to be put out.
Well said, minority rule has been enshrined in our constitutional order by design and that has been gamed by capturing the Supreme court through electorally unpopular presidents and appealing to fearful minority opinions. However, the American people also have to vote and make smart decisions. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to see if the latter will occur.
Yes, and the American people, so hard working towards "getting and spending" need to be awakened. On the surface, without even the interview or that 2025 agenda I don't know how people can be so oblivious. We are, it seems in the late stage of this. And structurally how do we change it? Are we stuck and destined to lose this experiment in democracy? Education is key.. I mean combatting ignorance, but how do we get through to people and turn the tide? Why does humanity have to learn the hard and painful way, if it learns at all? Pain and suffering seem to be prime movers... hitting home... because we are selfish beings. I hope I did not help to ruin your day.
Not at all. It's a consistent lesson in human history that democracy is a privilege. American exceptionalism is being disproven because one our flaws is believing we are immune to history. This feature is displayed in our nation's harmful way of ignoring racial politics or the way it is a prime motivator for many to dispel of democracy because of fear, hate, ignorance, or indifference.
Democracy IS a privilege, according to history. Prof Timothy Snyder writes, teaches, about this most recently and in his substack. We are indeed an experiment here.. a multicultural democracy. And we have flaws that have arisen in time that don't seem to have a way to get fixed structurally without violence and another revolution, pain and suffering. We just don't want to go through that, so addicted to "getting and spending" and "normality" and our "exceptionalism" in history. That makes us feel invulnerable, such that we prefer to stick our heads in the ground "it can't happen here". But there are bad actors and they are upon us. We are actually being threatened within. Democracy contains the ability for its own demise.
The DNC has got to rely heavily on massive paid advertising because nbc et al are for some unfathomable reason totally in the gop tank. It makes no sense to me.
It really makes parallels between Hitler's Germany and Totalitarian Trump's America without doing so directly. We can see the parallels outlined even though there are some differences. One thing that most people don't seem to mention is that Germany had only had a Democracy in the Weimar Republic. Prior to that they went from being little tribes to Small Kingdoms and Principalities, that grew to be led under a single monarch, but not really a government selected with the popular vote of all the people. With the Weimar Republic German women's right to vote swept in. It was also chaotic, and the Golden 20s were driven by people who no longer believed that one could plan for the future and instead spent to live in the moment. Still, you have your characters, and you can see who is paralleled in our times. Looking at the details of the militia and military are interesting. I am worried about the Trumpian militai rising up to do his bidding. The article is interesting as I am sure is the book. I started reading it in the Google Books where they offer 43 pages to sample.
Thanks for this. We ( this side.. the side that wants our democracy to continue) needs to retain a monopoly over violence regardless. It may come down to armed struggle. I hope not. But I was thinking, hoping, that our long experience with democracy, the evolution of it, and what we have been taught and teach our children will hold us in good stead. We have the story that prevailed. The issue and problem is that maybe a significant number may think that they have the story: the right to overturn this country like 1776. But then again what are they fighting for other than chaos.. one man's resentment, anger and retribution that purports to be for his followers? So I think the militia will rise up- plan on it, we must. But we must, like every rebellion in the past without good cause a resonating cause, put it down. I guess who gives the orders and who takes them is important... that is where leadership comes in.
You can see here that the Social Democrats support of the institution of democracy allowed Hitler to walk all over it without them denying him his right to do that at least not before it was too late. One can hope that our democracy, longer than Germany had at the time Hitler came to power of 15 years, will show more staying power. However, what tools do we have to support democracy against Totalitarian Trump if he is allowed to get enough votes to win the electoral college. Even if he does not win, will he just make the following 4 years as miserable as he has made these past almost 4 years? I hope not. I hope his deteriorating mind will not allow him to.
I believe we will have more staying power. We are not Germany, the German people. We have many Germanic people here but we are very multicultural and from the beginning. We are multi racial ethnic and religious. That is our strength.
The electoral college is a problem because it provides a way to game our system and it's in the Constitution. Regarding Trump losing, weтАЩre going to have to find a way of dealing with the repercussions. Trump himself will not last. HeтАЩs losing it mentally already.
While we are not the German people there are lessons to be learned. What we are as multicultural still has a dominant culture that people are supposed to fit in to. At least that is what the Republicans want. If the youth vote comes out we are in good shape because they represent the most diversity. A lot of bots are working on the different groups to disengage them. Dems do best when more people come out to vote. Let us hope we can find ways to defy the bots.
I am currently living in Germany and as a dual German/American I am very aware of German history, particularly because I have a daughter who is at a Uni here in Germany and she happens to be studying this period of German history right now. Today she told me that they had a survivor called a "Witness" or "Zeitzeugin" in German meaning contemporary witness, visit her class today and tell her story. My daughter was telling me about it after her class. She has been studying the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power, and we have been discussing it. It worries me that part of what American students will be missing as their schools take away "critical race theory" or anything where "White" people have done bad things in history, is that this is the kind of information that would be really useful for all Americans to know about and use as a tool to think about today, but I believe many do not know much about the past if it is not in the US, or even if it is.
Oh yes i remember i read here that you are in Germany ЁЯЗйЁЯЗк i learned about this period because i am Jewish. But i am interested in Germany anyway or also because of the arts. I have learned a lot and read on my own. I canтАЩt say about American education; it probably varies.
I learned about this history because my mother is German, and my father is Black American, so I had learned the history first as if I were a White German, but then later on when I met a lot of Brown Germans, I learned the different history of the Brown Germans. In fact, I have a collection of some books about this history. I studied history as an undergrad and this was one of my areas of interest. My daughter studied the Holocaust in the USA in her school, but it was not connected to the Weimar Republic. In 11th grade she did an exchange in Vienna, and when she was there they studied the Holocaust as well and went to Poland for The Walk of Rememberance, and to visit the concentration camps, I think they went to 3, and they also had a witness there, and Jewish students their age were their Likrad, which were their partners in things Jewish. My daughter said she already knew what they told her about Judaism from having Jewish friends in the US and from watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with my husband all the time. No one else in the class knew anything about being Jewish. It was interesting to hear that. In Germany she has 2 Jewish friends in her classes. One is a young woman from Israel, and the other is a young man from the US.
America is truly in decline if this remains a competitive race. I say that with love for this country but also with a deep trauma regarding the last several years and how our system has enabled such a man because of the nation's inability to reckon with historical deficiencies.
Biden can do only so much to combat this because of handicaps of being on the other side politically and other handicaps. Less so his age lately as he is showing he is not sleepy Joe. But the Israel/Gaza war is a real negative with younger voters... those who don't realize that Trump would be worse and Trump, in fact, with his Abraham accords brought on or certainly helped bring the Hamas attack.
Biden needs help....the media..... surrogates..grass roots. That this is not about politics has to get across.
People just waking up need information and Truth. Our system has been gamed. WE never had such a threat. And we are being forewarned, we have experience of this man. This is a test on us.. the people. This experiment is about the people, the owners of "the system" and our involvement or not in it. If we the people do not act, then the system has failed. Don't give up and blame "the system" please...
PS. there are two standards being used-- one for Biden, one for Trump. Trump is clearly mentally unfit. Biden is not mentally unfit. That is the fire that needs to be put out.
Well said, minority rule has been enshrined in our constitutional order by design and that has been gamed by capturing the Supreme court through electorally unpopular presidents and appealing to fearful minority opinions. However, the American people also have to vote and make smart decisions. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to see if the latter will occur.
Yes, and the American people, so hard working towards "getting and spending" need to be awakened. On the surface, without even the interview or that 2025 agenda I don't know how people can be so oblivious. We are, it seems in the late stage of this. And structurally how do we change it? Are we stuck and destined to lose this experiment in democracy? Education is key.. I mean combatting ignorance, but how do we get through to people and turn the tide? Why does humanity have to learn the hard and painful way, if it learns at all? Pain and suffering seem to be prime movers... hitting home... because we are selfish beings. I hope I did not help to ruin your day.
Not at all. It's a consistent lesson in human history that democracy is a privilege. American exceptionalism is being disproven because one our flaws is believing we are immune to history. This feature is displayed in our nation's harmful way of ignoring racial politics or the way it is a prime motivator for many to dispel of democracy because of fear, hate, ignorance, or indifference.
Democracy IS a privilege, according to history. Prof Timothy Snyder writes, teaches, about this most recently and in his substack. We are indeed an experiment here.. a multicultural democracy. And we have flaws that have arisen in time that don't seem to have a way to get fixed structurally without violence and another revolution, pain and suffering. We just don't want to go through that, so addicted to "getting and spending" and "normality" and our "exceptionalism" in history. That makes us feel invulnerable, such that we prefer to stick our heads in the ground "it can't happen here". But there are bad actors and they are upon us. We are actually being threatened within. Democracy contains the ability for its own demise.
paid advertising works
then donating for it must.
The DNC has got to rely heavily on massive paid advertising because nbc et al are for some unfathomable reason totally in the gop tank. It makes no sense to me.
MSNBC is absolutely not in the tank for the GOP. Please stop dumping all media in the same bucket.
None of this makes sense to me.. from the get go.
A book that was mentioned on another Substack is Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Ryback. Here is a review of it in The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/25/takeover-hitlers-final-rise-to-power-timothy-w-ryback-book-review
It really makes parallels between Hitler's Germany and Totalitarian Trump's America without doing so directly. We can see the parallels outlined even though there are some differences. One thing that most people don't seem to mention is that Germany had only had a Democracy in the Weimar Republic. Prior to that they went from being little tribes to Small Kingdoms and Principalities, that grew to be led under a single monarch, but not really a government selected with the popular vote of all the people. With the Weimar Republic German women's right to vote swept in. It was also chaotic, and the Golden 20s were driven by people who no longer believed that one could plan for the future and instead spent to live in the moment. Still, you have your characters, and you can see who is paralleled in our times. Looking at the details of the militia and military are interesting. I am worried about the Trumpian militai rising up to do his bidding. The article is interesting as I am sure is the book. I started reading it in the Google Books where they offer 43 pages to sample.
Thanks for this. We ( this side.. the side that wants our democracy to continue) needs to retain a monopoly over violence regardless. It may come down to armed struggle. I hope not. But I was thinking, hoping, that our long experience with democracy, the evolution of it, and what we have been taught and teach our children will hold us in good stead. We have the story that prevailed. The issue and problem is that maybe a significant number may think that they have the story: the right to overturn this country like 1776. But then again what are they fighting for other than chaos.. one man's resentment, anger and retribution that purports to be for his followers? So I think the militia will rise up- plan on it, we must. But we must, like every rebellion in the past without good cause a resonating cause, put it down. I guess who gives the orders and who takes them is important... that is where leadership comes in.
None of that worked where Hitler was concerned. Read a review of the new book Takeover: Hitler's Final Rise to Power by Timothy W. Ryback. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/25/takeover-hitlers-final-rise-to-power-timothy-w-ryback-book-review
You can see here that the Social Democrats support of the institution of democracy allowed Hitler to walk all over it without them denying him his right to do that at least not before it was too late. One can hope that our democracy, longer than Germany had at the time Hitler came to power of 15 years, will show more staying power. However, what tools do we have to support democracy against Totalitarian Trump if he is allowed to get enough votes to win the electoral college. Even if he does not win, will he just make the following 4 years as miserable as he has made these past almost 4 years? I hope not. I hope his deteriorating mind will not allow him to.
I believe we will have more staying power. We are not Germany, the German people. We have many Germanic people here but we are very multicultural and from the beginning. We are multi racial ethnic and religious. That is our strength.
The electoral college is a problem because it provides a way to game our system and it's in the Constitution. Regarding Trump losing, weтАЩre going to have to find a way of dealing with the repercussions. Trump himself will not last. HeтАЩs losing it mentally already.
While we are not the German people there are lessons to be learned. What we are as multicultural still has a dominant culture that people are supposed to fit in to. At least that is what the Republicans want. If the youth vote comes out we are in good shape because they represent the most diversity. A lot of bots are working on the different groups to disengage them. Dems do best when more people come out to vote. Let us hope we can find ways to defy the bots.
There are definitely lessons to be learned. This is why we are talking about Hitler and WW 2 so much.
I am currently living in Germany and as a dual German/American I am very aware of German history, particularly because I have a daughter who is at a Uni here in Germany and she happens to be studying this period of German history right now. Today she told me that they had a survivor called a "Witness" or "Zeitzeugin" in German meaning contemporary witness, visit her class today and tell her story. My daughter was telling me about it after her class. She has been studying the Weimar Republic and Hitler's rise to power, and we have been discussing it. It worries me that part of what American students will be missing as their schools take away "critical race theory" or anything where "White" people have done bad things in history, is that this is the kind of information that would be really useful for all Americans to know about and use as a tool to think about today, but I believe many do not know much about the past if it is not in the US, or even if it is.
Oh yes i remember i read here that you are in Germany ЁЯЗйЁЯЗк i learned about this period because i am Jewish. But i am interested in Germany anyway or also because of the arts. I have learned a lot and read on my own. I canтАЩt say about American education; it probably varies.
I learned about this history because my mother is German, and my father is Black American, so I had learned the history first as if I were a White German, but then later on when I met a lot of Brown Germans, I learned the different history of the Brown Germans. In fact, I have a collection of some books about this history. I studied history as an undergrad and this was one of my areas of interest. My daughter studied the Holocaust in the USA in her school, but it was not connected to the Weimar Republic. In 11th grade she did an exchange in Vienna, and when she was there they studied the Holocaust as well and went to Poland for The Walk of Rememberance, and to visit the concentration camps, I think they went to 3, and they also had a witness there, and Jewish students their age were their Likrad, which were their partners in things Jewish. My daughter said she already knew what they told her about Judaism from having Jewish friends in the US and from watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with my husband all the time. No one else in the class knew anything about being Jewish. It was interesting to hear that. In Germany she has 2 Jewish friends in her classes. One is a young woman from Israel, and the other is a young man from the US.