Count me underwhelmed by those who argue that all the public jubilation about what this Luigi character did was all that unusual or surprising [that Popehat guy did an excellent piece about how he'd like to live in a country where this sort of behavior is out of fashion, but he lives in the US]. I have no doubt at all that many of the otherwise decent people who voted for Harris did not have at least a fleeting wish that the PA shooter had adjusted his shot just a tiny bit to the right. What has changed is that Trump, and the internet, make it acceptable to express these thoughts publicly, and immediately. Just like it used to be the rule that politicians didn't attack their foes' families; no more. Does anyone else forget that there was cheering in some schools and theaters in 1963 when it was announced that Kennedy had been killed? Sorry; its the same as it ever was.
And the thing about the Hunter pardon, which is admittedly way, way over-discussed, is that it depends on whose ox is being gored. Anyone in the gun sights of the incredibly politicized FBI and AJ that we're about to get will not buy into the high-minded ideals that are espoused here by Chris and Damon. I remind you that Barr's Justice Dept has already conducted political investigations of Trump enemies [check out emptywheel for the details] and we really don't know what's coming for other 'enemies of the people'. If it's your son, who faces jail time for a charge where no one else in the whole country does, its a no-brainer, even at the risk of the ghost of Saint George Washington visiting you every night wagging his finger in disapproval. It reminds me of all those Trump apologists of the Taibbi ilk from, say, December 2020, who said, "Big deal, he talks like a fascist, but what the hell has he really done?" And then we had Jan 6, which was a healthy portion of STFU for many of them, at least for a brief period of time. It didn't last.
What is almost always left out of any of these discussions about the 2024 election is that there were in the Republican stable other potential candidates who could have advanced a conservative agenda as well as anyone else, and still Republican voters, almost without conscious thought, it seems, chose the one man who had already proven himself to utterly disdain and disavow our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
Now one may argue that more immediate concerns (the border and the grocery bill) animated them, and I’m sure that’s true. But the fact remains that anyone who had a reasonable idea about who Trump was, what he wanted, and how far he was willing to go to get it (and after eight years of him, including January 6th, that was hardly a secret) could have felt him to be the best solution.
I am often reminded these days of the scene in the musical 1776 (despite its several historical inaccuracies still one of my all-time favorites) when, the Declaration having been read to the colonial delegates, the southern delegates in the person of John Rutledge demand any reference to slavey be omitted or they ‘will bury your declaration now and forever". John Adams rails that posterity will never forgive us for this mistake. Franklin notes with his usual sense of humor, Don’t worry, John, we’ll all be dead by then.
Yet this tragic error, the creation of a country based on individual rights and freedom in which slavery was enabled, has been at the base of most of our worst troubles ever since. It is easy to say that without that bitter compromise, later embedded in the Constitution, we might never have become a nation, which may well be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that this failure doomed the nation to six decades of increasing division and violence, cost some 700,000 American lives (not including the untold numbers of blacks killed before and after the Civil War), including the single worst day in our history (September 17th, 1962 at Antietam Creek), made the Jim Crow era a reality, and continues to roil us today. The cause - a lack of foresight.
Trump’s election, above all other causes, is a singular lack of foresight, and one other thing. “America", as Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd notes in the movie The American President, "is advanced citizenship”. I would modify that - the most advanced citizenship in the world. Electing Donald Trump is a failure of imagination and of American citizenship. There is no dressing it up by recourse to Democratic failures.
Count me underwhelmed by those who argue that all the public jubilation about what this Luigi character did was all that unusual or surprising [that Popehat guy did an excellent piece about how he'd like to live in a country where this sort of behavior is out of fashion, but he lives in the US]. I have no doubt at all that many of the otherwise decent people who voted for Harris did not have at least a fleeting wish that the PA shooter had adjusted his shot just a tiny bit to the right. What has changed is that Trump, and the internet, make it acceptable to express these thoughts publicly, and immediately. Just like it used to be the rule that politicians didn't attack their foes' families; no more. Does anyone else forget that there was cheering in some schools and theaters in 1963 when it was announced that Kennedy had been killed? Sorry; its the same as it ever was.
Damon, was that a Dylan allusion at the end there--"going, going, gone"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWOZ7WQWlrc
And the thing about the Hunter pardon, which is admittedly way, way over-discussed, is that it depends on whose ox is being gored. Anyone in the gun sights of the incredibly politicized FBI and AJ that we're about to get will not buy into the high-minded ideals that are espoused here by Chris and Damon. I remind you that Barr's Justice Dept has already conducted political investigations of Trump enemies [check out emptywheel for the details] and we really don't know what's coming for other 'enemies of the people'. If it's your son, who faces jail time for a charge where no one else in the whole country does, its a no-brainer, even at the risk of the ghost of Saint George Washington visiting you every night wagging his finger in disapproval. It reminds me of all those Trump apologists of the Taibbi ilk from, say, December 2020, who said, "Big deal, he talks like a fascist, but what the hell has he really done?" And then we had Jan 6, which was a healthy portion of STFU for many of them, at least for a brief period of time. It didn't last.
What is almost always left out of any of these discussions about the 2024 election is that there were in the Republican stable other potential candidates who could have advanced a conservative agenda as well as anyone else, and still Republican voters, almost without conscious thought, it seems, chose the one man who had already proven himself to utterly disdain and disavow our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law.
Now one may argue that more immediate concerns (the border and the grocery bill) animated them, and I’m sure that’s true. But the fact remains that anyone who had a reasonable idea about who Trump was, what he wanted, and how far he was willing to go to get it (and after eight years of him, including January 6th, that was hardly a secret) could have felt him to be the best solution.
I am often reminded these days of the scene in the musical 1776 (despite its several historical inaccuracies still one of my all-time favorites) when, the Declaration having been read to the colonial delegates, the southern delegates in the person of John Rutledge demand any reference to slavey be omitted or they ‘will bury your declaration now and forever". John Adams rails that posterity will never forgive us for this mistake. Franklin notes with his usual sense of humor, Don’t worry, John, we’ll all be dead by then.
Yet this tragic error, the creation of a country based on individual rights and freedom in which slavery was enabled, has been at the base of most of our worst troubles ever since. It is easy to say that without that bitter compromise, later embedded in the Constitution, we might never have become a nation, which may well be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that this failure doomed the nation to six decades of increasing division and violence, cost some 700,000 American lives (not including the untold numbers of blacks killed before and after the Civil War), including the single worst day in our history (September 17th, 1962 at Antietam Creek), made the Jim Crow era a reality, and continues to roil us today. The cause - a lack of foresight.
Trump’s election, above all other causes, is a singular lack of foresight, and one other thing. “America", as Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd notes in the movie The American President, "is advanced citizenship”. I would modify that - the most advanced citizenship in the world. Electing Donald Trump is a failure of imagination and of American citizenship. There is no dressing it up by recourse to Democratic failures.