The Dems want Obedience, not Unity

Watching the behavior of the Democrat/Marxist/Anarchist coalition over the last couple of weeks,  I am drawn to the conclusion that they think their seizure of power through elections and street theater is permanent or at least something as durable as the long, long reign of the Bloody Shirt Republicans after the Civil War.  In that time all you had to do to beat the Democrats was talk about "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion and you were "in."  

The Democrat led alliance is now seeking to proscribe the opposition root and branch, beginning with the man 75 to 80 million citizens voted to re-elect and extending down through the ranks of probable or possible successors to the Orange One.

Banning from social media, actions to eject members from legislatures at the national and state levels, prosecutions for supposed incitement of violence.  These are among the tools contemplated.  People who work for the leftist media like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post openly advocate pressuring advertisers to threaten Murdoch over commentators like Carlson and Hannity.  The Democrat coalition supports bans on hiring their opponents at universities and in the business world as well.

"Re-education and de-programming" are advocated in the MSM as solutions for re-capturing control of the Smelly masses.  

It is now probable that Kamala Harris will preside over the senate trial of former president Donald Trump.  The US Constitution requires that the Chief Justice of SCOTUS preside over the trial of a SITTING president because of the obvious conflict of interest involved in a trial in which conviction results in the accession to power of the vice-president, but Trump is not a sitting president so she evidently is free to run her possible opponent in 2024 out of public life.

How long will the Smellies endure all this?  Well, pilgrims the tyranny of Communism lasted a long time in the USSR.  pl

Comments

[mathias alexander]

Washington Post not left wing.

[JohninMK]

Once this gets through, if it does, any opposition is a hopeless task.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/democrats-have-released-roadmap-one-party-rule

[Barbara Ann]

Lots of really good comments here, which is great to see. My own primarily concerns how this may play out in the economic sphere:

So the totalitarians have dropped all pretense - they are out to violate the founding principals of the nation & marginalize/persecute freedom-loving Americans. Historians may look back on this as Trump's greatest legacy; unmasking the enemy and getting them out into plain sight.

Impeachment as a tool for suppressing political opposition is a very slippery slope. Harassment & arrest of candidates on trumped up charges are the next logical steps. Will we see the Navalnyization of US politics?

The recent dramatic rise in censorship and the beginning of blacklisting, or 'cancelling' of conservatives has already had a dramatic effect. The popularity of 'alternative' media outlets like OANN & Newsmax is rising rapidly. Twitter's purge has driven many refugees to Gab. How Gab is treated once usage really starts to takes off will be instructive. The aim of the censors is to disrupt Deplorable comms and that won't work if 80m+ users simply migrate to an alternative platform. My guess is they'll eventually find some excuse to shut Gab down. By this point I'd expect warnings of & policies towards "domestic extremism" to have become a self-fulfilling feedback loop.

Parler's demise was instructive. It is now widely appreciated that control of the entire infrastructure chain is necessary to avoid cancellation by the leftists. But the fallout goes far beyond that. I am already seeing people talk about conservative-friendly banking, for example, to secure services for the blacklisted (Trump included). We seem to be seeing the beginnings of a bifurcation in sections of the economy into parallel ones outside of leftist/state control. Such a process could gather momentum very quickly I think.

So how will the totalitarians attempt to re-capture control of the Smellie masses? "Re-education and de-programming" for sure, but that takes time to set up. In the immediate term I'd anticipate a doubling down on censorship & blacklisting. And this can surely only hasten the pace at which the parallel Smellie economy develops & diverges.

I have tired to think of a historical analog for the above described process, so far without inspiration. It is less about geography and about more state vs. a large section of a disenfranchised population determined to resist control. Nothing about this dynamic indicates to me that it will do anything other than accelerate. Victory looks to be impossible without one side utterly crushing the other. If anyone is willing to outline a realistic but less bleak forecast, I love to hear it.

[Fred]

jerseycityjoan,

"There is a growing crime problem..." "...from Chinatown in Manhattan..." "...rioters attacking in the Northwest over the weekend."

That's the growing crime problem that was visible before the election of the 80 million vote Democrat.

"I am a Democrat...."
I think I see your problem there. Please remind us all of which party runs NYC and the "Northwest", and has been running both for years.

[Barbara Ann]

Tidewater

There are good arguments for considering the colonial relationship to be the other way around. As someone here recently said "we are all Palestinians now". It seems to only be a matter of time before we are all Antisemitic now too. Whose values are being imposed upon who?

[turcopolier]

mathias alexander

How about "Bezos' Blog" as a descriptor?

[Fred]

Tidewater,

"The central motion in American life is Israel." It is central to the Swamp.

[blue peacock]

Sen. Rand Paul:

"No Democrat will honestly ask whether Bernie Sanders incited the shooter that nearly killed Steve Scalise."

"No Democrat will ask whether Maxine Waters incited violence when she literally told her supporters" to confront Trump officials in public.

https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1354132364528660481?s=20

The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let us be clear, the John Brennan's, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are...

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1354035548524957697?s=20

https://twitter.com/Revelation1217/status/1353836511356211200?s=20

Tulsi Gabbard has been on a tear the past few days in interview after interview and in her own Twitter and Podcast feeds calling out the Swamp/Deep State aggressively. Is she vying for the Deplorables across the partisan duopoly? It will be interesting to see the "right"/"left" frame being applied by those stuck in that rut in the coming days & months.

[Yeah, Right]

The idea that the Senate can try Donald Trump "as-if" he were still holding the Federal Office of President of the United States, but that said trial does not require the Chief Justice because Donald Trump is no longer the POTUS is, honestly, breathtaking in its hypocrisy.

If the reason that he is still to be tried in the Senate is because the House impeached him when he is still President then all the forms and procedures must flow from that i.e. the Chief Justice must preside over that trial.

If that isn't necessary then neither is the trial, because the trial amounts to a claim by the Senate that it can pass judgement on private citizens. Which it most assuredly can not.

[smoke]

@ Deap 1/26 1 am

WaPo coins a new phrase: "multiracial whiteness".

The English lads are all over it as Wapo twists itself into word knots, to prove that Trump's support is fully racist, despite photos and ballot box, where growing numbers of Latino community voted Republican.

One does wonder whether the reporter deliberately sabotaged her assignment, in order to include some facts. Can anyone writing this sort of stuff actually believe it? Writers usually have some respect for words and their meanings, unlike propagandists.

Thanks for the link. Refreshing as a good political cartoon.

[Fred]

Yeah Right,

The reason for the circus is two fold. Distract from the ongoing actions via executive order that the apparatchiks are getting Joe to sign, and to allow the Democrats to pass a further piece of legislation that would ban someone impeached from holding federal office; thus depriving the Deplorables of the ability to re-elect Trump once the left doubles down on Obama's failed policies.

[rho]

Fred,

I really wonder if the Democrats want to interpret the constitution in such a way that Trump can be banned from future federal office-holding by a separate Senate vote with a simple majority even if he gets acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial because less than 2/3rds of the senators vote to convict him:

"The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States; but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law."

If that precedent gets established, the government majority in Congress can ban any opposition politician that has held a federal government office before ("officers of the United States") from future federal office holding. All they need is a simple majority in the House of Representatives, a simple majority in the Senate and a fabricated impeachment trial.

That is a very dangerous idea, it will have the effect of making a democratic transition of power to the opposition nearly impossible, unless some totally new opposition force emerges where former executive office-holders play no role at all.

What do you think? Are the Democrats going exactly for this?

[Fred]

rho,

Actual impeachment is unconstitutional on two grounds, first he's not if office, second it is effectively a bill of attainder - which is expressly forbidden in the constitution in two places. Don Surber sums up the loss of face and clout the Democrats face pretty well in his recent post:

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2021/01/impeachment-helped-donald.html

[Ryan]

Col. Lang, I appreciate everything. You truly are my hero. I’m trying to figure out how to reach Sy. I’m starting an investigative journalism scholarship at uchicago. I think it’s his sort of thing.

[Barbara Ann]

A. Pols

Your quote of Martin Niemöller's famous description of where indifference to ever more expansive rounds of purges inevitably leads is right on the money.

You may be interested in a short essay by James A. Lindsay* entitled "The Woke Breaking Point". In it Lindsay recommends asking your woke friends a simple question: "What would it take for you to say that the Woke movement has gone too far?". The idea is not so much to elicit a definitive response, but to get them to think about 1) the fact that wokism may go "too far" and 2) think about where their own line in the sand, such that if and when it is crossed they may be prompted to speak out. Very useful advice one can apply to any radical movement one's friends find sympathy with I think.

*Lindsay is infamous for getting spoof papers on critical social justice published in a variety of woke journals - one of which was a rehash of Mein Kampf written in feminist language. Here is his wiki.

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/woke-breaking-point/