Well I guess because America is a failing nation, according to him, he might have to be a dictator for a little longer just to "fix it all", right? Don't you know how this works? Never read a history book?
Is that like a funny thing to joke about ? Do you know how many people have died protecting freedom and democracy ? How many Americans ? Anyway have fun with it if he wins. You’ll find out. Our family are refugees from the Soviet Union, so enjoys your “jokes” and stubbornness to read the signs. Vote wisely is my advice.
It was actually a reference to executive orders being dictatorial. Both BHO and JRB have referred to them that way when convenient, the used them liberally (sorry/not sorry) once they were able to.
Some of JRB’s first actions were executive orders that undid a lot of DJT’s border security measures, for instance.
Is it "No, I have never read a history book" or is it "Yes, I have never read a history book" ?
Near as I can tell you leapt to the arrogant and presumptive position that I had somehow never read a history book.
If it helps I read a A Short History of the World (1922)* H.G.Wells back in about 1974 or so .. and a few hundred others since.
While I appreciate your unsolicited advice here and the spirit in which you offer it it does rather appear to be directed at somebody entirely not me.
Perhaps you're prone to rush into responses without engaging any thought or contemplation?
* That and his The Outline of History weren't too bad for 1920|1930's British PoV History, not definitive nor authorative but not too shabby - Arnold J. Toynbee defended them along the lines of decent for the general public.
Hitler, armed with his newfound celebrity, began furiously campaigning. During the 1920s, Hitler and the Nazis ran on a platform consisting of anti-communism, antisemitism, and ultranationalism. Nazi party leaders vociferously criticized the ruling democratic government and the Treaty of Versailles, while proselytizing their desire to turn Germany into a world power. At this time, most Germans were indifferent to Hitler's rhetoric as the German economy was beginning to recover in large part due to loans from the United States under the Dawes Plan".[1]
" while proselytizing their desire to turn Germany into a world power.", to "Make America great again".
Does this sound familiar to you? I guess you think I'm being hyperbolic but honestly, there is a LOT of similarities with these two stories and the messianic following Trump has.
Why do you think anyone telling the level of lies he tells, and taking the actions he is taking would just joke about "being a dictator for a day". He acts in bad faith, permanently. He lies endlessly. He isn't planning to just be a nice old funny president, that's for certain.
Sorry but I could only assume you're unfamiliar with some basic history if you think Americans need not be concerned or this is some unique situation in history, this is fall of the Roman Empire level stuff, it's happened hundreds of time before. It's started to look like the only outlier here would be if he somehow loses and is fired form his position in the republican party.
You should really read the book “How democracies die” for some insights and signals how it begins.
Maybe it’s because I’m from Europe and there are numerous examples (Germany, Spain, Italy,…) how it starts, but there is no single bone in my body that does not think that Trump has the same traits. (Not that the solution should be violence)
And the problem is that “the shining city upon the hill” is dimming and it’s becoming more and more a bad example for other countries. I never ever would think to live in an age that political parties would question if we should throw basic human rights in the trash while dealing with people we don’t want.
We are descending too deeply into politics for HN, but my take is different.
Trump signals the opposite of a dictator. For example, in Covid he required the States to make their own rules, while the media was punishing him for not making federal rules about masking, etc. Regarding abortion, he was all about giving the States the right to decide, that it should not be federal. Etc. All the European strongmen were doing the opposite - using any excuse they had to increase their authority.
Sure, he talks tough. And sure, the media makes him into a demagogue. But they also take his words out of context (ALOT [1]) and have a storyline to sell.
Methinks the media doth protest too much.
[1]: Even the "dictator for one day", which was said about closing the border [opened by an executive order ("decree") by Biden on "day 1", and which will need an executive order to close again] and energy - and in which his point was that he would NOT use his term authoritatively - is turned into "I will be a dictator, starting from day 1"
For example, in Covid he required the States to make their own rules,
He also suggested injecting bleach and sunlight might wipe out COVID in the body [1]. Federal institutions and health organizations had to warn people not to drink bleach after that, oh man.
In my opinion, any leader who actually cared about solving the problem would try understand basic things better or delegate to someone who does. If anything it proves he is an authoritarian. Do you think Kim Jong Un actually tries to solve any problem for his people, or just bullshits about it to stay in power / popular with those who matter?
You might see it as some type of freedom preserving move to let states do whatever they want, but his actions were about being popular with conservatives. If he actually has his way and is completely unaccountable for anything he does, he wouldn't even done anything at all.
A pandemic is a thing which absolutely requires a federal response, not a "hey Texas you do this, and California, you do that".
Please do not let this guy become king of America, It was fine when he was on the apprentice. He should stay there.
I lived through that bleach moment, back when I was anti-Trump. (I am still not pro-Trump, but think he is given a bad rap.) And I felt then that the media was being incongruous.
> In my opinion, any leader who actually cared about solving the problem would try understand basic things better or delegate to someone who does.
Nobody then knew what Covid was or what we needed to do to combat it. Trump got on the news almost daily and spoke freely about ideas that were being run by him - ideas that needed research or that had promise.
His open up-front style reassured the Nation; I have plenty of family that hated the man but felt reassured by his almost-daily updates, and the fact that he openly admitted that no-one knew yet how this was to be combated, but was willing to share ideas.
He very clearly was spending a lot of time to understand things well, and to share that info instead of "we are the experts so will make decisions without adequate facts and shove it down your throat without explanation" that some other politicians had.
In the video he doesn't tell anyone to drink bleach; he says that perhaps there is a cure based on bleach and research will be done. He says openly that sunlight will not cure Covid, but it may help.
> If he actually has his way and is completely unaccountable for anything he does, he wouldn't even done anything at all.
You have clearly read the media depiction of him. I don't think his record of action implies you are correct.
He clearly did not feel that the solution was to require China-level masking and quarantining - and in retrospect he was probably right. OTOH, his Admin did very well getting out a vaccines, etc. I disagree that we needed a federal response, but whatever - if things were so obvious all States would have had the same general requirements.
Overall, I can quickly point to dictator-type things that Biden has done, but have never heard even one convincing dictator-type thing that Trump has done. (If you are thinking "Jan 6" you should stop reading the media accounts and watch all the relevant footage. I have spent perhaps hundreds of hours watching Trump's speech that day, the J6 commission videos, etc. If there ever was a "big lie", it is that he was trying to stage a coup.)
Any reason I should reread a book that was published some 36 years after I studied politics in university ?
Again, Trump literally said that he woud only be a dictator for a day .. which I personally think sums him up beautifully and encapsulates just about everything you need to know about the man; starting with an over inflated sense of time management.
I blame the US system TBH, it was a shining star 300 years ago but heed was not given to Franklin's advice on tending it with care and avoiding despots.
Maybe it's because I'm from a politic system penned by grandparents who looked at the flaws (as they saw them) of both Washington and Westminster and created a Washminster hybrid (still flawed, but fresher and so far better tended).
Oh come on man. He clearly tried to subvert the last election and came within steps of his VP being killed by a mob he encoded while trying to certify the election. This isn’t just a fear campaign.
It's a fear campaign, and the leaders of the Democratic party know it.
Trump regularly behaves completely irresponsibly and is a terrible loser, and Trump is definitely capable of (intentionally and otherwise) inciting violence, but if you compare the actions of the Democratic leadership to their rhetoric you can clearly see they don't believe the full extent of their own rhetoric about him.
They play up the apocalyptic fears for democracy itself because they know it's the only card they have left after nominating Biden. If they were serious about protecting democracy they'd have kicked him out last year when there was still time to build momentum for an electable candidate, rather than continuing to protect his ego. If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have tried harder to court the moderate voters (who are very courtable right now if anyone cared to try). If they were serious about protecting democracy they would have done anything other than focus exclusively on how terrible Trump is for the last four years, because they know that you don't beat a fire by fanning it. They would have deescalated, but instead they escalated, and they absolutely share responsibility for this.
I remember seeing a comment in HN that went like "So some group of people walked into a government building. Big deal."
I guess, for people whose world view is so malleable that they can look at an attempt to overthrow the government and say "Some people walked into a government building," it makes perfect sense to feel sorry for Trump being demonized by the Left.
What actually constitutes an "attempt to overthrow a government"? Do you think a random mob would be followed by the country as a whole? Do you have so little faith in the government's institutions that they'd just agree to follow them? Do you think the military would?
If an "attempt" is so far flung from reality as to be impossible does it actually make it an attempt? If the mob had been half its size, or a quarter its size, or even one person, is that still an "attempt to overthrow the government"?
Even if they'd literally walked in with their guns blazing and killed every single politician they could find, while it'd cause a ton of chaos, the government would still have elections to replace those people killed and government would continue.
That's an extremely naive statement. Massacres of politicans are rarely followed by everything going calmly back to normal, it's much more likely to be followed by more violence, a crackdown on freedoms and liberties and a slide away from democracy.
> Massacres of politicans are rarely followed by everything going calmly back to normal
That is correct. Massacres of politicans are generally followed by military factions taking control of a country, also generally a military faction that participated in the massacre. Those are coups.
When we have massacre of politicians like the 2011 Norway attacks, we call it a domestic terrorism and throw the guilty into jail, and then everything goes mostly calmly back to normal. The risk that those actually succeed in changing the government of a democracy is thankfully very slim. Obviously they are still very horrible acts.
How is it naive? Americans have allegiance to the Constitution, not to whoever happens to be sitting in the seat of government. This is foundational to thinking of your average American.
And yeah there would probably be some nation-wide violence in response and some laws passed that would push the limits of what the Supreme Court would allow.
It doesn't mean that people would follow the idiots who did the shooting.
Polling says ~70% of Republicans, or over one third of all Americans, think the 2020 election was stolen.[0] That's a lot of people who disagree over what "allegiance to the constitution" means.
Yes institutions and democracy can resist and win against a small group of armed people taking over the physical seats of the government.
But in order to win people have to agree that the act is profoundly antidemocratic and a punishable offence.
It becomes more problematic when a sizable part of the population dismisses it as a non-issue. That very fact raises the level of concern several orders of magnitude. The more people dismiss the level of severity of an act of subversion the less faith you can have that the problem will just fix itself.
So yeah, it's not a big deal, provided that we all agree it is a big deal. Otherwise it becomes a big deal.
Because, due to the actions of a few brave people, they didn't get the chance to use them on any politicians.
Let me turn this around - why lie about such an easy-to-check fact? Even RFK has stopped pushing this, why do you continue when it's trivial to disprove?
Was the plan to run back for the weapons once the politicians had been spotted? They assumed no resistance until that point? Why wouldn't you arm everyone?
As far as what was brought into the building I only see mention of a potential concealed carry handgun or two? The only person shot was a unarmed woman who apparently caused the capitol police to fear for their lives. If they had guns as you claimed then they forgot to use them?
Sort of sounds like they forgot the guns, make sense given so many of them were elderly.
I don't have to know the exact plans to disprove your claim that "they all forgot their guns that day". Some people brought guns, and some people specifically stashed guns close by.
I mean, why do you think guns were stashed close by? Just for fun? Do you do this as a hobby as well?
Really? How often do you stash weapons in close proximity to political events? How many weapons do you usually stash?
I'm sure you are aware that I didn't ask whether you own weapons as a hobby. Since we're interacting in good faith and you're surely not attempting to derail the conversation with unrelated remarks, I'm interpreting your answer as affirmative.
I think you're jumping to a lot of conclusions about what I believe about Biden based on very little evidence. I'm a moderate who feels stuck and lost between two vindictive, hateful and poisonous parties and I just try my best to help people talk to each other and get past hate where I can.
It's so stupid to think of Hitler as some anomaly of evil. It's even stupid to think that of the Nazis as a whole. It was just a freak wave of "Evil" that requires no further explanation and that we're magically incapable of.
It was a response to their environment. Studying the conditions that led to the Nazis is probably going to be more informative than how you'd shoot Hitler and magically avoid the entire problem.
But, hey, that's how all stupid Democrats think about Trump, as some spellcaster who's hypnotized all his voters, which is a colossally miss of why people actually support him and a display of pathetic levels of charity and theory of mind about other people. "Don't you know he's a criminal and a liar?!?!" It's like an NPC talking at you whose programming can't countenance concepts like "protest vote", "humor", or "fear campaigns designed to control you".
Wilson's absence at the league of nations led to the punitive Treaty of Versailles.
As for Trump he does the Gish Gallop, spewing lies so fast you can't argue with him in good faith. He doesn't believe in democracy, and should have never been let near power, ever.
These conversations (this entire thread and all(!) others like it, with perhaps a few exceptional comments here and there) are like listening to my uneducated family members discussing AI at my last family reunion.
Noteworthy: they show no signs that they realize the predicament they are in.
Donald Trump was in charge of the Army in Jan 6th, 2021.
When Donald Trump failed to deploy the National Guard, it was Mike Pence who stepped in and called them in. Donald Trump never lifted a finger to help that day.
Speaking of Nanci Pelosi, have you already forgotten the hammer attack and her would-be assassin?
It's wild how the Overton window has shifted for the worse. Back in 2015-2016, supporting Trump was politically incorrect because of what he theoretically might do. Now after he actually tried to do the thing, the floodgates seem to have opened and all the scum have given each other confidence to come out showing their true colours.
