Bill Kristol follows a host of erstwhile Republican officialdom to (at least until November 4) flee the GOP.
Both belatedly realized that the Republic Party is irredeemable. That's bad but the truth is worse.
The New York Times editorial cited earlier was titled, "What Will Finally Defeat Donald Trump?" This won't, that won't, the editorial board goes on.
"So what will?" One more not.
One more passive avoidance: "anxiety is rightly running high."
Then, the denouement,
The task ahead for party leaders is ensuring that voters appreciate that the best chance to beat Mr. Trump is a unity of effort from political tribes that share far more in common than what divides them.
So the Times editorial board is out of ideas.
Russia's disinformation (the term itself is Russian in origin, dezinformatsiya) campaign delivered the presidency to the Kremlin through Trump. Russian dezinformatsiya goes back to Stalin's reign of terror. It has been repeatedly demonstrated to be so successful that it is the strategy of choice for dictators and authoritarians everywhere. So successful that McKay Coppins wrote in The Atlantic that even for him the Trump billion dollar effort for 2020 was, at times, so "disorienting" that "truth itself felt more and more difficult to locate." So successful that Western scholars have come up with their own term for it, "censorship through noise."
The truth is worse than the GOP being Soviet occupied territory because this was a democracy. The truth is worse because a coup did not oust the Bush's, Bill Kristol and George Will, and Mitt Romney, and, and, and from GOP leadership. These guys did:
Real Murican voters were seeded with dezinformatsiya, they never was too good with that sifting the wheat from the chaff stuff anywho, and, to borrow for about the one thousandth time from Olivia Nuzzi, "They don't care!", they'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat.
Friends and enemies, this is the truth: Trump is going to get reelected. Those guys, 63,000,000 of their closest American friends, and a critical few more in the +7 495 dialing code will see to that.
The truth is that the New York Times editorial board, Democrats, Never Trumpers, and an overwhelming majority of American voters are not even asking the right question. Trump cannot be defeated by democratic means.
He is the product of foreign, extra-democratic, electoral manipulation, of "censorship through noise." Extra! to the NYT ed board: Those guys don't hear you, you have been censored and they have been cocooned from you by the noise of dezinformatsiya.
He is the product of foreign, extra-democratic, electoral manipulation, of "censorship through noise." Extra! to the NYT ed board: Those guys don't hear you, you have been censored and they have been cocooned from you by the noise of dezinformatsiya.
The truth is worse because if all of that is true, then why bother? Why vote in an election that is rigged? The truth is (the truths are) that the election is rigged and that dezinformatsiya intends you to believe that the election is rigged! So you give up. You don't vote, you just bend over.
Democracy is a closed circulatory system that delivers political legitimacy to all parts of the organism. When the blood runs pure the political organism is vital, healthy, and legitimate. But when a poison invades the bloodstream the democratic circulatory system delivers it faithfully as well to all parts of the body politic. The hard truth is that democracy knows no cure for the ills of democracy other than more democracy. Democracy made the Nazi Party the largest in the Reichstag in 1932. What does democratic theory say you should do when an illegitimate is elected president? Impeach him. How is that done? By representative democratic vote. It's circular reasoning.
When democracy is poisoned the organism is at least transformed into something different; weakened or perhaps killed altogether. A one-time poisoning might be enough to do the trick. McKay Coppins : "the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable." The truth is we were invaded. The truth is we didn't realize the extent of the invasion at first. The truth is we did not know how to repel the invasion. We didn't postpone or cancel the election to thwart the invasion. When President Obama said in November, 2016,"The fate of the Republic rests on your shoulders," it was true, the fate of the Republic was at stake. His defense to the existential threat, though, "rests on your shoulders," the shoulders of voters, lol. The only solution to problems of democracy is more democracy.
When democracy is poisoned the organism is at least transformed into something different; weakened or perhaps killed altogether. A one-time poisoning might be enough to do the trick. McKay Coppins : "the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable." The truth is we were invaded. The truth is we didn't realize the extent of the invasion at first. The truth is we did not know how to repel the invasion. We didn't postpone or cancel the election to thwart the invasion. When President Obama said in November, 2016,"The fate of the Republic rests on your shoulders," it was true, the fate of the Republic was at stake. His defense to the existential threat, though, "rests on your shoulders," the shoulders of voters, lol. The only solution to problems of democracy is more democracy.
The truth is we were, at least, transformed on 11/8/16. We are a different country now, America 2.0 is my term for it. "We are all Democrats now," brave, conscientious Bill Kristol wrote a week ago. The truth is we are all men and women without a country now.
The $63 million question is what to do now, what do you do with the 63,000,000 Fifth Columnists who birthed IllegiTrump? I believe we need the political equivalent of a blood transfusion. What can a "political blood transfusion" possibly the fuck mean? That extra-democratic means must be used to defeat the extra-democratic poison that the invader introduced; that we have to rid the body politic of those 63,000,000 poisoned seeds. A blood-letting. A "political blood transfusion" means, Trump and his supporters have practiced it, predicted it, threatened it: civil war.
The $63 million question is what to do now, what do you do with the 63,000,000 Fifth Columnists who birthed IllegiTrump? I believe we need the political equivalent of a blood transfusion. What can a "political blood transfusion" possibly the fuck mean? That extra-democratic means must be used to defeat the extra-democratic poison that the invader introduced; that we have to rid the body politic of those 63,000,000 poisoned seeds. A blood-letting. A "political blood transfusion" means, Trump and his supporters have practiced it, predicted it, threatened it: civil war.
