American Politics from 2019 on

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Robert Reich:

Friends,
A brief word today one the fifth horrific week of Trump 2.0.
I know how hard it’s been for you. We are watching what we never dreamed possible — the apparent transformation of our democracy into a dictatorship (or, as Trump enjoyed promoting this week, a monarchy).
You may be feeling helpless, powerless, and alone. But you are not. Most Americans are as disgusted by this as you are. Trump and his regime want us to feel helpless, powerless, and alone — because that’s Trump’s way of taking over.
Last week, Trump officially went over to the dark side by aligning himself with Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine war. Trump even said Ukraine started the war, and he called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator.”
By now we all know that when Trump accuses someone of something, he’s projecting himself onto them. Trump is the one who’s becoming a dictator. He’s refusing to follow laws of Congress or obey rulings of the courts — disregarding the two branches that the framers of the Constitution intended to be co-equal checks on a president’s power.
Americans have never particularly liked government. Ronald Reagan told us “the government” was the problem. Bill Clinton said “the era of big government is over.” Trump accuses the “deep state” of being an enemy of the people.
But we cherish our system of government. We believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, and checks and balances, and we believe no person should be above the law. We prefer democracy to dictatorship. Our system was founded in opposition to monarchy.
The genius of our system is that it doesn’t require us to agree on every issue, but only to agree to be bound by decisions that emerge from it. We’re free to take any position on abortion, climate change, immigration, or any other issue, and to vote accordingly — but as participants in a democracy, we accept decisions that emerge from the system even if we dislike them.
We can, of course, work to change the politics that prevail in Washington and state capitals. We’re also free to protest, to engage in civil disobedience. We can even work to change the system through constitutional amendment.
If Trump were just attacking the government, many Americans would be cheering him on. But he’s now attacking our system of government. He’s moving America from democracy to dictatorship (or monarchy).
Although many Americans agree with his policies, most are coming to disagree with his attack on the system. The share of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s presidency has risen to 51% in the latest Reuters poll, compared with 41% right after he took office.
As more and more Americans come to understand his attack on our system of government — rather than the government (or his so-called “deep state”) — his support will continue to melt.
What do you think?

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US reverting to 1880

$US2 million worth of Nike shoes stolen from train

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-25/ ... /104978922

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Senile Biden led to downfall of democracy
https://www.threads.net/@jaketapper/pos ... 3Nn1jhtdZw

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America under Trump is a teenage boy:
"In the United States, manhood in a traditional sense has been distinguished from boyhood and adolescence partly by virtue and obligation: Boys may be boys and teenagers may run around thrill-seeking, but real men are expected to provide for themselves and their families, protect those they love, and demonstrate a kind of moral fortitude that justifies their familial and social authority."

"The masculinity of MAGA, though, is far worse: It rejects commitment and virtue, but still demands power and respect—it is, as Jamelle Bouie put it in The New York Times, “the masculinity of someone unburdened by duty, obligation or real responsibility.”

What does this mean for the nation Trump leads? Lawrence Steinberg, a psychology professor at Temple University was careful, again, to emphasize that he isn’t in the business of diagnosing strangers, and that Trump is not in fact an adolescent boy. But, he said, “if I asked the average person, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to have a 17-year-old running the country?,’ I don’t think most people would say yes. If I said, ‘Do you think it’s a good idea to have an adult who acts like a 17-year-old running the country?,’ I think they’d say that sounds like a pretty bad idea also.”

"Yet a majority of voters cast their ballots for Trump, so all of us are now finding out just how bad of an idea it is."

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ty/681828/

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Co-pilot on crashed Delta flight was DEI hire! None of those in Trump II era
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Con ... light_4819

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He:claim that businesses automatically align with the presiden't party, DEI and all.

Masha Gessen gives several other examples here:

[...] For me, it began before the election, when the owners of The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post decided to pull their papers’ endorsements of Kamala Harris for president. It continued with Mark Zuckerberg remaking Meta to reflect what he called the “cultural tipping point” that was the presidential election; with ABC News handing over millions of dollars in response to one of Trump’s frivolous lawsuits and CBS considering doing the same...

Well, corporations only deal with income. If it brings them favors and income, they do it. Dome corporations dealing with consumers do adjust to a more neutral way. Compare Target and Wal Mart. But...corporations do not have babies. They do not have a view on anything related. Unless they are a Christian craft store.

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Nother big name bails on the US.

James Cameron says US under Trump is ‘horrifying’ as he becomes New Zealand citizen
Titanic and Avatar director says ‘America doesn’t stand for anything if it doesn’t stand for what it has historically stood for’ – and that he prefers New Zealand to Canada

more
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/f ... nd-citizen

[Tero]

How Democracies Die. Orange man bad, but Obama was a dictator too.

My only 5-Star comment about this book was how Levitsky & Zieblatt introduced me to the works of Juan Linz and his book, "The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes." Linz developed a rubric for evaluating a leader's tendency toward becoming a tyrant and (spoiler alert) they used that rubric to warn us about the Orange Man in the White House. In that limited scope, this book brings value to a political scientist's bookshelf. Where they lose credibility is in evaluating Obama on the same scale. They completely ignored Obama's Big-4... IRS scandal, the Benghazi lies, the Fast & Furious and their little habit of spying on American journalists. That lowered my overall score of this book to a 3-Star... but then the killer:

I give this book a 1-Star over their breezy look at how the Jim-Crow South disenfranchised black voters. Only by ignoring the horror of that era, can they keep a straight face when the talk about how Nixon won the South. If free thinkers are ever allowed back to academia, they will agree that the biggest factor to the South's shifting to the right involved corporate migration from costly (and cold) norhtern states to the tax-friendly climate of my own state, NC. Not to digress, but these guys should wear a dunce cap for describing the entire Jim-Crow era as "sufferage restrictions." That's about as biased as calling Apartheid "social restrictions"! For penance, I assign both "scholars to go read David Zucchino's "Wilmington's Lie," and write a new Forward in their paperback edition of this book. Their sweeping past how Democrats used the KKK and Jim-Crow laws to (just about) keep slavery alive for another hundred years, is truly sickening and an affront to those who lived through that era. Though I'm white, my father was badly beaten by the KKK for supporting a black mayor on Raleigh, so this authoritarianism was FAR broader than just "suffrage restrictions."

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/ ... filter-bar

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Trending on social media: US collapse

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[macdoc]

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We need some of this
https://www.threads.net/@24hoursofukrai ... YFq8AZcCTg

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Election was stolen

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Damn ....
Here apparently is the whole movie