I agree with Elixir that they are ignorant blowhards. I do not think this is dismissive. It is simply calling a very weak bluff.
They don’t care about voting. They care about overturning elections and will do so through crooked and illegal procedures and outright violence.
.. and so they will end up in jail, unable to legally vote ever again. I call that a win for society.
So far, our democratic controls, weak and held together with chewing gum and thread, are nonetheless holding. So far. More or less. Sort of.
Yes, but what happens if they overturn elections through out right theft? Suppose in 2024, Arizona and Georgia go for Biden again, and he needs them to win. Then their legislatures overturn the will of the people and appoint electors for Trump. What do Dems do? Just roll over and take it? It may not be the Republicans that start the violence, but the Democrats! And rightfully so!
Yes, but what happens if they overturn elections through out right theft? Suppose in 2024, Arizona and Georgia go for Biden again, and he needs them to win. Then their legislatures overturn the will of the people and appoint electors for Trump. What do Dems do? Just roll over and take it? It may not be the Republicans that start the violence, but the Democrats! And rightfully so!
Bring in the Cyber Ninjas!
Seriously, what you lay out is the likely scenario. Only if Dems can gain in both houses in ‘22 can a full autocratic takeover in 2024 be averted. IMO locking up perpetrators of violent coup attempts is what democracies should do. Elected officials who gave support, aid and comfort to a violent insurrection need to be imprisoned; they’d have been executed not too long ago.
They note that elites are greedy, and that their greed causes a *lot* of trouble. They try to take more of the overall productivity for themselves, they try to ensure that only their descendants get access to valuable resources, like education credentials, and they resist paying taxes, thus depriving governments of needed revenues. "Such selfish elites lead the way to revolutions."We predicted political upheaval in America in the 2020s.
This is why it’s here and what we can do to temper it.
By Jack A. Goldstone and Peter Turchin
September 10, 2020
Almost three decades ago, one of us, Jack Goldstone, published a simple model to determine a country’s vulnerability to political crisis. The model was based on how population changes shifted state, elite and popular behavior. Goldstone argued that, according to this Demographic-Structural Theory, in the 21st century, America was likely to get a populist, America-first leader who would sow a whirlwind of conflict.
Then ten years ago, the other of us, Peter Turchin, applied Goldstone’s model to U.S. history, using current data. What emerged was alarming: The U.S. was heading toward the highest level of vulnerability to political crisis seen in this country in over a hundred years. Even before Trump was elected, Turchin published his prediction that the U.S. was headed for the “Turbulent Twenties,” forecasting a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe.
Then they describe how they collected a variety of measures of well-being and social dysfunction, measures like (median income) / (GDP per capita), (maximum personal wealth) / (GDP per capita), degree of partisanship in Congress, and social and political violence like lynchings, terrorism, and riots.Top leadership matters. Leaders who aim to be inclusive and solve national problems can manage conflicts and defer a crisis. However, leaders who seek to benefit from and fan political divisions bring the final crisis closer. Typically, tensions build between elites who back a leader seeking to preserve their privileges and reforming elites who seek to rally popular support for major changes to bring a more open and inclusive social order. Each side works to paint the other as a fatal threat to society, creating such deep polarization that little of value can be accomplished, and problems grow worse until a crisis comes along that explodes the fragile social order.
They wrote in 2010, Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade | NatureThe reforms introduced during the Progressive Era and clinched in the New Deal reduced inequality and strengthened the economic share of workers; during and after World War II, the country agreed on new tax policies and increased spending on roads and schools.
The 1950s were a golden age of worker progress and party cooperation; even in the 1960s and 1970s, despite serious racial conflicts, the country’s leaders were able to agree on remarkably far-reaching reforms to improve civil rights and environmental protection. However, the 1960s were a high point in our indicators of political resilience; in the 1970s and 1980s, things began to turn, and by the 1990s, a new wave of rising inequality and political divisions was well underway, exemplified by Newt Gingrich’s policies as speaker of the House. In the next two decades, the crisis indicators rose just as sharply as they had in the decades before the Civil War. It was not just that by the late 2010s, overall inequality was rising to the levels not seen since the Gilded Age; median wages in relation to GDP per capita also were falling to historically low levels.
Bill Maher sees it happening too. Here’s his take on how it will go down:
[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/7cR4fXcsu9w[/YOUTUBE]
I think he’s right. 2024 will be violent. The markets will crash. They will come armed this time and in far greater numbers.
... More pliable legislative and judicial branches would help Trump, but he would also have better control of the executive branch. He assembled his first administration from misfit toys and castoffs, staffers who would never have gotten such jobs in another presidency because they were too inexperienced, too incompetent, too abrasive, or too extreme. On his return, he'd do better. Those staffers are now seasoned and more able, and fewer veteran Republicans would remove themselves from consideration next time.
The government lost many able, conscientious civil servants during Trump's presidency, but others calculated that they could weather four years. These people both kept the government functioning when political appointees couldn't, and also pushed to ensure rule of law where Trump tried to erode it. (For their pains, they were labeled the "deep state.") Many of these people would probably quit if Trump came back to power.
Welcome To The ‘Turbulent Twenties’ - NOEMA
They note that elites are greedy, and that their greed causes a *lot* of trouble. They try to take more of the overall productivity for themselves, they try to ensure that only their descendants get access to valuable resources, like education credentials, and they resist paying taxes, thus depriving governments of needed revenues. "Such selfish elites lead the way to revolutions."
Then they describe how they collected a variety of measures of well-being and social dysfunction, measures like (median income) / (GDP per capita), (maximum personal wealth) / (GDP per capita), degree of partisanship in Congress, and social and political violence like lynchings, terrorism, and riots.
They found nearly two complete cycles. There was first a rising phase that peaked in the 1820's, the aptly-named Era of Good Feelings. But that did not last, and in the Jackson era, the US entered into a falling phase. "... political polarization and economic inequality rose sharply in the years leading up to the Civil War. The crisis indicators peaked in the 1860s but did not fall sharply after the war; instead, they remained high until 1920 (the years of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Gilded Age and violent labor unrest, and the anarchists)."
But the US did not collapse or fall apart into hostile coalitions of states, especially not in World War I or the Great Depression.
They wrote in 2010, Political instability may be a contributor in the coming decade | NatureThe reforms introduced during the Progressive Era and clinched in the New Deal reduced inequality and strengthened the economic share of workers; during and after World War II, the country agreed on new tax policies and increased spending on roads and schools.
The 1950s were a golden age of worker progress and party cooperation; even in the 1960s and 1970s, despite serious racial conflicts, the country’s leaders were able to agree on remarkably far-reaching reforms to improve civil rights and environmental protection. However, the 1960s were a high point in our indicators of political resilience; in the 1970s and 1980s, things began to turn, and by the 1990s, a new wave of rising inequality and political divisions was well underway, exemplified by Newt Gingrich’s policies as speaker of the House. In the next two decades, the crisis indicators rose just as sharply as they had in the decades before the Civil War. It was not just that by the late 2010s, overall inequality was rising to the levels not seen since the Gilded Age; median wages in relation to GDP per capita also were falling to historically low levels.
and some years later, a book, Peter Turchin Ages of Discord - Peter Turchin - Peter Turchin Age of Discord II - Peter Turchin
Thus predicting "Turbulent Twenties"
Both budget deficits and significant ill will between those who take such benefits and those whowork enoughhave sufficient income or wealth not to need them have resulted. To what extent do these fuel or moderate the tendency towards instability. Maybe it’s a wash.
There’s no longer such thing as a fair election. If the Republicans think the Democrats can steal an election so easily and leave no evidence, why wouldn’t the Democrats be able to claim that the Republicans can steal an election the same way, especially if it comes out of states with Republican legislatures? The days of reporting results and respecting the outcomes are over. Welcome to the new paradigm that Trump has created. Whatever it is I’m not sure it’s democracy anymore.As pointed out in The Atlantic's article "The Real 2024 Election Nightmare: Trump could win, fair and square" Trump may be restored to power in 2024 even without stealing the election. Winning "fairly" would steal the thunder from the democratic opposition.
Whatever it is I’m not sure it’s democracy anymore.
As it happened, his lawyers filed 60+ lawsuits, only to be rebuffed in nearly every one, sometimes with strong words from the judges. Then he invited his followers to come to DC and then march on the Capitol building to make his Vice President declare him the winner. Pretty much the scenario in the last sentence of my quote.If Trump loses, he is likely to contest the outcome as a “rigged” election. But that action will again lead to massive popular protests, this time to insist that the election results be honored. If Trump again puts federal security forces in the streets, governors may ask their state troopers or even national guard to protect their citizens and defend the Constitution. Or Trump may call on his many armed civilian supporters to defend their “all time favorite president” (as he put it) against so-called “liberal tyranny.”
They were unwilling to do much to challenge the Gilded Age II political consensus. Clintoncare was an unintelligible mess. Obamacare was tinkering around the edges.As a result, American politics has fallen into a pattern that is characteristic of many developing countries, where one portion of the elite seeks to win support from the working classes not by sharing the wealth or by expanding public services and making sacrifices to increase the common good, but by persuading the working classes that they are beset by enemies who hate them (liberal elites, minorities, illegal immigrants) and want to take away what little they have. This pattern builds polarization and distrust and is strongly associated with civil conflict, violence and democratic decline.
At the same time, many liberal elites neglected or failed to remedy such problems as opiate addiction, declining social mobility, homelessness, urban decay, the collapse of unions and declining real wages, instead promising that globalization, environmental regulations and advocacy for neglected minorities would bring sufficient benefits. They thus contributed to growing distrust of government and “experts,” who were increasingly seen as corrupt or useless, thus perpetuating a cycle of deepening government dysfunction.
They protested such things as the "Corn Laws", protectionism for British landlords that kept the price of grain up. (For speakers of American, in Britain, "corn" is grain in general, US corn is "sweetcorn".)The United Kingdom in the 1820s was coming apart. After defeating Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington became the leader of an elite group that sought to maintain the dominance of the traditional landlord elites. As prime minister and then leader of the House of Lords, Wellington sought to ignore, rather than adjust to, the new realities of the booming cities of Birmingham, Manchester and other burgeoning cities of the fast-growing industrial economy. Meanwhile, the workers of these cities demanded political reforms that would give them a voice in Parliament.
Would Britain have a revolution?Nonetheless, Wellington not only refused any legal changes, he sought to clamp down on the agitation for voting reforms. New laws were passed to expand police power and block public assemblies; newspapers were closed; protestors and journalists were jailed. Still, popular agitation continued, and there was even an attempt to assassinate several cabinet ministers.
In effect, Lord Grey threatened to pack the House of Lords.The solution was for leaders to accept the Reform campaign, which sought voting reforms that would reduce the power of the landlords and support the new industrial working class. After the growing confrontations of the 1820s, in 1830, Wellington’s Tories lost control of Parliament, and a Whig leader who supported the Reform campaign, Lord Grey, became prime minister. Grey’s initial efforts to pass a Reform bill were frustrated, and Grey threatened to have the King create enough additional Whig peers to force the bill through. The Tories then relented, and in 1832, Parliament passed the first Reform bill, which expanded the franchise, undermined the clientage of the landed elite and gave representation to the residents of the factory cities. Additional Reform bills followed, allowing Britain, despite continued large-scale workers’ movements, to avoid the revolutions that wracked the continent and emerge as the leading economy of Europe.
Seems like the present-day left.The formula in both cases was clear and simple. First, the leader who was trying to preserve the past social order despite economic change and growing violence was replaced by a new leader who was willing to undertake much-needed reforms. Second, while the new leader leveraged his support to force opponents to give in to the necessary changes, there was no radical revolution; violence was eschewed and reforms were carried out within the existing institutional framework.
Third, the reforms were pragmatic. Various solutions were tried, and the new leaders sought to build broad support for reforms, recognizing that national strength depended on forging majority support for change, rather than forcing through measures that would provide narrow factional or ideologically-driven victories. The bottom line in both cases was that adapting to new social and technological realities required having the wealthy endure some sacrifices while the opportunities and fortunes of ordinary working people were supported and strengthened; the result was to raise each nation to unprecedented wealth and power.
“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday urging further reviews of his debunked claims, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24. It is the single most important things for Republicans to do.”