"Trump is lying. His sweaty, small fingerprints are all over Project 2025, its architects, and its extremist agenda that will create a Trump dictatorship under the guise of a sham democracy. The only reason he’s backtracking is because his ally threatened the majority with a revolution. Unfortunately, that doesn’t go over well with most Americans especially during Independence Day."
"So yes, Donald Trump is a profound threat to democracy. But he can’t destroy it without the cooperation of the six conservative justices on the Supreme Court. And they’re already on the case."
"if a Democratic president did commit crimes, the Supreme Court would handle it. This Calvinball Court would find an exception, a loophole, a heretofore hidden penumbra that allows them to clothe in the language of legal authority the real rule: Our side gets to do what it wants, and your side doesn’t."
"Journalist Jennifer Schulze of Heartland Signal noted today that as of 8:00 this morning, the New York Times had published 192 pieces on Biden’s debate performance: 142 news articles and 50 opinion pieces. Trump was covered in 92 stories, about half of which were about the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling."
"The New York Times has run 192 stories about Biden’s debate performance and only 6 about Project 2025, according to media watch groups, since Thursday night."
"Although Trump has frequently slurred his words or trailed off while speaking and repeatedly fell asleep at his own criminal trial, none of the pieces mentioned Trump’s mental fitness."
Rebecca Solnit asks why the pundit class is so desperate to torpedo Biden in the same way it did to Hillary when she ran against Trump. People so "utterly convinced of their own ironclad rationality and objectivity" at the same time they have no clue about their emotional lives, biases, and motives….
"We are deciding if this nation has a future as a more-or-less democratic Republic this November, and on that rides the fate of the earth when it comes to acting on climate change. If the US falters at this decisive moment in the climate crisis, it will drag down everyone else’s efforts. Under Trump, it will."
Part of the answer to the good question R. Solnit asks is that the pundit class is overweeningly arrogant, convinced of its own objectivity and neutrality when it's wildly the opposite of objective and neutral. I think corporate media mavens, who want to position themselves as powerbrokers, imagine that the fascism the Republicans promise to bring us will be fascism-lite for them, though hapless others will be hurt.
"But the shocking supreme court decisions this summer and the looming threat of authoritarianism have gotten little ink and air, compared to the hue and cry about Biden’s competence. …
The electorate votes based on how they understand the situation and evaluate the candidates. That is, of course, in large part shaped by the media, … and the media is right now campaigning hard for a Democratic party loss. The other term for that is a Republican victory."
The movers and shakers of Germany as Hitler rose to power, including its media mavens, had the same fantasy: we can control Hitler, and the ones who get hurt will, of course, be the usual victims. Not us.
Then Hitler and the Nazis quickly proved them wrong and their arrogance was exposed as colossal blindness, and they found out that EVERYONE gets hurt when you open the door to fascism.
So now in the space of a week or so, we've gone from the head of Trump's Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, making a menacing statement about the revolution his sort are leading being bloodless if "the left" allows that, to MAGA North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson saying that some folks need killing.
But the problem, our media mavens tell us is Biden — not Trump and his followers.
"In the political climate that now exists, with authoritarian governments on the rise globally and a wave of right-wing populists winning elections in the world’s dwindling number of democracies, fresh comparisons to the rise of fascism a century ago are no longer irrelevant nor irresponsible, but, rather, are urgently needed."
“Fascism not only exists in America, but it has become formidable and needs only a Duce, a Fuehrer, an organizer, and a loosening of the purse strings of those who gain materially by its victory, to become the most powerful force threatening the Republic.”
"[John Roberts'] once-proud assertions of 'institutionalism' have acceded to the possibility of a second Trump term by, essentially, leaving open many questions to a post-November determination. In case after case, the court has whispered, 'We’ll hold off to see whether Donald Trump finds his way back into office,' even as the justices acted — repeatedly — to make that possible, if not more likely."
"This isn’t a lid coming off a pandora’s box. It’s a plot, and it’s an evil one. …
With the Dobbs decision and this week’s move to grant Trump immunity, this Supreme Court is mid-stride on its way to bringing about the end of our democracy."
"Every legal expert who has commented on the Roberts immunity decision has pointed out that immunizing a president is found nowhere in the Constitution. In the common legal phrase, Roberts made it up out of whole cloth. He created a new class of American citizens with a population of one, the president, and gave him powers not found in the Constitution, greater powers than any president has ever had."
“Trump v. United States is one of the most, if not the most, authoritarian court opinions I have ever read in U.S. law. It has a theory that in order for presidents to be able to exercise their responsibilities, they must have absolute power within this certain sphere that can’t be held to criminal account — that’s an unprecedented conclusion.”
"The Roberts supermajority has taken a radical course where the judiciary is increasingly the final arbiter not just on the law but on the facts, the interpretation of those facts, the application of those facts in given situations, and the technical, scientific, and professional implications of those facts in the real world.
Interested in building a better world and standing in solidarity with others who share that goal. For biographical information, please see https://toad.social/@wdlindsy/109539508828689842 "Writing is the way I fight." ~ James Cone #solidarity #democracy #HumanRights #LGBTQ