American Politics

[SkStu]

To be fair, it looks like that tattoo guide predates the current administration!

[Razors left peg]

Trump deploying the National Guard and mobilizing the Marines in LA against the will of the Governor of California is a dangerous and scary reach of powers that is a foresight of whats to come it seems. This weekend there is a military parade in Washington DC where Trump has already said that protestors will be met with massive force. There are protests planned for all over the country this weekend, the Governor of Texas has already mobilized the National Guard there to quell the protests. This is escalating extremely quickly.

ICE are acting like the Gestapo snatching people off the streets, and yet when people exercise their right to protest, like is allowed in any democracy, they are threatened with the Marines on the streets. If Trump is allowed to get away with over ruling the Governor on this I think its fairly clear whats to come. Election time I would expect to see the Military on the streets enforcing Trump running for his 3rd term, which he is already talking about.

This country feels like it is on the precipice right now

[joey B]

And they look like they’re about to start a war with Iran aswell so there’s that!

[pineapple stu]

Isn't that the plot of Threads, the 80s BBC nuclear war film often rated as one of the scariest films ever made?

[Razors left peg]

Isn't that the plot of Threads, the 80s BBC nuclear war film often rated as one of the scariest films ever made?

No idea but the real life stuff right now is scary enough

[Eminence Grise]

A bit similar alright, and Threads might look a bit hoaky with its early '80 SFX but it still has impact. It's online and worth a watch.

Trump is acting like the bully joining a new school - find the biggest kid in the yard and punch him in the face. If there's no retaliation or the kid is softer than he looks, it's a win. A blind man on a galloping horse could have predicted that Trump would pick a fight with a sanctuary city, so he could send in the troops, and the two most prominent are probably LA and New York, but he was never going to go after NY. The last week has the feel of a Fort Sumter moment...

I was chatting with a colleague recently about the parallels between the 1930s and where we are today and what I thought would be short enough list kept expanding...

1. Recent global pandemic: Spanish Flu / Covid 19
2. Junk science: eugenics and Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene) / RFK anti-vax as policy
3. Economic recession and consequences: post-war economies (mass unemployment, debt) Great Depression / 2007 Crash, Covid economic effects
4. Religious bigotry: Antisemitism / Islamophobia
5. Expansionist leader reuniting perceived national or owned territory: Hitler (Czechoslovakia and Austria) / Trump (Panama)
6. Expansionism and imperialist land grabs: Mussolini (Ethiopia) / Trump (Greenland, Canada, not counting Gaza, a property punt)
7. Fascist leader in thrall to an exemplar dictator: Mussolini – Hitler/ Trump – Putin
8. Private political armies: Brownshirts, Blackshirts / Proudboys, Oathkeepers
9. Glorification of criminal activities as legitimate insurrection and lionising of participants, including pardons: Munich Putsch / Capitol Hill riots.
10. State-sanctioned police terrorism against protest: creation of Gestapo / use of ICE
11. New media and propaganda channels: radio and cinema / social media and comms apps
12. Bypassing parliamentary processes: Hitler ruling by decree / US president’s executive orders (so routinely [ab]used it's hard to point the finger at Trump alone)
13. Purge of public services: Hitler (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, 1933) / Musk (DOGE)
14. Purge of universities: removal of non-conforming staff, book-burning / removal of nonconforming staff, programmes that challenge the state closed, restrictions on library stocks, withdrawal of federal funding
15. A handbook for totalitarianism: Mein Kampf / Project 2025

Dark times…

[Eminence Grise]

Just reopened this page and I see I've 1939 thanks. Hopefully not an omen...

[joey B]

The Middle East has been set alight this evening….

[pineapple stu]

A bit similar alright, and Threads might look a bit hoaky with its early '80 SFX but it still has impact. It's online and worth a watch.

Trump is acting like the bully joining a new school - find the biggest kid in the yard and punch him in the face. If there's no retaliation or the kid is softer than he looks, it's a win. A blind man on a galloping horse could have predicted that Trump would pick a fight with a sanctuary city, so he could send in the troops, and the two most prominent are probably LA and New York, but he was never going to go after NY. The last week has the feel of a Fort Sumter moment...

I was chatting with a colleague recently about the parallels between the 1930s and where we are today and what I thought would be short enough list kept expanding...

1. Recent global pandemic: Spanish Flu / Covid 19
2. Junk science: eugenics and Rassenhygiene (racial hygiene) / RFK anti-vax as policy
3. Economic recession and consequences: post-war economies (mass unemployment, debt) Great Depression / 2007 Crash, Covid economic effects
4. Religious bigotry: Antisemitism / Islamophobia
5. Expansionist leader reuniting perceived national or owned territory: Hitler (Czechoslovakia and Austria) / Trump (Panama)
6. Expansionism and imperialist land grabs: Mussolini (Ethiopia) / Trump (Greenland, Canada, not counting Gaza, a property punt)
7. Fascist leader in thrall to an exemplar dictator: Mussolini – Hitler/ Trump – Putin
8. Private political armies: Brownshirts, Blackshirts / Proudboys, Oathkeepers
9. Glorification of criminal activities as legitimate insurrection and lionising of participants, including pardons: Munich Putsch / Capitol Hill riots.
10. State-sanctioned police terrorism against protest: creation of Gestapo / use of ICE
11. New media and propaganda channels: radio and cinema / social media and comms apps
12. Bypassing parliamentary processes: Hitler ruling by decree / US president’s executive orders (so routinely [ab]used it's hard to point the finger at Trump alone)
13. Purge of public services: Hitler (Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, 1933) / Musk (DOGE)
14. Purge of universities: removal of non-conforming staff, book-burning / removal of nonconforming staff, programmes that challenge the state closed, restrictions on library stocks, withdrawal of federal funding
15. A handbook for totalitarianism: Mein Kampf / Project 2025

Dark times…

Yep. A US Senator arrested yesterday in LA for asking questions - not entirely sure of the backdrop (was he entitled to just barge in and enter for example), but it's not a great look.

I know you have social media in there, but you could probably add in the rise of activism and divisive identity politics (including racist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory/white privilege/white fragility). That sort of stuff is just not helpful. Social media also helps this sort of stuff cross borders really quickly, and activists then don't pick up on the fact the message can have lost all meaning in the cultural transfer.

I'd be wary of drawing a parallel between 1930s anti-semitism and current islamophobia by the way. Conservative Islam is racist, homophobic and misogynistic, among other criticisms. It's the core of people's protests when Qatar/Saudi Arabia win major sporting events for example - but there's an extreme hypocrisy when comments about those same cultural issues of Islam in the West are dismissed as islamophobia. There's a serious discussion needed about Islam's place in the West given upcoming demographic changes, and the attempts to stifle that debate by effectively calling it racism also contribute to societal tensions I think.

The Middle East has been set alight this evening….

Christ - Netanyahu makes Putin look like a pussy cat. Sky News' report is headed "This is the moment the Middle East has been waiting for". Echoes of another piece of 1980s nuclear popular culture - "This is what we're waiting for/This is it boys, this is war"

[Eminence Grise]

you could probably add in the rise of activism and divisive identity politics (including racist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory/white privilege/white fragility).

That's a very present day set of circumstances. I take it you mean activism as confined to identity politics not in its abundance where it can have very positive societal impact? I'm not sure what the 1930s equivalent would be of theories that make a hegemonic group feel challenged. Frankfurt School thinking? Anybody with any suggestions?

I'd be wary of drawing a parallel between 1930s anti-semitism and current islamophobia by the way.

The parallel isn't between the religions themselves but the various conditions (social, political, economic etc) that were exploited that made an enemy of a group identifiable by a relgion. Sure, conservative Islam is racist, homophobic and misogynistic: so is conservative Catholicism, and I'm sure many here know Muslims who are about as devout as the average hatch, match and despatch Catholic.
[/QUOTE]

[pineapple stu]

That's a very present day set of circumstances. I take it you mean activism as confined to identity politics not in its abundance where it can have very positive societal impact? I'm not sure what the 1930s equivalent would be of theories that make a hegemonic group feel challenged. Frankfurt School thinking? Anybody with any suggestions?

Yes on identity politics (which is probably the majority of what I was referring to there really). Andrew Doyle (Titania McGrath on Twitter) references the Frankfurt School as a comparison in his book The New Puritans alright.

The parallel isn't between the religions themselves but the various conditions (social, political, economic etc) that were exploited that made an enemy of a group identifiable by a relgion. Sure, conservative Islam is racist, homophobic and misogynistic: so is conservative Catholicism, and I'm sure many here know Muslims who are about as devout as the average hatch, match and despatch Catholic.

I still don't think the parallel fully works. There's no large-scale boycotts of Muslim businesses for example, or denial of rights to own a business. There's no requirements to wear identifying symbols (although ironically they do that themselves), or segregation orders in place at school level. Hitler enacted all of that between 1933 and 1939.

And I think to criticise conservative Christianity, while valid, misses something in its scope. Here's a 2017 survey comparing Islamic and Christian views (or culturally Islamic and culturally Christian views) in Austria for example. 73% of Muslims replied that the laws of the Koran were more important than the laws of Austria, compared to 13% of Christians saying the same about the Bible. 69% of Muslims said they did not want a gay person as a friend and 63% said they could not trust the Jews (compared to 15% and 11% of Christians). Scaled up to the aggregate, this is a particularly concerning view, and I don't think an anecdote about a non-devout Muslim really counters it.

[CraftyToePoke]

Is it just me not spotting him or has JD Vance gone a bit lower profile in recent weeks ?

Y'know, from parading around Greenland rounding up down & outs & drunks to don MAGA hats, then the Signal leaks thing showed he wasn't always or exactly of the same mind as Trump foreign policy wise, especially vitriolic toward Europe in those. Constantly anti aid to Ukraine, made an even bigger show of himself than Trump when they had Zelensky round for tea & biscuits that time, but he was front & centre.

So where is he ?
Can we assume the VP given previous stances wants no part of Netanyahus purge. The one Fox News piece I did find from the other day wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of further entanglement either.

[Razors left peg]

Is it just me not spotting him or has JD Vance gone a bit lower profile in recent weeks ?

Y'know, from parading around Greenland rounding up down & outs & drunks to don MAGA hats, then the Signal leaks thing showed he wasn't always or exactly of the same mind as Trump foreign policy wise, especially vitriolic toward Europe in those. Constantly anti aid to Ukraine, made an even bigger show of himself than Trump when they had Zelensky round for tea & biscuits that time, but he was front & centre.

So where is he ?
Can we assume the VP given previous stances wants no part of Netanyahus purge. The one Fox News piece I did find from the other day wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement of further entanglement either.

He went quiet around the same time as the Elon fallout. Were Elon and JD taking too much attention away from King Taco and had to be moved aside?

[CraftyToePoke]

He went quiet around the same time as the Elon fallout. Were Elon and JD taking too much attention away from King Taco and had to be moved aside?

Not so simple to remove a VP though. Not like the other positions where he can hire & fire. He'd have to go through impeachment proceedings as I understand to remove Vance. So Vance can effectively say what he wants & when. He's choosing not to, for or against.

I think Vance sees the Iran thing as being deeply unpopular with a big chunk of the base who elected them & is personally opposed also. And he will have eyes on needing that base for himself in three & a half years & ideally still in one piece.

So its an interesting tightrope he's gotten himself onto there and his little twinkle toes are doing overtime to stay on it.

[SkStu]

found this interesting

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...b65d5c76e02bc8

On Tuesday morning, the White House posted a livestream of the “Grand Opening Ceremony” of his newest golf club, Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeen, Scotland, on X — the latest in a long line of recent examples of Donald Trump using his public office for personal profit, with U.S. taxpayers covering the bill.

Yet, somehow, even in an era of presidential meme coins and library fund shakedowns, voters in the critical congressional districts see Democrats as the corrupt ones.

Impact Research — the exalted Democratic pollster used by the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama as well as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Governors Association — is out with new research likely to turn the stomachs of the firm’s current and former clients.

The survey of frontline congressional districts, conducted on behalf of the liberal watchdog End Citizens United and shared exclusively with Rolling Stone, found that, across these districts, voters see Democrats as more corrupt than Republicans.

In a rage-blackout-inducing twist, the polling also found that, despite the staggering, previously unfathomable scale of corruption that Trump has brazenly engaged in since re-taking office, the president’s rating on corruption runs eight points ahead of his approval number in the districts surveyed.

... ...

On the question of which party was more corrupt, Democrats edged Republicans out, with 49 percent of voters surveyed regarding the Democratic Party as the more corrupt, 44 percent of respondents identifying the Republican Party that way, and just seven percent choosing both, neither or equally corrupt.

When asked questions like which party could be counted on when it came to “Standing up to special interests,” “Taking on government corruption,” “Bringing needed change to Washington,” or “Working to fix a broken system,” Republicans beat Democrats out on every single order. At least a quarter of voters polled, it’s worth noting, didn’t find either party trustworthy on those four issues.

That image could be a problem for Democrats as they seek to regain control of the House and Senate next year. “If you look all the way back to 2006, whoever ends up winning the messaging battle on ‘Who is most trusted to take on corruption and make the system work for the people?’ is who wins the election,” says Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United. “I think in 2026 that’s what we’re going to see again.”

...[continues]...