Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar
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To cheer you up on a Friday
And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.
The pattern is textbook, if you learn anything from history: an economic crisis resulting in mass unemployment; the pent-up psychological disorders a long period of lockdown can and will unleash; a failure of nerve on the part of liberals to defend the values and institutions of liberal democracy, and of conservatives to keep their own ranks free of raw demagogues and bigots. But critically: a growing sense of disorder and violence and rioting as simply the background noise; and a sense that authorities do not have the strength or the stomach to restore order. What most people want in that kind of nerve-wracking instability is a figure who will come in and stamp it out. In Trump, we have someone who would happily trample any liberal democratic norm to do it. And the left seems to be all but begging him to do it — if only to prove them right.
A long time ago, I was mocked for saying that I believed that the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy. But this is where we are. There is no place for liberal debate or dissent, just competing mobs deploying propaganda, intimidation and mutual racial hatred. Norms are trashed, from the shameful cooptation of national monuments for partisan purposes, to violating the privacy and peace of ordinary citizens because they are not in the ranks of agitators. Liberals are now illiberal; conservatives are revolutionaries. The Republican convention we are witnessing makes no pretense of even publishing a platform — all to demonstrate total and unfailing fealty to the leader whose own family is now assumed to succeed him. What about this pattern of events do we not already understand?
Yes, we still have an election. But barring a landslide victory for either party, it will be the beginning and not the end of the raw struggle for power in a fast-collapsing republic. In a close race, Trump will never concede, and if he is somehow forced to, he will mount a campaign from the outside to delegitimize the incoming president, backed by street-gangs and propaganda outfits. If Biden wins, we may have one last chance for the center to hold — and what few hopes I have rest on this.
It’s always something.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
A long time ago, I was mocked for saying that I believed that the election of Donald Trump was an extinction-level event for liberal democracy. But this is where we are.
How convenient that the petulant tantrum the left has thrown in response to Trump, is Trump's fault. And that tantrum is largely justified by ideas like "Donald Trump is an extinction level event for liberal democracy". If you think that, I mean if you honestly think that, it actually follows that reasonable responses will include destruction of the liberal democracy. All to save it, you see.
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Meanwhile:
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Our current social unrest has to do with white cops shooting black people
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Donald Trump has nothing to do with that
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Our pop cultural response to those occurrences is irrational, destructive, and encouraged/condoned by the political side that also happens to hate Donald Trump and considers him to be an existential risk to our liberal democracy.
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Hogwash. This nonsense started with increasingly radical actions by the left during Bush II. It ratcheted up before Trump even took office and Hillary, the heir apparent, did not receive her due.
The right are not the ones trying to destroy everyone whose does not toe the line.
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The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much.
Where has "the establishment right" tolerated the rioting, looting, burning and assaults by members of the right?
I'll wait for examples, but I won't hold my breath.
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The link.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-trap-the-democrats-walked-right
And, though
Sarah Palin's gynecologistSullivan does, indeed, say "this is very Weimar," the title of his essay is "The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into."Remember the pivotal moment earlier this summer when the New York Times caved to its activist staff and fired James Bennet? It’s no accident this was over an op-ed that argued that if New York City would not stop the rioting in the streets, the feds should step in to restore order. For the far left activists who now control that paper, the imposition of order was seen not as an indispensable baseline for restoring democratic debate, but as a potential physical attack on black staffers. They saw restoring order within the prism of their own critical race ideology, which stipulates that the police are enforcers of white supremacy, and not enforcers of the rule of law in a liberal society. It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd.
It is just as true, of course, that the president has shown a similarly cavalier and even more cynical attitude to urban unrest. In the case of the protests outside the White House earlier this summer, he deployed law enforcement so crudely and counter-productively that he seemed to want to inflame it still further for political reasons. He’s more than usually aware that chaos is always good for authoritarians, and has delighted in excoriating Democratic mayors and governors for tolerating it. He has also sent signals to law enforcement that he supports abuse of suspects, and ignored the real threat of white nationalism in police and military ranks, and of terroristic white nationalist movements in general.
But Biden, let’s face it, is weak and a party man to his core, and has surrendered to the far left at almost every single turn — from abortion to immigration to race. You’d be a fool I think, to believe he could resist their fanaticism in office, or that if he does, he won’t be toast in a struggle to succeed him. He remains the only choice in this election. But on the central question of civil order, he blew it last week and so did the Dems. Biden needs a gesture of real Sister Souljah clarity to put daylight between him and the violent left. He has indeed condemned the riots, with caveats. But at some point, the caveats have to go. And the sooner the better.
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"My pronouns are FA/FO." - Mik, 2024
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@Mik said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
Yep. From the day after the election.
Remember the outrage when Rush talked about Obama's election, saying, "I hope he fails?"
I do.
The day after Trump's election, we have Olbermann closing his show with the comment: "Resist."
Yeah. How about that.
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And as for "Donald Trump is an extinction level event for liberal democracy" -
we are 4 years in and still waiting. (Frankly, my hesitancy to vote for him the first time around was because I thought he was a extinction level event for the US if not the world). #nuclearstrike
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" . . . a failure of nerve on the part of liberals to defend the values and institutions of liberal democracy, and of conservatives to keep their own ranks free of raw demagogues and bigots . . . a growing sense of disorder and violence and rioting as simply the background noise; and a sense that authorities do not have the strength or the stomach to restore order."
"Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much."
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I downloaded the book The Second Civil War by Ronald Brownstein. Probably won't get to it for awhile yet, but here's the writeup from Amazon:
In The Second Civil War, respected political commentator Ronald Brownstein diagnoses the electoral, demographic, and institutional forces that have wreaked such change over the American political landscape, pulling politics into the margins and leaving precious little common ground for compromise. The Second Civil War is not a book for Democrats or Republicans but for all Americans who are disturbed by our current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to understand it—and move beyond it.
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@Kincaid said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
And as for "Donald Trump is an extinction level event for liberal democracy" -
we are 4 years in and still waiting.
The left is only too happy to attempt to oblige. They know their rank and file will blame everything on Trump anyway. They have carte blanche in their own echo chamber. Really, just ask them.
Education is extremely important.
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@Horace said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
The left is only too happy to attempt to oblige.
And the politicians supporting the left have been silent on the destruction, violence, looking until polls demonstrated that it's the wrong position because it might hurt their prospects.
<insert Forest Gump "And just like that...." meme here>
Talk about "awokening," LOL.
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You reap what you sow.
Since the 2000 election, the country has been headed towards the abyss. The Left is magnitudes worse than the right, although both have their share of nuts. It just seems the Leftist nuts are becoming more mainstream for their political persuasion.
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
The Left is magnitudes worse than the right, although both have their share of nuts.
Again, I ask: Point me to the mayhem, riots, destruction, personal attacks, and intimidation that the right has encouraged and performed in the last 4 months.
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I should have quoted a smaller segment. I was thinking we’d have the new-to-us conversation about the Weimar comparison, not the age old conversation about blame.
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It's understandable that having enthusiastically participated in the tribal response that is largely to blame for the mayhem, you would find the blame game tiresome, and prefer to engage in a more zoomed out academic discussion of the proceedings. But if you would like to expound on your thoughts re: the Weimar comparison, you are welcome to.
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Nah.
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@jon-nyc said in Andrew Sullivan: This is very Weimar:
I should have quoted a smaller segment. I was thinking we’d have the new-to-us conversation about the Weimar comparison, not the age old conversation about blame.
The problem is that Sullivan equates the positions of the new left with the extreme right, when that's a false equivalence.
As TuCa said, about 10 minutes ago, "When is the last time a bunch of Trump supporters looted a Target, attacked you at a restaurant, or torched a police station."
Once you can answer that question, we can talk about Weimar comparisons and the tribes. If you can't then it's a false equivalence at best, and a bald-faced lie at worst.
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Here's jon next door:
Politically, at least, I post on broadly the same two themes in both forums. One is something like 'Trumpism is a danger to the republic and must be stopped' and the other is something like 'The post-liberal left is a danger to the republic and must be stopped'. In each forum everyone seems to like one or the other topic, only a tiny handful seem genuinely sympathetic to both.
Since he's slipped into princess jon mode in this thread, that is probably the most we'll get from him regarding his opinion that yes, the left and right are equally bad right now.
