I don't think a good faith belief that Trump is a threat to democracy is defensible if, as I believe, it is demonstrably false. Those holding this belief use Trump's antics as a loser to foretell his actions as a winner. There's no grounds for this position. Au contraire, if we judge the future by the past. When Trump was president inflation was subdued, mortgage rates made housing affordable, minority groups enjoyed their best employment ever, the southern border was secure, the Russian pipeline was shut down while the Canadian pipeline was greenlighted, the delivery of liquified gas to Europe was not shut down, we didn't bug out of Afghanistan in a way that marooned citizens and friends by the tens of thousands and probably induced Putin to invade Ukraine, we had the Abraham accords rather than war in the Middle East, the president did not indict Hillary Clinton or otherwise use the justice system or social media to punish opponents or interfere with an election, to name a few things. Nothing here that smacks of threat to democracy. Jim Dueholm
Paul, I love reading your columns, and your lawyerly analysis. But II think this is a very near-sighted analysis.
There is no reasonable comparison between Trump's expressions of outrage and the declaration of Biden, Harris, Schumer, Pelosi, AOC, Goldman, Waters, et al.
Let me give you a literary analogy to think about: Trump = Goldstein. Trump is the most dehumanized character in American politics since, perhaps, Richard Nixon. Orwell's creation of the Goldstein character was meant to reveal how fascist regimes need to dehumanize their enemies to distract the population from an unjust state. With Trump, the left has created its own Goldstein, paired with their own J6 Reichstag Fire, drilled home with two minutes of hate conducted every 24 hours on MSNBC, CNN and Morning Joe.
The sheer volume of Trump=Hitler, Trump is an existential threat, etc., on every major media outlet, by supposedly reputable anchors, by activists, and on social media by influencers dwarfs the sum total of Trump's negative comments towards Harris and Biden as the sun does the moon.
Have you forgotten Kathy Griffin broadcasting a bloody Trump head from a fake decapitation?
Have you forgotten Joe Biden's red-lit speech in front of Liberty Hall, seemingly inspired by Leni Riefenstahl, in which he declared not just Trump, but "MAGA Republicans" as a threat to "our democracy®" with US Marines standing guard in the background?
Trump's declaration that Harris's policies are "destroying the country" is not incitement of anything. It was and is nothing more than an expression of outrage and I'm glad he said it. I can pull into a truck stop anywhere from here to Georgia and hear the exact same thing. And he is right: letting 20M unknown and unvetted people stream into the country and launching a project to make them into citizens, igniting the first great inflation since the late 70s, condoning genital mutilation as a form of therapy, teaching school kids that the country was founded on slavery and there is such a thing as "whiteness," etc., is in fact, destroying our country.
Trump didn't say that Biden's supporters are a threat to the country; Biden and the democrats have, over and over again. Hear this: they are talking about me - and you! There is a big difference between outrage and the "othering" (to borrow a humanistic term) of half of the American population as traitors.
I have learned that whenever progressives say "our democracy," they are speaking literally: the "we" is limited to those who run the machinery of the federal government. Our democracy is theirs, not ours - until we defeat them. This is what Elon Musk meant when he said, "The woke mind virus must be eradicated, or nothing else matters."
The only person who stands between progressives and their goal of single-party rule, right now, is Donald Trump. And their rifles are trained on him.
Excellent comment! Have you considered being a regular contributor? Perhaps you and Paul should discuss it. You were not inflammatory and delivered a very thoughtful and well reasoned position.
What I believe is that if this is what we have been reduced to and the best our parties can offer, our country may not survive in its present form for that much longer.
I don't think a good faith belief that Trump is a threat to democracy is defensible if, as I believe, it is demonstrably false. Those holding this belief use Trump's antics as a loser to foretell his actions as a winner. There's no grounds for this position. Au contraire, if we judge the future by the past. When Trump was president inflation was subdued, mortgage rates made housing affordable, minority groups enjoyed their best employment ever, the southern border was secure, the Russian pipeline was shut down while the Canadian pipeline was greenlighted, the delivery of liquified gas to Europe was not shut down, we didn't bug out of Afghanistan in a way that marooned citizens and friends by the tens of thousands and probably induced Putin to invade Ukraine, we had the Abraham accords rather than war in the Middle East, the president did not indict Hillary Clinton or otherwise use the justice system or social media to punish opponents or interfere with an election, to name a few things. Nothing here that smacks of threat to democracy. Jim Dueholm
Paul, I love reading your columns, and your lawyerly analysis. But II think this is a very near-sighted analysis.
There is no reasonable comparison between Trump's expressions of outrage and the declaration of Biden, Harris, Schumer, Pelosi, AOC, Goldman, Waters, et al.
Let me give you a literary analogy to think about: Trump = Goldstein. Trump is the most dehumanized character in American politics since, perhaps, Richard Nixon. Orwell's creation of the Goldstein character was meant to reveal how fascist regimes need to dehumanize their enemies to distract the population from an unjust state. With Trump, the left has created its own Goldstein, paired with their own J6 Reichstag Fire, drilled home with two minutes of hate conducted every 24 hours on MSNBC, CNN and Morning Joe.
The sheer volume of Trump=Hitler, Trump is an existential threat, etc., on every major media outlet, by supposedly reputable anchors, by activists, and on social media by influencers dwarfs the sum total of Trump's negative comments towards Harris and Biden as the sun does the moon.
Have you forgotten Kathy Griffin broadcasting a bloody Trump head from a fake decapitation?
Have you forgotten Joe Biden's red-lit speech in front of Liberty Hall, seemingly inspired by Leni Riefenstahl, in which he declared not just Trump, but "MAGA Republicans" as a threat to "our democracy®" with US Marines standing guard in the background?
Trump's declaration that Harris's policies are "destroying the country" is not incitement of anything. It was and is nothing more than an expression of outrage and I'm glad he said it. I can pull into a truck stop anywhere from here to Georgia and hear the exact same thing. And he is right: letting 20M unknown and unvetted people stream into the country and launching a project to make them into citizens, igniting the first great inflation since the late 70s, condoning genital mutilation as a form of therapy, teaching school kids that the country was founded on slavery and there is such a thing as "whiteness," etc., is in fact, destroying our country.
Trump didn't say that Biden's supporters are a threat to the country; Biden and the democrats have, over and over again. Hear this: they are talking about me - and you! There is a big difference between outrage and the "othering" (to borrow a humanistic term) of half of the American population as traitors.
I have learned that whenever progressives say "our democracy," they are speaking literally: the "we" is limited to those who run the machinery of the federal government. Our democracy is theirs, not ours - until we defeat them. This is what Elon Musk meant when he said, "The woke mind virus must be eradicated, or nothing else matters."
The only person who stands between progressives and their goal of single-party rule, right now, is Donald Trump. And their rifles are trained on him.
Excellent comment! Have you considered being a regular contributor? Perhaps you and Paul should discuss it. You were not inflammatory and delivered a very thoughtful and well reasoned position.
What I believe is that if this is what we have been reduced to and the best our parties can offer, our country may not survive in its present form for that much longer.