I know it’s pointless, that there’s nothing worthwhile to be gained by responding to it. I just felt like I could have a little fun with it, that’s all.
The national media have spent the last several weeks insisting that after enduring months of record inflation, unaffordable gas and electric bills, plus a completely avoidable war costing taxpayers billions (and counting), the country is now feeling a new sense of affection for Biden. I’m sure. Now they’re hyping up the Democrat line about some “extreme MAGA ideology” (what?) and “authoritarian leaders” who “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Those are all quotes that Biden slurred his way through last week in Philadelphia, but the sentiment was just as sweetly captured the previous day in a New York Times column by Thomas Edsall. But instead of targeting the unnamed yet ever-so-fearsome “MAGA Republicans,” Edsall and a round of scholars went after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, aka God’s Chosen One.
“The fact that Ron DeSantis … is favored to win re-election is a clear warning to those worried about declining support for democratic institutions and values in the United States,” wrote Edsall.
Should DeSantis win reelection, he wrote, it would indicate that voters in a major swing state “will tolerate, if not actively embrace, the abuse of traditional political norms by domineering leaders.” It’s unclear what Edsall meant by “abuse of traditional political norms,” but he noted that the governor “has made no secret of his intent to use executive authority to the fullest extent.”
If an elected official’s use of authority “to the fullest extent” is “the abuse of traditional political norms,” it would be interesting to know what Edsall makes of Biden unilaterally spreading hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt among taxpayers, including many who never went to college and many who had already paid off their own. It would be interesting to know what he makes of Biden’s failed attempt at coercing millions of workers to inject themselves with an experimental drug.
Those weren’t an abuse of traditional political norms. Those were bold progressive actions!
Edsall went on to cite some of DeSantis’s more widely known achievements in office, including his crackdown on public schools that were teaching children that to be white is a problem; punitive measures he took against corporations that get tax breaks and then get mouthy about politics; and his removal of a state attorney general who openly said he would not adhere to a Supreme Court ruling.
That’s the real problem, see. DeSantis has actually accomplished things, running the Sunshine State less like your standard-issue Vichy GOPe collaborationist and more like a for-real, hand-to-God Goldwater conservative—governing as if the US Constitution was still extant; as if liberty and limited government really, truly matter; as if he believes the relationship between the sovereign States and FederalGovCo needs to be re-calibrated and brought back into the proper balance.
No wonder Leftard shitweasels like this guy hate him so fanatically.
This is where Edsall introduced his trusty gang of “experts” to make the case that despite DeSantis having broad appeal among the people who would have to hand him any higher office he has designs for — we call this an “election” — such a victory would mean certain doom for democracy.
T’is a consummation devoutly to be wished, seeing as how we AREN’T a “democracy,” never HAVE been, and were never INTENDED to be—democracy being a system cordially and correctly loathed by the Founders as “mob rule,” nothing more nor less than the prelude to national disaster.
And this is where the Opposite Rule—ie, whatever the Democrats are denouncing Republicans most hysterically for is exactly what they themselves are doing—kicks into full effect. For instance:
Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, told Edsall that what would worry him about a “Trump Republican” like DeSantis in office is “the extreme politicization and abuse of federal government power, the targeting of political enemies and the mobilization and emboldening of the violent, well-armed, extremist fringe of Trump followers.”
Gee, none of THAT sounds at all familiar.
UCLA law professor Richard Hansen was then allowed by Edsall to dream up a scenario where former president Trump runs for a second term and “fails to win legitimately but finds a route to being installed as president,” which, according to Handsen, would mean the United States “ceases to be a democracy.”
Nope, nothing familiar there either.
The piece went on like this at length, with various scholars and professors consulting their dream diaries about what a future second term for Trump or first term for DeSantis would mean.
—“Certain groups would be more vulnerable. These include historically marginalized groups, who might find new restrictions on voting. Or members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community who are treated as second-class citizens.”
Actually, I’d gladly settle for not being forced to prostrate myself at their feet and worship them as if they were Morally Superior Beings anymore, myself. As for new restrictions on voting, we’re currently in most dire need of that.
—“One might imagine the [Republican Party] in power during unified government would seek to dramatically expand the number and size of the federal courts, then fill these new positions.”
Um, whut? Who and when the hell has anyone mentioned anything like that?
—“There could also be soft or harder controls over the media. There would be tremendous uncertainty over what a postdemocracy period would look like in the United States.”
Again: not a democracy, jackass. And since the media insists that we all agree to turn a blind eye to their transparently-partisan politicking for the shitlib agenda entire, yeah, I’d say they of right ought to be treated as the propagandists they in fact are. Which of necessity means harder controls on them, which as far as I’m concerned can’t be imposed fast enough.
Edsall concluded his piece by asserting that whether DeSantis wins a second term as governor, it will be “a referendum on democracy, and the odds do not look good.”
Eh, not so much. A referendum on DeSantis, absolutely. Heck, I’ll be big about this and call it a referendum on Democrats if you like. Whatevs, Poindexter.
That we got from Point A — DeSantis is an exceptionally skilled and popular policy executive — to Point B — DeSantis as president would turn America into an authoritarian hellscape — should leave everyone reading this with severe neck pain from straining to find the logic.
To call this talk “divisive” is to give it way too much credit. This is panicked.
It is no such thing. What it is, in truth, is a pep talk, of a piece with Biden’s historic Satanic Speech. They’re preaching to the choir, motivating, inciting, and inspiring their Leftist base to aspire to greater heights of derangement and blank-brained hate than ever before attained. This is how fascist dictators have always prepared their peoples for war, since the days of Hitler and Mussolini. Not that Our Side dares to take the explicit threats being made against us as unserious, without danger, or purely as a matter of rhetoric alone. The other way in which they’re a lot like their ideological forefathers: they’ll really fucking do it, and fully intend to.
The Media are merely preparing us for the truth that the upcoming election will be every bit as corrupt as that of 2020.
I think you are right.
However, I encourage everyone to vote. Short of shooting it’s our only chance. If the level of cheating has to rise to a wave of red voters it will become obvious even to the less intelligent. Knowing will be useful when the sides are chosen.
The marxist cabal wishes to suppress our vote in order to hide the cheating.
Agreed. At best we at least send a message that we hate what they’re doing. Also, I don’t want them either (a) gaslighting us “alt right loons” that they lose because we choose bad candidates and tell people not to vote or (b) that the Dems are beating us fair and square.
We need to get people to wake up. The time for choosing sides is upon us.