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Created
Thu, 07/11/2024 - 00:00
I don’t have any idea Donald Trump has once more won the presidency. It’s as shocking as it was the first time and even more terrifying. We should have seen this coming from all the polling which showed that the race was tied nationally and in the swing states. Of course it was possible. But I think a lot of us, myself included, once again fell for the illusion that America is too fundamentally decent to elect someone like Donald Trump. We were wrong. In 2016 that starry-eyed naivete led to the deep despair that we all felt when Trump eked out a win over Hillary Clinton. And in 2020 we believed that dream was vindicated when Joe Biden turned the tables and eked out a win over Trump. And here we are again, caught in a swirling vortex from which we can’t seem to escape. The funny thing is that until recently I had assumed that the contest was going to be political trench warfare again and the result would be very close. It has seemed to me for a while that we’re in an ongoing war between two coalitions that can be defined as pro-democracy and anti-democracy and they have roughly equal political strength.
Created
Wed, 06/11/2024 - 19:58
To be ‘analytical’ and ‘logical’ is something most people find recommendable. These words have a positive connotation. Scientists think more deeply than most other people because they use ‘logical’ and ‘analytical’ methods. In dictionaries, logic is often defined as “reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity” and ‘analysis’ as having to do […]
Created
Wed, 06/11/2024 - 19:43
Well, as I write this late in the Kyoto afternoon, Donald Trump has just made a victory speech after an incredible day of election outcomes unfolding. As I wrote last week, the only moral and reasonable position for a progressive to take in this election would be to vote for Jill Stein and send a…
Created
Wed, 06/11/2024 - 18:57
I just didn’t want to believe it Mea culpa, I got this one very wrong. As someone wrote on twitter earlier: He was the worst President in history. And when he got voted out, he tried to stage a coup. Then he stole national secrets and sold the ones he didn’t store in the bathroom. He was convicted of fraud, found liable of sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies. He is half a billion dollars in debt, owned by God only knows who, and the biggest national security risk the nation has ever had. But at least he’s not a Black woman. That was a bridge too far. She ran a good campaign, they did everything they could. Half the country just wants what Trump is offering: a strongman sideshow. The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday. The bad guys won.
Created
Wed, 06/11/2024 - 18:31
Trump Wins

And it’s a big enough victory that we shouldn’t expect Lawfare to overturn it.

I thought Harris would pull it out based on abortion, but I was wrong. (I’m terrible at election prediction, as I warned.) What happened is that people voted for abortion at higher rates than for Harris. The numbers below aren’t final, but they’re indicative:

It seems that running on:

Created
Wed, 06/11/2024 - 11:30
Jon Meachum in the NY Times: I thought I knew what we were dealing with. When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015, he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue. As a biographer of presidents, I tend to think historically and seek analogies from the past to shed light on the present. And so, for years Mr. Trump’s marshaling of fear, prejudice, resentment, xenophobia and extremism put me in mind of grievance-driven figures ranging from Huey Long to Joseph McCarthy to George Wallace. To me, Mr. Trump was a difference not of kind (we had long contended with illiberalism in America) but of degree (since the Civil War, no figure with such illiberal views had ever actually won the White House). Then he proved me wrong. His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is in fact willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.