The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Battista Minola 1616]

I looked through a few of your posts and this one really stood out to me:

They’re a complete inspiration. It’s refreshing to see a race justice movement in the US that incorporates class elements that historically have been put aside in the country, acknowledging how economic inequality is linked to racism and the limitation of freedoms.

The energy displayed with the rioting and looting some months ago is an example of the voice of the unheard being finally being unapologetic and confrontational in the face of the system interests of false class and racial conciliation, in which a group is supposedly to be indefinitely above others. System will naturally blame the oppressed for their condition, attempt to suffocate them in front of public opinion with arguments of “rocking the boat” and act like the movement are the ones who are supposedly “violent” because of their reaction to the non-stop violence committed against them.

But no one can change the increasing consciousness and the anger that led to the movement. Some change will have to be eventually delivered in order to not destroy the thin social fabric of society, no matter how inconvenient that is for elite groups.

The GOP's modus operandi is grievance politics. They only coopt populist rhetoric to deliver their agenda of increasing authoritarianism and lining the pockets of the rich...sure, Trump might have campaigned on certain vaguely economically nationalist rhetoric but has he actually delivered on it? Not really. His main economic "achievement" has been a giant tax cut to the wealthy donors that fund the Republican agenda. It's not too hard to see how a foreigner might be duped by that (especially since so many Americans are).

As for BLM...did you pay any attention to what Trump and any other major Republican was saying during it? "When the looting starts, the shooting starts..." teargassing people to get an ominous photo op, constant dogwhistles about antifa marxists that want to destroy America. Especially coming from a position of actually supporting looting and rioting - you have to get pretty far left to find people who were supporting that sort of stuff.

Of course, you don't have to be enthusiastic about the Democrats. They're disappointing way more than I'd like. But compared to the GOP it's not a contest. And I probably agree with you on most issues. There's a reason all those figures you mentioned...Bernie, AOC, they run as Democrats instead of Republicans. If you went up to a group of Republicans and said "well, I support Black Lives Matter and AOC's pretty cool" they'd call you a radical cop-hating America-hating commie and laugh in your face. But if you went up to a group of Democrats and said that they'd agree with you.

[brucejoel99]

Horrible expectations management by O'Toole and his team with pushing the "CaNadiAnS WoN'T gET the vACCInE till SePtEMbER 2021 At ThE EaRlIeSt AnD iT's tHE liBerALS faulT" narrative. Now that it was announced that Canada is getting atleast 250k doses by the end of the month vaccinating 125k people, Trudeau easily clears the ridiculously low expectations set by O'Toole. Complete incompetence by the Conservatives.

Hmmm, that does seem somewhat amateurish tbh.

That's a common theme with Canada's Conservatives. They seem to be so completely consumed by a seething hatred of Justin Trudeau that they keep making stupid mistakes like this. This has been the case forever--in 2015, they pushed the Justin is not ready message so hard, Tory ads made "Justin" seem like a child. Granted Trudeau is not a politician with the most merit or gravitas, but they set the bar so low he simply walked over it with a likable personality and a few good debate performances. It's doubly stupid because at the start of the 2015 campaign, it was the NDP, not the Liberals, who were ahead in the polls and most likely to unseat the Conservatives. Yet for some reason CPC strategists decided to focus all their energy on Trudeau, which only drew attention toward him, and people said "wow, this Trudeau is a lot better than I thought."

They did the same in 2019. Trudeau's approvals were already at an all-time low, Scheer had an opening to present himself as a competent, mature adult in the room, and present some kind of an alternative vision. Enter the English language debate, Scheer uses up half of his opening remarks to say:

"Justin Trudeau only pretends to stand up for Canada. You know, he's very good at pretending things. He can't even remember how many times he put blackface on. Because the fact of the matter is, he's always wearing a mask...Mr Trudeau, you're a phony, you're a fraud, you do not deserve to lead this country."

Why? Most Canadians already saw Trudeau quite unfavourably at the time, but by doubling down on it he ceded time to present an alternate vision (which I suspect the CPC didn't really have, at least not one that would be palatable to Canadians), and he came off as unnecessarily nasty and standoffish to a nation that prides itself on apologizing when someone else bumps into them. But again, the tories are just so consumed by hating this one man, they throw good politics out the window just to get at him. Most Canadians, even though they disapproved of Trudeau at the time, didn't share that seething hatred. In the end the CPC won the popular vote but didn't even come close to reaching the Liberals in seat count, because they just ended up making massive gains in already Conservative ridings.

It also didn't help that Scheer called Trudeau a phony and a fraud, right around the time Canadians found out he had a dual citizenship he didn't disclose, and lied about being an insurance broker when he was never actually certified and only worked as a clerk in an insurance office. Whoops!

This becomes clear if you listen to a hardcore conservative, or god forbid, follow their facebook pages. They just have an obsession with hating the guy, and they'll take any opportunity to take pot shots at Justin, no matter how ill-advised it is. This amateurish play on vaccines is yet another example. They always set the bar at knee height for Justin, and can't understand how he always manages to cross it.

[MATTROSE94]

I disagree with your assertion that the Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was "an utter disaster for the country." It was an utter disaster for the 51 million people who voted for Gore, and it was a disaster for ME, personally, but i was not a disaster for the 50.5 million people, besides me, who voted for Bush. Those voters got what they wanted. Also, even though Texas v. Pennsylvania, et al was not a "sequel" to Bush v. Gore, that does not mean that there never will be a sequel at any point in the future. So long as Presidents from both parties continue to select who to appoint to the Court for ideological reasons, rather than because the people being appointed are the most highly objective interpreters of law that can be found in the country, the possibility exists that Bush v. Gore will have a sequel of some sort. Even liberal Supreme Court Justices appointed by Democratic Presidents might give in to the temptation to perform another Bush v. Gore of some sort.

I had been a Republican back in the 1990's, and I voted for George W. Bush that year. But my loyalty to the GOP was mostly based on the fact that I had faith that Republican-appointed Justices were mostly going to be better than Democratic-appointed Justices. I particularly believed that Republican-appointed Justices were going to be Originalists: they would respect the original meaning of each and every clause in the Constitution. Conversely, I assumed that Democratic Presidents were not going to appoint any Originalists. That assumption was based on the fact that the Democratic Senators had rejected the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the SCOTUS in 1987. That was why, slightly more than 20 years ago today, as soon as I heard in the news that GWB was going to try to get an injunction in federal courts to stop in the Florida recounts, and that included in his legal argument was that the method of recounting ballots was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, I was devastated that Bush was using that argument. What he was asking the federal courts to do had nothing to do with the intended meaning of the Equal Protecion Clause. Then, exactly 20 years ago today, the SCOTUS granted Bush's request for an injunction, and they based their reason why they granted the request entirely on the Equal Protection Clause and that alone. I knew then that none of the five Justices who granted the injunction were truly Originalists at all. They were relying on precedents from the Warre Court era, especially during the 1960's, that had nothing to do with the originally intended meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

Not only was Bush's and the Court's reasoning a grand departure from the meaning that was intended in 1868 when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, it was even a grand departure from those 1960's Warren Court precedents themselves. Think of it this way: look at the election results of the 1968 presidential election between Nixon, Humphrey, and Wallace. Now imagine these things: imagine that the results of Florida and New Jersey were flipped, and those states went to Humphrey instead of Nixon. That would give Nixon only 270 electoral college votes, and it would give Humphrey 222 electoral college votes. Now imagine that, in Ohio specifically, Nixon was ahead by only 904 votes instead of what actually happened: that he won by 90,428 votes. Now imagine that Humphrey decided to ask Ohio to recount the votes. And furthermore, imagine that Ohio was conducting the recounts in approximately the same way that Florida was conducting them in 2000: that there was no statewide standard for determining a legally valid vote, and in some Ohio counties, county clerks used different standards for determining a legally valid vote than in other Ohio counties. So Nixon initiates a lawsuit that tries the stop the recounts in Ohio, arguing that Ohio is violating the Equal Protection Clause. In 1968, would the Warren Court have granted Nixon's request and stopped the Ohio recounts, citing its own relatively recent precedents about how all citizens' must have equal voting rights? Of course the Warren Court wouldn't have done that!

The simple fact is that neither the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as adopted in 1868, or as interpreted (erroneoulsy, IMO) by the Warren Court during the 1960's, required that Florida should have had a statewide, uniform standard before the state started recounting ballots. "The law" didn't make the SCOTUS do what it did, so the only other explanation for why Justices Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas granted Bush's request was that they wanted to ensure that Bush would be the winner of the election. So Bush v. Gore was neither a fair, objective, nor accurate interpretation of the Constitution. I knew that 20 years ago, and I still knew it two years later, when I made a conscious decision to stop supporting the GOP, and indeed to stop voting all together.

During the years 2004 through 2014, I was consistently saying, to anyone who asked why I wasn't voting anymore, that "Why should I bother to vote if the Supreme Court can hand down a ruling that prevents my vote from being counted?" That was a short-hand way of explaining how I really felt, more deeply, which was that I did not trust that either Democrats or Republicans were going to appoint true Originalists to the Supreme Court. And that without any presidents appointing people to the Court who would objectively and accurately interpret what each clause of the Constitution was intended to mean, the Constitution was going to continue to be misinterpreted far too many times. Why bother participating in a system of government in which the judiciary misinterprets the highest law of the land?

I have my reasons for why I decided to return to the voting booth in 2016.

[Alcibiades]

The majority of our states are trending toward One Party Rule.  WV's political differences will simply be argued under the framework of one party as Southern Democrats did for decades.

This sort of governaceklolitics:

***"Friends and Neighbors" where victory in multi-candidate primaries depend on strong appeals to one's home base and surrounding regional areas.  This was most often true in one-party politics in its purest form.  Key's main example of this was Arkansas, which had a low black population, where politics was not driven heavily by the race issue, where the major metropolitan area was not a big city, where there was no heavy factional loyalties to particular individuals, and where there was a minimum of ideological division.  Florida was an example as well, as it was an "Every Man For Himself" situation, where politicians of extremely opposite viewpoints could be elected on the same day (e. g. the 1944 Democratic Primary, when liberal Sen. Claude Pepper and reactionary AG Tom Watson won renomination on the same day). 

***Urban/Rural rivalries where there was one big city and an emphasis on maintaining rural hegemony.  This was the rule in Georgia for the most part; it was the basis for Georgia's "County Unit" system (which was declared unconstitutional) in counting votes.  (Oddly enough, the only Georgia Governor to come from Atlanta so far has been Lester Maddox.)

***Personal factions, where a single figure leads a faction of voters.  The most obvious of this was the Huey Long/anti-Long factions of Louisiana politics that continued really up until the 1980s.  (Edwin Edwards and John Breaux were the last politician from Louisiana who could claim being part of the "Long" faction in any way, whereas somewhat recent Republican nominees (Woody Jenkins, Henson Moore, John Kennedy, Mike Foster, Buddy Roemer) were, arguably, part of the anti-Long faction.  (Governor Sam Jones was the leading example of this, and Gov. Jimmie Davis was generally considered to be anti-Long.)  Georgia (with Eugene Talmadge) had this to some degree.

***Regional Factions, best exemplified by Tennessee, which had three (3) distinct regions whose politicians made deals with politicians of other regions. 

***Actual ideological factions, which were ill-defined, and exemplified (in Key's opinion) by the politics of Texas, a state with an economics-based politics where "liberal" and "conservative" had real meaning.  Key also discussed South Carolina and Mississippi's governments; he considered South Carolina's politics to manifest "latent bi-partisanship smothered by racism", and made some of the same arguments of Mississippi and Alabama politics, which had ideological factions.  Theodore Bilbo may have been the most vile racist ever elected to the US Senate, but he was an economic liberal who voted down the line for the entire New Deal.  (Key pointed out that FDR had more in common with Bilbo than with Pat Harrison, Mississippi's other Senator in the 1930s, who was far more conservative than Bilbo.)

West Virginia, then, has the potential to develop a regional politics.  The Eastern Panhandle, which includes commuter territory for DC, has different interests from the part of WV that has coal mining, that has different interest from those areas that are trying to maintain an income based on tourism.  It is very likely that WV's Republicans may diverge widely in philosophy in terms of economics.  Something has, indeed, happened in WV.  The people of WV certainly view their ancestral Democratic Party as having royally betrayed them, and they have reacted as a person would react in seeing their spouse committing adultery.  These people have done more than shift voting habits; they've shifted allegiances at a very deep level and there's no winning them back.

If only Fuzzy could make more of this type of highly informative historical post.

[Antonio the Sixth]

One thing I will say though is imo the best Bourbon kings were Henri IV and Louis XIII. I think both were much better than Louis XIV, who I think is one of the most overrated kings in French history

Agreed, I think Louis XIII is quite underrated and was better than Le Roi Soleil a lot of ways. Maybe Richelieu deserves most of the credit, but the King's policy vis-à-vis Germany and Spain was masterful. By intervening in the Thirty Years' War at just the right time, France dealt a crushing blow to the Habsburgs and became the preeminent power in Europe. Cardinal Mazarin continued this expert diplomacy, nurturing close relationships with the Protestant princes of the Empire and seeing out a victorious end to the Franco-Spanish War. When Louis XIV began his personal rule in 1661, France was in a supremely powerful position thanks to the hard work of his predecessors.

And how did Louis choose to use that power? He pissed it all away by getting into unnecessary and expensive wars and alienating all his neighbors. The careful diplomacy of Mazarin in creating the anti-Habsburg League of the Rhine was shattered in a single swoop by Louis' unprovoked invasion of the Spanish Netherlands, and with it centuries of French diplomacy which had successfully kept Germany divided. This quote from International Politics and Warfare in the Age of Louis XIV and Peter the Great stands out to me: "Louis XIV succeeded in alienating most of the Germanies and did more than Emperor Leopold to bring about German unity." From then on, wars against Austria would be Reichskriege against all Germany, as the whole Empire united against French aggression. This was most evident in the Nine Years' War, which Louis envisioned as a short war of intimidation but instead became a long and bloody stalemate due to the unexpected resolve of the Germans. The Sun King then tried and failed to dislodge the German princes from the Imperial cause through an inept mix of threats and subsidies, an effort which lacked any of the finesse of Cardinals Mazarin or Richelieu. 

That's not to say Louis' foreign policy was a complete failure. The Franco-Dutch War was for the most part a military success, but it also had the unintended side effect of bringing William of Orange to power in the Netherlands. Be that as it may, it is undeniable that between Nijmegen and the Truce of Ratisbon France was at the absolute height of its power and influence, and for that if nothing else the Sun King deserves some credit. But then, as in all things, Louis decided to blow that too, in what was probably the single greatest blunder of his entire reign: the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By the stroke of a pen, the process of German alienation which had begun some 20 years earlier was finally completed. Louis' last ally in the Empire, Brandenburg-Prussia, deserted him for the Dutch immediately afterward and welcomed tens of thousands of economically valuable Huguenot refugees into its borders. Others fled to England, where the revocation and the Protestant anxiety it created helped cause the Glorious Revolution. This was another disastrous development for the Sun King, as it brought England into the Grand Alliance and to war with France. After 1685 there was no longer any doubt who was the great menace of Protestant Europe, the tyrant aspiring for universal monarchy, the bloodthirsty warmonger: it was not the King of Spain or the Habsburg Emperor as in times past, but the "most Christian Turk" of France.

All that said, I still prefer him over his Habsburg enemies because I'm a huge Francophile, I love the French Baroque, and the religious intolerance in Spain and Austria toward non-Catholics was even worse than in France (Turenne was a Huguenot for God's sake!). For me reading about Louis' reign is kind of like watching a bad sports team you love. They keep making bad play after bad play until they eventually blow the whole game, and the fact you're a big fan makes it that much more infuriating.

TL;DR: Watch this video by the great MoFreedomFoundation; he makes a similar but less detailed argument.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

How do you square that with the Bible?

There is a higher law than even Scripture, and those who proclaim that Scripture is the universal, literal, whole, and highest law make a claim about the Bible that it does not make about itself.

I square it the same way I do when Paul forbids women from wearing jewelry - certainly applicable to the specific group in the specific time he was writing to. However, Paul himself also speaks of several ordained women. Furthermore, my conscience not only neutrally dissents from those who forbid the ordination of women - it outright demands such ordination. I would view myself as being guilty before my mother, my female pastor, my grandmother, and many other women if I told them that I was more qualified for the priesthood than they are. Indeed, if I told my mother that, I would expect to get slapped.

Sexism is a sin, and to partake in it on God’s behalf is the highest form of blasphemy.

[MATTROSE94]

F

In the Soviet Union there were no homeless people, science was prospering, no mass migration from the Soviet Republics due to Moscow giving subsidies to less fortunate republics and kept developing their infrastructure, everyone was treated as equals, no drugs and HIV epidemic, Soviet engineering was the envy of the world, elders got respectful pensions, everyone had jobs, no wars & conflicts inside the state, their army wasn't filled with psychopaths hazing new recruits, etc.

[Battista Minola 1616]

My heart warms when I see Italo Calvino positively mentioned:

'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun'.

34 years ago Italo Calvino wrote a short piece for the NYRB exploring the basic question of this thread (which even namechecks the Odyssey): Why Read the Classics?.

The essay is structured around 14 separate but interconnected answers to the title question. It starts with some beautifully elegant definitions (A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say/Every reading of a classic is in fact a rereading), but as it moves forward the reasons become more complicated and more relevant to the education debate.  Consider for instance:

The classics are the books that come down to us bearing upon them the traces of readings previous to ours, and bringing in their wake the traces they themselves have left on the culture or cultures they have passed through (or, more simply, on language and customs).

And this:

A classic is a book that comes before other classics; but anyone who has read the others first, and then reads this one, instantly recognizes its place in the family tree

The classics, the body of works whose worth has been attested by people from all backgrounds over the course of decades and centuries, are not islands, they are in conversation with, and only comprehensible in the light of, each other. And crucially, because to the reader they all exist in a sort of eternal past, the connections go both ways you can read Shakespeare and then a work he influenced (like, say, Brave New World), or Brave New World and then be inspired by that to go back to The Tempest.

Calvino is in no way a snob, he makes clear that there is not a fixed canon, that there is so much worthy work that we can not hope to read it all, that 'there is nothing for it but for all of us to invent our own ideal libraries of classics'. The question is how to get children to grow up into adults who will be able to accomplish this for themselves. The personal nature of a canon is not an argument for schools not needing to teach anything, its the opposite, as Calvino points out:

We do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love. Except at school. And school should enable you to know, either well or badly, a certain number of classics among which—or in reference to which—you can then choose your classics. School is obliged to give you the instruments needed to make a choice, but the choices that count are those that occur outside and after school.

This dense network of interaction between classics is the reason its so important that schools teach them because a student only needs to be exposed to a few examples to be able to forge their own path in literature that will set them up for a lifetime.

[Fuzzy Bear]

It's got so unbearable where  where I'd rather speak to soft conservatives on issues related to national identity than woke liberals.

For example, there is fawning of how Kamala Harris is going to be the first asian-american VP, I think this obsession stems from subtle racism that segregates Kamala as not being a 'normal American' because she isn't white and because about the fact that because she is non-white she deserves special status and recognition (because minorities can't rise to the top and we as woke liberals need to promote them!)

Also what is this obsession with People of Colour, people of colour is racist terminology that collectivises the experiences of people of different backgrounds and furthermore segregates them from   white society by saying they are not like normal Americans, which immigrants want to be.

There is also the obsession of woke liberals of how people are Asian, like they want us to be a minority rather than just being Americans ignoring ethnicity. Like there's nothing wrong with calling someone asian Americans but the way white progressives do it, is so insulting.

I think these days, the left has become just as racist as the centre-right in terms of attitude, and this is seeping into Australia as well.

[President Johnson]

It is, people forget Hitler was considered a clown and a joke until he wasn't.

That’s the story of most right-wing populists tbh

- Gets into power through vote on a moment the nation has some deep anxiety, due to economic or social reasons.

- Establishment thinks they can control them and force them into “moderation”

- People see them as a joke, they don’t agree with everything but like the populism, the anger and act like deep down they have a good heart even if misguided

- If institutions aren’t able to resist and stop them, fascism happens

- If country goes economically upwards, economy becomes justification for blind support. The country is developing itself and that is a reason to ignore everything else.

- Later on when they’re out of power, everyone acts like they never expected the leader to be so evil and they pretend they never supported him.

- “He lied to us, we didn’t know what was going on. Not our fault”

Our luck is that most of these far-right crazies are too stupid and dumb to ever be something close to Hitler.

[Battista Minola 1616]

An objectively high-quality post about an intriguing, if possibly obscure, subject:

Hi! I’m actually a linguistics major. There is such a thing called prestige in linguistics and it basically is what you’re getting at. So the answer is yes and no depending on the region. Everyone has an accent and such accents are perceived differently by different people. As a southerner out accents, when thick, and thought of as bad and very generally we suppress them in highly public settings (think newscasters, senators, academics, etc.). However I’d wager our accent has a high amount of “covert prestige”, meaning while not valuable to the establishment, it’s valuable to the individuals as culture. I do remember in 2016 (anecdotally) hearing Hillary Clinton sound more southern in South Carolina then she normally did. Whether this was code switching (how we talk different to different people) or a political ploy I can’t say.

For politics I’d say this has a lot more bearing on house races then senate races or gubernatorial. Tim Scott vs. Clyburn is a decent example. Clyburn is older and has spent his entire life and career in the black and rural south so has an accent to reflect that, and probably why his voters like him. Personally I love a democrat with a southern accent (Dina Titus ❤️). Whereas Scott has a very different voter base and also has to overcome white prejudice of black people with accents so he has adapted his speech to fit his base. Jaime Harrison is also similar because he spent a large part of his career outside the south, but also was a statewide candidate in a conservatives state, so I’m sure his accent helped him.

This is obviously very regional. A Bostonian accent would help a candidate in Boston, but hinder her outside the city. The same goes for southerners due to the stereotypes associated with it. There is also the issue I mentioned with code switching that through the whole thing through a loop. It is human nature to speak differently to different groups. I speak different and more southern at hoke then when I do at school. I speak more formal to a teacher then to a friend. This can be tricky in politics as it could be seen as disingenuous for a person to speak with an accent to one group and not another. Ah example would be a candidate who is African American speaks in a more general American accent while campaigning in non black communities and tv ads, but talks with in a form of African-American vernacular while with other black people.

In short having an accent can be a liability or a aide. It depends on what your base is and how you use it. This is probably why most politicians try to generalize and diminish their accents so as to appeal to more people

[Badger]

F

In the Soviet Union there were no homeless people, science was prospering, no mass migration from the Soviet Republics due to Moscow giving subsidies to less fortunate republics and kept developing their infrastructure, everyone was treated as equals, no drugs and HIV epidemic, Soviet engineering was the envy of the world, elders got respectful pensions, everyone had jobs, no wars & conflicts inside the state, their army wasn't filled with psychopaths hazing new recruits, etc.

I'm not sure which bewilders me the most. That's sir Woodbury of all people would make a post defending communism, that even he could be so incredibly wrong about every factual allegation made therein, or that anyone actually thought this post somehow worthy of being entered in this thread.

[Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Bodies for Biden]

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Look if Reagan hadn’t been supporting Guatemalan genocidaires, Miami could be Castrograd right now :eyeroll:

Also, can I also circle back to The Reckoning’s Vatican avatar? Can you please at least take it down while your salvaging over a man who supported the murderous repression of parts of the Church in Central and South American  in the name of anti-communism (and at the behest of Evangelicals locally and at home).

Do you understand how evil the Communists in Nicaragua were?

How about those Mayan villagers in Guatemala?

Got to wipe those out

Reagan made mistakes, but honestly, if the communists in Guatemala were anything like the ones in China, I can’t get too mad at him for supporting the opposition to them.

Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a military coup in 1982 and during his 17 month reign killed anywhere between 10,000-20,000 people and destroyed 600 villages, in a campaign to reduce the Mayan population, who he claimed were naturally susceptible to communism due to their immaturity (his words), in the bloodiest part of the Guatemalan genocide.

Anyway, in 1982 and 1983 Rios Montt's army received millions of dollars in United States aid, which had been suspended by Carter was resumed by Reagan, claiming that the human rights situation was being improved by the new regime. He also provided propaganda support to the genocidaires, personally flew down to Managua in December of '82 to meet with Rios Montt, giving him a big photo op and giving an glowing interview where he calls him a man of great integrity and commitment who was committed to democracy (NB, Montt was a general installed by military coup) and was getting a bum rap. In case you are thinking this is a mistake, declassified CIA documents in Fed of 82, shortly before Rios Montt's coup, reports that the army was conducting massacres in a specific Mayan province, was meeting no substantial resistance, and that the army considered all Ixil (an indigenous) tribe to be insurgents and were giving no quarter, so he knew that 'fighting guerillas' was code for killing Mayans, and in February of 83, noted the rise in right wing violence and that bodies were piling up in rivers and gullies in the countryside. His financial support for the regime continued until it fell and through Mejia Victores (also convicted of genocide) regime.

Also, in El Salvador, where the civil war against the commies bankrolled by the Reagan administration killed 75,000 people. The UN sponsored Truth Commission would latter find that 85% of all offenses were committed by government (ie. anti-communist) forces. I'm not going to go into to much here, because reports of the specific conduct of the state department personnel are mixed, but the army that carried this out was funded and trained by the US and the Reagan administration claimed reports of massacres (later confirmed by the post war UN investigators) were guerilla propaganda to the Senate and conducted a campaign to discredit human rights groups reporting on the Salvadoran situation. As Reagan's Assistant SoS for human rights put it 'it was more important to prevent a communist takeover [than to promote human rights'. Again, 85% of the killing was from government forces.


Also of note, Rios Montt was a convert to evangelicalism, personal friend of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who believed that Catholic priests (who kept trying to tell him to stop the organized mass murder of the Mayan community) in particular were targeted for extra-judicial killings. To the point where his own brother, a bishop, had to flee the country.
Of course in all these dirty wars, priests and nuns, particularly in rural areas, were targeted for summary execution by right-wing paramilitaries as a matter of course. (Not that left-wing militants were all that much better, before you get into the what about game)
I'm bringing this up in particular because you insist on putting the Holy See in your avatar and it's incredibly offensive.

[Battista Minola 1616]

I could list all the bad things Reagan did as President, or all the corrosive impacts he’s had in the years since, but I think that would be missing the ultimate point as to why I think he was such an HP.

The Reagan political playbook (utilised to immense success) was ultimately based off demonising the vulnerable: poor people, black people, unions, industrial workers, and gay people, to name some of his favourite groups to pick on. I would contend that choosing easy targets such as these to appease the middle class majority who felt somehow threatened by and/or jealous of them is the epitome of cowardice, and why Reagan completely lacked the qualities required to be a truly great leader.

As much as people bemoan the the current culture war alignment (and I think Elliott County, KY, voting for the right-wing candidate while Darien, CT, votes for the more left-wing one is just as insane as anyone), I think it is better than the Reagan-era class alignment. Reagan very successfully, using the above strategy, gathered up the affluent suburbanites (ranging from the merely centre-right in the burbs of places such as Philadelphia and Chicago, to his rabidly right-wing base in Orange County and the Sunbelt), as well as the legendary Reagan Democrats, who had got a bit of money, and desperately wanted to feel middle class, which they did by joining in with the bashing of marginalised groups. I think this gets at some of the irony that MT Treasurer hints at in the link to the article in his excellent post above (although Youngstown was never really representative of that group in the same way as Macomb was), as well as the obvious future echoes to the Trump era.

But this is why the Reagan coalition was so toxic; it was, in essence, like a completely rigged game, with the confident and upwardly mobile majority against the voiceless, marginalised, substantial minority. It was like high school bullying, and, somewhat perversely, this was apparently manifested in the high school culture and politics (especially in middle-class and affluent suburbia) of the 1980s (I have heard a number of people talk about this, ranging from 90s indie rockers talking about going to high school in the 80s in interviews to Badger on this forum), a reflection of the stifling conformity of the decade in which outsiders were relentlessly picked on. I have often thought that being a liberal or a poor kid or other social outcast in a well-off section of 80s Orange County* as a teenager must have ranked as among the most hellish social experiences possible. Fortunately, that suburban world is now dead as these places have greatly diversified. In his book Which Side Are You On?, Thomas Geoghegan talks about organised labour as being the counterculture of the 80s. I think there is a certain forlorn beauty in these macho middle-aged men in a dying subculture being the #Resistance of their day, but at the same time it captures the hopelessness of being on the wrong side in Reagan’s America.

FF and much better President than everyone since.

I’m surprised that you think so highly of Reagan, considering how you’ve spelt out your vision of a Republican Party which is a sensible check on the more outlandish currents within the Democratic (a vision which I have a lot of sympathy for, even if I think it is a bit optimistic given the party’s current state). It was Reagan after all, who destroyed any hope for this kind of GOP; while the Rockefeller faction had passed its sell-by date at that point, it was by no means inevitable that the GOP had to end up as a coalition of the various particularly toxic elements Reagan worked to bring together, including the Religious Right (whom, remember, Goldwater hated with a passion) and the white resentment/ex-segregationist Southern crowd; there was of course frequent overlap between the two. Not to mention, of course, Reagan being the first to pursue (again, very successfully) the kind of fact-free, responsibility-free rhetoric which has come to define the modern GOP, to again reference MT Treasurer. I think it is a stretch to say that Trump is Reagan’s spiritual successor, but by no means inaccurate to say that, without Reagan, the kind of GOP which gave rise to Trump would not have been possible.

*The irony is that movement conservatism, which ultimately succeeded in mostly overturning the New Deal Order, would have never have existed without the Sun Belt suburbs, which never would have existed without the massive investment and development the New Deal brought to the South and West. Similarly, the Reagan Democrats, in their desperate quest to be truly middle class, voted for a man who helped destroyed the ladder from working class to middle class.

[VAR]

Imagine if a well-liked teacher molested a student, and instead of taking action against him, the school administration claimed "well, he's retiring at the end of the year, so he'll be gone soon anyway, and besides, firing him would be so divisive. It's horrible what he did, but firing him and pressing charges against him isn't the way to handle this."

[Badger]

cc Burn Thread

I've never had any respect for people who call themselves "libertarians" but vote Republican.

Dude... You can be a libertarian, not believe any of the nuttery that was asked in the poll, and still vote Republican for a multitude of other reasons, as I have done before. It has to do with the weighting and importance of certain issues. I guess you have no respect for me, somebody who agrees with you on almost every issue. I know many libertarians, yes real libertarians, that voted for Trump for real reasons (namely the authoritarian lockdown policies advocated by the Democrats, which you seem to not talk about to get popularity by the red avatars). This kind of self-righteousness is toxic and disgusting, and it's very unfortunate that a "true libertarian" like yourself is engaging in it, but it is likely that I'll be attacked viciously for even saying this.

So let me get this straight: We have a president who orchestrated a (failed) fascist coup by marching his violent inbred supporters to the Capitol in order to murder and kidnap our elected representatives. He has expressed a willingness to quash free speech, a genuine hatred for nonwhite people, and has routinely attempted to undermine our democratic processes and institutions via dictatorial fiat. He has appointed activist right-wing judges who will attempt to eliminate abortion rights, and he used his position as president to embezzle taxpayer dollars. He used US aid-- which was approved by congress-- to extort a foreign leader into participating in a smear campaign against his political opponent. He gassed peaceful protesters and has turned a blind eye to human rights violations worldwide, including the Uyghur concentration camps and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. He has used the pardoning power to pardon dozens of people implicated in his scandals and schemes, including a disgraced US general who has publicly called for "suspending the Constitution" in order to turn this country into a dictatorship.

And your response to all of this is to say "But what about muh restaurants? Why can't I sit indoors and cough on other people in peace?"

LOL, just freaking LOL.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: Interesting (2020) Exit Polls Notes. Truncated because the original was kind of long

I think small business owners in the $100-$200k crowd are the types who are successful but are also the most sensitive to changes in regulations and taxes. You have a comfortable life and work hard in your business, but it feels precarious and requires huge work to maintain, while you also resent a few thousand dollars more in taxes and really hate the meetings you have to have whenever the laws change to make sure your business is in compliance. I can imagine the consulting and restructuring fees are pretty huge, as well as seeing the increased headcount and workload just for compliance purposes, can be really frustrating for these people and definitely breeds strong resentment.

Compare this to the smaller company in a less-regulated business where these changes are pretty small and you don't make enough to really get hit by taxes, or the larger firm where you just sit in an office all day and don't have to be as involved in the daily management and some consulting fees plus a few more people on payroll doesn't really bother you all that much.

[Kamala's side hoe]

Re: Which country is culturally most similar to the USA?

Culture is not about statistics or a country's government. Even with religion, if two countries are both religious, but attend different churches, that's only a very thin similarity. North and South Korea couldn't be more different in terms of their government or any statistic, but they are still arguably culturally closer to each other than to any other country. The Philippines is basically American institutions transplanted on an Asian archipelago, but you couldn't say they're terribly culturally similar to the US.

Culture is the sum of things like how people interact with others, how families are structured, what people prioritize in their lives, what institutions or people they value, etc. Kissing on the cheek when greeting someone or living multi-generational households are cultural things, having a large agricultural sector or partisan politics is not.

[MoreThanPolitics]

Re: Trump's Fans in Hong Kong Are Worried About Their Future Under Biden

Congratulations to Torie for being the only person so far in this thread with better critical thinking skills than the Hong Kong dollar coin at the bottom of my pocket. A pox on the houses of everyone else for not being able to see beyond the misguided notion that Donald Trump is the be-all end-all of literally everything on earth, political or otherwise. If the rest of us are making an effort to debunk the caricature of Trump being representative of the entire country, perhaps it is incumbent upon you all to try to live up to that, do the same in the other direction, and recognize that Hong Kongers are not a political monolith. This limp French fry in the greasy burger joint that seems to be SirWoodbury's media diet (with its deliberately provocative title that parted ways with reality some months ago) is as good a place as any to start, and yet most everyone here is failing miserably. As I said, congratulations.

Yes, analyzing the likely differences between Trump's and Biden's China policy is an unofficial parlor game in the city's top circles at this point. With a very few exceptions, no, when we look back we do not see Trump's involvement in Hong Kong as a net benefit. My personal point of view on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (arguably the biggest impact he's had), which I have argued with others elsewhere, has been that it is a damp squib at best and hurts ordinary Hong Kongers at worst. What is generally not under debate is that his support (vocal, and not much more) has been vacillating and actively counterproductive in terms of its impact on the ground and in the minds of China's leadership, which already sees "foreign meddling" around every street corner in Hong Kong and has chosen to crack down harder as a result. Support for Trump or any other politician, as is pointed out in that video, is very dependent on the transactional thinking of what help politician X can offer to the cause. This "enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic is twisted around in certain influential circles to justify support for Trump-the-person instead of Trump-the-president – not that it matters, as even they recognize, when neither candidate nor president is willing to back his tweets up aside from a couple of poorly aimed sanctions. Not that it matters to the rest of the movement, which, again, as is pointed out in that video, is comprised of a rainbow of disparate domestic interests that are united only by opposition to China. It is, first and foremost, a localist movement. Any Trump supporters are localists first and not "Trump fans" in the commonly understood sense.

To the average Hong Konger, the middle-aged man and middle-aged woman who live in a tiny cramped fifteenth-floor apartment, most of this does not matter anyway – like the Hong Kong version of Shadow, they'd say that America's problems are their own. (And just like the real Shadow, they'd be wrong.) I can assure you that Trump's praise of the CCP's trigger-happy tank driving is not universal or even common knowledge, despite their own knowledge of the incident. When these people think about Trump at all, it is as the leader of a powerful but faraway country much further removed from daily consideration than the one led by a Beijing increasingly comfortable with reaching into the city. When they hear him on Chinese-language media, they may find his particular means of communication to be more in tune with the common man than other politicians', and that is the extent of it. As for the college students and younger folks with a much wider range of political interest, but which may correspondingly be taken up by biased English-language news sites, by all means educate me on how we are inherently less susceptible to fake news and conspiracy theories than Americans are. We are not, and the proportion of Hong Kong's young adults that pay enough attention to the ins and outs of American politics to stand a chance of getting sucked into alt-right media diets is still dwarfed by the proportion of the rest of Hong Kong's citizens, who do not care because they have better things to worry about.

So the answer to Progressive Pessimist's question is no, we do not spend our waking hours obsessing about Biden undoing whatever "progress" people think Trump has made. Having a much more pressing political danger on our literal doorsteps can sometimes have that effect. But of course that is our own fault; as compucomp says, the seven million of us (many of whom don't even know that Hunter Biden exists!) should simply have thought harder about the consequences of apparently being the cause of all that is plaguing American politics, because according to Sidney Powell we've also manipulated the vote count in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Will we collectively be found guilty of the murder of Seth Rich next?

And the desperation is fairly warranted, I would say, considering that China has begun moving past pro-democracy luminaries (including Jimmy Lai, owner of what Atlas apparently thinks is the Trumpist Apple Daily, who's just been charged with violating the national security law and is staring down a life sentence) and on to ordinary citizens. Not that it is productive, as most of us outside of a couple of true believers in Trump-the-person are aware, and indeed have known at a minimum since it became really glaringly obvious to every thinking person this June that Trump is not a Freedom Fighter in the literal sense. It also became glaringly obvious to everyone way back in January that whatever hopes people harbored of being rescued by a US intervention were gone forever. The pro-democracy movement has been running on online fumes since COVID-19 brought the larger-scale protests to an end. So kindly get the notion that Hong Kongers are grateful to Trump, and the notion that we think Hong Kong's lot has improved under Trump and the notion that we want Trump to come here in any way (where did that notion come from, New Frontier? I'd really love to know your thought process on that one), and the notion that my city and its inhabitants are idiotic enough to pin all our hopes on the president of a faraway land – right out of your heads, because not a single one of these laughable ideas has any basis in reality.

All that to say you know what, go ahead and feel sorry for us or laugh at us if you want. But since I'm here you may as well put a name and avatar to it and feel sorry for/laugh at me instead.

Finally, to the people posting and obsessing over photos of Xi, Trump, and Biden, if you really have nothing better or less ridiculous to do then please take your tangentially related clownery discussion somewhere else.

[lfromnj]

Re: Which country is culturally most similar to the USA?

Culture is not about statistics or a country's government. Even with religion, if two countries are both religious, but attend different churches, that's only a very thin similarity. North and South Korea couldn't be more different in terms of their government or any statistic, but they are still arguably culturally closer to each other than to any other country. The Philippines is basically American institutions transplanted on an Asian archipelago, but you couldn't say they're terribly culturally similar to the US.

Culture is the sum of things like how people interact with others, how families are structured, what people prioritize in their lives, what institutions or people they value, etc. Kissing on the cheek when greeting someone or living multi-generational households are cultural things, having a large agricultural sector or partisan politics is not.

Santander's racism trolling are infamous here, but his serious effortposts are less known.

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Lmao, I liked this idea of Trump and LBJ interacting that much I wrote a scene:


Trump: My fellow presidents, I don’t like to say it, but quite frankly, I’ve done more than any president in the history of this country. We had tremendous success. Nobody was more successful than Trump, believe me.

LBJ: Are you serious, you orange clown? I’m just reading your article in this really interesting encyclopedia named Wikipedia. All you’ve done is a bunch of sh!t.

JFK: Better be careful, Donny. Lyndon isn’t joking around.

Truman: You bet on it. You’re an inept loser, Don. And you’re more arrogant than this SOB MacArthur, that I fired. Are we sure this a president’s club? I can’t believe this buffoon is one of us.

Bush 43: I would say no if I didn’t see with my own eyes.

JFK: You saw that, George? Like weapons of mass destruction?

Bush 43: That wasn’t very nice, brother.

Trump: Look, Jack, I’m not talking to presidents who got shot. I like presidents who don’t get shot.

JFK: At least I won the popular vote, even if narrowly. You lost to a girl by three million the first time and got wiped out by my fellow catholic, Uncle Joe. Who’s the loser now?

Nixon: *caughs in his hands* I better don’t comment on the 1960 election. But I have to admit, you screwed up, Donny. Back in the 80s, I thought you’d do a great job. But even I didn’t get impeached twice. And I won 60% of the vote in 1972.

Trump: But a great job is what I’ve done, Dick. So, no president has done more in such a short period of time. And the election was stolen…

LBJ: Shut up, you tax cheat! You don’t come here in the president’s club and tell a bunch of stupid lies. I’ve passed a damn of legislation on the war on poverty and get the black man the right to vote. What have you done? You see this guy over there? He wouldn’t have been president if not for me. Do you get that?

Trump: You mean Obama? He spied on my campaign!

LBJ: A sh!t he did! I wish he actually spied on your so called campaign that was run by a lousy bunch of crooks, okay?

Obama: Calm down, guys. He’s not worth the fight, Lyndon. We all know Donald is confused. Right, Jerry?

Ford: Indeed, Mr. President. I would suggest we just leave him in his corner that talk to Franklin. Calvin still isn’t saying a word over there. Uncle Abe, Ronny and I have tried for an hour.

Reagan: We have. You may learn a lesson from Silent Cal, Donald. How to keep your mouth shut. The election was stolen? Serious, Don? I was better in lying, like Iran Contra. God, I miss the good old days.

Trump: Not confused. Not confused.

LBJ: Says the guy who told us windmills cause cancer and Belgium is a wonderful city?

Truman: *laughs* Or inject bleach! God, I’d say you’re dumb as a rock, Don, but that’s a damn insult to rocks.

FDR: Heck, if I knew that, bleach may have helped me to walk again. I should have tried at recommendation of Dr. Trump.

Trump: I never said that. Never. It never happened.

Biden: That isn’t what you said? Really? It’s on tape, man! Get your words straight, Jack!

Obama: Okay, guys, just leave Donald alone. Calvin said Hello to me. Let’s go!

[MATTROSE94]

Basically the Dems really screwed themselves with their appointments in the 60s and then there were basically 24 years of GOP picks (since Carter didn’t get any, as stated). One of Clinton’s picks (RBG) of course just died and then Breyer is still on the court at like 85 or whatever.

Kennedy:
Byron White: 31 years, retired and replaced by RBG under Clinton.
Arthur Goldberg: 3 years, retired and replaced by Abe Fortas under LBJ

LBJ
Abe Fortas: 3 years, retired and replaced by Harry Blackmun under Nixon
Thurgood Marshall: 24 years, retired and replaced by Clarence Thomas under GHWB

The combo of Goldberg followed by Fortas was just awful. From what I can tell, LBJ wanted to replace Goldberg with his friend Abe Fortas and succeeded in doing so. Fortas was basically an ethics bomb, but LBJ in probably the worst domestic policy move he made (Vietnam obviously being the worst overall) decided to try to elevate Fortas to Chief Justice after Earl Warren retired. That failed and Fortas resigned a few months later, in the Nixon administration following yet another scandal.

As to Marshall, it’s hard to say if he would have lasted into the Clinton administration (he died 4 days after the inauguration) and I wouldn’t blame him for being mad if Carter wanted to replace him given that he served 10-11 years past the end of the Carter admin. That’s just kind of one of those unfortunate things.

As to Trump getting three picks, the way that I see it, either Gorsuch or Barrett is essentially a stolen seat. I can see the argument for one, but not the other. I don’t care which one you pick, but one was essentially stolen by the GOP. Sadly, Gorsuch is my favorite of Trump’s picks. Kavanaugh for all of his issues was legitimate, but he really shouldn’t be on the court with all of his issues. Count me as being suspicious regarding Kennedy’s resignation. Gorsuch has been a good replacement for Scalia. Scalia always had a few positions that I liked regarding civil liberties and Gorsuch seems to be in the same mold. His support of Native American rights is refreshing.

/rant

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

Thanks for the “nomination.” That thread sprouted another quality post:

BECAUSE THERE WERE NO VACANCIES

That is the obvious answer, and what is more, I am sure Carter when running for president in 1976 expected zero vacancies and planned for no vacancies in a 1977 to 1981 term. Looking further back, the reason Carter got no appointments – a historical fact that greatly shapes the Court to this day – can be seen from the fact that the birth years for Justices who might have been expected to retire between 1977 and 1981 were from (approximately) 1892 to 1902. Of the (five) Justices born in that period:

• Wiley Blount Rutledge (born in 1894) died in an accident in 1949
• William Orville Douglas (born in 1898) died in 1980 but was physically incapable of serving on the Court beyond the 1974/1975 term
• John Marshall Harlan II (born in 1899), died in 1971
• Thomas Campbell Clark (born in 1899), died in 1977 but see below
• Charles Evans Whittaker (born in 1901), died in 1973 but resigned from the Court in 1962

Clark constitutes the key possibility for Carter getting an appointment. If Clark, alongside Goldberg, had stayed on the bench – assuming he did not become too ill to continue his work – Johnson would have obtained no appointments, but Carter would have obtained one in his first year to replace the centrist Texan when he died in June 1977. Given the demonstrable, but generally overlooked, unpopularity of the Warren Court’s decisions even when Johnson was winning a landslide over Barry Goldwater – in one poll, 85 percent of respondents opposed Engel v. Vitale banning prayer in public schools – Johnson ought to have been leery of creating a Court more liberal than the one he inherited in 1963. Nor did Johnson require the extremely liberal Fortas and Marshall for his programs to pass the Supreme Court: Clark himself seldom voted against them and Goldberg was just as liberal as Johnson’s appointees.

Carter’s numerous – in fact unusually so – lower court appointments do not provide definite details as to the ideology of the Justice with whom he would have replaced Clark had he stayed on the bench until his death. However, in ‘A Bench Tilting Right’ from the October 30, 2004 Washington Post, Cass R. Sunstein and David Schkade demonstrate that Clinton’s appointees to all federal courts were comparably conservative to those of Nixon and Ford (and, though none served past 1988, Eisenhower). This suggests a Carter appointee would have been to the left of anyone on the Court between 1991/1992 (Marshall’s retirement) and 2008/2009 (Sotomayor’s appointment), and could have liberalized the Court much more if Clarence Thomas was not on the bench.

The reactionary Trump Court is certainly a child of Carter receiving no appointments, but it is just as much as the Reagan Court, ultimately a child of Lyndon Johnson’s arrogance as David A. Kaplan expressed in kinder terms in September 1989.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

If their job requires them to operate autonomously from authority and engage in critical thinking, going to a "stop the steal" protest would seem to be strong indicators against those skills in both regards.

Also

If the employee's actions being there (regardless of "where exactly" the employee was) is causing a huge distraction (problems) to running of the business, then the employee should be let-go.

If you look at the percentages of people who believe in moronic conspiracy theories about the moon landing, the Holocaust and so on, you’ll find this principle unsustainable. There are a lot of people who are capable of doing decent jobs while failing to engage their brains in politics - in fact, the vast majority of people do this, albeit to a lesser extent than Qanoners in most cases.

Agreed.

I found your examples amusing as I once had a colleague who was convinced the moon landing was faked along with a host of other conspiracy theories, yet was also one of the more competent Chartered Accountants in the office. Turns out his ridiculous opinions didn't inhibit his critical thinking skills or ability to work autonomously in accountancy. Surprising I know. Similarly Ben Carson believed all sorts of weird stuff, but that didn't prevent him from doing all those brain surgeries successfully.

The notion that being laughably wrong in one area renders one unfit to work in a thinking profession is one of the more bizarre takes that crops up on Atlas from time to time. I think it betrays a certain lack of real world experience. People are weird and complicated, and often don't fit to our little psephological boxes.  I think we're all better off for it.

[S019]

Paleocons are the absolute worst, it's not even close. Sadly unsurprised this site can't see that, however.

I mean let me put it this way: Paleocons are wrong about EVERYTHING, AND they are wrong for all the wrong reasons. If you're unsure about whether you are on the right side of an issue or not, a good way to find out is to check what paleocons believe, then take the opposite position. They are wrong about foreign policy. They are wrong about social issues. They are wrong about economics. They are wrong about the Constitution and how a democratic republic is supposed to function. They are wrong about, well, EVERYTHING. Neocons have serious problems in a number of these areas, but at least they seem to share a similar, recognizable conception of what American democracy is supposed to be with most liberals. We may disagree on exactly how it should be implemented, where and why. But the core tenets are there. Paleocons throw all that out and are so reactionary it becomes difficult to distinguish them from fascists.