People need to watch this. This is unfortunately how things stand. Steve Schmidt points out something we already know, that the next election could be America’s last election “if the ball bounces the wrong way.” But he also points out something that maybe isn’t so known and that is that a lot of Democrats, and even the White House itself, want Trump to be the nominee, figuring that he is the easiest to beat. It ain’t necessarily so.
The Democratic Party is the only thing that is standing between democracy and authoritarianism. Listen to every single word Steve Schmidt is saying. You think Donald Trump doesn’t stand a chance? you are sorely wrong. We need to get busy. pic.twitter.com/sH94h7RGnJ
— julianne phillips (@juliann38915202) September 14, 2023
History is full of crossroads. We are at one now. Read a piece that Schmidt wrote about the crossroads that Martin Luther King was born at. These roads cross again and again as history flows and human nature decrees that old demons are resurrected with regularity and must be battled back and defeated with equal regularity. We are at another such momentous time in history right now.
Why was the world the way that it was in the time that King was born in 1929, 64 years after the end of the Civil War? Why was the world the way it was when King wrote this letter to a group of white pastors when he was 34 years old from a Birmingham jail cell? Why was it the way it was when he rose to speak in 1963 in the shadow of Lincoln’s temple, and why was it the way it was on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration?
Of course the reason in all instances was because of what had come before. Each day was a canvas of possibility and simultaneous unchangeability, until suddenly something gave way — even if it was barely noticed in the moment.
A great debate has erupted in America over our history. In fact, across America there are unconstitutional state laws being passed that seek to criminalize the teaching of history. There should be no confusion about the debate, its historic antecedents, its connection to yesterday and yesteryear, as well as the relative virtues of each side’s position. Suffice it to say that the cause of locking librarians and stifling reality in defiance of the truth, while proclaiming faith in a dogma of lies and revisionism, won’t be highly esteemed by future generations of freedom-loving Americans. Though it is clear how the issue will ultimately end there is no mystery around what happened last month, last year, last decade, last century, and so on. There is only a disorientation in the present that lingers around the issue that has always lingered in America, and defined who we are, what we were, and what we can hope to be.
It is no random coincidence that the extremist ideologists attempting to ban books and rewrite history wanted to start at a particular crossroads. Interestingly, at all of the inflection points in American history where revisionism could have been introduced the MAGA crusaders have picked slavery as their hill to die on. Why?
The assertion that American slaves learned skills and trades as being core to the understanding of the institution isn’t the same thing as Holocaust denial, but it is a related calumny in that it asserts nonsense in the service of an immoral cause and claim that is part of the timeless push and pull between the light and the dark.
The crude assertion that American slaves learned skills, trades and accreted benefits from their bondage is a typical non sequitur from an extremist movement that seeks to evade a moral teaching and history’s judgements. Again, why?
Maybe this speech helps explain why.
It’s known as the “cornerstone” speech, and it was given by Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy. It makes perfectly clear over what the US Civil War was fought. It was fought over an idea that we are still fighting. It is an enduring cancer, and its embers have proved durable and combustible. The progress towards justice has been steady, but it is not inexorable and it has never been unopposed.
It’s not just Donald Trump. Obama said it, Trump is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is the rot of the Republican party, which has become more extreme over the past seven years. Next year it will become more extreme, still. The disease is also racism and anti-intellectualism and poverty and homelessness and all human conditions which lead to hopelessness.
Vigilance is the price of liberty. We need to get to work to secure the 2024 election, in all senses. I’m not talking about fraud at the ballot box, I’m talking about rallying the forces of sanity and getting out the vote like never before, because we HAVE to defeat Trump — God forbid he is the nominee — and the Republican party.
Steve Schmidt is a former Republican. Mitt Romney is now, to all intents and purposes, a former Republican. His sons all left the party before he did. Both Schmidt and Romney are sounding the warning that the GOP “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution,” and that the only thing standing between America and authoritarianism is the Democratic party.
The lines are drawn. 2024 could indeed be the hill democracy dies upon. We have to act.
‘Gird your loins’ everybody, because, as you state “… The lines are drawn….” Please, please, don’t let your most excellent and valued model of democracy ‘go down the gurgler’ only to be
replaced by a tragic history proven system, that’s one-eyed, evil, murderous and destructive. Remember, you have been loaned your democracy from your children. Protect it. Just listen to the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ and heed the message behind their call.
“Remember, you have been loaned your democracy from your children.”
POWERFUL!!!
I disagree with Mr. Schmidt-trump would/will be beaten. Now, after actually WINNING the election will the various ‘pube legislatures try something thereby stealing the win from President Biden? They WILL try to do this. Question is, will they succeed? The ‘pubes know their a$$es are on the way out. They know their policies are losers. They know folks with even half a brain realize they’ve one half more brain than the ‘pubes. The ‘pubes also know they like the taste of power and will do any f*cking thing they can to keep it. Whenever there is actual election/voter fraud it is unfailingly committed by republicans. They constantly broadcast the big lie which tells me they’re projecting. In ’24, we might have the whole shebang stolen from us (because we’re the ones losing it all). I do not know how to fight the corruption that is running through the entire g.o.p. and that corruption is what is going to f*ck our nation.
One of the problems with our situation is that most people don’t understand the great danger we are in. Maybe they just don’t care. Some care, but are becoming or have become defeatist. I heard this the other day from an AA member, “self pity is the enemy of sobriety”. I think the fact that for the last twenty years the Republicans have acquired so much power through apparently condoned cheating and now naked violence has overwhelmed many on the side of the Angels.
Some think Trump should be allowed to run. I think if that happens, we are spitting on the Constitution and the rule of law. It is very important that he be excluded from the ballot, not just put in jail. People don’t understand how ‘the rule of law’ is connected to democracy even though we are getting a lesson in the’ school of hard knocks’. They don’t get that in a democratic government the people in that government are restricted by law and the Constitution and are not kings or lords.
In 2016 I explained to my friends that while tRump would be a menace (I knew him from my days in NYC) a more virulent danger would be the people he brought along with him. Like nitwit GWBush, his “surrounders” created so much havoc, worldwide – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condolezza Rice, his whole DoJ, etc. tRumpy has his own list of already convicted felons, his entire cabinet and “leave it up to the Republican congressmen.”
It’s not only the front runner but in this case not his sycophants but his widdle Stevie Miller types that would truly wreck the country if turd face was ever reelected.
What havoc they pull before, during and after the election will be horrifying. I sure hope the Good Guys are doing some hardcore game planning. I know it’s hard for the party that believes in the law to stay ahead of the robbers and thieves, but if they can put any R, anyone, in the White House, we’re doomed!