President Joe Biden is arguing that “there is something dangerous happening in America” as he revives his warnings that Donald Trump and his allies represent an existential threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement,” Biden says in excerpts of the speech Thursday in Arizona, released in advance by the White House, referring Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan.
Although voting in the 2024 Republican primary doesn’t begin for months, Biden’s focus reflects Trump’s status as the undisputed frontrunner for his party’s nomination despite facing four indictments, two of them related to his attempts to overturn Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
He’s absolutely right. The GOP wants to abandon democracy and install Trump as a dictator. We are on a dangerous precipice.
"If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”—David Frum, Republican speech writer under W. Bush
This was not a warning. It was a threat.
It was a warning. Frum is and always has been a staunch never-Trumper. He’s still a conservative, but he was never on board with Trump and to his credit has been pretty vocal in his opposition.
Oh my god, it was a republican that said that? That makes that line scarier, because that means was probably said with the idea that abandoning democracy is a good thing.
*trump or preferably any fascist Federalist society ghoul.
Their plan to end democracy is public even. They’re that confident/desperate. Leeja had a good video recently covering it.
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I had not given my brain the space to imagine that Trump would be the choice of dictator. I guess there would never be a ‘good’ dictator candidate but damn that would be insane.
I would be a good dictator. I don’t crave fame, fortune, or control. I like to live a quite life, have general good will for people and am kind.
I have a very technical background, a decent understanding of, and more importantly a high respect for, science. My number one skill is probably troubleshooting complex systems.
I’m am secure enough in my knowledge and abilities that I have no problem admitting when I’m wrong, and enjoy and am not threatened by other people being right so I can learn something new.
I make a terrible manager, so I’d have to delegate the vast majority of the actual work to competent people.
Mostly I just want everyone treated fair and equal, to have access to basic needs, and the ability to better themselves.
I absolutely don’t want the job, nor do I think anyone should have it, but yeah, I think I’d make a good dictator.
Because you don’t want it, you won’t make it as a dictator. People don’t hold power because it’s easy.
What
MAGAts are traitors.
They tried to destroy our democracy and install Trump as dictator. They trampled and beat hundreds of police officers in an attempt get their hands on the vice president in order to lynch him.
Republicans are so lawless and disdainful of our justice system that they aren’t even a little bit bothered that Trump was found liable for rape and fraud. They don’t care in the slightest that Trump is out on bail for trying to steal the election, and for stealing classified documents.
Republicans are attempting to impeach a newly elected judge for the singular reason that she acknowledged the legally decided fact that Republicans cheated and gerrymandered their state to seize power without the consent of the governed.
Republicans have become echo chambers for Putin’s propaganda, openly siding with our enemies over our allies.
Republicans are openly plotting to replace all the NONPARTISAN long-term government employees with violently partisan stooges who don’t come anywhere close to meeting the bare minimum requirements for doing these essential jobs.
Make no mistake at all: Republicans are a minority party with no interest anything but seizing power and harming anyone who they decide is an enemy. They can’t win over the voters with their perverted ideology, so they are determined to do ANYTHING inside or outside the bounds of the law, or even basic human decency, in order to steal the country from real Americans.
Republicans must be stopped, because if they gain power, they will make sure we never have anything close to a real election again. We will be living under a Christian theocracy, every bit as sick and hateful as the Taliban.
Joe Biden is right about this. Republicans don’t believe in our democracy and they don’t want people who vote against them to be able to vote.
Yes! Push this! They’re UnAmerican! Let everyone know!
They’re American. They’re the worst of us. But they’re American. We can and should be better than them though. But we can’t do that by acting like them.
You can be an American citizen and be UnAmerican. They reject the basic ideals this country was founded upon. That makes them fundamentally UnAmerican.
I definitely want to agree with you. No question there. But any country that enshrined slavery in their constitution. As we have. Who has fascisticaly toppled foreign governments for wealthy business interests. As we have. Who participated in genocide of native peoples up till at least the 1970s that we know of. As we have. Definitely matches their desires and behaviors quite well.
Not enough to make me question that those of us that want better might be the unamerican ones. But enough to recognize our failings as a country. And the difficult road ahead to be who we want to be, us. Vs who we’ve historically been, them.
They might technically be citizens but they are unpatriotic fifth columnists. And that’s being nice. It might be more correct to call them domestic terrorists: many of them openly moon over the idea of an actual shooting civil war and/or a government that will let them kill Americans that disagree with them and/or are the wrong color/ethnicity/religion, etc.
America has a long history of that unfortunately. We were the inspiration for the Nazis after all. We have made a lot of progress over the last 200 years. But they are very much part of who we’ve been unfortunately.
The lions share of people who originally settled the United States were criminals, and the dregs of society that refused to not be bigots. The pilgrims for instance. You have to remember the history we are taught is extremely whitewashed and sterilized. Then stuffed with false hero worship.
I agree they’re a danger to themselves and everyone else. But they are absolutely American and absolutely represent some of the worst America has to offer. And patriotic to that vision of the United States.
“Makes democracy a touchstone”
Wow man… It’s become this bad.
Not touchstone, touchtone! Beep boop beep
Extremism is born out of fear and desperation. And the number one driver of that is financial insecurity. I really wish he would say he was doing something about these fundamental issues: a liveable minimum wage, housing issues, education, and health care. He’s not wrong about these asshole insurrectionist Republicans, but pointing out that their thinking is anti-American and backwards doesn’t really get to the root of the issues.
Oh my god; someone still selling the ridiculous narrative that these white supremacist fascists are being white supremacist fascists because of “economic anxiety”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/trump-economic-anxiety.html
What they fear is losing the privileged status of white supremacy in America; what they’re desperate to stop is a more equal society. They didn’t march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.” They’ve been telling us, loudly, for years what it’s all really about and people still want to believe it’s about economics as if there weren’t dozens of very well-off people arrested for trying to attack Congress on January 6th.
. They didn’t march demanding more pay, better working conditions, or more upward mobility in Charlottesville, they marched chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil.”
Yeah, because they’re fucking stupid and they don’t know why they have poor pay, poor working conditions, and no upward mobility. They literally believe it’s a conspiracy by Them to keep the white man down. They’re dummies.
But that doesn’t actually mean economic factors aren’t the primary motivator. There’s still an underlying, material problem.
They’re no more stupid than leninists. Honestly both having roots being on the authoritarian end of the spectrum. They are an excellent mirror of each other. Having more in common than they are different realistically.
It’s really isn’t a problem of stupidity. More a problem of taking an ideology or way of thinking as the core of their personality. Combining that with an unwillingness to rationalize or change.
I consider myself more of a centrist. I think leninists and anarchists both have good ideas
In general I do not. Since realistically Libertarians, anarchists, etc share any of the good ideas leninists might have. Without embodying all the bad things leninists do. As long as were talking true libertarians, social-libertarians. And not the fash friendly, selfish neo-libertarians of privilege on the right.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. No matter the intentions behind it.
What absolute power? Power to the people my dude!
A party that’s socially suppresses the people does not represent the people. I say this about capitalism and leninism both. The party should only answer to the people. Not the other way round.
Like the farmers that under threat of the party. We’re forced to listen to the lunatic ramblings of Trofim Lysenko. Discarding what they knew would work to follow his unfounded recommendations. Exacerbating famines in Russia China Etc killing Millions. Committees and councils are absolutely bad about inaction. But inaction on genocide and torture I’ll take that any day.
It’s fine to recognize good ideas regardless of source, but politics is so much more than just ideas.
Centrism, especially at this point in time, may be the most dangerous political philosophy of all. After all, they will cast the decisive votes in 2024. The center of “democracy” and “no democracy” is “less democracy”.
Democratic Socialism isn’t less democracy and anarchism definitely isn’t less democracy so
It’s undeniable that more economic opportunity would shrink their pool of possible supporters, even if it would never eliminate that pool. We don’t have to stop every from being a white supremacist; we just need to stop them from coming up with the power to topple our government.
This reminds me of a good saying. The worst enemy of progress is doing nothing while waiting for a perfect solution. I agree with you.
Not having anyone doing hateful things would be better, but that’s a terrible reason to just let the problem grow.
“Extremism” Not just the fascists. If you can’t see the correlation between the shrinking middle class over the past 4-5 decades and the growth of extremism, I’m not sure what to say to that. These morons are anxious, and a lot of that is economic, and historically it doesn’t take much to point angry morons at the wrong target. Just define an “other” (Jews, Immigrants, LGBTQ) for them to focus on and they’ll run with it. I’m not excusing these assholes at all. But fighting the symptoms and not the disease is not a smart way to go about making change.
Also, for what its’ worth, I wanted to look at the article you posted, but I can’t get past the paywall.
Maybe if rural areas wouldn’t vote against their best interests they wouldn’t have been left behind.
Nothing will ever be done.
Nah dude, white supremacist extremism is born out of the fear of losing privilege.
Difference between discussing solutions to difficult problems and developing effective rhetoric to win a campaign.
If the Democrats were able to institute their full economic plan, there would be less financial insecurity. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a huge boon for less wealthy Americans. Most importantly, it would move the conversation about what’s acceptable policy more to the left.
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And don’t forget Dark Brandon’s color changing dark roast mug with flashing laser eyes! It even donates to his campaign.
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Well the spineless Republican candidates jockying for the vice presidency aren’t going to say it.
I think this guy sucks, but he’s not wrong here. I’ll vote for him again because as shitty as he is, he’s not going to completely destroy our country and/or destabilize the entire world.
If Trump is elected, that guy is going to hand Ukraine to Putin, and sever ties between the US and the majority of our allies in Europe.
If Biden wants to fight extremism he could maybe make the alphabets do something about all the domestic terror threats.
Maybe by admitting it’s domestic terrorism to threaten to murder your milquetoast political opponents.
Damn I’m so trained by the talking points. When you said alphabets I thought you meant gay people. Like what am I supposed to do? 🤣
Look, I’m not saying we should draft a Queer Anti-Terror Squad to take the fight to the Christofascists, but I bet they’d be well motivated.
Also extremely well dressed
It’s ok, for a second I thought they meant Google
💀 lmao
I think it’s important to note that Trump’s “extremist movement” is the mainstream GOP.
Yeah I saw a poll/survey that said voters found Biden to be “too liberal” and the GOP is just about the right amount of conservative.
The Overton Window in the US is so fucked up.
Yeah, targeting the MAGA crowd is not going to work. The Dems need an identity outside of “We aren’t Republicans”
Edit: That said, I must confess it is good to see they’re finally taking the Right seriously as a threat instead “ThEy WaNT WhAT’s BeSt fOr tHE NaTIon, wE JuSt NeEd A BeTTeR ComPrOmISE”
Celebrate democracy!
By getting to choose between two octogenarians no one really wants…
You should be voting safe when things are unstable.
Worry about it when we don’t have people trying to elect literal traitors who tried to overthrow the government.
You should be voting safe when things are unstable.
Sounds like a perverse incentive to keep things unstable.
Sure, there’s incentive to try to maintain that
It just requires relying on a bunch of people who can’t be relied to want to keep that status quo, and would probably kill their opposition given the opportunity.
Yeah, you could assume there’s an incentive if you looked at it in the most narrow vacuum.
It just requires relying on a bunch of people who can’t be relied to want to keep that status quo, and would probably kill their opposition given the opportunity.
Democrats do have a habit of assuming good faith on the part of Republicans when it’s obvious that none exists.
Democrats do have a habit of assuming good faith on the part of Republicans when it’s obvious that none exists.
They’re either idiots too stupid to be in office for believing it…
Or they’re liars that shouldn’t be in office because they’re not legitimately trying.
I’ve said that a lot, and no one has come up with a viable third option. It’s been happening for over 30 years, there’s no excuse for anyone running for office to not get it by now.
That’s right there’s literally no way to choose between them because they are in the same age bracket. Poor you.
That’s not what I’m saying.
If I asked 100 people if they wanted shot in the head or leg, they’d all pick leg. It’s an easy choice between two things you don’t want to happen.
Doesn’t mean people are lining up to get shot in the leg for no reason, it’s only to avoid getting shot in the head.
And that’s why voter turnout is so bad.
I’m a progressive and wish the Democrats, including Biden, were far more progressive. But comparing him to being shot in the leg? How so? Just because of his age?
SFW?
Understood, but running with that analogy, it’s a fucking stupid reason for turnout to be bad. Leg or head? That’s a shit choice! You choose for me.
Because some people are bad enough off already a shot to the leg will still kill them, just be slow and painful.
They’re dying either way mate.
That’s not even getting i to how for lots of people, voting ain’t a 10 minute stop on the way home from work.
It’s 4 or even 8 hours waiting inline instead of putting food on the table.
Try to have some empathy
More like “I’m just not going to choose to be shot, thanks, you all have fun with that”.
Unless you are leaving the country, you’re getting shot
You have misunderstood the metaphor. (edit: Rather, the people you’re describing have.)
You cannot opt out. Someone will take the office.
Rather, I reject the flawed nature of the metaphor and its poor fit. That’s true - someone will take office… and you’re not obligated to choose to be shot in either the leg or the head. You can, say, make no choice. You can choose, say, the hand.
We’re all going to be shot through what some choose. Some will go for everyone getting headshot, some will go for everyone losing a leg… and roughly the same will decide such a choice is absurd and not make a choice at all. Some few will choose something less damaging entirely.
Of course, one has the freedom to cast their vote, or not, as they like. But I can’t fathom why someone would “choose” an impossible outcome that ultimately makes the fatal scenario more likely instead of moving the needle toward the survivable one. It strikes me as irrational, which I could ignore if it were mere self-sabotage, but this affects others too.
uH ErM tHaT’s AgEiSt aNd AbLEiSt dUdE wHaT tHe HeLL!!!1!1!!1!
What does their age have to do with any of it?
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… about fucking time?
But all politicians are equally at fault for not leglislating to ensure workers have livable salaries and encouraging the “outsourcing” thing that moved jobs overseas so people could buy cheaper Walmart stuff.
Let’s go Joe! Hope my fellow Zoomers go out and vote.
The story of Joe Biden and his incredible perseverance, through hurdles and tragedies, is tremendously relatable to the common citizen. This man dusts himself off and charges headlong back into the fray after every setback. Lesser men would crumble, if faced with his challenges.
