Why republicans should care about having a king

[parmalee]

Mussolini abolished democracy, banned political parties, censored the press, and jailed or executed opponents. So, in substance, Trump is not Mussolini. Trump plays a populist strongman.

But Mussolini didn't start doing these things on day one--or even day 100. Excepting outright coups, there is always a transitional phase. Trump--along with Miller, Vought, et al--have made their intentions clear, and given what they've already done with respect to the press, their political opponents, marginalized groups, etc. there is no reason to believe that they will not try by every means possible to follow through with these.

It took Mussolini and Hitler years to fully consolidate and centralize power, and fully subvert democratic process. And given the overt supremacist philosophies espoused by Trump, Miller, et al, there is no reason to not believe that they are aiming for a fully totalitarian regime ultimately.

 

[TheVat]

Mussolini abolished democracy, banned political parties, censored the press, and jailed or executed opponents. So, in substance, Trump is not Mussolini. Trump plays a populist strongman.

Please remain in step with the lemmings in front of you. And enjoy your swim.

 

[parmalee]

Please remain in step with the lemmings in front of you. And enjoy your swim.

Sam Seder recently remarked upon how so many are apt to forget that even during the darkest of periods historically, life typically went on as usual for those in the favored groups--for the most part: bombing campaigns and the like were probably disruptive for pretty much everybody.

Personally, I'm probably pretty safe; however... for a variety of reasons not pertinent here, American cops (and law enforcement generally) often pose an imminent threat to spastics and crazies of many flavors--or the outliers amongst the neurodivergent generally. This is an irrefutable fact and it is quite well-documented. I've been badly beaten by cops twice, for no fucking (legitimate) reason, and the second time caused irreparable damage and was literally life-threatening. I've had plenty of other deeply unpleasant and terrifying encounters with LEO over the years that did not culminate with beatings, as well. And cops are one thing: TSA security and other sorts of dumbasses with guns and tasers and, apparently, license to use them freely can be much, much worse. But now with fucking ICE? Those guys are somehow infinitely worse than cops, and while I'm pretty damn white albeit vaguely semitic looking, I am still scared shitless of those fuckers.

But one really has to wonder about a lot of these people... Perhaps they themselves are (probably) completely safe, but don't they know anyone who is brown, queer, pregnant, female, a member of the press, politically active...? Or do they just not care?

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

To be more direct, you don't understand why the procedures came to be in the first place, so you see no value in them.

I understand quite well.
It came to be to avoid certain actions by prosecuters, lawyers and judges. Today it has overstepped its necessity.

 

[Sarkus]

Mussolini abolished democracy, banned political parties, censored the press, and jailed or executed opponents. So, in substance, Trump is not Mussolini. Trump plays a populist strongman.

Trump certainly aspires to being Mussolini-esque. What is stopping him is perhaps not his intentions but the strength of the underlying US political framework which, while not as robust as some/many would have liked, has served to slow down some efforts, and thwarted others entirely.

Maybe the only distinction between the two by the end will be how long it took.

With regard your reminders of what Mussolini did, be reminded yourself how Miller, Trump's chief policy advisor, and he of Project 2025, said: “The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

Trump isnt just an ordinary populist strongman, he's a wannabe-authoritarian strongman. (And yes, I have just seen an M&S advert - iykyk )

Anyhoo, hopefully Democrats will take the House in the mid-terms, even despite the gross gerrymandering by the Republicans, to which I note that Newsom has felt the need to retaliate in kind (in a do-or-die moment?). A Congress that can actually curb Trump's desires and actually work towards the betterment of people's lives in the US, the better. Whether that will actually happen, or whether Musk will intervene and rig any and all electronic voting systems (the evidence is mounting that someone did just such at the Presidential election), time will tell.
And who knows what SCOTUS will do, how soon before Trump's demise will they start to try to row back and try to curry favour, or whether they will just press onward regardless. I note that they are soon to decide on the legality of Trump's tariffs - and signs are that they were not impressed with the administration's arguments. Maybe that was just frustration for Ali to, Roberts, and Thomas, that they would have to actually come up with something even more ridiculous themselves so as to support them?

Interesting times.

 

[Sarkus]

I understand quite well.
It came to be to avoid certain actions by prosecuters, lawyers and judges. Today it has overstepped its necessity.

I imagine when it's raining you take an umbrella with you, put it up, and not get wet, right? Well, your statement above suggests that you would think to yourself "Hey, I'm not getting wet! Problem solved! I don't need the umbrella! It has overstepped its necessity!" and take the umbrella down. While it's still raining.

Or you have dandruff, and so use a certain shampoo to combat it. Your dandruff disappears, so you think you no longer need that shampoo, and find yourself surprised when the dandruff returns.

Or maybe you think "I lock my front door and have never been burgled. The lock has overstepped its necessity." And then you get surprised when your home is ransacked.

Or...
Well, you hopefully get the gist.

 

[Seattle]

I imagine when it's raining you take an umbrella with you, put it up, and not get wet, right? Well, your statement above suggests that you would think to yourself "Hey, I'm not getting wet! Problem solved! I don't need the umbrella! It has overstepped its necessity!" and take the umbrella down. While it's still raining.

Or you have dandruff, and so use a certain shampoo to combat it. Your dandruff disappears, so you think you no longer need that shampoo, and find yourself surprised when the dandruff returns.

Or maybe you think "I lock my front door and have never been burgled. The lock has overstepped its necessity." And then you get surprised when your home is ransacked.

Or...
Well, you hopefully get the gist.

Umbrella? I haven't owned one since I moved out West after college.

 

[geordief]

Whether that will actually happen, or whether Musk will intervene and rig any and all electronic voting systems (the evidence is mounting that someone did just such at the Presidential election), time will tell.

Any recent developments along that line?

The last I heard (perhaps on CNN) was that there were patterns of voting that suggested that.(maybe a couple of months ago)

 

[Sarkus]

Any recent developments along that line?

The last I heard (perhaps on CNN) was that there were patterns of voting that suggested that.(maybe a couple of months ago)

There's a group dedicated to the statistical analysis of the voting data: https://electiontruthalliance.org/
They're doing some good work, and while they can't state categorically that there definitely was manipulation, they seem to be saying that, if the data was manipulated (in the states that they have looked at) then you might expect the results that were observed.

For example, the main analysis seems to suggest that, the higher the % of people that vote in a county, the higher % vote for Trump. This is unusual behaviour, as you'd expect the % that vote for one candidate to be reasonably consistent across turnout %s. What is more, this only seems to be apparent when the results were machine-counted rather than hand-counted. There are far fewer hand-counted states, so there's the issue of sample size, but in similarly sized counties that they looked at, hand-counted results showed little deviation to outcome whether the turnout was high or low, whereas in machine-counted counties it was higher turnout = higher % for Trump.

It's all, at best, circumstantial evidence at the moment, but they are starting to go into the actual detail - picking some anomalous counties and actually comparing the electronic results to how the people actually say they voted.
On a YT video with David Pakman, the guy from this organisation said that the very first door they went to knock on was someone who voted, per the electronic count, for Trump. They thought that this was a good place to start as the house was supposed to have no occupant registered there at the time. They knocked on the door, and the owners had actually been registered elsewhere at the time, and had voted in that other location.
And that was the first door: electronic result did not match reality.

It's going to be a long haul to get to anywhere near the truth, and questionable if anyone cares, even sufficiently to tighten up the security of the machines, or to return to hand-counting, let alone pick the bones out of past results.
The website linked above suggests that they have been informed the NSA are performing a "forensic audit" of the 2024 election, but with Trump effectively owning all such Executive organisations, there's not exactly going to be any objectivity.

So, it's very much a case of "watch this space".


There's also the question, outside of this analysis or anything to do with this group, of whether Musk's DOGE were really not there to cut spending but rather to obtain voting information and to remove evidence of previous... activity. But that's disappearing into conspiracy territory.

 

[TheVat]

Trump certainly aspires to being Mussolini-esque. What is stopping him is perhaps not his intentions but the strength of the underlying US political framework which, while not as robust as some/many would have liked, has served to slow down some efforts, and thwarted others entirely.

Maybe the only distinction between the two by the end will be how long it took.

It turns out to be fortunate that we are composed of separate states, and states have fairly strong identities. This poses several obstacles for authoritarians. One, it makes ratification of major constitutional changes more difficult. Two, families and friends tend to be scattered through several states (those itchy American feet), so there's awareness when prog policies and more robust institutions are producing good results for people in another state. Hatchet men on the Right can talk trash about Cali or Oregon, but many of us have people on the ground telling a different story. Three, anything that takes too much time...well, the American electorate is not famed for its patience and taking the long view. E.g. how long will voters put up with the fallout from Turnip's tariff idée fixe - and generally, is the Right's whole "you have to suffer some to get to the promised land" blather going to keep the troops in line.

 

[TheVat]

Sam Seder recently remarked upon how so many are apt to forget that even during the darkest of periods historically, life typically went on as usual for those in the favored groups--for the most part: bombing campaigns and the like were probably disruptive for pretty much everybody.

Yep, America has shown a flair for sort of insulating itself, going into a complacency bubble. John Updike had a famous line, "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." I don't know...either makes us more vulnerable to creeping fascism or it could make us more outraged when our local bubble pops. And that stage before fascism, like the current drift into patrimonialism, can result in people waking up and realizing their country is less developed than their dream of it.

Patrimonialism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(this gets into the fragile and underdeveloped nature of patrimonial systems)

 

[parmalee]

Yep, America has shown a flair for sort of insulating itself, going into a complacency bubble. John Updike had a famous line, "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." I don't know...either makes us more vulnerable to creeping fascism or it could make us more outraged when our local bubble pops. And that stage before fascism, like the current drift into patrimonialism, can result in people waking up and realizing their country is less developed than their dream of it.

Patrimonialism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(this gets into the fragile and underdeveloped nature of patrimonial systems)

Yeah, these remaining doubters--which, unfortunately, seems to be a sizable percentage of Americans--would do well to read Umberto Eco's excellent essay, "Ur-Fascism", and to also be reminded (given the general state of American ignorance) that Eco was no stranger to proper fascism:

---------
"In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary,compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy."
---------
Also, props to Eco for defining ur-fascism as eternal fascism, and not proto-fascism (he read his Heidegger). Also, props for this consideration:

---------
"Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy. The article on fascism signed by Mussoliniin the Treccani Encyclopedia was written or basically inspired by Giovanni Gentile, but itreflected a late-Hegelian notion of the Absolute and Ethical State which was never fully realized by Mussolini. Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric."
---------

(He also read his Arendt, Benjamin, et al.) Now some might argue that The Rapist doesn't have any philosophy either. True, but Miller, Vance/Mandel, the authors of Project 25, et al, certainly do. For, as Eco reminds in the paragraph preceding:

---------
"Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan,while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes."
---------

The anti-Christian/atheism stuff aside, forms of humanism all the same, that's more like it--and we musn't disregard the notions of "degenerate art". Moreover, are these Christian Nationalists even Christian, in any coherent sense, anyway? Between Erica Kirk's leather pants and all these "Christian" creeps constantly going on about their "hot wives" and Vivek Ramaswamy half-convincing a room full of "Christians" that they're actually polytheists, it's all just an incoherent mess under the guise of Christianity. Again:

---------
"The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion.Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations."
---------

But this is all just a prequel to the heart of the essay, the 14 attributes of Eternal Fascism--several of which are partly incoherent and half of them contradict each other, but that's all by design--ostensibly. I shan't copy-paste the full list cuz it's... long, but in short it comes down to rigid adherence to certain conceptions of the "traditional" and rejection of everything new and novel--and especially of diversity in all it's forms; a commitment to the irrational and disdain for all proper criticism; a strong identification with the homeland; and fear, loathing and resentment towards all perceived "threats" to the purity of said homeland and traditions.

That is the modern GOP and Trumpism to it's core.

 

[TheVat]

Will read the Eco essay. Ever since reading TNotR, I am pretty much "I have to read more Eco."

 

[parmalee]

Will read the Eco essay. Ever since reading TNotR, I am pretty much "I have to read more Eco."

New Kids on the Block? The Wrath of Khan? Bones, Thugs and Harmony? Ohhh, right, The Name of the Rose.

 

[Tiassa]

… and Vivek Ramaswamy half-convincing a room full of "Christians" that they're actually polytheists.

Speaking of Vivek and questionable theses, have you seen how FOX News has responded to what voters had to say about King Dotty, I mean King Daddy, I mean King Don?

We should remember, despite all the energy and momentum and zeitgeist, five years after Trump it will be hard to find Republicans who remember this chapter. Not that anybody ever said Daddy, or that he boasted himself as a king, or these embarrassing moments when the only comfort is to lash out like a petulant moron.

To the other, there was a sloppy minute in all that when it was possible to at least wonder if the FOX News lobby felt chastised by the Republican loss, but it turns out they're just going through stages of ... something.

Democrats were so rattled after Trump's first presidential victory that some thought the way to win was to surrender↗. Now Republicans are so shook after an off-year loss that they need to pretend that loss is a victory.

It tells us a lot about history when, no matter the result, the outcome favors Republicans: Democrats can only win by surrendering; when Democrats win they actually lose. And what a mentality; it easily coincides with the conservative tendency to be afraid of everything. You know, like transgender, nonwhites (including Jesus), and agricultural workers↗.

And, sure, politics, but what do you do if you actually have to "work with" people who are so frightened as to be nearly incapable of honesty? What is the middle ground between what is happening and what is make-believe?

(Personal anecdote: I used to hang out in a place with a statistically unusual concentration of scientists, science types, and even science fans, and as it happens a seemingly extraordinary number of them were really, really soft on the difference between demonstrable fact and certifiable make-believe. And it happened again with modern "rationalism", which actually really did turn out to be supremacist delusion. It's one thing if I can follow, say, legal, bureaucratic, academic, and even scientific discussion of reality, but it is unclear what people expect when their objectivity requires practical compromise between what is true and what is not. I understand that people have their opinions, but what do I owe an opinion if it asserts falsehood? The value of science and objectivity is greatly diminished when we expect truth to compromise with falsehood, but, to the other, that falsehood often feels good to the advocate, and thus becomes so important. Recognizing that basic reality, it puzzles me to figure why the thing to do about that is to legitimize what we know to be false. It's one thing if the FOX News chyron is ridiculous, but this stuff has a certain amount of traction, so it behooves us to not simply write it off as a superficial distraction.)​

 

[billvon]

It took Mussolini and Hitler years to fully consolidate and centralize power, and fully subvert democratic process. And given the overt supremacist philosophies espoused by Trump, Miller, et al, there is no reason to not believe that they are aiming for a fully totalitarian regime ultimately.

Indeed. Hitler openly claimed that he would "destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy" - use the very mechanisms that democracy allows to dismantle free elections, representative government and the checks and balances inherent in any modern democracy.

Trump's attempts to use the various methods allowed by democracy to seize power (i.e. suspending basic rights because the Consitution allows that during "times of invasion") evoke a similar approach.

 

[parmalee]

If the death penalty were handed out only to people who were guilty of their crimes I would have no moral problem with it. FAFO and all that.

Careful, you might rile up the Arbiter of What Is Virtuous with that kinda talk.

But, yeah, even then--with a perfect, foolproof judicial system--you're not likely to find much consensus as regards what sorts of transgressions warrant such action. And then you're apt to encounter certain Minority Report-esque scenarios, differing views on degrees of accountability for heinous acts committed by proxy, deferred reappraisel and reassessment of the severity of certain transgressions, etc.

To illustrate this: I would, of course, offer the usual suspects--The Rapist, et al--as candidates for such, but in this very moment I'd be inclined to offer the kapo of kapos, Chuck Schumer, as well. Whereas ordinarily I just regard Chuckles as a pathetic, weak, ineffectual nuisance.

 

[Tiassa]

differing views on degrees of accountability for heinous acts committed by proxy

It's one thing if, in the end, what Lysander Spooner↱ really wanted was a drink, but still, ca. 1875:

The greatest of all crimes are the wars that are carried on by governments, to plunder, enslave, and destroy mankind.

The next greatest crimes committed in the world are equally prompted by avarice and ambition; and are committed, not on sudden passion, but by men of calculation, who keep their heads cool and clear, and who have no thought whatever of going to prison for them. They are committed, not so much by men who violate the laws, as by men who, either by themselves or by their instruments, make the laws; by men who have combined to usurp arbitrary power, and to maintain it by force and fraud, and whose purpose in usurping and maintaining it is by unjust and unequal legislation, to secure to themselves such advantages and monopolies as will enable them to control and extort the labor and properties of other men, and thus impoverish them, in order to minister to their own wealth and aggrandizement.​

____________________

Notes:

Spooner, Lysander. Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty. 1875. LysanderSpooner.org. 11 November 2025. https://static1.squarespace.com/sta...068873/1436885864688/Vices+Are+Not+Crimes.pdf

 

[Wizard of Whatever]

Indeed. Hitler openly claimed that he would "destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy" - use the very mechanisms that democracy allows to dismantle free elections, representative government and the checks and balances inherent in any modern democracy.

Trump's attempts to use the various methods allowed by democracy to seize power (i.e. suspending basic rights because the Consitution allows that during "times of invasion") evoke a similar approach.

As long as SCOTUS is on his side there is not much you can do about it but wait it out to the next election or start an actual revolution or civil war. I don't think peaceful demonstrations will do it at this point, though they might get some reaction from law makers, though it might be negative if the demonstrations turn violent..

 

[C C]

As long as SCOTUS is on his side there is not much you can do about it but wait it out to the next election or start an actual revolution or civil war. I don't think peaceful demonstrations will do it at this point, though they might get some reaction from law makers, though it might be negative if the demonstrations turn violent..

And it is just a matter of waiting circa 3 years. No revolutions necessary, especially in an era where (unlike the early 20th-century) the success of a coup would be severely undermined by antipathy toward firearms.

The next POTUS will be a Democrat. Ever since Eisenhower's run and a couple of exceptions like LBJ and Bush senior, this alternating back and forth between Dem and GOP presidents seems to be the historically implicit way that the American public maintains its tacit conception of balance or keeping each party in check.

Similar doom and gloom histrionics transpired during Trump's first term -- and voila -- there was Biden taking office, even with his obvious senility or dementia (albeit journalistically obscured till the 2024 debate made the "nothing to see here" acrobatics impossible to maintain anymore).

In fact (that past pattern aside), Trump may well be the last Republican president in quite some time. Just as Texas provided the excuse for California Prop 50 and an expanding gerrymandering war, from 2029 onward Dems can also justifiably counter with their own version of what Trump has wrought overall. And it will probably be a lot more robust and successfully maintained over the ensuing decades.

GOP presidents were actually becoming an endangered species prior to Trump's unexpected intervention. They simply could not get through the super-thickened briar patch of the establishment anymore (mainstream media, academia, entertainment industry, influence of progressive businesses, sleuthing of government agencies and judicial system, etc). Only a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly like Trump could survive that obstacle course -- a combination of atavistic cunning, the manipulative experience of a magnate, and having the "primeval beast" magnetism to steal the lesser educated proles away from the Dems in swing states.

Once he's gone, it's game over. Because it won't just be a restoration of the establishment's former might, but -- again -- a potential Dem revenge of instituting the kind of orchestrated damage that Trump and his cronies mounted against their rival. A long-term killer instinct that's excusable or warranted in the same context that reciprocal gerrymandering has been. "Thanks. You woke us up."

And certainly the swelling tide of support that Mamdani's mayoral win has triggered, and the consequent lessening of aversion to democratic socialism, will aid in recovering the working class, for the Democratic Party.

Which is to say, after Trump exits, it's doubtful that Republicans can maintain their flimsy "new paladin of the hoi polloi" role that Trump had to drag them kicking and screaming into accepting, to begin with.

Even classic Marxism -- that celebrated champion of commoners (before segments of the left incrementally shifted to marginalized population groups) primarily courted and revolved around skilled labor. Not the quasi-literate grunt workers confined to uncomplicated jobs, that are roughly analogous to MAGA and QAnon like conspiracists. Only the former had the adequate sapience to understand and be guided by the literary intellectuals of the class struggle movement. And the GOP lacks any semblance of possessing a corresponding (conservatively inverted?) intelligentsia.

Sing merrily:
Poe's law, Poe's law,
Tiptoe carefully
'Long top of that wall!
_