Posted on 09/14/2020 7:46:32 AM PDT by Drew68
This is the era of expecting the worst while hoping for the merely tolerable. Some might say that the worst is already happening—economic disaster and 190,000 dead from a pandemic—while the president and his surrogates insist, in a feat of self-delusion, that the “best is yet to come.” As someone who has argued against catastrophism—I don’t believe Donald Trump is a fascist or a dictator in the making, and I don’t believe America is a failed state—I find myself truly worried about only one scenario: that Trump will win reelection and Democrats and others on the left will be unwilling, even unable, to accept the result.
A loss by Joe Biden under these circumstances is the worst case not because Trump will destroy America (he can’t), but because it is the outcome most likely to undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning—even if they could never bring themselves to vote for him.
In presidential elections, once is a fluke; twice is a pattern. I struggle to imagine how, beyond utter shock, millions of Democrats will process a Trump victory. A loss for Biden, after having been the clear favorite all summer, would provoke mass disillusion with electoral politics as a means of change—at a time when disillusion is already dangerously high. If Democrats can’t beat a candidate as unpopular as Trump during a devastating pandemic and a massive economic contraction, then are they even capable of winning presidential elections anymore? Democracy, after all, is supposed to self-correct after mistakes, particularly mistakes as egregious as electing Donald Trump...
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
On Election Night, I predict a law-enforcement crackdown on the rioters the likes we haven't seen since the 1960s. At that point, President Trump has nothing to lose as he's either been defeated or term-limited.
I wonder if the LARPers playing revolutionary in the streets understand that it's about to stop being a game. Cracked skulls and long prison sentences are coming.
Shadi Hamad is making terrorist threats and needs some quality GITMO time.
Vote for Joementia “Hiden” Biden or we’ll shoot this Dog.
Bah! Rioters need to be shot in the act. If they have killed someone, and manage to get captured alive, they need a fair, but quick, trial, one appeal, then the long drop.
They are making it them or us. So be it. I know which side I’m on.
You rate them too highly. I'm thinking terrible twos, myself,
This distance between what a society should be and the tragedy of what it actually becomes is less of a problem in democracies, because democracies are supposed to be responsive to voters’ demands and grievances. But they aren’t always. The gap will grow larger under a Trump presidency than a Biden one, and this has implications for mass unrest and political violence across American cities. For democracy to work, the losers of elections need to believe that they can win the next time around. Otherwise their incentives to play the spoiler increase. A breakdown of democracy is always a possibility, but the country is more resilient than it may seem, and consolidated democracies seldom break down in any circumstance. That said, this is one of those propositions that is better left untested."
The first bolded part is what the foot soldiers on the Left have been suffering from for four years, and I'd almost say as far back as 2000.
Certain elements of the Left are under no such delusions--the ringleaders, much like the Fred Kinnan character from "Atlas Shrugged".
The other two bolded parts are wishful thinking, but I think a realization of the author that the reaction would be deadly, in the very concrete meaning of the term.
Demicomms still don’t believe Americans will shoot back.
Teaching history doesn't work with these people. You can go to most places with comments on the internet and find people talking about how they will need to reeducate us and put us into camps, but they are not introspective enough to see that they are the totalitarians. They scream about the evil Trump while they contemplate exterminating us.
If they, the Dims, are truly concerned about The Orange Man stealing the election, they why are the not demanding in person voting with ID’s only?
This is what desperation looks like!
They are consumed by their fear of us.
It’s a good thing.
The article is based on a false assumption which is that the polling data are accurate.
Starting with that false assumption the writer races down a blind alley.
His fear is enjoyable.
Also...
“Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow in the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy and the author of “Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World” (St. Martin’s Press), which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize. He is also co-editor with Will McCants of “Rethinking Political Islam”
That is the funniest liberal article I’ve read so far… The left will simply never understand. How can you possibly be that blind?
The Word of God says that “if the light within you was darkness, how great is that darkness”.
.... Clearly it is incomprehensible the dark.
Maybe on Nov 04, the gloves come off and we start stacking bodies?
Boiled down, this argument is “We can’t accept the results so you have to let us win anyway in order to Protect Our Democracy. Also we’ll burn the town down.” What happens to that “Democracy” or its host society under those rules apparently does not occur to the writer, and it’s useless to try to explain that we don’t live in a democracy because the answer is inevitably “We do now. Or else.” There can be only one answer to that sort of ultimatum, and it isn’t pretty.
Then why are articles from The Guardian routinely deleted? And the Texas Tribune?
I dunno.
Maybe you should just avoid articles that you don't want to read.
That's what I do.
The "mass delusion" was the polling.
-PJ
*may not be able to* my foot.
It’s that they WON’T.
Besides, if Trump clearly wins, he’s the winner whether the other side concedes or not. Their not conceding does not negate a clear win.
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