Friday, April 30, 2021

Something to Know - 30 April

The Jim Crow Party is so frustrated with Biden that it is not able to find a way to push back on Biden's agenda for "building America back better".   The projects and policy are turning out to be very popular with the citizenry - and the Crow babies have nothing to offer.   McConnell claims that the democrats are working for change that will destroy the future of America - but does not mention anything specific, other than his saber rattling noise.   So, he decided to step out of the normal channels of legislation and took it upon himself to oppose any rewriting of history to reflect the actual dystopian effects of racism and slavery in this nation.  So, who is Mitch to be an authority on this subject, other than state that taxpayers should not support efforts to disclose the realities of our past?

Earlier today, in anticipation of tonight's address to Congress, President Joe Biden met with news anchors. The president told them that his many meetings with foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, have convinced him that the story of this moment is whether democracy can survive the challenges of the twenty-first century. As things speed up, is it possible, he asked, to achieve the consensus necessary for democracy in time to compete with autocracy?

He told the anchors that "they're going to write about this point in history."

Biden nailed it. The struggle to preserve democracy is precisely what the story of this moment is—although it started long ago in the U.S., at least—and historians are already writing about it that way.

In the United States, the move toward oligarchy had been underway for decades. First, Movement Conservatives, who wanted to destroy the liberal state President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, increasingly grabbed power through voter suppression, gerrymandering, filling the courts with originalist judges, focusing on the idea of the so-called "unitary executive," and propaganda. Once they controlled the Republican Party, their techniques left it open to a leader like Trump to gather power to himself alone. Their admiration for oligarchy left them open to autocracy.

And now the Republican Party appears to have embraced Trump over any principles the party once held. Its leaders support the Big Lie that Trump won the election and are exercising their control of certain state legislatures to cement their power in enough states to control the federal government. They are passing laws to restrict voting and outlaw protesting; at the same time they have given up on policy and are relying on such blatant propaganda that just yesterday a writer for the pro-Trump New York Post felt obliged to quit after writing a completely fabricated story.

Biden is calling this move to autocracy like it is, and making a bid to shift the course of the nation.

Today, the Department of Justice executed search warrants on both the Manhattan home and the office of Trump's ally and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani as part of an investigation into Giuliani's adventures in Ukraine as he tried to dig up dirt on Biden's son Hunter. Experts say such a search against a lawyer, and against a president's former lawyer, to boot, is extraordinary. To get a warrant, investigators had to convince a judge that they believed it would turn up evidence of a crime that they knew had been committed. Political appointees in Trump's Department of Justice had blocked such a warrant in the past, but Attorney General Merrick Garland lifted the block.

Federal officials also executed a search warrant on Victoria Toensing, a media personality and lawyer associated with Giuliani on his Ukraine work. The details of that search are still murky (but my long-time readers will be pleased to know that Lev Parnas is relevant).

Also today, federal prosecutors have added conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to the charges against three men who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a jury in New York today convicted a Trump supporter of making a death threat against elected officials for his statements in a video he posted online after the January 6 insurrection calling for the "slaughter" of Democratic senators. The penalty for such a crime is up to ten years in prison.

While authorities seem finally to be exploring the potential lawbreaking of the previous administration, Biden is properly entrusting law enforcement to the branch of government responsible for it, leaving the actions of the previous administration to the Department of Justice and state and local authorities. He is also refusing to engage in the rhetorical brawls the right wing is trying to spark, ignoring, for example, the ridiculous story that he was going to outlaw the consumption of meat, or that the federal government had bought and distributed copies of Vice President Kamala Harris's children's book to incoming refugees, both of which then blew up in the faces of those who had pushed them.

Instead, Biden is advancing a vision of an active government that levels the legal, economic, and social playing field for all Americans. While observers tend to associate this vision with FDR, who gave us our modern government, in fact that vision has been shared by all our greatest presidents.

Indeed, it was Republican Abraham Lincoln who first proposed the idea that the country does best when government guarantees equality before the law and works to guarantee equality of resources to all. Under Lincoln, the Republican Party established public colleges, put farmers on land, built railroads, and backed Black equality before the law, paying for those things with our first national taxes, including an income tax.

Republican Theodore Roosevelt took that idea a step further, addressing the extremes of industrialization with a federal government strong enough to regulate business and provide support for labor. Democrat FDR went much further, using the government not just to regulate business but to provide a basic social safety net—Social Security and the Works Progress Administration, for example—and to promote infrastructure through investments like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity and flood control to what had been a neglected region, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which enabled men to recover the landscape from the ravages of the Dust Bowl.  

Biden is in the mold of such predecessors, but his vision is new. He wants the government to support all Americans, beginning not with the ability of a man to support his family but with the idea of protecting children. Since the beginning of his presidency, he has focused on rebuilding the economy by improving the conditions in which children live—famously, reformers credited his American Rescue Plan with reducing by half the number of children living in poverty—and with the plan he announced tonight, he illustrated this reworking of society by investing in our children.

The American Families Plan calls for investing $1.8 trillion in education, providing free schooling from pre-kindergarten through community college. It calls for funding for childcare and paid family medical leave, and it includes more money for fighting child poverty. Biden plans to pay for this, in part, by enforcing existing tax laws which wealthy people and corporations currently slide by, raising as much as $700 billion. Biden also proposes increasing the top tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, the rate it was under President George W. Bush, and by increasing the capital gains rate. 

"The question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent," Biden reminded us tonight, in an echo of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. "Can our democracy deliver on its promise that all of us —created equal in the image of God—have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect, and possibility?  Can our democracy deliver on the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart?" 

The world's autocrats are betting it can't, Biden said. But he listed the accomplishments of the past 99 days, when the people of the United States came together to administer 200 million doses of vaccine and create hundreds of thousands of jobs and he pointed out: "It's never been a good bet to bet against America." 

"Our Constitution opens with the words, 'We the People,'" Biden reminded his listeners tonight. And "it's time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It's us. It's 'We the people.'"  

And if we remember that and come together, he said, "then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong." "The autocrats will not win the future….

America will."

—-

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-supporter-brendan-hunt-convicted-death-threat-democrats/2021/04/28/9a239624-a838-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/nyregion/rudy-giuliani-trump-ukraine-warrant.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/feds-execute-search-warrants-on-trumps-ukraine-dirt-digging-legal-team

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/28/politics/gretchen-whitmer-kidnap-plot-charges/index.html

https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/2021/presidential-policy/biden-economic-relief-proposal-poverty-impact

Share

 

--
****
Juan

Hitching one's wagon to a star was Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice for setting a high standard goal. 
 However, when a political party is all in on hitching its wagon to Trumpism, one has to wonder what
 goal is being set for such a lowly mark.

Thursday, April 29, 2021

Something to Know - 29 April

The President of the United States delivered his agenda going forward, in this period of his first 100 days in office.   There was no screwball bat s###t lunacy like his predecessor.   The delivery was almost like a talk over several cups of coffee, and interestingly detailed.  We now are coming to see that this is no longer a matter of trumpism.  We are now at the WALL where Democracy either moves forward, or gets swallowed up in ugly authoritarianism run by an oligarch of dictators.  Government is us, and we need to make it work.


Earlier today, in anticipation of tonight's address to Congress, President Joe Biden met with news anchors. The president told them that his many meetings with foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, have convinced him that the story of this moment is whether democracy can survive the challenges of the twenty-first century. As things speed up, is it possible, he asked, to achieve the consensus necessary for democracy in time to compete with autocracy?

He told the anchors that "they're going to write about this point in history."

Biden nailed it. The struggle to preserve democracy is precisely what the story of this moment is—although it started long ago in the U.S., at least—and historians are already writing about it that way.

In the United States, the move toward oligarchy had been underway for decades. First, Movement Conservatives, who wanted to destroy the liberal state President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created, increasingly grabbed power through voter suppression, gerrymandering, filling the courts with originalist judges, focusing on the idea of the so-called "unitary executive," and propaganda. Once they controlled the Republican Party, their techniques left it open to a leader like Trump to gather power to himself alone. Their admiration for oligarchy left them open to autocracy.

And now the Republican Party appears to have embraced Trump over any principles the party once held. Its leaders support the Big Lie that Trump won the election and are exercising their control of certain state legislatures to cement their power in enough states to control the federal government. They are passing laws to restrict voting and outlaw protesting; at the same time they have given up on policy and are relying on such blatant propaganda that just yesterday a writer for the pro-Trump New York Post felt obliged to quit after writing a completely fabricated story.

Biden is calling this move to autocracy like it is, and making a bid to shift the course of the nation.

Today, the Department of Justice executed search warrants on both the Manhattan home and the office of Trump's ally and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani as part of an investigation into Giuliani's adventures in Ukraine as he tried to dig up dirt on Biden's son Hunter. Experts say such a search against a lawyer, and against a president's former lawyer, to boot, is extraordinary. To get a warrant, investigators had to convince a judge that they believed it would turn up evidence of a crime that they knew had been committed. Political appointees in Trump's Department of Justice had blocked such a warrant in the past, but Attorney General Merrick Garland lifted the block.

Federal officials also executed a search warrant on Victoria Toensing, a media personality and lawyer associated with Giuliani on his Ukraine work. The details of that search are still murky (but my long-time readers will be pleased to know that Lev Parnas is relevant).

Also today, federal prosecutors have added conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to the charges against three men who allegedly plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a jury in New York today convicted a Trump supporter of making a death threat against elected officials for his statements in a video he posted online after the January 6 insurrection calling for the "slaughter" of Democratic senators. The penalty for such a crime is up to ten years in prison.

While authorities seem finally to be exploring the potential lawbreaking of the previous administration, Biden is properly entrusting law enforcement to the branch of government responsible for it, leaving the actions of the previous administration to the Department of Justice and state and local authorities. He is also refusing to engage in the rhetorical brawls the right wing is trying to spark, ignoring, for example, the ridiculous story that he was going to outlaw the consumption of meat, or that the federal government had bought and distributed copies of Vice President Kamala Harris's children's book to incoming refugees, both of which then blew up in the faces of those who had pushed them.

Instead, Biden is advancing a vision of an active government that levels the legal, economic, and social playing field for all Americans. While observers tend to associate this vision with FDR, who gave us our modern government, in fact that vision has been shared by all our greatest presidents.

Indeed, it was Republican Abraham Lincoln who first proposed the idea that the country does best when government guarantees equality before the law and works to guarantee equality of resources to all. Under Lincoln, the Republican Party established public colleges, put farmers on land, built railroads, and backed Black equality before the law, paying for those things with our first national taxes, including an income tax.

Republican Theodore Roosevelt took that idea a step further, addressing the extremes of industrialization with a federal government strong enough to regulate business and provide support for labor. Democrat FDR went much further, using the government not just to regulate business but to provide a basic social safety net—Social Security and the Works Progress Administration, for example—and to promote infrastructure through investments like the Tennessee Valley Authority, which brought electricity and flood control to what had been a neglected region, and the Civilian Conservation Corps, which enabled men to recover the landscape from the ravages of the Dust Bowl.  

Biden is in the mold of such predecessors, but his vision is new. He wants the government to support all Americans, beginning not with the ability of a man to support his family but with the idea of protecting children. Since the beginning of his presidency, he has focused on rebuilding the economy by improving the conditions in which children live—famously, reformers credited his American Rescue Plan with reducing by half the number of children living in poverty—and with the plan he announced tonight, he illustrated this reworking of society by investing in our children.

The American Families Plan calls for investing $1.8 trillion in education, providing free schooling from pre-kindergarten through community college. It calls for funding for childcare and paid family medical leave, and it includes more money for fighting child poverty. Biden plans to pay for this, in part, by enforcing existing tax laws which wealthy people and corporations currently slide by, raising as much as $700 billion. Biden also proposes increasing the top tax rate from 37% to 39.6%, the rate it was under President George W. Bush, and by increasing the capital gains rate. 

"The question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent," Biden reminded us tonight, in an echo of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. "Can our democracy deliver on its promise that all of us —created equal in the image of God—have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect, and possibility?  Can our democracy deliver on the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart?" 

The world's autocrats are betting it can't, Biden said. But he listed the accomplishments of the past 99 days, when the people of the United States came together to administer 200 million doses of vaccine and create hundreds of thousands of jobs and he pointed out: "It's never been a good bet to bet against America." 

"Our Constitution opens with the words, 'We the People,'" Biden reminded his listeners tonight. And "it's time we remembered that We the People are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital. Not some powerful force we have no control over. It's us. It's 'We the people.'"  

And if we remember that and come together, he said, "then we will meet the central challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong." "The autocrats will not win the future….

America will."

—-

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-supporter-brendan-hunt-convicted-death-threat-democrats/2021/04/28/9a239624-a838-11eb-bca5-048b2759a489_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/nyregion/rudy-giuliani-trump-ukraine-warrant.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/feds-execute-search-warrants-on-trumps-ukraine-dirt-digging-legal-team

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/28/politics/gretchen-whitmer-kidnap-plot-charges/index.html

https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/2021/presidential-policy/biden-economic-relief-proposal-poverty-impact

Share

 

 

--
****
Juan

Hitching one's wagon to a star was Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice for setting a high standard goal. 
 However, when a political party is all in on hitching its wagon to Trumpism, one has to wonder what
 goal is being set for such a lowly mark.

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Something to Know - 28 April

Good Day!   Looks like Southern California is going to warm up to some nice weather.  Growing conditions for plants, trees, and other stuff is ideal.   So much for the good stuff, now for the bad stuff; this story 


 just disgusts me.   It involves the chemical DDT.   Growing up in the Torrance/Redondo Beach area of Los Angeles county, I remember a big chemical plant (I think it was called Union Carbide) just east of Hawthorne Blvd around Prairie avenue.  Over the years, it changed hands, and this valuable real estate became part of the big Del Amo shopping area, and more to the north for the Old Towne shopping area.  However there was one piece of land that never was developed, and stayed barren, and is still undeveloped.   Turns out that this was a prime area for a remaining chemical plant that produced DDT.   DDT was banned from production and use some time later, and there was a huge cache of the chemical that had to be eliminated.   This is where it gets sad.  Right now, the story is that 25,000 barrels (maybe more) was dumped into the deep channel between the Palos Verdes/San Pedro peninsula and Catalina Island.   I would like to know how the decision was made to dump it all there, who is responsible, and how does this get rectified.  Of course, all the various companies who made the stuff and dumped it are all out of business, and it will now be the tax payers financial problem.   The marine animals and consumers of the fish are all subject to the ravages of DDT, and all the problems for which the chemical was banned.   It all goes to prove that we are our own worst enemy - chemical poisoning, superfund cleanups, climate change, and stupid politicians - all bad.   So maybe HCR is your pick-me-up for this morning's read:

More than 140 military leaders, former national security officials, and elected officials from both parties have asked Congress to establish a commission to figure out what led to the January 6 insurrection, when rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol, and how to stop a similar coup attempt in the future.

Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) told reporters that the proposed congressional commission should focus solely on that attack. "What happened on January 6 is unprecedented in our history, and I think that it's very important that the commission be able to focus on that," she said. "It's very important that the January 6 commission focus on what happened on January 6 and what led to that day."

Cheney is staking out turf apart from that of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who has said any commission should cover political violence in general, including Black Lives Matter protesters and Antifa protests. And yet, an investigation by The Guardian established that more than 90% of arrests at Black Lives Matter protests never led to charges and were apparently at least in part to feed a narrative that the BLM protesters were violent.

Cheney and McCarthy are parting ways over what they see the future of the Republican Party to be. Cheney voted to convict former president Trump of incitement of insurrection for the events of January 6 and clearly wants to keep herself from the contamination of that crisis.

McCarthy, in contrast, has come back to the Trump fold. Immediately after the January 6 attack, a number of Republicans who had witnessed the events said that McCarthy called Trump to beg him to call off the insurrectionists. Trump had said to him, "Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," to which McCarthy responded: "Who the F—k do you think you're talking to?"

Nonetheless, later that night, McCarthy joined the majority of the House Republicans to object to the counting of the certified state ballots electing Joe Biden president. Although he later said that the former president "bears responsibility" for the assault, he voted against his impeachment for incitement of insurrection.

What is at stake is the future of the Republican Party. What is also at stake is the future of the country.

McCarthy doesn't want to alienate Trump or his supporters because he sees them as key to future electoral victories. On Fox News Sunday this week, Chris Wallace asked McCarthy whether the story about his angry phone call with Trump on January 6 was true, but, despite witnesses, McCarthy refused to answer. He would like to keep Trump voters behind Republican candidates and has suggested forcing Cheney out of her leadership position in the party.

The Trump loyalists in the party are trying to take over the party in its entirety. Trump and his supporters have continued to feed the idea that Biden cheated Trump out of his election win until now more than two thirds of Republicans say they believe Biden did not win the election. (He did. This is well established.)

To continue to feed this Big Lie, Republicans in the Arizona state senate have turned to a private company for a vote audit in Arizona's largest county, Maricopa. The vote has already been audited at least twice, under formal rules, and both audits turned up no fraud. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a Republican, said there was no need to review the ballots again.

In contrast to the trained election officials, the company the Republicans tapped is run by a conspiracy theorist who supports the idea that voter fraud stole the election from Trump; he claims Trump actually won by 200,000 votes. When a judge ordered the company, Cyber Ninjas, to explain publicly how it was conducting the audit, company attorneys refused. A reporter who observed the early process by claiming to be a volunteer noted that the volunteers helping with the audit were using pens that could be picked up by the scanners. The ballots are no longer secure, so whatever this so-called audit claims is automatically suspect.

Tying the Republican Party to the Big Lie that caused the January 6 insurrection is a dangerous game. It is still unclear what will come out about the insurrection and the media lies that supported it and continue to support it.

While officials in the Department of Justice have been quiet about investigations of the insurrection, that does not mean they are ignoring it: it is not appropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation. Indeed, more than four hundred people have already been arrested for their participation in the insurrection, and news broke yesterday that the FBI had at least four informants within the Proud Boys, the right-wing organization that allegedly provided security for Trump adviser Roger Stone in the days around the insurrection. The Department of Justice has announced it expects to charge at least 100 more individuals.

There are also suggestive insurrection-adjacent stories swirling. A far-right British agitator, Tommy Robinson, who urged Trump supporters to keep fighting after the insurrection and who appeared in right-wing U.S. media, is now affiliating himself with Russia.

If Russian disinformation is indeed involved in the Big Lie, it might well be revealed: nine regional military commanders last year asked the intelligence community to declassify information about the ways in which Russia and China are undermining U.S. national security by shaping public opinion. Yesterday, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines announced that the administration will establish a new center to coordinate intelligence about foreign interference in U.S. politics. Haines noted that "[E]fforts by U.S. adversaries seek to exacerbate divisions and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions."

Lawyers from the Justice Department have been arguing in court lately that Trump's continued lying about the election, along with the amplification of those lies by right-wing media, remains an ongoing threat.

—-

Notes:

https://www.axios.com/capitol-siege-liz-cheney-kevin-mccarthy-d36989db-b658-4b5c-9eea-ce6b853e04c9.html

https://abc7.com/trump-mccarthy-phone-call-herrera-beutler-impeachment-trial-us-capitol-riots/10336297/

https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-effort-live-updates/2021/01/13/956452691/gop-leader-mccarthy-trump-bears-responsibility-for-violence-wont-vote-to-impeach

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-before-jan-6-fbi-collected-information-least-4-proud-boys-2021-04-26/

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/540508-majority-of-republicans-say-2020-election-was-invalid-poll

https://americanindependent.com/arizona-election-audit-pro-trump-cyber-ninjas-vow-secrecy/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/us/Election-audit-Arizona-Republicans.html

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/04/24/politics/trump-capitol-rioters-future-threat/index.html

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/least-100-more-arrests-coming-us-capitol-riot-probe-prosecutors-2021-04-22/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/world/europe/uk-far-right-tommy-robinson-russia.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/26/spy-chiefs-information-war-russia-china-484723

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--
****
Juan

Hitching one's wagon to a star was Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice for setting a high standard goal. 
 However, when a political party is all in on hitching its wagon to Trumpism, one has to wonder what
 goal is being set for such a lowly mark.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Something to Know - 27 April

Today, a two-fer-one presentation.   The printed opinion piece of David Brooks (so that those who do not have NY Times access, and HCR.  Richardson's piece speaks to the ongoing governance by Biden and his administration into foreign and domestic policies which are more consistent with what we would expect in a democratically progressive domestic and globalist society.  On the other hand, Brooks speaks to the confusing Jim Crow Party, which seeks to support the virtues of law and order, while at the same time justifying the use of violence to achieve its goals.   On the surface, this seems to be some pretty scary stuff, which it is, but identifies what we should actually be thinking as the dystopian gang, formerly known as the Republican Party, does its thing.


The G.O.P. Is Getting Even Worse

Trumpians are having a venomous panic attack.

David Brooks

Opinion Columnist


Those of us who had hoped America would calm down when we no longer had Donald Trump spewing poison from the Oval Office have been sadly disabused. There are increasing signs that the Trumpian base is radicalizing. My Republican friends report vicious divisions in their churches and families. Republican politicians who don't toe the Trump line are speaking of death threats and menacing verbal attacks.

It's as if the Trump base felt some security when their man was at the top, and that's now gone. Maybe Trump was the restraining force.
What's happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swaths of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.
The first important survey data to understand this moment is the one pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson discussed with my colleague Ezra Klein. When asked in late January if politics is more about "enacting good public policy" or "ensuring the survival of the country as we know it," 51 percent of Trump Republicans said survival; only 19 percent said policy.

The level of Republican pessimism is off the charts. A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: "It's a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated" or "Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves."
Over 75 percent of Biden voters chose "a big, beautiful world." Two-thirds of Trump voters chose "our lives are threatened."
This level of catastrophism, nearly despair, has fed into an amped-up warrior mentality.

"The decent know that they must become ruthless. They must become the stuff of nightmares," Jack Kerwick writes in the Trumpian magazine American Greatness. "The good man must spare not a moment to train, in both body and mind, to become the monster that he may need to become in order to slay the monsters that prey upon the vulnerable."
With this view, the Jan. 6 insurrection was not a shocking descent into lawlessness but practice for the war ahead. A week after the siege, nearly a quarter of Republicans polled said violence can be acceptable to achieve political goals. William Saletan of Slate recently rounded up the evidence showing how many Republican politicians are now cheering the Jan. 6 crowd, voting against resolutions condemning them.
Liberal democracy is based on a level of optimism, faith and a sense of security. It's based on confidence in the humanistic project: that through conversation and encounter, we can deeply know each other across differences; that most people are seeking the good with different opinions about how to get there; that society is not a zero-sum war, but a conversation and a negotiation.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the magazine Liberties, James Madison was an optimist and a pessimist at the same time, a realist and an idealist. Philosophic liberals — whether on the right side of the political spectrum or the left — understand people have selfish interests, but believe in democracy and open conversation because they have confidence in the capacities of people to define their own lives, to care for people unlike themselves, to keep society progressing.
With their deep pessimism, the hyperpopulist wing of the G.O.P. seems to be crashing through the floor of philosophic liberalism into an abyss of authoritarian impulsiveness. Many of these folks are no longer even operating in the political realm. The G.O.P. response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesn't care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.

Over the last decade or so, as illiberalism, cancel culture and all the rest have arisen within the universities and elite institutions on the left, dozens of publications and organizations have sprung up. They have drawn a sharp line between progressives who believe in liberal free speech norms, and those who don't.
There are new and transformed magazines and movements like American Purpose, Persuasion, Counterweight, Arc Digital, Tablet and Liberties that point out the excesses of the social justice movement and distinguish between those who think speech is a mutual exploration to seek truth and those who think speech is a structure of domination to perpetuate systems of privilege.

This is exactly the line-drawing that now confronts the right, which faces a more radical threat. Republicans and conservatives who believe in the liberal project need to organize and draw a bright line between themselves and the illiberals on their own side. This is no longer just about Trump the man; it's about how you are going to look at reality — as the muddle it's always been, or as an apocalyptic hellscape. It's about how you pursue change — through the conversation and compromise of politics, or through intimidations of macho display.
I can tell a story in which the Trumpians self-marginalize or exhaust themselves. Permanent catastrophism is hard. But apocalyptic pessimism has a tendency to deteriorate into nihilism, and people eventually turn to the strong man to salve the darkness and chaos inside themselves.

More on the post-Trump G.O.P.
An Emboldened Extremist Wing Flexes Its Power in a Leaderless G.O.P.
Opinion | Paul Krugman
The G.O.P. Is in a Doom Loop of Bizarro
Opinion | Spencer Bokat-Lindell
3 Paths for the Republican Party
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.

David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of "The Road to Character" and, most recently, "The Second Mountain." @nytdavidbrooks

--
****
Juan

Hitching one's wagon to a star was Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice for setting a high standard goal. 
 However, when a political party is all in on hitching its wagon to Trumpism, one has to wonder what
 goal is being set for such a lowly mark.