It's funny, except it's not, how fear of populism has become profoundly anti-democratic. The elites want to save democracy even if they have to end democracy, but they absolutely don't want people to be allowed to vote for the party and the policies of their choice. The elites say this is to prevent fascism and fascist populist parties from winning, but fascism is whatever they say it is. The Democrat Party in America is doing somewhat the same thing, its just not quite as bad.
It was pretty bad under Biden . They raided a former President’s home . In NYC they created a case against him for fraud despite the statute of limitations having run out and no party was injured . In the mortgage fraud case Deutsch bank said they appraised the property , willing loaned Trump money , got paid back in full with interest . They said this at trial and a “ democratic “ jury found Trump ..GUILTY . The problem is guilty of what ??
And now the democrats complain hysterically about Trump's lawfare, about him seeking revenge against his enemies, etc. As you say, the lawfare against Trump was egregious. There was also the rape case. The woman who accused him of rape, in a department store dressing room ( according to her) 30 years ago, and she never went to the police or came forward until Trump was elected president!
When Democrats whine about revenge, we simply challenge them with, "revenge for what?" It forces them to enumerate all their atrocities. It's very cathartic.
It is rightfully the need for accountability under the law. No one is being indicted without declassified evidence of criminality proven before a grand jury.
Realize that "proven before a grand jury" is quite an oxymoron, as grand juries hear ONLY the prosecution's evidence and arguments. The phrase "justified suspicion" is more accurate than "proof."
Her whole case was bankrolled by one of the “Oligharcs” they claim to hate in Reid Hoffman. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Nobody is above the law they claim unless it’s them being prosecuted.
She accused him of abuse in a dressing room, but couldn’t remember details. The law to allow her to file a claim was created for women who had claims never filed to extend the SOL. I think it ended up being a civil defamation case, wherein she lost money as a writer due to the denial by the defendant of wrongdoing. The penalty was $1M for defamation.
Yes. During or after the initial trial, at which her baseless claims were thrown out, he called her a liar. So she sued for defamation. NY gleefully allowed it, despite having officially called her a liar for all intents and purposes itself.
They've lied to us that politics is Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch and John McCain all cozy and having hearty steak dinners as they hash out together what's to be done to us.
If your goal isn't to utterly defeat the other party so it's unable to force its values on the entire country, you ain't got no real values about anything.
It was well publicized at the time that New York's law that addresses that kind of fraud was unique because it did not require a victim. It was a victimless crime against the state, the perfect vehicle for lawfare.
I also wondered how "populism", which one would think is kind of the definition of a democratic system, became a bad word. A guy named Thomas Frank has written multiple books about this. https://tcfrank.com/
Populism is good. Nationalism is good too, can’t have patriotism without it.
As I see it, there are basically two types of Democracy; one is based on populism, and the other is just a facade for enabling and facilitating the control / manipulation of a people or a nation, - by elites / oligarchs / big-money.
You can tell which is which, by looking at how responsive a government is to the wants and needs of the voters.
Listen to old debates from the 80s and 90s between major candidates in congress and for the presidency. Today nothing is discussed. It is all theater and bluster. PR managed talking points and divide and conquer tactics. There is no substance. No real democracy because issues aren't even talked about let alone attempts made to fix them.
Yes. The only difference is that the word ‘populism’ comes from Latin, while the word ‘democracy’ comes from Greek. They are two words for the same thing.
When ‘populism’ is used in the current context, however, it actually means ‘democracy that is used to vote for stuff I don’t like’.
And look at the warnings about democracy from the founders.
"Democratic" has been abused to mean "anything I like". Prices got cheaper? "They got democratized!" even when it was capitalist investment that reduced the price...
As far as I can tell, they've associated it with demagoguery and coupled it with their contemptuous dismissal of the average man as an ignorant, easily-misled rube.
The Left became elitist, turning against the People, when the promised Revolution failed to materialize.
Marxists concluded in the third quarter of last century that the proletariat had been bought off by the capitalists, as if it was a case of bribery rather than the complete repudiation of their doctrine.
The Soviet Union, in the 70s, instructed the Western European Communist parties to launch "Eurocommunism", which was the precursor of wokeness. Shrewdly, they told the parties to maintain an old guard in supposed opposition, so that the new Eurocommunism would appear to be a spontaneous Western movement.
While the old guard continued with its trade-union based campaigns, the Eurocommunists bypassed the working class to forge a coalition of all the "oppressed minorities".
This changed the character of the left during the 80s, and Eurocommunism built up enough momentum of its own to operate without any need for Moscow's supervision, so it easily outlived its former masters. Once the end of the Cold War left Western liberalism supreme, it felt free to merge with Eurocommunism (the name had long since disappeared), and the ideology of the globalist managerial elite began to emerge in its 21st-century form.
For years now I have been offering the maxim that "Isolationist is a term invented by imperialists to denigrate non-interventionists." When the Trump era began, I added, "Populism is a term invented by elitists to denigrate actual democracy."
Democrats never refer to their candidate as a populist, even if they are. But they will always refer to the polls showing the Republicans ahead as a surge of populism, or some such. A word game.
The Circulation of Elite. One of Vilfredo Pareto's sociological works that has similarities with Machiavelli's The Prince. Pareto being one of Benito Mussolini's major influences as he was a young man studying in Switzerland, taking Pareto's ideas and fashioning "the most perfect governing system ever devised" Fascism out of it.
It has been offered and presented many times, many ways by many others that attempts for a populace to take power from an elite ruling class requires the participation of and coalition with a number from that same elite ruling class. A complete reordering of society that excludes all elite has never and will never succeed in revolution. Whatever reforms and moments the people rising up and prevailing achieve have always been fleeting. Always. The 'elite' always find a way back in power, no matter what system prevails. Elite have no loyalty to any system, their loyalty is to their status. As Marxist Chomsky wrote, "you can be a senior corporate executive singing the praises of capitalism or a commissar singing the praises of communism" overnight, it's essentially the same position, the same status.
What eugyppius writes is probably the most likely outcome I agree with for this reason. If the CDU leadership can figure out how to retain their status in an AfD coalition they will. But that means they call the shots. They don't lose their elite posts in society, job, community, culture. As long as partnership with AfD comes with loss of status they will reject those they ostensibly share much more ideological values with.
So how does a populist movement lacking elite support gain power but not become coopted and transformed into what it opposes? I've given that some thought and am pointed in the direction of a distinction between a revolution and an evolution in governance. Revolutions revolve, circulate the same elite power constructs. Evolution evolves power constructs that aren't as prone to cooption. Governing model changes into something that isn't elite dominated, where status is automatically transferred to "the latest thing." Where merit prevails, not privilege.
Seeing as how that all seems so very pie in the sky, fanciful and difficult to imagine playing out as conceived the more likelihood is the current system is massaged by a CDU+AfD coalition, with CDU as the senior partner. Even though smaller in number, larger in ability to exercise real power by virtue of status. Doling out small victories to their AfD junior partner to claim success, without fundamental change that AfD supporters think needs to be made.
Circulation of Elite. The system is built on that cornerstone, understanding of human sociology. As much as we wish otherwise. Unless and until Evolution in self-governance is achieved.
They have redefined democracy, or rather redefined demos to include only Good People. Then they created the new word populism to denote what before had been called democracy.
Progressivism is 90% word magic. The other 10% is daddy issues.
It was just as bad a few years ago, with leftist politicians using the phrase Our Democracy and how Republicans will destroy it in the midterms. Ridiculous slogans like “Democracy is on the ballot.” Idiotic rhetoric in a Republic with most people aware that we are not a Democracy per se.
There are a few sensible moderates. They should start a new moderate center-left party. Near 2028 it would be possible to steal some segments from Vance.
But not not, with the Dems dominated by the Woke-Progressives.
I look at it as an example of eugyppius' "new men" theory about the periodic replacement of oligarchies. When the old regime of oligarchs (elites) becomes ossified and goes stupid, they become unpopular. Meanwhile other, newly powerful men decide it's worth the risk to try sieze power from them, and see the opportunity to harness their unpopularity. In order to prevent this, the old elites become increasingly desperate and authoritarian, further enhancing their unpopularity. The longer they allow the cycle to go on, the greater the likelihood that change will come with upheaval and violence.
I'm starting to think that Meister Eckhart has the answer to everything. Most modern medieval thinker in history. He said with great scorn that the peasant wants God to be tangible as his cow is in order to have true faith.
The mask made the virus tangible. The firewall against AfD is proof that the Devil exists and needs to be contained.
Glad for the optimism in your analysis. As we saw here in the US with Trump, the more you try to demonize that which is actually quite normal and desirable, the more a critical mass of people start thinking for themselves and act accordingly.
Yes . I would add however that the “ demonizers” have doubled down on the “ Trans “ issue . Despite their own Democrat party rejecting it . Independents rejecting it . And Republicans 95% rejecting it …they persist . I think the same will happen with the greens . They cannot be reasoned with and they will absolutely NOT admit defeat .
I gave your comment a "like," but I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but that, of course, is to be expected in a comment thread, where comments are comments and not a thesis on some subject.
But What I want to say is that the reason for the doubling-down and their unwillingness to admit defeat (I'd say, "inability" instead of unwillingness) is that they are suffering from a sickness of, more precisely, corruption of the soul. Some might call them "mentally ill," but I think it's deeper than that. These things are manifestations of a profound spiritual crisis, although "crisis" is admittedly a vague and probably inaccurate word for it. Spiritual corruption sums it up, I think.
The reason that there are no political solutions to these things is that the problems are not political; they are spiritual, and those suffering from this spiritual corruption must eventually pay the proce that must always be paid for such corruption.
The whole world is facing sovereign-debt crises, currency collapse(s), and war--with everything that those conditions bring with them. These corrupt people are unlikely to make it through the coming trials.
Well, to repeat yet again life's most grim truth--all cults are the same. All fanatics are equally crazy. All social movements are religions. All religions are cults...
The CDU makes the same mistake that the Democrats in the US do. They think AFD/Trump is the problem and defeating them will make these issues go away. Their logic is totally backwards: the reason why both of them are popular is precisely because these issues are popular and no one else is willing to advance them.
A religion is characterized by continuity in doctrine.
The CDU of three decades ago advocated the policies the AFD now does. The CDU position on substantive issues has changed.
For the CDU to be adhering to their "religion", they'd have to be supporting the AFD positions.
What we see is a non-ideological, non-dogmatic, *and* non-rational course by the CDU, which is that of servile servant to satan. They will say Sky is Blue monday and Sky is Green tuesday because they serve the earthly power over them.
I already posted this on X, so I beg your indulgence:
Sorry, but "if you forbid it, it will only make it more interesting" does not apply in this case. (Sadly, my German wife is infected with the RTL, ARD "mainstream media virus" Politics are tabu as well as questioning the narrative.)
Her son is in the police, and he is slowly coming around, but he has to keep his thoughts and opinions secret; otherwise…1984 anyone?
The AfD is the only party that, ironically, is representative of democracy, but the other parties want to ban. It listens to the will of the people, their concerns, and attempt to institute them in the policies of Government.
At the Landeswahl, I was confronted outside the REWE by a supporter at a table for the CDU. He asked me who I would vote for, and I told him that I could not vote, being an American. I informed him that if I could vote, I would vote AfD. He asked me why, and I replied, Because that is the only party that seems to support the interests of the German citizens.
When I asked him why his party, or any other party, appeared to have no interest in addressing the issues that make the AfD popular, he was like a deer in the headlights. No answer.
My daughter from my second marriage is AngloGerman, her man is ItalianGerman. Before the divorce that was brexit I was able to vote at a local level in Berlin. They asked my voting intentions, and I said AfD. I wasn't prepared for the attacks that I received. Germans be they Anglo, Italian, or any other European German mixture, is a nation that is feared to vote for their national and I use national in an ethnic sense, interests. They truly believe that Germans are the world's shit, this I know could apply for all European nations, for we are all committing national/ethnic suicide. But I don't believe yet that Germany or Europe is doomed. Praise Yahweh and pray that our God will open our eyes to the storm that is coming upon us.
Though suicide is maybe the wrong word. If you tell a kid that eating the plutonium will give him super-powers, and he eats it, and he dies, was that a suicide?
"Mass vaccination followed a nearly identical arc. At first the vaccinators said everyone had to be vaccinated to stop the virus, but by late Autumn 2021 they wanted to vaccinate everybody as much as possible because reasons."
eugyppius, something similar happened with the National Health Service in the UK, though over a longer time frame. It was originally sold as a way to improve access to healthcare, with the NHS acting (ostensibly) to protect the public. But during Covid, people were asked to mask up, isolate themselves at home, and take the experimental shots: now it was the public acting to protect the NHS.
I have little doubt but that it was a similar process that led the free men and women of late Western European antiquity to enter into servitude to feudal lords. Sold as a way to protect the people from random marauders, over time the feudal/manorial system became just another way to rob and control the populace.
Hopefully the populace learned from the first time around. I understand packaged convenience food in Britain now sometimes has a stamp on the film cover as to the daily carbon allotment of the contents. Paid that with mandatory digital ID. Where are we going here. 🤔
Here is what puzzles me. I worked for over 10 years in the Middle East as a teacher, so I was teaching and spending my work time with Muslims and I feel I'm pretty versed in how they think. I was in both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and traveled to a great many of the other Muslim countries as well. I would assume the Muslims who left their Middle Eastern shithole countries didn't want to expend the effort to make their homelands better, and wanted to jump over to countries where life and opportunities are vastly better.
But looking at how they have conducted themselves in the West over the past couple of decades, the puzzling thing is that they appear to just want to change geographical locations, and then when they are in the West they don't assimilate or change their attitudes in the least and set about making their new geographical locations into the same shitholes they just fled from. I've actually observed more fanatical Muslims in the West than I encountered during my 10 years in the Middle East. It's almost as if the most fanatical religious zealots came West. There's a reason these fanatics might be referred to as a Stone Age culture. They have such deep hatred for the West, for Western religions and cultures, why on earth don't they go back to their "perfect" homelands? Well, one big reason is the Islamic fundamental belief that they are supposed to conquer the world and make everyone in it either dead or a Muslim.
I think a lot of it is by design as well. Muslim countries sent their most rabid people to the west to a) get rid of them and b) undermine and destroy the west.
You only have to look at palastine and their situation - how come that their Egyptian Muslim brothers are not willing to take them in and help them out. The border to Egypt is protected like crazy to make sure none of those crazies come over.
More precisely, not a single one of the nearby Muslim countries want to take in the Palestinians because they are virtually always trouble. Yet from a distance many of them have supported Hamas.
It took 600 years for the Spanish to remove the Turks, but remove them they did. Unfortunately the essence of the Spaniard I should warrant is now not the same.
I don’t believe Scenario #2 is out the very real realm of possibility. When the Left gets desperate, which they most assuredly are now across the West, they behave like a cornered raccoon and they will lash out with violent determination against their perceived enemies. Add to that, they don’t fear the people or a backlash at all. They have been so ensconced in power for so long without the slightest consideration of what the people may actually want, it has become alien to their nature to even consider it. Their survival, by any means necessary, is all that matters, and damned be the consequences.
But the other elephant in the room is the seriously precarious state of the economies throughout Europe. That reality check is coming no matter what anyone wants, and may be what will determine not just Germany’s future, but the future of all of Europe as well, AfD or no AfD.
I think number 2 is also more likely than what we would like to admit. These are not intelligent people. They do not look at down stream consequences, they are very binary and locked into a view of only the present. And for them, power at any cost, is still a good play. I’m watching Democrat Jews support Mamdani in NYC, talk about self-immolation. It beggars belief.
Truly! Literally everything they’re doing -in a sane world - would be considered suicidal for a political party! And yet, they double-down, and here we are.
Isn't that amazing? Mamdani got something like 563,000 votes in that pathetic Democrat primary. There are supposedly 940,000± Jews in New York who could vote against him. And of course, there are roughly 4.9 million registered voters but recently only about 23% of them voted. It's a pretty unbelievable situation in which Jews either won't vote or will vote for the anti-semitic Marxist, and Republicans are so apathetic they not only won't find a decent Republican candidate who could possibly win and in general they just don't vote in large enough numbers to affect outcomes. The voter apathy is astounding. New Yorkers certainly deserve what they vote for....or don't bother voting for as the case may be.
Endification is, in essence, the inability to ever admit a mistake has been made. I think this inability to admit a mistake more or less guarantees that AfD is banned at some point in the next year.
I think the "No Kings" protests in the US (and apparently around the world) have reached your "endification" point. No one can really say what they're about, even the most enthusiastic participants. Except for not wanting a king which America hasn't had for 250 years.
That particular endified movement is the anti-Trump movement, and it flared into existence in 2016. They're only message is "because Trump!".
A lot of my friends went to the No Kings protest yesterday. I suppose at some point the subject will come up and I'll try to point out that Biden was more authoritarian than Trump has been. They are particularly blind on this point.
Yes, it was laughingly obvious the majority of the protests were the sad, ragged remnants of the 60's protester boomers who are back in action...walkers and all. I hardly saw anyone who wasn't post 70 and white. A lot of women, also some pretty silly looking men.
As a comparison, abandoning the firewall and allowing the Sweden Democrats to be coalition partners but without formal seats in the government has worked wonders for the old "seven-leaf clover" of political parties; the SD has stopped growing, only increasing or decreasing in the polls within the margin of error in polls.
This means the SD can be tossed the occasional political bone then and now, and meanwhile what non-narrative measures the governement wants to enforce it can do in peace and safety since media and pundidiots and anal-ysts will blame the SD for anything decreed Wrongthink, even if it's something that originated with the former Socialist Democrat/green/Communist governement, or even the extreme neoliberal Reinfeldt-Alliance of 2006-2014.
I don't know why Sweden didn't mimic Germany in this - possibly, it is because the SD has been the most pro-NATO, pro-Israel and pro-war-with-Russia-party and so continuing to shut them out would be too costly with regards to the various corporate capitalist backers of the right-side parties (though Kristersson, the current PN nicknamed "Milhouse" for obvious reasons if you see a photo of him, is a rainbow-weeping WEF-creature caricature of a man to eleven).
The danger for the AfD is the temptation to "moderate" to be accepted, which won't work to any other end than making them too slaves to the various forces struggling to rule behind the Potemkin-backdrop of "Our Democracy".
I like this endification definition. It explains a lot. The Democrat party in the US is in the midst of it. They really have no policies, they are just a knee jerk reaction to all things Trump. Currently they try to enhance their powers by inviting boomers and the mentally ill to protest a King, even though that party wanted you to vote for a candidate that never received a single vote in the primary. Their own Queen, if you will. The older members of the Democrat Party are trying to appease the more radical left youngsters like AOC and Mamdani, only to get burned. AOC will likely run against Schumer and Mamdani refused to support Hochul.
I’m hoping we are also watching the endification of the pharmaceutical industry. As the covid vaccine has made many of us start looking into the efficacy of all vaccines and their side effects, in addition to food additives, the pushback has been apparent. RFK Jr remains one of the most highly polled members of the Trump administration. Naturally, the industry is doubling down on their past mistakes and fighting tooth and nail, instead of trying to give gracefully on some points. They want all cattle to be injected with MRNA and so forth. These systems are complex and deeply entrenched int heir viewpoints and presumably their cash inputs. It will be interesting to see where all of this will lead.
If 'No Kings' were against executive overreach generally, that'd be great. Trump, like most presidents before him, has very little interest in the legal bounds of his own authority.
What are legal powers of a president? What are illegal powers of a president? Which presidents violate their oaths of ofice?
The great Ivan Eland reviews the US Presidents with regard to these issues in "Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty"
Hard times create strong men that create good times. Good times create weak men that create hard times.
Germany and much of the West is living in a time of weak men (many of them are females now). The US has elected a strong man to attempt to stop the decline to hard times again, but it is dubious if he will succeed with all the elites against him for retaining their globalist greed. The problem for the Trump agenda is that the problems they are trying to solve have evolved over decades and fixing them requires breaking things that Democrats and low information voters will rebel against. Trump has a very difficult job explaining this need for the American public to sacrifice today for the greater good tomorrow... especially when the media is failing to report anything but flaming negative attacks on him. I give it 50/50.
From my perspective the problem with the West was that the post-war US-funded Global Order as initiated by the 1944 Bretton Woods Act should have ended 30-40 years ago. Germans as well as many other Europeans and Asians grew too fat dumb and happy with their high life of massive social spending as the US was paying to keep them from blowing each other up again. That "good times" period allowed the weak men and women to slime their way to administrative and money control... through looting, tent-seeking and gambling... certainly not from any productive outcomes or merit. These people dislike industrialization because they never had the right stuff to be industrialists... too much getting one's hand dirty and taking career risks... and those that do have the right stuff are their socioeconomic status competition... and thus they cannot have that again.
They demand that this old Global Order continue. It is why they would involve themselves in creating a fake dossier to try and take out Trump and plant a geriatric cognitively deficient puppet in the White House who by autopen fiat would perpetuate and increase US spending to protect the European dream while also enabling even more Western de-industrialization.
The difference between the US and other Western countries related to this populist uprising to beat down the liberaltard elites probably comes down to one single difference... the Constitutionally protected God-given right to free speech, expression and association. Germany does not have it and without it the people don't have enough populist power to defeat the tyrants in control.
It appears to me that the US is short-cutting the endification... attempting to correct the declining trajectory before it hits the end. The Democrats seem to be committed to taking it to the end so they can continue to extract more wealth from it and to hell with future generations impacted by the final implosion. That seems to be the same motivation of the EUtard elites in control of other European countries. The point about German culture being different is interesting to me... but I think the lack of citizen human rights protection explains at least part of it. Yes, the 2nd Amendment seems key too as without it the tyrants would trample on 1st Amendment rights.
The Democrats are filibustering the CR and shut down the government because they are extremely angry. Hopping mad. Trump has been implementing one consistent domestic policy goal since the first day of the second term - defunding, dismantling, and destroying the machinery of the massive Democratic party political machine. That is the common thread between ending USAID, defunding PBS and NPR, mass deporting illegal aliens, breaking public employee unions, shrinking the Education Department, going after Antifa and their Oligarchs, and so many other things. Trump is trying to destroy a political machine that the Democrats have taken 100 years to build in just 4 years.
"a political machine that the Democrats have taken 100 years to build.
My only quibble with your great comment is that the current version of this machine is about 20 years old. Or more accurately, it has been overhauled beginning about 20 years ago to include a massive level of coordinated and networked collusion and corruption.
Some components are recent and were built in the last 20 years - particularly the Soros oligarchs and connections to China. But USAID was around for 60, the Teachers Unions were part of that machine for nearly 100, the Media has been part of their machine for my entire life, and the illegal aliens have been part of their machine since the 1970s at least.
Are you serious? You must be one of those unaccountable people living off the soft money of government to not understand what it takes to have created his business empire. Nobody with even a modicum of business sense would ask this question. Fixing the crime problem. The illegal immigrant problem. The cost of gas. The cost of eggs. The problem with China continuing to rip us off and other countries continuing to rip us off. The fentanyl problem. The Israel-Hamas war problem. The previous problem with ISIS. Democrats only make problems. A lot of Republicans also only make problems. Trump solves problems.
The EU has not existed for 80 years so clearly Germany could not have been a member of it for that long. Before Maastricht it was the EEC in the UK but critically its nature was different from what it became afterwards.
Endism is a useful term and concept. We had it here for decades in respect of the EEC/EU. Membership was supported by the old parties because, well because they did. At all costs they had to prevent UKIP andlater The Brexit Party from sowing doubs about it. If there was any recognised fault in the EU it had to be taken on the chin by the UK as a member State. This persists in much of the old parties and they would rejoin in an instant if it was politically possible.
The question of coalition will not arise here until after a general Election because the Conservatives are so weak no one would want to ally with them. After a GE a few individual Tories might support Reform in government if it needs them but the bulk of that party won't because they are much closer in opinions to the other (openly socialist) parties here.
I wonder if, when one larger western country topples its old regime, the habit will run like wildfire.
True - it was the change from the EEC to the EU with all that implies - remember the disaster that was the "Constitution for the EU" which e.g. Ireland rejected and was made to vote again to accept it? - which turned many of us into firm Leave supporters.
Indeed the EU27 Kommission mantra 'vote, but vote as we kommand' was the main issue. I do not think this has served any EU27 member state well, and the UK has the scars - as well as treasonous types like Mr Starmer kC.
It's funny, except it's not, how fear of populism has become profoundly anti-democratic. The elites want to save democracy even if they have to end democracy, but they absolutely don't want people to be allowed to vote for the party and the policies of their choice. The elites say this is to prevent fascism and fascist populist parties from winning, but fascism is whatever they say it is. The Democrat Party in America is doing somewhat the same thing, its just not quite as bad.
It was pretty bad under Biden . They raided a former President’s home . In NYC they created a case against him for fraud despite the statute of limitations having run out and no party was injured . In the mortgage fraud case Deutsch bank said they appraised the property , willing loaned Trump money , got paid back in full with interest . They said this at trial and a “ democratic “ jury found Trump ..GUILTY . The problem is guilty of what ??
Guilty of being Trump! Duh...
⬆️⬆️⬆️
And now the democrats complain hysterically about Trump's lawfare, about him seeking revenge against his enemies, etc. As you say, the lawfare against Trump was egregious. There was also the rape case. The woman who accused him of rape, in a department store dressing room ( according to her) 30 years ago, and she never went to the police or came forward until Trump was elected president!
And she couldn't remember what year it happened in. I'm not a woman but it seems like you'f probably remember what year you got raped
And gleefully bragged on TV about how she was going to spend the lawsuit money. Soooo traumatizing! 😂😂😂
When Democrats whine about revenge, we simply challenge them with, "revenge for what?" It forces them to enumerate all their atrocities. It's very cathartic.
It is rightfully the need for accountability under the law. No one is being indicted without declassified evidence of criminality proven before a grand jury.
Realize that "proven before a grand jury" is quite an oxymoron, as grand juries hear ONLY the prosecution's evidence and arguments. The phrase "justified suspicion" is more accurate than "proof."
You are right. Thanks for the correction. I knew grand juries don’t prove, but was too quick. Correct to say they find probable cause?
Proof is not accurate. I get that. But is probable cause to indict accurate?
Her whole case was bankrolled by one of the “Oligharcs” they claim to hate in Reid Hoffman. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. Nobody is above the law they claim unless it’s them being prosecuted.
She’s clearly a liar and rather nutty to boot.
Did she win? Trump loves winners.
Not clear - the case is in appeal....
She accused him of abuse in a dressing room, but couldn’t remember details. The law to allow her to file a claim was created for women who had claims never filed to extend the SOL. I think it ended up being a civil defamation case, wherein she lost money as a writer due to the denial by the defendant of wrongdoing. The penalty was $1M for defamation.
Yes. During or after the initial trial, at which her baseless claims were thrown out, he called her a liar. So she sued for defamation. NY gleefully allowed it, despite having officially called her a liar for all intents and purposes itself.
Thanks. It’s the one trial iI didn’t follow daily.
They've lied to us that politics is Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch and John McCain all cozy and having hearty steak dinners as they hash out together what's to be done to us.
If your goal isn't to utterly defeat the other party so it's unable to force its values on the entire country, you ain't got no real values about anything.
Guilty of being an enemy of the state.
It was well publicized at the time that New York's law that addresses that kind of fraud was unique because it did not require a victim. It was a victimless crime against the state, the perfect vehicle for lawfare.
Guilty of stating the truth
One of many faux uses of our courts.
I also wondered how "populism", which one would think is kind of the definition of a democratic system, became a bad word. A guy named Thomas Frank has written multiple books about this. https://tcfrank.com/
I know, populism comes from the same root as " the people", its basically politics that people like! Thanks for link.
Populism is good. Nationalism is good too, can’t have patriotism without it.
As I see it, there are basically two types of Democracy; one is based on populism, and the other is just a facade for enabling and facilitating the control / manipulation of a people or a nation, - by elites / oligarchs / big-money.
You can tell which is which, by looking at how responsive a government is to the wants and needs of the voters.
Listen to old debates from the 80s and 90s between major candidates in congress and for the presidency. Today nothing is discussed. It is all theater and bluster. PR managed talking points and divide and conquer tactics. There is no substance. No real democracy because issues aren't even talked about let alone attempts made to fix them.
"Events" are about to fix all of that.
"Populism" is literally democracy.
Yes. The only difference is that the word ‘populism’ comes from Latin, while the word ‘democracy’ comes from Greek. They are two words for the same thing.
When ‘populism’ is used in the current context, however, it actually means ‘democracy that is used to vote for stuff I don’t like’.
That's also what "fascism" means. A large vocabulary is such a heavy burden for the left.
And look at the warnings about democracy from the founders.
"Democratic" has been abused to mean "anything I like". Prices got cheaper? "They got democratized!" even when it was capitalist investment that reduced the price...
As far as I can tell, they've associated it with demagoguery and coupled it with their contemptuous dismissal of the average man as an ignorant, easily-misled rube.
The Left became elitist, turning against the People, when the promised Revolution failed to materialize.
Marxists concluded in the third quarter of last century that the proletariat had been bought off by the capitalists, as if it was a case of bribery rather than the complete repudiation of their doctrine.
The Soviet Union, in the 70s, instructed the Western European Communist parties to launch "Eurocommunism", which was the precursor of wokeness. Shrewdly, they told the parties to maintain an old guard in supposed opposition, so that the new Eurocommunism would appear to be a spontaneous Western movement.
While the old guard continued with its trade-union based campaigns, the Eurocommunists bypassed the working class to forge a coalition of all the "oppressed minorities".
This changed the character of the left during the 80s, and Eurocommunism built up enough momentum of its own to operate without any need for Moscow's supervision, so it easily outlived its former masters. Once the end of the Cold War left Western liberalism supreme, it felt free to merge with Eurocommunism (the name had long since disappeared), and the ideology of the globalist managerial elite began to emerge in its 21st-century form.
And we'll have fun fun fun till Daddy takes the T-Bird away.
Exactly.
R.I.P. Brian Wilson
Ironically, it's difficult to find any bigger demagogues than in the Democratic Party.
I dunno . . . they look pret-ty small to me.
Rustbelt, flyover states, deplorables... the Democrats have long hated the people
But the GOP, on the other hand, always represents the people perfectly! Yee-HAW!
How can you disagree with "easily misled" after 2020?
I can't. All I can do is notice that the people they're describing are their own voters.
For years now I have been offering the maxim that "Isolationist is a term invented by imperialists to denigrate non-interventionists." When the Trump era began, I added, "Populism is a term invented by elitists to denigrate actual democracy."
👍
Democrats never refer to their candidate as a populist, even if they are. But they will always refer to the polls showing the Republicans ahead as a surge of populism, or some such. A word game.
If them peasants ain't stinking it's hard to claim they're unwashed.
The Circulation of Elite. One of Vilfredo Pareto's sociological works that has similarities with Machiavelli's The Prince. Pareto being one of Benito Mussolini's major influences as he was a young man studying in Switzerland, taking Pareto's ideas and fashioning "the most perfect governing system ever devised" Fascism out of it.
It has been offered and presented many times, many ways by many others that attempts for a populace to take power from an elite ruling class requires the participation of and coalition with a number from that same elite ruling class. A complete reordering of society that excludes all elite has never and will never succeed in revolution. Whatever reforms and moments the people rising up and prevailing achieve have always been fleeting. Always. The 'elite' always find a way back in power, no matter what system prevails. Elite have no loyalty to any system, their loyalty is to their status. As Marxist Chomsky wrote, "you can be a senior corporate executive singing the praises of capitalism or a commissar singing the praises of communism" overnight, it's essentially the same position, the same status.
What eugyppius writes is probably the most likely outcome I agree with for this reason. If the CDU leadership can figure out how to retain their status in an AfD coalition they will. But that means they call the shots. They don't lose their elite posts in society, job, community, culture. As long as partnership with AfD comes with loss of status they will reject those they ostensibly share much more ideological values with.
So how does a populist movement lacking elite support gain power but not become coopted and transformed into what it opposes? I've given that some thought and am pointed in the direction of a distinction between a revolution and an evolution in governance. Revolutions revolve, circulate the same elite power constructs. Evolution evolves power constructs that aren't as prone to cooption. Governing model changes into something that isn't elite dominated, where status is automatically transferred to "the latest thing." Where merit prevails, not privilege.
Seeing as how that all seems so very pie in the sky, fanciful and difficult to imagine playing out as conceived the more likelihood is the current system is massaged by a CDU+AfD coalition, with CDU as the senior partner. Even though smaller in number, larger in ability to exercise real power by virtue of status. Doling out small victories to their AfD junior partner to claim success, without fundamental change that AfD supporters think needs to be made.
Circulation of Elite. The system is built on that cornerstone, understanding of human sociology. As much as we wish otherwise. Unless and until Evolution in self-governance is achieved.
Power is the exercise of a focused will. 'The public' as a whole has no focused will.
It would be good to remember that.
Will to Power.
Those too timid to act with power lack will.
Most with power on the right lack will.
Most with power on the left have will.
Public policy today reflects that.
Oh, it’s just as bad over here, though perhaps not quite as obvious.
They have redefined democracy, or rather redefined demos to include only Good People. Then they created the new word populism to denote what before had been called democracy.
Progressivism is 90% word magic. The other 10% is daddy issues.
You made my .sig file.
It was just as bad a few years ago, with leftist politicians using the phrase Our Democracy and how Republicans will destroy it in the midterms. Ridiculous slogans like “Democracy is on the ballot.” Idiotic rhetoric in a Republic with most people aware that we are not a Democracy per se.
The Democrat party in the US is dead.
There are a few sensible moderates. They should start a new moderate center-left party. Near 2028 it would be possible to steal some segments from Vance.
But not not, with the Dems dominated by the Woke-Progressives.
We have to SAVE Democracy even if we have to KILL it!
It is just as bad with the exception that it's a two party system.
I look at it as an example of eugyppius' "new men" theory about the periodic replacement of oligarchies. When the old regime of oligarchs (elites) becomes ossified and goes stupid, they become unpopular. Meanwhile other, newly powerful men decide it's worth the risk to try sieze power from them, and see the opportunity to harness their unpopularity. In order to prevent this, the old elites become increasingly desperate and authoritarian, further enhancing their unpopularity. The longer they allow the cycle to go on, the greater the likelihood that change will come with upheaval and violence.
Not to mention war, ruin, poverty, and starvation. Shutting down agriculture doesn't seem like the brightest idea in the world
I'm starting to think that Meister Eckhart has the answer to everything. Most modern medieval thinker in history. He said with great scorn that the peasant wants God to be tangible as his cow is in order to have true faith.
The mask made the virus tangible. The firewall against AfD is proof that the Devil exists and needs to be contained.
Glad for the optimism in your analysis. As we saw here in the US with Trump, the more you try to demonize that which is actually quite normal and desirable, the more a critical mass of people start thinking for themselves and act accordingly.
Yes . I would add however that the “ demonizers” have doubled down on the “ Trans “ issue . Despite their own Democrat party rejecting it . Independents rejecting it . And Republicans 95% rejecting it …they persist . I think the same will happen with the greens . They cannot be reasoned with and they will absolutely NOT admit defeat .
They can persist all they want, but if their numbers keep shrinking, it won't do them a lot of good.
I gave your comment a "like," but I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but that, of course, is to be expected in a comment thread, where comments are comments and not a thesis on some subject.
But What I want to say is that the reason for the doubling-down and their unwillingness to admit defeat (I'd say, "inability" instead of unwillingness) is that they are suffering from a sickness of, more precisely, corruption of the soul. Some might call them "mentally ill," but I think it's deeper than that. These things are manifestations of a profound spiritual crisis, although "crisis" is admittedly a vague and probably inaccurate word for it. Spiritual corruption sums it up, I think.
The reason that there are no political solutions to these things is that the problems are not political; they are spiritual, and those suffering from this spiritual corruption must eventually pay the proce that must always be paid for such corruption.
The whole world is facing sovereign-debt crises, currency collapse(s), and war--with everything that those conditions bring with them. These corrupt people are unlikely to make it through the coming trials.
Your thoughtful choice of words reflects a wider than average body of reading behind it.
Well, to repeat yet again life's most grim truth--all cults are the same. All fanatics are equally crazy. All social movements are religions. All religions are cults...
The CDU makes the same mistake that the Democrats in the US do. They think AFD/Trump is the problem and defeating them will make these issues go away. Their logic is totally backwards: the reason why both of them are popular is precisely because these issues are popular and no one else is willing to advance them.
Well, they're not making a "mistake." Their religion demands this. They are true to their faith.
If any party in politics stands for something it must believe in that something utterly. Otherwise there is no point.
And believing in things utterly is always the heart of the problem.
A religion is characterized by continuity in doctrine.
The CDU of three decades ago advocated the policies the AFD now does. The CDU position on substantive issues has changed.
For the CDU to be adhering to their "religion", they'd have to be supporting the AFD positions.
What we see is a non-ideological, non-dogmatic, *and* non-rational course by the CDU, which is that of servile servant to satan. They will say Sky is Blue monday and Sky is Green tuesday because they serve the earthly power over them.
That's not religion; that is its opposite.
I already posted this on X, so I beg your indulgence:
Sorry, but "if you forbid it, it will only make it more interesting" does not apply in this case. (Sadly, my German wife is infected with the RTL, ARD "mainstream media virus" Politics are tabu as well as questioning the narrative.)
Her son is in the police, and he is slowly coming around, but he has to keep his thoughts and opinions secret; otherwise…1984 anyone?
The AfD is the only party that, ironically, is representative of democracy, but the other parties want to ban. It listens to the will of the people, their concerns, and attempt to institute them in the policies of Government.
At the Landeswahl, I was confronted outside the REWE by a supporter at a table for the CDU. He asked me who I would vote for, and I told him that I could not vote, being an American. I informed him that if I could vote, I would vote AfD. He asked me why, and I replied, Because that is the only party that seems to support the interests of the German citizens.
When I asked him why his party, or any other party, appeared to have no interest in addressing the issues that make the AfD popular, he was like a deer in the headlights. No answer.
Germany is doomed.🤬🤬🤬🤬
My daughter from my second marriage is AngloGerman, her man is ItalianGerman. Before the divorce that was brexit I was able to vote at a local level in Berlin. They asked my voting intentions, and I said AfD. I wasn't prepared for the attacks that I received. Germans be they Anglo, Italian, or any other European German mixture, is a nation that is feared to vote for their national and I use national in an ethnic sense, interests. They truly believe that Germans are the world's shit, this I know could apply for all European nations, for we are all committing national/ethnic suicide. But I don't believe yet that Germany or Europe is doomed. Praise Yahweh and pray that our God will open our eyes to the storm that is coming upon us.
Post WW2 Germans have been conditioned to hate themselves and are highly masochistic as a result.
Praise Yaweh indeed :)
Though suicide is maybe the wrong word. If you tell a kid that eating the plutonium will give him super-powers, and he eats it, and he dies, was that a suicide?
"Mass vaccination followed a nearly identical arc. At first the vaccinators said everyone had to be vaccinated to stop the virus, but by late Autumn 2021 they wanted to vaccinate everybody as much as possible because reasons."
eugyppius, something similar happened with the National Health Service in the UK, though over a longer time frame. It was originally sold as a way to improve access to healthcare, with the NHS acting (ostensibly) to protect the public. But during Covid, people were asked to mask up, isolate themselves at home, and take the experimental shots: now it was the public acting to protect the NHS.
I have little doubt but that it was a similar process that led the free men and women of late Western European antiquity to enter into servitude to feudal lords. Sold as a way to protect the people from random marauders, over time the feudal/manorial system became just another way to rob and control the populace.
Hopefully the populace learned from the first time around. I understand packaged convenience food in Britain now sometimes has a stamp on the film cover as to the daily carbon allotment of the contents. Paid that with mandatory digital ID. Where are we going here. 🤔
That kind of pattern is human nature.
I see a lot of patterns that I classify as inhuman, though of bipedal origin.
'[Merz] ruled out cooperation with the AfD in any form – “at least not under me as party leader of the CDU.”'
The proper response to this: "Your terms are acceptable."
The woke left idiots will be in charge until western society is destroyed. It is not just a German problem.
Once the moslem mob takes over we are screwed, we can already see it in the UK and France.
We are quickly approaching a point of no return.
For a description of how this might come about, I highly recommend the recent novel "Submission" by Michel Houellebecq.
The Belgians, the French, and no doubt Houellebecq himself will be quite surprised to learn he is Belgian.
Sorry for the error. Fixed. Sarcasm was not necessary.
I saw it as gentle sarcasm.
If you can point to a nation returning to a point it was at before, feel free to point it out.
Here is what puzzles me. I worked for over 10 years in the Middle East as a teacher, so I was teaching and spending my work time with Muslims and I feel I'm pretty versed in how they think. I was in both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and traveled to a great many of the other Muslim countries as well. I would assume the Muslims who left their Middle Eastern shithole countries didn't want to expend the effort to make their homelands better, and wanted to jump over to countries where life and opportunities are vastly better.
But looking at how they have conducted themselves in the West over the past couple of decades, the puzzling thing is that they appear to just want to change geographical locations, and then when they are in the West they don't assimilate or change their attitudes in the least and set about making their new geographical locations into the same shitholes they just fled from. I've actually observed more fanatical Muslims in the West than I encountered during my 10 years in the Middle East. It's almost as if the most fanatical religious zealots came West. There's a reason these fanatics might be referred to as a Stone Age culture. They have such deep hatred for the West, for Western religions and cultures, why on earth don't they go back to their "perfect" homelands? Well, one big reason is the Islamic fundamental belief that they are supposed to conquer the world and make everyone in it either dead or a Muslim.
I think a lot of it is by design as well. Muslim countries sent their most rabid people to the west to a) get rid of them and b) undermine and destroy the west.
You only have to look at palastine and their situation - how come that their Egyptian Muslim brothers are not willing to take them in and help them out. The border to Egypt is protected like crazy to make sure none of those crazies come over.
More precisely, not a single one of the nearby Muslim countries want to take in the Palestinians because they are virtually always trouble. Yet from a distance many of them have supported Hamas.
The possibility of a selective importation of the most harmful elements is not beyond cogitation for me.
It sure looks that way . Surely we would all agree that it cannot last another ten years
It took 600 years for the Spanish to remove the Turks, but remove them they did. Unfortunately the essence of the Spaniard I should warrant is now not the same.
I don’t believe Scenario #2 is out the very real realm of possibility. When the Left gets desperate, which they most assuredly are now across the West, they behave like a cornered raccoon and they will lash out with violent determination against their perceived enemies. Add to that, they don’t fear the people or a backlash at all. They have been so ensconced in power for so long without the slightest consideration of what the people may actually want, it has become alien to their nature to even consider it. Their survival, by any means necessary, is all that matters, and damned be the consequences.
But the other elephant in the room is the seriously precarious state of the economies throughout Europe. That reality check is coming no matter what anyone wants, and may be what will determine not just Germany’s future, but the future of all of Europe as well, AfD or no AfD.
I think number 2 is also more likely than what we would like to admit. These are not intelligent people. They do not look at down stream consequences, they are very binary and locked into a view of only the present. And for them, power at any cost, is still a good play. I’m watching Democrat Jews support Mamdani in NYC, talk about self-immolation. It beggars belief.
Truly! Literally everything they’re doing -in a sane world - would be considered suicidal for a political party! And yet, they double-down, and here we are.
Isn't that amazing? Mamdani got something like 563,000 votes in that pathetic Democrat primary. There are supposedly 940,000± Jews in New York who could vote against him. And of course, there are roughly 4.9 million registered voters but recently only about 23% of them voted. It's a pretty unbelievable situation in which Jews either won't vote or will vote for the anti-semitic Marxist, and Republicans are so apathetic they not only won't find a decent Republican candidate who could possibly win and in general they just don't vote in large enough numbers to affect outcomes. The voter apathy is astounding. New Yorkers certainly deserve what they vote for....or don't bother voting for as the case may be.
That's because they and Mamdani answer to the same authority.
Interesting how the oligarchs and the elites are scared of anything that will upset the status quo and their power. Human nature never changes.
Like sands in the hourglass…..
These are the days of our lives.
Wow, *that* took me back... 🤣🤣🤣
Endification is, in essence, the inability to ever admit a mistake has been made. I think this inability to admit a mistake more or less guarantees that AfD is banned at some point in the next year.
I think the "No Kings" protests in the US (and apparently around the world) have reached your "endification" point. No one can really say what they're about, even the most enthusiastic participants. Except for not wanting a king which America hasn't had for 250 years.
That particular endified movement is the anti-Trump movement, and it flared into existence in 2016. They're only message is "because Trump!".
A lot of my friends went to the No Kings protest yesterday. I suppose at some point the subject will come up and I'll try to point out that Biden was more authoritarian than Trump has been. They are particularly blind on this point.
Surely you realize that evidence and logic hold no sway with the no kings crowd.
Having seen videos of the protests, I‘d say they are about being a last chance for boomers to make it all about them before the day of the pillow.
It disturbed me that the two closest demonstrations to me were in retirement communities. So much for age bestowing wisdom.
Yes, it was laughingly obvious the majority of the protests were the sad, ragged remnants of the 60's protester boomers who are back in action...walkers and all. I hardly saw anyone who wasn't post 70 and white. A lot of women, also some pretty silly looking men.
One of your friends?
https://x.com/jeffhunt/status/1979554731782729920?s=42
As a comparison, abandoning the firewall and allowing the Sweden Democrats to be coalition partners but without formal seats in the government has worked wonders for the old "seven-leaf clover" of political parties; the SD has stopped growing, only increasing or decreasing in the polls within the margin of error in polls.
This means the SD can be tossed the occasional political bone then and now, and meanwhile what non-narrative measures the governement wants to enforce it can do in peace and safety since media and pundidiots and anal-ysts will blame the SD for anything decreed Wrongthink, even if it's something that originated with the former Socialist Democrat/green/Communist governement, or even the extreme neoliberal Reinfeldt-Alliance of 2006-2014.
I don't know why Sweden didn't mimic Germany in this - possibly, it is because the SD has been the most pro-NATO, pro-Israel and pro-war-with-Russia-party and so continuing to shut them out would be too costly with regards to the various corporate capitalist backers of the right-side parties (though Kristersson, the current PN nicknamed "Milhouse" for obvious reasons if you see a photo of him, is a rainbow-weeping WEF-creature caricature of a man to eleven).
The danger for the AfD is the temptation to "moderate" to be accepted, which won't work to any other end than making them too slaves to the various forces struggling to rule behind the Potemkin-backdrop of "Our Democracy".
The will to power expressed by the German Regime is not that of its own people.
I like this endification definition. It explains a lot. The Democrat party in the US is in the midst of it. They really have no policies, they are just a knee jerk reaction to all things Trump. Currently they try to enhance their powers by inviting boomers and the mentally ill to protest a King, even though that party wanted you to vote for a candidate that never received a single vote in the primary. Their own Queen, if you will. The older members of the Democrat Party are trying to appease the more radical left youngsters like AOC and Mamdani, only to get burned. AOC will likely run against Schumer and Mamdani refused to support Hochul.
I’m hoping we are also watching the endification of the pharmaceutical industry. As the covid vaccine has made many of us start looking into the efficacy of all vaccines and their side effects, in addition to food additives, the pushback has been apparent. RFK Jr remains one of the most highly polled members of the Trump administration. Naturally, the industry is doubling down on their past mistakes and fighting tooth and nail, instead of trying to give gracefully on some points. They want all cattle to be injected with MRNA and so forth. These systems are complex and deeply entrenched int heir viewpoints and presumably their cash inputs. It will be interesting to see where all of this will lead.
If 'No Kings' were against executive overreach generally, that'd be great. Trump, like most presidents before him, has very little interest in the legal bounds of his own authority.
What are legal powers of a president? What are illegal powers of a president? Which presidents violate their oaths of ofice?
The great Ivan Eland reviews the US Presidents with regard to these issues in "Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty"
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/02/07/recarving-rushmore-ranking-the-presidents-on-peace-prosperity-and-liberty/
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1598130226
Cleared-up my mind on this subject.
An outright "toleration arrangement"!!! Madness.
Herr Merz really needs to be made into a sitcom. They can call it "Yes, Chancellor".
‘Ja Herr Kommissar’
Hard times create strong men that create good times. Good times create weak men that create hard times.
Germany and much of the West is living in a time of weak men (many of them are females now). The US has elected a strong man to attempt to stop the decline to hard times again, but it is dubious if he will succeed with all the elites against him for retaining their globalist greed. The problem for the Trump agenda is that the problems they are trying to solve have evolved over decades and fixing them requires breaking things that Democrats and low information voters will rebel against. Trump has a very difficult job explaining this need for the American public to sacrifice today for the greater good tomorrow... especially when the media is failing to report anything but flaming negative attacks on him. I give it 50/50.
From my perspective the problem with the West was that the post-war US-funded Global Order as initiated by the 1944 Bretton Woods Act should have ended 30-40 years ago. Germans as well as many other Europeans and Asians grew too fat dumb and happy with their high life of massive social spending as the US was paying to keep them from blowing each other up again. That "good times" period allowed the weak men and women to slime their way to administrative and money control... through looting, tent-seeking and gambling... certainly not from any productive outcomes or merit. These people dislike industrialization because they never had the right stuff to be industrialists... too much getting one's hand dirty and taking career risks... and those that do have the right stuff are their socioeconomic status competition... and thus they cannot have that again.
They demand that this old Global Order continue. It is why they would involve themselves in creating a fake dossier to try and take out Trump and plant a geriatric cognitively deficient puppet in the White House who by autopen fiat would perpetuate and increase US spending to protect the European dream while also enabling even more Western de-industrialization.
The difference between the US and other Western countries related to this populist uprising to beat down the liberaltard elites probably comes down to one single difference... the Constitutionally protected God-given right to free speech, expression and association. Germany does not have it and without it the people don't have enough populist power to defeat the tyrants in control.
As well as the Second Amendment to protect the first! 💥
Would the “endification” you are speaking of be something similar to what our Democrats here in America are doing in their purity spirals? 🤔
It appears to me that the US is short-cutting the endification... attempting to correct the declining trajectory before it hits the end. The Democrats seem to be committed to taking it to the end so they can continue to extract more wealth from it and to hell with future generations impacted by the final implosion. That seems to be the same motivation of the EUtard elites in control of other European countries. The point about German culture being different is interesting to me... but I think the lack of citizen human rights protection explains at least part of it. Yes, the 2nd Amendment seems key too as without it the tyrants would trample on 1st Amendment rights.
The Democrats are filibustering the CR and shut down the government because they are extremely angry. Hopping mad. Trump has been implementing one consistent domestic policy goal since the first day of the second term - defunding, dismantling, and destroying the machinery of the massive Democratic party political machine. That is the common thread between ending USAID, defunding PBS and NPR, mass deporting illegal aliens, breaking public employee unions, shrinking the Education Department, going after Antifa and their Oligarchs, and so many other things. Trump is trying to destroy a political machine that the Democrats have taken 100 years to build in just 4 years.
"a political machine that the Democrats have taken 100 years to build.
My only quibble with your great comment is that the current version of this machine is about 20 years old. Or more accurately, it has been overhauled beginning about 20 years ago to include a massive level of coordinated and networked collusion and corruption.
Some components are recent and were built in the last 20 years - particularly the Soros oligarchs and connections to China. But USAID was around for 60, the Teachers Unions were part of that machine for nearly 100, the Media has been part of their machine for my entire life, and the illegal aliens have been part of their machine since the 1970s at least.
What makes you imagine Trump understands how to "fix things"?
Are you serious? You must be one of those unaccountable people living off the soft money of government to not understand what it takes to have created his business empire. Nobody with even a modicum of business sense would ask this question. Fixing the crime problem. The illegal immigrant problem. The cost of gas. The cost of eggs. The problem with China continuing to rip us off and other countries continuing to rip us off. The fentanyl problem. The Israel-Hamas war problem. The previous problem with ISIS. Democrats only make problems. A lot of Republicans also only make problems. Trump solves problems.
I do thank you for your response. That helps me understand what you imagine.
Poorer, weaker, and worse off. Pretty well sums it up. Cultural suicide is not fun to watch.
The EU has not existed for 80 years so clearly Germany could not have been a member of it for that long. Before Maastricht it was the EEC in the UK but critically its nature was different from what it became afterwards.
Endism is a useful term and concept. We had it here for decades in respect of the EEC/EU. Membership was supported by the old parties because, well because they did. At all costs they had to prevent UKIP andlater The Brexit Party from sowing doubs about it. If there was any recognised fault in the EU it had to be taken on the chin by the UK as a member State. This persists in much of the old parties and they would rejoin in an instant if it was politically possible.
The question of coalition will not arise here until after a general Election because the Conservatives are so weak no one would want to ally with them. After a GE a few individual Tories might support Reform in government if it needs them but the bulk of that party won't because they are much closer in opinions to the other (openly socialist) parties here.
I wonder if, when one larger western country topples its old regime, the habit will run like wildfire.
I think many in the UK had little issue with the EEC, but as it went from economic to political we felt the madness - ECHR being but one aspect.
Except the ECHR is a Council of Europe body that the UK has not Brexited from.
Agreed - but Euro opt-in types see it all as one in the same.
Hence the false cries should we leave, the ignoring of the way ECHR has evolved, and the fake made-up judgements often made with political intent.
True - it was the change from the EEC to the EU with all that implies - remember the disaster that was the "Constitution for the EU" which e.g. Ireland rejected and was made to vote again to accept it? - which turned many of us into firm Leave supporters.
I resigned from the Tories the day the Maastricht Treaty went through the House of Commons. The whips used very unsavoury methods to get the majority.
Indeed the EU27 Kommission mantra 'vote, but vote as we kommand' was the main issue. I do not think this has served any EU27 member state well, and the UK has the scars - as well as treasonous types like Mr Starmer kC.