Jonathan Turley: "Donald Trump is completely transforming the Democrats"
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Popular cable programs with Democratic and liberal viewers are equally full of recriminations over withdrawing from these wars. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow criticized the plan to withdraw troops as merely an effort to distract the public, despite Trump campaigning in 2016 on promises to withdraw from such wars. “Morning Joe” host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough denounced the president as a “quivering coward” who failed to understand that we must fight “enemies like ISIS abroad, so we do not have to fight them in our own schools, churches and airports.” Liberals once rejected the premise that we should engage in continual wars in other countries or face terrorism on our streets at home.
In pursuing Trump, Democrats have also adopted a type of “red scare” mindset. While Republicans long pumped up the Russian menace as a political Cold War narrative, Democrats are now adopting the same type of rhetoric over the Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 president election. Democrats for the past two years speak about how Russians “stole” the election or destroyed the legitimacy of the results, with little empirical data to support such irresponsible and unfounded claims.
While many of us support the Mueller investigation and the need for sanctions against Russia for its interference, Democrats now routinely refer to Russia as our “enemy” and accuse any people with alleged connections to Russians as “traitors.” Special counsel Robert Mueller may have more to reveal on Russian hacking, but there is little evidence that either the trolling operation or leaked emails of the Hillary Clinton campaign had a material impact on the 2016 presidential election.
In building up the Russian menace, Democrats ignore that we have not only hacked the emails of our enemies but of our allies as well for years. Moreover, we have routinely intervened in or influenced foreign elections. Likewise, other nations from Israel to Mexico to China and many more, have long tried to influence our elections. Still, Democrats are escalating their calls for greater action against Russia, including criticism of being too dovish in not confronting Russian military elements around the world.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/423178-donald-trump-is-completely-transforming-the-democrats
I’d also add the wide-armed embrace of Kissinger, Clapper, Brennan, Wolfowitz, GWB, William Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Bret Stephens, Max Boot, Eliot Cohen, David Frum: remember, the neocons always posed themselves as “JFK Democrats” or lefties who learned better; they already softened on Iraq because Orange Man Bad and Taibbi got flabbergasted by people starting to defend Vietnam all because Trump wants to pull out of Syria
since 1969 people all too often shorthand “Republicans” and “war” and therefore “Democrats” to “peace”: Nixon’s a traitor, the neocons are mysterious defectors with no resonance on the left half of the bench, Reagan and his shenanigans even before the election, Cheney’s a war criminal, etc.–whatever happened with LBJ and the Liberal Hawks, Bill Clinton’s lightweight interventionism, Obama and R2P, Hillary Clinton and Timber Sycamore, they were well-intentioned and Not As Bad
Max Boot rewrites “The Case for American Empire” for Democrats: https://t.co/00MN3hL517
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 27, 2018
A success, except for that whole two million dead civilians thing: https://t.co/1vMuqvRoYr https://t.co/pOGEPkbiGE
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 28, 2018
Turley goes through many of the same concerns I’ve noted–“They want immediate unequivocal action in supporting or opposing President Trump. For Democrats, that all consuming purpose has led to the abandonment of core unifying values, including many that first drew me to the Democratic Party”
adopting Reaganomics, the Koch backing of the DLC, the barking anti-voter authoritarianism was only the start, by 2016 the Dems were a-okay with Jew-baiting Sanders and race-baiting their own voters: like hiring assassins or backing terrorists, those are things you simply can’t “step back” from
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December 30, 2018 at 4:20 PM #6446
Right wing corporate Democrats are indistinguishable from CIA operatives.
I would like to remind you that U.S. health insurance companies do not contribute anything to health care. They are only a PARASITIC middle man receiving an undeserved cut of "FREE MONEY".
Me
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December 30, 2018 at 4:44 PM #6458
When I heard news of the Syria withdrawal I was curious how the “left leaning” pundits would handle it. Same as with Russia, full throat condemnation. Trump is bad, mmkay?
Trump is a huge a-hole but this move is the right one. Jesus – do we even have an opposition party anymore or is this act III of Kabuki theater 2.0?
It's alright Ma, it's life and life only.
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December 30, 2018 at 5:34 PM #6480
and doing so so easily, solely because of the revelation that the neocons cheated Sanders and then their loss to their own ringer
younger voters may be unconvinced, but with all their professors and relatives and news saying the same thing over and over it seeps into the public consciousness/discourse and relegates any doubt to The Daily Caller or Consortium News
OTOH Dave Barry’s showing mounting frustration over the top media and political story for 2017, 2018, and now (with Schiff) 2019 being the goddamn 2016 election
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December 30, 2018 at 4:45 PM #6459
transforming them into Bush/Cheney republicans.
All governments lie to their citizen's, but only Americans believe theirs.
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December 30, 2018 at 4:50 PM #6462
I mean Bumblebee (keeping shi+ relevant for the kids) could always transform into a VW bug – he’s always had the beetle in him. These jack holes that play a Democrat in real life but transform into a Kissinger arse licker when the doors are closed are just worthless koontz – every last one of them. Principle-less ween bags.
It's alright Ma, it's life and life only.
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December 30, 2018 at 5:27 PM #6478
Just like every time an empire is about to collapse those who presume themselves to be “rising powers” – the establishment Democrats – are jettisoning all pretense of caring about anything but their own personal delusions of grandeur. I like to use Hillary as my illustration, but that is only because she has been the most transparent; the Democrats are full to the brim with people who believe that they will be carried into Washington on a sedan chair by a dozen generals – all they have to do is deal the death blow to American society and they will be anointed to restore the empire to its mythic glory.
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December 30, 2018 at 6:01 PM #6489
seems pretty good, but the conclusion is that Trump is Cheney’s legacy, because a firing-happy CEO meshes well with that Unitary Executive theory
I particularly note that apparently it ends with some shots of refugees–from Libya and Honduras! the entire period between 2008 and 2016 isn’t just absent, it’s been excised, like healthy flesh from around a tumor: I believe unfortunately that that inclusion makes Vice fundamentally dishonest
the interests that backed war in Iraq and now Syria are by their nature perceived as Republican-only–the White Houses of Ford, Reagan, the Bushes: Trump’s a Pub so he must be stamped off Cheney’s die; the movie can’t comprehend the neocons’ Cold-War history and Trump’s weird semi-instinctual isolationism–and more importantly that he ran 2016 on drawdown and balked at funding child-beheaders while the “adults in the room” somberly agreed it as Very Necessary
Trump was elected as a reaction to Cheney, not his heir; it’s like saying since he was mentored by Roy Cohn all of his opponents are Joseph Welches one and all (when instead they’re shading past the Birchers and fringing into Ed Walker territory)
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December 30, 2018 at 6:07 PM #6490
Those that unthinkingly follow them are the ones that are betraying core values. As such I will not be lifting a finger or a penny to support any of them.
I’m sure that by saying this it makes me a Russian (dupe, bot, troll, Pick One!)
In America, “Liberty” means “Free to Die in Service of Capital” - Amfortas the hippie.
Most of today’s elites have the moral and social reasoning capacities of spoiled toddlers.
“People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage...but the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-right. The sensitivity of the poor to injustice is a trivial thing c
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December 30, 2018 at 6:15 PM #6492
Cable pundits are furious that we’d become vulnerable to the rebel alliance lurking on the fringes of the American empire.
Lol, so I imagine the headline if Trump suggested Space Force wasn’t a priority. The media wants a strong challenger to Trump, someone who’ll make the Middle East come to heel.
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December 30, 2018 at 6:35 PM #6497
Attacking Trump from the right will be a losing strategy for 2020, not that that will stop the DNC from doing it mind you…
Be the Change
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December 30, 2018 at 6:37 PM #6499
into a more crooked corrupt and Hillaristic party. Not that DNC was not previously owned by the Clinntons
Never expect different result by following the previous steps
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December 30, 2018 at 6:55 PM #6508
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December 30, 2018 at 8:47 PM #6527
<u><b> </b></u>
And, in particular, any politician.
It is always the case that we are left to choose between lesser or greater evils. I think that the best we can hope for is the chance to vote for someone who, even though a politician, has some shred of human decency and will display it in public office.
We must remember that political parties of any stripe or philosophy do not stand for “the people” but for some of the people.
Tell me, great captain, how do the angels sleep when the devil leaves his porch light on? Tom Waites
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December 30, 2018 at 9:25 PM #6538
as long as they can plausibly refer to real ideals–justice, equality, opportunity, compassion–they remain valid disguises
also especially dangerous is the neocons’ baggage of America’s perpetual wounded innocence, that we’re just attacked by mindless fanatics of one sort of facial hair or another–that’s what drives 1. our rampages abroad against civilians who die without ever knowing why their country was chosen and 2. our aggressive whitewashing of foreign policy, that we’re well-intentioned saviors and the world’s (second) most moral army, reluctant protectors of our home and way of life, learning from any incidental violence
and it meshes very well with Dem ideas like humanitarian interventionism: the neocons know how to speak lefty language, even when Nicaraguan schoolteachers were being targeted; same with the fundie-fighting New Atheists wanting to level a secular anti-Iranian regime with no ties to 9-11 because of the “Allah” doodled on the flag or Rojava or whatever–it’s a liberation that’ll bring reason: Sam Harris can merrily say we’re better than our enemy even when we target civilians since they’re collateral and killing them’s not our primary intent in the war
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December 31, 2018 at 4:34 PM #6827
You know we have to look out for the villainous mustached people MistaP!
all jest aside, brilliant post.
It's alright Ma, it's life and life only.
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December 30, 2018 at 9:42 PM #6546
I used to enjoy very much, him being a guest on Olbermann (before he lost it with Russia!1) during the W. Bush years and also during the Occupy movement when Olbermann was briefly on Current.
~ All good things are Wild and Free ~
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December 31, 2018 at 4:55 AM #6606
By all accounts the USA lost the Vietnam War. If the domino theory is valid why hasn’t all of SE Asia become communist (since there is no protective envelope of democracy)? The Domino theory is a lie, completely contrived to suit their purposes.
See, folks, they just make stuff up. They make stuff up constantly and they tell us whatever is convenient. The most clear and obvious lie is—they want war so they lie and tell us, “War is essential for the safety of the nation.”
I would like to remind you that U.S. health insurance companies do not contribute anything to health care. They are only a PARASITIC middle man receiving an undeserved cut of "FREE MONEY".
Me
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December 31, 2018 at 10:45 AM #6666
I don’t understand how this is the result of losing the war to the ‘red menace of communism.’
2 million lives lost for what? I understand that when we left, the Russians and Chinese left as well. Vietnam spent decades recovering with little help from any ‘superpower’. Although some bankers and developers must have realized that they get a higher return on their retail investments than the war machines. (Through slave wages, but that’s another story…)
“Go and tell Alexander that God the Supreme King is never the Author of insolent wrong, but is the Creator of light, of peace, of life, of water, of the body of man and of souls;...what Alexander offers and the gifts he promises are things to me utterly useless;..." Dandamis, a great sannyasi of Taxila.Excerpt From: Yogananda, Paramahansa. “Autobiography of a Yogi.”
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December 31, 2018 at 6:39 PM #6910
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/11/05/half-russians-london-spies-claims-new-report/
reminds me of the war frenzy of 1914, when mobs hunted for German grocers said to be poisoning food and Kraut hairdressers cutting English throats: waiters were beaten and the trunks of German governesses were searched for bombs and Germans’ tennis courts surveyed to see whether they were usable as secret artillery emplacements; Battenberg had to resign as head of the sea forces and the Royals were renamed “Windsor”; at Thorpe-le-Soken 80 special constables beat the bushes for a rumored spy; penny-dreadful writers insisted that thousands of Germans infested England, crouching under railway bridges, taking bike rides in Epping Forest, and asking questions about reservoirs
at least only one cat was killed without cause this time around
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December 31, 2018 at 7:34 PM #6933
Lookin’ in the sink and underneath the chair – I looked way up my chimney hole, I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl – they got away.”
“Followed some clues from my detective bag and discovered red stripes on the American flag”
-excerpts from Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues by Dylan
Same as it ever was.
It's alright Ma, it's life and life only.
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December 31, 2018 at 9:32 PM #6997
Russia! is why we handwaved genocide in Indonesia 1965 and wrote murder lists in Guatemala 1954; Russia! is why we stabbed Mossadeq, Lumumba, Ho, Castro, Ortega, etc. in the back while shaking their hands; Russia! is why the man who ordered a bullet put through Archbishop Romero’s chest at the altar for asking paramilitaries to not bayonet infants and feed them to hogs; Russia! is why MLK, Fred Hampton, and the Kennedys were shot, it’s why the US backed the Dirty War and overthrew Goulart and Allende, why we backed Azzam and Pol Pot and Rios Montt and Syngman Rhee and Saddam and Operation Gladio and Habre and Mobutu and …
honestly, I never understand what Russiagaters think the entire Cold War that they condemn (or used to condemn) was about
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December 31, 2018 at 9:23 PM #6993
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