London-based writer. Often climbing.
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Further thoughts on this:
Criticising the Democrats as merely a type of Republican has other downsides: it effectively takes the Republicans as the standard type of politician, i.e., it turns every argument into an argument on their terms.
This also means that we don’t effectively criticise the Democrats, who are best criticised on their terms, not as merey lesser or mutated Republicans.
The “lesser” fascist is still a fascist, and fascists spend much more of their time attacking us than attacking each other, and on top of that even if they do attack each other it’s through attacking us.
But the Democrats aren’t fascists, lesser or otherwise. They’re not ‘the Republicans, but less so’; they’re a different organisation with different histories and philosophies, different people and different priorities. The Democrats, for example, are not promising to overthrow the constitution, but overthrow it a bit less than the Republicans; they’re not planning to overthrow it at all. Degrees of evil are not possible in this case, nor in many others. The Republicans are straight up wrong in a way that the Democrats just are not.
For these reasons, I don’t buy the framing of lesser evil at all. If I did buy that framing, I would still wholeheartedly vote for the lesser evil, because it would still be better than more evil, by definition. Even your definition of ‘the same amount of evil, but slower’, would be better.
Seems like a good choice from where I am (which is, granted, the other side of the ocean). Republicans want to depict Democrats as dangerous extremists, but Walz comes across as a friendly dad, so that just won’t stick. No one will care about his policy record, they’ll just sound weird talking about that stuff.
Prior to the election, Donald Trump incited the Proud Boys specifically and other militant groups to insurrection with his ‘stand back and stand by’ comments. These were taken by many observers and the Proud Boys themselves as calls to seditious conspiracy. Members of the Proud Boys then planned the 6 January attack, including planting bombs around Washington DC, and were involved in the attack on the Capitol. Many have been convicted of this conspiracy, so there’s no legal question as to whether it happened. I don’t know if incitement to an insurrection counts as insurrection in and of itself. It might do, but I’m not a lawyer.
Having lost the election, Trump knowingly engaged in a conspiracy to undermine a free and fair election, which he knew he had lost, in order to keep himself in power. Some aspects of that conspiracy have gone to trial and defendants have been found guilty. So, there remain some legal questions as to the extent of the conspiracy, but it is quite clear that people involved broke the law in the pursuit of the conspiracy. The conspiracy constitutes an attempted insurrection in itself.
When his conspiracy failed, he then incited a violent attempt to overthrow the election (the ‘fiery stuff to a rally’) and allowed it to continue as people were violently attacked. This also constitutes an attempted insurrection.
Right and… then what? Biden isn’t guilty of anything. The Senate wouldn’t convict him. Even if the Senate did convict (which they won’t), Harris, who even Trump isn’t pretending has done anything wrong, would then become President. What’s the endgame, here? We all know there isn’t one. It’s just the politics of endless grievance and whinging.
But he voted Trump in 2016. I think that’s what @Chuymatt@beehaw.org meant by a ‘historical conservative’.