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I think this sums it up nicely. Liberty only exists when there is a relative balance between two opposing forces.
It's why I'm terrified of the left right now. When one party is so strong they think they can throw the leader of the opposing party in jail and get away with it, that's a bad sign. During the Bush years, I was pretty anti-Republican because it felt like they were winning (although nothing like today).
An ideal situation is a stable equilibrium.
Worse is swinging between two extremes like in Latin America.
Worst is when one party gets permanent victory like Nazi Germany or the USSR and banishes the competition.
And I think it’s worth noting that the progressive establishment is terrified that the mainstream red tribe will have the kind of engrained distrust of institutions that’s common in the Arab world, or exists between the inner city ghetto dwellers and the police, or etc etc. I think that’s what’s really behind the trump arrests and social media censorship and all that. There’s this idea that the flyover will simply stop obeying the institutions because it’ll be led into conspiracy theories by the president, bolstered by social media.
Obviously the progressive establishment would need to have a pretty bad theory of mind of Republican normies to think that trying to jail trump or exclude him from the ballot on dubious grounds will make them less likely to listen to them, or that censorship makes their authorities seem more authoritative. But, uh, we already knew that. And progressive moderate establishment mouthpieces like The Atlantic keep telling us that that’s what their goal is. It’s not some conspiracy to create a one party state, they want a moderate Republican Party that compromises with democrats in exchange for the odd tax cut. Nor are they that interested in oppressing the red tribe; oppressing people is a lot of work and these people know it, and they also know they have a strictly limited number of people who will go kick in doors(almost anyone willing to do that is either a Republican or a minority, and the terms of minority communities’ deals with the DNC do not include that). We already knew these people are extremely neurotic and frequently do counterproductive things because of their unwillingness to question methodology and narrative; it’s worth considering that the stated goals for the censorship and arrests of opponents are more in keeping with the flaws we know they have than the flaws their enemies claim about them.
I’m having trouble buying that they’re terrified of the Red Tribe losing trust in institutions simply because they’ve been doing everything that one would do to create the outcomes that they’re claiming they want.
Taking the moderate Republicans who compromise thing. If that’s what you want, then calling people fascists and liars is going to go the opposite direction. As are executive orders that undo the previous administration’s actions on day one is a terrible way to do it. Executive orders that end run around the Red Tribe is a terrible way to do it for much the same reason. You would have to be absolutely stupid to compromise when anything you actually get is going to be taken away at the nearest opportunity. You would likewise be stupid to try to reason with someone who thinks you have nothing legitimate to say.
A lot of these people are simply in denial about how Obama treated republicans and/or are stuck in a cycle of 'turnabout is fair play', but more to my main point- we already know that even fairly moderate and establishment-y progressive types have a very bad theory of mind of their opponents. Using ineffective and counterproductive tactics is what we would expect them to do in, well, anything addressed to cultural conservatives/red tribers/republicans(they're technically three separate things). As far as I can tell they really do think they're warning Trump supporters about where they're heading, and don't understand why they're not being listened to.
I'm honestly not even sure what you're talking about. The story on /r/politics is that Obama's primary failure was working with Republicans too much.
That would be being in denial, yes.
Sorry, yes, I understand that. I'm saying I really have no idea what the other side to that story is.
Oh, ok.
To start with, I don't actually know where r-politics gets their "Obama was too eager to work with republicans" idea- when he had a choice not to work with republicans, he didn't. Like he started his time in office with an "elections have consequences, so no, I won't come your way at all" speech to republicans. Him being more moderate than he'd like to have been had more to do with his inability to win and keep large majorities; he had a trifecta for two years, and steadily lost support in both houses of congress during his entire term in office. "Watering down" the ACA was necessary to get it past blue doggers, not republicans, and you'll note that republicans didn't vote for it and there was a significant amount of procedural maneuvering to evade needing republican support at all. And sure, not making concessions to the opposition when you don't have to is fair play, but it's the arrogance and arc-of-history triumphalism(remember, this was the era of the emerging democratic majority) which wasn't confined to either rhetoric or a hardline negotiating tactic which poisoned his relationship with republicans(and the GOP leadership had been there for decades at that point, many of these were literally the same people who maintained a working relationship with Clinton which was, if not entirely cordial, at least not poisonous).
And it wasn't just congressmen; the Obama administration did lots of things aimed at either the republican base of support or republicans themselves(which yes, the Clinton administration did some of these too), but it was the attitude towards republican opposition to these things which was meaningfully different. I can see the Clinton admin suing nuns to try to deny conscience exemptions, but I can't see them declaring it a "war on women" to object to it. To say nothing of the IRS targeting conservatives, "if I had a son he would have looked a lot like Trayvon", etc, etc. Go hang around red tribers and they're still griping about fast and furious and life of Julia.
I think the Mitt Romney 2012 campaign has been gone over at length here, but I also think it's a minor factor. The red tribe polarization against the democrats has a fair amount of catastrophism and tradmoaning to it, but Obama and his administration's own actions are the bulk of the reasoning. Clinton at least was smart enough to not say things like 'clinging to their guns and religion', 'you didn't build that', or 'choose science over ethics', and a lot of normie red tribers took it as a series of mask off moments for the broader democratic party, which even today can't admit Obama made any mistakes except maybe not being progressive enough.
Thanks for writing that out. The ACA part particularly is what I see most often.
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