The unimaginable

[Leftfield 2,593]

I don't usually post articles, so I didn't post this one when I read it just before the election. Wish I had.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/opinions/trump-after-the-election-prepare-for-unimaginable-kasparov/index.html

------------------------

Win or lose, with Trump, prepare for the unimaginable after the election

By Garry Kasparov

Updated 3:58 PM ET, Sat October 31, 2020

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN)After four long years of chaos and lies from the Trump administration, it's time to prepare for the worst, even as we hope for the best. Every time we thought he could stoop no lower, that there were no boundaries of legality or decency left for him to violate, he has outdone himself.

After praising dictators, attacking veterans, demeaning women, discrediting our democracy, and surrendering to a raging pandemic, we can only hope that Trump has also undone himself.

We cannot know exactly what Trump will do in these final days, only that whatever it is, he will be thinking only of himself. If he declares victory on election night, regardless of the uncounted ballots, what then? What if he calls the entire election a fraud, a hoax, and demands that the counting stop? Or if armed Trump supporters heed his call to intimidate voters at the polls? What if he takes to Twitter with "LIBERATE AMERICA!" and his MAGA zealots respond?

You may roll your eyes, but such things are not unimaginable, or even unrealistic. Normal people don't like to imagine terrible events, which is why autocrats consistently surprise them. (As when I wrote here back in April that it would seem logical to someone like Trump to try to sabotage the US Postal Service if he thought it could help his electoral chances. Unimaginable, until it happened.)

You could make a very long list of things pundits insisted autocrats would never do that they eventually did. I made such a list myself, about Vladimir Putin. In my 2015 book, "Winter Is Coming," I called it the "Putin would never" list. It included things like taking over private media companies, arresting Russia's richest man for dabbling in politics and invading Georgia and Ukraine.

"Doesn't Putin realize how bad this looks?" became the experts' refrain after he crossed line after uncrossable line. As if he cared how things looked. Why should he? Dictators don't ask "Why?" They only ask, "Why not?" They don't stop unless someone stops them. No one stopped Putin.

For years, my colleagues and I in the Russian democracy movement warned that Putin was building a dictatorship. Even when it was crystal-clear that Russian democracy and civil society had been gutted, the free world fiercely resisted acknowledging that truth.

Putin laid bare the huge disconnect between autocrats and normal people -- the autocrats' ability to do things that simply don't occur to people with a sense of decency and a respect for norms and traditions. Autocrats are aware of the consequences they might face for the damage they do, but they believe they can avoid those consequences by staying in power, forever if necessary. Trump might have been indicted several times over were he not protected by his office, and a sense of impunity tends to make one sloppy.

Trump no doubt believes that he has more to lose by leaving office than by fighting -- lawlessly or not -- to stay. The oligarchs and thugs he so admires surely agree. They won't easily let go of such a lucrative investment -- one of their own kind in the Oval Office.

Putin and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, to name two, have surely reaped many benefits from Trump, beyond political ones. It will take years to untangle the web of his financial dealings and how the treasure and might of the United States was exploited to serve the President's personal interests and those of his cronies. If defeated, Trump will likely spend his last months in a flurry of self-dealing, tossing out pardons and trying to discredit his opponents and the system itself.

But what if he wins? Even the dire scenarios I just outlined are predicated on avoiding the worst outcome of all. Let's say Trump stays in office, either by a shocking electoral upset or by his hand-picked Supreme Court justices doing what he chose them to do.

Rolling your eyes again? Do you really think Trump cares about limiting abortion rights or Constitutional originalism or anything else he cannot fit into his pockets? Or that Mitch McConnell and the GOP rushed Amy Barrett's appointment for any reason other than having her seated before the election? She and Brett Kavanaugh were political appointments to achieve political ends, which is always how autocrats view the judiciary.

A Trump victory would legitimize his politics and policies the way his election in 2016 normalized his rhetoric. Then, after four more years of Trumpism, the only question would likely be: Who is the next Trump in line? The autocrat's heirs could be expected to carry on the assault on the remaining pillars of American democracy. When one side fights for power at all costs against those defending the rule of law, time is not on the side of the law.

Defeating Trump overwhelmingly at the polls is the most important step, but it's only the first step. Americans who want to see the rule of law restored and strengthened must be ready to fight for it -- in the courts and in the streets if necessary, peacefully but persistently --because there is little doubt that Trump and his supporters will not go quietly.

Trump has spent five years dehumanizing his opponents and painting them as America's mortal enemies while conditioning his followers to see things as he does. They will not leave the field easily, but leave they must, or American democracy will not outlast them.

[Leftfield 2,593]

And here's his follow-up:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/12/opinions/battle-against-anti-democratic-extremism-kasparov/index.html

Some good advice for both sides in there.

----------------

Garry Kasparov: What happens next

By Garry Kasparov

Updated 10:20 PM ET, Tue January 12, 2021

 

(CNN)As terrible as the events of Jan. 6 were -- and I'm on the record warning of "the unimaginable" -- I'm going to repeat what I said after Election Day: It's not over.

This battle against anti-democratic extremism didn't end when a right-wing mob invaded the United States Capitol and five people died, including one police officer. It didn't end when Twitter and other social media platforms finally muzzled President Donald Trump -- although that was a heavier blow in this fight than most. And it won't end when Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20. 

Beating Trump was an essential step, of course. Four years of his thuggery and demagoguery were enough to bring American democracy to its knees. Four more might have finished it off. Had fewer than 45,000 votes across three key states gone the other way on Election Day, we'd be plunging toward authoritarian rule, and discussing which of Trump's children would take over in 2024. 

Narrowly dodging that metaphorical bullet was no protection against the threat of real bullets, as the attack on the Capitol proved. And there will be more violence, especially if the Capitol perpetrators and those who incited them -- starting with the President -- are not held accountable. 

The correct response is the dispassionate application of the law. Not political persecution, but not politically motivated leniency, either. We don't have to choose between unity and justice. Avoiding doing the right thing will only prolong the crisis and give aid and comfort to enemies of the state and of the peace. Our Founding Fathers failed to resolve the historical challenge of slavery, passing a bloody Civil War on to future generations. Despite Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Reconstruction allowed the South a "defeat with honor," decades of Jim Crow, and the pernicious Lost Cause mythology that persists today. 

Consider the repugnant image of a Trumpist Capitol invader carrying a Confederate flag in a building that Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson only dreamed of conquering. No new mythology should be allowed to sprout from this vile transgression. The worst result would be letting the mutineers off the hook -- and this includes the elected officials who encouraged them, like Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and especially President Trump. That they, and scores of other Republicans, continued to attack the integrity of the election even now is beyond the pale. 

The perpetrators won't become heroes or martyrs if the process of justice is not unduly politicized. It would be a blunder for the left to turn a clear case of criminal justice into a battleground for racial justice, which would help the Trumpist Republicans twist their illegal insurrection into the culture war they crave. White supremacy is a terrible evil of American history, and Trump and his followers' traffic in it is repugnant, but we should not overburden a clear-cut criminal proceeding with the cleansing of sins. 

History teaches us the cost of well-meaning but shortsighted attempts to sacrifice justice for unity. Russians learned this in the hardest possible way after the fall of the Soviet Union. As I discussed at length in my book, Winter Is Coming, they declined to root out the KGB security state in the interest of national harmony. It would be too traumatic, our leaders said, to expose the countless atrocities the Soviet security forces committed and to punish their authors. 

A feeble truth commission was quickly abandoned by President Boris Yeltsin, and soon even the Soviet archives were closed, although not before researchers like Vladimir Bukovsky revealed some of the KGB's atrocities. The KGB's name was changed to the FSB and its members quietly stayed in touch and intact. The result? A mere nine years after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia elected a former KGB lieutenant colonel, Vladimir Putin, to the presidency. It was the last meaningful election we ever had. We chose unity and we got dictatorship. 

America should not make a similar mistake. The truth may hurt, but lies will do far greater damage in the end. Americans should be prepared for a long fight against these anti-democratic forces. The attack on the Capitol has opened every eye; there can be no more feigned ignorance of the crisis. 

Many Americans were shocked by how many of their compatriots, including nearly all GOP officials, have been willing to go along with Trump's open assault on the pillars of their open society, from the free press to fair elections. As I warned early on, demagogues don't find radicals to lead, they steadily radicalize their followers one outrage at a time. The culmination, so far, was January 6. 

Hemingway wrote in "For Whom the Bell Tolls": "There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes." The time has come, and we are finding them out. Fortuitously, they are inclined to boast of their transgressions on Instagram and from the Senate floor, which makes them easy to find. 

The question is if the will exists to apply the justice they deserve. Failing to do so will not mollify them. They are living in an alternate universe, where 70% of Republican voters say that Republican lawmakers who tried to stop the certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 presidential election were "protecting democracy," according to a Quinnipiac poll taken AFTER the assault on the Capitol Trump incited. Seventy-three percent told pollsters they thought Trump, too, was "protecting" democracy. 

Perhaps the most ominous number is the 24% of Republican voters who don't accept the results of the election, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey last month, leaving the question of whether they will accept the results of any election ever again. 

Coups aside, this was always the greatest threat of Trump's rhetoric, and a result that will delight dictators like Putin, who are always eager to denigrate democracy and its champions. At its core, democracy is an act of faith, a shared belief that the people can fairly act in the common good by choosing their leaders. Destroying the faith in the system will destroy the American experiment. 

This is precisely what we are trying to counter at the Renew Democracy Initiative. We are launching a campaign dedicated to the simple phrase, "what democracy means to me," in the hopes of reminding everyone what a luxury it is for every citizen to have a say in the course of their lives and of their nation.

Democracy isn't liberal or conservative, not left or right -- at least it isn't supposed to be. Millions of Americans currently believe that democracy isn't working, or even that it isn't worth saving. The battle to prove them wrong isn't over, it's just begun.

[McLoofus 35,182]

26 minutes ago, Leftfield said:

I don't usually post articles, so I didn't post this one when I read it just before the election. Wish I had.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/opinions/trump-after-the-election-prepare-for-unimaginable-kasparov/index.html

------------------------

Win or lose, with Trump, prepare for the unimaginable after the election

By Garry Kasparov

Updated 3:58 PM ET, Sat October 31, 2020

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN)After four long years of chaos and lies from the Trump administration, it's time to prepare for the worst, even as we hope for the best. Every time we thought he could stoop no lower, that there were no boundaries of legality or decency left for him to violate, he has outdone himself.

After praising dictators, attacking veterans, demeaning women, discrediting our democracy, and surrendering to a raging pandemic, we can only hope that Trump has also undone himself.

We cannot know exactly what Trump will do in these final days, only that whatever it is, he will be thinking only of himself. If he declares victory on election night, regardless of the uncounted ballots, what then? What if he calls the entire election a fraud, a hoax, and demands that the counting stop? Or if armed Trump supporters heed his call to intimidate voters at the polls? What if he takes to Twitter with "LIBERATE AMERICA!" and his MAGA zealots respond?

You may roll your eyes, but such things are not unimaginable, or even unrealistic. Normal people don't like to imagine terrible events, which is why autocrats consistently surprise them. (As when I wrote here back in April that it would seem logical to someone like Trump to try to sabotage the US Postal Service if he thought it could help his electoral chances. Unimaginable, until it happened.)

You could make a very long list of things pundits insisted autocrats would never do that they eventually did. I made such a list myself, about Vladimir Putin. In my 2015 book, "Winter Is Coming," I called it the "Putin would never" list. It included things like taking over private media companies, arresting Russia's richest man for dabbling in politics and invading Georgia and Ukraine.

"Doesn't Putin realize how bad this looks?" became the experts' refrain after he crossed line after uncrossable line. As if he cared how things looked. Why should he? Dictators don't ask "Why?" They only ask, "Why not?" They don't stop unless someone stops them. No one stopped Putin.

For years, my colleagues and I in the Russian democracy movement warned that Putin was building a dictatorship. Even when it was crystal-clear that Russian democracy and civil society had been gutted, the free world fiercely resisted acknowledging that truth.

Putin laid bare the huge disconnect between autocrats and normal people -- the autocrats' ability to do things that simply don't occur to people with a sense of decency and a respect for norms and traditions. Autocrats are aware of the consequences they might face for the damage they do, but they believe they can avoid those consequences by staying in power, forever if necessary. Trump might have been indicted several times over were he not protected by his office, and a sense of impunity tends to make one sloppy.

Trump no doubt believes that he has more to lose by leaving office than by fighting -- lawlessly or not -- to stay. The oligarchs and thugs he so admires surely agree. They won't easily let go of such a lucrative investment -- one of their own kind in the Oval Office.

Putin and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, to name two, have surely reaped many benefits from Trump, beyond political ones. It will take years to untangle the web of his financial dealings and how the treasure and might of the United States was exploited to serve the President's personal interests and those of his cronies. If defeated, Trump will likely spend his last months in a flurry of self-dealing, tossing out pardons and trying to discredit his opponents and the system itself.

But what if he wins? Even the dire scenarios I just outlined are predicated on avoiding the worst outcome of all. Let's say Trump stays in office, either by a shocking electoral upset or by his hand-picked Supreme Court justices doing what he chose them to do.

Rolling your eyes again? Do you really think Trump cares about limiting abortion rights or Constitutional originalism or anything else he cannot fit into his pockets? Or that Mitch McConnell and the GOP rushed Amy Barrett's appointment for any reason other than having her seated before the election? She and Brett Kavanaugh were political appointments to achieve political ends, which is always how autocrats view the judiciary.

A Trump victory would legitimize his politics and policies the way his election in 2016 normalized his rhetoric. Then, after four more years of Trumpism, the only question would likely be: Who is the next Trump in line? The autocrat's heirs could be expected to carry on the assault on the remaining pillars of American democracy. When one side fights for power at all costs against those defending the rule of law, time is not on the side of the law.

Defeating Trump overwhelmingly at the polls is the most important step, but it's only the first step. Americans who want to see the rule of law restored and strengthened must be ready to fight for it -- in the courts and in the streets if necessary, peacefully but persistently --because there is little doubt that Trump and his supporters will not go quietly.

Trump has spent five years dehumanizing his opponents and painting them as America's mortal enemies while conditioning his followers to see things as he does. They will not leave the field easily, but leave they must, or American democracy will not outlast them.

I think most of us inclined to agree with this already had these thoughts. Those of whom that needed to receive the message would have, of course, rejected it. They certainly rejected it over and over again when we warned them. Even now, they scramble to minimize and deflect. 

Anyway, you didn't miss an opportunity by not posting it previously, is all I meant to say. 

[homersapien 11,366]

36 minutes ago, Leftfield said:

I don't usually post articles, so I didn't post this one when I read it just before the election. Wish I had.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/opinions/trump-after-the-election-prepare-for-unimaginable-kasparov/index.html

------------------------

Win or lose, with Trump, prepare for the unimaginable after the election

By Garry Kasparov

Updated 3:58 PM ET, Sat October 31, 2020

Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and the Human Rights Foundation and a former world chess champion. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.

(CNN)After four long years of chaos and lies from the Trump administration, it's time to prepare for the worst, even as we hope for the best. Every time we thought he could stoop no lower, that there were no boundaries of legality or decency left for him to violate, he has outdone himself.

After praising dictators, attacking veterans, demeaning women, discrediting our democracy, and surrendering to a raging pandemic, we can only hope that Trump has also undone himself.

We cannot know exactly what Trump will do in these final days, only that whatever it is, he will be thinking only of himself. If he declares victory on election night, regardless of the uncounted ballots, what then? What if he calls the entire election a fraud, a hoax, and demands that the counting stop? Or if armed Trump supporters heed his call to intimidate voters at the polls? What if he takes to Twitter with "LIBERATE AMERICA!" and his MAGA zealots respond?

You may roll your eyes, but such things are not unimaginable, or even unrealistic. Normal people don't like to imagine terrible events, which is why autocrats consistently surprise them. (As when I wrote here back in April that it would seem logical to someone like Trump to try to sabotage the US Postal Service if he thought it could help his electoral chances. Unimaginable, until it happened.)

You could make a very long list of things pundits insisted autocrats would never do that they eventually did. I made such a list myself, about Vladimir Putin. In my 2015 book, "Winter Is Coming," I called it the "Putin would never" list. It included things like taking over private media companies, arresting Russia's richest man for dabbling in politics and invading Georgia and Ukraine.

"Doesn't Putin realize how bad this looks?" became the experts' refrain after he crossed line after uncrossable line. As if he cared how things looked. Why should he? Dictators don't ask "Why?" They only ask, "Why not?" They don't stop unless someone stops them. No one stopped Putin.

For years, my colleagues and I in the Russian democracy movement warned that Putin was building a dictatorship. Even when it was crystal-clear that Russian democracy and civil society had been gutted, the free world fiercely resisted acknowledging that truth.

Putin laid bare the huge disconnect between autocrats and normal people -- the autocrats' ability to do things that simply don't occur to people with a sense of decency and a respect for norms and traditions. Autocrats are aware of the consequences they might face for the damage they do, but they believe they can avoid those consequences by staying in power, forever if necessary. Trump might have been indicted several times over were he not protected by his office, and a sense of impunity tends to make one sloppy.

Trump no doubt believes that he has more to lose by leaving office than by fighting -- lawlessly or not -- to stay. The oligarchs and thugs he so admires surely agree. They won't easily let go of such a lucrative investment -- one of their own kind in the Oval Office.

Putin and Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, to name two, have surely reaped many benefits from Trump, beyond political ones. It will take years to untangle the web of his financial dealings and how the treasure and might of the United States was exploited to serve the President's personal interests and those of his cronies. If defeated, Trump will likely spend his last months in a flurry of self-dealing, tossing out pardons and trying to discredit his opponents and the system itself.

But what if he wins? Even the dire scenarios I just outlined are predicated on avoiding the worst outcome of all. Let's say Trump stays in office, either by a shocking electoral upset or by his hand-picked Supreme Court justices doing what he chose them to do.

Rolling your eyes again? Do you really think Trump cares about limiting abortion rights or Constitutional originalism or anything else he cannot fit into his pockets? Or that Mitch McConnell and the GOP rushed Amy Barrett's appointment for any reason other than having her seated before the election? She and Brett Kavanaugh were political appointments to achieve political ends, which is always how autocrats view the judiciary.

A Trump victory would legitimize his politics and policies the way his election in 2016 normalized his rhetoric. Then, after four more years of Trumpism, the only question would likely be: Who is the next Trump in line? The autocrat's heirs could be expected to carry on the assault on the remaining pillars of American democracy. When one side fights for power at all costs against those defending the rule of law, time is not on the side of the law.

Defeating Trump overwhelmingly at the polls is the most important step, but it's only the first step. Americans who want to see the rule of law restored and strengthened must be ready to fight for it -- in the courts and in the streets if necessary, peacefully but persistently --because there is little doubt that Trump and his supporters will not go quietly.

Trump has spent five years dehumanizing his opponents and painting them as America's mortal enemies while conditioning his followers to see things as he does. They will not leave the field easily, but leave they must, or American democracy will not outlast them.

Trump is Putin Lite.

Or to put it in the same terms as the Auburn/Clemson/lake comparison:

Putin is Trump without the U.S. constitution (not that it has been much practical use in checking Trump's power.)

[Leftfield 2,593]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Trump is Putin Lite.

Or to put it in the same terms as the Auburn/Clemson/lake comparison:

Putin is Trump without the U.S. constitution (not that it has been much practical use in checking Trump's power.)

I laughed, then thought it's a damn good thing that Trump isn't nearly as intelligent as Putin.

[McLoofus 35,182]

17 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Trump is Putin Lite.

Or to put it in the same terms as the Auburn/Clemson/lake comparison:

Putin is Trump without the U.S. constitution (not that it has been much practical use in checking Trump's power.)

 

13 minutes ago, Leftfield said:

I laughed, then thought it's a damn good thing that Trump isn't nearly as intelligent as Putin.

To your point, Putin had to use that intelligence to rise to where he is. He didn't buy his way to prestige. They are both ruthless and perhaps megalomaniacal, but one is all cunning and the other is all bombast. Which, to be fair, is obviously enough to get to the top in the land of Hulk Hogan and monster trucks. But it won't keep you there. 

[autigeremt 6,599]

Nice to see more desecration of the United States and the people who live in the land of Hulk Hogan and monster trucks! Never mind the total ignorance of those people for decades while they rotted in the land of coal and steel (sending their jobs to China). 

[DKW 86 7,419]

There is a school of thought that says if you are mature and want to criticize something, your Boss, your spouse, your condition, you need to bring an answer for the problem with you. So far, I have heard 4 years of Orange Man Bad. When someone proposes answers that are popular with the American People, (Bernie Sanders) we are told "Nope, cant do that." 

So what exactly is the ruling class proposing? Nothing really. If you are unsatisfied with the way things have been going for the last 20 years or so, their answer is STFU and let us rule. They propose nothing new, no changes, nothing different. Biden was elected telling the world, NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE. More perpetual war. more years dropping 20K bombs a year forever.  

M4A? Promised a Veto
Tuition? Nothing really. May look at modest tuition reform.
Income or Minimum Wage? Nothing. 

Wow...I am so excited to get nothing. So looking forward to watching the political class become even wealthier while I and my kids are told to STFU and suffer. 
Yea, so looking forward to the next four years.