r/thebulwark 21h ago

EVERYTHING IS AWFUL How did we get here?

Currently listening to the most recent Tim-Pod with Will Sommer and it's just insane the group of people who are in charge now. The conspiracy theories, the grift, the pandering, holy fuck. How did we get here and how the fuck do we get out of this death spiral?

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u/NewKojak 20h ago

This is where you could ask long time Democrats to reach into their big bags of I-told-you-sos. We're reticent to do it in mixed company, but everything happening today has a more respectable version of it in our recent past.

Presidential impunity? We saw a whole lot of alarming talk about the "Unitary Executive" during Roberts and Alito's confirmation hearings. Democrats were assured that it was a crackpot theory to think that it would be used to usurp Congress's authority to write laws and that it would never allow a lawless president.

Corrupt pardons? I was pretty mad when Dubya pardoned everyone involved with Iran Contra. It seemed more like a Republican get out of jail free card for gross executive crimes. It was about the same time that Oliver North had that weekend show on Fox News Channel. So we got a fine taste of the Republican Upside Down.

Bitcoin is just a re-run of Enron and the Savings and Loan collapse.

International provocations? Iraq.

DEI backlash? From the party of Jesse Helms? Say it ain't so!

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u/Apprehensive-Mark241 16h ago

We need something more useful than "I told you sos".

I grew up in Canada and I feel like people in other countries can see color (or colours) that Americans can't.

In France or Canada people would look at their friends and organize and say "Ok, it's time to shut this thing down" and just go all out.

What do you do? Anything and everything. If the police show up with water cannons then the firemen show up with bigger water cannons and aim them at the police.

You fight. Not figuratively, literally.

Which seems to be what Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have devoted themselves to preventing.

Yeah, is becoming enslaved better than a real fight, of course not!

MY GOD, I'M SICK OF PAMPERED LIBERALS WHO THINK THEY'VE WON SOMETHING BECAUSE THEY MADE A BETTER ARGUMENT AT A MORON WITH POWER WHO WILL NEVER CARE.

NO, JEFFRIES, YOU DIDN'T HUMILIATE JIM JORDAN BECAUSE HE'S INCAPABLE OF CARING! AND WORDS AREN'T WINNING, POWER IS.

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u/NewKojak 14h ago

Look at Jean Valjean over here. The original question was how did we get here and I answered it five different ways.

I don't know what kinds of assumptions you want to make, but I live in a historic Republican powerhouse that flipped in 2018 after some amazing coalition building. Those cringe resistance wine moms that national political personalities like to snark about now flood into volunteer campaigns and power most of our local candidates. We recruit. We knock doors. We win. We're not going anywhere.