I think we should all make plans to vote early and then find a relatively safe place to live between election day and Inauguration Day, especially if Trump loses. The men in my rural Tennessee neighborhood are already practicing for the bloodbath. One neighbor shoots hundreds of rounds every week, sometimes at a target shaped like a human. I talked to this guy briefly once, pointing out to him where my house was and that people were present on this side of the creek. He said not to worry. "I was trained by Uncle Sam," he said. That made me more worried.
I am not saying this to scare people, just to alert people to a reality that city people may not be aware of. In most cities, you can't just go out in the backyard and discharge hundreds of rounds with your pistol or rifle. Outside of city limits, you can. So the fact that you have not heard shots in your neighborhood does not mean they are not getting ready.
Another neighbor apparently has a bump stock, because you can hear machine gun fire from his property. I have tried calling the local sheriff's office, but the deputies are afraid to confront these guys. I found one young deputy cruising around after I called about the shooting; he was nowhere near the location of the shooter. And who could blame them? They are outgunned and not paid that well.
My plan is go to to a small town in NC where my family has a house within city limits. I feel safer there. The town is so small that you can hear shots from OUTSIDE city limits, but they are not as loud and not as close. I may be kidding myself that this place is safer, but it's my only option right now.
One of my friends has moved to Maine within an hour of the Canadian border so that she can escape if necessary. We can debate about the merits of "standing your ground" versus fleeing, but right now fleeing makes more sense to me, until this blows over. Other friends on the Left are saying they will shoot back. When I say this will likely make things worse, they just shrug. For the record, the Lefties who are promising to shoot back are men. I haven't heard any women saying that.
From a legal standpoint, isn't praising and promising to pardon people convicted of the crime of insurrection a clear case of aiding, abetting, and giving comfort to insurrectionists? Shouldn't this behavior, in and of itself, render Trump illegible to hold office? If not, what would? I don't hear this being discussed explicitly by experts.
It is very simple. Believe people when they tell you who they are. Trump is not hiding who he is at all. A malignant narcissist with a victim complex, a nihilist with an authoritarian and facist streak who seeks to incite violence because he gets pleasure out of it. We cannot let the media and others normalize him or to make excuses that he really is not meaning what he is saying. That is all gaslighting. Trump is a clear and present danger to all of us and all this country was founded upon.
We are witnesses to the ongoing failure of the media to treat Trump not as a normal candidate, but as the radical, brain damaged, dicktator wannabe, national security threat that he is. More than a few have noted that the only reason he is running is to stay out of prison. Now the other reason is that bankruptcy looms. And his need for cash right now would guarantee that he wouldn't get a clearance at any level.
Dr. Snyder is, of course, completely correct in this Talmudically-detailed essay. The violence, mendacity, incoherence, and fascist [I do not use that term casually] terms in which Trump casts the future are clear. His black-and-gold-shirted Proud Boys linearly descend from the SA.
The 'context' in which Trump speaks is that he is the greatest danger the US has faced since the Civil War -- whether liberal, pluralistic democracy will "perish from the earth." It is the earth of Orban, Bolsonaro, Putin, etc. -- he is a world-wide, era-ending threat.
Two points merit inclusion.
First, Trump is demented. This has not been discussed as carefully in the press as it should, and Bandy Lee has taken a beating (from Dr.Snyder's institution, alas) about this. But, leaving aside Trump's vast catalogue of evils and faults, atop it all, his brain does not work. I do not say this casually either, and I know whereof I speak. His incapacity to think, engage with the world, and process information, requires thorough elaboration in public discussion.
Second, Timothy Snyder is a historian. IF there is history being studied and written [for which I have little optimism] 10 or 20 years from now, or 50, or 100, THEN he will be remembered as the one who warned, who blew the bugle, the one who tried to save us from ourselves, the one who knew the better angels and tried to resuscitate them. Timothy did his best. The country (and the world) ignore him at their peril.
Another great essay, Prof. Snyder. "The people who say that the car context rescues Trump ignore the meaningful contexts: history, Trump, the opening of the rally, what he said in the speech generally." In fact Trump does this sort of thing quite a lot at his rallies. He routinely inserts bloodbath-type comments into comments about other subjects. His stream-of-consciousness thinking, with its abrupt stops mid-sentence, allows him to go from one thought to another, so that by the time he gets to the middle of a sentence, he's talking about something else. What is worrying is that so many of his followers can't or won't see this way of talking, even absent the bloodbath comments, as disqualifying.
This morning I put my Biden-Harris yard sign up. The man is dangerous but and it’s time to show as you and Lawrence O’Donnell discussed last night we cannot show fear Stand Up & VOTE-Blue.
As disturbing as the post was, the comments are more so. We who recognize what Donald Trump represents are a substantial majority, and we need to make it plain to Trump and his supporters that we will not be intimidated by threats of violence, nor will we tolerate actions of insurrection on their part. We must make that clear though words and actions, and not by planning to hide away.
We need to identify non-voters and convince them to vote as though their lives depend on it. We need to convince all prior Biden voters that while not perfect by any means, Biden is far better than Trump. When Joe Biden wins the election in November, we need to have large, spontaneous celebration parties nationwide. When the day comes to certify the results, we need to show up in Washington, a million strong, unarmed and peaceful, to shield the Capitol from his thugs.
I've read a lot of the apologists who have tried to tie the part ot Trump's speech on cars with the bloodbath comment. What they fail to see, either deliberately or in ignorance is that Trump's rants are hardly a coherent whole, but rather a collection of disjointed and often unconnected sound-bytes calculated to do two things only - to prove that he is the victim of a vast left wing conspiracy, and that, contrary to his usually hollering that he is his supporters retribution, he is, rather, counting on them to be his retribution.
The irony, of course, is that he doesn't give a damn about his supporters except as hands to pull voting levers, mindless adoration at his rallies, and deep pockets to pay his legal expenses in order to keep him out of jail.
This is man without a soul, a man so given to his own pleasures and desire for stature that he would destroy the country that has given him so much in order to fulfil his own personal desires. That so many don't seem to comprehend this is the real matter of concern in this whole terrible business.
Thank you Prof. Snyder. excellent...we need an overwhelming vote against Trump. At this point whether or not you have a bone to pick with Biden, a vote for Biden in the general election, and not a third party spoiler, is a true vote against Trump and for continuing our democracy of we the people... as flawed as it may be, as a work in progress as it may be.
We need to reverberate messages like this one about what Trump is saying, repeating, quoting and demonstrating to those who are tuned out, rationalizing that it's just rhetoric, not voting, or voting third party. The choice is binary.
There are so many parallels: Goebels/Mannafort, Goering/Miller, any female FOX news personality/Riefenstahl. Yet, people are still bamboozled with the idea that ANTIFA and a supposedly sympathetic Deep State is the real enemy. A simple high-school class on the history of the 19th and 20th century ought to be enough to curb what's currently taking place. Even a simple Google search or a few Wikipedia citations would provide context but, apparently, the need to have an enemy contextualized in simple terms and a small hint of belonging to a like-minded group is all that's required to complete what is so clearly an illusion. What will it take to divert our elected officials from orthodox and blind obedience to Trump and his self-indulgent, narcissistic rhetoric? When will reasonable people finally say "enough is enough?" When will the people whom have been entrusted with protecting our country and our global reputation finally stand up and say that Trump and his Cadre of sycophants represent a clear and present danger to Democracy?
Professor Snyder, this essay is a master class demonstrating why humanities education matters. You have shown that context and history always matter and that it is incumbent on us all to do the analytic work. And to vote! Thank you.
The RNC has dropped promotion of early and mail voting. So vote early and/or by
mail but…. Volunteer to serve as a poll watcher for the Democrats if you can. A massive turnout, well-monitored is our best hope. Join the texting, postcarding, phone-banking and letter-writing campaigns, now. Knock on doors and donate to candidates. Wave and post signs. Go to a rally. Show yourself. Wear campaign insignias. Own the streets.
I think we should all make plans to vote early and then find a relatively safe place to live between election day and Inauguration Day, especially if Trump loses. The men in my rural Tennessee neighborhood are already practicing for the bloodbath. One neighbor shoots hundreds of rounds every week, sometimes at a target shaped like a human. I talked to this guy briefly once, pointing out to him where my house was and that people were present on this side of the creek. He said not to worry. "I was trained by Uncle Sam," he said. That made me more worried.
I am not saying this to scare people, just to alert people to a reality that city people may not be aware of. In most cities, you can't just go out in the backyard and discharge hundreds of rounds with your pistol or rifle. Outside of city limits, you can. So the fact that you have not heard shots in your neighborhood does not mean they are not getting ready.
Another neighbor apparently has a bump stock, because you can hear machine gun fire from his property. I have tried calling the local sheriff's office, but the deputies are afraid to confront these guys. I found one young deputy cruising around after I called about the shooting; he was nowhere near the location of the shooter. And who could blame them? They are outgunned and not paid that well.
My plan is go to to a small town in NC where my family has a house within city limits. I feel safer there. The town is so small that you can hear shots from OUTSIDE city limits, but they are not as loud and not as close. I may be kidding myself that this place is safer, but it's my only option right now.
One of my friends has moved to Maine within an hour of the Canadian border so that she can escape if necessary. We can debate about the merits of "standing your ground" versus fleeing, but right now fleeing makes more sense to me, until this blows over. Other friends on the Left are saying they will shoot back. When I say this will likely make things worse, they just shrug. For the record, the Lefties who are promising to shoot back are men. I haven't heard any women saying that.
From a legal standpoint, isn't praising and promising to pardon people convicted of the crime of insurrection a clear case of aiding, abetting, and giving comfort to insurrectionists? Shouldn't this behavior, in and of itself, render Trump illegible to hold office? If not, what would? I don't hear this being discussed explicitly by experts.
It is very simple. Believe people when they tell you who they are. Trump is not hiding who he is at all. A malignant narcissist with a victim complex, a nihilist with an authoritarian and facist streak who seeks to incite violence because he gets pleasure out of it. We cannot let the media and others normalize him or to make excuses that he really is not meaning what he is saying. That is all gaslighting. Trump is a clear and present danger to all of us and all this country was founded upon.
We are witnesses to the ongoing failure of the media to treat Trump not as a normal candidate, but as the radical, brain damaged, dicktator wannabe, national security threat that he is. More than a few have noted that the only reason he is running is to stay out of prison. Now the other reason is that bankruptcy looms. And his need for cash right now would guarantee that he wouldn't get a clearance at any level.
Dr. Snyder is, of course, completely correct in this Talmudically-detailed essay. The violence, mendacity, incoherence, and fascist [I do not use that term casually] terms in which Trump casts the future are clear. His black-and-gold-shirted Proud Boys linearly descend from the SA.
The 'context' in which Trump speaks is that he is the greatest danger the US has faced since the Civil War -- whether liberal, pluralistic democracy will "perish from the earth." It is the earth of Orban, Bolsonaro, Putin, etc. -- he is a world-wide, era-ending threat.
Two points merit inclusion.
First, Trump is demented. This has not been discussed as carefully in the press as it should, and Bandy Lee has taken a beating (from Dr.Snyder's institution, alas) about this. But, leaving aside Trump's vast catalogue of evils and faults, atop it all, his brain does not work. I do not say this casually either, and I know whereof I speak. His incapacity to think, engage with the world, and process information, requires thorough elaboration in public discussion.
Second, Timothy Snyder is a historian. IF there is history being studied and written [for which I have little optimism] 10 or 20 years from now, or 50, or 100, THEN he will be remembered as the one who warned, who blew the bugle, the one who tried to save us from ourselves, the one who knew the better angels and tried to resuscitate them. Timothy did his best. The country (and the world) ignore him at their peril.
Isn’t it past your jail time?
3/10/24 😘 Jimmy Kimmel
Another great essay, Prof. Snyder. "The people who say that the car context rescues Trump ignore the meaningful contexts: history, Trump, the opening of the rally, what he said in the speech generally." In fact Trump does this sort of thing quite a lot at his rallies. He routinely inserts bloodbath-type comments into comments about other subjects. His stream-of-consciousness thinking, with its abrupt stops mid-sentence, allows him to go from one thought to another, so that by the time he gets to the middle of a sentence, he's talking about something else. What is worrying is that so many of his followers can't or won't see this way of talking, even absent the bloodbath comments, as disqualifying.
This morning I put my Biden-Harris yard sign up. The man is dangerous but and it’s time to show as you and Lawrence O’Donnell discussed last night we cannot show fear Stand Up & VOTE-Blue.
As disturbing as the post was, the comments are more so. We who recognize what Donald Trump represents are a substantial majority, and we need to make it plain to Trump and his supporters that we will not be intimidated by threats of violence, nor will we tolerate actions of insurrection on their part. We must make that clear though words and actions, and not by planning to hide away.
We need to identify non-voters and convince them to vote as though their lives depend on it. We need to convince all prior Biden voters that while not perfect by any means, Biden is far better than Trump. When Joe Biden wins the election in November, we need to have large, spontaneous celebration parties nationwide. When the day comes to certify the results, we need to show up in Washington, a million strong, unarmed and peaceful, to shield the Capitol from his thugs.
I've read a lot of the apologists who have tried to tie the part ot Trump's speech on cars with the bloodbath comment. What they fail to see, either deliberately or in ignorance is that Trump's rants are hardly a coherent whole, but rather a collection of disjointed and often unconnected sound-bytes calculated to do two things only - to prove that he is the victim of a vast left wing conspiracy, and that, contrary to his usually hollering that he is his supporters retribution, he is, rather, counting on them to be his retribution.
The irony, of course, is that he doesn't give a damn about his supporters except as hands to pull voting levers, mindless adoration at his rallies, and deep pockets to pay his legal expenses in order to keep him out of jail.
This is man without a soul, a man so given to his own pleasures and desire for stature that he would destroy the country that has given him so much in order to fulfil his own personal desires. That so many don't seem to comprehend this is the real matter of concern in this whole terrible business.
Thank you Prof. Snyder. excellent...we need an overwhelming vote against Trump. At this point whether or not you have a bone to pick with Biden, a vote for Biden in the general election, and not a third party spoiler, is a true vote against Trump and for continuing our democracy of we the people... as flawed as it may be, as a work in progress as it may be.
We need to reverberate messages like this one about what Trump is saying, repeating, quoting and demonstrating to those who are tuned out, rationalizing that it's just rhetoric, not voting, or voting third party. The choice is binary.
There are so many parallels: Goebels/Mannafort, Goering/Miller, any female FOX news personality/Riefenstahl. Yet, people are still bamboozled with the idea that ANTIFA and a supposedly sympathetic Deep State is the real enemy. A simple high-school class on the history of the 19th and 20th century ought to be enough to curb what's currently taking place. Even a simple Google search or a few Wikipedia citations would provide context but, apparently, the need to have an enemy contextualized in simple terms and a small hint of belonging to a like-minded group is all that's required to complete what is so clearly an illusion. What will it take to divert our elected officials from orthodox and blind obedience to Trump and his self-indulgent, narcissistic rhetoric? When will reasonable people finally say "enough is enough?" When will the people whom have been entrusted with protecting our country and our global reputation finally stand up and say that Trump and his Cadre of sycophants represent a clear and present danger to Democracy?
Is there anything more disgusting than The Bloated Yam? I think not.
There was also the choice of this place 'Vandalia', the place of the Vandals. Part of the context to me.
Professor Snyder, this essay is a master class demonstrating why humanities education matters. You have shown that context and history always matter and that it is incumbent on us all to do the analytic work. And to vote! Thank you.
The RNC has dropped promotion of early and mail voting. So vote early and/or by
mail but…. Volunteer to serve as a poll watcher for the Democrats if you can. A massive turnout, well-monitored is our best hope. Join the texting, postcarding, phone-banking and letter-writing campaigns, now. Knock on doors and donate to candidates. Wave and post signs. Go to a rally. Show yourself. Wear campaign insignias. Own the streets.