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Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

19 Feb

@conor64

I promised myself to stay away from direct comment on Rush Limbaugh. @conor64 has some thoughts worth the time here. I did want to say something about Limbaugh's audience. [thread]

https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1362541226084298755

Limbaugh was all about opinion without responsibility. Obviously. He was a radio host. He never had to write a bill or get a road fixed or negotiate with a foreign government or do any of the things that people in government need to do for the government to work.

I think it was this that drew so many people to Limbaugh's show, and made him a role model for so many other people in conservative media and, eventually, people in conservative politics. These were people who liked expressing opinion, and disdained responsibility.

Read 12 tweets

Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

9 Feb

@ThePlumLineGS

We can look at the argument @ThePlumLineGS makes here from a different, more institutional standpoint. What took place on January 6 was a physical attack on the national legislature, incited by the executive. What recourse does the former have in such a case? [thread]

https://twitter.com/theplumlinegs/status/1359172608181366792

The majority Republican position, as of now, is that the legislature — Congress — has no recourse. The attack on Congress was incited; it was made; and Congress must simply accept it. Impeachment cannot be a remedy, because the President is no longer in office.

@ThePlumLineGS

Little effort is required to understand the absurdity of this position, from the standpoint of Congress as an institution. As @ThePlumLineGS makes clear, the point of the attack was to be the culmination of the President’s campaign to stay in power — in effect, to be a coup.

Read 11 tweets

Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

8 Feb

It’s been 30 years since the Gulf War, celebrated at the time as a great American victory. Officials in GHW Bush’s administration never stopped praising themselves for it. Samuel Helfont takes a more jaundiced view, & it’s not hard to see why. [thread] tnsr.org/2021/02/the-gu…

A “precision” air campaign that struck many more targets than it needed to; ideas for the postwar period that assumed Saddam Hussein’s departure with no plan to make this happen; reactive diplomacy that led Gulf War allies to distance themselves from the US.

The aftermath of the Gulf War included a protracted American military commitment in the Middle East to contain the regime that had lost the war — a goad to extremists & excuse for American policy makers to defer thinking about what a post-Cold War world order would look like.

Read 4 tweets

Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

19 Nov 20

The United States passed a quarter of a million offically reported #COVID19 deaths today. Counting people who died at home, and others who died from other causes because #COVID19 cases were swamping local hospitals, we actually passed that milestone weeks ago. [a thread]

At this moment, the President is preoccupied with watching TV, plotting to overturn the results of the election he lost by millions of votes, and making transition to a new administration as difficult as possible. He hasn't met with his White House #COVID19 task force in months.

This may be just as well, as the Trump administration's preference is to let states fight the nationwide pandemic and take the blame for necessary restrictions, while not coordinating anything. The one really useful thing task force members could do -- provide regular televised

Read 22 tweets

Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

17 Nov 20

@NBCNews

I don't take this already much-shared @NBCNews report by @carolelee @kwelkernbc & @mikememoli as definitive of anything about the incoming Biden administration, including @JoeBiden's personal thinking. Early days still. With that said...[thread] nbcnews.com/politics/justi…

A good rule of thumb for looking back at the Trump administration is this: you either defend the rule of law, or you don't.

Trump has objected violently throughout his life to being bound by the rule of law. He will object violently to prosecutions, investigations, anything.

The United States is in too precarious a political position for the government to concede anything to obduracy of this kind. There is no moderate, comfortable middle ground between faithful execution of the laws and acceptance of lawlessness from the most powerful citizens.

Read 12 tweets

Joseph Britt

@Zathras3

13 Nov 20

Now that all states have been called, I wanted to record a few thoughts about the election while they're still fresh -- what seems to have been important, and what was evidently not. Follow along if interested.

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/798315103867109376?s=20

I suppose it's only fair to disclose my priors, many of which were summed up in something I wrote just after the 2016 election. This characterized support for Trump by Republicans -- particularly the better-off among them -- largely as a moral failing.

https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/798315103867109376?s=20

The single most important dimension of this moral failing is rejection of responsibility -- which Trump certainly personifies, and which has been a recurring motif throughout his Presidency. His supporters, in this sense, got what they asked for in 2016.

Read 28 tweets

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