I've never understood the argument that Dems will hesitate to amass or abuse power because it could be used against THEM after they lose the next election.

Passive conservatives and the GOP Establishment spend every day loudly promising they would never do that.
There is no detente, no mutually assured political destruction. Every Dem plotting to abuse power for political gain and play hardball to advance their agenda can read a dozen op-eds a day from passive conservatives promising they would never dream of responding in kind.
Even now, even after everything that's happened, you can see the MUH NORMS MUH PRINCIPUHLS crowd recoiling in disgust from suggestions that the Right should start fighting the way the Left does, even as we teeter on the brink of a socialist and authoritarian abyss.
If there's one thing the hard-Left activists running our increasingly weaponized Leviathan State know for sure, it's that Republicans will never follow thorough on hilariously insincere warnings of dire consequences for the abuse of power.
The closest we've come to that is Dems belatedly realizing they shot themselves in the foot by monkeying with the rules of Congress, and even there, the price they paid has been more annoying than unbearable or insurmountable - procedural hurdles, not critical wounds.
The Left understands that REAL power comes not from writing rules, but from writing exceptions. They will always find ways to protect themselves and their allies. And they know they can intimidate passive conservatives out of responding to their escalations.
In case you haven't noticed, warnings to the Left that their abuses and power grabs could someday be turned against them have not slowed their march to authoritarianism at all. No one of stature on the Left is worried about getting silenced, punished, or even embarrassed.
That's because they know their main opponents are openly, proudly sworn to never use the weapons of the Left against it. It's their core principle. They're devoted to "leading by example" even if no one is following, even as they march into endless bloody ambushes.
It's nice to have a controlled opposition that promises it will never use power to acquire more power, accepting every revision to the rules of the game without ever trying to change the rules itself. Why does that opposition think its dire warnings would be taken seriously? /end

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More from @Doc_0

5 Oct
"But" is one of the magic words that enables totalitarianism.

"It's wrong to harass women BUT if they vote the wrong way it's understandable," for example.

There are no principles, only privileges that can be revoked by the Party at its discretion to control dissidents.
Every totalitarian regime in history has justified its abuses by claiming its victims were Enemies of the People who forfeit the protections of society by choosing to stand against Progress. Every one of them claimed the "righteous" were justified in taking extreme measures.
The weird version of totalitarianism overtaking the U.S. mutated from the "crybully" movement that swept campuses a decade ago. "Oppressed" people supposedly had a right to silence speech that offended them. "Justice" requires using force to correct "the inequities of power."
Read 6 tweets
1 Oct
The most important task in the wake of the pandemic was to strip down our bloated, overfunded, underperforming, downright dangerous government and return more money, capital, and manpower to the American people. Instead we're getting the opposite.
I wanted Trump to run for re-election on that platform, combined with - and flowing very naturally into - the Return to Normal. I think that would have been a successful campaign, and it could have become the cornerstone of a strong conservative bloc in Congress.
It's still what we need to do, and the conversation we need to have, so hopefully someone picks up the flag and rallies the troops going into the 2022 and 2024 elections. It's about to become a couple trillion dollars harder to restore American strength and freedom, though.
Read 21 tweets
28 Sep
Joe Biden's War on the Middle Class - the war American socialism must win, before it can advance to the next stage - is a multi-pronged attack. Here are two of the prongs: reducing the economic freedom of the Middle Class and making it more dependent on government.
Believe me, Biden and his handlers have no intention of bungling the War on the Middle Class like they bungled Afghanistan. They will not retreat an inch, not with final victory in sight thanks to the Wuhan coronavirus. American socialism must defeat the middle class to advance.
How do you defeat the middle class of a huge and prosperous nation? Casting them into abject poverty with one massive economic attack doesn't work, because the middle class combines economic AND political strength - it's why socialists hate and fear them so much.
Read 18 tweets
27 Sep
The hostility of globalists to borders is a key element of their strategy for elevating authoritarian power beyond the reach of mere voters.

Erase borders, destroy the nation-state, and you sever the last cords of duty and accountability binding the Ruling Class to its people.
Of course there's a lot of money in mass migration, and left-wing parties love importing new welfare-state clients to serve as loyal voting blocs, but the big picture issue is the war against national identity. No nations means zero accountability.
Notice the "how dare you?" tenor of the Ruling Class when it deigns to discuss borders, immigration, citizenship, and migration with the unwashed masses. This is not an issue they think you should have any control over. You should really even be allowed to discuss it.
Read 11 tweets
23 Sep
Has a single piece of false information peddled by major media outlets about the fake "Haitians whipped by Border Patrol" story been labeled as disinformation by our Big Tech overlords? Has a single account been flagged or suspended for spreading it?
This is exactly the kind of propaganda that disinformation labeling SHOULD be used for, if we're going to have it at all. Verifiably false and deliberately misleading posts are being used to attack the American political system and the rule of law.
People are being mercilessly defamed by the false story, and this particular spew of Fake News has a very good chance of getting people injured or killed. It's a textbook example of dangerous disinformation. Aggressive flagging and banning by Big Tech would help slow it down.
Read 5 tweets
22 Sep
Interesting coda to the marriage wars: there's no longer much doubt that declining birth rates are closely linked to the decline of traditional marriage. That's not how it was "supposed" to work, according to all the fashionable social theories.

mother.ly/life/news/news…
We could argue over the timing of cause and effect: did traditional marriage lose its appeal because marriage was redefined, or did it become politically possible to redefine marriage because it had lost much of its power and appeal among young people?
But whatever the root causes, the results are undeniable. After decades of mad-scientist social tinkering, we've got studies piling up that prove what our grandparents knew all along. It turns out that tradition and common sense were right after all.
Read 9 tweets

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