Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
When we talk about parts of Germany being “left behind”, we are talking about first-world problems. These areas are still wealthy by world and historical standards. But, their wealth and economic growth is smaller than the big cities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoQgoV-T8wM
The AfD has completely polarized a German town where disputes used to be easily resolved over a beer. They take over German villages as a strategy, first just establishing a base in a pub or something, then spreading their message, then polarizing the town by: ending trust, lying about anyone who speaks out, and suing and criminally reporting people who are against them. They also threaten opponents, especially AfD apostates. When dealing with external and internal opponents, the party focuses on threats and insults over discussion of the issues.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gedOEGjyMHA
The DSA has shown that they can win some blue districts, but they haven’t shown that they can win elections that, without their supposed DSA advantages, would have been won by a Republican.
The socialist politician to have won the most support on a national level is Bernie Sanders, and he is not a member of the DSA.
Republicans love running against the DSA and right-wing media likes plastering Democrats as the DSA, but Democrats are not the DSA. We are talking about a handful of successful politicians, not most Democrats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHsJRddkWNY
Ezra Klein: This Is How Democrats Win
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8iw1A2utVA
So far, the Supreme Court is allowing Trump to use powers that appear to be unconstitutional. The Court has largely done this using the shadow docket, where the court doesn’t need to explain its reasoning.
By allowing the president to create real-world and not fully reversible impacts while acting with clearly unconstitutional powers, the Supreme Court is derelict of its duty as a check on presidential power.
It makes sense to limit injunctions that stop the president when his actions may not even be found unconstitutional in the first place, but if the president can act in any way, and not be stopped until the damage is done, then the Supreme Court is derelict in its duty.
The Supreme Court can act very quickly when it wants to, and it can slow-walk when it wants. Seems like it will do this in favor of Trump and Republicans.
Trump and his associates say clearly why they are doing what they are doing, and then tell the Court that they did it for different reasons. The Court has naively accepted the administration’s legal justifications that conflict with the administration’s clearly spoken motives.
The Constitution does not take into account political parties. The founders did not expect parties when they wrote it. Parties ruin the separation of powers and cause officials to not restrain a president acting illegally, even though it is those officials’ (Congress and the Supreme Court) duty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZBLpzcYx4
“We’ve studied democratic erosion in countries around the world, and our research has found that the most important bulwark against an elected leader undermining democracy doesn’t come from opposition parties or pro-democracy activists. It comes from the ruling party — and particularly the powerful elites in that party — and their efforts to constrain their own leader.
The danger to democracy is particularly acute in political systems led by parties where leaders wield disproportionate influence relative to the political parties that back them — as is now the case in the Republican Party. Our data on all democratically elected leaders around the globe in the 30 years since the end of the Cold War show that where leaders dominate the parties they lead, the chances of democratic backsliding increase, whether it’s through gradual democratic decay or a rapid collapse.
In the United States, we tend to assume that constitutional checks and balances, including the powers vested in Congress or the Supreme Court, play the central role in constraining a rogue executive and any power grab they might attempt. But we’ve found that institutions can do so only if the members of the president’s party inside those institutions are willing to use their authority in the face of executive abuses or overreach.
The reason that often doesn’t happen is because when a political party becomes dominated by the leader as an individual, party figures view their political fates as directly tied to that of the leader, not to the long-term reputation of the party, and so they are unwilling to push back against the leader’s actions. In these “personalist” political parties, the party elite are even willing to go along with a leader’s abuse of power if they see that doing so is advantageous for keeping their jobs.
The impact affects more than just the political class. When prominent party figures tolerate — or indeed even support — a leader’s anti-democratic actions, it fosters public acceptance of those actions among party supporters, as people take important cues from their elected officials. High levels of polarization and the resulting disdain for the other side only make matters worse, as partisans are willing to accept abuses of power if it means keeping the other side out of office. Indeed, even when there remains a high level of public support for democracy, our research shows that societies can slide down a non-democratic path simply because they don’t want the other side to win.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/12/republicans-save-democracy-trump-00197613
How The Two Parties Crushed Competition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8vWF2E3qDg
““This is a political-leaning conference right now, not a policy-leaning conference,” Ryan told me. Which makes sense, he added, because “our party is a populist-leaning party right now, not a policy-leaning party.”
In this sense, there’s some logic to Jordan ascending to lead Republicans in the House, the body which best reflects the sentiments of the GOP’s Trumpified rank-and-file.
“He’s a very articulate fighter on TV, with the gavel,” Ryan said. “He is the star of the conservative media industrial complex, he is their darling.”
Yet as we spoke, Jordan had just seen 20 of his GOP colleagues oppose his candidacy on the House floor, a day before the tally would rise to 22.
“He is where the center of gravity is,” Ryan added of Jordan, “but I think, we’ll see what happens here, there’s just enough institutionalists around still that…”
I interrupted: “He can’t get quite get there.”
Which was a nicer way of saying what I was thinking: There are still enough antibodies resisting the virus.
However, if we’re being honest, in the House, and the GOP writ large, increasingly it’s Jordan who’s the body and the pre-Trump Republicans the virus.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/18/gop-party-house-speaker-00122371
“In state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties like Dane are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins. They’ve already played a pivotal role in turning several red states blue — and they could play an equally