Non English speaker: inevitable means it will happen no matter what. They way i see it, its used wrong here correct? It should maybe have been ‘increasingly realistic’ or maybe ‘increasingly plausible’ but inevitable assumes that voting for someone else won’t stop it from happening
The title is a bit clickbaity, but the subtext is that if he is elected, dictatorship is increasingly inevitable.
And the ‘increasingly’ modifier further shows it’s only a potential outcome.
The author isn’t the most self-aware… Robert Kagan was a Republican strategist until 2016, he’s an interventionalist neocon, thinks the GOP “lost it’s way” rather than contributed to this by design.
I agree. I think that if Trump is elected and puts an end to democracy as we know it, but it won’t be a dictatorship of Trump, alone. Trump is but a mortal man. And whoever replaces him will be worse.
One of the many examples of how English is manipulated and massaged to mean whatever you want it to mean. A more accurate phrase they should have chosen is “increasingly likely”.
Technically, I’d say “increasingly inevitable” is a meaningless phrase. “Inevitable” is an absolute - an outcome either is, or is not, inevitable. Like they say, “you can’t be a little bit pregnant”, outcomes cannot be a little bit inevitable, or somewhat inevitable, or mostly inevitable, so the degree of inevitability cannot be increasing.
However, I think most native English speakers would not think twice about it, and would read it as something like: “a Trump dictatorship is approaching inevitability.” That’s how I read it, at least.
This is just the usual polarising fear mongering bullshit. Even “increasingly plausible” is a stretch.
Maybe the democratic party should focus more energy trying to understand what is that that makes so many people even considering trump.
When people turn the other side into a one dimensional caricature they just ignore the real world problems that make them lose elections.
As a non American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for Donald twice.
As a free-thinking human being, I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
When you see his opponent it becomes easier to understand.
No, it doesn’t. In any way.
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As an American I can’t understand how anyone could vote for him once.
As a Canadian, I can absolutely understand how someone less informed in politics and (rightfully) angry at the political establishment would vote for Trump in 2016 just to flip the bird to Hillary. Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I apparently have difficulty empathizing with people who aren’t paying attention to what they’re voting for (or against).
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders, and how blatantly undemocratic our process of selecting candidates truly is, a lot of people fell into the trap of “fuck it, burn the world down then”. I know a lot of people reacted that way when the Republican party’s obvious rigging of the 2012 nomination worked against Ron Paul even though the votes were tallied in some states that he was the actual victor, but the derailment of his campaign by announcing Mitt Romney as the winner did enough damage…even though the Republican party chairs for several states had to resign due to the obvious false declarations and ignoring of the votes counted in primaries happened.
The real problem is the lack of confidence in our democracy and the rampant apathy that works against constructive progress.
After seeing how the super delegates worked against Sanders
Especially because he was almost guaranteed to win against Trump, but they know where the money comes from and decided to go with Hillary, who was historically unlinked as a candidate. I think this ought to have demonstrated that real change cannot come from within the Democratic party and that they are not willing to be the left party people wish they were, they’re part of the downward spiral. (And yes they’re better than the GOP, always have to get that in for the concerned voters out there.)
lack of confidence in our democracy
It’s funny how this idea of “free and fair elections” has recently come up in such a historically corrupt system, it’s true that elections today are better than they’ve ever been in this respect, 2008 onward were incredibly tight on this. Seems like people forget how the 2001 election was stolen. Historically it’s almost a joke how bad they were. It was routine for busses to drive around picking up people and dropping them off at voting stations in exchange for a bit of money. It hasn’t even been 60 years since everyone in the US could vote! At first you basically needed to be a landowner and even produce from your land to be able to vote. The men’s suffrage movement was like a century before women’s suffrage.
I’m really glad you mentioned some of the progress, while it’s not ideal, it does remind me that we ended the Gilded Age, and we can continue to confront the robber barons of our time. In US history we’ve already had a few near misses where we almost went the road the Romans did by giving a wealthy person absolute authority. We have to stay aware and be ever vigilant.
That’s really when America as it exists today was created too, between the Civil War and WW1. Often glossed over in the popular mythology of America.
indeed. the democrats have been enablers to this whole process
Americans need to understand why he won to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
It’s been estimated that 13% of Trump’s voters were Obama voters. The degree to which this impacted his victory is debated, but this group is almost invisible in the way Trump is understood in the popular discourse, which is almost entirely determined by… Trump’s own spectacle of rhetoric and the feedback it generates. The degradation of civic institutions and disenfranchisement is a major factor, experiencing this while you’re exposed to political marketing like, Kamala Harris doing a happy and smiley scripted bit where she tells children if they’re “authentic” they will succeed, not only does that not connect with the reality of people’s struggles but it’s a slap in the face to them.
I don’t. What was there to be mad at Hilary about that made people want to vote for a child raping, tax fraud committing, racist crook?
You have to understand that most people don’t pay that much attention to politics. They see a woman who embodies everything they hate about the US government establishment, and they see a guy who is raging against said establishment. If Dems had let Bernie win Trump would have been crushed.
I was working at this business owner’s home. Smart, genuine, kind guy in his mid-40s with a beautiful “nuclear” family. He said he was going to vote for Trump because his sister in law worked at one his properties and she spoke well of him. That was it. That’s how a seemingly respectable upstanding well-to-do member of the community chose the president of the United States. Or, at worst, that was the reason he felt compelled to tell others.
People in the US don’t understand what political ideologies are and literally vote for someone based off of “I’d like to have a beer with that guy!”.
My in-laws voted for him twice. They are pro-life, and that’s all that matters to them. Otherwise they support progressive policies like single-payer healthcare. But when it comes to abortion, they will vote for a literal anti-Christ to make it illegal. Funny that they are Catholic.
People who say they are pro-life will vote for the most pro-death policies, it’s crazy.
The cruelty is the point.
“pro-life” is a dog whistle. it’s anti-woman and everyone knows it
Its not funny. Its ludacris.
Your in-laws sound like uninformed rubes.
They kind of are, no college education and they don’t take the time to self-educate. Their support for single payer healthcare is something that both me and my husband have been working on with them for a while. I don’t think they are completely lost - they never showed the kind of hate I’ve seen from other Trump supporters. So I’ll keep trying.
So they’re going to vote for the guy that had an abortion?
If murder was legal, and somebody who was known to have committed murder was running, and you were confident that person would make murder illegal, and you were convinced that their opponent (who may have never committed murder themselves) would actively encourage more murder, maybe even pay poor people to commit murder, which candidate would you vote for?
This is exactly their reasoning. To a tee.
I can’t follow this argument. Try to be more concise.
Their decisions are logical based on their map, which is grossly inconsistent with the territory. Better?
Trust me, we’ve tried to reason with them. It’s maddening because they are otherwise mostly reasonable people, just ignorant politically and scientifically.
They’ll vote for him a third time. Believe me, folks. *accordion hands*
As a non-American I can’t understand how Bernie wasn’t voted in decades ago.
DNC sabotage his campaigns
If there’s anything the last few years taught the world, stupid people are far more numerous and far more stupid than we thought.
There are graduating seniors in high-school this year. That group of unregistered voters needs to be coaxed to register, and vote. They need easy, step by step directions. They need to understand their new power of citizenship. They can be tried as adults. They should know who the sheriff is. They should know its an elected position. They need to learn this shit, and most likely it’s not gonna happen in school. Please ticktock or whatever. Make it viral.
I still don’t understand why people have to register to vote. Everyone should automatically be registered to vote.
I think you know the answer.
Honestly I don’t
I live in a country where everybody who is entitled to vote, gets a vote in their mail box and a dedicated place where they can go and vote. They can even send in their votes before hand or vote in the local library.
I don’t see how one side or the other or any can benefit by low voting percentages
Republicans do better in elections with low voter turnout because old white people vote at disproportionately high rates.
But it has always been like this no? Have Americans ever not had to register to vote? Why cant all just be automatically registered to vote?
Republicans are currently making it harder for left-leaning populations to vote, by closing polling stations in urban areas or opposing vote-by-mail. Automatic voter registration is being actively resisted. That is “why”.
Voter registration became a thing in the 1800s to limit the voice of immigrants, adopted state by state.
Oregon first, and about a dozen other states since, have made registration automatic when you get a driver’s license or state ID.
So yeah it’s pretty much always been like this.
Central registered of all citizens with ID-number. I’m pretty sure your nation has it, as does mine. So the government knows where you live, and where you can vote. If you move these things are automatically updated. So it’s easy to make sure everyone can vote in the “correct” ballots ect.
None of this is true with the US
it’s because of racism.
But they better vote the way we want them to vote. /sarcasm
If you’ve ever wondered why no one killed Hitler on his rise to power, now you know.
The main difference is, in 2023, we know how Hitler rose to power. In 1933, Germans didnt.
Yeah, but that’s like… almost a 100 years ago. Completely different. SlashEs
I think that is a bridge too far for many reasons. First off I hate the Cheeto. He is a mudstain on used panties from a crackhead pornstar.
However, we have Hitler in recent history. We have many forms of media that they did not have to see how it’s going with everyone else. And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
I don’t glorify Hitler lightly. He was a force that needed to be stopped and so does Trump. But that is were the comparison ends. Nazis became so huge because people were afraid of what would happen to their family if they didn’t. Here we will fight the morons back. Stop giving this man so much power and admiration. He’s a conman. A shitty leader. And a dumbass.
And let’s not forget that Hitler was smarter than Trump ever will be.
Not really. Hitler’s (supposed) “genius” exists in the same way Trump’s does - as propaganda and nothing else.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius. I called him smarter than Trump. Trump copies him. He at least (for the most part) came up with the strategies to inspire the changes in Germany. Even though they were shitty as fuck.
I didn’t call Hitler a genius.
Fair enough - you didn’t. But calling him smarter than Trump is still a stretch. Hitler wasn’t very smart at all. You don’t have to be smart to serve the interests that puts you in power… which is the only real function politicians serve at the end of the day.
Fortunately for the US, it’s actually very difficult to be a dictator in the White House - the US president is a cog for those “interests.” He takes his orders from them and not the other way around. That’s why Trump became so ineffective once he stepped into the White House and became isolated from his adoring MAGA crowd.
This is stupid fear-mongering horse s*** that ignores all the steps Americans are taking to fight against Trump being elected, and ignoring that they voted him out 3 years ago.
Stupid b*******.
People took steps against him in 2016 as well. And voting him out previously gives no guarantee of anything.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/
Polling is bullshit, but to the degree that it isn’t, it isn’t looking great. This isn’t some guarantee that Trump will lose. The boomers that vote republican do so EVERY election. The people who vote against them aren’t so reliable in comparison.
You’re on the internet. Censoring yourself makes you look childish. Just cuss. Also, it’s not fear mongering. The GOP has announced their intentions if they win.
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So go fill your gaping ignorant armchair with another short floppy bamboo pole
That’s just uncalled for
It just looks ridiculous, doesn’t it? Who would take them seriously?
If you read the article, the author is not saying Trump winning the general election is an inevitability, but that him winning the nomination is inevitable and so is his rise to dictatorship if he wins the general. He never says Trump winning the general is guaranteed, and allows phrases that part as, “he could win the general”. All of those things are true baring unforseen circumstances.
Also, honestly that sentence would have been a lot funnier not censored.
Right, and instead of presenting the facts in an entertaining and sincere way, he writes a deliberately false and misleading title and article that bolsters conservatives and is intended to scare liberals.
Unproductive, fear-mongering b*******.
Which bastards are you talking about?
Please point to where the GOP has said they intend on installing a literal dictatorship. Please remember how many executive orders President Biden signed in his first 90 days in office as well.
Do you just forget that Trump almost succeeded in an insurrection and is now allowed to run as president again? How are you able to do that?
TDS is real.
It indeed is. Everybody who forgot what Trump did are truly deranged.
what did trump “DO” exactly. line it out for me. you seem to know. give specifics.
He instigated an insurrection and tried to overturn legal election results. How specific do you need to go?
I remember January 6th insurrection when Trump was in office
if you think that was an insurrection… you know what never mind.
Notice no one has actually answered the question, nor have they addressed the EO’s. How do you rule like a dictator in a representative republic? Sign more EO’s than any other pres had prior, totally wiping out everything your predecessor did. Last I checked nothing’s been proven that “TRUMP” caused, ordered, or even suggested your little so called “insurrection”. Saying something doesn’t make it true. But keep trying.
Again? Jesus.
you know you can swear on the internet right?
Some instances run profanity filters.
Same paper that just ran the “Women should stop shunning Trump supporters in their dating pool” article. I guess that’s so they’ll be less likely to abused under the pending dictatorship?
Stop sucking Trump’s cock, www.washingtonpost.com. There’s nothing inevitable about Trump but lies, treason, and bullshit.
Polls a year out are meaningless. Obama was also “losing” at this point before his re-election.
Nationally, Democrats have been beating polls by 9+ points at the ballot box since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Reminder of what an absolute shit-bird Robert Kagan is.
‘No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner Bill Kristol did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public.’ - Glenn Greenwald, Salon.
Kagan is one of the shitheads that got us to this point. He’s now concern-trolling us about how we shouldn’t bother opposing Trump.
I completely agree but I would just like to point out that Glenn Greenwald is also a massive shithead.
Yes, he absolutely is, but he was also correct in that particular assessment.
Just because he’s a neocon piece of shit doesn’t mean he can’t be right. Also, dude, Glen Greenwald is no fucking saint either. That guy is a certified scumbag. At least with Kagan there’s a chance that he actually believes his bullshit, whereas with Greenwald, we know he’s an intellectually dishonest grifter.
Are people really going to vote for a 80’ish year old would be dictator? For notionally a 4 year term? And no coherent succession plan?
Yes.
Well, bezos, it’s because you don’t actually care about a dictatorship as much as you care that your money pile gets bigger! What are you yelling at me for shitbird? You guys have the money n power! If you’re counting on my broken ass to fix the world you’re in deep shit
Billionaires will be fine. They have built their doomsday bunkers and they’re waiting for the dictators to genocide everyone else so they can crawl out into the sunlit depopulated paradise.
To be eaten by wolves surely. I just wish i could be alive to see it
It’s fun that you think Bezos takes any interest or part in the day to day workings of the WaPo.
Bezos’ pile of money is so big if he got out today his great-grandchildren will have no fucking idea how to spend all their money. He has no reason to care what anyone fucking thinks until they start breaking out the forks and knives.
I mean other than the fact that money will not save them in a destroyed society or world. Why do you think they argue over the best way to control their security teams, shock collars or limited food? Because they only have as much power as they have control and it will slip from their grasp if they do fuck all with it and let it burn around them.
It’s a good piece and I think the analysis is largely accurate. But there’s one thing I think Kagan missed: Trump isn’t the only would-be dictator who could take power. He lists DeSantis and Haley as the closest competitors to Trump within the Republican Party, but he doesn’t point out that even if, by some miracle, one of them becomes the party nominee, they would assume the very same dictatorial powers Trump is threatening to wield. Neither of them is going to defend democracy when offered the reins of tyranny, and both could easily hold power for decades. Trump maybe has a single decade at most.
The problem isn’t simply Trump wanting to be President for Life. The problem is that the path has been cleared for any Republican to assume that role the next time one is elected. Project 2025 won’t work for Trump only. The next time we have a Republican President, expect it to be the last time we have a fair election.
No, none of the other GOP candidates have anything even remotely like Trump’s grip on the base. Without that none of the above can happen. Trump got where he is through a long series of steps that Kagan details in the piece. There is no world in which some other candidate steps in and immediately plugs into the same kind of power that Trump has amassed as a result of Republican cowardice. Every one of them would have to start over with consolidating power in a party that’s swarming with amoral power-hungry grifters.
Not to run interference for those shitbags cause most of them are just as evil but I wouldn’t say they all equally threaten democracy. For one I’m not sure their base would allow a woman to be dictator lol even if she won due to institutional fuckery
Trump isn’t the only would-be dictator who could take power.
honestly I think only trump has what it takes to form the cult of personality necessary to take over. he’s got the charisma to entrance 35% the country. DeSantis is more temperamentally fit to be the lieutenant you send in to do massacres than a figurehead leader
Polls are meaningless when nobody answers the phone and/or they call people who don’t actually vote. Kids today know to shut up and beat the shitbags at the polls. We are collectively punishing the Republicans for 40 years of attacks against our society.
When does this brinkmanship dilemma stop occurring? How long are dems gonna get a blank check to spit in our faces because republicans are a looming threat? Is MAGA gonna be gone in 2028? 2032? When is the income gap gonna stop accelerating? Or emissions? When are houses gonna be affordable, or education? What about the situation is supposed to improve if dems win 2028?
Voting for local elections is more important than president. Some flavor of socialist could win a local election. You are fooling yourself if you think a socialist could win presidency in the upcoming election.
Also why should Democrats care about someone that doesn’t vote? What you want them to lose 2 votes for you…continuing to not vote?
Who said anything about not voting?
Voting records? I don’t know you, you don’t know me. Great 😃👍 most people don’t vote. You play football, you’re going to get concussed. You involve yourself with politics, you’re going to have to come to terms with people doing things you don’t want done. You’re the only you. Other people close to you won’t have 100% the same politics. Waiting till you clone yourself will solve nothing.
If you want to make the changes that you want you’ll need to get people who don’t vote to vote. If all that happens is they vote during the presidency and know nothing about anyone else, then they are probably going to at best vote down ballot. Dems are better than Republicans. If my only choice is between Dems and Republicans, I’m going to vote Democrat. There was an election recently that I voted in. The only vote that was happening was for mayor. It was between Dems and Republican. There is no alternative.
Winging about how much the Dems suck is going to motivate no one. People aren’t even going to get angry enough at the Dems when you say they suck to do anything. They’re not going to protest, they’re not going to vote, they’re not going to get involved. You are at best wasting your breath when you say the sky is blue.
Argue for mandated voting. Argue for something different than first past the post. Argue for a politician. Hell, argue for a fascist takeover so debate bros can “dunk” on you, they’re at least doing more that what you’ve put here.
The things you complain about will keep happening until you DO something. Argue about doing something.
It sounds like this rambling doesnt involve me.
im voting for someone that supports ranked choice.Which would be who? For what position?
If the answer is “no one” then why should any elected person care about you?
probly Jill Stein. Unless someone better that also supports ranked choice or proportional representation shows up.
believes Wi-Fi is bad for health.
Wants to starve people and drive up food prices because she doesn’t understand what GMO means, or doesn’t care to clarify.
Green party endorses fracking?
Suspect stance on Ukraine
Suspect stance on vaccinesI’m not saying biden has a better aggregate stance. I am saying you have a chance in a liberal government. But you don’t in a conservative one.
You’re spinning your wheels, and you’re going to go nowhere. Making people only pay attention to president is one of the best psyops
spoiler
(no evidence, it’s just funnier to believe)
::: that the Dems made so people like you vote so they stay in power.I seriously thought you had a local candidate who was going to push for that. There have been several local elections where they had ran on and implemented something besides first past the post system.
If you want change in a system this big there are only 2 routes. Slow and voting local so your party gains steam, or violence. I’m not going to advocate for violence.
What do you think the outcome of voting for her is going to be.
LOL, she’s running as Green Party again. If you vote for Stein in the general, that’s basically a vote for Republicans.
You get downvoted for actually expecting something from your vote. I’m sorry some 1/100000000 chance of a president becoming a dictator isn’t going to make me want to vote for someone who doesn’t want to fix economic problems for the middle class. Do better and winning the presidency would be a cakewalk do the bare minimum and possibly lose to Donald Trump.
If a fascist dictatorship in the US is “inevitable,” it’s only so because liberals won’t actually lift a finger to stop it.
There are plenty of organizations out there working to make sure this doesn’t happen. You could sing up for one of them instead of spreading doom and gloom on the internet. The change starts with you.
Such as?
There are literal hundreds. You can google “ways to get involved with elections” and you will get so many your eyes will water. I’m so tired of people acting like this is impossible to do and then complaining about how nothing ever changes. Go phone bank. Go canvass. Go talk to people.
“ways to get involved with elections”
In other words… just more of the same stuff that allowed fascists all this power in the first place.
Do tell… where were you when antifa was actually doing something about fascism in the streets a few years back? Heckling from the sidelines like a good little liberal, perhaps?
And how far did they get? What meaningful legislation came from it? Protests are needed but so are all kinds of other action. Feel free to sit on the sidelines and spread doom and gloom because elections aren’t important, apparently.
What meaningful legislation came from it?
The laws favor the fascists, liberal - they even have a fascist institution to enforce it… the police.
If you think you can vote fascism away I don’t think you really realize what fascism even is. How far the fascist element (the fascist element that is so thoroughly entrenched in US society that you and your fellow liberals even consider it “normal”) gets depends on how threatened the political elites and their corporate benefactors are by the prospect of working-class revolt - an electoral process means nothing to fascists or the capitalists that fund them.
Vote for whomever you wish. But if voting - or getting others to vote - is the only thing you are willing to do to oppose them, it means you are not prepared to do much at all.
liberals rolling over for fascism is the reason they’re winning. the moment enough liberals draw a line in the sand and hold firm is when it stops.
Liberals rolling over for fascism is the only way fascists win. There simply is no other way fascists can win.
