Becoming a Theocracy will be our downfall.

I'm so angry I don't think I can even type on my phone correctly at this point.

I think the US is screwed...

"Will be" ?

Sadly we're treading in your coattails and don't even have the same historical 'justification', our current crop of politicians inane statements to the contrary. A blinkered view of the golden age past providing you were the ones sitting at the top.

For now, Clam, for now. There is still hope. No damn idea where to begin looking for it, but I'm sure it's around here somewhere.
Everybody, look hard for it!

When your Supreme Court includes several judges with multiple credible allegations of sexual assault against their names, and several judges appointed by a self-confessed sexual predator, what do you expect?

Go after the legitimacy of this unrepresentative, tainted bench to have an opinion about anything.

>3 WholeHouseLibrary: I must've left it in my other pants. No sign of it here.

Time to start disuniting.

Quite the contrary. As the philosopher Roger Daltry wrote:

Ev'rybody join together
Won't you join together
Come on and join together with the band

We need to join together
Won't you join together
Come on and join together with the band

I haven’t felt like rioting since the invasion of Iraq—until now.

>8 varielle: I hear ya!

>6 LolaWalser: The Disunited States?

>7 WholeHouseLibrary:

Sorry, that's just empty sloganeering. Realistically, you've been falling apart since at least Dubya stole the elections; the Tea Party was the last nails in the coffin of USian two-party system see-sawing.
Who do you see "uniting" now over the separation of church and state, abortion, warmongering, climate change, capitalism etc.?

>9 clamairy:

Yeah, it's not like it's not a reality in so many important. And why should anyone outside Texas and similar suffer because of Texas and similar? Just to keep that "big hat" strut? The US has been "big hat, no cattle" for a while now.

The Weimar Democrats aren't bringing anyone together except "donors."

>3 WholeHouseLibrary: Is this hope?

Senators Warren and Smith urge Biden to declare public health emergency | https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sens-warren-smith-urge-biden-declare-public...

More than 20 Senate Democrats signed letter pressing Biden for executive actions on abortion | https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/senate-democrats-press-b...

Maybe not reasonable hope if our Catholic POTUS is deflecting the power of federal checks and balances back to the populace.

"My administration will use all of its appropriate lawful powers, but Congress must act. With your vote, you can act, you can have the final word," said President Biden yesterday.

(ETA source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/06/24/remarks-by-...

However, we who may still vote in the upcoming elections aren't entirely on our own at the municipal level...
"Pro-Choice Groups Prepare State-by-State Blitz to Defend Abortion Access" | https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/inside-legal-strategy-defend...

If you give in to despair, you lost. I choose to fight for hope.

>13 WholeHouseLibrary: Yes! We have to walk that fine line, though... To fight like hell and stay hopeful simultaneously.

>10 LolaWalser: We’ve been falling apart since Reagan. Lee Atwater’s southern strategy to keep the Republican Party relevant by embracing the fringe evangelicals and neo-fascists started this decline.

> 15 True that! I saw it even back then. Never thought something like 45 would happen until he knocked off his third rival for the nomination. It was a big OH CRAP! moment for me.

>15 varielle: Mm-hmm. Looks that way to me. I was 18 growing up in the middle of Mississippi when Reagan was elected. Republican strategies don't look much different today, except they're more obvious and maybe even more vicious, and they're working 'em outside the old definition of "The South" pretty well, too. Remember that the local offices were important in getting their way, not just the national stage. Once again there's a push to keep certain groups of people from voting, or their votes from counting equally. It's deja vu all over again. I'm fed up.

>17 sbercaw:

And the Democratic party leadership has steadily moved to the right and become more feckless, so that there's less effective resistance to those basically consistent Republican efforts.

On the plus side, yesterday the people of the state of Kansas restored some of my faith in my fellow Americans by voting to keep abortion rights as part of their state constitution! Woohoo! It's considered a conservative 'red' state, so this is huge!

>19 clamairy:

Yeah, I saw a pundit describing Missouri and Kansas as having swapped their respective "purple" and "red" qualities in this century, with Republicans suffering the results of "overreach" in Kansas. Yesterday was a day of mild relief on the reproductive rights front, with the vote in Kansas and the Justice Department action in Idaho.

>19 clamairy: Yes, really interesting development!

>18 paradoxosalpha: Yes, and that consistency is powerful. It should never have been underestimated. And the sad part is -- it doesn't even seem to be so much ideological consistency but rather a constant reinforcement of the "our side" and "the other side" way of looking at things. As if one couldn't agree more with one party on certain issues and the other on other issues. We actually used to do that sometimes back in the day, you know?

>22 sbercaw: Back in the day, the common wisdom held that the two parties were essentially alike, each with its right, left, and center, its strengths and its weaknesses, its winners and its losers. I really think the current revolting mess was brought to us by Richard Nixon.

>23 Meredy: Not so sure about that Nixon-origin idea. Clearly, his first VP, Spiro Agnew was corrupt, but I've long held that the whole Watergate scandal was created when Nixon made an innocent and off-the-cuff remark something like, "Gee, I sure wish I knew what the Democrats are planning as a campaign strategy," and Holderman, Erlichman, and the rest took him seriously. That's my take, anyway. Nixon's mistake was trying to cover it up rather than be honest about it.

The first chicken (as we think of them) was a mutated embryo of its ancestor, which was not, technically, a chicken. So, in that, Nixon is like the proto-chicken. The whole mess (neo-con Republicans) began with Regan.

>24 WholeHouseLibrary: So, Richard Nixon channelling Henry II of England's "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", which resulted on the murder of the archbishop of Canterbury on the altar-steps of his own cathedral.

An early example of plausible deniability?

>25 Cynfelyn: Can't say one way or the other. As I recall (and granted, I've got a pretty fuzzy memory of the whys and wherefores from then,) Nixon wasn't involved in the planning of the break-in, but was eyeball-deep in trying to cover it up after the fact. I could be entirely wrong about the pre-break-in part.

>26 WholeHouseLibrary:

I think that's a plausible reading of the facts as summarized on Wikipedia. That reading is supported by Mitchell and LaRue (and Nixon), and it's denied by Magruder (in at least one of his mutually contradictory statements).

>27 cpg: Nixon had long been involved with political dirty tricks. If he didn't know about the Watergate break-in he certainly was responsible for the atmosphere that condoned such shenanigans