Forum Post: Assault Weapons is what makes US Acceptional
Posted 2 years ago on June 7, 2022, 3:56 a.m. EST by gsw
(3420)
from Woodbridge Township, NJ
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
It Doesn't Matter to the Oligarchy How Many Mass Shootings There Are There will be no gun control, not only because of the gun lobby and a corrupt political class, but because for many white Americans the idea of the gun is the only power they have left.
CHRIS HEDGES June 6, 2022 by Scheerpost
Re. as "for many White Americans the idea of the gun is the only power they have left" .. consider quite simply that seldom on this OWS forum was such a truer word said so sadly and succinctly! Also fyi
consider - "To End Mass Shootings, We Need to Change the Deeper Structure of Life in the US"! https://truthout.org/articles/to-end-mass-shootings-we-need-to-change-the-deeper-structure-of-life-in-the-us/ by Henry A. Giroux
and: http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-2nd-amendment-please-share-with-people/#comment-1081232 and thread + links
&, via bw NB: https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment
et veritas vos liberabit!
PS: I thoroughly agree with the fact that the U$A is Exceptional in being "Acceptional" - as it seems to 'accept' far more dangerous limits to its alleged "freedoms", than many other nations, which are freer in their everyday living than the "United States of Amnesia" - as Gore Vidal put it! The Original 2A, was all about a "citizens' militia" from the time of -- NO Standing Army and single shot flintlock weapons -- NOT powerful automatic and semi-automatic guns ffs!! I just want explanations for WHY anyone needs semi-automatic/ automatic weapons of war at home these days in a gun culture that can have pistols for self-defense & hunting rifles and even shotguns but wtf is the rational reason for the ownership of: Powerful Weapons of War?!!! It appears that U$A is really an exceptionally 'accepting' culture of RW conformity!!
ad iudicium?!
2nd amendment flawed as designed to terrorize black populace, and others, as it still to this day was. It is one of our original sins, twisted to make look like a sword of justice, by our elites, it divides us to inaction and destruction of our most vulnerable, by the weak, empowered with no responsibilities
The 2A Text : "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." .. Now compare and contrast that ^; with The Preamble of the US Constitution:
So, please consider - IS "A well regulated Militia necessary - to the security of a free state" NOW in present "United States of Amnesia" (Gore Vidal)?!!!!
Surely the Second Clause, ie. --- "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,", is contingent on a "Militia" being "necessary" but HOW is that the case, in times of a HUGE Standing Army and umpteen levels of 'Official US Armed Services & Agencies'?!!!
Furthermore - is it not clearly the case that the "Domestic Tranquility" and - "The General Welfare" of the Citizens of the USA, are NOW directly threatened by the wildest possible reading of the old 2A, from a time of single shot weapons & no standing army?!!
Sadly, there is just no getting over the very deep psychological truth of "for many White Americans the idea of the gun is the only power they have left"!
omnia causa fiunt!
===============================================================================
PS: The reactionary reply below was just 4 paras of 1,3,5 & 8 lines 2 hours after my reply, et ecce homo!
a HUGE Standing Army and umpteen levels of 'Official US Armed Services & Agencies'
These weren't even imagined at the time of the Founding Fathers, who were far more concerned about the continuation/survival of the "experiment" (George Washington) at self governance without a king, or the "republic, if you can keep it" (Benjamin Franklin).
The Founding Fathers were obviously thinking about a citizen militia when James Madison wrote down the first and second amendments necessary for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the thirteen original colonies/states (the southern ones being slave-holding ones requiring the constitutionally guaranteed right of bearing arms/guns for their citizenry's coercion of the slaves who might revolt and representation of the slave population at a discounted rate of 3/5 that of White men { women weren't even considered much } in the Electoral College -- it's why I had said that slavery was the Original Sin of the U.S.A., later partially cleansed with human blood in the American Civil War which still didn't suffice because the Republicans, in order to gain the Presidency, abandoned the Reconstruction of the conquered slave-holding South in a compromise with the slavery-favoring Democrats.) The second being necessary to buttress the first, which hemmed in the U.S. Congress which had its discounted representation for the slaves. Citizen militia was necessary to prevent our republic from slipping into a tyranny. Maybe we should upgrade our citizenry's firepower to the level commensurate with our standing army to prevent its being used by the likes of the Cheatose(R) to exercise tyranny.
Global Plutonium Association needs to continue its urgent task to achieve: a nuclear bomb under every kitchen sink. It's more urgent than an electric light on every kitchen ceiling. DPRK should be invited to become a board director of the Global Plutonium Association so that it can teach and direct people how to keep their existing electric lights on with plutonium power. DPRK is so dark at night because it's afraid of nighttime air raids by the U.S., Japan, or ROK, or their kids are so efficient at studying and finishing up all homework that they can go to bed at sunset. I used to be in bed by 8 p.m. but ahh.. those were the good old kiddie days when I was highly efficient at studying, finishing up all homework, and snooze until 7 a.m. the next morning. Maybe the DPRK kids can recognize in the darkness the Milky Way, the North-Star Polaris, how to locate Polaris pointed upward to by the Big Dipper's two stars at its ladle's outer edge at a sky apparent distance of about five times the sky apparent distance between the two stars ("in the northern hemisphere, you'll always know your direction home on any dark cloudless starry night," ) see brilliant Vega, and know Orion constellation, its Nebula (the greenish tint of light from part of it shows the presence of doubly ionized oxygen { oxygen nucleus is most often just three helium nuclei fused together and helium nuclei are already very stable nuclei and very common in the universe so oxygen nuclei are even stabler and very abundant among lighter elements 《the other noteworthy stable light one is carbon so the Earth probably has much deep underground carbon, too -- yes, there's indeed a lot of coal available to make carbon dioxide; tectonic movements can probably create new oil and gas fields or replenish old ones over a long time》; we human beings are by mass comprised mostly of oxygen because we are douche bags of salty water and the hydrogen part of the water has low mass } so with the presence of abundant hydrogen, we may say that primordial water is probably widely available there in the deep when God's spirit hovers over the deep and says, "Let there be light !" and new stars are born brilliant in Shining Time Station,) and its very bright stars Rigel, Betelgeuse, etc. as Simba was told.
It seems that no one who doesn't have a big outstanding loan balance can snooze because the producer price index increase may very well soon become consumer price index increase. All debtors are getting bigger reliefs soon via higher inflation. Maybe the U.S. could break the record set when I was starting out in adult life. My Mom was complaining of groceries' prices becoming exorbitant. ( High-inflationary times are perfect for learning the discipline of fasting 《for most people of the developed world where obesity diseases run rampant ★sleeping counts as the ¿best way? to fast ♥I achieved my best academic performance after I'd slept instead of studied before final exams ♥ so I was fasting for at least 11 hours a day before my Big Brother bought us a television set and I started watching with my family a bit more of a nighttime show★; it works like my tried-and-true highly effective method of refreshing my store of groceries by stopping grocery shopping until I cannot find any more [old] stored groceries to eat》to improve one's health greatly by chanting the mantra, "Delay some more《屌你新母》! " as a rejoinder to the English-speaking grim-reaper teacher's sternly saying, "Delay no more《屌你老母》! ") She told me to get a real promotional break for a new-car loan at 13.9% per annum interest rate.
It was certainly a break from my having to walk through a tall-corn field and when I emerged, being honked at by the ¿surprised? car drivers who had probably thought that I was either drunken or crazy walking along the muddy side of the highway at night as there was and probably still is no sidewalk in rural America. Pity the children in New York City who couldn't recognize Orion due to light pollution. Even in the muddy tall-corn field hemmed in by ¿cornwall?, Orion was visible up there together with many stars.
I spent at least $10,000 in inflation-adjusted-to-2018 U.S. dollars to get my car driver's license (I was the first owner of a car in my family so my learning to drive required me to pay for renting a car and the instructor, both of which are usually available nearly additional-cost-free by the family cars and the parents of typical American families). This expenditure was incurred because I didn't have "American and American-families' car culture." A high-school teacher was telling me and others in his class that he would be available to teach anyone how to drive if we get to school much earlier than usual. It just went right "over my head." I certainly neither wanted to drive nor drove in the City of New York as the Metropolitan Transit Authority's subway system reached to within walking distance (usually less-than-10 minutes of walking) of everywhere I wanted to go.
Boy ! There was a different world outside of New York City. As I strolled through the straight muddy path flanked by the two sidewalls of tall corn stalks indistinguishable where I was or how far I had gone in the sea of ¿cornwall?, I kept on thinking of "Giants in the Earth".
I should've taken up the high-school teacher's offer to learn driving (some soon-to-be high-school graduates might have been going away from New York City so he was probably trying to take up the role of a surrogate parent teaching driving skills to help the kids) before leaving -- it's good to have foresight and cultural knowledge of locale's conditions.
I reread your comment. Nowhere did you mention the First Amendment's relationship to the Second Amendment being adopted as a part of the Bill of Rights which are the initial ten amendments to the proposed U.S. Constitution in order that ALL thirteen original colonies/states ratify the constitution under the shadow cast by slavery which was expediently dealt with, only to blow up later as new territories joined the U.S.A. becoming new states which shifted the balance of power between the commercial industrial North and the rural slave-holding agricultural South. I learnt American History during my high-school years. I suppose that many foreigners may not have studied American History for a whole school year. It's partly why I question whether you've studied American History in detail to know the context of the creation of the U.S. Federal Government after the failure of the Original Thirteen Colonies' Articles of Confederation. The fatal flaw of the Articles of Confederation was its lack of a Continental Army ready to fight the British. Since those American Revolutionary War days, the Army's progeny has definitely grown to a HUGE size by now in terms of its equipment and global Periplaneta scope but not in personnel or warship count. Red China has far more soldiers & more warships, built using Australian coal & iron ore.
It seems that people who were born in a place aren't as interested or knowledgeable about it as the new immigrants. When I was a child, born on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong, I neither cared nor knew or understood my Big Brother's big fuss about Boundary Street (an old border) and Kowloon City. ( I did notice the bizarre nature very deeply { every few minutes a huge airplane would roar above our heads ¿screaming bloody murder? while we waited on an extremely crammed building's roof for a chicken to bleed to death, be stuffed into a bucket of tar/black-goo, and have its feathers all plucked off } when my Mom took me to Kowloon City to buy the best freshly live-killed chicken to serve up to the deities { only Confucius was a meat eater, no matter; Guanyin might be a woman in China or originally a man in India, transgender no matter; my Mom agreed with my Big Brother: Guanyin had been male because of her "big feet" in my Mom's words } in my spiritual godfather's temple.) He was a new immigrant to Hong Kong and I was a native-born Hong Konger.
And The Truth Will Set You Free!!! - with Prof. Gary Younge:
“Do you love the second amendment - more than you love your children?!!"
And stop spewing reactionary, self-referential, unintelligible gobbledegook!
et veritas vos liberabit!
You need to learn to read this: the U.S. citizenry has been preparing for a real war, the race war. It's rational. I've never ventured to inspect the fallout shelter of where we used to live (on upper Manhattan's "Academic Acropolis," Morningside Heights; opposite the sunrise side, on the sunset side was the landmark Riverside Church) but it was reassuring to me when my Big Brother told me that we had it (with steel drums of deionized water and more).
It had been totally useless (as the Cold War ended, not in a Boom) for at least half a century by now but it was better for me to know that it was down there. My Big Brother was perhaps more morbidly oriented (or he knew what was going on and got scared; the 1970s & early 1980s were a terribly awful period to live through but the U.S. then had no foreign war, only the ongoing Cold War { I didn't fight in the Vietnam War but I surely paid its bill through heavy taxes and high inflation } and I was hit with some of the biggest tax increases "to rescue Social Security and Medicare" 3%SS+MC to 6.2%SS+1.45%MC=7.65% x2 for employer's match = 15.3% 《was 3% ×2 = 6% before》of employer's outlay to pay me was taxed for SS+MC -- we the Baby Boomers have been rescuing them already for nearly half a century but we all eventually get off of work and die so youngsters had better make some big money soon to shore them up; I know how heavy a burden it feels like, as I am a Late Baby Boomer, but it's a calling to carry on with both grit and forbearance; I was somewhat "protected by ignorance") than I was (or ignorance is bliss; the less I knew, the better I could sleep peacefully) but I believed and I definitely felt safer. I got scared twice before in the early 1960s and sort of understood what my Big Brother was saying: each tiny much-smaller-than-a-speck-of-dust uranium atom was huddling and crouching most-of-the-time quietly like a flea together with the thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands.. of other similar fleas (some heavier plump fleas have calmer tempers and not easily provoked -- these are the uranium-238 atoms difficult to be provoked in a "fly-off-the-handle rage" to split into pieces; the lighter fleas, probably more starved, have more explosive tempers and are easily provoked -- these are the uranium-235 mostly and uranium-233 atoms; if provoked they split into pieces in a "fly-off-the-handle rage" which may hit the other fleas and provoke them) then one flea was tickled and split-apart or "hopped" triggering the nearby fleas to "hop" which would trigger other fleas to "hop" and so on and so on. The uranium enrichment process moves the usually far apart hotter-tempered uranium-235 fleas much closer together so that one flea "hopping" can disturb a few neighboring uranium-235 fleas so they may "hop," too. The body parts of the uranium-235 fleas may hit a uranium-238 flea which may absorb a little bit and becomes a somewhat provoked and upset uranium-239 flea. This uranium-239 flea threw up a little bit (electron) to become neptunium-239 flea which threw up another little bit (electron) to become plutonium-239 flea which is fairly stable but much more easily provoked than a uranium-235 flea. Most lighter weight nuclear weapons' explosive core parts are built using plutonium-238 fleas because they can be chemically separated from the uranium-238 -235 -233 fleas and are much easier to be provoked to "hop".
I knew what a flea was because the family living upstairs had a dog with fleas. I was also taught how to catch (with saliva on a finger or palm to stick to a flea on contact) and quash (between two fingernails rolling against each other with the flea in between them, as pinching between two fingers can't flatten a flea's hard shell) and kill a flea but my mere thought of so many angry fleas hopping up made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
At the first time it was the Cuban Missile Crisis. I didn't quite understand what the big fuss was all about but I was plenty nervous and literally, in bed, stood upon my head propping up my body upside down against the wall. At the second time it was the news about Red China's atomic (highly enriched uranium-fissile type nuclear) bomb detonation test. My Big Brother showed me the newspaper and explained to me. I understood fleas. One was bad enough (terrible scratchings) but more and more and more.. angry fleas.. Yikes !!! Many fleas hopping can make a human.. dance !
One thing I learnt from riding on the backseat of my Big Brother's bicycle was that there was no point of worrying about that huge dump truck/lorry speeding too close-by. Tucking my right foot into the bicycle's back wheel to get its out of the way of the truck and had it all cut up by the bicycle wheel's spokes was stupid. Fear makes one less rational but preparing because of fear is perfectly rational. One abandons fear if its subject has already materialized. One needs all the power one has, brain and brawn, to deal with the situation at hand, rationally without fear. Fear not only takes away observational power but also brain power. Fear not and fight, or flee with full power.
If people in the U.S. become unemployed, they can go join the fight in Ukraine against Russia. Ukraine has food and guns. Like Russia's using mercenaries, U.S. can fund jihadist mercenaries, too. Lebanese, Sri Lankans: there's much food in Ukraine, waiting for you, if you can fight Russia to get to the millions of tons of grains there in Ukraine. Probably more important than food now for Lebanese, etc. if Ukraine cannot plant crops because of Russia, a lot of other peoples must join the war against Russia or starve later because there won't be much food if Ukraine doesn't plant the seeds, due to Russia's invasion; Ukrainian farmers hid from Russia's artillery shelling and aerial bombing instead of farming. It's work for agriculture at stake and timing is extremely important. China, for example, has grown huge over millennia (at least partly through the military conquests by using three-warriors horses-drawn war chariots; we are the warrior clans which were involved in this war business for millennia ever since horses and some of my horse-accompanying ancestors were first introduced to western China, heavyweight maces were forged to be wielded and charged with, and instruments such as odometers and compasses were designed and created to assist all-weather guided warfare; we understand military cultures and know that there are codes to live and die by although they may differ between masters; former enemies may become comrades and former comrades may become enemies and loyalties may change but changed warriors still stay as warriors; the linchpin of the U.S. is the freedom of speech -- James Madison got it correct -- it's a right to speak even for a person of a different religious denomination; this is what many people from a non-U.S. culture make a mistake trying to understand the U.S.: Americans have the right to free speech, freely worship none, any, or all religions, and free press, unlike the Old World which tries to shut people up instead of letting people speak of a countering argument; we hold public hearings to get [interested] people's opinions on an issue such as a potential new law) because there was a lunar calendar which instructs farmers when to sow seeds catching the rhythm of Mother Nature and getting her great assistance for bountiful harvests with minimal effort and expenses. Little planting -> little harvests of food -> high prices of food -> poorer people primarily near or dependent on food from Ukraine may starve (it's the reason why the U.S. policy of planning to convert corn to ethanol to be burnt to lower gasoline prices is being questioned because the U.S. may be able to alleviate the looming global food crisis with its corn.) We need more sanctions { EU is sending Russia hundreds of millions of euros' worth of money every day to help Russia fund its invasion via its oil & gas "cheap with German characteristics" sales to EU }; today Ukraine, EU 's next } and heavy weapons to fight the war against Russian invaders in Ukraine. Do you know where your food is coming from ? From Ukraine ? From new Ukro-"Russia" ?
I can eat corn. I can't eat crude. U.S. has fracked gas. Many long-distance trucks have already been converted to run on fracked gas instead of diesel because it's cheaper if used a lot to amortize the conversion costs. Most of the explosives being used in the Russia-Ukraine Conflict come from nitrogenous substances often created for being used as nitrogen-rich fertilizers so Russia's capability to export fertilizers is rapidly being degraded by its soldiers, probably mercenaries. Little nitrogenous fertilizers->little amount of plant proteins get made (proteins are made of amino acids which contain an amine -NH2 functional group at one end with the N signifying nitrogen, H2 signifying two hydrogen atoms stuck like two plums to N's pudding)->lousy harvests->stunted export of food->exacerbated global food crisis->mass artificial (made by Russia) famine.
Apparently .. "the U.S. citizenry has been preparing for a real war, the race war. It's rational." WTaF?!!!
Is it really?! According to who?!! A $H!T Spewing Right Wing Nut Job - like U, gropes?!!! U utter cretin!!!!
Repeated^here, in case the crazy c*nt deletes it later!!! No time to reply like usual, as time is at premium right now, however a more comprehensive reply to the existing (3,7,4,5 lines) four paragraphs which will no doubt be added to at a later time - as is the disingenuous cretin's wont .. may follow!! And already the mendacious scum-sucker has started to alter his reply and it's not even an hour since he first spewed it! Oh well, all hail 'The Agon' [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agon ]!
respice, adspice, prospice!
Are you saying that "Uncle Mao" [Zedong] was "A $H!T Spewing Right Wing Nut Job - like U" ? Wow, I'm in-honored ! Mew2 is coming to the rescue.
Here is Mao's original April 16th, 1968 statement in Simplified Chinese plus a map showing the locations of the race riots in the U.S.A. You can enlarge it to peruse the details. Around that time, the U.S. had Robert F. Kennedy (who was also murdered later on in his presidential campaign) to calm things down but who is our present-day RFK-equivalent in the U.S.A.?
I would say that "having a few" was very rational. My circumspect Big Brother's inspecting the fallout shelter was also very rational. My preemptive tucking in my right foot to avoid the speeding dump truck/lorry was not rational. A primary culprit may not directly cause the catastrophe; the attempt to avoid the primary culprit often does cause the catastrophe. Avoiding the primary culprit requires one to watch at least two things at once to be successful: the primary culprit and the vacancy or not of where one may retreat to. The primary culprit has a less-demanding loading on attention.
U are the "$H!T Spewing Right Wing Nut Job" and anyone only need read the following reply to your retarded, reactionary, Right Wing b-s to see that - although there is also recourse to reprising the entire exchange thread if U want; U $H!T Spewing Right Wing Nut Job! So read this & weep - U $S-RWNJ:
U are a mendacious moron & a dishonest interlocutor -- as exampled and exemplified by your previous much mutated reply & this^reply of 3 paras (2, 3 & 4 lines long) immediately above - is also up for later alteration too, isn't it - U p-o-s?!
STAY ON TOPIC .. U A$$-HAT!
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment
https://truthout.org/articles/after-mass-shootings-republicans-shield-white-supremacists-from-scrutiny/
https://www.salon.com/2022/05/25/texas-school-shooting-the-right-responds-to-massacre-by-calling-for-more/
https://truthout.org/articles/to-end-mass-shootings-we-need-to-change-the-deeper-structure-of-life-in-the-us/
and http://occupywallst.org/forum/end-the-2nd-amendment-please-share-with-people/#comment-1081238 and indeed the entire exchange there warrants attention .. U $H!T Spewing RW nit-wit!
et veritas vos liberabit!
Guns are the only power Americans have left. How true and sad is that?
Living in a society with no living wage, no secure retirement, no mandatory time off, no decent public transportation, higher education that gets you into so much student debt, employment at will where you can be fired for looking at your boss the wrong way, no guarantee of healthcare with 40 million with no access whatsoever and the rest paying huge premiums, co-payments and deductibles, no social safety nets, no sickpay, gosh the list goes on and on. So, yeah, you can see how some want their guns.
Maybe the way to end this is to start giving the American people things that would allow them to find meaning in their lives. Time off to spend with family, healthcare and retirement that would alleviate constant worry and stress. Affordable education so that parents who love their children so dearly and want the best for them don't have torment when they realize their kids state school is over $30,000 per year. It's really not a lot to ask, to ask for the government to protect the general welfare of it's citizens. Oh, right, that IS actually in the constitution that the government is supposed to do that!
More assistance for human necessities would be stealing from the rich to give to the “revolting” peasants.
We are living in a thieving oligarchy, constructed on fairytales and symbols of nationalism, myths.
Even to get a health care insurance, reams of paperwork, costs, networks that don’t work together even within one state, maybe 1800 a month for 2, who rarely use the medical system, except for yearly checkup. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/11/nation-bleeding-gunshot-wounds
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/06/11/nation-bleeding-gunshot-wounds
Note, "America Is Occupied By a Dangerous Second Amendment Scam"! by Thom Hartmann:
NB "War is the use of armed violence to achieve political ends. If the armed, uniformed militias who attacked our Capitol on January 6th weren’t “levying War against” America, what were they doing?!"
omnia causa fiunt!
Yes we are being titaniced, as with climate change, denial time is over, and little to hope for, too many koolaide hooked kooks https://newrepublic.com/article/167100/republican-party-turning-america-into-hungary
"The truth is that American democracy is essentially broken beyond fixing and is unable to withstand a right-wing populist movement determined to destroy it. The Eisenhower wing of the GOP was rooted out long ago. It will take multiple miracles to avoid getting one or more of the “bad” endings in this Choose Your Own Adventure of dystopias. The best realistic case resembles a Jim Crow America from the 1920s, complete with a Gilded Age, mass migration, violent militias running amok, and no-go zones for minorities. The possibilities only go downhill from there into secession, fascism, and civil war.
"Since (roughly) the second term of the Bush administration, there has been a tacit understanding between the GOP and its base that they cannot win hearts and minds: The demographics of the U.S. are inexorably shifting toward nonwhites and secularism. Despite the postmortem on the 2012 election that called for a bigger-tent party, the GOP has settled on a strategy that it must take the wheel away from voters and steer the country with or without the consent of the governed. While Latino voters swung toward Trump and Republicans in 2020, it remains to be seen whether this is the sign of a long-term trend of GOP messaging winning them over; Latinos tend to be less beholden to parties and are more “swingy” than the most voters.
"Republicans tried to overturn the 2020 election results, but the guardrails held, if just barely. As a result of Donald Trump’s relentless attacks on the outcome, roughly 70 percent of Republicans did not believe that Joe Biden won legitimately, and still do not. The January 6, 2021, insurrection was a direct attempt to invalidate a legitimate election result, yet Republicans largely went along with it: Roughly two-thirds of House Republicans voted to give the insurrectionists what they wanted mere hours after they stormed the Capitol.
"The GOP isn’t even bothering to hide its goals to seize permanent minoritarian power anymore. Republican candidates for various state offices in all the swing states are promising to deliver their Electoral College votes to the GOP presidential nominee in 2024, regardless of whom people in the state cast their ballots for. Republican leadership also isn’t even bothering to hide its ambition to turn the U.S. into a competitive authoritarian theocracy: The 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference was held in Hungary to celebrate and learn what can be gained by killing democracy as Viktor Orbán has.
"To prevent the GOP from capturing the U.S. the way Orbán and the Fidesz Party did Hungary is going to require several miracles in a row: having a history-and-poll-defying 2022 election, then being willing to overturn the filibuster, then getting lucky with an opening on the Supreme Court and a GOP that never regains its footing or suddenly decides to abandon its quest while at the cusp of victory.
"All of this is to say, barring a series of black swan events, we must be prepared to face the reality of what sorts of fates inevitably await our country in a postdemocracy future. With Moore v. Harper about to make the independent state legislature theory a reality, 2022 is the last chance for Democrats to shore up our democracy against the oncoming tide of Christian nationalist authoritarianism. We need only look at Russia, and Hungary, to understand the consequences of failure." (EXCERPTED FROM YOUR LINK)
And now please also try to further consider, the following information:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/2020-election-deniers-organize-challenge-votes-2022 - by Mekela Panditharatne
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/29/following-trumps-lead-gop-pushes-bill-make-federal-workers-fireable-will - by Brett Wilkins
https://www.salon.com/2022/07/30/officials-refuse-to-certify-primaries-this-is-how-are-planning-to-steal-elections/ - by Igor Derysh
respice; adspice; prospice - et caveat!
Hong Kong changed its colonial-style governance shortly after the 1967-1968 strikes and riots. The decisive turn of public opinion in favor of law and order happened after a firebomb attack on and killing a prominent journalist (general populace perception was the lawlessness of the mainland Red China was bleeding into Hong Kong and we wanted none of it; British Colonial governance was preferred over arbitrary Red governance; of course, once Hong Kong Government became very serious about restoring law and order {at bayonet and gunpoints of British soldiers and Hong Kong garrison's overwhelming mass show of force to lay siege and carry out police raids}, we supported the government as we had "skin in the game [for peace]"; authoritarians of Red China viewed that as Hong Kong people giving up freedom by authority applying oppression -- that's a misread; I, of course, don't think that the Reds read Hong Kong history because Reds believe that they can warp reality to fit their narrative and agenda -- this is the dangerous pitfall set up by many extremists -- much worse than Noam Chomsky's well-known-and-discussed-in-liberal-spheres' "manufactured consent" is "manufactured HIstory" 》die Geschichte《a very concise one-German word -- Hißler was a genuine native Teutonic speaker, as genuine as new Ukro-"Russia's" "grain export"). Under the new old-China-hand-guerilla-fighters'-trainer (against Imperial Japanese Army which invaded China and also Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. British colonies) Governor MacLehose, Hong Kong went into huge amount of deficit spending and carried out many reforms. Hong Kong built the foundation for being a truly world-class modern city.
I suspect that Red China probably said to U.K. that it didn't want Hong Kong back any sooner than the lease on New Territory which has most of the land in Hong Kong, runs out. Red China was weak then, reeling from its own disastrous Mao's Cultural Devolution, and great ( not only border tension -- Red China was going to hold the U.S.S.R. accountable for example, discontinuing its technical help with building Red China's own nuclear bombs after Stool-in's death and reneging on Stool-in's promise that the U.S.S.R. provide the weapons [for free !] and Red China the soldiers to fight the Korean Conflict against the U.S.A.-led U.N. force; then Krushchev withdrew all Soviet technical advisors from Red China and coerced it to pay up with food for the weapons used in the Korean Conflict; the feeling was that Khrushchev had pulled the rug from under Red China [under the banner of Revisionism/Coexistence-with-the-West] which was hoping to industrialize and modernize quickly with U.S.S.R.'s help; Mao was snubbed by both Stool-in and Krushchev, perhaps like how Condoleeza Rice might have snubbed Poo-tin so he started acting up ) tension with the U.S.S.R. It's reasonable that it didn't want the "hot potato" of Hong Kong back anytime soon and gave U.K. trust in the political stability of Hong Kong ( i.e. there will be no PLA horde suddenly charging across the nearly indefensible border; my Mom thought that she could sneak across the border into New Territory of Hong Kong with her kid in tow so the border couldn't be a formidable natural border; I've never been there ). Hong Kong's corruption started to be cleaned up. It got Chinese as a new official language and also new infrastructure: under-harbor tunnel connecting Kowloon with Hong Kong Island, deep-water container-shipping terminal, lengthened airport runway, subway system, satellite cities, many public [affordable] housing estates, water pipe linkage from Guangdong, new gigantic reservoirs, etc. I wasn't sure all of it was done under MacLehose because I was gone to the U.S.A. before his long governorship had ended. Maybe my EFS scholarship was also an early newly instituted educational reform item.
Deficit spending isn't necessarily bad. Much depends upon exactly for what the spending was. Spending for consumption is usually bad for young people. Spending for investments is usually good for young people in the long term in a politically and economically stable societal environment. For old people nearing everyone's inevitable but fairly easily long-term-lifestyle-behaviorally delayable terminal disease, called death (the U.S. banned 'old age' as anyone's cause of death, { no one is struck down by Zeus' lightning bolts anymore for failing to worship him but does anyone wonder why church steeples are still so often struck by lightning bolts, though ? Is angry Zeus still fighting God trying to burn God's temples on Earth down ? } ) the reverse is often true. Hong Kong had surplus year after year but its turning into a "hot potato" wasn't a good way for it to have gone. However, the will to reform massively might not have come were Hong Kong hadn't turn into a "hot potato".
Every time Russia explodes a bomb or rocket in Ukraine (ja, ja, Russian Fartvergnügen with German characteristics; does anyone recall those "highly enviromentally clean highly efficient diesel engines" of German precision [but inaccurate in moral] engineering "design [to 》Gift 《 cancers]" to foul with smoke American air ?) it's probably laden with the nitrogenous fertilizer needed to grow much of your food -- being burnt up to form hot N2 vaporware plume, much less dense than a "hot potato" but far more broadly diffused in effect, easily ricochét to Egypt, Türkiye, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Sri Lanka, Red China, Maghrib (including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), etc. wherever people or their livestock eat food imported from the "breadbasket" of Europe. Syria may well blow up again in a reverberating echo boom of refugees being sent back home.