{"id":35317,"date":"2019-01-12T13:10:33","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T21:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=35317"},"modified":"2019-01-12T19:57:01","modified_gmt":"2019-01-13T03:57:01","slug":"everyday-erinyes-152","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2019\/01\/12\/everyday-erinyes-152\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Erinyes #152"},"content":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto<\/strong>,<\/span><\/span> Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”<\/p>\n

\u201c2020 is kind of like in the WWE,\u201d said a former White House official, \u201cwhere they have seven or eight guys fight for the majority of the match and then the Undertaker strolls up and pins everybody after they\u2019ve exhausted themselves.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for President in 2020. So has Kamala Harris.\"\" Julian Castro*<\/span> has an exploratory committee. Tulsi Gabbard’s name has been mentioned. Trump has attacked Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, and Joe Biden as if they were running. And that list by no means exhausts the list of people potentially qualified to take on the Presidency. And every one of those people can expect to be savaged by Trump and his minions.<\/p>\n

What is Trump’s plan to become “The Undertaker” in this scenario<\/a>?\u00a0 Because, in a kind of a sort of a way, he has one, and it’s not just confined to<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, I\u2019m dreaming of those candidates,\u201d Trump said at a rally in Kansas late last year. \u201cI see those candidates before my eyes. Every night before I go to sleep. Sometimes while I\u2019m sleeping, I love them so much.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, there’s a very definite plan (not that Trump came up with it himself, of course):<\/p>\n

The pair of outside groups tied closely to President Donald Trump has retained the top Republican opposition group in an effort to smother Democrats seeking to challenge him \u2014 and perhaps even help pick his 2020 challenger.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So who are these people?<\/p>\n

\"\"America First Policies<\/a> is a 501(c)(4) “nonprofit” founded in January 2017 by six of Trump’s former campaign aides. It is allied with America First Action<\/a>, a super-PAC. “Allied with” means the PAC essentially launders the money which the “nonprofit” spends, keeping dark the names of the donors and the individual amounts “donated.”<\/p>\n

And there is lots of money to spend. Well, we all know that. I won’t belabor where it is coming from (and they’ll never tell), but we can get an idea where it goes. For instance, $1.2 million went to get Brett Kavanagh confirmed. $1.5 million each to confirm Gina Haspel and promote the Trump “Tax Plan.” All together, approximately $9.5 million in 2018. Which means they still have an estimated $20.5 million from 2018 at their disposal. And the donations will keep coming.\"\"<\/p>\n

America First Policies and America First Action are the “pair of outside groups” referenced above. The “top Republican opposition group” is America Rising PAC. “Opposition” is short for “opposition research” which is Newspeak for “finding and exaggerating any dirt which exists and planting it where it doesn’t.” Their “mission statement” is “to hold Democrats accountable and expose any hidden hypocrisy. We use video tracking, research, and communication strategies to ensure they must account for every word and action.” In accordance with site policy, I won’t link to them, but you can google them easily. As I type, their home page has articles smearing Harris, Warren, Pelosi, Bernie, Biden, and House Democrats as a group. If you have blood pressure issues, perhaps you should stay away.<\/p>\n

It crossed my mind while skimming – can you imagine how many people, and how much ink\/bandwidth, would be required to put Republicans under the same scrutiny they are applying to us? And no one person could ever read it all.<\/p>\n

It’s no secret that I have been hoping that our Democrats would hold off a little longer before starting to declare, and this systematic character assassination is a big reason why. But that ship has now sailed. And we must deal with it. But how? How is the best way we can protect our party from splintering as we did on 2016? Should we try to jump on board as people announce? Should we try to remain uncommitted as long as possible to attempt to maximize our commitment when we do have a nominee? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

I’m sure there is an individual temperament factor. It will help if each of us will be honest with him- or herself as to how difficult it will be to change course if one’s preferred candidate does not survive the primaries.<\/p>\n

And we must stay aware that Republicans will be doing this systematically, and more and more viciously, with particular vitriol being aimed at anyone who looks like a front runner at any given time.<\/p>\n

Alecto<\/strong>,<\/span><\/span> Megaera<\/span><\/strong>, and Tisiphone<\/span><\/strong>, please help us keep our facts and our priorities straight. Don’t allow any of us to fall for any Republican crap. The future of civilization, in fact of life on earth itself, depends on it.<\/p>\n

The Furies and I will be back.<\/p>\n

Cross posted to Care2 HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/span>Just got an email that he announced today.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":32899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}