If Trump Breaks Up the G.O.P., It Won’t Be a First
By SEAN WILENTZMAY 20, 2016
Donald J. Trump has astounded the world, as he would be the first to tell you, leaving the Republican leadership to make the best of a terrible situation. Only months ago, Senator John McCain of Arizona, a professed maverick Republican, was berating Mr. Trump for inciting the fringe “crazies.” Now he backs the presumptive nominee. “I believe that the Republican Party must maintain its viability as a party,” he said.

But what if the Republicans are no longer a viable national party? What if the schism between Mr. Trump and establishment holdouts like Mitt Romney deepens, and other schisms follow? What if Mr. Trump’s achievement turns out to be not just hijacking the party of Ronald Reagan, but catalyzing its disintegration?


It might seem unthinkable, but we’ve been here before. Major-party crackups are rare in American history, but far from unprecedented. These convulsive events mark major phases in the long history of American democracy and its expansion.

And although none of the implosions are identical, they share elements with the current crisis inside the G.O.P., including nativism, political legitimacy and class. All of them resound with calls to make America great again, to reclaim a country that is on the verge of being stolen away.

BUSTED: ABC NEWS HITS TRUMP HARD WITH HUUGE TAX EVASION REVEAL (VIDEO)
ABC News recently revealed that Trump has deliberately undervalued the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York. This sprawling jackass factory consists of 147 acres that is said to be worth “more than $50 million,” according to Trump’s campaign disclosure form. And yet when it came time to value the property for tax purposes, this 50 million dollar boast was suddenly only $1.35 million. Rich guys have really, really great access to magicians operating as attorneys. Naturally, the proposed valuation has bewitched the small town of Ossining. Moreover, they say the new figure would cut Trump’s tax burden by 90 percent and dump that burden on everyone else.

You know what else they have in common?

I stuck my neck out and gave a blanket amnesty to all the people who were suspended on five hides, and when those people on your list got their second chance they all chose to double-down on their bad behavior.

And they aren't the only ones. We've got a bunch of Bernie supporters sitting on Flagged For Review status also. Of course they aren't on your list because they don't fit your narrative.

Yes, I get that the system is stacked against Hillary supporters. But that doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of toxic people on both sides of the Hillary/Bernie split.

Allow me to be perfectly clear: The current system of moderating here on DU is done. It completely failed, and I take full responsibility for that. Yes, we are still using it, but we have already signed its death warrant. We have a completely new system and we are going to insist on some standards.

The only reason we haven't unveiled the new system yet is because the primaries are the worst possible time to make a change like that -- the people who don't like the new system (and there will be plenty of them) would frame their opposition as a partisan act in support of their favored candidate, and all the rabid partisans on their side would believe it. People on both sides are so polarized and so primed to believe any story that puffs up their candidate and tears down the other that it would be impossible to make any serious change and make it stick.

Once the primaries are over, we are all on the same side again. Anyone who isn't on the same side was never supposed to be here in the first place. And anyone who persists in disrupting this site -- no matter what side they're on -- will no longer be welcome.

Never Forget: America’s Forgotten Mass Lynching: When 237 Black Sharecroppers Were Murdered In Arkansas

owards the end of 1918, attorney Ulysses S. Bratton of Little Rock, Arkansas listened to Black sharecroppers tell stories of theft, exploitation, and never ending debt. One man by the name of Carter, explained how he cultivated 90 acres of cotton and then had his landlord confiscate the crop and all of his possessions. Another Black farmer, from Ratio, Arkansas said a plantation manager would not give sharecroppers an itemized record of their crop. No one realized that within a year of meeting with Mr. Bratton, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. would take place. In a report released by the Equal Justice Initiative, white people in the Delta region of the South, started a massacre that left 237 Black people dead. Even though the one-time death toll was unusually high, it was not uncommon for whites to use racial violence to intimidate Blacks.

Mr. Bratton represented the deprived sharecroppers who became members of a new union, the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. The new union was founded by a Black Delta native named Robert Hill. With no prior organizing experience, all Robert Hill had going for him was ambition. Mr. Hill said “the union wants to know why it is that the laborers cannot control their just earnings which they work for,” as he asked Black sharecroppers to each persuade 25 new members to join a lodge.

The white elites of the region understood that the only way they could maintain their economic prosperity was to exploit Black sharecroppers and laborers. A well-to-do Northerner, E.M. “Mort” Allen, came to Arkansas and founded a new town called Elaine, which became a hub for the lucrative lumber industry. Mort Allen said the “Southern men can handle the negroes all right and peaceably,” but peaceable techniques were far from what was used to destroy the sharecroppers’ union. In an attempt to disrupt a union meeting, a white landowner was shot and killed. The sharecroppers braced for reprisals that were sure to come and formed self-defense forces. The local sheriff, Frank Kitchens, deputized a large white militia that was headquartered at the county courthouse. In the end, 237 Black people were killed because they wanted fair compensation for the crops they harvested.

Women Swept The 2015 The Nebula Awards

Earlier tonight, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America handed out the Nebula Award in Chicago, and this year women have swept one of science fiction’s biggest awards.

This year’s Nebula Award Banquet toastmaster was actor John Hodgeman, who opened the show with a fun performance of ‘Radio SFWA’, pitched his own novel idea, A Feast for Bros and lamented the lack of genre NPR shows such as Car Talk: Fury Road.

The science fiction world has had its share of drama with the Hugo Awards as various slates have worked aggressively to push against the growing numbers of women and people of color appearing on award ballots. The Nebula Awards have demonstrated, for two years in a row, that science fiction and fantasy literature remains a strong, inclusive body of literature.