Just interested. Did the Baseline (Group C) this AM. Not totally thrilled with my results, but not unhappy either.

We've scoffed at the denigration of the reality based community, but Carl Rove was correct. That's not the way a huge slice of the American populace works or think anymore. They didn't think the FBI would find them because in their universe the election was stolen, there was massive fraud and once they broke into the Capitol and "Stopped the steal(TM)" the FBI would be rounding us up.

Their worldview is consistent and closed, how long you can go denying facts is a good question. The moment is pretty scary because the ones who are getting dragged in are saying "we were mislead, etc." I think the judges are correct in denying bail. It is harsh, but as long as they can "get away with it" the more their worldview is reinforced. Simultaneously, members of a pluralistic democracy look at that and say, "but we're suppressing their rights." That may be true, but their rhetoric has consistently said they'll do more than suppress our rights if allowed to.

We say this is a cult, and it's true, but when a cult has this many members and is this keen on using violence to get their own way, society has to decide if it wants to protect itself or allow the cult to replace it. Rightwing rhetoric is so happy to talk about sharia law replacing our laws, but as with many of their bugbears it's a projection of what they'd do if they could.

Where do we go from here.

I'm reminded that we need to be resilient, the Winston Churchill reference is telling in my opinion.

This is not the end, or the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.

This will be TLDNR, so just ignore me now.

We are asked to show consideration and understanding of our opponents when we win because those are our ideals. Honesty, integrity, fair play things that every liberal and Democrat will say we should be doing. We are asked to live up to our ideals.

When our opponents win they aren't asked to live up to our ideals, nor are they asked to live up to their ideals. This is because their ideals are best kept in plain brown wrappers. Not something to be proud of.

The right can be counted on to live their ideals when they win, and we've seen those ideals in action for the last 4 years. I too am offended by the blatant double standard but I think we need to accept that it is the way it is. The party of "Personal Responsibility" has never been about responsibility but punishment of the other. The party of "Christian Values" has always been the party of Ken Copeland and Jerry Falwell Jr.

It's hard to live up to your ideals after abuse, but that is when you have to struggle to do so. It's hard, but we have to see it for what it is, an acknowledgement that the GOP is at this point utterly devoid of basic human decency. If we desire a return to "normal," it will be on our shoulders because the current GOP can't, even if they wanted to.

But as you point out they can and have spoiled. I think many of them have reached the conclusion that centrist Democrats have a "like it or leave" attitude. If centrist Democrats can't find a way to work with the progressives we must face continued electoral losses.

As you point out, centrists outnumber the more left leaning side. Looking at it from the left side, it seems like the centrist Democrats enter all negotiations by leaving out all the lefts positions. That is a negotiate from the center to the right stance. I imagine it's pretty hard for a left leaning person to argue that the Democratic party has any progressive wing from that perspective.

I'm not arguing that the left doesn't need to compromise, but I am arguing that the center should look at how they act and decide if their position is "compromise" or "submit."

Glenn Greenwald is an absolutist. He isn’t wrong that our government does bad things too, but in his mind doing bad things means we’re no different than the Russians.

Being aware of the skullduggery the US has engaged in is not a reason to support attacks on the US. It is a reason to try and change the way we behave. From my observations I’d say that the GOP has never thought covert invasions, interfering with other peoples elections was wrong, and it’s not wrong to say that Democrats hands are far from clean. On the other hand if I want to change that, do I try to elect people who will listen and I might be able to influence or people who are going to double down on the bad behavior.

We’re still dealing with a party run by people who think the US should thrash some small country every now and then just to show the world we can. Perfection is the enemy of the good, but it seems willing to tolerate evil.

I’m not a skeptic, but I also wasn’t surprised that the Mueller didn’t contain an outright statement of collaboration between Trump, his campaign and the Russian government. That last phrase seems critical to me, Russian government. We talk about oligarchs, but don’t seem to understand what that means. If a small cartel of extremely wealthy people are pulling the strings of the government, would they let the government get it’s hands dirty when it found a kindred spirit running for election in a hostile country?

Donald Trump has come out as being opposed to the Foreign Corrupt Practices laws. He is a white collar criminal the Trump Tower Moscow was a kickback scheme. This is more about institutionalizing kickbacks to the oligarchs, which Trump believes himself to be.

As such I wasn’t surprised that there was nothing to convict him of collaborating with the Russian Government, he was working with the governors of the government. Legally it’s not the same thing.

Now we’ve established that he didn’t collaborate with the government, how about the Foreign Corrupt Practices. There wasn’t any word of him not being guilty of those. Should I assume that Bill Barr put out what he did because there was ample evidence of that?