The XYZelensky Affair and the Whole Impeachment Shebang

[Montmorency]

There's a lot of coordination between the Bannonites on both sides of the Atlantic, and their supporters lap up their stories whilst imagining that their Bannonite position has nothing to do with the Bannonite position on the other side of the water. Thus you will have Brexiteers affecting some kind of contempt for Trump, whilst parroting the narratives devised by Trumpites. Functionally there is no dividing Trump and Brexit; both are branches of the Anglo-American far right, directed by the same group. There is a fair bit of suspicion that Russia and Putin do the strategy, that Russia is the state benefits most, with the leaders of the US and UK also benefiting financially.

Over here, the main director is Dominic Cummings, currently chief of staff of the PM Boris Johnson. Who are the personnel on the American side?

I wish you would not use the term "Bannonite," because it imputes far too much influence to Stephen Bannon. He is presently a marginal chump with no particular influence remaining (crossing Trump even got him kicked off of Breitbart), despite the "liberal" media often still handing him pundit-circuit welfare checks to appear on TV.

Speaking of, searching his name earned me the funniest juxtaposition. What a hack:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Sadly also typical for what sort of insight and content the cable TV news prioritizes.

The important thing to note is that his ideas are merely one outgrowth of mainstream Republicanism. This reddit comment is a perfect representation of the psychology that has been cultivated and in turn feeds this movement:

I think what most liberals are missing is that this isn't about right and wrong, it's about winning and losing. I've attached my entire worldview to this man and I am going down with the ship. Not one of you is going to convince me otherwise.

It's a death cult, pure and simple, and death cults tend to collapse at the end of an apocalyptic doom spiral.

Movement conservatism has no prominent central thought leaders that I am currently aware of, if that's what you mean by your question. Seamus could tell you more. I would identify just the usual longtime constellation of Beltway pundits (e.g. Bill O'Reilly, Tucker Carlson), magazine columnists (David French, Rod Dreher), audiovisual freak shows (Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones) and religious leaders/televangelists/christofascists (Falwell & Graham kids, Pat Robertson - who recently said Trump was in danger of losing "the mandate of heaven" for pulling out under the Kurds). Plus the billionaires who fund many of them and other projects and help refine the party line to their own taste.

The point is, the Republican Party is not a Leninist organization because Bannon engineered it, Bannon is who he is because the Republican Party has been a Leninist organization since the 1960s and Trumpism dissolved the mask.

As for Russia, I wouldn't be surprised at Republicans welcoming any level of foreign interference (see: NRA), but more importantly their interests align well enough already that Russia probably wouldn't need any specific leverage; Republicans could independently arrive at a similar result, and increasingly so with the direction of recent political alignments around the globe. Unsurprisingly, a party whose reason for being is to serve domestic fascistic plutocrats does not actually have many doctrinal differences with foreign fascistic plutocrats. Sure, ultimately nationalists have to compete with other nationalists - the pie isn't big enough for every foreigner to wet their beak and sharing is for communists - but trampling civil society and the rights of the peasants, suppressing liberal dissent, that's something they can all agree on.

You might mind your stress levels go down if you stop assuming other people are more stupid and ignorant than yourself.

You posted something egregious so I had to respond forcefully. Don't post nonsense.

There is a very long history of white people claiming some distant, invisible minority heritage for what is - essentially - a fetish.

I'd have you read these on the matter.

Let's be aware that politicians often have some sort of narrative about their heritage, and may even be wrong, so the presence of the topic is not a problem in itself. Amerindian heritage in American context is a special category however, and it's a claim that millions of Americans, across the political spectrum make. I wouldn't be surprised if most whites who claim Native ancestry identified as Republicans given their geographic distribution. The "white guilt" narrative is largely a figment of perpetually-panicked conservative imaginations.

This is what Warren did - self-identified to the Texas Bar and in an academic directory as "Native American". There are a number of reasons she may have done this, including outright fetishisation, rejection of white american culture or a need to expunge her own sense of guilt as a product of colonialism.

Or, she was very close to her mother, who maintained a claim to Native American ancestry, she liked the sound of it because it made her working-class upbringing more unique, and she wanted to meet other people with similar backgrounds.

I don't think Warren did this to get a job, but I do think she did it to assert a Native American identity, to "be" a Native American lawyer and legal academic. The fact she hunkered down and protested this identity for more than half a decade and took a DNA test to prove it shows she's used it as part of her political idenity too.

She didn't shout it to the world, Republicans did. Quibble all you like about her response but recognize that basic fact that she never brings it up except in response to Republicans (and now on her various apology tours with Native groups).

Now then - so what? Gosh, she self-reported herself in a directory for private and professional networking without ever claiming contemporary affiliation! What does this have to do with pandering or a race to the bottom? If you merely don't like how she reacted to the political controversy that's fair enough, now the next step is to update yourself on her recent conduct.

I'm much more concerned with what this whole sorry episode says about Warren's judgement, because you can bet if she'd been able to convince her detractors and won the election as some point she would have said, "As the first Native American President..."

Now that​ would have been damaging to Native interests.

Baseless BS. You would have to ignore all reality to create this hypothetical. It's like saying, if Barack Obama could be appointed Democratic nominee today he would do it. Absurd counterfactual prejudice.

Our treatment of Native Americans/First Peoples/Amerinds was nowhere near as programmatic as you suggest. It was not designed, so much as happenstance, arising from a mix of racism, greed, remorse, and corruption. A truly coordinated policy of subjugation would have crushed those cultures entirely so that they could be fully absorbed or massacred en toto.

To say that there wasn't a single overarching national plan (until the end) does not mean that it wasn't systematic. I mean, from the beginning of the country's history almost all white people wanted and expected all indigenous people in the way of expansion to be removed and preferably killed. They carried this desire forward over generations and regions. It was one of the most overwhelming, unifying consensuses in American history.

I apologize, I took it too far.

I still disagree with your sentiment, for an example of what is to come, look at Oregon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_O...lican_walkouts

Refusal to comply with the institutions they were elected to, with the full force of armed militia's. Now that it has worked once, they will keep doing it.

At this moment, Trump calls impeachment illegal and treasonous, and announces his total refusal to cooperate with legally mandatory Congressional oversight. Watch for the escalation of calls to violence.