"In this sense, modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception (ie Kamala selection, 2024 DNC Convention), of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system (Democratic Party)... The state of exception is not a special kind of law (like the law of war); rather, it is a suspension of the judicial order itself and opens up a space in which application and normativity become indistinguishable."
Daniel Greenfield, "RFK Jr. Chooses Democracy Over Democrats"
"In the name of saving democracy, a Democratic Party set itself to dismantle it.”
On Friday evening, a Kennedy joined Trump on stage in Glendale, Arizona. The first major Trump rally after the DNC convention featured RFK Jr as an answer to the Republicans who had come out for Kamala at the showcase event for her political campaign. The Kamala campaign had enlisted a former Pence aide, Stephanie Grisham, a former discredited press secretary, and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, while Trump brought out Camelot on stage. But what happened at the Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale went beyond a matchup of names.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was more than the heir to a storied last name and acronym, he was the most successful third party presidential candidate since Ross Perot took on Bush and Clinton. Earlier in the summer before the Biden coup, RFK Jr had been polling as high as 10% despite media coverage that veered between hostile contempt and determined disregard. And he had done it without Perot’s massive fortune or the media’s endless willingness to give the billionaire airtime in the eventually successful hopes of kneecapping Bush and aiding Bill Clinton.
While there were other third party candidates in the race, RFK Jr polled so well because he was seen by his supporters as representing a genuine alternative to the two-party system and whose idiosyncratic views were authentically his own in sharp contrast to candidates like Cornel West or Jill Stein who just represented even more left-wing versions of the Democratic Party ticket.
Prior to his endorsement of Trump, there had been talk of meetings between the Kennedy scion and both presidential campaigns, but in a compelling speech, RFK Jr laid out his reasons for breaking from the party so tied to his family and rejecting overtures from the Kamala campaign.
“Democracy,” RFK Jr said, had become “little more than a slogan ” for the Democratic Party. “In the name of saving democracy, a Democratic Party set itself to dismantle it,” he charged, describing constant legal battles by the DNC to keep him off and force him off state ballots.
Similar stories had been previously told by No Labels, a Democratic organization which had sought to field an alternative bipartisan ticket, and by Rep. Dean Philips: Biden’s actual primary opponent, as well as any Democrats or third party candidates who had challenged Biden.
RFK Jr then went on to describe a rigged “sham primary” for Biden followed by a “palace coup” for Kamala and the installation of a “candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate” who “has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic.”
The former candidate compared the actions of the Democrats to that of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in trying to keep him off the ballot and off the air with the media maintaining “a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me” and government agencies partnering with Big Tech firms to suppress him on social media in which a federal judge recently described as “the most egregious violation of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”
The Biden-Harris campaign and now, post-coup, the Harris-Walz campaign, has argued that it is defending democracy and that its opponents, especially Trump, are threats to democracy.
“Are you ready to vote for democracy?” Biden began his remarks at the DNC. He warned of “clear and present threats to our very democracy”, claimed that “democracy has prevailed”, “democracy has delivered” and that “we came together in 2020 to save democracy” by presumably voting for him. Now, “democracy must be preserved” by voting for Kamala.
“We saved democracy in 2020, and now we must save it again in 2024,” Biden claimed at the DNC. “The vote each of us casts this year will determine whether democracy… will prevail.”
Democracy, to Biden and many Democrats, isn’t the act of voting, but voting the right way.
In his speech however RFK Jr laid out a different vision of democracy, not as outcome, but as process. To Biden, any process, no matter how undemocratic, that ends with him or his party winning, means that democracy has prevailed. RFK Jr however argued that a party that his family had long belonged to and even defined had abandoned the process of democracy.
Due to election rigging, “relentless, systematic censorship and media control”, RJK Jr argued that he could not compete, but he made an argument for a system where candidates could compete. That’s a democratic system rather than the current Democratic Party system.
When RFK Jr walked out onto the stage at the Desert Diamond Arena in the suburbs of Phoenix to endorse Trump, the media predictably ignored the event and smeared the former candidate, but he was standing for what he believed in: the core values of democracy, not Democrats.
The two visions of democracy have long been on a collision course as they are in every leftist system. Communist dictatorships from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Democratic Kampuchea, (Pol Pot’s genocidal dictatorship), and the people’s democratic dictatorship in Communist China called themselves democratic while being ruthlessly brutal.
That is the path that RFK Jr may well fear America’s own Democrat establishment is on.
The Harris-Walz campaign, even more than the Biden-Harris campaign, showed the country what a closed system that calls itself democratic looks like, while RFK Jr showed what an open system that offers more than a one way street should be like. In a country that is increasingly centralized, where decisions are made from the top down, open systems are disappearing.
RFK Jr is not saying anything that most Democratic Party insiders don’t already know is true.
“We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process. It was bottom-up, I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say!” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a behind the scenes contender to replace Biden, joked with the Obama vets of Pod Save America, some of whom had played a role in the Biden coup. He then called Kamala’s takeover “30 minute convention.”
While Trump and RFK Jr have fundamental policy differences, each had to fight their way through a process that was anything but a “30 minute convention”. That is an open process.
By taking the road that he did, RFK Jr had made the decision to fight for what he described as the “core values” of democracy rather than democracy as “little more than a slogan.”
“I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of six in 1960,” RFK Jr began his speech ending his pursuit of the presidency. On Friday, he attended his first Republican rally.
The Democratic Party today is Democratic in Name Only. They're DiNO's!
The last time Democrats and Republicans ever got together to work for the American People. Now it's all RiNO's and DiNO's.
"The camp (Democratic Party) is the paradigm itself of a political space at the point of which, politics becomes biopolitics and homo sacer is virtually confused with the citizen."
-Giorgi Agamben
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"If the constitution of a state (or party) is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state (or party) power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called a dictatorship."- Carl Schmitt
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"The situation created in the exception (Kamala appointment) has the particular characteristic that it cannot be defined either as a situation of fact or a situation of right, but instead a paradoxical threshold of indistinction between the two. It is not a fact, since it is only created through the suspension of the rule(s)."
-Giorgio Agamben
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"Laws develop through their enforcement."
Agamben argues application is the key. Laws develop through their application and enforcement. They aren't merely categories separate from how they are applied. This is exactly why, in "State of Exception" within the chapter "Force of Law" Agamben marks out law, force of law: "It's not about the rule, it's not about the law itself, it's about a sovereign interpretation and execution the overarching force.
Who the "sovereign" making the choices in the Democratic Party? It's not the lowly voters.
21 comments:
All Democrats who support Harris are DINOs and all republicans who don't support Putin's puppet d0n-OLD are RINOs. Apparently (in the minds of rightturds) realness is conferred by standing with Putin. While standing against Putin means you are "in name only".
"When RFK Jr walked out onto the stage ... endorse Trump ... he was standing for what he believed in: the core values of democracy..."
Naah. He was standing for Putin. And he's standing against democracy. Given that republiturds are the party of voter suppression. rfkjr endorsed the candidate who tried to steal the presidency in 2020 and will try to steal it this year.
"RFK Jr however argued that a party that his family had long belonged to and even defined had abandoned the process of democracy".
With his endorsement of an insurrectionist who tried to steal the presidency, rfkjr loudly proclaimed his hatred for democracy.
The anti-racists become anti-democratic. DiNO, thy name is K-a-m-a-l-a!
Diversity is a strength!
Don't you love the idea of cutting the voters out of the presidential selection process completely? By moving the selection to the House. tRump and allies (depending on the margins) will likely try it again. I've heard several states may refuse to certify their results. republiturds are the anti-democracy party. Democrats are the pro-Democracy party. Acta non verba! By their deeds you will know them.
You're an oficialista. Selection by any "democratic" process is your mantra! Vote all you want, so long as the Democrats get to count the votes...
"You're an oficialista. Selection by any "democratic" process is your mantra! Vote all you want, so long as the Democrats get to count the votes..."
You're replying to Minus FJ? That alter ego of yours didn't comment in this thread yet.
Selection by any "democratic" process = moving the potus vote to the House.
I believe that people who believe in democracy and a fair process should count the votes. So, not cheating republiturds. Votes not cast (due to republican voter suppression) can't be counted. Ballots thrown out aren't counted either.
You must be an oficialista, given your support for these methods of getting rid of votes from people who might be inclined to vote for Democrats.
This current nationwide voter suppression effort harks back to a series of trends during the 20th century, in which the Democratic Party introduced voices of racial justice and equality into their party during the 1970s, and the Southern Democrats who upheld segregation began to turn to the Republican Party. After a past America in which both parties believed in illiberal social values and racial hierarchy, the 1970s trend shaped the stark contrasts of both parties and drove a stake into bipartisanship, because today we now have two parties that are nearly monoliths ... for the deeply opposed social values for which they stand: The Democratic Party supports equal rights, economic justice, gender equality and the breakdown of norms that harm others, while the Republican Party, whose chief demographic of White Christians is losing ground, reveres the social order that once was, or longs for the Gilded Age 2.0 [aka] Make America Great Again. link
"the Republican Party, whose chief demographic of White Christians is losing ground" -- aka -- the Beginning of the Extinction Age of the republiturd Party.
Blah, blah, blah... Southern Strategy. Blah, blah, blah...democrats AREN'T racist SoJus warriors. Blah, blah, Democrats would never do what Daley did and cheat with the vote count.
The Democratic party is all talk about making laws that mandate equality, and then selectively enforcing them to enforce the status quo inequality. The biggest racists in the world lead the Democratic Party. How do I know? Show me the cities where all the poor blacks live, and I can guarantee it's been COMPLETELY governed by Democrats for at least 5 decades.
America's election system used to be based in "trust but verify". Now it's "only racists want to verify". It's sh*t, and soon as in Venezuela, NO ONE will accept the results it produces.
What you mean is that you won't except the results unless your candidate wins.
If I see as much hanky panky as I saw in 2020... you're right.
"Hanky panky" = tRump legitimately losing.
Hanky panky = voting centers re-opening in the 3am hours to triple count the same ballot stacks.
Yeah? So who was convicted and sent to prison for this alleged crime?
Nobody? Because nothing like that happened?
EXACTLY.
Then why'd all the YouTubes disappear?
Exactly = nobody. Because it didn't happen.
The crime is on video? Sounds like a slam dunk case. Why hasn't it been prosecuted?
Hitler is proud of Dervish Sanders.
It would expose the entire CBC directed Vote Cheating network nationwide, that's why.
CBC? Congressional Black Caucus? In your White Supremacist delusions Black people cheated to remove your White Supremacist leader from power?
FYI, Mystere, Adolf Hitler was a White Supremacist. Unlike you, I'm opposed to White Supremacy.
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