Coup-Coup Bird: James Fallows' Public Freak-Out Now At Level 8

James Fallows blogs at The Atlantic. You can find it if you like. I won't link it, because I might get spazz-cooties from him.

But here's Fallows' spazz attack.

Normally I shy away from apocalyptic readings of the American predicament... But when you look at the sequence from Bush v. Gore, through Citizens United, to what seems to be coming on the health-care front; and you combine it with ongoing efforts in Florida and elsewhere to prevent voting from presumably Democratic blocs; and add that to the simply unprecedented abuse of the filibuster in the years since the Democrats won control of the Senate and then took the White House, you have what we'd identify as a kind of long-term coup if we saw it happening anywhere else.**

** You can try this at home. Pick a country and describe a sequence in which:

First, the presidential election is decided by five people, who don't even try to explain their choice in normal legal terms.
Then the beneficiary of that decision appoints the next two members of the court, who present themselves for consideration as restrained, humble figures who care only about law rather than ideology.
Once on the bench, for life, those two actively second-guess and re-do existing law, to advance the interests of the party that appointed them.
Meanwhile their party's representatives in the Senate abuse procedural rules to an extent never previously seen to block legislation -- and appointments, especially to the courts.
And, when a major piece of legislation gets through, the party's majority on the Supreme Court prepares to negate it -- even though the details of the plan were originally Republican proposals and even though the party's presidential nominee endorsed these concepts only a few years ago.

How would you describe a democracy where power was being shifted that way?

Remember what I was saying in the comments on Friday, about the psychological shock of the coming repudiation, and how it would become a Concern (capital intended) as some people simply went crazy?

Bear in mind, this is but the pre-Spasmodic Freakout. This is just dress rehearsal for the full derangement of the left.

Also via @ben84's sidebar news-dump.

By the way, I italicized "blogs" to stress it. Fallows was some kind of author previously.

Now he's just another idiot left-wing blogger, with his daily freak-outs and misrepresentations he got from other left-wing bloggers.

Headline Credit: Nickless suggested "coup-coup." I like it.

posted by Ace at 01:53 PM

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