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Mon Apr 5 06:00:01 EDT 2021 ======================================== Slept from eleven to seven. Woke briefly a couple times in the night. Mostly cloudy. Numerous rain showers in the morning. Isolated thunderstorms through the day. Scattered rain showers in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 60s. Southeast winds 5 to 15 mph. Chance of precipitation 70 percent. Work ---------------------------------------- - 6639, check on Dell order Done. - 7349, do these users still work here? Done. - 7339, ransomware defense Done. - call Heather about rent increases Done. - 7344, think about Ubiquiti mitigation, alternatives Some. - revenue management Not much. Rainy morning. Listened to some jazz. Good: - Christine Tassan - Lile Aux Lilas. - Pink Martini - Aspettami Twenty-five-minute walk at lunch. The sun came out. Leaves starting to burst from their buds. Said hello to the pretty neighbor lady. Saw a quartet of pigeons and a trio of turkey vultures. Saw and heard a scarlet tanager. Heard a woodpecker. Home ---------------------------------------- - new tags for car Done. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers > “Most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term,” Glenn Ellmers, the essay’s author, writes. “They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.” > These seditious citizens are opposed, according to Ellmers, by “the 75 million people who voted in the last election against the senile figurehead of a party that stands for mob violence, ruthless censorship, and racial grievances, not to mention bureaucratic despotism.” > If Trump voters and conservatives do not band together and fight “a sort of counter-revolution,” then “the victory of progressive tyranny will be assured. See you in the gulag.” > What exactly this counter-revolution entails is unclear, but Ellmers has some tips. “Learn some useful skills, stay healthy, and get strong,” he writes. “One of my favorite weightlifting coaches likes to say, ‘Strong people are harder to kill, and more useful generally.’” > Ellmers’s essay has been widely discussed in American media and intellectual circles, due to its bracing honesty about the modern right’s worldview and the prominence of the outlet that published it. Claremont is an influential institution of the right; one of its publications, the Claremont Review of Books, published the notorious “Flight 93” essay arguing that the 2016 election was a choice between Trump and national extinction. (“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die,” that essay declared in its opening line.) > As absurd as it may seem, Ellmers’s essay should be taken seriously because it makes the anti-democratic subtext of this kind of conservative discourse into clearly legible text. And it is a clear articulation of what the movement has been telling us through its actions, like Georgia’s new voting law: It sees democracy not as a principle to respect, but as a barrier to be overcome in pursuit of permanent power. > Inasmuch as there is a central argument in Ellmers’s piece, it is this: The label “conservative” no longer accurately captures what the American right should be about. This is because “conservatism” implies preserving or protecting something already in place, when in fact America is so hopelessly corrupted that there’s little worth saving. > “The US Constitution no longer works,” Ellmers writes. “What is actually required now is a recovery, or even a refounding, of America as it was long and originally understood but which now exists only in the hearts and minds of a minority of citizens.” > John Ganz, a perceptive critic of American conservatism, recently wrote that Ellmers’s essay should properly be termed “fascist.” Excommunicating a large percentage of the population from the body politic, describing once-idyllic society hopelessly corrupted by the forces of change, describing one’s enemies as animals or diseases, invoking the threat of physical force in a political context — these are all historically hallmarks of fascist rhetoric. > This analysis holds despite the fact that Ellmers speaks in a democratic idiom, portraying himself as a defender of the American democratic tradition against its enemies. Ganz notes that calls to restore “freedom,” “liberty,” and even “democracy” were used by fascist intellectuals and movements in interwar Germany, France, and Italy because they were culturally powerful — a way of recruiting the people to one’s way of thinking by speaking their language. Barack Obama’s 2008 victory, and the attendant talk of a coalition of minorities and young voters creating a “permanent Democratic majority,” helped spread anxieties about declining electoral power on the political right. After the 2010 midterm elections, which swept Republicans into power in statehouses across the country, they acted — drawing gerrymandered maps and passing laws, like voter ID, seemingly designed to suppress Democratic-leaning constituencies. The state-level Republican lawmakers were often quite honest about their aim of locking Democrats out of office. > “I think electing Republicans is better than electing Democrats,” former North Carolina Rep. David Lewis, who chaired the state’s recent redistricting committee, once said. “So I drew this map in a way to help foster what I think is better for the country.” > The January 6 attack on the Capitol was a pure expression of Ellmers-ism, a violent lashing out against a system that conservatives believe to be fraudulent and corrupt. The new round of voter suppression bills represents the more subtle 2010 variant of Republican anti-democratic attitudes: that the system can be rigged such that the Democratic threat is locked out of power for good. > There are at least eight proposals from Republican lawmakers in state legislatures around the country to seize partisan control over electoral administration. One of the most egregious examples, in Georgia, was passed into law last week. More broadly, there are over 250 state bills under consideration that would curtail voting rights in one way or another. > That these proposals are justified in the language of “restoring confidence” in elections and “preventing fraud” does not make them actually defensible in democratic terms — anymore than Ellmers’s thinly-veiled pining for a civil war is “democratic” because he wants to wage it in defense of a warped conception of liberty. Servings: grains 1/6, fruit 2/4, vegetables 2/4, dairy 1/2, meat 2/3, nuts 0/0.5 Brunch: banana, cucumber, egg, coffee Lunch: pineapple, avocado, hot dog Dinner:

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