If Harris wins, the Democratic base will continue to sleep. You can do anything when the Dems are in the WH. It was under Trump that protesters shut down airport terminals, but under Biden the base sleeps regarding immigration & asylum. That’s what Glenn Greenwald and I learned from the GWB to Obama transition: the Dems sleep when their team is in office. Greenwald “changed” from hero to villain without changing the least bit; the only difference was who was in office. Unlike the Dem-aligned media, he didn’t go to sleep.
You can war as much as you want. You can run a fucking star chamber. You can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody.
If Harris is the harm reduction candidate, who for?
It still doesn’t make sense to view Trump as a harm reduction option for the rest of the world. There was no credible harm reduction candidate this time around.
Trump is still the guy who reversed detente with Iran and went to the brink of war with them twice. He’s completely untrustworthy as a negotiator and doesn’t actually care about any of the underlying issues, which undercuts what should be easy wins (detente with the DPRK) and makes tougher negotiations even harder. He started his second term by saying he wants to invade Canada and Greenland. He’s fucking with the water rights treaty the U.S. has with Mexico. He’s a return to naked imperialism, not a rejection of imperialism.
His only positive move so far was forcing Israel to accept a ceasefire, which they’ve now torn up without repercussion. That’s something, but not much.
I generally agree. My possibly naive hope is that Trump is significantly weakening the US’s position as global hegemon, which will eventually benefit humanity. But his admin’s actions are chaos at best and monstrous at worse.