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Maybe that provide some hope that right-wing radicalism will just melt away without incident and democracy will triumph.

I practically never summarize people directly, but good grief, aren't you just so giddily optimistic about everything! It must be a race in your mind as to what happens first in 2024: Trumpism is vanquished for good, or the Tigers win a ring! 🤣 Which, really, that is the best way to be, isn't it? Optimistic people are happier, and even if the optimism doesn't bear out, they are in the same boat, no worse, than anyone else. There's no penalty for being optimistic and wrong versus being pessimistic and right. So go on with your bad self, O-Man! Keep that sun shining here!

lol. So, bottom line, your answer appears to be, it will never stop and it can continue forever without breaking. Just looking even cursorily at history, I don't think that's even possible, that tensions can simply continue to stretch and stretch and stretch even more, like some sort of unbreakable rubber band, forever. Something is going to happen, it's all going to break, it's going to happen unbelievably suddenly, and the likelihood is high that a lot of blood will be shed. What I don't believe we will have is an American-style geographic civil war, which is really the only context Americans have for contemplating what a domestic civil war would even look like. (The war in the 1860s wasn't even an actual civil war, in any event. It was a war of two nation states, with one fighting and failing to establish its legitimacy.) I don't even think we will have a true civil war, the kind where neighbors fight house-to-house and in pitched battle with one another, basically because one side is practically unarmed by choice, while the other side is just itching to use their weapons. Because of that, I believe what we will experience is something closer to Rwanda circa 1994.

I remember on MTS in 2016 that the default position, borne of the ennui of cynicism, was that Trump will become just another politician in Washington, because that's what Washington does to everyone, and that no one can escape that. I don't know whether that was you as well, but that was most people, even though Trump was talking in much the same vein then as he does now, so his trajectory was not all that difficult to suss out.

So where and how does the relentless drumbeat of malaise and impending doom break? Or do things just continue to get worse indefinitely, for hundreds or thousands of years or more, without ever breaking, because it's a human condition for things to eternally get progressively worse at the same unchanging rate?

You think it'll happen next year because normal politics. I think it'll take decades because normal politics itself will be upended and suspended once the radical right wing takes over. And I don't even mean Trump, necessarily: he's not the alpha and omega of the whole thing. He's more like the celebrity spokesman who makes it all look tough and cool and accessible to those culturally predisposed to MAGA. But even if Trump loses or dies, the movement won't die with him. He'll just be held up as a martyr to its cause, and in his martyred name, at some point, the radical-right-wing takeover is going to happen. And they don't even have to have a military coup or anything like that, because people will just vote them right in, because people don't know things, and they will need catharsis to actually learn lessons like this. That's in part why we will need truth and reconciliation at the end of it.

I'm glad to see I am no longer the only guy on the Alarmist Non-Sense train when it comes to Trump. Took you guys long enough to board it with me. 😉😁 Now that it's becoming clearer to more and more people what kind of culture-based authoritarian dictatorship an unhinged and unrestrained Trump presidency would actually entail—basically because they are saying so in exact words—the $64 question will be what can be done to stop it, and I don't believe wishcasting oligarchs paying Trump to simply go away is even on the table. Personally, I think this country is going to have to cycle through some historically dark times, culminating in a comprehensive truth-and-reconciliation exercise, before it gets rooted out. That's probably going to be measured in decades, and many of us wouldn't live to see it all resolve. But if you have progeny, then you have a keen interest in that outcome.

You can't tell people who can't see beyond their fingertips anything about "someday". There is only today. They are basically human goldfish.

They also believe the Republican Party is much better with the economy than the Democratic Party. Why? Believe the media they consume has told them so over and over and over.

Well, of course everything is not great, but there's definitely nothing to worry about! Has the country ever succumbed to post-constitutional authoritarian dictatorship before?

I think you might be surprised by how many people don't follow presidential electoral politics such that they honestly can't tell the difference between the two, since they perceive no effect to their own lives lived entirely within the reach of their fingertips.

Your puny facts are no match for the power of MAGA!

Regardless of Trump's state of mind while using it, the danger in the vermin comment is less about what he consciously, literally and specifically intends to do by using it, and more about what using it gives the millions of his most ardent followers permission to do.

Probably separate broadcast rights prevents it. I don't think Bally's or even MLB would countenance Dan Dickerson doing live reads for radio advertisers like Trex composite decking or Wallside Windows on a TV broadcast.

I would bet there is periodic malfeasance with politicians pressuring small local businesses for favors, payoffs, etc. here in America, but I wouldn’t bet that it is endemic to anywhere near the degree it is in many other countries. But I also wouldn’t bet on the state of affairs remaining exactly the same in future America, either. As with everything else, it depends who ends up running things.

But … but … if National Socialists aren’t socialists, how else can right wingers fairly call Democrat socialists Nazis?

Men are not angels, so government is necessary. Angels do not govern men, so external and internal controls are necessary.

I don’t know, maybe? I’m not sure Benetti got this many games off with the Sox. That said, I’d be actually upset rather than merely annoyed if someone like Greg Gania were the backup. I know people here like him, but he really is a minor league announcer. At least with Dan—who I would prefer stay on radio for 162, but whatevs—we have a seasoned big league pro as backup.

This is rich: In the spirit of the current approach among right wingers, they will announce the reform but not actually do anything about their conduct, figuring that simply announcing it will be good enough, that their MAGA supporters will parrot the line that they’ve reformed even though they haven’t, and that everyone else will get off their backs about their conduct. Let’s see how well that all works.

I'm more interested in the Rule IV draft.

I look up words, too, although I don’t do it so much to find a word I need that I don’t know, as I do to see whether the word I am thinking of using is the exact right one for the sentence at hand. I’m a stickler for rhetorical exactitude.

Yes, you most definitely will. Night, meet Day.

Someone did the New York Time crossword this weekend! 😅

I like Benetti as an announcer as much as the next guy, but I don’t love that the Tigers will be his second priority. That feels to me like he already has a foot out the door coming in, and I had the sense while he was in Big Shoulders that he wants to be 100% national. That said, Tigers could do worse than Dan Dickerson as the backup on TV. For as long as it lasts, this is a complete win for Tiger fans.

To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time for nonchalance, a time for Alarmist Non-sense …