(via NBC)

Never a Better Time?

‘If changes to the social media site formerly known as Twitter have you thinking of ditching X, here’s how to completely leave the service behind….

1. Sign in to your X account and tap your profile icon.

2. In the side menu, scroll down and tap Settings and Support, then select Settings and privacy.

3. Select Your account > Deactivate your account.

4. Tap Deactivate.

5. You’ll be prompted to enter your password and tap Deactivate to confirm.

If you change your mind, you can restore your account for up to 30 days after you deactivate it. However, deactivating your account is not deleting your account. If you want to delete your account, you simply need to not access your account within the 30-day deactivation period. After the 30 days, your account will be deleted and your username will no longer be associated with your account…’ (via CNET)

‘Paradoxically, however, trump’s reckless venality is a reason for hope.

trump has the soul of a fascist but the mind of a disordered child. He will likely be surrounded by terrible but incompetent people. All of them can be beaten: in court, in Congress, in statehouses around the nation, and in the public arena. America is a federal republic, and the states—at least those in the union that will still care about democracy—have ways to protect their citizens from a rogue president. Nothing is inevitable, and democracy will not fall overnight.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not counseling complacency: trump’s reelection is a national emergency. If we have learned anything from the past several years, it’s that feel-good, performative politics can’t win elections, but if there was ever a time to exercise the American right of free assembly, it is now—not least because trump is determined to end such rights and silence his opponents. Americans must stay engaged and make their voices heard at every turn. They should find and support organizations and institutions committed to American democracy, and especially those determined to fight trump in the courts. They must encourage candidates in the coming 2026 elections who will oppose trump’s plans and challenge his legislative enablers….

The kinds of actions that will stop trump from destroying America in 2025 are the same ones that stopped many of his plans the first time around. They are not flashy, and they will require sustained attention, because the next battles for democracy will be fought by lawyers and legislators, in Washington and in every state capitol. They will be fought by citizens banding together in associations and movements to rouse others from the sleepwalk that has led America into this moment.

trump’s victory is a grim day for the United States and for democracies around the world. You have every right to be appalled, saddened, shocked, and frightened. Soon, however, you should dust yourself off, square your shoulders, and take a deep breath. Americans who care about democracy have work to do….’ (Tom Nichols via The Atlantic)

‘The American people have made a disastrous choice. And they have done so decisively, and with their eyes wide open.

donald trump will be our next president, elected with a majority of the popular vote, likely winning both more votes and more states than he did in his two previous elections. After everything—after his chaotic presidency, after January 6th, after the last year in which the mask was increasingly off, and no attempt was made to hide the extremism of the agenda or the ugliness of the appeal—the American people liked what they saw. At a minimum, they were willing to accept what they saw.

And trump was running against a competent candidate who ran a good campaign to the center and bested him in a debate, with a strong economy. Yet trump prevailed, pulling off one of the most remarkable comebacks in American political history. trump boasted last night, “We’ve achieved the most incredible political thing,” and he’s not altogether wrong.

Certainly, even before he once again assumes the reins of power, trump has cemented his status as the most consequential American politician of this century.

And when he assumes the reins of power, he’ll start off as a powerful and emboldened president. He’ll have extraordinary momentum from his victory. He’ll be able to claim a mandate for an agenda that the public has approved. He’ll have willing apparatchiks and politicians at his disposal, under the guidance of JD Vance and Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson and Stephen Miller, eager to help him advance that agenda. He’ll have a compliant Republican majority in the Senate. And it looks as if Republicans may narrowly hold the House.

It’s hard to imagine a worse outcome.

If you think, as I do, that trump’s agenda could do great damage to the country and to the world, if you think of deportations of immigrants at home and the betrayal of brave Ukrainians abroad and you shudder, if you think that turning our health policy over to Robert Kennedy Jr. will cause real harm, you’re right to feel real foreboding for the future.

And of course there is no guarantee that the American people will turn against trump and his agenda. They knew fully well who it was they were choosing this time. Their support may well be more stubborn than one would like. It certainly has been over the last four years.

So: We can lament our situation. We can analyze how we got here. We can try to learn lessons from what has happened. We have to do all these things.

But we can’t only do those things. As Churchill put it: “In Defeat: Defiance.” We’ll have to keep our nerve and our principles against all the pressure to abandon them. We’ll have to fight politically and to resist lawfully. We’ll have to do our best to limit the damage from trump. And we’ll have to lay the groundwork for future recovery.

To do all this, we’ll have to constitute a strong opposition and a loyal opposition, loyal to the Declaration and the Constitution, loyal to the past achievements and future promise of this nation, loyal to what America has been and should be.

And we’ll have to have the fortitude to say, ‘Yes, at times a majority of the American people can be wrong.’ That they were wrong on November 5, 2024. That vox populi is not vox Dei.

I’ve sometimes quoted John McCain’s wonderful comment, something he used to say with deadpan irony: It’s always darkest . . . before it turns pitch black.

But the real McCain was cheerful about life and hopeful about America.

So as I write this before dawn Wednesday morning, and as I contemplate the dark and difficult period ahead, I’ll instead invoke, as he would in this circumstance, the original sentiment that he was using as his foil. As the mid-nineteenth century Irish writer Samuel Lover remarked:

There is a beautiful saying amongst the Irish peasantry to inspire hope under adverse circumstances: “Remember,” they say, “that the darkest hour of all, is the hour before day.”

“Hope under adverse circumstances.” That’s what we need. Hope followed by thought and action, all to help bring about a new day for a great nation which has, for now, made a terrible mistake….’ (William Kristol and Andrew Egger via The Bulwark)

‘Hunter S. Thompson, writing in September 1972, a little over one month ahead of Nixon’s landslide reelection:

The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states.

Well … maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves: finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government”, is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon.

McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.

Jesus! Where will it end?

If every damn word of that doesn’t ring true to you today, you’re deaf….’ (John Gruber via Daring Fireballl)