Today's Recommended Reads (UPDATED)

Here are some teasers for recommended reading for today!

The Los Angeles Times tells Californians "anybody but Trump":

Democrats are still choosing between two candidates with specific, policy-heavy pitches — Sanders and his promise of sweeping, even utopian change and Hillary Clinton with her more incremental agenda of building on President Obama’s legacy. Meanwhile, millions of Republicans have fallen under the spell of a snake-oil salesman. That’s an indictment of the Republican Party, but it also is a judgment on politics and political discourse more generally.

Robert Kagan tells us "how fascism comes to America":

... In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt? 

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

Is Kagan a progressive?  Hardly.  Is he a founding member of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party?  Yes.  In fact, the op/ ed is clearly written with fellow Republicans in mind, and while he calls the party Trump's "incubator," he fails to indict the conservative movement for the Trump phenomenon.  Here's Jeet Heer's correction of Kagan's history:

... Kagan has good reason to want to gloss over the historical roots of Trumpism. Although he will vote for Hillary Clinton this year, Kagan is a neoconservative whose hawkish foreign policy ideas were immensely influential during the presidency of George W. Bush. If we wanted to boil down Trumpism to two historical precedents, they would be the Southern Strategy (which made the Republican Party amenable to Trump’s racism) and Bush’s war on terror (which primed the party to respond to fear-mongering, threat inflation, and bluster).

Both recommended reads.*

Finally, via Lawyers, Guns and Money, this potential Area 51 landing zone for Koch megabucks and #NeverTrump far right- wing purists:

Billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Koch has pledged “tens of millions of dollars” to help bankroll the campaign of Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, according to a source within Johnson’s campaign.

Koch’s money will be made available should Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, secure his second consecutive Libertarian Party presidential nomination, the source said.

A swamp of cranks, black helicopter spotters and preppers if there ever was one, the Libertarian Party has attracted the fawning attention of uber nut Glenn "Boo Hoo" Beck, which tells you all you need to know.  But, hey, take those votes away from Rump!

*UPDATE:   Then there were less temperate reactions =cough= filthy fascists =cough= to all this.

Confronting Sovereign Citizens And Right-Wing Libertarians

From the banal in Keene, New Hampshire --

The activists selected this New England-cute city of 24,000 for liberation mostly because it lies within that flinty bastion of Yankee individualism known as New Hampshire, where “Live Free or Die” is carved into the collective granite.

Back in 2003, a libertarian-leaning group called the Free State Project decided that this small state could be a liberty lover’s paradise if enough like-minded people settled here. (The movement, by the way, tends to attract white males, according to Carla Gericke, the group’s president, a white South African who has lived for many years in this country. “I’m the token African-American,” she joked.)   (Ed.:  Yuk-yuk.)  (our emphasis)

And just who are these freedumb fighters "activists" saving us from?

They are part of a broader effort by about two-dozen activists, most of them from someplace else, to unshackle Keene from the “violent monopoly” of government and its enforcers, including these parking officers who work in weather fair and foul. (our emphasis)

Gotta watch out for those violent meter maids!  How nuts do you have to be to see this as "liberty loving?"

To the  fatal in Tanana, Alaska --

A sovereign citizen shot and killed two Alaska state troopers last week during an argument over a $150 couch, authorities said. 

Nathanial Kangas is accused of killing Trooper Sgt. Patrick “Scott” Johnson and Trooper Gabriel Rich as they attempted to arrest the suspect’s father. 

A mother and daughter called Tanana village police Wednesday night because they feared 58-yer-old Arvin Kangas would break into their home and steal a sofa he had sold them.

The elder Kangas told a village public safety officer that he had no jurisdiction to arrest him, and the officer called state police for backup after he said the older man made threats against him with a shotgun.  (our emphasis)

The common thread here is that civil authority and domestic peace is increasingly being threatened, sometimes with deadly consequences, by groups of far-right extremists calling themselves "sovereign citizens" or "libertarians."  As we saw with the Cliven "Hoof" Bundy carnival, it doesn't take much for these freedumb fighters shitwits to grab their guns and claim that they're not answerable to the law.

This has been brewing for some time, but the advent of America's first African-American president led to an explosion in the growth of the sovereign citizen/ nullifier/ secessionist/ militia movement.  At some point, just as George Washington had to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, governments at all levels will have to confront these "domestic terrorists" (h/t Harry Reid).  Sooner is probably better than later.