Jeff Merkley of Oregon gave address to make case that president is ‘violating the law’ through authoritarianism
Oregon’s Jeff Merkley gave a marathon, nearly 23-hour speech on the Senate floor that began on Tuesday and ended late Wednesday, pressing the case that Donald Trump is acting as an authoritarian by prosecuting political enemies and deploying the military into Merkley’s home town of Portland.
The 68-year-old senator began speaking around 6.20pm on Tuesday evening and continued until just after 5pm on Wednesday. Standing continuously on the Senate floor alongside placards that read “authoritarianism is here now!” and “Trump is violating the law”, Merkley paused only to take questions from fellow Democratic senators who joined him in the chamber to make their own points about the president’s conduct.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the civil war. President Trump is shredding our constitution,” Merkley said as he began his speech.
It wasn’t even a filibuster?
He just started talking at 6pm, and kept talking for almost a day?
What was the point?
https://gov.mtopgroup.com/art1/floor-senate
There wasn’t even anything scheduled to happen today…
This performative “raising awareness” isn’t helping, especially if you schedule everything with the fascists before hand
Edit:
Can any of the trained seals who clap whenever asked at least tell me what the point of starting at 6pm and doing like 14-16 hours when no one was even there?
Without even knowing what he spoke about yet, which I don’t, I can respect the conviction of a person who uses their platform to speak when they have rare access to that platform and there’s plenty to talk about.
Plenty of us are going on marathon posting sessions on social media and it’s to a much smaller audience. I have to empathize a little bit with anybody who feels exhausted or overwhelmed by the absurdity of everything but then gets up to speak for a whole damn day on one of the largest stages in the world
Even if the room is empty the audience is global. It may be grandstanding, but that’s part of the job. Getting attention to things you care about is part of the job. People put you there to bring attention to things that they hope that you care about.
If government’s going to work at all people have to give a shit about it and whatever this dude was talking about it’s clear he gives a shit about it.
I didn’t think of that either…
People acknowledgeing how little this did, have to acknowledge they’re also not really “fighting the power” themselves.
Good point.
Some will show up and do things only because they feel the support is out there to act and be seen.
I might make different efforts were I them, but they are at least paddling in the same direction I want to go. I just don’t have the energy to resent how they choose to spend their outrage.
If your house is burning down, your kids and dog are trapped inside…
You barely make it out alive, but you know your family is in there…
Firefighters show up, a wave of relief washes over…
Then they sit down and pray to Jesus that someone comes to put out the fire.
If you got upset the people paid to put out fires aren’t using the equipment or putting any real effort into saving your family who are actively burning to death, and you yell at the firefighters:
How would you react to someone telling you the firefighters are doing all they can?
I think a better analogy is that they are paddling in the direction that we all want to go but are denying that the ship they are paddling is sinking. We need them to be directing people to life boats and fighting back against the fascist boarding our ship. But they seem to just want to paddle forward when the water is already above their chest. There is no honor in “going down with the ship” if all you did that whole time was useless. Captains “go down with the ship” to make sure they did everything in their power to save people. That is not what the Democrats are doing at all.
Dude. We’re not elected policians. You really need to have a higher standard for your representatives than people posting on Twitter.
It really was not a good point AT ALL. I swear liberals are so use to not expecting any material change from their party that all they do is hold them to the same standard as a social media poster. That’s actually pathetic.
I am…
I’m saying if those people admit the politicians aren’t doing anything productive, then it obviously means funny signs won’t do anything, even if you have a frog costume…
Someone on the Democratic side stands up and does something within their power to go against the Republican party, and you’re criticizing them for not doing it during session?
This is something. It’s not a game changer, but it’s better than nothing.
Why are you upset that this took place? It’s a positive thing. Are you upset that the no kings protest took place while there wasn’t something more significant happening at the same time as well?
Because they’re either trained to shit on democrats at every single opportunity, or they’re training others.
Edit:
Never mind, no idea why I’m still seeing these
I know that we went rounds the other day, but genuinely, I’m curious why in this case you are critical of one of the only things that I’ve seen Democrats do in 9 months that is even slightly opposed to Republicans. I definitely wish that more was done, but given the lack of control in Congress at least protesting on the floor is better than nothing.
I mentioned it previously that I do think that you often post valuable content, even when I don’t agree with the delivery. This feels like a situation where I would feel if even performative, we would agree that protesting is better than nothing.
“The record”. Posterity. It makes the entire thing part of the History of Government. Otherwise, it’s just external reports and heresay. This paves the road for official acts like secession. Think of it like HR filing a formal disciplinary action. Until they do, the paper trail isn’t there. “See? We warned you.”
As I see it. I’m no politics wonk.
The French process: go to the tennis court, and politic without the king’s permission.
The liberals are proud to watch their liberal democracy die as fascist break every form of “process” that they care for so much. Instead of realizing that the rules are no longer being followed and fighting back they would much rather go down with the ship and do useless things like this so that history can say “the were honorable”.
They care so little about the actual material outcome (because they believe it won’t actually impact them personally) that they have somehow convinced themselves that defending “the process” of a liberal democracy is better than actually trying to stop it from dying.
Your comment does a great job of explaining this. I think without you even being aware of it. You’re delusional if you think they are doing this for any future “official act”. There are no future acts. They are going down with their ship and will bend the knee to the fascist in time. Accepting the new “process” to defend. Because they have nothing else they believe in but “the process”.
Seriously, if you think the liberals in Washington are fighting back and “planning” with stuff like this - you are not paying attention. They are playing their role to make you feel as if something is being done in resistance. Wake up.
But there are official means to do that type of stuff.
This was not that…
I don’t even know if a transcript will be kept, especially since the first 12+ hours was overnight
I think this is the real explanation…
People just don’t know what can be done, so they get excited for stupid meaningless shit. And don’t demand for productive things instead.
Just clapping for bread and circus like it’s 1788
The liberals are playing their role in making people, like the comment you replied, feel like something is being done. The liberals in Washington might actually feel like they’re doing something too. But they wouldn’t be in Washington in the first place if what actually needed to be done was even an idea in their heads.
They will never say what needs to be said. They will never do what needs to be done. They are not capable of it. So, they will do useless stuff like this until they bend the knee and accept the new rule of the fascist state.