Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
MOD OP EDIT: Please put general conversations about Trump here. Anything that is not exceptionally deserving of its own OP on this topic will be merged into this discussion. And let's keep things relatively polite. Thanks.
Comments (24161)
This fundamentally misunderstands NOS and far right-wingers in general!
And now on to total Democrat rule. Let's keep this energy going—shall we move to the Joe Xiden thread?
Yeah, no, his only value is entertainment.
I was wrong for posting that article. I heard of it from the congressional floor. The search for information is a perilous one. I apologize.
Literally the lowest possible hanging fruit. Not even hanging just sitting there rotting on the ground.
The shooting does not make sense, I have seen the video. If it was right to shoot people breaking in, then all of them should have been shot, in the interest of fairness, why shoot one person? Is he shooter of sound mind, I mean would we trust him with nuclear weapons? I think not.
I have watched the Trump speech and I do not think Trump is responsible for the acts of some of his supporters any more than Biden is responsible for the acts of any of his supporters - not sure if Antifa and BLM are his supporters. For a Philosophy forum there are some hugely great leaps of reasoning made here. "March peacefully and Cheer" equals violence.
It is also funny that such reactions to violence and desecration of the seat of government is accompanied by four years of insults and denigration of the President of the country. Biden will not sink to the level of name calling because he knows that is just as unacceptable as rioting. If you want a different view of Trump, read Victor-Davis Hansons "The Case for Trump" where he makes the case that President Carter and President Ford were really nice people but not good presidents. Calling someone who can make billions and run a huge enterprise, not to mention the country (check Trump-meter for his achievements)and idiot does not serve anyone well including yourselves.
More to the point, calling the other side traitors is not the way. They are entitled to their point of view. The Republicans should take these people to court for calling them traitors, that should not go unpunished. I thought America was about tolerating other peoples views, not matter how crazy they sound. Maybe not. Maybe that America is gone. When I was shocked to hear that America tolerated Neo-Nazis marching through the streets I was told that that was a part of their right. This is America. Maybe not.
Trump has fought the results of the election in every legal way possible. It might be good to look at the actual court ruling and the dissenting opinions to know that there were some irregularities and the judges stated it. How much we do not know. As I predicted, he finally conceded when all options were explored, peacefully. He fulfilled the wishes of many of his Republican supporters, more than 80%. Should he have fulfilled the wishes of all Americans including Democrats? Sure.
His mistakes? Not ensuring testing kits were developed quickly enough, trusting the Chinese information on the Covid-19 flu, listening to Dr. Fauchi. Killing the Iranian General. But this list is not your list.
This is my take: President Biden was voted into office as 46th President of the United States. As far as we can tell, it was a free and fair election. He deserves the respect of that office, and the election system and process needs to be respected. This is democracy in action. Accept that the other party has to win sometimes. Work with it.
President Trump was voted into office as 45th President of the United States. As far as we can tell, it was a free and fair election. He deserves the respect of that office, and the election system and process needs to be respected. This is democracy in action. Accept that the other party has to win sometimes. Work with it.
If your system keeps producing people who you think are not fit for office, look at your system.
Calling the other side traitors is not the way. They are entitled to their point of view. The Republicans who voted in the Senate and House against certifying results are constantly denigrated.
They should take their accusers people to court for calling them traitors, that should not go unpunished.
Yeah, it's totally unambiguous. It's a tragedy she was so callously manipulated to get her to this point - and that the police outside slickened the sense of invincibility by allowing her and others to get so far inside with little pushback, as though nothing bad could happen, allowing the dream-like trance of the q-anon 'storm' narrative to carry them --so that even a secret service agent (i think?) with a gun, in the capitol, pointing it at you as you jump through a barricade, into the rotunda, doesn't seem like a danger- but there's a line. There is a point at which an adult - especially an adult over 30 - has to bear responsibility for going this far. It's a mess, and its sad.
We need a freethinking system of public education, but that in turn requires that we have an enlightened discursive community to support it.
Fair enough. But remember, you fell for a Borat stunt.
Go rest your head Brett.
Yes, I mistook a video of Rudy Giuliana lying in bed to tuck his shirt into his pants for something more lewd, and you believed that an overt pro-Trump mob who overtook Congress yesterday was actually comprised of leftwing false operatives to make Trump supporters look bad.
Like you said, lowest hanging fruit.
I suppose you could always ask. But thanks for the advice.
lol.
Likewise. But thanks for sparing me the hostility.
Yeah if thinking that a guy who often hung out with infamous pedophile Jeffery Epstein was taking his pants off in front of a young woman is "low-hanging fruit" to you, I'll happily take it over believing that a covert leftwing operation disguised Antifa as rabid Trump supporters in order to overtake the capital building so as to make Trump and actual supporters look bad along with all the other absurdities that have filled the empty cup you have for a brain in the last 4 years.
I think it understands and encompasses them perfectly.
But let's not so quickly forget that Trump was legitimately elected president by hordes of people who are typically persuaded along the exact moral and ideological/memological lines that Nos usually draws from (whether you believe Nos is a shill or a troll aside, the things he says are representative of right wing rhetoric). Disregarding all of them as deplorable and idiotic trolls is about as effective as telling people to pokémon-go-to-the-polls-because-I'm-a-woman. To repeat, ignoring Nos and others like him does not work: we tried that, it failed, and the Trump presidency was the result. The stronger our emotional rejection of Trump and his supporters, the deeper they can become entrenched in resentment that enables ad-hoc rationalization of whatever.
We are now in a world so saturated with information, noise, and attention seeking outrage that it is harder than ever before to reach any kind of nuanced consensus (we still all agree about bread and games). "Democracy" is therefore a harder thing to do, and we have no choice but to try it anyway. Depending on whether the younger generations develop the capacity to filter out digital bull-shit (thanks to being born and raised in it), or whether they just get segmented and tribalized into so many piles of idiots, the future of democracy is uncertain.
:lol:
Yeah, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln — Trump. An impeached, deranged failed businessman and reality TV star who cheats on his wife with porn stars, rapes women, lies as he breathes, and has the mentality of a 3 year old.
Really went out on a high note too.
Hey NOS: enjoy 4 years of Biden. :kiss:
The people LOVED Trump because he was one of their own. "Drink Lysol". They said to themselves, "I would have said the same thing," and voted for him. Trump lies? so do I. And they voted for him. He grabs poossys? Well, I wish I could, they said, and voted for him.
It took a real and concerted effort to turn the election around. It was done with cunning, with fraud, and with brute-force cheating. But it was worth it. I am glad to see him out of the office, even in jail, if he manages to live just two months into the future. But it is sad, almost tragic, that the American democratic process needed to take a big hit for this goal to be realized.
Dude, you're dreaming. Despite a concerted effort by Pelosi et al to sabotage their own party, Trump's performance was just that bad. There's not really any good reason to believe that fraud or brute force cheating took place in the general election.
In America... facts are just a fantasy. Numbers are a mystery. Reason is a miracle. Logic is the devil himself.
Quoting Baden
Apparently on this OP we can use words as loosely as we like. The story of the fire extinguisher comes from a Twitter story, not the most reliable source for anything. Without evidence how can we say murder? Maybe it might have been but we don’t know that yet, unless there’s been an update from a reliable source. The “most likely scenario” is not how justice works, not yet anyway.
Technically, you're correct, of course, we can't say it was murder for sure until someone is convicted in a court of law. I don't see how that affects my point much. You can add the two live pipe bombs that were found at the scene if you need a bit more to drive it home.
Quoting Baden
So why say it? Why use words like “coup” or “putsch”?
Edit: so the point is what?
What? I said it wasn't a coup.
Quoting Baden
Quoting Brett
Not going to repeat myself, @Brett. If you're not reading, let's leave it there.
I don’t understand the rush to use hyperbole and the pleasure people seem to get on this forum by using it. It doesn’t make things clearer. So why?
Quoting Baden
I was’t meaning you there. It was in reference to the word “murder”. What’s the point in using that word when you agree that it’s a trial that decides that?
I don't know. Some of us have personalities which we Iike to express sometimes. It's acceptable to do that on this thread. It's OK if we don't like each other all the time, especially re politics. Let's not fret about it.
Quoting Baden
Well if we can’t do it rationally on a philosophy forum then why judge those on the street?
Quoting tim wood
There’s nothing to clarify. Anyone is entitled to their point of view, otherwise why free speech.
I'm getting tired of your selective sensitivity. It wasn't there when it was black people doing much less worse stuff than killing police officers. Don't pretend to be rational when you're stinking of bias.
Quoting tim wood
Well you’re entitled to your point of view.
Quoting Baden
Here we go again. Sensitivity about using words accurately?
Well it seems like the reported death of a police officer has been declared inaccurate. Now do you get the point.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-08/betsy-devos-resigns-citing-trump-s-rhetoric-in-capitol-riot
No loyalty among scum.
Then again, I can't imagine how much richer swamp monsters like DeVos got under these past 4 years. No matter what they do now, history will not remember them fondly.
The cop was posing.
There was no fraud and no cheating. Lord and savior Trump saying so repeatedly doesn’t make it true. Your delusions are your own.
:clap:
Quoting Wheatley
Right.
This was on StreetlghtX’s post “ Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists.”
Big difference.
You come after me every time. Is there a reason for this?
That's what they meant.
Just nice to know you’re not fooling anyone with this act, probably not even your self. Your hypocrisy and pro-Trump bias is obvious. But please carry on. Let’s make sure we get every word right while our Capitol building was just mobbed and desecrated. That’s what really matters right now.
Quoting Wheatley
Well that’s what they should have said.
Oh, I see. You disagree with me.
So sue them.
Grow up.
Good observation.
So you feel a need to keep informing me of that?
Quoting Xtrix
Right, like calling an injury a murder without evidence.
Not yet, actually.
In the next act he will f***k his most loyal supporters I guess.
Quoting Wayfarer
I guess now, with only a few days to go, the Democrats will finally change their rhetoric and actions more to the way the GOP has operated at least since Clinton. Which...actually tells a lot about the democrats.
And likely if (a big if) they get Trump on this, the likely outcome will be that Trump will throw under the bus his most staunchest supporters.
Oh, but they were antifa posing as Trump supporters....right.
Sure, Trump will be there on Newsmax and perhaps even on Fox commenting and repeating how he was swindled from an election victory (the line he already had ready for the 2016 elections), but honestly the media will get interested about Trump only if he is put on trial and faces prosecution after January 20th. Who cares what he tweets, if he gets back his twitter account?
The place where Trump actually wants to be. Or something similar:
In 2024 Trump will be even more toxic to a large segment of Americans than Hillary was. So that's the future of Trump. What can happen is that many will try to take the legacy of Trump in order to get his followers, or the remnants of his followers. In the end too many people will be tired of Trump. But he won't be discarded as Sarah Palin or the Bush clan.
Young politicians who are interested in the legacy of Trump:
And secondly, the polarization will thrive, even without Trump. Nothing will change that.
Haven't we seen how American grass root movements evolve already? First it was the Tea Party, which morphed to Trump supporters, who morphed to Q-anon supporters and into the mob that ransacked Capitol Hill. On the other side you had first the Occupy Movement, which morphed then to BLM and antifa supporters. In fact, that few people call themselves antifa and are there to fight the fascists itself shows where this all is going.
What you are looking is something like a Weimar America. It's already here, Americans are already living it. If the roaming street gangs in Weimar Germany were the Nazis and the Communists, you already have the American versions of them going around. And they will just further alienate themselves from the democratic process. Sorry to say it, Biden won't stich up this.
Purpose in life for a few, that won't "go home". The few who will dominate the media scene in an otherwise peaceful US:
Let's remember that storming of the Capitol Hill was a continuation of a tactic that we had already seen during the Covid demonstrations in Michigan. The mob of the street is now well entrenched to US politics. It works. It get's publicity. Hence, it won't go away.
Anyone remember Michigan?
Quoting NOS4A2
If you genuinely can't see the difference between a peaceful sit-down protest for immigration policy reform and a mob attacking police, smashing windows, and trying to use home-made bombs to stop the democratic process when it doesn't go their way, then you really are a poor example of a human being.
Quoting ssu
You’re probably right here. It’s possibly similar in Europe. I’m not sure about that. To combat this I think the average person has to be more proactive in politics. But they’re also locked out of that process. The battle with daily life saps them. Which works well for politicians. Obviously violence doesn’t work because it frightens people. Insecurity is a powerful deterrent to challenging the system. Who can begin this process, where does the best ground lie? But whatever, people have to get more active. But activated by what? By issues or potential leaders or their personal situation? The poor can’t fight, the middle classes feel threatened by all sides. The young could do it but they seem to be unaware of history and politics.
What do you think?
What I find truly tragic is that a nation which was one the smartest and most benevolent on Earth has been dumbed down to such a level of stupidity and hatred, where something like 40% of the people hate truth and wish their democracy away... That is truly tragic because it means thousands more deaths are in store, be it through inept COVID response, sheer idiocy and lies, or more violence. The death of that rioter symbolizes the cultural decline of a once great nation, its disunity, its lack of wit, the sheer stupidity and meaness of its political discourse. In that broader sense I agree it is tragic.
Quoting Olivier5
Is it possible that was never really true, only a belief or hope? And if it was like that, then when?
The so-called "Greatest Generation" mostly aren't alive anymore. The youngest of them would be about 100 years old now. It's their kids, the Boomers, who are the present nuisance.
Quoting Olivier5
Quoting Olivier5
Not them alone though. Ironically the USSR was part of it too. Are they part of the guys that saved the world? But let’s say you’re right. It’s a very short period over the span of American history.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Than all the other malevolent countries. True. But what about Britain, Australia, Canada? America may have had more wealth than these countries, but were they benevolent? They did demand their pound of flesh from Britain for loans that kept Britain on rations after the war.
Edit: American exceptionalism, what is it?
I was referring to this curious Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
And also this one:
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
For example, everyone has the right to join the Trump Supporters group if they want.
Same shite kind of people. Persons that due to too much or too little money in their families growing up focuses energy on other stuff than their daytime 9-5 work.
Yes of course.
There were a few great American leaders before, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, etc. JFK in my opinion was of the same great American alloy. Too bad they killed him. Then there was the civil rights folks. MLK, Malcom X, Angela Davis, etc.
Now they have Sanders, who lost brilliantly to Biden, who won over The Douche, which must count for something... Let's see what Biden can do. History is not over.
Letter to America: Don’t give up.
This is what I'm worried about, because we Europeans really ape all things that happen in the US.
Especially the local media copies very often the American discourse and puts it into the domestic setting, however different the European country actually would be from the US. Something that is trending in America will get people want to have it here too. Trumpian populism is already popular in many countries. And demonstrations in the US are extremely popular than some local petty problems: just notice how the George Floyd demonstrations and riots spread to other countries (not only the UK) is very telling. Greater cause when it's happening in the US. People will try to find the equivalent sides to portray similar US positions in their totally different European setting. Who cares for things like that the US has a totally different history from ours.
Parliaments as semi-open public places are lucrative perfect targets. Usually their security measures focus on checking the people going into the balcony (or similar place) to watch the proceedings. Yet just walking from a main door through couple of doors means that and you are likely inside the chambers of the Parliament. Parliaments usually aren't build as let's say Military Headquarters, that have been built to shut areas from outside and not be open. If demonstrators storm the Parliament, that will be an event for the history books and far more noteworthy than your typical demonstration turned a riot with looted storefronts and burned cars. Those happen ever so often in some countries.
Quoting Brett
I think many are just happy with that. Some even here think violence is justified as a tool for demonstrations and that peaceful protests don't work.
Quoting Ansiktsburk
Why do you assume that they have a daytime 9-5 work?
Have you seen the stats for unemployment these days during the pandemic?
What 'ya doin' hangin' around PF, get to work!
It never was the 'smartest and most benevolent on earth', or maybe it was but that would be truly coincidental. It is just a myth of American exceptionalism. the US is built on a form of genocide which in today's enlightened age would amount to crimes against humanity. In the 1930s' it had laws not much different from those of fascist European nations (Other Eruopean nationshad such laws as forced sterilization of minorities etc, as well). It was a leading superpower, it had a lot of money, but the smartest and most benevolent, come on. Maybe that price goes to... well.... Czechoslovakia for instance? though they never had the clout to play a meaningful role of the world stage.
As for it being 'dumbed down', yeah but so have other nations, including my own. I prefer the Rhineland model over the Anglo Saxon one, but I fear the European are not 'smarter' than Americans, even though they very much think they are.
And you?
Scandinavain and aint so sure about that.
Quoting StreetlightX
[tweet]https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1347327314363904006[/tweet]
ACAB.
I assume that the toomuch people never envisioned a 9-5 job, rather making plans on "what they want to do with their lives". The toolittle people, well, question is if they feel they CAN get a 9-5 job. Tougher to be in that position, granted. But still...
Protests of this kind did not start with the virus. And guys doing this kind of hullabaloos dont seem to care about the virus being spread. Social distancing does not seem to be the name of the game in "protests"
As the saying goes...
Yes we can too!
So I suppose you support a socialist economic model with a jobs guarantee?
Quoting Benkei
Nice for you! The "reasonable" yet devoted populist is the worst possible politician.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2020/03/20/ranked-20-happiest-countries-2020/?sh=24c1ecd97850
https://www.therichest.com/rich-countries/10-countries-with-the-happiest-children/
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/safest-countries-in-the-world.html
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/the-10-most-economically-stable-countries-ranked-by-perception?slide=5
https://worldjusticeproject.org/our-work/wjp-rule-law-index/wjp-open-government-index/global-scores-rankings
https://nomadcapitalist.com/2017/04/30/best-countries-rule-of-law/
I'm certain you and I live in some of the best countries in the world. If anyone has a right to be patriotic, it's us.
In reaction to Trump his denouncement of the violence last Wednesday. :rofl:
I am starting to unironically think that the final stage of capitalism will be a global fascism in which 99% of the population will die. It is, at least, a way to statistically achieve superabundance: just kill all the poor and undesirable folks.
I never believed in any exceptionalism and am not saying Americans are magically removed from the human race's problems or America built on some shiny hill, just that they have dug themselves pretty deep right now as compared to the past few decades. The trajectory is downward, and they have reached a new low. Including in terms of mental health.
What are they going to do now? Arrest and trial thousands including the cops and armed forces who took part in the sack of the Capitol? Biden won't do that, I think. Too cleaving. I guess the important thing right now for him and his team is to manage security during the inauguration.
Good question. What I am pretty sure about, leaning on Rawls, Nozick and Marx, that there are some kind of feeling for justice in our DNA. Probably has been a good model since huntergatherer days. A good work should be rewarded. After all, grades in school is a fairly accepted system. Feminists strive for "equal pay for equal work". So there is - after all - some kind of feeling that good work should be rewarded. You may call it Meritocracy. Growing up in striving lower middle class, I got that in my upbringing as in my genes. Having done the class journey to a semi-wealthy academical environment it is NOT so obvious. Simply said, the concept of Property, paramount to libertarians do not exactly promote meritocracy, since Property primarely is inherited. Having a semi-successful father (who made the 2nd stage of our family's class journey) I have had some short cuts from that.
But yeah, I am not all that fond of this "liberty" thing. Nozick made a big case for capitalism being "organic", but a society that is not all that all about choices could be just as flexible, I think. My dream is - everyone does what one is supposed to do rather than want to do. Guys in my newer, richer neighborhood is running around trying to get gut feelings for what they "really want to do". I had a bit of that too, and that really just confused me.
Let me give you an Utopia: Everyone is born with personality traits. Parents dont fiddle around with that just gives their kids a lot of love, w/o pushing anyone in any direction. You enter school as a tabula rasa. Teachers, rather than stuffing info into kids, monitors the kids and nudge them in directions where the kids perform well and get energy from that subject. You don't care about class, gender, skin color or whatever, you end up in classes where people share the brain. And you specializes in that.
Then, when ready you do not search for a job. Your search for a place to live. Then, the guys who during school have shown a talent to coordinate people will assign you a job that you do. That is in line with your personality and education. Some jobs, highly specialized, like medical doctors, those jobs will be for the guys that had the best personality to do that job, they will be doctors. Or other specialized professions that require one to build up competence for just that. But there is a heck of a lot of jobs that the right guy learns in no time.
And then, you get paid as you get rewarded in school or in a large organization. Someone rate what you have done and you get paid for the job done rather than the result.
I suppose this vision is far closer to Socialism than the Invisible Hand... so yeah, I suppose I do support some kind of socialism. But a daughter or son in an academic home envisioning their life´s meaning to be a SJW would not thrive in this environment. This is more a Chinese or Stalin like system.
We’re all glad you’re here to make sure the record is set straight. Just a straight-shooter seeking the truth objectively. :rofl:
What a stupid comment.
As I said earlier, Trump will f**k his lunatic supporters in the end. He naturally doesn't mean anything he says. Hopefully the idiots will get the memo, but it's unlikely.
And of course the lies keep on coming, like that he called immediately the national guard to intervene (which actually happened I guess after 1 1/2 hours by the secretary of the army...or someone like that in the administration).
So why was Capitol Hill taken over?
I am not complaining that people should go to work instead of invoking their right to protest (subject to reasonable constraints of time and place). You made that remark, so you practice what you preach. I preach something different.
Hasn't Trumpism or cult-politics proven to be a failed strategy to maintain power? The Republican Party lost the White House and the majority in both chambers of Congress in only 4 years. People like Howley and Cruz may be power-hungry but they're not cult leaders who can spin a web of fantasies and lies that can capture Trump supporter's apparent appetite for faith-based leadership.
Conspiracy theories give a sense stability and meaning in a crazy world because 'we understand what's really going on and how this is headed toward a great awakening.'
Stress is the fuel, so whether that group endures as political power waiting to be exploited, depends on the economy, the pandemic resolution, etc. If another 911 happened, that might cement it. If Trump is assassinated, that would transform it.
Without stress, it might just smolder into the dust until it's resurrected in the next crisis.
But what one is supposed to do would have to take into account what one wants to do - since you're probably less effective at doing something you don't want. Markets are a decently well working cybernetic system to get that kind of result in some circumstances. That's why market economies have historically had the edge over planned ones. Of course, that does not mean this will always be the case.
Quoting Ansiktsburk
What about the dangers of concentrated power though? Some individualism might be necessary to prevent someone capturing the system and making it work for their personal benefit.
For once it was aimed at the guilty. Seeing the picture of lawmakers cowering behind their benches and their armed guards reminded me that these are the people that send young men and women to war. (“Lawmaker” is a specious term. They do not write our laws—hell they don’t even read them—they just sign whatever lands at their desk, more evidence that this “citadel of liberty” is a citadel of incompetence and corruption). And until now, our lawmakers have been mostly insulated from the pestilence they’ve let loose upon the country.
Unfortunately, even this forum has its share of morons.
The spirit was Trumpers believing the lie that the election was stolen from them and wanting to do something about it. Some violence was preplanned, apparently, and it seems that others just went along with the herd.
Quoting NOS4A2
Surest in what sense? Violent protests are typically regarded as the expression of the desperate. I'm not sure that a handful of gullible attention seeking oddballs like horn-guy truly qualify as desperate, at least compared to BLM protesters. They were yelling things like "this is our house," so must have felt some sense of entitlement.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course, I would imagine that they'd be ridiculed as hypocrites and not accused of being insurrectionists at all.
Maybe there will be more than just Romney who would vote to convict this time.
Presumably another who will.
Trump will remain a dangerous person after 1/20; he should be put in a strait jacket and transferred from the White House to a high security psychiatric facility for treatment of extreme delusional thinking. Perhaps something along the lines of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They can take his running dog lackeys with him.
They should build a replica oval office and put him in it.
LOL.
Presumably because he genuinely, heart-of-hearts believed that this mob really would overthrow the Government and that he would be staying on as President for another term. And if he was 'confused' it was because those around him couldn't see this as an obvious fact.
As I said upthread, that Trump is delusional is obvious, but the fact that 70 million odd people buy into his delusion is another thing altogether. That's the really worrying thing.
"He exceeded even my worst notions about him. He's been an embarrassment to the country, embarrassed us around the world. He's not worthy to hold that office," Biden said.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/biden-trump-inauguration/index.html
Name - calling is not what is needed here, and is a kind of verbal violence. That is all.
Took your time.
Trump is perhaps delusional, or perhaps he is fiendishly clever. I tend to think it's the former because fiendish cleverness requires a lot of cognitive horse power, which we have not seen much evidence of in Trump. He isn't stupid (presumably) but he's no stable genius either.
Part of Donald Trumps very large problem is that he spurned proper etiquette. Other presidents may have been delusional, but they minded their 'Ps and Qs'. (Nixon was a crook, but his corrupt practices were outsourced and performed at night, the way skullduggery is supposed to be done.) They played their part properly. Trump did not -- and it would appear that he had not paid enough attention to know what "proper" was for an elected high public official. Manipulating the masses is, of course, de rigueur, and he knew how to do that but it's supposed to be subtle -- not a travesty.
His biggest delusion was his sense of entitlement to the presidency. I suppose he thought of it as a lifetime job. A lot of problems have been caused by people thinking they were in for life.
Worse than Trump alone are the groups like the Proud Boys, QAnon, and millions of demented Republicans who have a symbiotic relationship with Trump. Even if we lynched Donald tomorrow, his followers would remain at large and in a position to cause more, maybe much more, trouble.
I do not know if the tweet referred to below has been removed, but this non-incitement to violence was made in July this year (not by Trump)
https://nypost.com/2020/07/30/twitter-execs-refused-request-to-remove-ayatollah-khamenei-tweets/
Shouldn't it be the government that decides what to censor or is it up to private organizations? Then is it upto the government to decide which private organizations have a right to operate based on their censorship pattern? Quite a slippery slope here.
Life, seems like an appropriate sentence for trump.
Krakens Lin Wood and Sidney Powell gone too. And no Parler to run to. :clap: :clap: :clap:
It's a long overdue purge. Well, they destroyed themselves. Less 4D chess than Tic-Tac-Toe.
The US Constitution restricts The State (or the states) from interfering with free speech. Private organizations (like churches, corporations, universities) are not so limited. That's why speech codes are more common on private campuses than public ones, or why Congress can not make Donald Trump shut the fuck up.
There is no such thing as free speech at work. If the boss wants to forbid his employees from discussing unions at work, he can.
Quoting Bitter Crank
But without Trump in the White House as a rallying point it's going to be very hard for them to maintain any cohesion, they'll simply revert to being the rabble they are. Yes, they'll continue to cause trouble, but they will be up against a properly-constituted and professional administration, unlike the collection of sycophants and bootlickers who ran the Trump adminstration.
Smart guy. (Was).
A friend of mine told me this theory soon after Trump won. He said that Trump and his family were lifelong democrats. And so, he was planted to destroy the republican party and all it's supporters from within.
I didn't believe him of course because cmon. But who knows?
Nah. No conspiracy theory here. Things are as they appear.
Well yes, I agree with you here. I do not think Trump is delusional. With the people who came forward to say various things about election fraud forged mail in votes, and the people like Rudy Guliani who alleges more votes than voters, it is reasonable that he thinks so. The question is, if these were all lies, who misled him? How would he know if ballots were scanned multiple times? How would you know?
Is this a moot point? Will we ever know - I feel the truth will out in coming months.
Some talk of a 'K' shaped post pandemic recovery - a recovery for some and not for others. It may be time to look beyond Trump and both parties and question why things are the way they are, who really is in power and who is benefiting. History is rife with examples of the common population revolting against the elite. Even in North Korea communist party members enjoy increased privileges.
To paraphrase an old saying: we have nothing to gain but more chains. I think it is time to bow down to people in power and accept our lot with meekness and thanksgiving.
Michael Hobbes, Senior Enterprise Reporter, The Huffington Post, wrote in The Huffington Post:
“Other than Netflix, Andrew Cuomo and the virus itself, no one has benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic more than American billionaires.
https://countercurrents.org/2020/10/the-pandemic-has-benefited-billionaires/
I'd like to know your ideas on how ordinary people can get out of this mess.
So those private 'speech codes' are not subject to government regulations, is that right? If Twitter has decided to take sides, shouldn't there be an alternative for those who are banned from Twitter from expressing their views? I am not saying it is a good thing, for example China only permits media channels to operate with their approval, but I am not sure denying evil Trump supporters from expressing their views is in line with allowing free speech. Am I missing something?
Now that we've all chanted "we hate Trump!" about a billion times, it seems about time to start focusing on understanding why that happened. A few thoughts...
1) While we all seem to agree that Trump voters made an exceedingly poor choice in voting for Trump, there are ample good reasons for voters to be reaching beyond the traditional political class. The same thing is happening on the left in the popularity of Bernie Sanders.
2) Not enough focus has been directed at the media, whose business model is built upon drama. The media is not in the news business, it's in the ad business. Trump got elected by understanding this reality better than any of his competitors. So long as corporate media profits depend upon poring fuel on every fire the wackos will always have a voice.
3) It's way past time for Democrats to start looking in the mirror and asking ourselves how we lost to a cartoon character like Trump. As I see it, the relentless chanting of "we hate Trump" is we Dems trying to hide from our own failures. A lot of those "sucked into Trump's vortex of delusion" were traditionally our voters. How'd we lose them? If we don't figure that out they are likely to remain lost and will be sucked up by the next con man to come along.
In my opinion, however, the root of the issue is with how information is being passed. I notice that you have major news organizations being extremely one sided.
This should not be. News agencies must present all sides and clearly state whether a piece of information is verified or not.
Right now, it seems that even opinions or conjectures are being presented as facts and this is dangerous.
@Wayfarer Is that the old articles of impeachment or a new one? Got a link?
It just gets better and better. :party: :party:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/08/us/draft-articles-of-impeachment.html
How about more?
Michael Cohen says he's cooperating with officials probing Trump and his family
Sweet. Put the whole mafia family in jail.
And run it from jail? You do realize how insanely fucked he is, right?
Free speech is free speech, no restrictions apart from reckless endangerment (like yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater that isn't on fire). So yes, crazy Trump supporters can repeat the QAnon story about Satan-worshipping child molesters running the country. And you can call Trump supporters evil and/or insane.
Twitter doesn't have to allow QAnon posters, or vegans for that matter. They are under some obligation to play fairly, however. They can't ban blacks from Twitter, for instance.
Quoting FreeEmotion
As in "Eat shit and die"? Clearly you are not feeling well. Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.
Quoting FreeEmotion
It's not clear to me how billionaires have benefitted from Covid-19. When you have that much money, it is quite difficult to not come out ahead regardless of what is happening,
Quoting FreeEmotion
Democratic and Republican poll watchers were observing voting and ballot counting, both with vested interests in the outcome. Fraud (such as multiple re-scanning) would have been visible to the observers.
There are also statistical checks: the number of potential voters in a precinct is a known quantity. The historical average of votes is known. Voting patterns in precincts, districts, and states can and do change, but extreme changes are not common. When there is an actual landslide (such as in 1972 when McGovern (D-South Dakota) lost to Nixon by a landslide) the landslide occurs everywhere, pretty much.
There was nothing strange about the 2020 election results. There was a small shift toward the Biden/Harris ticket. That's all that it took.
Trump kept repeating that the election would be fraudulent, way before November. He was laying the groundwork for the post-election fraud claim, in the event he lost. Too bad for Trump, multiple re-counts kept coming up short. This seems to have been intolerable to him.
Excellent idea. I'm actually really hoping this happens. It's not outside the realm of possibility, although probably unlikely.
Either the GOP get completely destroyed, or they come back stronger than ever. The fate of the party literally rests on a old manbaby with a below average IQ and what he does, and even he doesn't know what he's gonna do. Heck Trump could very well just die from a heart attack while golfing and take his cult with him so these next 4 years will be interesting to see.
I predict the Democrats will take this great opportunity while their opponent is crippled to do something stupid enough to unite and energize the Republicans. Sunrise, sunset.
Certainly. That is how crazy things are now in the GOP.
Quoting praxis
Yet that's what it has come down to in the Republican party: to appease these fringe elements that have taken over the party. Anything that the majority of Republicans believe will be their line. Or they could chosen the Mitt Romney road, which they didn't. Somebody like Cruz might otherwise appear totally normal say rational things, but he will go with the crazy ideas permutating in the Trump party. Because crazy ideas are permutating in the Trump party.
I think they bet that Republicans (and Americans in general) are separated in their own echo chambers who don't remember anything that happened six months from now. They will talk the lines people in these echo chambers want to hear and then totally turn their coats when the wind changes. They want to engage the anti-establishment crowd even if the crowd isn't rational. Because what was said a week ago doesn't actually matter.
For example, just look at what Ted Cruz is tweeting now:
This from the senator that pushed for an "emergency audit" and made the following joint statement with other Republicans, despite requests from his own Senate leader Mitch McConnell that Republicans refrain from challenging the certification:
Hence those who indeed believed that voter fraud and irregularities exceeding any in our lifetimes are now terrorists. And if Trump falls from favor of the Republicans, likely Cruz will say that he fought hard to prevent the excesses of Trump. Everything is as malleable as that.
That's how it works. That's how Trump works. Because past words and past actions don't matter at all.
I think he’s proven beyond any shadow of doubt to be a liability to the Republican party, but beyond that I tend to think he’s untouchable.
Nah, I think he'd be better off at Infowars.
US Capitol rioters with zip ties
Also from the Snopes link, 'Jim Bourg, a Reuters news pictures editor who was at the Capitol that day, tweeted that he heard at least three rioters say they “hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor.”'
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-biden-cites-goebbels-and-nazi-propaganda-techniques-when-asked-about-hawley-and-cruz-1.9436593
He could've made the point without mentioning Goebbels because Hawley and Cruz are scum.
And of course for the conspiracy theorists, the reaction from the government will be the proof that "they were all along right".
I think the next phase is that we will really start to see a dose of true terrorism as the delusional fringes of the Trump crowd believe that the civil war has already started in Weimar America. Terrorists live in their hallucinations. It's only going to get worse, actually.
Wonder what the Covid-era, post Trump insurrection-era inauguration will look like. Talk about security then.
That is absurd. 80% or more were approving of him after 4 years. Does that sound like a poor choice? Not from their point of view, and your point of view is just your opinion. Check out who won most admired person of the year, yes I cannot believe it myself.
Just quibbling with this a tiny bit. In 1995 I was hanging wallpaper for a living, making just enough to pay my modest bills and that's it. By 2000 I'd created a net startup and sold it to a "big dog", and have been retired since. Nothing vaguely close to Elon Musk or Bill Gates, just rich by wallpaper hanger standards. :-) To be accurate, I then tried to repeat this success and utterly failed.
Point being, there is a lot of opportunity in America, and hard work and inspiration does sometime pay off. NPR has a show called "How I Built This" with many come from nowhere stories similar to mine, except far more successful.
The American dream is not dead. There are LOTS of people who started off as a plumber's helper and then went on to own their own plumbing company with a hundred employees.
As rich as Bill Gates? Yea, that's a fantasy 99.99% of the time.
Quoting NYT
There was the Tea Party (remember the Tea Party?), there was Trump in 2016, who at the outset was opposed by many in the Republican establishment - the party persevered. I don't see that changing now.
The Right are authoritarian by their nature. All their rhetoric notwithstanding, they have no higher principle than Power. They will support anyone who manages to seize and consolidate power - be it Trump or Putin or...
I'm guessing there's no point pointing out that a) an election not going your way is not comparable to your friends and family and neighbours being murdered by the people sworn to protect them in terms of a cause, or b) the hypocrisy you're alleging is precisely your hypocrisy, insofar as you condemned BLM protests following another swathe of lethal police brutality against black people for violating the rule of law and now proclaim the spirit of using lethal and destructive violence to halt democracy as somehow beyond judgment.
Agreed, and I think what concerns me more than Trump, who might just have been an anomalous evil blip, is the trajectory of Republican leadership, from Nixon, through Reagan, through the Bushes, to Trump. In the orange light of Trump, Dubbya seems such a decent, grounded, competent guy, buddying with Obama and Biden on pro-vaccine and anti-Trump publicity that it's easy to forget what an appalling President he was.
One can hope that the two benefits of Trump's abject Presidency were: 1) the ending of the backroom neo-con power he would never have accepted, not because it was wrong, but because it wasn't about Trump, and 2) the villification of Trump and anyone like him. But it just seems hard to swallow that after over half a century of backing corrupt, authoritarian, backward morons, the Republicans are suddenly going to present anything like a sane, competent leader anytime soon.
I agree partially with you NOS actually. There are multiple levels of analysis here. At the highest level (the level of spirit ;) ) one may say that the BLM protesters and Trumpers share similarities. It is a backlash against a system that is stacked against both groups, albeit in different ways. The working class, even the middle class have legitimate gripes against the system that governs currently. It is actually a bloody shame that even during a pandemic the amount of millionaires has risen whereas a great many people see their livelihood in danger. And well that increasing gap is partially due to the policies that come from the Capitol and the government buildings of other places. So yes, there is a legitimate outpouring of anger and maybe a revolutionary spirit, Streetlight also alluded to that in earlier posts. Indeed the situation is so polarized that angered groups turn to violence. Now violence of course has indeed always been the means of the masses to effectuate social change. Libertte, egalite and fraternite did not come about in the ballot box, indeed even universal suffrage is the result of violence.
Indeed the reporting on such events is by and large 'conservative' and anti-revolutionary, also here I agree with NOS. Especially when such revolutionary attempts have a chance at succeeding one will see that vested interests in the status quo will vilify them. I was rather amazed with CNN's reporting of the event. In every sentence the name Trump was mentioned, they also had to mention what a terrible person he was, lest we would not get the message. In my view that is not needed and only plays into the hands of those saying that 'the media' is against them.
Where I disagree is the ease with which you equivocate one protest with another. As Praxis pointed out, the Trumpers proclaimed the Capitol to be 'their house!'. Now would a BLM protester do that and what would we think when he/she would. If he would I would find that a hopeful sign because it means she still saw himself a part of mainstream society and did feel that the representatives ruled in her or his name. My hunch is she he would not. In a sentiment I would totally understand, he might well consider it a long standing symbol of oppression. The point is that where white working and middles classes have legitimate bones to pick, the black working and middle classes have those to a much greater degree. The system is much more stacked against them than against Trump's supporters.
That partially explains the different types of violence and the different targets. Looting is a sign that one wants stuff that one cannot have but others do. The stores for the rich are just as much of a legitimate target as is the Capitol because in the eyes of many protesters they are just as guilty. They benefit from the unequal opportunity structure. (That is not saying I approve of it, I am merely trying to understand) The opportunities is what the Trumpers have more than the BLM protester (of course not all, it is a generalisation as you have underestood I guess). What the Trumper wants is direct influence on government and he is actually against the new government because he fears for his advantaged position. That makes the Capitol the prime target. The Trumper is afraid of losing a certain position and entitlement. On the level of spirit it might well be a revolution, on the level of ideology where these different groups fight for the Trump storm is actually a counter revolution. Trumpers intend to stop the wheel of change, which as they rightly perceive is not running in their direction.
The difference is actually starkly seen in the difference in deployment at BLM protesters and Jan 6. The level of oppression perceived as needed to quell BLM protests is far higher than at Trump rallies apparently. Could it be that that is the case because the Trumpers are still seen as people still benefited by the system whereas the BLM protester is not? They were wrong, they underestimate the level of fever and anger that can be instilled by national populists, but essentially that is the difference. That also explains why BLM protests lingered on and these will not. Trumpers still have far more to lose.
Exactly what in the Biden administration would take away the advantaged position? Public health care? Immigration?
I'm not sure your theory of their gripes is really the case. It's more about some weird cultural identity for the Trumpers. The moderate repubs just think taxes will be kept lower (which they won't.. just be more deficits as happened under Trump). So, it's actually a lot of bullshit based on bullshit for what exactly hardcore Trump fans want.. It's a lot of conspiracy theory perhaps and fantasy but not much to do in reality with what you said.
If the Trumper movement was about anti-corruption.. Trump is more corrupt than all the insider politicians so don't know what that's about either. My theory is people like leaders that act like dicks. They want an idiot boss that just rules by force of personality and not reasoned understanding.
From Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism:
I believe that the ideas that underlie fascist actions are best deduced from those actions, for some of them remain unstated and implicit in fascist public language. Many of them belong more to the realm of visceral feelings than to the realm of reasoned propositions. In chapter 2 I called them "mobilizing passions":
Besides the identity politics I had no problem with the anti-police protests, many of which were justified, many of which were not. My problem was with the riots, especially wherever they were directed towards the innocent. The arson, looting, and violence towards fellow citizens and their property is obscene to me. 25 Americans lost their lives and there was over a $1 billion in damage, all of which the tax-payer must pay for. It is possible that many cities will not be able to recover. So much for justice.
The simplest explanation for the disparity between the police response to BLM protests and the Trump protest is that the anti-police protests have long proven to get violent and lead to riot, whereas Trump protests have not. There is nothing wrong with being prepared. The attempt by the DNC and the gutter press to mix race into it is specious at best. After the Trump protest in Washington the disparity will completely reverse.
But the most obvious disparity is in the cultural response. Trump has already been banned from social media for “incitement to violence” whereas BLM, its leaders, its countless enablers have not. In fact, they received corporate donations in the countless of millions, and support from virtue signallers world wide. (We cannot know whether companies like Apple donate because they believe in the cause or because they didn’t want their apple stores looted). The one Trumpist riot is panned as violent rebellion while a wide variety of euphemism is used to explain away the hundreds of BLM riots.
I just don’t get it.
Yeah those seem to fit.. Though Trump is more of a loud-mouth idiot boss-type. Emperor has no clothes, etc.
President/executive branch dog-whistling to known fanatic followers to march on the legislative branch..
If you can't tell the difference between that an other type of protest/riots, then you are indeed the trolliest of trollers.
You’re shown so-called dog-whistles while his talk of peaceful protest is omitted, then you carry on in faith.
When the consequences are closer to home.. he does some self-preservation, like a little bitch. Then he goes back to being a dick again.
I agree. I have no problem with protesting the systemic police brutalization and harassment of Black Americans, but once you add identity politics to the mix, count me out!
I’m not racist enough to limit justice to this or that racial group.
No, I limit injustice to individual cases of injustice, which doesn’t involve any reference to a racist hierarchy within Maw’s mental apartheid.
So.. the civil rights movement wasn't about a group of people that were being discriminated against because of a category called race? And because some (liberal) legislation was passed in the US, do you think that stopped racism? Poof! It just went away by the Civil Rights and Voting Rights act (that's assuming you at least believed that legislation was necessary)? Centuries of Jim Crow, red lining, and de facto discrimination was just wiped out?
It's easy to pretend history doesn't matter.. as if there wasn't hard won political events that led to someone like you pretending everything is just about individual acts of discrimination.
They certainly were being discriminated against, and this discrimination was compelled by racist superstition. So I see no benefit in carrying this same racist superstition into the future, especially after the hard-fought battles against it.
Phew.. at least you agree with that.
Quoting NOS4A2
This is vague troll-speak. Don't know what you are saying. You didn't address what I said... especially this part:
Quoting schopenhauer1
One difference is that BLM riots are based on actual faults in law enforcement whereas you’ve said yourself that you don’t believe that there was widespread voter fraud.
No, I do not think racism went away, or else I would not be against identity politics. Believe it or not, I think the descendants of slaves are deserving of some form of reparations. But you cannot do that with identity politics, when you believe all people who have dark skin are deserving of the same. Not only is it racist to think that way, it’s unjust.
I certainly do not rule that out and as has been pointed out above, it is a staple in fascist ideology, charismatic leadership as Weber called it. Here we saw the clash between charismatic leadership and formal rational leadership play out. I do also think though in order for people to risk being hurt there must be something at stake for them, apart from a leader that is a dick. Whether they marched against their own interests is irrelevant, they thought they marched for them.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes and it is entirely rational to do so. It is a tried and tested way of dealing with protest groups and it is called accommodation. (At least in the parlance of Dutch governance studies it is). It is rational because oppression does not work and and they demand a seat at the table, so you give them a seat at the table. The strategy is also known as repressive tolerance in Marxis palance. Corporate sponsors of course donate because they see they have sympathy of a lot of people and the protesters and their sympathisers are a significant market. The BLM riots display a wholly different pattern from the trump riot and that is because their aims are different. Trumpers do not wat a seat at the table (they have that), they want to determine the table and who is sitting on it. That is a much more ambitious and dangerous aim. I wonder why you keep missing the distinction while i has been explained in countless forms.
I don't know why one thing would exclude the other. But, oddly I can see this as being somewhat reasonable from one point of view. You realize, Trump and his ilk would be the least likely to be for anything like reparations right? If you truly believe this, then you are backing the wrong horse.. I don't even know if there is a conservative politician that would agree with reparations.. there's barely liberal politicians that would agree with that.
I guess then, what is your idea of identity politics? It is quite clear that "white identity" is something Trump supporters identify with very strongly, so even that would be against your own devotion to Trump.
Also, generally speaking, identity politics has to do with discrimination of some sort. But if you can identify specific instances of using identity politics poorly I can evaluate what you mean more clearly.
I can see that, perhaps. But there has to be a strong correlation with sympathizing with dick leadership style.. They defend the right for him to lead like a dick, even to the point of risking being hurt themselves. I wonder though as @darthbarracuda, that there are personality types that are drawn to fascist personalities. People that rule out of poisoning the well, erratic decision-making, having no filter or nuance, etc. Some people really respond to that shit. It's like if you took a book on good leadership and inversed every principle.
Yes, you do. It's been explained to you often enough.
Personally, I think that democratic rights come with obligations - first and foremost, the obligation to acknowledge facts. Of course judgement is a matter of individual choice, as a matter of definition; but 'everyone has a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts'.
What is dire about the Trump legacy, buttressed by a small number of utterly unscrupulous media outlets, is that significant numbers of people believe a lie. Because there's no doubt that the presidential election was a free and fair election, and that Biden won by around 10 million votes. As long as that remains contested, then there's no basis for reconciliation, because there's no recognition of the facts.
Not sure I have the stomach for it, but I guess I'll get the gist from others.
It's awful that the left-wing media supported the BLM protests but condemn these people for simply exercising their right to hold lynch mobs.
From the clip, she appeared not to be threatening anyone's life, so it seems unjustified, but maybe there's more to this.
Your thoughts?
I'm not sure. As a rule, I'm for minimal force. With proper training, there should be a way to prevent a threat without resorting to a lethal shot. And this was clearly that. What might mitigate the situation in this context would be:
a) An angry, potentially armed, crowd shouting that they wanted to murder the VP.
b) If there was a warning.
I mean, suppose he let the woman climb through the door and she was armed and intent on killing lawmakers? His career would be over if he wasn't already dead. There has to be a final line of defence and it would be totally justified to presume these people (as a group) to be terrorists considering what they were openly claiming they were going to do.
Again though, not enough information just from the video for me. (And I might add, I consider the woman mostly to be a victim of Trump and his cronies and it's a tragedy she was killed).
Yes, attempting to hang Mike Pence is pretty much the exact equivalent of calling for racial justice. :brow:
I think even without him thinking it through that far ahead, he's one of a surprisingly small number of police officers defending the senate from an overwhelming violent mob. I think it's a miracle that only one person got shot under those circumstances. The people condemning this would be the first to defend a police officer shooting a black man for the slightest resistance or intimidation.
Quoting Baden
With the number of racists and fascists on the site atm, I'm worried you think I was being serious.
:lol: No, man. I dig.
:rofl: and :up:
There are certainly critical distinctions between the Trumpers and the BLM protesters, but there is a similarity often overlooked, and that is that both comprise a marginalized underclass, even if the Trumpers don't realize the source of their anger and even if they are members of the majority race.
True.
Too funny not to share...
Yes. But the BLM protesters sought police reform because they were victimised by the police. The marginalised underclass that supports Trump is an economic underclass protesting on behalf of someone who wishes to cut taxation and public ("wasteful") spending. Even in that similarity they are starkly different.
I just drove across country and am in the final book and this stood out to me.
Some believe that a part of the anger that Trump utilized was them becoming underclass and seeing minorities rising in status.
The idea that the median Trump voter is a poor blue collar white worker simply doesn't line up with data. That is branding.
Trump lost support with lower income voters this time around even as he gained ground with minorities and higher income voters.
That's not to say millions of low income voters didn't vote for him, but his core base is middle to upper middle class. And they're old. He lost voters under 55 by landslide margins in both elections, so the core of his support isn't the generations (Millennials and Z), who are more downwardly mobile. Indeed, their the group cleaning up in terms of government spending, getting both UBI and universal healthcare through federal entitlements.
I wonder how many of them are people who think that they are poor blue collar workers and have no idea how rich they are. I see a lot of “rednecks” in my neighborhood with big expensive trucks and boats and RVs in the driveways of their expensive real houses, and so apparently a lot more money than “classy” well-educated “liberal elite” trailer-trash like me.
Yeah, but it always astounds me the huge proportion of people who leverage up on debt and spend everything they earn on a year and then some. There is a reason Baby Boomers had the most advantageous economy in US history (hell, maybe world history), and median savings for people 55-64 is $15,000.
I certainly know people who say they couldn't go two weeks without a check who redo their kitchen every 3 years and have a brand new truck in the driveway.
Still, you at least need a middle class income to get approved for those loans.
I really can’t believe people still use this phrase.
“Just your opinion.” Well it’s just YOUR opinion that it’s my opinion.
Really adds depth to the discussion.
Please stop that.
I wonder why.
That must be excluding illiquid assets like home equity, right?
You say you want a revolution well, you know...
My gut tells me they’re going to stick with Trump to the bitter end (that is to say, when his voters lose interest or are no longer voting for him in numbers they need). The fact that he got 75 million after 4 years is terrifying, but I look at it as them giving it all they had. Biden was also an exceedingly poor candidate, but unlike Hillary was endearing to many and, importantly, not a woman. I don’t see the Trump brand growing by the numbers they need in the future, but who knows. Look at the Latino vote in southern Florida.
In the end, his followers are so deep in the cult that there’s no reasoning with them. We just have to be thankful we have the numbers - for now.
The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is.
And just for the record, again, the Wikipedia definition of 'demagogue':
....
Quoting Xtrix
The bitter end might not be far off. Granted, it might not be possible to bring articles of impeachment to a floor vote within the ten days remaining of Trump's misrule, but if it prosecuted and he is found guilty - and a number of Republicans are signalling they will vote in favour this time around - then he will be barred for life from standing for public office. If the Republicans really want to rid themselves of him for once and for all, this would be a very efficient way to do it.
Cait Johnstone:
Glenn Greenwald:
Don't let your political convictions sway with whatever change in the wind there is.
The voice of tolerance.
Quoting Baden
Quoting hypericin
Quoting The Opposite
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Maw
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Baden
Quoting Baden
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting Brett
Quoting Maw
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting Xtrix
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Quoting StreetlightX
Articulated rather well, I think. Extra points for accuracy.
(Nyt)
This, and the underlying economic consequences of neoliberal policies, are in my view the two biggest factors explaining Trumpism.
Trump was simply able to gather it around Himself, riding the wave of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and Obama’s utter betrayal of the working class. We’re lucky if his term ends with only a few deaths and the sack of the Capitol building, in a way.
I thought maybe he was already here, under the moniker of NOS4A2. Oh, sorry about the insult NOS.
You (and NOS) expressed support for a terrorist attack on your own country's centre of government, an attack in which five people were killed. You can expect some pushback for that. I mean, what do you want, a pat on the back?
Quoting Baden
Conservatives ought to be able to make any argument they like for 'small government' or 'balancing the budget' or whatever, and the progressives theirs. But that is not what is at issue in this case.
The Trump Presidency has been built on lies from its very inception. His first gambit in politics was the birther conspiracy lie. His lies have been fact-checked and documented for four years, reaching such a pitch in the last half of 2020 that the team of fact-checkers had to be expanded to keep pace. He literally lies every time he opens his mouth, and practically every time he tweets. It is not feasible to argue that Trump doesn't lie, or that this is just misreporting by 'the mainstream media'. To say that Trump doesn't lie is itself a lie. To say that 'all politicians lie' is just whataboutism, which is one of the techniques Trump uses to get away with lying.
So does lying deserve to be protected speech? I say not.
Excerpt from the letter advising their CIO of the ban:
[quote=Amazon] AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we continue to respect Parler's right to determine for itself what content it will allow on its site. However, we cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler's account.[/quote]
Elsewhere, it was reported that Parler deleted several posts by Lin Wood, who could be described as a MAGA fanatic, saying that Pence ought to be hung for treason. However, I imagine, given the clientele that Parler atttracts, deleting such sentiments would require a large team of mole whackers.
There's nothing in principle wrong with someone hosting a private medium of discussion.
There's nothing in principle wrong with them deciding how to filter content on it.
But there's definitely something wrong with the effective public square of society being on such privately controlled media, of course.
Yet that privately controlled media became the effective public square because a bunch of people chose to use it.
Yes, because of advertising, and network effects, etc, but there's still an element of choice there. I don't use (and never have used) anything like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc, myself, and there's nothing at all that I feel like I'm missing in my life because of it, so it's clearly possible to choose not to.
There are still plenty of not-corporate-controlled platforms to communicate through. The old, decentralized internet is still there, behind all the corporate bullshit. It's just that people choose not to use it.
I don't know how to begin to convince people en masse that it would be better to use that than corporate media like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Quoting Wayfarer
Good point. Trump became a more trustworthy source of news for his base than anything else. Trump demonstrated how weak the controls are on the president but ideally, the government should be segmented enough that when one part steps out of line, the others collapse on it and bring it back. Trump's war on truth really demonstrated how a leader can use their status as leader with just media/social media. I'm not exactly sure what should be done but the "allowing him to hang himself with misinformation" approach didn't appear to be working seeing as how many people believed him over the truth.
Maybe it didn't work with Trump in terms of usurping democracy but I don't think anyone else should be allowed a second try. Demonstrably incorrect information coming from a president needs to be addressed more forcefully.
Why stupid? How can a persons Utopia be stupid?
That is also a very rude thing to post.
And vice versa. Those guys in Washington were aping the gillets jaunes.
It's indisputably true that Trump is a compulsive liar, we all seem to agree on that, so we should be able to move on from this obvious point.
What's also true is that "all politicians lie" is not that unreasonable of a claim. Not perfectly true in every instance, but true enough often enough that it can't just be swept off the table. Loss of trust in presidential claims began in the sixties during the Johnson administration, and then was further amplified by Nixon. And it didn't stop there. Reagan lied. Clinton lied. Bush Jr. lied. And, the beloved Kennedy lied too, hiding his dangerous extra-marital affairs from the public.
The appeal of Trump to Trump voters is that Trump lies more openly than the others. His lies are so blatant, so obvious, so loud and persistent, that he is perceived as an honest liar, that is, a president not trying too hard to hide his lying. Trump has just taken the American presidency to it's logical conclusion. That's politically brilliant, and accurately seen as such by his supporters.
YES, it's despicable too! It's despicable, despicable, despicable, despicable. Do we really need to fill another 500 pages with this point of agreement?? It's possible for something to be both despicable AND brilliant, right?
Trump got elected because great numbers of American voters have lost faith in traditional politicians for some pretty good reasons, a consistent pattern of lies and more sophisticated deceptions going back decades, my entire life.
Trump is not the problem. Trump is a symptom of the problem. Thus, getting rid of Trump will not solve the problem. Thus, endless discussion of Trump is not a suitable job for philosophers.
But even if we all agree that they're not, it certainly deserves to be pointed out that e.g. Twitter only started caring about the lies when it looked like it wouldn't hurt their business, and only took drastic action when they were sure it would be more damaging not to do it.
I don't buy that. Some of the mob were armed, there were vehicles found with bombs and high-powered rifles in them. There are recordings of people trying to hunt down the Vice President and Speaker of the house, presumably to assassinate them. It was a watershed event. I had thought Twitter would suspend Trump's account on Jan 21 but he forced their hand. They had no choice.
Incidentally, I think Trump is likely to be impeached AND convicted before his term ends. Why? Because the Republican Party will know that if he's convicted, he can't run again. He won't be able to breathe down their necks for the next four years, and he can't bully them via Twitter any more. Carpe diem.
I just remember from my childhood how festive and cheerful US elections were when I lived in Seattle. There wasn't the somber mood as in Europe. Now that I think has changed.
Personally, I can't see that happening before the end of his term, but it might be possible in the next Congress. Apparently (if I understand correctly) what would be needed to convict is a two thirds vote in the Senate, that is, two thirds of whoever shows up for the vote. If true, then Republican senators, cowards that they are, could support the effort to convict simply by not attending that vote. That is, they could kind of have their cake and eat it too, the most popular of all meals.
Is the following true?
1) Trump can be convicted in the next session of Congress
2) Conviction takes two thirds of whoever shows up to vote.
3) Conviction would prevent Trump from running again.
If the above is true and Trump gets convicted, we arrive at new questions. If Trump can't run again what does he do next? He's not interested in issues except as a vehicle to his own advancement. If he can't run again does he abandon politics? Does he launch something like TrumpTV purely as a revenge vehicle?
Calling Trump voters stupid is an insufficient analysis because many of them used to be Democrats. Were they stupid when they voted with us too?
While it's true that the act of voting for Trump (especially the 2nd time) was a stupid act, that doesn't automatically equal the concerns that caused a person to vote for Trump being automatically invalid.
In the recent Democratic primary Andrew Yang seemed to be the only person who actually understood the historical forces generating social instability, and the only person with a bold plan for addressing that instability. And he kinda went nowhere. None of the candidates seemed to have much of anything at all to say about nuclear weapons which, as you know, strikes this voter as being beyond bizarre. No candidate that I know of has addressed the question of how many people we want to have living in America, so why should any of them be considered credible on the subject of immigration? The entire political class has basically dodged all such issues for decades, so what is the point really of voting for them yet again??
Trump voters (and Sanders voters too) are teaching us that the American political culture (including the media) is seriously broken. We will all now say we know that already, but if we aren't reaching for some kind of radical alternative to the status quo, we don't actually get it yet.
So, it's possible for Trump voters to have both made a serious error in voting for Trump, and have insights in to the American political system which we have not yet achieved.
Now, watch how every poster will either ignore this, or claim they already know it. Watch how childlike egos will totally dominate any following discussion of these claims. That's Trump's evil genius, he sees us more clearly than we see ourselves. He knows we're addicted to melodrama and self serving delusional mental stimulation and so he feeds that reality, and we suck up the reality TV soup he is serving, just like he knew we would.
As the greatest philosophers of all time, we should be shifting our focus away from Trump and on to ourselves. We are who is supporting corporate media's drama for profits business plan. We built the polarized culture. We accepted the broken status quo for decades. All Trump did is take over the machine that we ourselves built.
And he figured out how to do that before any of his competitors. Thus, it's not all that unreasonable for Trump voters to conclude that Trump is smarter than his competitors, as that appears to be true.
If we persist in calling Trump voters stupid, if we keep feeding the polarization, all we're accomplishing is handing the broken machine over to the next clever asshole to come along. And that would make us stupid too.
My point was that Europe also influences the US. It's a two-way street. Least we forget, fascism was born in Europe for instance, and all these white supremacists are in effect euro-centric by definition.
As for the tradition of demonstrating in the streets, remember the US has had a lot of that, historically, upto the civil rights movement at least. They too had a revolution (that influenced the French one much) so the US and France have something in common in their basic political mindset.
There was actually a guy among the rioters in the Capitol waving the tricolor. He wasn't downing a yellow jacket but I bet he was close.
Check this video taken by two female journalists, also French, who were reporting on the demonstration (2:07) and then decided to follow the rioters inside the Capitol (3:15 onward). The guy and his French flag appears at 5:40.
https://www.tf1.fr/tmc/quotidien-avec-yann-barthes/videos/capitole-le-recit-minute-par-minute-de-nos-journalistes-au-coeur-de-linvasion-16460883.html
It always baffles me who the right-wing find charismatic. Hitler, Putin, Berlusconi, Trump. Or even the right of the left-wing (Blair). All these so-called "charismatic" leaders all seemed like pretty hideous characters, quite pathetic. It's not like Trump's image changed between 2016 and 2020: he seemed like a vile human being (racism, misogyny, boasting about sexually assaulting women, mocking people for their illnesses) and a total moron long before he was elected.
When I think "charismatic", I think charming, smart, strong, self-confident, maybe good-looking. Trump was self-confident beyond the pail, but utterly charmless, mentally stunted, frail, and he looked ridiculous, somewhere between an aging female Nevada motel owner and a clown.
Are they defining the word differently or are they genuinely seeing the person differently? What kind of mindset do you have to have where you see some orange old dude boasting about grabbing strange women's pussies and you think, "Wow! I will follow him to the ends of the Earth"?
Charisma is perhaps more accurately compared to the phenomena of screen presence in TV and films. It's not so much about the character being laudable as it is about their ability to hold our attention. Think of John Malkovich for example. He typically plays evil characters, but he's a very watchable actor. When he's on screen he's probably what you're looking at.
Charisma is a mysterious force in human affairs. It doesn't necessarily have a logical basis, because human beings aren't fundamentally rational.
But this is about being drawn to follow someone, right? If you saw John Malkovich (the "overrated sack of shit" -- Being John Malkovich) in Con Air, you might find his hamming entertaining and his character darkly curious, but you wouldn't think "This is the guy for us, he will lead us into a new golden age." You'd think something more like "This character is funny but I'm glad I don't know him."
Trump was certainly funny when he didn't mean to be. "What will come out of this moron's mouth next?" was essentially our "Next time on 24..." He has watercooler appeal, for sure. I just can't get my head around what sort of person -- and there are tens of millions of them, so it's my fault -- would see leadership in that. He did the opposite of charming people: he gave them every reason to be turned off, and invented a few new ones.
Quoting Hippyhead
But it has a statistical footprint. The human race is a large sample. It's not random noise: there's causality at work here.
Ok, so let's try to understand this phenomena together. I don't have the perfect answer obviously, so the following is just a place to start.
First, they see leadership in Trump because Trump actually did lead. He defeated the entire political establishment of both parties and defied media speculation which was convinced of Clinton's inevitable victory. Trump declared himself a winner, and then he proved that claim by winning, somewhat against all odds as calculated at the time.
Once elected Trump led by overturning a number of decisions and assumptions of the established political class. Instead of ignoring immigration and conceiving of that issue as being very complicated and sophisticated etc etc blah, blah, blah, he said, "Fuck that, let's build a wall!" That's not the kind of leadership you and I are shopping for, but it is leadership, a dramatic change of perspective.
He left the Iran deal, the Paris accords, the WHO. He challenged NATO to pay their own way. Same thing here. Examples of bold leadership, just not the flavor that you and I prefer.
More importantly perhaps, Trump offered his base leadership on a more personal emotional level. Educated liberals such as ourselves have been looking down our snooty noses at rural and working people for decades. We are the cool smart people, they are the clueless bumpkins etc. Trump led by raising his middle finger and jamming it in our eye, thus channeling the understandable emotions of many millions of people, who then rewarded him with their loyalty.
I think we need to separate the decision to vote for Trump (stupid) from the desire to kick over a corrupt status quo (smart). The rational move here is to dial back discussion of the stupid decision, and shift the focus to the arguably valid desire to kick over the status quo. Look for those areas where we have some level of agreement with Trump voters, and focus on that.
We all lie, I think it's impossible to avoid this unpleasant fact. But a lie is an act which can be judged in relation to consequences, and intention, just like any other act. Therefore a lie which has criminal consequences, and criminal intent, is clearly a criminal act. This is called fraud. And it's not hard to see that Trump's actions after the November elections are acts of fraud.
I'd be happy to see him slammed in to federal prison for the rest of his life. That would send a message that's worth sending. But that's not going to address the underlying issues which led to Trumps rise.
Imho, a leading cause of Trump's rise is the knowledge explosion. The accelerating rate of technological change generates considerable uncertainty which expresses itself in social disruption. Here's an example, which I got from Andrew Yang.
Driverless vehicles are coming. This development threatens to put 3.5 million truck drivers out of work. And for every one of those folks who lose their job there will be ten more who wonder if they're next. These folks will understandably be dissatisfied with the status quo, and they may become vulnerable to confident con men who promise to "make America great again".
And while we're discussing such phenomena the knowledge explosion continues to race forward, faster and faster. It can reasonably be argued that over the long run the knowledge explosion is worth it, but not if in the short run social and political instability crashes the entire system.
Just look at last election. Best I could tell, Andrew Yang was the only candidate on any side who spoke to these underlying forces in an intelligent manner. But we weren't ready to hear, so he was discarded.
I think that's presupposing the answer to the question. Did he do that or did they? Almost everything he did seemed to highlight him as a disastrous candidate based on prior experience. Did he actively prove them wrong, like find some kind of cheat codes that cut through the crap and got to the heart of the matter, or did his supporters do that? I think the latter. The candidate is obviously important to the election result, but that result is realised through votes. They must have loved him before they voted for him.
Quoting Hippyhead
He promised the wall as part of his campaign, so his supporters either voted for him in part because of that or despite it. I get that a lot of people in the confederate states hate Mexicans, hate non-whites in general, so I understand that there's an appeal to even a pipe dream of that kind of determination and vision. But a) even here he made it seem unworkable by claiming Mexico would be made to pay for it (how did they think that would work?), and b) the southern states that would love that idea would mostly have voted Republican anyway. Does someone in Wyoming or Michigan or Wisconsin want a wall between the USA and Mexico? Why?
Quoting Hippyhead
I guess another one here is Obamacare, which Republican voters hated anyway because it was Obama and it was a bit too socialist for them. The same people would have opposed the Paris accords. I'm less certain about the Iran deal, the WHO, NATO, and the free press. I didn't see any pre-existing overwhelming opposition to these before Trump took them on. Rather he had an approach of demonising something, promising to do something about it, then doing it. But why be sympathetic to that and not, say, someone saying "We need universal health care, it's wrong for Americans to be left to die just because they're poor, I'm going to do something about that, there I did something?"
Let's narrow it down, a toy model of Trump (free with every box of Cheerios): some ridiculous-looking, illiterate old guy says, "I like grabbing women's pussies. And the Iran deal was bad, I'm going to pull out of that if I'm President." What about this would make someone go, "Yeah, fuck the Iran deal, we need this guy to sort it out"? A pre-existing prejudice against the Iran deal, sure. But there didn't seem much of one.
If I was to hypothesise why it was so easy to convince people that the Iran deal was bad, and therefore so easy to then gain support by promising to pull out, it's that the Iran deal was brokered by Obama, and therefore bad by proxy. I really don't think your average MAGA-hatted dunderhead really thinks Iran should be left to develop their own enrichment facilities, not just because it's obviously a bad idea, but because that's a tad abstract and overseas for them.
Quoting Hippyhead
I have seen no evidence of this. In fact, he's notorious for putting his foot in his mouth about things like "suburban wives".
His term shouldn't start off dominated by Trump. The guy is off social media and most media outlets won't let him on. Let him fade away. He's an obese 74 year old so its entirety possible nature takes away the 2020 threat, and in any case, it seems not improbable he might be in state prison or have fled the country by then.
That's the political calculus.
The right thing to do? Is dealing with all the underlying shit that lead to Trump and make him irrelevant. That won't happen in the US though.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In comparison to what? More decades of the same old political status quo which has failed so many people?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Yes, because Trump promised an alternative to the status quo, which he then delivered on. This can be compared to the political class who promise all kinds of things, and then shift focus once elected. Remember George Bush senior? "Read my lips, NO NEW TAXES!" Whereupon he proceeded to support new taxes.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Please observe the assumption that a desire for defendable borders to one's country is a function of racism. People in the confederate states have been the target of such insults for decades, so they hired a professional asshole to respond in kind.
We agree that a vote for Trump was not the right solution, but the desire for real borders to one's country is entirely reasonable, and the status quo political class has consistently failed to address that reasonable concern in an effective manner. Given that the Bushes and Clintons have all failed to address this reasonable concern, who is it that you expect Trump voters to choose as their candidate?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
All the Iran deal did was kick the can down the road. The Iran deal served to hand Obama's problem off to some future President.
I actually think Trump handled Iran pretty well. Note for example his success at building an alliance between some Arab states and Israel. Note how he surgically removed Soleimani, and then immediately sought to defuse the situation. He was tough, hitting a very specific and appropriate target, without going over board. Not bad, imho.
Because Trump is a self centered asshole, he understands the other assholes around the world. As example, he knows the Iranian regime cares only about their own personal situation, so he takes out one of their buddies to demonstrate, this could happen to YOU too. But he didn't carpet bomb Tehran, or any other such nonsense.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Have you heard of the term "cultural war"? It's been going on since the 1960s. Trump picked a side of that war to be on, and then articulated that side's emotions more effectively than any other speaker in my life time.
A question you might consider could be...
Is your goal to understand the Trump phenomena, or just be against it? My argument is that to the degree we're focused on being against it, we're not going to be able to really understand it. Understanding is going to require looking at this through the eyes of Trump voters to the degree that's humanly possible.
I was against it for the reasons you cite, until I realized it might prevent Trump from running again. Removing that threat once and for all seems worth a shot. But yea, do it as quickly as possible and then move on.
Nor on this forum.
I thought this too, until my wife informed me that what is required is a two thirds of vote of whatever senators show up for the vote. If true, then Republicans could get rid of Trump simply by not showing up for the vote. No finger prints on the murder weapon, so to speak.
I don't think it's a terrible idea, but it does seem kind of pointless. Just wait a couple of weeks and arrest the tyrant.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There is good reason to suspect he is a criminal, and he was President. We should not let him fade away. He should be investigated by the FBI and, if a case is surmountable, he should be brought to trial, extradited if necessary and possible, voluntarily exiled if necessary and not possible.
Ordinarily there would be justified trepidation about pursuing a former or outgoing President for his crimes in terms of setting a precedent. Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, Trump has already set that precedent by attempting to have his opposition arrested in both in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Until the Republicans get their house in order, there is no reason to believe that the next Republican candidate will have more integrity. It would be extremely dangerous to have a situation in which one party incrementally criminalises the other and the other turns a blind eye to the crimes of the first. The best way of ending the trend of trying to outlaw political opposition is to have an actual strong case against the party who are setting the precedent, i.e. make them afraid of their own principles. For that reason, the Biden administration should offer it's full support to the idea that any criminal activity in office, from either party, will be met with consequences. That way the Republicans will be forced to choose between crime and retribution.
It won't remove him. Only one GOP senator has said they would vote to impeach. 7 in total signalled they might flip. They need 17. A large proportion of Republican law makers voted to overturn the election and make Trump President from 2021-2025 after the shitty crowd sourced coup attempt. It has absolutely zero chance.
If anything, it will vindicate him by letting him "win" a trial over his involvement in the attempt. Better to hit him with criminal charges later.
If making a mistake automatically qualifies one as stupid, then we all are stupid.
If successful, conviction would remove him from any future run for high office.
I agree that removing him in the next 10 days is very unlikely.
Ok then, you are smart, smart, smart and those people over there are stupid, stupid, stupid. Given that every other post on every philosophy forum is basically making this same point, the pattern seems a bit tiresome.
I've addressed this already in other posts above, which you are free to read should it interest you to do so.
He’s simply a conman who tells them what they want to hear and in a way that they enjoy hearing it. Not just anyone can do that. Have you ever watched him speak at one of his rallies? It’s just raw divisive nonsense that only a completely unprincipled narcissist could spew.
There's no obvious route from that to racism, misogyny, ablism, ineloquence, stupidity, or the demonisation of the free press which his supporters would ordinarily declare a violation of first amendment rights.
Quoting Hippyhead
See my earlier question:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Seeking to change things is not something Trump has a patent on.
Quoting Hippyhead
Trump demonised mask-wearers, raising an anti-masker movement in the US, then started wearing a mask. He is not immune from U-turns either. And how's that wall going?
Quoting Hippyhead
No, that's not what I said. Immigration policy is separable from racism. I have no beef with people who prefer a stricter immigration policy than I do because there's no authoritative right answer to that. I am a multiculturalist because I enjoy being surrounded by diversity: my parents do not and so are not, but even I am okay with tighter immigration in the UK because of the housing crisis.
Rather, southern states are hotbeds of racism, especially against blacks and hispanics, and building a wall appeals to that, especially when the cited reasons for that wall include "[Mexicans] are rapists". Don't fall for the right-wing fallacy of pretending one thing is equivalent to another just because there's an overlap.
Quoting Hippyhead
Not taking the bait, that's not the point. The Iran deal became a hot issue because Trump made it one. Not that it already was and Trump dealt with it. He successfully manufactured the problems he would solve. That cannot be used as evidence for his supposed charisma.
Quoting Hippyhead
It's not my goal to be against it. I am against it. My goal is to figure out how someone boasting of sexually assaulting women is seen as charismatic, especially by women. That's a reduction of what I can't get my head around.
I get that, but why do they want to hear *that*? And, as I said to Hippyhead, it seems more like whatever he says becomes what they want to hear.
The downside is that it kind of confirms the fears that Trump and his media lackeys have been stoking for months, and just when the Democrats are setting up shop. It confirms their fear of authoritarianism.
It may help for you to find further clarity on whether your goal here is to understand, or reject.
Everyone is deep, deep, deep in to rejecting right now, for very understandable reasons. Given that this is already happening about a billion places in every form of media, it might be more interesting to shift the focus here to trying to understand.
Or not. To each their own is agreeable here.
Better questions will be rewarded with better answers.
Let me rephrase, as I'm not expressing myself well. I know Trump thought his supporters to be fools. He said as much when he said he could shoot a randomer in the street and they would excuse it. I understand his awfulness; I don't understand why, hearing him say that, they agreed.
This seems rather vital to the fascist mindset, but it's difficult to empathise with someone who would say, "Yeah, if he shot someone at random I'd support that". It's an extremely common mindset so I would like to understand it, however evil it seems to me.
Best explanation I have heard is the same reason why people watch the Kardashians or Trump himself in reality TV.
Trump has high status by the standards of the time. He is rich, he is famous and he has power - mostly the power to command media attention and make the left wing angry.
At the same time, his character is perhaps one of the least redeemable imaginable.
This juxtaposition of having higher status than almost every possible voter, while being a worse person than almost every voter creates a pull. He thereby gives voters the feeling that all the things they feel bad about and more importantly that they are told they should feel bad about, aren't.
One of the well known cognitive biases humans have is the halo effect. We equate high status with authority, including moral authority. So Trump is the equivalent of someone selling religious indulgences. Voting for him is like buying forgiveness for all those sins like racism, or homophobia, or nationalism.
Books that helped me understand the Trumpers at the beginning of his administration were works like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strangers_in_Their_Own_Land
The best I can do for now is to try to draw a line between 1) the decision to vote for a particular candidate, and 2) the concerns which lead us to consider radical alternatives to the status quo.
Considering radical alternatives may be rational if the status quo is sick enough. But choosing a particular radical alternative may indeed be irrational.
What I'm floating for consideration is a notion that while Trump voters may be stupid in their choice of a particular candidate, their grasp of how sick the American political system is may exceed our own. It may not be as simple as they are stupid and we are sensible. We can at least explore a theory that the system is sick enough that a decision to roll the dice was not entirely without merit.
In 2016 and 2020 voters faced a choice between very traditional candidates and a radical departure from the norm. Once the primaries were over there was no middle way choice. If one feels the system is very sick, voting for a radical departure may contain at least some element of rationality.
Imho, the phenomena is not limited to Republicans, as Bernie Sanders is a pretty radical departure from the norm too. One doesn't have to be a confederate states MAGA hat racist to come to the conclusion radical alternatives are now necessary. One can come to that conclusion as a liberal too.
One problem I see is that it's not going to be possible for Bernie voters to win over Trump voters to more sensible radical solutions so long as we are focused on yelling about how stupid Trump voters are. If we're serious, we'll stop doing that, and look for common ground. If we're not serious, then we are stupid too, and that will be our common ground.
I am a greedy, lazy, dishonest miserable, angry, self-centred, racist, sexist loser. Trump represents me; he tells me he is like me, and is on my side, he makes like we are the virtuous people and anyone who supports minorities and women and children is a whining communist who wants to stop us being good old American assholes.
During that time Biden threatened Facebook with repealing section 230 on the basis that they are "propagating falsehoods they know to be false", much of which turned out to reflect badly him. So it's no wonder that, after all their censorship, Facebook insiders, lobbyists, and former executives began appearing in the Biden transition team. The rest of Big Tech, including some of Washington's biggest lobbyists, immediately cued in. I guess we now know that any bipartisan efforts to break up Big Tech are DOA, anyway. Who would evoke the Sherman act against their own monopoly?
That's just the digital coup, but it will dovetail into the real one, which is the Democrat's new pressing efforts to erase Trump's presidency and to bar outright his political resurgence. I assume we'll observe all feats of rhetorical magic as they elevate an arbitrary violation of a Twitter policy to the level of high crime and misdemeanor.
There you have it, all the Trumpian media lackeys are saying it.
All the anti-Trump lackeys are cheering it on.
There's a LOT of us. I mean them. This explanation -- and I'm not dismissing it -- gives weight to a great gulf between two very different kinds of people. It neatly legitimises the kind of visceral reaction someone like me has toward someone like NOS4A2, although just because it's conveniently neat, doesn't mean it's incorrect. But there aren't really two kinds of people. Ultimately, people like myself and counterpunch have more in common than we have in difference: straight white male Englishmen born in the 20th century. And yet I cannot empathise with him in the way that, say, I could empathise with a drug dealer or even a paedophile.
Quoting praxis
Thanks, I'll look into that.
Maybe Trump is a symptom of chemical poisoning caused by pollution.
Quoting Hippyhead
Right, and that supports my feeling that this is a dead end. I like Bernie Sanders a lot. As a Brit, voting for him is not an issue for me, but pretending I'm an American citizen for a moment, if he went into on television saying that Mexicans were rapists or there was a leak of him treating women purely as sex objects or he boasted he could shoot someone and get away as a positive thing, it wouldn't matter what his policies were, I'd never endorse a person that foul. Quite the opposite, I would vocally oppose him.
For right-wingers, this sort of thing seems to be a total non-issue. Trump is right: he could shoot a soccer mom and they'd just say she was an Antifa terrorist. That's what I don't get. Trump is not secretly vile; he is proudly vile and they love him for it.
This is interesting, and quite compelling.
Quoting Echarmion
Yes, it seems difficult to avoid this point, also made by unenlightened, that ultimately his racism is attractive because they are racists, his misogyny attractive because they are misogynists, his irresponsibility attractive because they are irresponsible. And after decades of being made to feel bad about this, along comes this person who exemplifies and therefore exonerates them.
I said to unenlightened that this seems all too convenient for left-wingers like myself, because we can legitimately say that Trump's fanbase is a bunch of backward, evil tosspots who are therefore attracted to a backward, evil tosspot who says they're backwardness and evil is actually great. It's good versus evil with no nuance. Which doesn't mean it's not true, but...
No, there aren't. But there are two directions one can be going as a person - upwards or downwards. Everyone is swimming or sinking. And to anyone who is sinking, it is great to hear that that way lies salvation. I think that is always the appeal of the demagogue, to the basest instincts, flattering the weak that they are strong rather than challenging them to become stronger, and so on.
Of course it’s their right. That doesn’t mean it is right. In fact it’s wrong. Yes, I have massive complaints about this and most censorship.
I think it's not just that. It's also that, in our world and perhaps especially in America, the standards projected by media (and politicians - often falsely) are often far removed from the standards you can reasonably expect someone to uphold. You get constantly bombarded by incredibly beautiful people who appear to lead incredibly fulfilling lives all while being woke on race, helping poor children in Africa and only eating organic, ethically produced food.
If you're scraping along on the edge of poverty in some area culturally very removed from any of this, it doesn't take a particularily viscious person to develop a whole lot of resentment.
People are being censored by giant monopolies for specious reasons, and oddly enough, some of these monopolies have former executives and lobbyists within the opposing party. Of course people can go elsewhere, but “elsewhere” is becoming increasingly narrow. Parler, a competitor, was denied services for the same specious reasons.
I know you would. You’re a censor. And yes, you can censor me in a variety of ways.
These are tech companies, not publishers, Tim. Your question is a stupid one.
Perhaps start from jokes done with bad taste?
I was trying to think of left-wing anti-Trump lackeys (meaning Biden lackeys?) that were comparable to Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Judge Jeanine, Shapiro, Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, etc. and came up with a video from The Young Turks.
They do indeed celebrate it and are unconcerned about a slippery slope.
Anti-Trump lackey’s would not be limited to the left-wing. There are plenty on the right as well. Odd bedfellows. But thanks for the video.
Good example. I remember Dave Rubin was part of the TYT team and then left them. Of course now Rubin went all in with Trump and sided with the election fraud argument, which just tells how difficult it is for these political commentators not to slide down the slippery slope themselves.
The worst of course are the conspiracy-buffs like Alex Jones. They don't believe in any way there being impartial journalism and they themselves push the most classical propaganda ever once they side with something.
I think the best way is to simply listen to them as you listen to RT or other news media. They are journalists, and when covering some third nation / third party stuff they do their job applying good journalism. Yet when the issue is Putin or Russia or things on Putin's agenda, they won't utter any criticism and will very smartly promote the agenda. Similarly Al Jazeera English is a great news channel from the Middle East, if you just remember that any story about Qatar or that has a Qatari agenda won't be impartial.
Who are they the lackey’s of?
(y)
I guess there are different ways to protest...
• Baton Rouge killing: Black Lives Matter protest photo hailed as 'legendary' (Jul 2016)
• Protests in Minneapolis and across the US following the death of George Floyd (May 2020)
• 'I am notoriously naked': Portland protester dubbed 'Naked Athena' is revealed as a sex worker in her 30s who says her face-off with police was unplanned (Jul 2020) :D
• The Story Behind Banksy (Feb 2013)
• Flower Power (photograph) (Oct 1967)
As far as I can tell, the 1960s movement did have impact throughout the West, for better or worse.
This is different:
• Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Feb 2018)
• Some of the Most Visible Christians in America Are Failing the Coronavirus Test (Apr 2020)
With a large growth in readily available (dis-mis-mal-)information, demagoguery, and confirmation bias, the stage is set.
I (personally) tend to run with free expression - combat crap with more free speech.
The dark side thereof is now on display.
By the way, has Pompeo made any statements or something? (haven't seen anything myself)
It's odd, though, isn't it that they are inspired by a man born into extreme wealth who feels like he alone should get what he wants at the expense of others, a man with the power to make his immediate world exactly as he likes it by firing anyone who brings him facts that differ from that projected world. If people were fed up with feeling poor and powerless, how does Trump of all people become their figurehead? Meanwhile there are people out there who have spent their lives campaigning to reduce the very gap you speak of, but these voters wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.
I guess the thing is that Trump voters aren't after betterment of the lives of the poor because that would include poor black people, poor hispanic people, poor women, poor gay people, poor Muslims, poor atheists... The Capitol coup was incredibly WHITE considering it wasn't a race issue. I wonder if it's not just that poor people have some Nietzchean resentment toward the projected ideal, but these white people in particular believe that they are owed it, and decades of attempted social reform followed by attempted regression have left them feeling they've been owed it for a very long time, entire lifetimes of generations passing on the IOU. Meanwhile their out-groups have seemed to receive increases: civil rights, feminism, gay rights, trans rights. These people are trying to get to where white men are at but white men see it as a concession: we are losing and those are gaining.
Or something. I don't know, I'm just guessing. But it's a narrative that fits the main story points: hatred of minorities, hatred of immigrants, hatred of any kind of difference, love of someone who also hates those things and promises to be different (a promise he kept to be fair).
What is on display is just how the American political system is descending into Weimar style politics as both extremes of the American political spectrum have at last found the street as the perfect place for their extra-parliamentary activity. After Trump's incitement to walk on Capitol Hill to show strength, the loonies will be just more emboldened and more confident that they were right in their claims that the ruling elite is there to get them.
After this comes likely the real terrorist groups like Europe had in the 1970's and 80's or the "lone nut" activists, who know the best way to be successful is to keep it all in your head.
And he wonders why I'm not eager to give him the attention he is demanding.
Are you trying to understand Trump voters? Or is most of your effort going in to rejecting them? This isn't a challenge or complaint of any kind. Just reaching for whatever further clarity can be found.
I brought up Sanders just to demonstrate that it can be reasonable to consider radical change in some circumstances. It can be reasonable to 1) consider radical change in general, and then 2) unreasonable to choose a particular form of radical change.
If it is true that radical change to the American political system is required, then Sanders and Trump voters may have some level of rational agreement. They may largely agree on item #1 above, but obviously not item #2.
To the degree the above is true, the situation may not be as 100% polarized as is currently being portrayed in the public conversation. There may be some degree of unexplored meeting ground available.
I think you're right in regards to Weimar. There is an eerie similarity between the treatment of those involved in the protest and those involved in the Reichstag fire. It makes me wonder if Democrats and their GOP enablers are using the "insurrection" conspiracy theory as a pretext to remove civil liberties, particularly against their political opponents.
Now Trump has been censored on all social media platforms for arbitrary and dubious reasons such as "incitement to violence", even though he has for years condemned violence and vandalism, including those who rioted in his name. He's probably going to be impeached for the same dubious reasons.
:clap:
Republicans and social media had years to take a stand on Trump. Waiting until the very end like this is clearly opportunistic. On the other hand, given what happened Wednesday, these measures aren't entirely unjustified.
I myself think it's a good move. Too little too late, but a start. We shouldn't have to live our lives worried about the reaction of the political right. When both sides keep moving to extremes, and one side goes beyond the pale, then eventually it has to come to blows. You have to pick a side. They WANT a civil war. What are we to do if people are beyond reason? Keep allowing them to push us back farther and farther?
If that's the case, then let's just give Trump another 4 years. Because that's what's being demanded, and that's what his base believes. Let's allow them to storm the capitol building, the White House, etc., with little resistance and a slap on the wrist afterward. Let's allow them to threaten the lives of people and organize militias on private online forums, violating the TOS of each one. We don't want to piss them off, after all.
Give me a break. Pick a side.
Yang is fine. I would have liked to see him get more traction. But Sanders' message was far better, in my view.
Tough shit.
"Specious reasons" means exactly nothing coming from someone who believes the election was stolen.
I never said I believe the election was stolen. But you should be embarrassed that you need Silicon Valley soy-boys to curate information for you.
A Trump supporter telling someone to be embarrassed. :rofl:
Both "curating" and "information" are incorrect. Neither apply.
Exactly. Let the neo-Nazis make their own platform. They're free to do so. They're not entitled to an op-ed in the WSJ, nor the algorithms of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Believe it or not, free speech is indeed limited. I fully support their right to march, to assemble, and to free speech in other capacities. The crazy drunk yelling slogans in the park likewise is not violating any laws. But likewise he isn't entitled to do so on private platforms.
You don't like it? Don't sign their terms of service agreement. We'd all be better of not being on there anyway.
In my opinion, this is beyond the pale...
As for Trump, maybe banning him from twitter won't help to legitimize the 'radical left authoritarianism' fear that they've been promoting.
My message for Trump terrorists and their supporters, including on this site, is simple: Fuck off and die. I make no apologies for that and never will. Neither should FB, Twitter, Amazon, or anyone else.
Quoting Baden
Well I guess it’s all over for the forum then if this is how the administrator behaves.
Orwellian? It couldn't be more capitalistic for a publisher to not want to be associated with sedition. What a whinny bitch.
No, it's not only acceptable imo but obligatory to shut down terrorists. We don't need to be polite to them. Why on earth would you disagree with that? Anyway, until and unless you condemn what you earlier supported, you have zero moral ground concerning anything.
Show me posts where I supported terrorists.
Quoting frank
Taken out of context. And that’s not support anyway.
Still not support. Come on, you can do better than this.
It's not support that you said you were "on the side" of the people who "asserted themselves" at the capitol?
Quoting Baden
What’s that from?
What? I just posted your answer to Frank above.
You’re playing games.
I'm quoting your words as you asked me to. Look, I'm done, @Brett. If I'm wrong about your position, I challenge you to condemn the Trump terrorists who attacked the capitol now. If you won't, the obvious interpretation of your posts is the correct one.
Here’s the original use of “the people”
?Tobias
Obviously the people. These people shook up the system. I don’t have to like them to see that.
— Brett
But what is 'the people' in this case. I always get itchy when 'the people' are mentioned, because it is usually an appropriation by a small group who claims to represent them,
— Tobias
You’ve taken that line out of context. The line was in response to frank who asked whose side I was on.
Who's side are you on?
— frank
Obviously the people. These people shook up the system. I don’t have to like them to see that.
— Brett
By the people I mean:
Left or right it’s the people against a heartless system.
— Brett
If that is the case then why when I mentioned the assault here: Quoting Brett
(specifically referring to those who attacked the capitol.)
did you reply with: Quoting Brett
And why won't you just condemn those people who attacked the capitol now?
I had to make it clear to Tobias and now you because you interpret it the way that suits you.
Quoting Baden
Because it’s true.
What’s happened to you Baden? You were so reasonable once. Now you’ve become an alley dog along with @StreetlightX and @Xtrix
I'm an alley dog because I asked you to condemn the terrorists who attacked the capitol? Forget everything else. Just condemn them. Go on.
Quoting Baden
“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller
“ The second reason that Scene 5 is pivotal is because Abigail exerts her power and begins her quest to obtain Proctor. Unsurprisingly, Tituba confesses to witchcraft when the townspeople threaten her with physical violence. She is a black female slave, an individual without any power. She cannot hope to defend herself against Abigail's accusations, even though she and Abigail both know that Abigail is lying. The fact that Tituba confesses to witchcraft and then implicates Sarah Good and Goody Osburn reveals that Tituba listens very well and values her life. In order to preserve her own life, Tituba takes cues from her interrogators and tells them what they want to hear. Hale's response to Tituba's confession prompts Abigail's own sudden admission of guilt.
Declaring witchcraft becomes the popular thing to do. It grants an individual instant status and recognition within Salem, which translates into power. Abigail realizes that she can achieve immediate respect and authority by declaring that she has consorted with the Devil but now seeks redemption. Abigail's manipulation of the circumstances demonstrates her keen sense of self-preservation, as well as a unique understanding of the blind ignorance of others. Abigail knows that the townspeople will view her as an expert witness. The fact that Hale believes her sets her far apart from the other people in Salem. The people forget Abigail's questionable reputation and now consider her an instrument of God. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/c/the-crucible/summary-and-analysis/act-i-scene-5
But the Senate Trial will be held back for a few months, so as not to derail the initial weeks of the new Administration. And the cooked goose will be allowed to twist ever so slowly back and forth in the breeze, awaiting the verdict of a Senate which by the time it convenes, will have an effective majority of one vote.
If Trump is convicted, he will not be able to stand for public office again.
I see, we're not allowed call anything terrorism because of Arthur Miller's play, "The Crucible". Terrorism no longer exists when it's right-wingers doing it! Hurrah! No responsibility for them! It's excruciating watching you squirm like this and even more so watching you abuse a work of art while you do it. I'm finished with you. You're on my ignore list. But if you, or anyone, promotes terrorism here (so far you've equivocated), you'll still be banned in a shot and don't even think we're going to indulge any more of you playing the victim.
Seconded. Proudly.
I’d say the same to the hijackers of 9/11 and their supporters and enablers.
If these people want a civil war, they’ve got it. It’s their funeral.
I haven’t promoted it.
Quoting Xtrix
Oh you hero.
Just like Trump the Capitol Building rioters have exposed who you really are.
Keep defending domestic terrorists Brett. You hero. Noble work.
Still haven’t seen any evidence of me defending or promoting domestic terrorism on this forum.
Please. Rationality and politeness don’t apply to those who, for example, storm buildings shouting “hang Pence” because they believe in a fantasy.
The appropriate response is utter contempt.
No, no, no. You don’t get away with that sleight of hand. I was talking about Baden’s attitude to posters, not the rioters.
Yet given the opportunity to outright condemn it, you pull a Trump, then cite the Crucible.
Fine people on both sides, I hear.
Not reading any more of Brett. Thing about the extreme right is they are so entitled, they really think they are the victims if anyone stops them doing or saying whatever they want, whether that be infecting people with COVID, storming buildings to "assert" themselves, or refusing to condemn terrorism. And when confronted they cry and whine like babies and complain you're not being polite enough to them.
I’m not obliged to tell you what my politics are. You seem to have missed the point of “The Crucible”
Quoting Baden
So now I’m the extreme right. This has escalated fast.
Free speech has never encompassed the right to say whatever you wish at my dinner table, nor does it include the right to speak with impunity.
In any event, the power of mass media has always rested in the hands of the few. Historically, you first must have had a printing press, then the ability to print large scale newspapers and fliers, then access to the radio waves, then to the television waves and then to cable and such. Because market entry was difficult, the owners generally held to an ethic to be truthful, at least in the West.
This modern problem of giving every Tom, Dick, and Harry access to mass media via Twitter, Facebook and the like is something that must now be grappled with. The solution, as is now evident, is not to allow a free for all. I have no problem with the owners of mass media doing as they always had in the past: publishing only that which meets proper editorial standards. Such worked for probably 1000 years prior to tweets and insta posts.
Hm, I'm on your side now v Street. Something is very wrong. :gasp:
Yes, this applies to those who, rather than explicitly condemn the actions outright, offer nothing but qualifications and excuses. While also not outright supporting what was done, of course — which allows for plenty of worming out of what’s plainly obvious.
You’re fooling no one except yourself. I have no doubt you believe you’re simply seeking the truth.
I think that’s pretty on the mark.
I’m a white man, more or less [hide=*] (I’m nonbinary but AMAB, and one of my grandmothers was an “octaroon”)[/hide], and both my grandfathers were insanely better-off than I am, even though one of them was an orphan adopted by (European) immigrants. Almost any black person or woman of their era would probably have been much worse off in many ways compared to black people and women of my generation. So if I were the kind of person who thought that pirates prevented global warming (i.e. a person who doesn’t understand the difference between correlation and causation), I could see jumping to the conclusion that my losses compared to my grandparents are because of their gains compared to their grandparents. In truth I know they’re two unrelated trends that happened at the same time, but that’s too subtle for many people I guess.
Quoting Xtrix
I haven’t done that either.
Quoting Xtrix
I’m not seeking the truth. I’m resisting you.
Can’t bring yourself to say it, can you? Just like Trump. Won’t be bullied into condemning violence. What a hero.
In any case, you don’t have to. I already know. You’re supporting domestic terrorists. I’m sure you don’t believe that— but that’s not relevant to me, nor anyone else here.
Yes, you have.
Quoting Xtrix
You keep saying that, so show me.
I’ll go back to ignoring him as well. It’s pretty easy. I couldn’t help myself given the disgrace on Wednesday and his response to it.
Quoting Xtrix
Was that a slip of the tongue? Bring out the rack and thumbscrews!
:up:
I’m not obliged to explain this to you.
Yeah, but what exactly is the shape of that problem? I remember not too long ago people celebrating Twitter's role in fomenting revolutions in Middle East and North Africa (the term even has it's own wiki page: Twitter Revolutions), and anyone following say, Hong Kong, understands that social media has been indispensable for protest organization. I get that it's a cause de jour right now because of the toxicity of what's happened and has been happening (and what has happened, by the way? Effectively a non-event), but as soon as you zoom out, a change in circumstance will have us bemoaning just such limits. The guns are trained on the right right now - but they will not stay that way. In fact, this is a moment of exception, not the normal run of things - so-called left-wing social media accounts have for years been targets of erasure and deletion, and have been very much part of the current 'purge'.
The US is on the cusp of reinstituting a 'normalized' neoliberal regime deeply friendly with - if not entirely run by - silicon valley and wall street, and alot of people are going to need a great deal of alot more sedition.
Quoting Xtrix
Explain what?
Don’t get the joke. Shocker.
Congratulations, Brett. You’ve once again proven too boring to even have a petty argument with. :yawn:
So, to summarise. I don’t have a sense of humour, I’m boring, I’m extreme right and I support terrorism.
Edit: this isn’t a philosophy forum, it’s an old ladies clarevoyent club.
The right is arguing that because they’re monopolies, there’s a different set of rules. They cite Iran and Syria leaders being allowed to say things freely, and a few posts about burning down a cop’s house that were supposedly left up— not sure if it was BLM or not. That’s the line they’re taking on Fox News, anyway.
Except they're quite literally not, as the effective shut down of Parler shows quite distinctly.
Just to be clear - this is less a 'right' vs. 'left' problem than a corporate monopolists verses everyone else problem. The former is a cover for the latter.
He cannot because he is not worth the dust on the feet of those you have hanged!
I think I understand now why people move to the right. This has been quite enlightening.
Edit: to be more accurate, you move so far to the left that they’re now on the right.
Push comes to shove, Trump can always (ask whoever runs his website to) host his own listserv and anyone who wants to subscribe to his newsletter can literally do that. Or they can put up a web forum, like this one. Or any of numerous other alternatives to using these big corporate-controlled platforms.
To be clear, I don’t like when online communities are controlled by a central party rather than letting end-users control moderation from their end-view alone, especially when that central control is heavy-handed. But nobody has to use those kinds of communities, so I largely just don’t. Anyone else who agrees with us about that is free to do likewise, and if enough people do likewise then there goes the network effect that attracts people to those services in the first place.
These are tech companies, not publishers.
But only because you do not believe in free speech. You have the right to say whatever you want at my dinner table, however, and to do so with impunity. Free speech, the principle and the desire for it, does not disappear with the fact of censorship.
The decentralization of information is undoubtedly a recent affair unlike anything we have seen before. I am of the mind that this is a good thing because it leads to more freedom to express oneself, and as a corollary, to seek and receive information.
I think it was Jaspers who made the point that free speech leads to the distortion of truth, but it also allows for its correction. Censorship leads to both the distortion of truth and its suppression.
As for Parler - Amazon Web Services said, and I quoted the letter, they appeared to have no capacity to monitor and or delete posts calling for acts of violence. That was what got them banned. The largest problem is that there’s an explicit link between Donald Trump’s politics and violence, he’s been inciting violence since day one.
Here in Australia, Josh Frydenburg (a senior Liberal politician and minister of the Crown) was likewise arguing for freedom of expression. But what if there was a twitter channel dedicated to inciting people to go to Canberra and assassinate Australian federal politicians? What would he say then? Would that that protected under freedom of expression? There are Islamist ideologues in Australian jails this very day convicted for planning violence.
So - I see your point, and I think the argument always needs to be made, but in this case, I’m supporting those decisions, you’ve got a rogue politician who is literally tearing apart America. Desperate problems call for desperate remedies.
No flair for drama?
:lol:
Quoting praxis
Probably.
LOL, exactly. Poor little bitch wasn't even allowed to hang Mike Pence.
These private services have been pressured by governments to regulate speech. The Network Enforcement Act out of Germany is one such example. The EU puts much pressure on these companies, as the following article shows.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/technology/facebook-europe.html
In other words, state-enforced truth.
This war against such canards as “fake news”, “misinformation”, or in China’s case, “rumors”, has not only affected right-wingers, but also the left as well.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/26/intv-n26.html
This bullshit was peddled and popularized by the only person you come in here to run your fucking mouth in support of, so you can fuck right off, you piss-drinking hypocrite.
@NOS4A2 Oops you set him off.
Edit: see, you can say whatever you like if you’re innocent.
The term pre-dates Trump’s misuse of it. No amount of couch-fainting can change that.
False, I can read. I am talking about the “fake news” as a pretext for censorship.
Again, I’m not talking about Trump’s version of “fake news”. Over your head and under your knees, I suppose.
If you don’t want to discuss the point, it’s fine, but disguising it under righteous indignation is hilarious. It’s catharsis all the way down.
"The growing number of probes follows an announcement from the Seattle Police Department on Friday that two of its officers have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that they were in the nation’s capital during the raucous events.
The New York Times reports that cops from Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire are now under similar scrutiny after social media posts placed them near the riots that took place in the nation’s Capitol."
Why didn't the cops stop them? Because 'them' were cops.
• Veracity of statements by Donald Trump
• List of conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump
• AP FACT CHECK: Trump distorts record on National Guard in DC
I'm sure the lists are incomplete. :D When serial liars become the go-to authority for a lot of people with zeal and guns, then it could well make sense for privately owned platforms to kick them off.
Quoting Baden
I support terrorism.
Long live Zohra Drif.
You have a problem with truth, with states, or with both?
What is it with these people who cannot tell the difference between free speech and a book deal?
Don’t forget to reference your quotes.
I completely agree. It seems quite ridiculous to me to compare the T&C's of services provided by private interests to state censorship, especially as these complaints come from users of sites who would ban criticism of far-right violence without a second thought. If Twitter doesn't want formentors of violent coups on its user list, their house, their rules.
I think the people complaining know this. I've lost count of the number of times I've read or written the explanation that this is not a first amendment issue, that no one has a right to a platform for incitement of violence or transmission of propaganda: ultimately they are there by invite or not.
I agree with you here. It’s their business, they choose. At least we know exactly where they stand.
In other news, negotiator pressures jumper off roof in violation of his free will.
And what they stand against: that which all decent people stand against.
Quoting Brett
I'm not going to lie, this was a great cliffhanger. Brett has gone all in. I will definitely be tuning back in.
I'm over Brett. Got super annoyed I couldn't get a straight answer out of him before. But whatever. Never liked Mike Pence all that much anyway. :lol:
So I agree that legally it looks like there's no free speech violations, since the platform has power to remove whatever content they like. There is a rational kernel to the free speech argument though. Large social media sites effectively function as the social commons; they're how we chat, make friends, inform ourselves and so on. It is quite creepy that someone can be exiled from that commons with little to no oversight.
I think the free speech complaint "goes through" so to speak, but not in the terms it's originally articulated in.
Well, the way things are going, we might get bomb attacks also in our local cafeterias where you drink your sustainable fair-trade herbal tea and me my cafe latte. But hey, Zohra looked sexy especially in the movie "the Battle for Algiers" (which is a great film about urban terrorism).
Or at least you get the government search engines to note that the user "Brett" on the site "Philosophy Forums" says "he supports terrorism" and that is then put to a huge database to be used possibly in the future.
Yup. I despise Trump, but I don't love control of the commons with no oversight.
I'm pretty sure that most Trumpers would censor people on the left given the chance. They'd justify it in terms of public safety too.
It's possible that the censored right-wingers will revolutionize communication somehow. Text doesn't require that much processing power. Perhaps a decentralized Twitter-clone will be co-hosted by millions of cellphones. Not my area, but it seems vaguely possible, especially as phones get more powerful. (It's a Silicon Valley plot-line, but in that show it's from a place of genuine idealism.)
Trumpers couldn't even revolutionise their revolution. I doubt technological innovation is their forte.
I must confess that I'm personally a little paranoid about this kind of thing. Our minds are mostly externalized nowadays and subject to potential policing and analysis as never before. A new kind of tyranny is becoming possible.
Actually, it's not inconceivable the FBI will start asking sites like ours for IP addresses. The law on that is probably different in Europe and America, so I don't know the ins and outs of it.
Of course you are right about the majority of them. But I do worry about the odd genius with such leanings. Like what happened to Bobby Fisher? Or Ezra Pound? I'm reading the Toland bio of Hitler, and it's eerie how otherwise intelligent people can be become seduced. Or they cynically ride on the back of a beast they think they can control (like the GOP on the back of Trumpers). (It would have been poetic justice if some of them had been captured by a crowd they humored, but the better part of me is glad that it didn't happen.)
On the bright side, the left could hijack/borrow such technology for themselves.
I could certainly see the US government use domestic terrorism, especially if it continues in a more organised way, as a reason to impose measures that could negatively affect us all in terms of free speech. I don't think we're on that track yet but it's an open possibility.
I'm concerned that we will end up with an endless war on domestic terrorism. The threat is real, but so is the counter-threat of an exaggerated reaction. I agree that we're not on that track yet.
Snowden talked about how resistance can be nipped in the bud before it spreads. Oppose the wrong entities and one could in theory be discredited with lies or just embarrassing context. One's self-defense could be silenced before the attack begins. Like I said, it's paranoid. I don't really expect it to happen to me, for instance, but it sucks to realize how fragile one is. Reality is mostly mediated by screens I do not control.
I think the Trump crowd accept fringe views because they think that comes with freedom of speach. But yes, they wouldn't allow anyone they consider a public safety issue around (starting from ISIS).
Quoting five G
You are totally correct to be paranoid. For starters, ECHELON is (was) of similar age than I am. And I'm not a youngster anymore.
Quoting Baden
That is totally true. So stick to your Guidelines, Baden. Really.
Here's the thing with the FBI and others: they actually are not partisan in this and will go and observe ALL possible kind forums, from pro-life to pro-choice, from antifa to the right wing militias and to animal-rights sites or libertarian sites. Pro-Trump sites now? You bet. And a philosophy forum would be a typical place to check, because heck, you have computers and algorithms to do that. It's not that a physical person employed would have to follow the stuff, so the cost isn't so high.
NOS, now you are only showing that Weimar-mentality. You just assume that they will use events as a pretext to remove civil liberties and and attack their opponents. This is the attitude discourse of a conspiracy theorist and a populist.
Just try to think from another point of view:
How about the more obvious case: that they (the US political elite) are deeply humiliated just how the US politics now looks to the whole World and demand a stop this. It was their offices that were ransacked. They had to flee from an angry mob. This didn't happen on the West Coast in Portland. And as they don't understand how grave the underlying current of distrust is, they don't see that people will see their response as, well, like you do. But mark my words, the politicians will react. And the distrust will be just reinforced.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348253670606041089[/tweet]
For sure, the bases of moderation and suspension/banning should be explicit in those T&C's. It is frustrating when platforms augment this with unofficial, ad hoc moderation (the Guardian being a prime example). But even if they don't, yes it's unfair, so what? That's a judgement on those platforms. As Pfhorrest said, simple solution is don't use them if you don't like them.
What does Jim Sensenbrenner have to do with it?
Either way, seems a bit hysterical to bemoan the loss of civil liberties of some future bill being looked into regarding domestic terrorism. If and when someone tries to introduce security legislation that actually impacts civil liberties, the question of whether the majority prefer the liberty or the security ought to be had then.
Joe Biden, friend.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Have you met the US Government? Or its intelligence apparatus, for that matter?
Hell, with Snowden we found out that it doesn't even need laws to breach your civil liberties.
Edit: one more point - let's not forget that with the billions spent on security since 9/11, a bunch of larping nitwits with no plan and minimal organization were able to literally sit on the speakers' chair; these laws, when not functioning as security theatre designed to inconvenience working people, will inevitably be selectively used to destroy any and all activism that the state disagrees with. People need more room for sedition, not less. What needs changing is the cause.
Had not heard that. He also said "The devil is in the details" when discussing the difference, although that is the difference between at best one degree of loss of civil liberties and another.
Quoting StreetlightX
Sure. If Congress are going to pass any kind of sinister bill, not much anyone can do about it. May just as well fear everything then. As I said, I'll wait until I see the bill.
Humph. My working assumption is that any bill passed under a Biden administration will be a sinister bill unless proven otherwise. I think it will have a higher hit ratio than the other way around.
They have those laws in the book already.
Yes, for those who see violence and extra-parliamentary action as the key to get things done in a democracy.
Yet of course anti-terrorism usually doesn't solve the underlying problems, but it can do away with fringe movements that basically have no larger support than a cult would have.
The real question is if still the legal system prevails. I think one example is the UK and it's "Time of Troubles": when known terrorists can live their life freely, either after their jail sentences or when the authorities cannot represent enough evidence for a conviction. That happened in the UK with the Provisional IRA.
Well said. This appears exactly right. And I hold no illusions about the benevolence of social media platforms.
Information Apocalypse is here and it's here to stay.
Private companies, thanks to their monopolies, are effectively censoring people. I find the legal argument, that it's a private business and those censored can start their own site or social network or move somewhere else disingenuous. There's no "somewhere else" when we precisely join networks because of the inherent value of the existing network. (That said, I'm in the process of switching to Signal and dropping WhatsApp).
To combat this, we can at least do the following:
1. make it mandatory for any messaging app to be interoperable with other messaging apps.
2. prohibit targeted ads, news and videos. (It's economically shit anyways: creepy ads suck monkey balls
3. use antitrust laws.
Although to be honest the US is probably a lost cause due to how money is married to politics there to an extent not possible in some of my favourite countries (Nordics, Germany and the Netherlands).
You think we should go back to how it was hundreds of years ago? Not long before the arrival of the printing press, speech, education, and even gatherings, in the western world, were strictly controlled by The Church. Any suspicious activity and you'd be subject to The Holy Inquisition.
Do you think we need to return to that type of scenario? It doesn't sound like fun to me. What about the scenario described by Plato in "The Republic"? He thought that art ought to be censored, and particular types, which he thought bad, ought to be disallowed . The worst for Plato is what has been commonly translated as "narrative". Wouldn't that include all media reporting of "The News"? The reason why narrative appears to take on such an evil character seems to be that it is often stated as, and received as, 'the truth', when the producers of it do not have the capacity, or will, to create a true narrative.
That conclusion cannot be inferred from anything I've said. What I indicated was that there have been editorial standards for over 1000 years, and there's no reason to abandon standards entirely simply because mass media is now generally available to the public.
I'm not suggesting there be some subjective, whimsical approach to determining what is worthy of publication. Journalistic ethics can be arrived at and they ought be enforced if we wish for our journalism to be ethical. If, on the other hand, we want to provide a platform for those who scream the loudest or who have the most provocative things to say, we can continue forward with what we're doing.
If we can demand that the medicine we take will cure us, that the cars we purchase start when we turn the key, that our computers properly link us to the internet, then we should similarly be able to expect the news reports we read to reflect what actually occurred. It's not clear to me why mass media should be an exception and should get a pass and be permitted to defraud those who consume those products with impunity.
I must admit I'm having trouble figuring out why I should be concerned about being banned from Twitter, Facebook and the vast majority of social media sites. If I had to make a yes/no decision right on the spot I'd probably thank them for kicking me out. Being banned from Twitter is like being banned from a landfill.
@Hippyhead
Oh, I don't use them, and I regret it at least once a week. Here are some social things that happened since I stopped using social media:
(1) Many lifelong friends no longer contact me.
(2) I no longer get invited to any social gatherings I don't organise myself.
I've tried keeping in contact with friends and social groups; emails, phonecalls, Whatsapp; those are a relatively small window into their lives in terms of engagement-hours. Eventually people just stopped responding. I haven't had a regular group of friends, or been able to get one, since "taking my business elsewhere". Since "elsewhere" from social media is like being deleted from the commons. My presence is largely filtered out from the construction of social reality.
You may think it doesn't limit social interactions once they're already rolling; and for that I cite you the countless [hide=*](I stopped counting earnestly after this happened with 15 separate people/social events)[/hide] times someone has wanted to add me on Facebook, instead I offer them my email or phonenumber or Whatsapp, and the person immediately stops talking to me or never contacts me again using my suggested media. The intuition: what kind of weirdo exempts themselves from society like this?
I think perhaps you're both showing your age.
I hear your points, really I do. But I would answer your question this way.
The kind of weirdo that exempts themselves from social media could be the kind of weirdo who understands that, due to severe limitations of the human condition, social media sites are OVERWHELMINGLY jammed to overflowing with time wasting worthless crap. Never has the phrase "much ado about nothing" been so useful.
I hear your points because I do understand that being a hermit is not going to work for very many of us.
But honest to God, true story, there is a retarded squirrel living in cage at the top of the stairs here who is far more interesting, to me, than most human beings.
This is the unfortunate bind in the US. Even if a net corporations would have tried to be impartial and would have upheld freedom of speech values, they likely would face even bigger wrath from the DNC and the incoming administration. Some YouTube or Twitter wouldn't be exactly favorites of the democrats if they would have allowed Alex Jones et al. use their platforms right up to last Wednesday. Americans simply don't consider any corporation to be impartial, but twist the narrative to what they want to portray.
The simple reason is the vitriolic nature of the two-party system. Those favourite countries you mentioned have political systems that, at least for now, have the ability during times of extreme duress (severe terrorist attack, large scale natural disaster etc.) to come together and reach a consensus. Hopefully this won't change.
That's interesting. I suspect you're right. I've been on Facebook since near the beginning, when you needed a college email to get on. I've deleted several times since then, and didn't miss it much at all. But that was years ago.
I agree that keeping in contact with people is still very much a useful thing. Now I simply prefer to use their Messenger application. The rest ("news" feed mainly, and the advertisements they bring, plus groups -- most of which are toxic) has become quite useless. I suggest this as a compromise to you if you're regretting not using it. It's basically text or, if people remember back, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).
This is true enough. One of the things that happens with age is that you've heard all the ego driven melodrama merry-go-round noise so many times that it becomes of ever less interest. It's like a TV show that you liked the first couple of times you watched it, but after about the 14th viewing you started yelling, "Ok, ok, alright, alright, enough already!"
This is not meant to be insulting, because I've felt (and continue to feel) this way as well, but I think it's worth attempting to grow out of this kind of view. I think this attitude is a remnant of adolescent contempt. I have to fight the feeling often enough to realize it's far easier said than done -- although also quite appropriate at times -- but I think it's a worthwhile undertaking, especially in the current circumstances. There should be no quarter given to those participating in, supporting, condoning, or cryptically justifying what took place Wednesday -- and to those who are begging for a fight or a civil war should not be run away from. But we're still stuck with 75 million + people who, for whatever reason, took the time to vote for Donald Trump, and not all of them are unreachable. I don't see a way out of this other than making attempts to educate them, and that can't be done if we hold them in contempt.
I know your point was about social media, by the way, so I digress.
No one should have to square themselves with being a hermit in order to avoid using a website.
Quoting Xtrix
On the whole I don't regret not using it. I'd join again if I had a good use for it; like marketing or organisation, I'd put aside personal quibbles for that. At this point I think anyone I could actually socialise with... I'm already in regular contact with; the other dinosaurs and hermits I know. The thing about the social commons being monopolised is that it housing the commons disincentivizes forming another space; since it doesn't "house the commons" until it's reached a critical point of development, before that it's just a worse interface to social life. I'd have contact with the people I already have contact with, but not the other features of social life; so long as they're not represented on the less used service!
Quoting fdrake
I don't think real friends place strict rules on modes of communication like this. My real friends and I, the kind of people who would be in contact anyway, rarely contact each other on Facebook. "Friends" that will only speak to you on Facebook are "Facebook friends".
Quoting fdrake
This is true. You do miss out on interesting stuff sometimes. Of course, you don't *have* to boycott Facebook on principle. I've been suspended from Comment Is Free on The Guardian so many times for disagreeing with feminists (not in particular, I am just generally disagreeable) I've lost count. I still go on there to disagree with people. I just don't care enough about whether it's fair or not. Same with all social media, so in a rare wtf moment I am in total agreement with Hippyhead.
I still have a FB account. I stopped using it when Facebook decided to make it utterly useless. The algorithms they use and the density of advertising meant I was actually seeing less of my friends than I was when I had far fewer friends. I did a massive cull, whacked my friends list right down to little over a hundred. Didn't make much difference. Now it's just an address list I feel obliged to go to after my birthday to thank everyone for wishing me a happy birthday. It was good once, total crap now.
Yes, it's easy for you to say that standards have worked in the past, but until you take a good look at what was going on in the past, that statement is rather doubtful because you don't consider how the standards were enforced. For most of those 1000 years the standards were strictly dictated by The Church, and if you would have stepped out of line, or even perceived to have possibly stepped out of line, you'd be subjected to The Inquisition.
Quoting Hanover
And who would be doing this enforcement, the president, some political party which happens to be in power at the time? The capacity to enforce such standards is what leads to the suppression of political opponents.
Quoting Hanover
The difference here, between a government enforcing standards on medications and car sales, and a government enforcing standards on news reporting, is that the political party in power does not stand to benefit from that type of enforcements. But that would not be the case if the government could enforce standards on news reporting, because there would a conflict of interest.
My reply is not meant to be insulting either, we're just chatting, no worries. My attitude arises out of about a billion hours spent in the north Florida woods, which I have discovered to be more interesting than human beings, on average, generally speaking.
I can plug in to this site because it at least attempts to be about interesting ideas. But massive piles of little bits of nothing just doesn't do it for me.
Agreed. And if I could add, not just educate them, but be educated by them where possible. That's surely implied in the concept of not holding them in contempt.
Interesting. Cumulus Media now giving a few hosts an ultimatum.
Also, is Biden trying to put the brakes on the impeachment push? Is it his judgment that preventing Trump from running again isn't going to work, thus impeachment will just generate a lot of unproductive noise?
We don't need to go back that far. Up until the 1990s, mass media was limited to very few people and journalistic ethics were self enforced.
Having grown up spending a lot of time in the woods, I often prefer it over the social world as well. But if ever there were a time where we need all rational hands on deck, it's right now. So what I had said was more a personal goal: be more social, be more active, try to organize, try to bring people in, unionize, etc. But I encourage others who have similar temperaments to do the same, given the unprecedented circumstances. Every little bit helps.
Dominion software got them to make a complete retraction.
Yes, but worth pointing out more explicitly. Appreciated.
Quoting Hanover
After being threatened with a billion dollar lawsuit. I hope that sends a message, and I hope they go for the jugular.
If they convict him in the senate, he's barred from holding public office again. But that's unlikely to happen, given that 67 senators are needed to do so.
Philips added, “If you transgress this policy, you can expect to separate from the company immediately.” [/quote]
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/talk-radio-owner-threatens-to-fire-hosts-who-dispute-election-results/
Interesting. Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, and Ben Shapiro all employees. It's about time talk radio joins the fray.
Ok, I can hear that. Really, I can. So here's a little story.
About a year ago I made a somewhat serious effort to engage by becoming a nuclear weapons activist. I made a 200 page website and so on.
I made a good faith effort to engage on Twitter with other nuclear weapons type folks, who are on average very sincere and well educated etc. I followed every one I could find, and engaged with anyone who showed interest. It proved to be a total waste of time. People on Twitter, even the very intelligent ones, just shout little blurbs at each other. Very little real engagement, NOTHING at all like what is accomplished here.
So I wrote article about forums and tried to interest the nuclear weapons community in that. I volunteered to do what whatever was needed to go in that direction. A no go operation. Just not interested. At all. The vast majority of emails I sent to any nuclear weapons site received no response. I tried donating money. Didn't help.
My website was the only nuclear weapons site I could find that tried to link to all the other nuclear weapons site. All the other sites focused on their own projects while largely ignoring everyone else.
But all of that turned out to not really be the real obstacle. I retired from activism when it became clear to me that nothing substantial is going to happen with nuclear weapons until after the next detonation. I'm hoping to be dead before that happens, so....
Sorry to honk this hysterical horn yet again, but...
Look at the world of philosophy, which is supposedly about rational thought. Very close to exactly no interest in nuclear weapons, no matter the level of education.
All of this is just to explain why retarded squirrels are looking pretty good here. That's not sarcasm, I'm being serious. My little friend Marco the retarded squirrel is pure, innocent, uncontaminated by this world, closer to the Great Whatever than I can ever be. BTW, my degree is in special education, so retarded anybody has always had a place in my heart.
Anyway, there you go, way more than you wanted to know about that! :-)
Are you sure that's all that's required? I'm hearing jabber about there needing to be another vote specifically about banning him from running.
I'm hearing that what's needed is two thirds of the Senators who show up to vote. If that's true, that's a very different situation, yes?
Here's one means of enforcement:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/487247
I do admire the quit you have in you.
Ok, so you're saying that few to none of the nuclear weapons sites link to each other because I'm somehow creating an obstacle?
You're saying that the supposedly oh so clever little wanna be philosopher people on this site, and the pro philosophers too, overwhelmingly ignore nuclear weapons because of me? I'm the obstacle?
As usual Benkei, you're clogging the thread with your little ego. Now you will make some supposedly clever little remark in a desperate attempt to save face. So very tiresome.
I admire how insanely clever your lazy little remarks can be.
Me: maybe it's you.
You: you're clogging the thread.
:chin: sure buddy.
There was a time when aspiring journalists took courses in journalistic ethics and were expected to adhere to them as part of the industry standard. The enforcement was voluntary before and it seemed to work, so we were in a position where we could expect truth to be the goal of reporting. I realize that the First Amendment will serve as a barrier against direct enforcement, but I'm not convinced it cannot be enforced at all, which is what I see with the responsible owners of mass media doing (at least in the example I referenced).
I too share the interest in nuclear weapons and, you're right, it's taken a back seat to climate change and other issues (social justice, etc). But taking a step back, it seems as if you took a real shot at it and were met with multiple dead-ends. That's discouraging, no doubt, but the solution isn't to lay down. It's to find other avenues. Just from what you've posted, I think one area has been too much reliance on the Internet. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's what I gather.
Incidentally, I've done the same myself -- joined a new group last summer, had 170 members within a week (more than I expected), but then quickly turned into exactly nothing, eventuallbeing reduced to just one person occasionally sharing various articles. I had encouraged them to do Zoom meetings or meet in person if possible, because that is FAR more meaningful and more "real" than communicating from behind a screen and, when posting, to write THEIR thoughts, not simply sharing links to articles, memes, or quotations, as people tend to ignore those because they're everywhere. This advice was not heeded, and the group is now a ghost town. Totally pointless. I myself am complicit in it, as I could have pushed harder for these things myself, even if not an administrator.
But we can't let results like this discourage us. I have no doubt that things can be done -- that people can organize, even in small groups, to get things done. So instead I've turned my attention to forming a union at my workplace. I do this by talking to my coworkers and per diem staff individually. It's a slow process, and not guaranteed to work. But that doesn't bother me. If I fail, I'm sure I'll learn something important from it.
Long story short, I'd encourage you to keep trying or move to something where you can possibly get more traction. The climate change movement is an important one. I think nuclear weapons are equally as important, as it's an existential threat, but it's simply not getting the attention it deserves right now, so that's a bit of bad luck for you if that's what you happen to settle upon. But there are endless possibilities for activism. Perhaps even looking to more local problems.
I'm pretty certain, yes.
Quoting Hippyhead
Different but not huge. When there are important votes, almost every senator shows up. If you need 17 or so Republicans, even a few people quarantining or sick won't get you there.
But they don't have to show up. The Republican senators could liberate themselves from Trump just by not showing up to vote. Seventeen senators not showing up would get the job done, right?
With Trump gone doesn't that clear the field for any senator with presidential ambitions?
No, because that leaves 83 total. Two-thirds of 83 would be 55, so you'd still need a good deal (5, if done after Democrats take over), even in that very unlikely scenario where that many don't show up. I'm not quite seeing 5 yet, although it's close. But again, this is a pipe dream. It's not going to happen. They're still terrified of his base.
Too bad it's not a secret ballot. Then I have no doubt they'd have the votes -- most Republicans can't stand him. They're just too cowardly to say it publicly.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1347241531594432513[/tweet]
In an earlier era I was a full time public safety activist here in Florida. Long story, but again, same story.
People would show up at meetings to demand somebody do something, but the somebody was almost never them. The state wide group I was working for failed to show up at the state supreme court to defend the constitutional amendment I had spent 5 billion hours promoting. Otherwise intelligent professional people would stand up at public meetings, and want to tell a 3 hour story, about themselves. One of the meetings I hosted got on national TV. A local Sheriff took the stage and gave an impassioned speech. When I tried to thank him in the parking lot after the meeting to work together, he looked me right in the eye and told me to get fucking lost.
Again, we need travel no further than this website. Everyone is trying to position themselves as a big logic brain Mr. Rational etc, while we relentlessly ignore the single biggest threat to modern civilization. It's just bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, never ending total pure bullshit.
I guess I'm just getting old my friend. The torrential bullshit storm has worn me out.
If you can still hack it, go for it!
Yea, ok, I can hear that. Cowardly does seem accurate. So is there any point to another impeachment then in your opinion?
I can see that -- and that's a shame, I think. But you're in big company, and that's exactly the problem. And you're well above average in your activism -- most are too busy keeping food on the table to have any time, and others are either too distracted, too apathetic, or completely disenfranchised to do anything.
These stories you tell are pretty defeatist, though, don't you think? It's very selective, skewed towards negative experiences. The very fact that you got a meeting on national television is an enormous success, for example -- yet you focus on a dickhead sheriff's poor reaction to you? I do sympathize, because those things really do suck and obviously can be demoralizing, but I don't see the alternative. By quitting, or laying down, you're essentially helping the opposite forces along.
This thread is a good example, yes. OK, so people aren't focused enough on nuclear weapons. Then it's your job to educate them. Who says you can't?
Yeah, just in terms of precedent. It puts the Republicans in a position to have to vote against it, which is good, while keeping Trump's ability to run again in tact when it fails, which is (I would argue) ALSO good for this country. Why? Because if he runs again, it'll further divide the Republican party during the primaries, and after four years and the memory of this event, he'll likely lose -- assuming the Democrats don't completely blow it these next few years. But as soon as I wrote that last part, I'm beginning to think he may have a shot after all.
Ok, fair enough. To a significant degree I've lost faith in humanity. I'm pretty cheerful about that most of the time, but when pressed to explain I have to air the dirt that caused me to lose faith. I don't hate anybody or anything like that, but am I still willing to invest tons of time in trying to save people from themselves? No, been there, done that. Your turn now.
Quoting Xtrix
I did have some great experiences which I don't regret. It's like what some veterans say about being in the service. Great experience, don't wanna do it again. :-)
Quoting Xtrix
I say I can't. See this thread, total waste of time.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9333/insanity-squared
Sorry, really truly not trying to be a dickhead, but honestly speaking...
Members here, and professional philosophers too, simply too dense to get nuclear weapons. And for quite awhile I was too dense to get that they are too dense to get it.
Now I get that the subject is simply too big for them, for me, for us, for reason. I'm not as negative as these posts suggest, but more philosophical, seeing the reality more clearly, making peace with it. Very interesting subject, but now I am ridiculously off topic so.... :-)
Yes, he is likely missing those 88 million followers that he had on Twitter. (I guess the 51 people he followed aren't so much missing him)
Without Twitter, he is missing something:
Trump is now going to Texas to see his much beloved wall. 400 miles of it. And visit the Alamo. I think after the forced on him talk, which he barely could make through reading from the teleprompter, Trump will get to be back himself tomorrow.
All he needs is to see his fanatic supporters, and off he goes...
Yea, more wisdom from you. I think we under estimate Trump at our peril. Is he evil? Indisputably true. But is he also very street smart? True again.
If we can't bar him from running again then maybe other options will be required. And that's all you're gonna hear from here about that. :-)
Of course it’s a assumption, as are yours. That’s what happens when you try to predict the future.
But I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. I don’t think these people are smart enough to coordinate anything so grand. Rather, I believe they are unhinged, drunk on their own conspiracy theories, as they have been for the last 5 years. Just as they are silly enough to impeach a president for made up crimes, to propel a anti-Russian hoax around the world, to impeach him in the last days of his presidency, they are silly enough to criminalize his supporters. That’s not a stretch of the imagination.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin to reintroduce Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act
That has happened to me too and my takeaway was that this person isn’t actually interested in me personally so it’s no loss to not stay connected with them.
When I was a kid I never had a lot of friends because I didn’t understand how to make friends. As a young adult I intentionally figured out how and was then immensely popular and socially connected for about a decade. Until I realized how much effort I was spending being “connected” with people who didn’t really matter to me, to whom I didn’t really matter. So I just stopped putting in that effort, and none of them made an effort that stay in touch with me either, so my social life died... and nothing of value was lost.
The kind of people who will only “keep in touch” by adding you on facebook are precisely the kind of people it’s not worth the effort of keeping in touch with.
Very odd. But the time stamp keeps changing each time you refresh the page.
Or Trump has been removed or will resign. I guess we’ll find out tonight.
I think you're trivialising those friendships that I had; we knew each other for between 6 and 11 years, regularly saw each other in person, helped each other out etc. Duration depending on the person. In general I agree with you though!
Says the guy who repeated the conspiracy theory that the Capitol rioters were Antifa in disguise...
Quoting Michael
We wouldn't want one of those.
:up: To hell with those people who just see you as a +1 to their friend count.
// he also told his followers to ‘fight like hell’, which is somewhat at odds to ‘remaining peaceful’.
Also, note that in that video address, prior to telling his 'supporters' - that would be the mob that had just ransacked the Capitol and murdered a policeman - to 'go home', he told them they were 'special' and 'he loves them very much'. How can that constitute admonishment for their actions?
I said I wouldn’t doubt it. Nonetheless, at least one man was arrested for weapons charges, and of course let go.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/08/prosecutors-wont-proceed-charges-against-michigan-woman-arrested-capitol-storming/6602945002/
It can't, of course. His more moderate language was undoubtedly through gritted teeth, but nevertheless is less ambiguous than "fight like hell" which doesn't necessarily mean violence. I'm sure Trump was delighted that they took him literally and seriously, but that's not a case.
Quoting NOS4A2
That seemed to be the problem.
Here’s another.
https://www.ksl.com/article/50083768/utah-activist-inside-us-capitol-says-woman-killed-was-first-to-try-and-enter-house-chamber
Eh, he'll be out soon.
Culpability for the attack on the Capitol?
What?
https://nyti.ms/2XtGlNf
I was just responding to your mention of 1000 years. In that time, there was a lot of enforcement.
I agree that the journalistic industry was quite a bit different before the nineties. There was independent companies and real competition, especially going back further from this. Now they've all been bought up by big companies and merged into conglomerations. The dollar is the driving force and so long as each of the big companies gets its cut, there is no need for quality journalism. People do not develop loyalties to their news source because of quality journalism .
Quoting Hanover
I think the "enforcement" you refer to here is a feature of competition in the market place. Healthy competition helps to keep the quality up. But it's a very complicated issue here, because journalistic endeavours border on entertainment, and the same company which brings you journalism will also bring you entertainment. But entertainment is not bounded by, nor does it pretend to be, truth. And entertainment brings in a lot more money than truth.
So the boundary between entertainment and news is much blurred. And when the goal is to provide entertainment, because that's where the money is, who needs the news? But what if the news becomes your entertainment? Then they get doubled together and it's even better money. There's something really sick in this, but I think we reached a turning point with 9/11, as millions of people watched planes destroy buildings, over and over again for weeks. Why? If that was just a movie I'd say it was great entertainment. Then we got some "shock and awe" in Iraq. It's clearly been down hill, as our news has sort of become our entertainment. Remember when Trump was running for election? Wasn't that the best entertainment? When the news is your entertainment, I don't think bringing you the truth is a top priority for the so-called journalists.
Let's see, he's been fraudulently claiming for months now that the election was stolen from him. Then he makes a statement that he's exhausted all legal avenues. So he recognizes that further moves would be illegal. Nevertheless he moves on to the infamous phone call. Then he tells his supporters to fight like hell to take back the Whitehouse. Where's the ambiguity?
The difficulty was on my part, finding something so clear, without ambiguity.
Hmm. We actually had a civil war one time where a whole army was trying to get to Washington. They got pretty close.
This is nothing like that.
I think it worth remembering, for the sake of accuracy, that only two people died because of the riots. A heart attack may have been brought on by being there, but to say there were five deaths is being a bit disengenuous.
The heart attack victim may have been saved if he or she could have been rushed to a hospital for a heart catheterization, but paramedics won't enter a dangerous scene.
So we may be able to blame the riot for the heart attack death. Can't rule it out, anyway.
How far would you have to be away from the action to not be included as a death? 100m, 200, 500? Where’s the line?
1 inch
It's just weird to think of Australians worshipping Trump.
Right. With AI the eye of Big Brother really can be everywhere. If that's not the case now, it will be soon. Captions can be provided for images automatically. Speech can also be converted to text.
I'm not quite paranoid enough to actually worry about a department of precrime, but it's feasible that algorithms will be used to select which citizens get special attention, even if such citizens have done nothing suspicious yet in human terms.
Hah. That young earth creationist, Ken Ham, started in Sydney, I used to drive past an Answers in Genesis billboard, with dinosaurs on it. But he had to relocate to Kentucky to get an audience.
Belichick cited the "tragic events of last week" as leading to his decision. Pro-Trump rioters rampaged in the US Capitol last Wednesday. Five people died as a result of the chaos, including a US Capitol Police officer. House Democrats want to impeach Trump, accusing him of "incitement of insurrection."
"Recently, I was offered the opportunity to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which I was flattered by out of respect for what the honor represents and admiration for prior recipients," Belichick said in a statement. "Subsequently, the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award. Above all, I am an American citizen with great reverence for our nation's values, freedom and democracy."[/quote]
Now, there's a patriot.
The old way of journalism is better but not suited for modern "news" consumption I'm afraid. That's not to say there aren't excellent investigative journalists out there and good background pieces but they've become the exception instead of the norm.
I'm at a loss as to how to fix that. The only thing I consider that would at least limit the reach and speed at which a lie spreads is to once again prohibit targeted ads, news and videos etc. So that, just because you read a conspiracy theory yesterday, you don't automatically receive the next one in your feed.
Yes. I'm not defending him, I think he's a turd who loved every second of the chaos he invited. But I don't think there's a solid line from what he explicitly said to what happened. In politics, "fight" does not mean "fisticuffs".
His lawyer, on the other hand, should and I think will be disbarred. His violent incitement was more explicit.
Because none of those things can be shown to reasonably expect as a consequence a violent coup in the Capitol. It's not about causality -- the 25th amendment option has been rejected. It's about criminal culpability. In order to pin the coup on him, they're obliged to demonstrate that he intended a coup. He probably didn't. He did intend a frenzy, an outrage, a hysterical mob, but there's no masterplan for an occupation of the Senate in what he did or said.
The Raffensperger call is a lesser crime, maybe, but one that was unambiguously intentional.
Most of the republican congress also can't accede to these kinds of arguments least they incriminate themselves. It's in their every interest to dump this mess on Trump's lap - but not have the case looked at too closely. They were slavish, willing instigators no less than Trump.
On the other hand, voting to convict would be a great way of cheaply cleansing one's own sins before one's voters, which was my apparently unfounded concern (since the Republican line seems to be that Trump should not be impeached, not because he did nothing wrong, but because "bringing the country together" somehow involves supporting the nutter who divided the country with astonishing efficiency).
They still fear Trump's base, even if Trump himself is a political dead man walking. The lesson: the end of Trump is not the end of Trumpism.
Well, what he explicitly said for at least months was a consistent pattern of blatant lies which became the foundation of the invasion of Congress. Without the lies, no invasion.
What Trump's speech can highlight is what a savvy street smarts actor Trump is. He's been walking the line between legal and illegal for years, and is very good at it. Think of all the crap he's been hip deep in for decades, and yet never served a day in jail.
What confuses we philosophers is that Trump is not an intellectual, like say, Obama. He's not articulate in the manner that we relate to. So he sounds oafish to us, and we assume that means he's stupid. But he's not stupid, he's just not smart in the way that we can appreciate. He's street smart, typically a foreign land for philosophers.
There's an excellent chance that Trump will have launched a violent invasion of the Congress of the United States, and pay no price for it. Evil. But not stupid.
Hitler is a decent example. He was considered an ignorant buffoon too. Until he came within an inch of conquering all of Europe.
Right. He is the cause, which is strong grounds to apply the 25th amendment. But lying about voter fraud, even if the cause of the coup, is not an outright incitement to insurrection.
Quoting Hippyhead
Yeah, I know you like this line, you use it a lot, but Trump couldn't outsmart a banana. He has not survived because he is smart. He has survived because his abject corruption eliminated any efficacious means of sating his power hunger other than within an abjectly corrupt party. He didn't figure out that he could get away with murder because there was no crime so grave that Republicans would convict him, rather the only party that could let a criminal like him get away with murder is the Republican party.
Now his more honest admirers say, He got away with perverting the course of justice because he was smart. No, he got away with perverting the course of justice because most Republicans right now are corrupt. Ah, but he did it because he'd get away with, therefore he's smart. No, he did it because that's what he wanted, and he's never had to deal with not getting what he wants.
Well, this is a bit sweeping, isn't it? There are many millions of Trump voters, and only the tiniest fraction of them have taken part in any public demonstrations etc. I see something like this...
Corporate media focuses on drama to build audience, and thus ad revenues. And so those who invade Congress get endless hours of coverage, while the peaceful, reasonable, sane Trump voters get close to nothing. This isn't a political bias so much as it is a business bias, a bias for profits.
An important part of Trump's evil genius is that he's a realist. And so he understands far better than most that corporate media is not in the news business, but in the advertising business. He understands their business model, works it like a pro, and is rewarded with non-stop round the clock coverage of his every utterance.
Corporate media's business model is built upon our bottomless need for stimulation. It's a survival of the fittest situation. If one channel refuses to feed the beast of our endless need, they go out of business and are replaced by a company who will give us what we want.
If we can stop yelling about Trump long enough to follow the breadcrumbs back to their source, we will find they lead directly to us.
Trump is a conman and as such is highly attenuated to the emotions of others. So if he's intelligent then we're talking about emotional intelligence and keeping up appearances. His political appeal is grounded in sounding just like other Americans and saying things out loud that they've been socially conditioned not to say. We all know how great it feels if someone's position we agree with is unleashed as a tirade on other people we disagree with in a way we never could (but wish we could).
Trump gets away with it because he has power. And the more outrageous he is, the more normal these "social outcasts" feel and they feel heard because here is Trump saying stuff I'm thinking so "he gets me" and "he's one of us" when quite clearly he isn't. That's why we have people dress up like Braveheart and Bullwinkle J. Moose storming the Capitol. That's normal when Trump is accepted as normal.
So to sum up: Trump is emotionally intelligent (in a very limited and specific way) and stupid in almost every other way possible.
If you are in your twenties then your comment is understandable.
And yet he has taken over half of the world's leading superpower and earned the attention of almost the entire planet, while you honk your little posts to almost nobody on a tiny forum.
Are you perhaps familiar with the concept of evidence?
I agree that he has skillfully walked the line between legal and illegal.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Apologies, meaning no offense, but the majority of this thread is really little more than the usual fantasy superiority ego posturing so common on forums. Perhaps we could cut the crap and just get down to what we really want to do.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
We are smart and everyone else is stupid.
Some of us are smart and Trump is stupid.
You're projecting. You keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is some street-smart operator. It's your religion. It doesn't take a genius to differentiate between an over-entitled moron and someone with realpolitik savvy. If you don't like having your religious views refuted, don't rely on them in argument.
Are you perhaps familiar with the concept of "single cause fallacy"?
Quoting Hippyhead You're not very good at math are you?
If you want to prove your point, why don't you demonstrate what "smart things" Trump has done that has led to his election victory? Tell me where he's made conscious choices to do things a certain way as opposed to others that paved the way to his election?
All these processes are never the product of the actions of one man. They require socio-economic circumstances to be a certain way, populism thrives in downturns. It requires a political party prepared to back him. It requires a two-party system to garner that many votes. The idea that Trump would have been a meaningful political player if there was a plurality of political parties is quite frankly idiotic.
There's a lot of evidence that Trump has the attention span of a fruit fly and cannot plan. He doesn't read, he walks out on meetings when bored, he's consistently described by people who know him as a fucking moron. And despite such direct testimony and evidence in his every day speeches and tweets, all you have is "but he won the election" without any ability as to explaining why he won. I've offered a theory and there's plenty of psychological and sociological work to support that theory.
Blah, blah, blah, college sophomore punditry. And if you really are a college sophomore, then ok, pretty good. Keep going.
Generally speaking this whole thread is confusing two different things.
Is Trump evil? Yes.
Does that automatically mean he's stupid? No.
This is a philosophy forum. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not the pub downtown. A philosophy forum.
And thus it would seem appropriate that we make at least some good faith effort to observe the Trump phenomena with some detachment.
Do we all hate Trump? YES! So let's go ahead and say that another 3,000 times, get it out of our system, and then erase the thread and start a new one.
I don't wish to prove anything to you. You win.
If you'd like to disclose how old you are I would be willing to have more patience with someone who may be 40 years my junior.
Ahem. As I said, you keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is a street-smart operator. The confusion is not mine. You keep introducing it. This assertion of yours had extremely low relevance to the point I was making.
Those of us who think Trump is stupid are not smart, at least not on this particular topic. They may be very smart on other topics. What's really happening in this thread is herd mentality, a tribal dance where like minded people gather to tell each other how right they are, over and over and over again. In other words, this is the Internet. :-) But not really philosophy.
If we wish to abandon all evidence from the real world, then I agree I'm totally wrong.
What members are doing is leaping from the agreed upon fact that Trump is not an articulate intellectual, the kind of person we prefer, to the conclusion that he is therefore stupid.
And one of the key reasons that Trump got elected is that we've been making this same self serving error in regards to truck drivers, waitresses, car mechanics, farmers, factory workers and so on. For decades (since at least the sixties) we've been looking down our snooty noses at such folks based on the ignorant assumption that articulate presentation is the only valid measure of intelligence.
And guess what? A lot of these folks are getting kinda sick of that. And then some hyper confident strong man comes along, raises his middle finger and jams it in our eyes, channeling the pent up frustrations of those we've been insulting for years. He bellows that we liberals are arrogant assholes, and it works, because there's some truth in that claim.
There's plenty of stupid to go around. Lots of these folks used to be Democratic voters. It's we who lost them.
I mean clearly it's not because you're smart and he is stupid, since everyone can see that you're not smart. But good job turning those 68 years of experience into one post that establishes that fact beyond reasonable doubt.
If we were to ask Jagger a detailed question about music theory, he'd likely look stupid. He's certainly not a jazz musician. But if we were to ask him to channel the egos of a 100,000 human beings in a stadium, he's fucking brilliant.
If we look at Jagger strutting around on stage making all the usual rock star pouty faces, he actually looks kinda stupid. But his business is not music theory, it's human ego. And ego is the little four year old child still residing within all of us. Ego is pretty stupid, so if you want to talk to ego, or many millions of egos, it's smart to talk the language that ego understands.
Thus, Jagger can look stupid, and actually be stupid in some regards, while also being brilliant.
In the spirit of your selection bias, seconded.
Quoting Hippyhead
Those who are rimming Jagger might well say so.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
And so it goes.
That’s the problem. In a sane world, there would be very, very few. Or none.
That is a good description of your recent posts, including this one, yes.
Quoting Hippyhead
Or perhaps the arguments you are making are simply not very convincing. But I get it's much better for one's ego to imagine oneself as the lone warrior for truth, martyred by group consensus.
Does this look like something any smart person would have done? On live television?
Quoting Benkei
He can be stupid in some ways and savvy in others. As Bill Clinton said, he's a master brander. He was very effective in tapping into the concerns of average Americans.
Oh no. It's the Who Made Up the Weirdest Religion challenge.
In terms of numbers and longevity, I think we've got you beat.
I disagree. I think anyone who can't see the intent is closing their eyes, willingly ignoring, and making a judgement based in ignorance. What was the purpose in repeating over and over again, that the election was stolen? It was to make his followers think that a criminal act was carried out against them. That's the key point, the deception employed to make others think that a criminal act had been carried out against himself, and against them. That's Trump's MO, we saw it in his fight against Clinton, "lock her up". To "steal" has strong implications, as necessarily criminal. So then he proceeded as far as possible, to demonstrate to those followers that he had attempted every legal course to get what was criminally taken, back. He went to state supreme court and federal supreme court. He had demonstrated, with intent, to those people who had come to believe that the theft occurred, that the legal system had failed them.
At this point he has four significant possible choices. 1) He could accept the legal judgement and tell all his followers that he was wrong in claiming that the election was criminally stolen. 2) He could continue to believe that the the election was stolen (if he even believed that in the first place), and suffer in silence. 3)He could continue to talk about it with resignation that there is nothing which can be done. 4) He could rile up his followers to fight the legal system itself. He chose 4), because 1), 2), and 3), are all inconsistent with what his intent was..
You might claim that 4) does not imply inciting insurrection, because if you or I were to fight the legal system because of some perceived unjust judgement, this would not constitute insurrection. But we need to account for the nature of the thing which was said to be stolen, and the nature of the "fight" which was called for. If you or I were to fight against an unjust judgement, we would be fighting within the bounds of the legal system. We might take it right to the supreme court, but then we reach the end of our possible fight. What more could we fight against, the legal system itself? In Trump's case the "fight" has already gone to the supreme court. So any fight at this point would be outside the law. Furthermore, the thing stolen was "the country", and the "fight" was to take it back.
In the context of an election rally, 'let's fight to take back the country' is not an incitement to insurrection. In the context of a stop the steal rally, after all legal options have been exhausted, 'let's fight to take back the country', cannot be associated with any possible intent other than. to incite insurrection. If you or I were to stand on a grand and elaborate stage, in front of thousands and thousands of people, after a favoured candidate had lost an election, and tell those people, march to the Capitol and fight to take back our country, and those people proceeded to violently attack the Capitol, how could you conceive of a defense involving lack of intention? Even if you insist, you were speaking metaphorically and you didn't expect the people to take you literally, you need to account for the intent behind your metaphorical speech. And there is no other possible intent evident for such a speech, no matter how metaphorical the language, except to incite mob violence. You might simply appeal to ignorance.
See the simple fact? He did not tell the participants at the rally, that there was nothing short of insurrection which could be done now, and advise them to go home in peace. No, he riled up their anger and frustration and told them to march to the capitol and fight. He might claim that he had no intent because he was truly ignorant, but criminal law does not allow you to substitute intent with ignorance because it would be a loophole allowing criminals who are proficient liars, to go unpunished.
It’s an NBC-affiliated local news site from Salt Lake City. You guess wrong.
I don’t believe Antifa had anything to do with the capitol riots.
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6
How long till he goes broke?
Like I said, criminals who are proficient liars will be allowed to go unpunished, if we allow intention to be substituted with ignorance. Notice your quoted statement indicates absolutely nothing about Trump's intentions, so it provides no argument for a lack of intent. It's only a statement about what he claims to know about the intent of others. And we know he's a proficient liar. So his claimed ignorance of the intent of the others is nothing but a lie intended to substitute intent with ignorance.
Donald Trump said he wanted to contest the results legally and peacefully. Not only that, but he has been quite opposed to riots, violence and vandalism for the entirety of his presidency. There is zero evidence he wanted any violence or riot or insurrection to occur. His speech is protected by the 1st amendment, and does not rise to the level of “immanent lawless action”.
But he also stated that he had gone as far as he could go legally. Then he continued to hold rallies during which he spoke about fighting to take back the country. Yes, he wanted to change the results legally and peacefully, and before that he wanted to win the election. What is consistent in his intent, is that he wanted to continue to be president.
Because of this consistency, we can say that his overall intent is to continue being president, that is his priority. Plan A, was to win the election. Plan B was to go to court and win the legal challenge. Notice that in all the time that he was working on plan A, he was also sowing the seeds of discontent concerning mail in voting, preparing for plan B in case plan A failed. Evidentially, plan A failed. Then, plan B became plan A, top priority. At this time he needed a new plan B in case the legal attempt failed. So, he held rallies, drumming up support for plan C, violent insurrection, which was now plan B. When the plan B, legal challenges, failed, plan C became plan A, top priority.
See, you must account for the occurrence of, and the intent behind those rallies. They are not election campaigning, so the original plan A is ruled out. They are not part of the court challenge, so plan B, the legal challenge is ruled out. They can only be part of a plan C. And we saw the results of that plan.
What Trump said could be completely irrelevant to what Trump's intentions were, we know this from his propensity toward lying. We must judge his intentions by his actions, and we need to account for those rallies. They are not a part of an election campaign, nor are they a part of contesting the results legally and peacefully. They did have significant consequences. Trump's only defense is ignorance, 'I didn't expect this to happen', as if he had no plan C. But ignorance is no defense in criminal trials.
Trump brand equity is shrinking by the minute so obviously not a master.
At the same time he's a thin-skinned narcissist with hardly any self control, so emotionally stunted and stupid there.
The big problem is there is no evidence of any plan for violent insurrection. We don’t even need to pick and choose disparate and ambiguous words from an hour long speech to make the case because he was quite explicit about plan C: “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women”.
Might he be lying and, unbeknownst to everyone but a bunch of Q-tards, plotting a violent insurrection? It’s certainly possible. And frankly, I don’t blame people for believing it. The media has been pumping that sort of conspiracy theory for quite some time, so it’s no wonder that both Trump’s opponents and some of his supporters have come to believe it. Up until the rally the media was running with the conspiracy theory that he’d evoke martial law or the insurrection act. So it’s no surprise that some showed up for battle. What the media never showed was Trump’s explicit desire to do it legally and according to the constitution, which is his right, and which many have done before him. Perhaps if they did, there would be no such violence.
There is never conclusive evidence of a plan, only actions consistent with one. This is the tweeting and the rallies.
Quoting NOS4A2
The big problem is with this statement. It was not unbeknownst to everyone. To most, it was very clear that Trump's tweeting and rallying was very consistent with the intent of plotting violent insurrection. Most of us could see very clearly that unless measures were taken to prevent it, this would be the outcome.
Quoting NOS4A2
The media judged Trump by his actions, not by his explicit desire. This is because he is a known liar, deceiver, and con artist. Therefore his explicit desire is inconsistent with his true desire. Sorry to shatter your illusion NOS4A2, but you just cannot judge a proven lying, deceiving, con artist, by his explicit desire.
Do you remember his nickname for H. Clinton?
That would require that he have a set of principles. I don't think he did. He was a kick ass demagogue.
Your view was that he accidentally connected with the American people. I assume you meant he started with certain principles he believed in and those principles accidentally meshed with public concerns.
For fucks sake....
Oh yes, when nobody publicly says that they are going to attempt an insurrection tomorrow, it obviously wasn't an insurrection! Rhe storming of the Capitol Hill was a logical and obvious consequence to all the bullshit perpetrated earlier by Trump & the gang. It's no surprise that people who believe in Q-Anon bullshit do take these things seriously... when it's the biggest scam in history.
For example, the ex-Tweeter in Chief did tweet things like this one from last year December 26th:
Or this one:
Since the kidnapping plot of Gretchen Whitmer it's all quite evident where this is leading to. Or even with the pre-Trump era shooting of Gabrielle Gifford and others in 2011. Or the attack on the congressional baseball game in 2017 (where the targets were Republicans, btw). Those all were canary in the coal mine events showing just where things are going in Weimar America. But the person that increased most the polarization, the alienation and the vitriol, was President Trump.
Believe me, now for the terrorism part during the Biden years. Bombs blowing and that sort.
So happy that I and my family visited Washington DC and New York in 2019. I always remember the walk from our hotel in DC to the stairs of the Capitol Hill where the US Marine Corps Band was playing "patriotic" music in the warm summer night with a crowd of laid back Americans listening to the music. It felt so nice, relaxed and it reminded me how nice Seattle was in my childhood. Hope that America isn't lost yet.
Trump Supporters Invite BlackLivesMatter Protesters on Stage at MOAR Rally (6m:44s youtube)
Quoting Hanover
Reminds me of Yugoslav politicians before the civil war.
He’s not stupid. In fact, he’s got very strong con-man instincts, since that’s been his entire life. He’s managed limited success in business because of his created persona and brand creation, thanks largely to manipulating the media.
He brought that to politics, and it proved a good match. Name recognition was important, as was general anger with DC. Add social media to the mix, and it’s little surprise he’s taken over the party.
That wasn't my point. You posted conspiracy theories about Antifa disguised as MAGA loons perpetrating that attempted coup. You do subscribe to conspiracy theories, even if you have the ability to accept when you're wrong about them later.
I agree, but that's not what Trump did.
I’m not saying that nobody planned an insurrection, I’m saying that Trump didn’t plan or incite one. I would even say there were elements that had insurrection in mind, and they should be punished accordingly. I get why you’d try to misrepresent my point but I’m not going to fall for it myself. The president calling for a protest is one thing, but calling for or inciting an insurrection is quite another, especially in the land of the 1st amendment. Blaming him for the actions of others will require more evidence.
Trump has been unequivocal about riots and law and order, before and after the riot at Capitol Hill. Trump was often criticized for being too hard on protesters, for instance on those who for days laid siege to the Whitehouse in the summer. (Trump’s opponents went so far as to pretend he did it for a photo op, even though the DOJ’s plan to push back protesters occurred long before any discussion of Trump leaving the Whitehouse).
So if your logical conclusion to Trump’s claims is violent insurrection, then you’re thinking like the very same nutters who sought insurrection at the Capitol Hill.
Holy shit, we agree on something!!
If Trump had intended a violent coup at the Capitol we would know for sure because he would have spent days saying: "It's a terrible thing, a terrible thing. The Armageddon people have voted for me, they love me, you know that? They really do. It's a beautiful thing, really. But there are people out there, I don't want to say who they are but I know who they are, we all know them, and I've seen the proof, democrat congressmen, a lot of our guys too, they're involved in this, I don't know how they got them, they got Mike Pence too, he's a good guy but he's weak, he's not a winner. They're using the vote count, which should never have happened, especially in Georgia, and Wisconsin, and Arizona, it's a terrible thing they did there, but they're using this count, this false count, mostly dead people and democrat voters which isn't fair but hey, and because of that they're going to steal the election from the Amoonian people, and the only thing I hope is that the people take matters into their own hands and, I don't know, I don't want to say lynch Congress, although I'd like nothing more than to see Nancy Pelosi hanging from a lamppost because she's a pig, a really bad person, you think I'm joking, but unless the people take control of Congress, and if that means by violent means then I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, I don't think, you know, well, it's going to be a terrible shame, a real shame."
That's how Donald Trump disguises his meaning: by trying, and failing, to put it into English.
Trump may be unique among American presidents in his flagrant propaganda based on lies, such as 'the election was stolen and everyone knows it'. He repeated the lie relentlessly for months until his weak minded followers believed it with a passion. All politicians use propaganda of course, but it takes a special kind of sociopath to so readily use propaganda techniques like the so called big lie. Having a strong penchant for propaganda yourself, even you won't stoop that low, and also seem to possess the moral conscious to brand yourself an evil bloodsucking parasite to help alleviate any cognitive dissonance caused by having a conscious.
:up:
Fine NOS. Even more reason to get him out. Inciting by accident / cluelessness is even worse.
I guess here the issue are things like 1) what was Trump's reaction to the storming of Capitol Hill and 2) Why did the administration did not respond even if the national guard was ready to intervene. Yet it's obvious. A President doesn't use that language of walking to the Capital and then respond by sending the National Guard in against his supporters, who he so dearly loves. This is quite straightforward in the end.
And likely you'll see it tomorrow how Trump behaves in Texas. Knowing Trump it will be hard for him to stick to the prepared teleprompter script. Just remember Trump's mixed responses after Charlottesville. Yeah, after an outcry he talked a bit from the teleprompter for a moment before going to back to his "blame all sides" rhetoric.
Alamo, Texas.
Even Fox News is reporting it, adding:
Daily Beast.
Quoting Hanover
According to Jim Clyburn, as there is no convention governing when an impeachment which has been passed is sent to the Senate for trial, it might be delayed for about 100 days, or about the first three months of the Biden presidency.
And I still hope when it comes to the Senate trial, the GOP will sieze the possibility of getting itself out from under the thumb of the Orange Emperor for good. Yes, 'the base' will squeal dreadfully, there will be a short-term political hit, and some of the MAGA militia might even take up arms, but it will mean taking Trump out of the political equation for good. At the end of the day, who owes loyalty to Trump, considering how he treats those who have been deferential to him?
From the Fox News story linked above:
Trump as a self-cooking goose. Allow 100 days to marinate.
I do agree with her that Trump ought be impeached, but it's hard to overlook the sanctimony, considering daddy Dick is that charming black hearted national treasure who left office with a record breaking 13% approval rating after there was, whoopsie, no WMD.
Parler is filled with coffee shop talk for Nazis (Nov 18, 2020) ugh :/
Apparently, someone grabbed terabytes of Parler posts, though I'm not sure if it's publicly available.
Head over to donk_enby's twitter feed for details.
I imagine it's just the usual rambling and raving littered with the usual keywords.
The tone of Trump and crowd have an undercurrent of certain sub-cultures, where loyalty trumps truth (pun intended), where alignment outweighs doing the right thing - a divisive or alienating Us-versus-Them sentiment.
"Us" have zeal, guns, leadership, a tint of fear hate paranoia, and sufficient resources to both pollute the general public, reinforce internal pseudo-trust, and further sweep up those disposed to fringe.
Not pretty.
Do you understand what :"false pretense" means NOS4A2?
What you don't seem to be grasping, is that "calling for a protest" is a false pretense. The president never produced any real evidence of any conspiracy, or any acts which could constitute stealing the election. The rally was not called for as a protest, because there wasn't anything to protest. That there was something to protest was a false pretense. It was not a protest at all. Therefore we need to look elsewhere for a motive for that rally, along with a motive for the false pretense.
Swalwell was proven just a month ago to have relations with a CCP spy, and has since spent the remainder of his time trying to nullify a certain presidency.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/11/what-we-know-about-rep-eric-swalwells-ties-an-alleged-chinese-spy/
Fang Fang! What a fantastic name. This must have been done by a screen writer. (Cut to manga graphic of fearsome dragon with poison dripping from fangs.)
Quite an understatement... In that culture, there is this concept of 'the day of the rope'. That is to say, the day of the white supremacists revolution, when they will hang all blacks, gays, lesbians, Jews, scientists and fancy-pant politicians. These guys are wannabe mass murderers, well armed too...
I think you need to calm down. There’s almost a sense of pleasure in all this sky falling in stuff.
From protestors to terrorists to mass murderers.
That's what they themselves say. It's their culture, it's their alleged goal. I'm not living in the US, so I don't personally care, but the United States have raised a Cain.
So they call themselves “wannabe mass murderers”? It’s whose alleged goal, whatever that is?
Spoken like our lord Jesus
There's something very weird about the religion of the American right.
I keep seeing that she's an alleged spy; I can't find anything about the allegation though. So far, she's Chinese.
In as many words, yes.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Who said that?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
What could that possibly mean?
I would make the point though - despite all these lovely Parler screengrabs, a great deal of the riots were organized on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Parler just so happens to have been the convenient scapegoat - a worthy, good one - so that all these companies can secure their monopolies.
So you’re just throwing all these people into the same pot. Where do you draw the line, or is it all Republicans, all Conservatives?
Actually it’s 74,222,958 votes, or 46.8 percent of the votes cast.
74, 222, 958 wannabe mass murderers? You may as well surrender now.
20,000,000. You’re a joke.
I bet you can’t wait to taste the blood yourself.
Nazi is getting a bit tired. You’re going to have to find something new.
They’d smell your fear from down the street.
No need. You’d run.
Well, enough of these pleasantries.
Are you following the conversation you're involved in? Scroll up and, you know, read stuff.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Well you can’t answer it because you don’t know. Some random post on Parler.
The usual “rambling and raving”. I mean really, is this the sort of reference we use now on this site.
Predictable I suppose. If anything, McConnel is a smart politician with a clear ethical view that the end justifies the means.
Yes, when discussing whether it's true that fascists plan coups on parler, what they post on parler is remarkably relevant. Especially when, you know, those coups actually happen, dismissing them as noise is dumb as hell. Thank god the FBI take it a little more seriously.
I guess it's all over for the US if this is how the president behaves.
So either this is true of Trump and Baden, or it’s not true of Trump and Baden? Which one?
Yes. Which one?
There's been a lot of corporate backlash, the donor base isn't happy and McConnell can see where the wind is blowing
Can't tell if sarcasm...
Quoting Rafaella Leon
Couldn't find any proof of that. At all.
Because the commies destroyed it, obviously, duh.
There was no wide spread electoral fraud, and "high treason" isn't a thing under U.S. law. There's the crime of "treason", which is defined as "levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort" which electoral fraud doesn't satisfy.
Fuck me, totally forgot about that one! Thanks Raf. Guys, have you been following that election fraud thingy? They are all in it, the judiciary, Republican governors, Even Hugo Chaves was raised from the dead to play his part! It must have slipped my mind...
The commies travelled back in time and changed the votes!
Personally, I'd be somewhat reluctant to just remove/ban it all, but that may just be me; other platforms do have means to force-tag posts, make it a bit slower to get to offensive posts, etc.
As far as I can tell (I know some of those guys), there's a McCarthyist type fear-dread of their faith/culture going away, which easily turns to hate. Things like "commies" "socialism" "taxes" "Marxists" "leftard" "big government" "globalism" are special loaded/pejorative/trigger words here. So, anyway, this contributes to far-right moves for (some) Christians. Not that there are that many communists in the US as far as I know (Sanders certainly isn't one) — unless you ask those guys. Trump has become / is their guy (to an extent).
[sub]Holy Hate: The Far Right’s Radicalization of Religion (Southern Poverty Law Center; Feb 10, 2018)
The Rapture and the Real World: Mike Pompeo Blends Beliefs and Policy (The New York Times; Mar 30, 2019)
Christian Nationalists Aim to Dismantle this Core Freedom (Religion Dispatches; Jan 15, 2020)
Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are 'foremost' human rights (The Guardian; Jul 16, 2020)
[/sub]
Below is a running, selective collection of hyperlinked articles detailing charges of ballot irregularities or electronic fraud being made in various states, especially key battlegrounds such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Arizona - FBI investigating voter data theft - Forbes
Data expert: between 120,000 and 306,000 fake people cast ballots - NTD Television
Maricopa GOP chairwoman: Trump votes credited to Biden - Capitol Times
Anonymous: 35,000 illegal votes for Democratic candidates - Daily Signal
Georgia - Trump campaign files suit seeking new statewide election - Reuters
House Republicans seek mail-ballot process review before Jan. 5 runoff - Epoch Times
Dekalb County can’t find chain of custody records for absentee ballots - Epoch Times
Trump campaign: Video shows ballot-counting from suitcases after poll workers sent home - Townhall, Twitter
Chief investigator: No 'mystery ballots' seen in security video - Washington Examiner
Attorney L. Lin Wood: All 900 Fulton Co. military ballots for Biden - sdfish.com
Wood: Video shows ballots shredded - Cobb County Courier
Data analyst: 40,000 ballots illegally cast by people who had moved - NTD video
Ex-gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams group investigated for seeking to “register “ineligible, out-of-state, or deceased voters” before Jan. 5 Senate runoffs - Fox News
Michigan - Judge allows probe of Dominion machines in Antrim County - Fox News
Four takeaways from the state Senate's vote fraud hearing - Daily Signal
Nevada - Nevada GOP to appeal judge’s refusal to nullify Biden win - Associated Press
Native American voter advocacy group “handed out gift cards, electronics, clothing” in tribal areas, and on Facebook some recipients documented the exchanges for votes while wearing Biden campaign gear - The Federalist
Trump legal team: Audit finds 2 percent of ballots cast in the name of people who said they never received a ballot and 1 percent by those who said they never filled one out - PJ Media
Mail ballots were sent to abandoned businesses - Public Interest Legal Foundation
Trump representatives said more than 1,500 ballots may have been cast by dead voters and that 42,248 people voted “multiple times” - Washington Examiner
Witness: Early voting tallies in Carson County were inexplicably changed on election night - Hearing transcript
Whistleblower affidavit: Clark County supervisors accepted ballots despite concerns regarding required signatures - Washington Examiner
Pennsylvania - Justice Samuel Alito moves up U.S. Supreme Court deadline in mail ballot case - Epoch Times
Lawsuit: Up to 280,000 ballots ‘disappeared’ after postal contractor's trip from New York - Epoch Times
Tens of thousands of ballots returned earlier than sent date, researcher says - Epoch Times
Mail carrier says he was ordered to collect late ballots for backdating. - Washington Times
Pittsburgh ballots sent to vacant lots - Public Interest Legal Foundation
Rampant and unbridled voter fraud everywhere. Didn’t Joe Biden himself accidentally say they put together the greatest voter fraud in history during pre-election?
So basically "Trump said so." Investigating false allegations of voter fraud does not demonstrate voter fraud, especially when those investigations found that there had been no voter fraud.
Great post. there's no way he can respond to that.
Theft of voter data is a breach of privacy, if it happened, but is no proof of voter fraud.
Court cases need to be won before they count.
Affidavits are generally worthless as are anonymous claims.
So basically you have nothing.
Meanwhile, your conspiracy theory requires most media outlets, judges, politicians, election officials, etc. to be in on it.
So, basically you're peddling lies.
Cool thanks. You must really be distraught over this.
Karma's a bitch.
So tell me how is it possible that the most admired man in America (according to a Gallup poll) had fewer votes than Joe Blow, who couldn't bring fifty people together at a rally?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-from-the-president-011321/
18% of Americans named Trump, 15% named Obama, 6% Biden and 3% Fauci.
I think it’s likely that most of the 18% who named Obama or Fauci voted for Biden in the election, not Trump.
These are things they cannot explain. They can only explain it away.
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/01/13/rachel-rodriguez-arrested-alleged-election-fraud-illegal-voting-texas/
Don't care.
Why would you care?
Let me explain how time works. That ^ was issued today. The riot happened last week. Trump is being busted for what he did last week. Not doing it again today has no bearing on last week. Geddit?
How silly, appealing to reason, logic, general rationality, etc. The "debate" with NOS or anyone else still supporting Trump is already over. It ended years ago. There are no principles or consistency in anything -- just pure tribalistic thinking.
A little thought experiment makes it clear: just imagine if Obama (who I'm no fan of) held a rally saying the exact same things and the capital was overrun with his supporters. Would these people be equivocating, so eager to qualify every fact/statement they could? Would they suddenly take an interest in nuance?
Please. I heard more outrage when he asked for dijon mustard. It's a futile enterprise.
Still, your replies are funny.
Here's the fact why this is so absolutely perverse and crazy.
Who is urging violence, lawbraking or vandalism?
(Streetlight X is even quite for a while on that)
The only thing is that Donald Trump is impeached because of inciting the storming Capitol Hill with his prolonged delusional propaganda of the elections being stolen that culminated in an event which even the US military sees as sedition and insurrection.
What on Earth is there to heal? The US Congress should do it's obvious job in this case.
Oh right, that Trump supporters estranged from reality would next time get their guns and resort to more violence?
You don't handle an angry mob by appeasing it. That makes the mob just feel more powerful. You disperse the mob, get the ringleaders and the instigators of the mob and you don't tolerate violence. Didn't you learn anything from last summer, NOS?
Except he was nowhere near there, of course.
Well, he's no Franco, I'll give you that. Or, perhaps you prefer "Caudillo"?
But seriously, the claims and cases you refer to were almost literally laughed out of court. It's difficult to believe any lawyer, even one of limited intelligence, could summon the nerve to file them. Those who claim massive electoral fraud have the burden of proof. Nobody must prove there is no fraud. The affidavits submitted simply were not evidence, being conclusory and largely hearsay. Others have dealt more than adequately with your popularity claim. Preposterous claims don't become more persuasive with time.
Not to forget that Trump had the lowest consistent approval ratings of any President in history. They never got above 50%
Well, it will certainly be more difficult for our Great Union to hector other nations about the rule of law and proper governance, thanks to recent events and claims that the results of our elections can't be trusted. We've lost a great deal of moral authority in the world. As we're being told by friends and foes.
Are you referring to this: "18% of Americans named Trump, 15% named Obama, 6% Biden and 3% Fauci." ?
That is simple mathematics no? That is why many election systems such as the French have a first an a second round. It just shows that Trump has a very firm and loyal base, not per se a large one. But you know that, you are bright enough.
Out of a poll sampling of 1000. Similar poll named Richard Dawkins as the world's leading intellectual not long back.
Quoting Michael
:clap:
Quoting 180 Proof
Thanks again, Speaker Pelosi. :clap:
[quote=117th Congress, H. Res. 24 (1/13/21)] Incitement of Insurrection 232-197
[/quote]
:mask:
Eff ewe, magaMORON-1 (your fascist enablers and your terrorist supporters)!
With that sort of iron clad proof I totally get why a horned man stormed the Capitol. You are on the side of righteousness. Keep telling yourself that.
No iron clad argument for voter fraud is complete without hearing from Alex Jones.
Is that a lot? How many are there in total? (Working so no time to Google info)
211. (Yes 10 Nay 197 Not voted 4)
Again, all evidence of “incitement” comes from that stuff in your skull, or worse, propaganda. That it closely resembles the Democrat’s articles of impeachment is no comfort.
Some may have came to the same perverse “logical conclusion” of yours, I admit, but to believe Trump is guilty for making you come to those conclusions, or in the protester’s case, to come to those conclusions and storm Congress, then that is something you’ll have to prove from evidence outside of your skull. It’s just that simple.
That was an opinion poll. It has nothing to do with elections or how people voted. So I’m not sure of your point.
[sup]
Draw up timelines for each relevant locale, places where votes were counted, that stuff.
Mark all relevant events on them, referring to evidence (the more evidence the better, the less the worse).
Stack the timelines, especially if something is relevant across locales.
Mark open ends, e.g. unknown origins of material evidence, whatever.
Draw up a chart of alleged actors, including unknowns.
Connect actors that (must have) cooperated or conspired together, include their (corroborated) statements.
Add (corroborated) statements of others, e.g. photographers, witnesses, and cross-reference timelines/evidence.
Determine alternate scenarios that might explain the evidence (the more weaker explanations the better).
[/sup]
So, a technical thing, like forensics, reconstruction.
The allegations are fairly serious, I'd expect something fairly good to support them.
I wonder, though, why wouldn't the President have gotten someone to do that?
Sure would be better than some scattered unsourced photos of stacks of paper with some arrows and circles on them and such, or just saying so.
Must be tired of winning, fucking loser.
In fact you are really the one suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. If you have the President constantly, repeatedly lying that the election would be and was stolen, the logical conclusion of those who truly believed him would be to storm the Capital. Perhaps you cannot see the long obvious reason why it has come to this, but you can easily see it with Trump supporters starting to carry last year guns quite openly in demonstrations. That's a telling sign that the country was going to more like Weimar Germany or Yugoslavia before it's breakup.
This really isn't normal for supporters of Presidential candidate, apart a country close to Civil War:
And Trump was arguing that the elections were stolen already in 2016, but then contrary to what he himself believed, he won the election. But now, all those justices, the whole justice system with also Trump appointed people would go along with the steal is simply ludicrous.
But I guess that doesn't personally matter so much, as you are living in a mainly peaceful Canada.
Or maybe he's full of shit, never actually believing the election was stolen, but never anticipating the rabble he was rousing would nut up and cost him all his influence, so now he's trying a new approach. It apparently is working with you, so good for him.
Trump won Texas.
And do notice that he is reading from a teleprompter and not speaking whatever he wants, as usually.
This is classic Trump. When you go too much over, have the lawyers / aides prepare a statement that you then read and Republicans and your supporters can say that Trump "has learned" and has stepped back to the line.
That's why she operated from Texas. All those seven million (or so) votes!!! :wink:
You mean she caused Trump to win Texas? Dammit! I'm taking my horn hat to Austin!
I don’t understand, how did he publish that video? I thought the radical left muzzled the mad king.
Rat trying to leave his own sinking ship.
You only need a conviction and 7,999,999 more of the same and Trump was right, he won! The conspiracy was widespread voter fraud of an unprecedented scale and that has been thoroughly debunked. Besides:
So, Biden won by an even bigger landslide. :party:
Poor NOS and Brett suddenly realising they weren't supposed to support the terrorism. *Confused face*. *Pretend we never said that*.
He never invited any such thing, and has always called for law and order, so anyone not burying their face in anti-Trump laps might come to a different conclusion.
I've heard that argument going around. It's kind of like saying that because Lenny Bruce could still do comedy shows he was never censored.
I don’t care what is normal or not. There is no strand of chewing gum connecting Trump’s election claims and fiery rhetoric to any violence, and in fact these strange conclusions contradict anything else he has said on the matter of violent protest and riots, which he has opposed throughout the entirety of his term.
I do see why it has come to this. No rally goer or protester would need to carry guns and to wear riot gear to protest if they weren’t routinely set upon by violent mobs of delusional soy drinkers. No citizen would need to stock up on weaponry if his business wasn’t burned to the ground, or if some Antifa pedophile didn’t seize entire blocks of their city. No patriot would need to exercise 2nd amendment rights if he wasn’t locked down by state order, only to find out that those who made the order are allowed to flout their very own rules. Trump isn’t telling them to do any of this.
Was Democracy worth dying for when Stacy Abrahms or Elizabeth Warren or Al Gore said the election was stolen? Was it worth dying for when we were told for years that the president was a manchurian candidate? Was Clinton or Carter guilty of inciting violence, or some other species of malicious action, when they said the president was illegitimate or installed by Russia? The answer is no. Sorry, I still don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that violence is the answer.
It’s a little concerning to me that Trump has allowed his act to be censored, meaning that the threats must be so credible that even he fears (his legacy will be further stained by continued violence from his supporters) them.
Wow, what a change in Trump's demeanour today. For four years it's been 'I'm higher than the law'. Now suddenly it's 'I'm afraid of the law'.
Irrelevant. He stood by them for a week after his "I love you" and changed his tune only after the threat of being convicted for it was very real. You'd have to be extremely prejudiced to believe that was in good faith.
It's also hilarious that he insists that no one in his movement would incite violence after HIS lawyer at HIS rally called for "trial by combat". RG fired yet? Nope? Seems pretty groovy with his movement inciting violence then.
Don't think there was a violent insurrection because if it, know any different, or are you suggesting that because Trump is being held responsible for an actual insurrection, other people should be charged with the same even in the absence of one? Because logically that's kind of screwed up.
Violence is rarely THE answer. However violence is frequently a symptom of a greater underlying problem. People like to think that their perspective is the correct one, therefore, if I vote for "Bob" because Bob is awesome and has all the answers, it seems shocking when not Bob wins the election. It suggests that: A) I am wrong, and Bob isn't that great (which makes people uncomfortable, because they don't want to be wrong) B) That everyone that didn't vote for Bob is either confused or part of some secret agenda to keep me down, or C) Bob actually won (because I really, really wanted him to) and there is a conspiracy afoot to keep Bob down.
People like to pick a winner. If people knew that the person they voted for would not get in, would they still cast their vote for them, or would they vote in the winner, since the outcome is already known? I vote for whoever most closely reflects my values, knowing that they won't get in, but I don't know many people who will knowingly give their vote to a lost cause.
Violence is used as strong demand for attention. Those who feel unheard, or overlooked, or worse, mandated by social pressure to be silent, despite their valid concerns, can always turn to violence as a form of self, and political, expression. My voice may be silenced on social media thanks to censors, my voice may be silenced by those around me who, rather than listen with an open ear, instantly relegate my opinion to some "ist" or other, simply because I present an alternate view point. However, eventually, I will get tired of trying to use my voice to be heard and will elect to use the fist, or club, or whatever, to get the point across.
I am not supporting violence, I am understanding of how it comes about. I support listening to people, I find I learn a lot that way. The best way to raise people to violence: overlook them and trivialize them.
Trump should have gracefully accepted defeat, however, as he has done nothing grace related that I can recall, perhaps that was beyond his capability.
Actually you don't see it. Your partisanship just blinds you, just like many of the ranting leftists here, who eagerly go with the flow and embrace the polarization and see this as a great wonderful struggle. The inability to look the situation objectively is here the key. Sure, there have always been a tense relation between the right and the left, but typically the fringes have been viewed as clowns and eccentric losers. The playing field has just been tense political discourse, but not extra-parliamentary action in the US. Neonazis were a joke just as were the leftist revolutionaries. Yet now the fringes have changed to be something sinister and dangerous, which just feeds the polarization and increases their popularity and the popularity to oppose them violently. And people are enthusiastic about their side, fighting for the right cause. That Americans staunchly walk under various kinds of flags is direct sign of deep polarization.
Various flags, red and black...
Perhaps it's just been such a gradual descent or that you haven't noticed it how it has change. Since the time of Bill Clinton there has been ferocious political culture of mudslinging and vitriolic accusations that has been used to rally the base. And it has worked. With Trump this type of rouse to a new level. Add then the fact how the social media has created separate echo chambers. Then take into account the recession brought down by the pandemic.
So the end result...
Quoting NOS4A2
Isn't this argument amazing? Simply stupendous! I hear the Flat Earth Society is recruiting members and looking for donations. You two would probably fit right in. Go for it!
If that's the sort of logic which is capable of inciting violent uprising, God help us. Bring on the revolution! Let the animals roam freely. Anarchy is inevitable.
:lol:
I do agree that routine censorship and the violation of rights might lead to violence, especially in a country like the United States. The premise I disagree with is that the president of the United States incited them to do it.
As for contesting the results of an election, no, violence is not the answer.
The “incitement to insurrection” is a fake, made up crime, like everything the House democrats and their media fellow travellers have been selling since Trump started. It’s unconstitutional because Trump’s speech is protected speech. No investigation, no due process, no defendant allowed to defend himself, just pure show trial in a kangaroo court. As such they are not defending and supporting the constitution, they are violating it, just like they violate their oaths of office.
All of this might make some foreigner drool with glee because he was raised cradle-to-the-grave in some backwoods nanny-state, but in a country that prides itself on freedom this is an utter disaster.
Why disregard for the rule of law? You seem to equate impeachment with a criminal trial, but it is not. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" is not to be understood in the sense of criminal law doctrine as pertaining to a certain set of defined crimes. High crimes and misdemeanors denotes a rather nebulous category of behaviors that are unbecoming of the executive power. The verdict rendered is also not of a criminal nature. Criminal law sanctions punishment, the inflicting of suffering on the person convicted. The aim of impeachment is not to punish, it is to remove from office because the person concerned is considered to behave inappropriately, or overstepping the boundaries of his powers. Since there is no punishment in play there is no need for the strict legal protection for suspects under criminal trials such as the lex scripta and lex certa requirements. The same reason actually why Trump is not just by an impartial judge or jury but by the inherently partisan members of the house and senate.
I never equated the impeachment with a criminal trial, only with a show trial in a kangaroo court. I understand how impeachment works. My point is that the oath of office requires Congressmen to support and defend the constitution of the United States. So why wouldn’t Congress, those who swear an oath to defend and support the constitution, defend and support the rights of the president instead of violating them?
Instead they invent a nonsensical “high crime” by attempting to criminalize, contra the first amendment, Trump’s speech. Had Trump said something racist or anti-American it might be deemed inappropriate, worthy of impeachment, but he said nothing that violates the bounds of polite discourse, let alone something that rises to the level of high crime and misdemeanor.
But what makes you think the President has such a right? If the president incites a mob to 'march on the capital' and if his personal lawyer utters statements like 'trial by combat', the president is not doing a proper job, i.e., behaving as the president should and accepting the outcome of the democratic process. He should not, express or implied, either by himself or by those he employs, incite his supporters to violence. That is not what a godo president should do. Having a certain right does not reason not mean one is exempt from the consequences of exercising it, in this case, becoming impeached.
Quoting NOS4A2
Here you go again. It is not even necessary to criminalize his speech. His speech need not be criminal just unqorthy of or unbefitting of the presidential office. I do not see why you would accept 'un-american' as a reason for impeachment and not first amendment protected but you do consider undermining democracy, by the president, to be so protected. I can only conclude you do not find undermining democracy un-american.
Quoting NOS4A2 And why do you think this simple unqualified opinion of yours is correct? Many do find it impeachment worthy and have actually moved towards impeachment. They have seen something different than you did. Now why would we accept your take on 'polite discourse' and not theirs?
His speech is not considered incitement by any American law, state or otherwise. So why would they keep claiming that he incited violence? Same thing with the trite phrase “undermining democracy”. These violations are made up whole cloth, inventions, fantasies, inapplicable to any set of rules or codes of conduct, legal or otherwise, and apparently only the president can be guilty of them. This is arbitrary persecution.
It's not a violation of anything save for the whims and fantasies of the opposition. They might as well impeach him for being a shade of orange. The constitution is not irrelevant when it comes to those who swear an oath to support and defend it.
...Until it would be an Ocazio-Cortez using exactly similar rhetoric talking to the BLM or some Black block.
Then it's TOTALLY DIFFERENT!!! :grin:
It would be nice if they applied their arbitrary standards to everyone. But convicting opponents of that which they are themselves guilty seems to be the going rate.
They can only impeached and removed for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
What is meant by “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” isn’t clear, although it certainly can’t be equated with crime in the normal sense of the word, so there’s some degree of freedom there.
And in Sudan girls can marry at age 10. That doesn't mean it is right or that these girls' rights are not violated. No one is saying that Congress cannot impeach someone for whatever they like. My argument is that they shouldn't.
Looking into it more, as per Chief Justice Marshall’s ruling in 1807, technical language in the Constitution should be understood to mean what it meant in British law at the time, where “high crimes and misdemeanours” included such things as “misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, etc.”[sup]1[/sup] It’s generally understood to refer to misconduct, so it’s quite open.
[sup]1[/sup] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
It would be nice if you applied your arbitrary standards to everyone.
But I guess Americans look at an event and then decide if their role is either to be the defense attorney or the prosecutor based on their political tribe. And naturally deny this and say that they objectively judge what has happened.
Trump has stated multiple times that he lost the election due to fraud, a punishable crime.
Trump has not prosecuted anyone for that.
Or established that to be the case, which would be a prerequisite for prosecution.
Trump has a legal apparatus at his fingertips and resources to thoroughly investigate.
I guess simply lying may not be a high crime/misdemeanor.
Yes. Put NOS in post-war Germany and he would have been equivocating about Hitler for years. Must be like playing whack-a-mole for bad apologetics.
But of course it's YOU who are the brainwashed one. :lol:
Yes. Like incitement, which is what Trump did -- in reality. Of which we know you're allergic.
You mean seeing a bunch of Trump supporters, incited by Trump, sacking the Capitol building? Or watching degenerates like you equivocate about it?
I agree.
There's still the matter of the false pretense for you to come to grips with. This is the claim that the election was fraudulently stolen. It is precisely this claim, and nothing else, which incited the violence. And, it was the president who keep repeating this claim over and over again, countless times.
So, are you ready to demonstrate either that it was not this claim, made by the president, which incited the violence, or, that the claim was not a false pretense? Until you do, you're just blowing smoke, and the president is obviously guilty of inciting the violence.
You have to separate the President inspiring an insurrection from him inciting one. I don't think his rally speech is solid evidence. The insurrectionists turned up armed and prepared. People had ordered weaponry and armour online for the event, and had organised on platforms like WhatsApp and Parler.
That's a mighty fine line to draw, between "incite" and "inspire". The inciteful, or inspirational (however you want to say it) activity was the false pretense of a stolen election. And that had been going on for months, so there was preparations made for the event. The event was carried out under the false pretense of a stolen election, a false pretense which the president perpetrated, propagated, and perpetuated.
Not at all. If I incite someone, that's a teleological action on my part, irrespective of its consequences. If I inspire someone, that's an interpretation on their part.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, and I think that'll have to be the crux of the matter: Did Donald do what Donald did in order to set up a violent insurrection by his supporters in the Capitol? And the answer ought to be that this cannot be established, further is unlikely to be the case.
Trump thrives on attention and adoration. He lives for it. He's a moron and a narcissist, which 100% explains his actions. He lost an election to a corpse, so he has to rationalise that both for himself and his millions of cult followers. So naturally it was a fraudulent election.
The impeachment is floating a very different version of Trump, one who is blessed with understanding of others and the cunning to use this to deliberately guide his mob into violent insurrection without ever explicitly stating that this is what he wants: Trump as master manipulator, shadowy Bond villain, astute strategist and a man of subtle means. That isn't Trump. He has none of those qualities. And yet if we wish to convict him on the impeachment charges, in the absence of an overt call to arms, we have to pretend that is what Trump is.
Incitement is what Rudy did: "trial by combat".
I think that's a false representation. There is nothing intrinsic to the concept of "incite", which necessitates that the person who incites must intend the specific action which is incited. If we say that the person who incites must intend some action, in a general sense, by those incited, then Trump is guilty of inciting, because he clearly intended for his followers to take action, in the form of some sort of protestation.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In a criminal trial, it is not necessary to establish that the actual outcome was the one intended by the perpetrator. Therefore it is not necessary to demonstrate that the specific intent of the Donald was violent insurrection. All that is necessary is to show criminal intent. And in some cases this is not even necessary, as ignorance is no excuse. His use of false pretense in an attempt to get what is not rightfully his (the presidency), is criminal intent. And, it is this criminal intent which led to the violent uprising. Therefore the Donald may be held criminally responsible.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Neither way that you represent him, ignorant, or knowing, can absolve him from his crimes. Criminal law is designed so that ignorance cannot be used as a defense, because this would allow the criminal who is a proficient liar to walk free, under the pretense of ignorance. We know he's a great pretender, and the chameleon is not necessarily intelligent, so this distinction is just a distraction.
By the way, Rudy was hired by Trump (regardless of whether he pays him), so there's another argument required to separate his actions in this matter, from Trump's responsibility.
If he sincerely believed that certain states manipulated results against him, as he professes, then he files his legal application, as he has done. However, once those avenues have been exhausted, as they have been, any decent leader would have acknowledged the loss, congratulated the winner while extolling the virtues of the system. By refusing to accept, from multiple sources, the election loss, and the subsequent bad-mouthing of the American Democratic system, Trump has effectively, and fundamentally, attacked American democracy at it's core. The standing American President has essentially publicly announced that he does not believe in American Democracy. He then voiced his opinion loud enough to have his followers/supporters attempt to forcibly change the election result. This is the stuff I expect of forming nations. It is astounding to see it in the US.
I hope it is sorted out with a minimal life loss.
Seems pretty consistent with the dictionary definition to me:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But protest is not insurrection.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Showing criminal intent is showing intent to commit that crime. The crime in question is incitement of insurrection, not whipping up a protest. If you cannot show intent to invite insurrection, you cannot ethically convict.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Ignorance of the law is no defense because it is a national's responsibility to know the laws of his or her country. But ignorance that one's actions would lead to someone else being inspired to commit crimes is a perfectly reasonable defense, and the one Trump's people will employ. "How could he know that calling for a march to support the objectors would lead to a violent insurrection?"
Indeed, how could he? Because that was his plan all along? Yeah right. Because he should have thought of it and taken it seriously as a possible consequence? If it can be shown that the outcome was a likely one, maybe. Problem there is if you go down that route you'll have genuine first amendment violations. You shouldn't start protests against racist, murderous police because a riot is a likely consequence.
You are simply ignoring the concept of "criminal negligence".
Quoting Kenosha Kid
OED, incite: "urge or stir up". Where is there a mention of the need to intend the specific action resulting from the urging or stirring up?
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Again, to "incite" does not require that the specific outcome is intended by the one who incites. This is due to the nature of inciting in general. The person inciting cannot be fully aware of the effect that the incitation will have. Inciting is by nature an unpredictable thing to do. But such ignorance of the possible outcome is not an acceptable defense in a criminal trial.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
If the person's actions are inciteful, and are criminal, as I have demonstrated through the concept of false pretenses, then ignorance of the final outcome is not "a perfectly reasonable defense" against the charge of inciting, regardless of the seriousness of that final outcome.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
You don't seem to understand, that to be guilty of a specific crime, the person need not have intended the particular outcome which is described by the specific charge. This is known as "criminal negligence".
Quoting Kenosha Kid
There is no need to show that the outcome was a likely one. The outcome could be completely accidental, unforeseeable, and even improbable, as is often the case in manslaughter for example. That the consequences were unforeseen, or even unforeseeable, does not absolve one from criminal responsibility for the consequences of one's criminal acts.
Your “false pretense” test for incitement is a made up one.
His words do not rise to the level of incitement in American law, and are in fact completely contrary to the constitution. Therefore he is not guilty of incitement according to any official standard beyond his political opponent’s fantasies. Congress is guilty of violating its oath.
At zero point did he tell rally-goers to commit violence or break the law.
You’re blowing smoke.
Says the guys who's obviously smoking some serious shit.
Now body armour is a reimbursable purchase for Congres members. Last time I remember members of a Parliament having body armour and being armed was just before the Civil War broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
And NOS, perhaps here it would be useful to widen the focus from just one speech to get the picture, if you would (and not stay high on Trump all the time). Just look at the Trump diehards like "QAnon Lauren" among others.
No, it came to my mind too, but I just don't think you can negligently incite an insurrection. You can negligently kill someone or damage their property, but the concept of accidentally starting a coup and being held culpable for it is a non-starter.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The need is in the impeachment article. Trump definitely stirred up division, paranoia, resentment, a false sense of injustice. Just not an insurrection in particular, at least based on what I know. I think it would be a struggle even to demonstrated that he incited a riot. Caused one, yes, but incitement is active.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And that's the thing: there is nothing to which incitement of insurrection is the equivalent of that manslaughter is to murder.
I also just don't think this is something we would want to generalise. Trump is a special case and it feels like it's worth taking him down if possible. But I can see Trump's conviction, if he is convicted, being used by the right as an excuse to persecute organisers of peaceful protests should a riot break out. The same sorts of arguments you're using against Trump would apply.
If Trump is to blame for the expressions and acts of others, who should I blame for the expressions and actions of ssu? I’d love to know who possesses enough magical powers to control your tongue and motor cortex.
how isn’t it? shouldn’t the president be held to a higher standard? you’re a leader of a country versus an organization..
I agree, Trump is guilty of inciting insurrection.
But his supporters will not be convinced of this by the text of his speech to the mob...
Well one can incite violence irrespective of the criminal difference for a crime names 'inciting violence' is fulfilled. Het is not charged with the crime 'inciting violence' he is being charged with misconduct, namely the inciting of violence. For good reasons the criminal law restricts its ability to punish to certain very strictly described behaviours. That does not mean that behavior that falls outside of its scope is automatically ' right'. Especially a president must know that his words carry weight. If he says " March on the capitol to give our republican allies the encouragement they need", it is A. not likely he meant that literally, i.e. his followers singing a round of Kumbaya together and B. if he did mean it literally why then did he not urge his followers immediately to stop storming and start singing? Only the most naive among us, or those pretending to be naive would take the president's words literally.
He is not being prosecuted, he is being impeached. And indeed certain roles makes one more liable to prosecution, even in the criminal law sense. That is known as ' garantenstellung' in German. From someone trained with firerarms you may expect to shoot at the legsin self defense, whereas an ordinary citizen might indeed beexcused when shooting an assailant in the chest. There is nothing odd about it. Especially a president who has bred a following of devoted citziens a number of whom who are known to be violent, should choose his words more carefully than indeed Joe Blow.
Trump at the time of the riot was President of the United States. So his words obviously have the power to influence others. When he said 'go there and fight like hell' and 'we cannot take the country back through weakness', his many followers took that as a call to arms and acted accordingly. And he'll never live it down.
Quoting Tobias
Trump was charged with:
[quote=Wikipedia]"incitement of insurrection" in urging his supporters to march on the Capitol building. The article stated that Trump had committed high crimes and misdemeanors by making a number of statements that "encouraged–and foreseeably resulted in–lawless action" that interfered with Congress' constitutional duty to certify the election and stated that Trump "threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government," doing so in a way that rendered him "a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution" if he were allowed to complete his term.[/quote]
Yeah... seems to me not out of the bounds of the reasonable. The actual charge is high crimes and misdemeanors, which is a legal catch all term as explained above. The incitement of insurrection is the species of it, but not the same thing as the criminal law definition of the crime. That would actually punished by a heft jail time I reckon.
Remember where all this started: demonstrably untrue claims about voter fraud and a stolen election. That rhetoric alone should be impeachable.
Yes, nothing to see here. Just another House Republican terrorist.
Btw, what level of a fucking mind votes for this piece of human garbage?
:up: Defence of Trump is just a continuation of the fascist propaganda that led us to this. Response should be full force.
The context is verbal defence, lies, rhetoric etc,
Quoting Xtrix
so I'm talking about verbal force in response.
Understand that your fellow citizens have been lied to and fallen to those lies, but that they still are your fellow citizens. The worst thing is to fall into thinking that this is the 'new normal'.
They're not my fellow citizens.
Quoting Baden
Milquetoast, feeble?
Well, those who broke the law should be dealt by the justice system. Those who incited them should be put to trial too. Those that believed the lies, but haven't broken the law, should be left alone.
You see, if those who were in the past your fellow citizens aren't anymore, then likely you see them as an enemy of some sort. That's the first step to dehumanize other people and prepare the way to a genuine civil war. Don't think that it's impossible.
I’m not going to bother asking for the specifics on how one is able to compel another adult to criminal action by speaking of peaceful action. What I will repeat is that their version of “incitement” is no standard and is contrary to the constitution, which they have sworn a duty to support and defend. In America this is called “free speech”, and it applies to everyone equally. If their version of “incitement” is not a standard used by any authority in the land, it is arbitrary, made up, and also, selectively applied.
It sets a dangerous precedent to impeach a politician—or anyone—for advocating the peaceful exercising of their constitutional rights.
Again, no one is saying Congress doesn’t have the power to do this, or that they cannot set the rules and make up the high crimes as the go along. So repeating that is no argument.
I meant I'm not American, so they're not my fellow citizens.
Yeah, definitely peaceful. Except for the sacking of the Capitol, which Trump incited.
Go gaslight somewhere else.
And don't forget when Giuliani told the rioters to engage in "trial by combat" against lawmakers, he meant "hand out candies". Just a big misunderstanding, really.
So, what's that prove? "Incite" does not mean 'told them to do it'. Nor does "incite" imply 'conspired with'. Your arguments are simply irrelevant. Under any reasonable understand of "incite", coupled with a reasonable understanding of Trump's actions, it's very evident that he's guilty of inciting that violence.
Then I don't think you understand the concept of "criminal negligence". The issue, is whether Trump's actions are contributive to the insurrection, as inciteful. If you understand the nature of criminal negligence you will see that for a person in the position of political influence, like the president, inciting an insurrection is the very type of thing which one could negligently do.
Here's Wikipedia:
[quote=Wikipedia on Criminal Negligence] The distinction between recklessness and criminal negligence lies in the presence or absence of foresight as to the prohibited consequences. Recklessness is usually described as a "malfeasance" where the defendant knowingly exposes another to the risk of injury. The fault lies in being willing to run the risk. But criminal negligence is a "misfeasance" or "nonfeasance" (see omission), where the fault lies in the failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest. In some cases this failure can rise to the level of willful blindness, where the individual intentionally avoids adverting to the reality of a situation. (In the United States, there may sometimes be a slightly different interpretation for willful blindness.) The degree of culpability is determined by applying a reasonable-person standard. Criminal negligence becomes "gross" when the failure to foresee involves a "wanton disregard for human life" (see the definitions of corporate manslaughter and in many common law jurisdictions of gross negligence manslaughter).[/quote]
I would say that Trump's criminal negligence clearly obtains to the level of "gross", as defined above.
It’s not irrelevant according to the constitution of the United States of America. Representatives swore an oath to support and defend the constitution, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. These lawmakers are impeaching their political opponent for a “high crime” they just invented. They’re setting a very dangerous precedent.
If you want to argue that speakers who neither practice nor preach violence can be held responsible for the violent conduct of others, try to incite me to agree with you just to see how far you can get.
That's 2016 already. "In the good old days this doesn't happen because they used to treat them very, very rough. ... We've become weak."
6 January 2021: "And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."
Yeah. Nothing to see here. :roll:
EDIT: add "trial by combat" and we're done. It's not as if Rudy, as Trump's lawyer and representing his views up there, is to be seen separate from Trump all of a sudden. The guy had his tongue up Trump's ass for years.
His real supporters are convinced.
A Common Line Keeps Emerging From Capitol Rioters: Trump Asked Us To Be Here
Imagine Trump were stupid enough to listen to this guy.
[Criminal action must be] and [Trump administration from the] respectively.
I'm guessing.
I guess the question is how much honest delusion we credit Trump with. If someone sees a possible consequence of their actions, but simply doesn't care whether or not it happens, that is usually sufficient to establish intent.
It's irrelevant to the question of whether President Trump is guilty of inciting insurrection through criminal negligence. If you want to argue that this is a crime which the lawmakers "just invented", that's really irrelevant as well. Inventing crimes is what "lawmakers" do, so they're just doing their jobs. We live in a changing world, with the development of social media, and laws need to be invented to keep up with the capacity to commit new crimes. In no way does finding Trump guilty of inciting insurrection through criminal negligence violate the constitution. Now you've just resorted to outright lying, like your protege.
Quoting NOS4A2
Did you read the Wikipedia quote on criminal negligence which I provided? There is no question that Trump's actions of disputing the election, and various absurd claims concerning the election, were a contributing cause of the insurrection, regardless of the few words you are able to provide in his defence. His "failure to foresee and so allow otherwise avoidable dangers to manifest" makes him guilty of criminal negligence, at the very least. The question now is not whether or not he is guilty, it is a question of the extent of his culpability. So, we must apply a "reasonable-person standard". And since there was much discussion and speculation, prior to the violence, that Trump's actions could very well lead to violent uprising, we can conclude that a reasonable person would have foreseen the danger, and Trump can be held accountable for a high degree of culpability.
Not many guys going to Trump nowdays.
Besides, Trump has got the people around him who he wanted and who he deserves.
Quoting NOS4A2
I wish you ha bothered because it is fairly easy and I can show you by way of an example:
"Hey boss, what we supposed to do with that broad that keeps steelin our stash and keeps snitchin' on us to them cops"? You know what to do Antonio, make sure she sleeps".
What do you think 'to sleep' means here?
Quoting NOS4A2
I love it when people keep repeating assertions without an argument. Firstly there is no "standard" for incitement as if there is a specific subset of words with which one might incite and others with which one might not. Something like incitement, just like insult or defamation is by necessity context dependent. Of course were it a criminal trial the bar for words to reach the level of incitement is higher, due to the restraint with which criminal law must be employed, This is impeachment and not criminal law. Secondly I have explained to you how impeachment works. ' High crimes and misdemeanors' is an open category. We are not dealing with criminal law, we are dealing here with constitutional law. I do not not know if it is often employed in constitutional law, but in private law and even sometimes in criinal law the 'reasonable person standard" is used. To come back to my example above, "let her sleep" might come down to aiding and abetting murder (or to construe some sort of conspiracy if that is not feasible) because of the context. Any reasonable person would know what the words mean.
Now let's apply the reasonable person standard, tried and tested in US law, to this situation. "March on to the capitol to give the encouragement they need" might in itself not be enough. However his aides urged for trial by combat the same day and consider Wayfarer's examples:
Quoting Wayfarer
Add to this he did not tell his followers to back off immediately. Could he have known his leads to the endangerment of government officials in session? He most certainly could. Therefore his impeachment is justified.
Quoting NOS4A2
It would be if that is what he did. And even then, for an average citizen to call for protest is ok. For a president to do this and challenge an election certified by officials and the judiciary alike which he lost, is altogether different. I would argue actually that even there has not been a storming of the capitol his words merit impeachment.
Quoting NOS4A2
No it does not, it is always subject to time and place constraints. If I start yelling obscenities at Trump during his rally and he cannot continue because of my verbal abuse I am forcibly removed.
Quoting NOS4A2
You just saying so does not make it so. Actually I get visions of this baboon just clapping his hands together and uttering constitution, constitution in a nigh unintelligible fashion. No matter how often you say it is against the constitution, that does not make it so.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/thoroughly-respectable-rioters/617644/
"They were business owners, CEOs, state legislators, police officers, active and retired service members, real-estate brokers, stay-at-home dads, and, I assume, some Proud Boys. The mob that breached the Capitol last week at President Donald Trump’s exhortation, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, was full of what you might call “respectable people.”
The notion that political violence simply emerges out of economic desperation, rather than ideology, is comforting. But it’s false. Throughout American history, political violence has often been guided, initiated, and perpetrated by respectable people from educated middle- and upper-class backgrounds. The belief that only impoverished people engage in political violence—particularly right-wing political violence—is a misconception often cultivated by the very elites who benefit from that violence.
The members of the mob that attacked the Capitol and beat a police officer to death last week were not desperate. They were there because they believed they had been unjustly stripped of their inviolable right to rule. They believed that not only because of the third-generation real-estate tycoon who incited them, but also because of the wealthy Ivy Leaguers who encouraged them to think that the election had been stolen."
Or in video form for those with short attention spans:
Trump supporters live in Opposite Land. Shamelessly. So if Trump is impeached for violating the constitution, YOU’RE violating the constitution. If Trump says something racist, and you call him such, YOU’RE a racist. Etc. And of course “both sides” deserve equal consideration.
It’s as predictable as it is childish. Pure tribalism.
One of the House freshman (Green) has already drawn up impeachment papers for Biden. I suppose NOS and other deluded Trump cultists will say this is perfectly constitutional.
If we were to leave it up to them, nothing will happen until we’re all dead. No consequences for Trump, no action needed on climate change, no need for police reform, no such thing as racism, etc. All that’s relevant is giving away as much as possible to the plutocracy. Cut their taxes, get rid of any regulation, privatize everything — all while screaming about “small government.” Capitalistic nihilism at its finest.
Again I repeat: these people can’t die off quickly enough. I just hope they don’t bring the entire human species down with them, which is their goal.
"Criminal negligence" is completely irrelevant. It is not mentioned in any articles of impeachment. The article of impeachment is "incitement of insurrection".
Let's use real quotes. For instance, if one reads Trump's speech he can see that Trump uses the word "fight" in a figurative manner throughout. For example:
"We have great ones, Jim Jordan, and some of these guys. They’re out there fighting the House. Guys are fighting, but it’s incredible."
Does a reasonable person conclude that Trump thinks Jim Jordan is actually getting in fist fights on the House floor?
Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer, and we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us.
Does a reasonable person conclude that Trump believes Republicans are boxing in the house?
But it used to be that they’d argue with me, I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight. I’d fight, they’d fight. Boop-boop. You’d believe me, you’d believe them. Somebody comes out. They had their point of view, I had my point of view.
Does a reasonable person conclude that Trump is talking about fist fighting with the press?
Yet the following phrase is used in the articles of impeachment as evidence Trump incited insurrection:
"We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore"
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6
Does this pass the reasonable person test?
Because reasonable people such as yourself take his use of the word "fight" to mean actual fights, actual trial by combat, I think the "reasonable person standard" does not apply here.
Again, the standard for incitement to violence in law is "immanent lawless action". Congress uses the similar phrase "lawless action" in the articles (minus the word "immanent") hinting that they are in fact alluding to the Supreme court standard "immanent lawless action". I'm not sure why they leave out a very important part of Supreme court precedent, but my guess is that it is a specious attempt to tie much earlier speech to later violence—"before this therefor because of this" nonsense.
As for the claim that his words matter more than anyone else's therefor he should not figuratively use the word "fight" in case someone takes it to mean something else, I completely disagree.
It wouldn't be a miscarriage of truth to admit that Trump spent almost an entire year rabble-rousing and spreading false rumours about voter fraud in a way that both undermined American democracy and also fuelled violent unrest. There's no need for quote mining or trying to cite legal precedent; "high crimes and misdemeanours" is so vague that it could refer to anything, and the way Trump pointed a rally/protest/whatever at the capitol building during electoral proceedings can certainly pass for both.
Regarding the "incitement of insurrection" charge, if the senators believe what happened at the capitol can be called an insurrection, and if they believe Trump incited it to some or any degree, then they could call it a high crime and impeach him for it, and it would be just execution of the US constitution.
Well, he uses the words ' fight' in those instances figuratively perhaps. As I would argue he does. However he is not indicted for those. He is indicted for speech acts which might well have lead to the storming of the Capitol and him tellingly refraining from condemning the action. It is rather pointless to debate what times Trump used ' fight' figuratively sometimes, the question is could a reasonable person predict that his words spoken there and than lead to violence and than my answer would be yes. Did he mind the violence? Well there are indications he did not otherwise he would have spoken out immediately against it instead of watching television, right? Did Trump's incitement to walk to Washington helped creating an insurrection? Yes. Is that unbecoming of a president? Yes. Does it amount to high crimes and misdemeanors? Yes. Is an impeachment therefore constitution? Yes.
Quoting NOS4A2
In law the devil is in the details. What doe imminent mean? Immediately? Well, not very likely. It would narrow the definition of crime to the point of redundancy. Incitement takes some time to foment the necessary will in those incited. I might incite to violently and openly to overthrow the government and the coup d'etat happens a couple of days later after., because it needed some time to prepare Was that imminent? depends on your interpretation of the word. This is called the open texture of law. There is some necessary interpretation going on in every legal definition.
So maybe they want to avoid the bickering about the word ' imminent' . You might find it problematic, I do not. Again, impeachment is not a criminal trial, so they do not need to stick to definitions of the criminal law. What they need to prove is that the president acted in ways contrary to how a president should behave. Undermining democracy does not seem to fall out of that category. I believe Nixon was inter alia impeached for contempt of congress. That is not a criminal offence and actually inherently vague.
Right, and we all know that Trump is guilty, whether he intended to incite insurrection or not, because even if he did not intend to incite insurrection, the insurrection occurred, and he is guilty of inciting that insurrection through the concept of criminal negligence, regardless of his intent.
Quoting StreetlightX
Theft may be prevented with violence in the libertarian code of ethics.
Capitol insurrectionists are begging for pardons from Trump. Quandary: these are die-hard Trump fanatics, a dying breed, and Trump thrives on that sort of insane adoration; on the other hand, pardoning the insurrectionists is definitely comforting them, and will look bad in his impeachment trial.
Self-adoration or self-preservation: which will the pussy-grabber choose?
He's way too much of a pussy (heh) to take such a risk. So I'll vote self-preservation.
He usually does, eventually. His principles last about as long as their utility, maybe a bit longer. (Just recalling how contrite-ish he was about Megyn Kelly calling him a misogynistic when he needed Fox approval.) He only has a few days to decide though which, while for an average human is a lot, for him can pass like a fleeting moment during one of his sulks.
No way, he only pardons his loyal cronies.
Yes, the insurrectionists might have a little too much independent initiative for his liking.
It would be funny if he did pardon them, though.
"I cannot excuse the violent actions taken by those who invaded the Capitol."
"But you did."
The real smoking gun about prior planning seems to be Lauren Boebert, a congressperson who gave a tour of the Capitol to many of the insurrectionists on the 5th, who tweeted "today is 1776" the morning of the 6th before the insurrection began, and who was live-tweeting the movements of congresspeople within the Capitol during the insurrection.
It seems extremely unlikely that Trump was completely unconnected to what is looking like a clearly planned event that was both pursuing a cause in his name and triggered by a speech he gave.
Yeah, that's the twist in the tale. I had thought the insurrection well planned but just between nutters on right-wing social media and messaging platforms. But an inside job immediately raises the question of who else was involved in the planning.
Still... It remains to be proven that Trump was involved in that planning.
she's one of the q-anon nutjobs. Magnetically attracted to Dear Leader. Her comms director just walked.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
It's a matter of executive responsibility.
What???
Are you now questioning if people can or cannot be incited? Oh boy.
Or wait a minute, did the second impeachment of Trump happen for the reason that Trump possessed magical powers to control peoples tongue and motor cortex? I think I missed that!
Politicians have and will contest the election results and express doubt about the winner, as is their right. Elizabeth Warren, Hilary Clinton, Al Gore, Stacy Abrahms have all done it. Hell, we had to put up with the nonsense of Russian collusion for years, and people like Jimmy Carter saying Trump is illegitimate. That's why I treat these claims with utter suspicion. No amount of glittering generalities such as "undermining our democracy" are persuasive, even as propaganda. The ability to contest election results, to express doubt, and to share with others those beliefs is a feature of democracy. Criminalizing and censoring that doubt is undemocratic.
Yes, Congress can invent "high crimes and misdemeanors" at their whim and fancy and impeach their opponents for it while absolving themselves of the same crime. They have already done it. My contention is that it is wrong and sets a dangerous precedent.
Louis Gomert recently quoted Nancy Pelosi talking about "uprisings" and calling Trump an "enemy of the state" on the House floor. Journalists were actually complaining that he was inciting violence. This is peak clown world. These nutters have lost their minds.
Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it
That said, as if that larping 'organic food' soy fuck was ever gonna hurt anyone.
Apart from the cop that blue lives matter crowd beat to death with American flags.
Quoting NOS4A2
The Mueller report was damning and would have been the basis for impeachment in any other administration. The problem was, Mueller left it up to Congress to act on the findings of obstruction, and Congress declined to act, because they were so thoroughly bullied and intimidated by Trump.
*hrmph*
Two variations of Clarke's Laws come to mind:
[i]Any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.[/i]
Jesus, no, nobody can be that dumb. I'd sooner think that what he does is satire than think anybody could actually mean the stuff he says. The whole thing looks like the theatre of the absurd.
Well there is a long tradition of thought in philosophy that holds, essentially, that "evil is reducible to ignorance", i.e. nobody knowingly does bad things, everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, and is only incorrect about what the right thing to do actually is.
Of course this comes up all the time, not least in court. I someone tells me that they genuinely thought the passport they bought from the guy at the street corner for 200 dollars was a genuine, state-issued document, I'm not going to believe them. They'd need to show some kind of medical document with a diagnosis that makes such a mistake remotely plausible.
I think ultimately there is a normative element at work here. There is a level of basic competence that's simply ascribed to everybody, and if you want to argue that you lack this basic competence, you will have to provide the evidence. A reversal of the presumption of innocence, if you will.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm sympathetic to this position, though I'd say we'd have to differentiate between ignorance about the facts and a false moral philosophy. You can be perfectly cognizant of the facts but adopt the moral position that all live is struggle between the weak and the strong and that might makes right.
Quoting Wayfarer
Case example of Trump supporters being in an alternate reality.
But of course, they just see here that anti-Trumpers are attacking Trump and simply don't look at the facts objectively. Did the worst accusations I heard be found to be true by the Mueller report? No, but enough was found as Wayfarer states. And let's remember that the Mueller probe was of Trump's own making. Had Trump just shut up and remain calm, there wouldn't have been a Mueller probe in the first place and the FBI would have simply stated that "Yes, Russians were active in the 2016 elections. Period. Nothing else". And the Democrats would see the FBI director Comey as a Trump stooge (as Trumpsters don't selectively remember the October surprise that Comey gave to Trump with opening the Hillary investigations, which is the way Trumpsters work).
There's the similarity to the repetition of the statement of the elections being fraudulent and stolen clearly visible. And it works as we can see. This polarization will just continue.
I often think something similar but different... I do things that I know are wrong, but they're little things, such speed a little to make a long journey less arduous. I'm not ignorant of the law or the good reasons for it, rather I'm cogniscent of what I can get away with and that the benefit to self appears to me to outweigh the risk to society.
There's an interesting quirk of human psychology that makes us think that if we did it before we'll do it again. If, say, there was a 1 in 10 chance of being caught speeding on a particular road, that might for some time put me off speeding, but should I get away with it once, I'll be more likely to think I'll get away with it again, even though patently the more I do it, the larger my overall probability of being caught.
That particular defendent has had that accusation struck. That does not make the video evidence of the crowd a mass hallucination.
Sounds like an application of the representativeness heuristic. We guess probabilities based on how easy we can come up of an example of a case. Reminds me of that other bias where we're more likely to believe stories that have more details added to them even though technically all those details make the story less likely to be true.
It's too bad politicians seem to rarely consult criminologists (or don't care) when drafting new laws, because they'd tell them that constantly increasing the penalties for stuff people don't think they'll get caught for won't work.
That's the one! Thanks!
I just want to say that I feel stupefied, flabbergasted, stumped by Trump and his supporters.
I just don't get it.
I don't understand how someone can really mean those things he says, and yet get so far in life and politics. I keep thinking that what he does is all a carefully thought out strategy.
It's all just beyond, way beyond my scope.
His supporters, before they were his supporters, liked what they saw, which was a vicious, racist, misogynistic, nationalistic, ablist, xenophobic, illiterate hatemonger or, as they'd previously referred to that figure in their life, "Dad".
The Trump Mob In Their Own Words (5m:55s; The Bulwark; Jan 13, 2021)
... but those people are reciting the conspiracy theories.
Illegal is not the same thing as wrong, and that sounds like you’re reasonable that it’s sometimes okay, not wrong, to break the law a little.
I admit that I was somewhat taken in by this myth myself. But I do not think the myth is Pro-Trump. Facts, even incorrect facts, do not have ideology all by themselves.
It is also not quite what has been argued by Democratic Socialists like myself, who see the general lack of social safety nets and dearth of Economic opportunities in America as a factor in the rise of Trump. Historically there are real parallels between the current era and past eras where Right Wing politics succeeded. Honestly, I feel squeezed on three sides -- the same old crap from the Right, postmodern identity politics from supposed "allies" who don't realize they are corporate stooges, and utopian dreams from the Revolutionary Socialists.
Of course it is. It is designed to absolve Trump and co. from all responsibility for the riots.
Ah, the squeeze of political polarization!
Choose your side and pick up the flag given to you and march along, Garth.
"[Who] thinks that Trumpists “believe” in the words of Trump in a literal sense? In the book Les Grecs ont-ils cru à leurs mythes? (Did the Greeks believe in their myths?), Paul Veyne questions the meaning of “belief.” His conclusion is that the force of mythology does not consist in believing a metaphor literally, in forgetting about the brackets before and after the metaphoric enunciation. Mythological belief (like memetic contagion) today similarly enables a sort of pragmatic coherence in the life of “believers.” It gives sense to the world of those who heed such mythology, amidst a world that has lost any sense.
For example, believing Trump’s assertion “I won the election” is not a semiological mistake. Rather, it is a strategy for identitarian self-assertion. When liberals speak of “fake news,” they totally miss the point, because those who share a mythology (or a meme) are not searching for the factual truth, like a social scientist might. Instead, they are consciously or unconsciously using the force of the fake enunciation as an exorcism, as an insult, as a weapon.
The more important question to ask is not why Trump lies, but instead why so many people vote for him in the first place. What are the conditions—economic, political, semiological, and so on—that produce this voting and acting? The solution to the problem is not to impeach the orange man (again), or ban him from Twitter (too late, Mr. Dorsey, too late). Rather, it is to allow people to think and to choose in a way that is not clouded by humiliation and resentment.
The American crisis is not generated by the perverted effects of mass communication. It is generated by the contradictions that emerge from the racist nature of the most violent country of all time".
That certain incorrect facts are propagated and not others is most certainly an 'ideological' effect.
Quoting Garth
As for this - I'd be more forceful. It's not just a lack - as though something just so happens to be missing. There is very much an active campaign, pursued at the level of policy and public consciousness, to maintain those lack of safety nets and economic opportunity. It's not a passive lack. There are forces that actively work against such things. The problem is political before it is economic.
Quoting Garth
Yeah, it's a spiky field to negotiate. But everyone's doing it. You get better and more comfortable with the dance after a while.
M I Finley argues that they did believe the Homeric account, which is kind of like the psyche turned inside out. Human motivation is cast across the cosmos instead of stuffed in people's heads.
Quoting StreetlightX
A lot of them do.
Well, perhaps not of all time. The Assyrians were an extremely violent people/country/empire, if the inscriptions attributed to Ashurbanipal are any indication, and gloried in the violence they inflicted.
But we're a violent bunch, no doubt about it. I think the violence is encouraged through communication technology, though. Here I'm not referring to "Big Tech" which seems to be the latest boogeyman, but instead to the fact that people may instantly communicate with, encourage and incite others of like-minds. That was harder to do in the past, and a technology which facilitates immediate response facilitates emotional reaction.
I was thinking about this in relation to the spread of American made religions and sects to other parts of the world.
There are 65,000 Seventh Day Adventists in Australia. It's popular among aboriginals because one of the American evangelists specifically targeted them for conversion.
As a species, we have been travelling trade routes, sitting in oases sharing religious beliefs, for millennia. The internet is isn't introducing something new. It's just speeding things up.
I don't believe I stuttered. The Assyrians did not ring the earth with military bases and conduct violent military campaigns on every continent bar Antartica. And technology is not the problem either. It's simple violent American imperialism carried out by violent American imperialists. And Americans regularly glory in the violence they commit. There's even an globally spanning industry worth billions of dollars a year to celebrate it - Hollywood. And lets not talk about the nuclear disintergration of Japanese civilians hey? Or the domestic genocide of American Indians? Or when not conducting genocide, enabling and supporting it elsewhere? America is a uniquely murderous nation, unmatched by anyone, ever. It has deserved every second of Trump.
Strictly speaking, that was atomic, not nuclear.
Edit, oh, fission bombs are called nuclear. Didn't realize that.
I don't think the internet introduced something new, either, beyond the ease and speed of access to information and ideas and their propagation, regardless of their worth, and the immediacy of participation in global communication by anyone, regardless of their character, ignorance or intelligence, and motives. But I think that ease and speed of access encourages thoughtless and emotive communication. Immediate and limited communication and responses are encouraged. There also seems to be a tendency to communicate without restraint. It's far easier to say something bigoted, inflammatory and malicious in writing.
Someone called the internet "the id with a mouse."
True. The extent of violence is much greater, if not the severity of it, and in light of the examples you give the greater severity of the Assyrians' violence isn't clear, though it may be more personal (more violence was hand-to-hand back then). And violence has been glorified in popular culture here, although I don't think our government has boasted of butchery quite as much and as openly as did the Assyrian kings. Toleration or encouragement of it, though, is another matter.
Someone was perceptive.
The active campaign has been so pervasive and long lasting that it is "invisible". There has been a recent spate of books on housing like EVICTED and THE COLOR OF LAW which reveal how the campaign has worked. The myths (a.k.a. lies) of the ruling class are so deeply embedded, it is practically impossible for many people to question them. So, of course it's your fault if you are broke and living in a ratty building, poorly employed or on welfare, or living under a bridge. You just didn't try hard enough, you lazy worthless son of a bitch.
I think it's true that the size of the US arsenal means the US is potentially the most destructive in history.
In reality, it's probably Europe collectively.
The myth is that the government should supply safety nets, and not the community. Nanny-statists prefer government safety nets because it absolves them from having to create and sustain their own. Advocacy, then, becomes a way of insulating oneself from the poor in ones own community, but at the same time it can only accrue power in the State while they steal it it from the hands of the people. If you believe the State was formed from conquest and coercion rather than a social contract this is not a happy outcome.
Got that right. That's why they're so often contradicted by it.
That the government should supply safety nets, and people not have to depend on private charity, is not a myth--it's a collective choice. The states with the highest standards of living, best education and health outcomes, the best housing, and so forth are "nanny states'. They are at the top of the distribution because "the community" and "the state" overlap, and the common good is tended.
We could go back to 1930 when unemployment and destitution were handled at the local, city level. The amount of aid a city could offer was pitifully small. Imagine how bad Covid-19 would be without federal nanny state action.
Non-profits can and do provide a lot of social services--much of the safety net. The size of the budgets required for Lutheran Social Services or Catholic Charities et al to be effective could not possibly be met with contributions from churches and individuals. A lot of their money comes from government contracts (the nanny state one step removed). Given your loathing of the nanny state, I suppose you are out there haranguing the rich to cough up enough money to keep the private safety net operating.
If it was a choice there would be no punishment for refusing to do it. A better phrase might be “collective coercion”.
No I don’t believe in theft, whether it is legal or not. My conscience forbids me from coercing some to give their wealth to others. I do believe, however, in charity, philanthropy, and willingly helping others in need.
NOS doesn't have to.
He's an expat tucked away safely in welfare-state Canada (if I have got it right), from where it's so pleasant to comment the huge Trump trainwreck that has happened in the US. Just like, uh, people like me from the other side of the Atlantic.
A modern parallel might be the phenomenon where everyone says "I don't believe what I see on the TV and Internet." This is manifestly contradicted by the fact that we get almost all of our information about everything from these two sources.
Even the tropes of fictional TV shows teach us how to think about things. This insidious level of conditioning doesn't typically rise to our conscious awareness.
What do you think of the inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs, especially with respect to material wealth?
~ Washington Post
Good. Having watched more video of the insurrectionists, it's clear they have been mentally poisoned. More gullible and desperate for the most part with some truly mendacious ring-leaders thrown in.
And let this thread go with it.
The same thing MLK was for.
The New Yorker's Luke Mogelson's video is one of the "best" out there I've seen, which captures the moment. We see the Shaman and the gang in the Senate floor. In American fashion they had at least a prayer moment on the senate floor. Have to say that the part where the one sole policeman is trying to convince them to go is bizarre (policeman: "OK, can you please now go...").
But seriously speaking this was an extremely close call for the US.
Had the US President not been the Ultimate Disaster President, but a marginally efficient autocrat with the balls to push through, it would have been totally possible situation to stage and to have a successful autocoup. Just put at the late stage Michael Flynn to be the acting acting secretary of Homeland defense or /and head of the Defence department (or similar whackos), Giuliani as the acting attorney general and into the crucial places with QAnon people. The Democrats would not seen what would have hit them. They simply wouldn't have had the imagination to think that it would be possible in the US, just as the Capitol Police didn't understand what the Trump crowd could do. You see, someone like Flynn would have understood that it's going to be really two possibilities: either go through or it's a life sentence. When suddenly people are put into that kind of situation, choose either power or certain jail or death, they would have to truly committed. The essential crowd rejoicing on the streets would have been there, when the election results would have been sent back and a committee would have been put up to "really look at the fraud".
Biggest issue would have been the armed forces. Trump did use extensively generals (to later fire them or them resigning from their positions), yet Trump never got pro-Trump generals into leadership positions. And it is telling that the armed forces was even now an important actor in this fiasco: they had to come out and say that Biden is the next President and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to say to Nancy Pelosi that the nuclear weapons were safe. Hence the military has been part of the political equation, which actually is terrible.
Now (luckily?) it was the epic fail of Trump. Trump as usual was clueless and didn't understand that he did instigate sedition. Only thing for him was to tweet and watch his television at what his supporters, who he loves so much, were doing.
Quoting Benkei
Oh you think Trump will instantly go away with an impeachment on the way and other court cases? It's over when Ivanka Trump, in order to get money and public commiseration, releases her tell all book about she was sexually abused by her father. That's way down the road. Sorry Benkei, Trumps not past. Only his sudden death would stop the debate about this huge trainwreck that just happened.
This is irrelevant. Trump questioned the election results until the cows came home, as was his right, but then he rabble roused a mob and flung it directly at the capitol building. By compromising the safety of congressmen and senators (or at least contributing to it), he committed a high crime or at least a misdemeanour (even if he was too stupid to realize what he was doing, which is itself a misdemeanour). By doing it during an allegedly important electoral session, he therefore also undermined the process of democracy, unequivocally and unambiguously.
In Trump's own words, the demonstration was designed to sway the hearts and minds of senators (sway them toward unconstitutional de-certification of the election results) through an on-site show of strength.
Quoting NOS4A2
Congress is supposed to invent high-crimes and misdemeanors as necessary. It's by design. Since congress is also elected by the people and sworn to uphold the constitution, it's actually their duty to make decisions about what constitutes an impeachable offence when necessary. It's one of the adversarial setups that is built in to the madisonian government structure you lauded earlier.
What kind of precedent would be set if they did not impeach him? First, it would show that American democracy is a complete joke to the rest of the world, and it would show corrupt American politicians that anything can be gotten away with as long as your are unapologetic and control the senate, including mobilizing street thugs to exert political control, which is what Trump did at the capitol.
Quoting NOS4A2
But I thought that it was Pelosi's right to openly express doubt about the President's loyalties? If it's Trump's right to outright lie about election fraud, then Pelosi is allowed to call him an enemy of the state. That's only fair, don't you think?
All the "it's his right!" and "but what if?" defences that you raise for Trump can also be raised for the nutty dems. I could sit here and feign some moral-esque political belief like: "The congress are elected by the people to exercise their judgment and initiate impeachment proceedings if they honestly believe it is necessary. It is in fact their duty to initiate these proceedings to uphold the constitution, regardless of how much it hurts the feelings of weak-spined ideologues."
Right out of Ayn Rand.
You wouldn’t have wealth we see in the US without a strong nanny state. So I agree— we should get rid of it. I don’t want my tax dollars going to massive corporate subsidies.
But “charity” is the real problem, of course. Forget the 700 billion a year on defense contracts— Those damn welfare queens are the true problem.
What a sick, perverted, warped worldview. Again I repeat: you can’t die off quickly enough.
The violence of America is a reflection of the violence of America, utterly unique in the history of the planet. Dissimulate and what-about and excuse all you want. My point, like MLKs, is simply that the US is the most violent nation the earth has ever seen - and continues, to this day, to remain. You can play twenty questions with someone who is as equally as interested as you in your imperialist murder apologetics.
After 4 whole years of Trump, most of America and its corporate patrons have finally and fully rejected Trump and Trumpism, but I think it took too long to get here...
Some small nucleus of morons are so emotionally invested at this point (small compared to the entirety of America, but still a significant portion of conservatives), that it's unlikely many of them will ever reconcile. The ideological schism within the GOP is cementing itself, with neo-cons and fox on one side (who are willing to leave Trump behind), and the OANN + Newsmax + Qanon idiots on the other side (a big chunk of what used to be politely called "religious conservatives" I think). It's also unclear if OANN and Newsmax can live off Trump going forward...
Now that the GOP itself has basically lost everything, with a permanently fractured base, what will become of it? For how many years will we be hearing that nucleus of idiots say things like "the election was stolen from Trump" as a matter of course? What set of rocks are they going to scurry under given that they are the world's chosen reserve laughing stock? And what sort of fungus are they wont to spawn... More ridiculous internet conspiracy games? Emotionally unstable and potentially violent extremists and extremism? Maybe Trump will just keep holding rallies, and somehow the circus/show will go on?
In short, are political tensions about to escalate, or de-escalate, and in what ways?
Exactly. A thread which acted as nothing but an advertising platform for NOS's brand of sycophancy should never have been allowed on the front page in the first place. Having a thread entirely devoted to what amounts to conflict therapy for a single person's obsession with a former president seems absurd.
:up: Better quarantine the politically diseased to one thread only.
This is probably the most important lesson that America must learn from Trump. The simple fact that after the coup attempt Republicans did not unanimously support impeaching Trump shows just how many people in this country do not really support the system that is in place anymore. It shows how ignorant people are to really believe that it would be better to have totalitarianism than the current system.
Our Democracy literally won't survive. Even if we deal with Trump in the most severe way, the next Republican will be dictator.
On January 19, 2021, the last full day of TR45H's MAGA-junta, c400,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 infection (or related-illnesses) since February 2, 2020. By comparison to published data for seasonal flu casualties in the US, c359,000 Americans have died from influenza during the period of 2010-2020. Any claim that COVID-19 is not deadlier – which it is, at least, 10 times deadlier – than seasonal influenza is either (willfully) ignorant or (ideologically / demogogically) disingenuous. I suspect a strong, criminal case can be made that, either way, TR45H's malignant negligence amounts to, at minimum, mass-murder.
:mask:
Perhaps we can move it to the lounge instead.
Actually by Polydor and Interscope.
That's a good idea. When he's no longer commander-in-chief he'll be impotent, and his psychosis not a significant threat. Talk about him will be idle chatter.
This is the scary thing.
When something like 34% of Americans still support Trump after this debacle, there obviously would have been the support base for an autocoup. Those people who now stormed the Capitol do truly think that the election was stolen, Trump's propaganda machine had worked perfectly on them. The fiercest supporters do live in their alternative reality and in an real autocoup, their victory celebrations would be an essential part of the image for the coup. (It should be mentioned that naturally not all of those who voted for Trump think this way)
Hence to stage an autocoup would have been totally possible: Trump supporters would be even on this Forum repeating a line like: "There was allegations of serious fraud that could not solved before January 6th and hence the current administration continues as an interim government." It simply would be a "special case", not an overthrow of the Constitution. The unthinkable could be the new normal. And then of course those protesting the autocoup would be portrayed as the insurrectionists.
A real coup requires military support, right? I think most coups are done by generals.
The Capitol rioters were prepared to execute Pence and congressmen deemed traitors. They weren't prepared to take over the government.
Not actually. A military coup is different.
Do notice that an autocoup or selfcoup is still a Coup d'état.
It is what has basically happened in Venezuela and in 1992 President Fujimori was successful in this in Peru. The US here follows a long tradition of American countries, actually.
Quoting frank
Naturally they weren't taking over the government. The Government was and still is for a few hours the administration of Trump. They were urged to do what they did by the acting US President. In their view they were defending the Constitution from fraudulent elections, which Trump and his gang have been beaten the drum for a long time.
Yet thanks to the Ultimate Disaster President, things went like this. It took even less time that I suspected from Trump's supporters to go from people Trump loves and "that should now go home" to Trump condemning their action.
Yea, you'd need the military to accomplish that.
Such a petulant child.
But there's the Great Trump "See you later" -ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base!
Please come with other five people! (Remember crowd size?)
If it occurs through mutual contract I can respect it. If it is stolen my blood boils.
What do you think about it?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/abc/status/1349062177529987075?s=21[/tweet]
WTF uprising you are talking? It's not a Civil War with a Bull Run at the start. The timeline I'm looking at is the first term of Biden (if he of old age makes it to 2024) and it will be more of, well, the same. Now it's the post event media frenzy, where the news will minute by minute follow if anything happens in the inauguration or before it. But just have a wider focus.
But if you ask, already just few days from the Capitol storming, another group takes the streets:
Protests are going to be the norm, NOS. For various reasons. The only thing Biden can do to take control of the situation is to succeed in fighting the pandemic.
Surprising.
Biden is scared of his own troops, so a fawning FBI is purging them of anyone who may have ties to militia groups. Perhaps these officials have also been duped by the conspiracy theory that the previous president would use the military to stage some sort of coup, or that there would be some sort of insurrection. In any case, a massive army exists in Washington to ease the fears of an administration duped by the media.
Now the entire capitol is on lockdown, complete with fences and razor wire. This is a far cry from what we saw in the summer, when Washington was actually on fire.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1346951451705270272?s=21[/tweet]
That's a good thing.
I think of those who acquire and retain more than they could possibly need as being similar to gluttons and hoarders ("misers" may be more accurate, though, as hoarders may suffer from mental disease). I see nothing admirable about them, just as I see nothing admirable in gluttony or hoarding. Where resources are limited, those who accumulate them and retain them when they already have more than enough for their comfort and security and that of their families are merely selfish.
I would feel the same way if they were hoarding limited resources, but not necessarily for wealth, which is what I thought we were writing about.
What is wealth but an abundance, a profusion, of possessions and money?
The root of all evil.
:lol:
"Is it Great Again yet? Is it?!" :rofl: (So true ...)
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/mob-was-fed-lies-mitch-mcconnell-accuses-trump-of-provoking-riot-20210120-p56vew.html
Indication of which way the wind is blowing. First time he was impeached - and there's nobody else you can say that about - McConnell was dismissive of the whole thing.
Oh, and also a public acknowledgment from the leadership that Biden won and that the election was not rigged.
Correct sentiment. (Full article behind paywall).
[quote=Rick Wilson] That mob beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher and flagpoles. They stormed the Capitol to seize power and kill Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and others. This isn’t speculation. It’s on hours of video, and in a waterfall of indictments. Mobs seek blood. Trump’s mob sought it that day, and failed.
America is protected by some Providence, be it divine or just the stumbling, ratfuck incompetence of so many of our enemies. The effort to seize the Capitol was a strategic failure and a tactical mess.
Heroic D.C. Police and Capitol Police pushed back the mob and ended the first and let us hope only battle of the Trump Civil War. They protected elected leaders of both parties from assault, violence, and murder.[/quote]
Does not mince words.
The Twats already sold a book to a bunch of Cunts and will build from there, I imagine.
:clap: :up:
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-leaving-office-3m-less-jobs-when-he-entered-worst-record-since-depression-1562737
"President Donald Trump will leave office with 3 million less jobs than when he was inaugurated in 2017, marking the worst presidential job record since the Great Depression. Despite previous claims that he presided over the "greatest economy in the history of our country," Trump's economic legacy was crippled in the last year of his term because of the coronavirus. The jobs report released by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on January 8 shows his employment record will be the worst in modern American history."
Anyway, to the next impending nightmare.
So much for draining the swamp.
Of course, but Trumpsters will never admit that. You could be sitting on a iceberg in the Arctic and they would swear blind you were sunning yourself on the Copacabana. And would probably believe it.
Seems kind of symbolic.
"Facebook not only facilitated organizing for the Jan. 6 event in Washington that culminated in the deadly Capitol riot; it has spent the past year failing to remove extremist activity and election-related conspiracy theories stoked by President Trump that have radicalized a broad swath of the population and led many down a dangerous path.
Throughout 2020, Facebook’s efforts to curb violent activity and disinformation were either too late or ineffective or both. It banned a boogaloo network in June after members of Facebook boogaloo groups were linked to a terrorism plot and murder, but its enforcement of the new policy fell short. Over the summer, Facebook banned militia groups, but it failed to take down the page for a militia event that led to the deadly shooting of two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The company’s new crackdown on the phrase “stop the steal” came only after the mob attack on the Capitol."
https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/capitol-attack-was-months-making-facebook
Trump logic: my mid-pandemic rallies were bigger, so we must have won the election. There were very few people at his farewell speech btw: mostly media, his family and the military he requested.
Fake news, the crowed was HUGE. No ones ever seen a farewell crowd so massive.
I was surprised by some of the choices of music for the event: Journey's Don't Stop Believing, famous for its use in the final episode of The Sopranos (which made it rather apt), and the Village People's YMCA, the use of which I find hard to explain.
It was a beautiful thing.
Continue not invading the Capitol, I imagine.
Speaking of flushing, I guess we won't close the thread considering @StreetlightX's points made earlier, but I hope it just dies along with Trumpism.
Wear your MAGA hat around and find out yourself.
(Btw, did hostility towards Hillary Clinton persist after the 2016 elections among the Trump crowd?)
No wonder he asked everybody to bring five people...
A fitting end. Next phase: the pictures of Trump lawyers going to court.
Well, I think the idea that Trump should be impeached and persecuted after he has already left office is a good indication of what I am speaking of. How else could you justify the years of hysterics without following it to the bitter end? I fear it will continue until the man is in the grave.
I'm curious as to how you will go about signalling your virtue.
Justice for what, Tim?
What crimes?
Obstruction of justice, bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States, campaign finance violations, financial fraud, tax evasion, money laundering...
EDIT: Oh, and the one he's most proud of... sexual assault.
It’s a perverted idea of justice you have there. What you describe is persecution, the very reason for the 4th amendment.
Childish and hysterical people can't stand criticism and need to live in their little bubble in order to feel safe. If you don't like the guy then don't reply, stop embarrassing yourself.
They lost, Tim. It doesn't matter anymore.
Trump used to call it fake news and only watched friendly news networks, speaking of being intolerant of criticism.
I’m gonna miss all the Trump satire, incidentally. He must be the most ridiculed man that’s ever lived.
I think you were at my school.
You know how since Trump took office people have a newfound affection for Dubya..? I think counterpunch has done the same for Nos.
I don’t think we need to, now that his idol has faded into the sunset.
Besides which, criticism of the current regime is healthy. (If done right...)
Not at all. Do you have any pets? Think of it like fetching or wrestling with your dog. Sure you gotta wash the dog slobber off your hands when you're done but it's all in good fun.
A philosophy forum ought not to be an echo chamber. It can be a shooting range, though.
The communist government urges the Antifas and BLMs to break everything, then blame the Trump supporters and expel them not only from political life, but from human society.
Do you really think that if Biden really had as many voters as he said he did, all of them, even protected by thousands of soldiers, would refuse to go to the ceremony of inauguration of their idol? Today, more than ever, the political, media and Big Tech elite throws the most cynical question at our face: - After all, will you believe me or your own eyes?
Not at all. We grown-ups do it all the time; we call it 'cleaning', and it it is the foundation of civilisation. You know, like draining the swamp.
Yes. The anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and Covid conspiracy theorists are all on Trump's side. Idiocy attracts idiocy. Compare how jammed together the few people at Trump's farewell were despite ample space with how spaced apart the attendees at the inauguration were. That's called social distancing. That's what reasonable people have been doing for almost a year.
They didn't refuse to go; they just weren't invited.
Joe Biden's inauguration will have fewer than 1,500 official guests instead of the 200,000 invited in 2016, organizers reveal
And what exactly are you suggesting? That because only 1,500 people were there, only 1,500 people voted for Biden, and the other 81,267,257 votes were fraudulent? :brow:
Not everyone is part of a cult that thinks of their chosen candidate as being an idol. Most people vote for a candidate simply because they believe they're better suited to the job.
Another thing to consider is that there are more registered Democrats than Republicans and more Democrat-leaning Independents than Republican-leaning, and given that most people vote for their preferred party's candidate, whoever that is, it's not surprising that there were more votes for Biden than Trump, irrespective of which individual has the biggest fan club.
When did Biden come out as a communist, and when did he urge Antifa and BLM to break everything, blame it on Trump supporters, and then exile them?
Do you realize that it sounds like you live in a stupid fantasy world of common internet low-IQ delusions?
Do you also believe in the Illuminati or the Anunaki (lizard aliens?)
Tbf if he could he wouldn't be in a stupid fantasy world of common low-IQ delusions, or Qanon as I believe it is known.
"Everyone who doesn't agree with me is an conspirancy theory redneck". "Accuse them of what you do, curse them of what you are" does not fail. When communists accuse others of a coup, they are preparing one.
:rofl:
For further consideration, recall how Trump told his supporters not to vote by post, then was stumped by most postal votes being for Biden because his supporters did exactly what he said in the middle of a pandemic, while Biden's were more likely to vote safely.
There's too many masks in that crowd for it to be a pro-Trump crowd, although main point taken: everyone seems to push their luck during major celebrations... Thanksgiving, Christmas, the end of Trump's presidency (which might yet become a national holiday). BLM protests also. But cramming yourselves like sardines into a large space? That's just bizarre.
Better suited for the job is a good criteria.
A pre-election article about voters highlighted the reasons people voted for their candidate. Some voters were voting for Biden because they thought Trump had mishandled the Coronavirus Pandemic, not given suitable relief to those who lost their jobs, enough to make the 5% difference in votes. Some mentioned 'hating Trump' but no one said they hated Biden. Hate is not a good reason to vote anyway.
Voting for policy is what people do. Even hating people for policy - for example stricter immigration laws and border controls is also a possibility. Build a wall? I hate you for that!
What I find unacceptable is that some use the same type of language they accuse Trump of, insulting, calling people stupid for voting for policies that they do not agree with. Can this sort of thing be defended under your constitution? If it is , then the defense applies both ways. In any case, you are welcome to resemble Trump as close as you want.
To be fair, the insults fly both ways. Many things have been said about Biden as well as the Democrats, and even the Clintons. I am neither a block Republican Supporter not a Democrat supporter - I broadly supported - though I am not a US resident - the policies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and I was very happy to see Barak Obama elected to office, although in later years I was unsure if he was a good president after all. I believed also that Bernie Sanders would have been a great choice.
So partisanship is out for me, which might explain the lack of interest in calling the other side demons.
The alternative is secession, which I understand has been tried in the past.
They're also planning to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids. We've heard this before, Jack old boy.
I used to have a problem with this too, but I have since changed my mind.
When one is dealing with someone who understands only one thing, one has to be willing to either resort to their language and fight with their kind of weapons, or concede defeat and leave the battlefield. One cannot choose one's opponents.
But you will have noticed that Biden has a wide range of ways of expressing himself, while Trump has a rather limited one.
I like to remember Peter Jackson's Hobbit films -- the way those beautiful elves nevertheless go and fight the ugly orcs.
Makes you long for a drink of pure grain alcohol and rainwater, doesn't it?
You literally have no idea why there were no crowds at the inauguration, do you?
He's too articulate to be Trump, and doesn't use enough all-caps words. Also, I don't think Trump could figure out how to register an account here.
Everything the right ever accuses the left of is projection, including, now, projection itself.
Maybe not when the General sent off the B-52s. Now I suppose it would be distilled water, but for all I know that's got flouride in it too.
:yawn:
I wonder who this could be? Another person recently banned, no doubt. My advice: don’t bother engaging. Let them talk to themselves.
If antifascists are opposed to democrats, would that make democrats... fascists? Right?
[tweet]https://twitter.com/joe_exotic/status/1351961406355222530?s=20[/tweet]
Quoting Banjo
Antifa are anarchists and they hate left and right equally.
C'mon banjo. You spray painted that on your dad's basement wall, didn't you? What are you going to do when he finds out?
That's a hammer and sickle.
The Antifa logo is
The presence of a hammer and sickle is zero evidence, in itself, of Antifa. But, of course, Antifa activists are the current right-wing version of the Nazi's "Jews": a placeholder for every scary thing they don't like and/or want to scapegoat.
Anarchists are definitionally left, but so much further left than Democrats that Democrats are scarcely better than Republicans in their eyes.
Some of us are also pragmatists and realize that less bad is still better than more bad. Others, sadly, prefer vitriolic graffiti over trying to actually reduce harm. They are at least “useful idiots” to us, much as Trump is to Republicans.
Historically the feeling was apparently mutual. From wiki:
Quoting Pfhorrest
How have they been useful?
I think you should look into the ideology of libertarianism. There's a lot of deluded right anarchists out there today.
Far right is the minimal state and far left is total equality. All those extremista just want to push for their own group’s well being. Not least the red wine environmental left, that primarily want to make their lives meaningful, Hägglund style.
That's because you're stuck in the distorted Cold War version of a one-dimensional political spectrum.
The original one-dimensional political spectrum had the left as being for both liberty and equality, and the right being for the authority and hierarchical superiority of the state and capital-owners, who at that time were explicitly the same people: the aristocracy of feudal states.
Then in the aftermath of that original left's partial victory, and the invention of post-agricultural types of capital, the successful owners of that new capital began to conflate their liberty with the hierarchical privilege they enjoyed thanks to the remaining vestiges of feudalism that they retained through their possession of said capital.
In response to that, those who found themselves now more oppressed by those new capital-owners than the old ones who used to control the state began to consider using the state against the new capital-owners, with the ostensible intention of then dissolving both state and capital together and getting back on track toward the liberty and equality of the original left. Note that this was not a unilaterally popular idea even within socialism: the original socialists were libertarian socialists, i.e. anarchists, still on the track of the original left. State socialism was considered a bad idea by them.
And of course it turned out to be a bad idea after all, because you can't have authority without thereby creating hierarchy, so the state socialists became just state capitalists -- and even acknowledged as such, though they claimed it was temporary -- and so places like the USSR and PRC turned essentially back into the same thing the original left had opposed in their rejection of feudalism. Which was also the same thing that Mussolini meant when he coined the term "fascism": the collusion of state and capital.
But likewise, you can't have hierarchy without thereby creating authority, and in the nominally libertarian capitalist countries that's just what happened, and continues to happen, leading right back to the same thing again: the collusion of capital and state. Fascism. Which is basically a post-agricultural, industrial facelift of feudalism, with government and capital-owners the same people.
So now ever since the Cold War, fought between nominally libertarian capitalists and nominally state socialists, people think those are the natural right and left, respectively. But that axis is completely orthogonal to the original one, and both ends of it can't help but fall back toward state capitalism. Because you can't have liberty without equality, and you can't have equality without liberty. Which is what the original left, the true left, stands for -- liberty and equality for all -- and what the original right, the true right, is against.
//end rant.
Notice how Covid arrived shortly after Antifa turned up?
Quoting Ansiktsburk
There are several anarchistic groups in the world, some on islands. There were more, but we kind of killed most of them off, or their habitats.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-55765516
Gotta say, I agree. Twitter should ban him.
Being from at poor/working class family, grown up in a no-go area until 8yo, poor on all my grandparents sides back to the 17th century - What my ancestor and all my friends(i never made friends with the badasses) strived for was Equal Opportunity. And of course a stable state where institutions protected one from opressors of high and low type.
That "liberty and equality for all" sounds kind of good, and it somewhat relates to something I have seen. But most of all it sounds like a vision dreamt ut in the head of some bourgeoise kid looking for "a goal in life". Things have to work, and there is no such wonderland as that of Nozick or leftist/rightist Anarchist. But of course, if one can make it work, why not? Just haven't seen it.
Anarchism worked for most of the history of the human race. It just isn't practical now.
Nothing but anarchism was practically possible for most of the history of the human race. It's only in this age of abundance since the agricultural revolution that steep social stratification has been possible. Anarchism isn't impractical after that, it's just more difficult to keep since there are other possibilities it has to fight against now.