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On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways  It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Show nested quote +Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
Again, throwing stones from a reliably blue state. Not everyone is that lucky. I am not falling for the bait as the line always moves.
There will be pikachu looks on all these peoples faces if Trump wins
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On March 31 2024 06:19 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. Again, throwing stones from a reliably blue state. Not everyone is that lucky. I am not falling for the bait as the line always moves. There will be pikachu looks on all these peoples faces if Trump wins
It's not "lucky" to have an electoral system that obviates your vote. Particularly when it means a guy supporting genocide wins regardless.
But rest assured it's not bait or moving the goalposts. Just because genocide is especially poignant compared to the stuff they've done this with for decades doesn't mean people to their left have forgotten about all the other reasons they don't support someone like Biden.
Genocide was just hopefully a line for Biden supporters with a conscience. That they would demand he stop supporting genocide through organized acts of civil disobedience to disrupt his ability to continue. Turns out nope, they'll go along to get along like Republicans, even in the face of genocide.
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On March 31 2024 06:19 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. Again, throwing stones from a reliably blue state. Not everyone is that lucky. I am not falling for the bait as the line always moves. There will be pikachu looks on all these peoples faces if Trump wins There is an alternative candidate that doesn't support insurrection.
there is no alternative candidate that doesn't support genocide.
No matter who you do, or do not, vote for I can 100% garantee you that someone that supports Israel will win.
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United States43746 Posts
On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Show nested quote +Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
If people criticize voting for the greater of two evils then how can they justify voting for the lesser of two evils?!?!
Because, as always GH, it's the lesser.
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On March 31 2024 06:44 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. If people criticize voting for the greater of two evils then how can they justify voting for the lesser of two evils?!?! Because, as always GH, it's the lesser.
Even if I subscribed to "lesser evilism" (which I obviously don't), the reality that the "least evil" person Democrats could nominate is genocidal speaks to the "bad precedents" and "slippery slope" parts.
EDIT: I should add this isn't about general election voting. My point is about before any general election votes are cast.
The reflexive reliance on "lesser evilism" rationalizations isn't even involved when it comes to organized civil disobedience aimed at disrupting the Biden's ability to continue aiding and abetting genocide.
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On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Show nested quote +Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit.
I was having a similar thought, actually. A lot of Republicans during the Obama administration (including several of my family members) scared themselves silly worrying about the inexorable advance of a Statist dystopia. It’s not hard for me to see how they could get pretty forgiving when they think the Republican Party is the only thing standing between them and 1984. It’s a useful cautionary tale on allowing yourself to accept a self-righteous political narrative too readily. The more convinced you are of the righteousness of your cause and the evilness of the enemy, the more moral compromises you’re willing to make to increase your chance of victory, and as a rule people are extremely ready to accept a narrative in which they’re the good guy.
A lot of leftists (not you, I don’t think) insist now is the time to loudly announce our intentions to not vote for Biden, in order to spur him to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. I think that’s a good cause, I hope it works! But I don’t write my TL posts strategically on the premise that Joe Biden might be reading them; I write what I think. And at the moment this election between staying the course and handing power to the fascists, I’m still hoping against the latter.
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On March 31 2024 07:15 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. I was having a similar thought, actually. A lot of Republicans during the Obama administration (including several of my family members) scared themselves silly worrying about the inexorable advance of a Statist dystopia. It’s not hard for me to see how they could get pretty forgiving when they think the Republican Party is the only thing standing between them and 1984. It’s a useful cautionary tale on allowing yourself to accept a self-righteous political narrative too readily. The more convinced you are of the righteousness of your cause and the evilness of the enemy, the more moral compromises you’re willing to make to increase your chance of victory, and as a rule people are extremely ready to accept a narrative in which they’re the good guy. A lot of leftists (not you, I don’t think) insist now is the time to loudly announce our intentions to not vote for Biden, in order to spur him to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. I think that’s a good cause, I hope it works! But I don’t write my TL posts strategically on the premise that Joe Biden might be reading them; I write what I think. And at the moment this election between staying the course and handing power to the fascists, I’m still hoping against the latter.
The key difference between Obama and Trump's 'scare' is that one really happened. And the other only existed in the mind of fox news.
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If by not voting Biden you allow somebody much worse and proudly openly genocidal to take over (like Trump), makes me think you're part of the problem and not the solution you think you are (whatever that is).
Of course all this is moot if neither of us live in purple/swing states, and only apply to those who do *shrug
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On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:On March 30 2024 02:16 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
Sure we were just shades away from the Shaman guy swearing in Trump as Supreme leader while flanked by Boebert and MTG. Which would have taken heroic levels of “counter-coup” to undo.
You honestly believe that if terrorists put a knife to congresspeople’s throats and demand they vote a certain way that whatever they voted for would be legitimate? it would obviously be illegitimate. And? Who is going to enforce that? And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump. An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider. But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: Show nested quote + The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling?
If people wanted to give some evidence that some organ of government was about to aid Trump in his quest to stay in power I'll listen. So far the courts, even Trump appointed judges have rejected his claims of election rigging. His own Vice President rejected his plan to reject electors. His own daughter was asking him to stop the January 6 riot. Everywhere you turn everyone around Trump and in every branch of government was disgusted and rejecting what happened on Jan 6, yet everyone here just insists that they were all chomping at the bit to join the plot to keep Trump in power. The Republican congresspeople were eagerly waiting to come out of their hiding places and join a murderous mob that was chanting that they wanted to hang a Republican. That makes total sense.
I agree that it's bad and slippery slope-y. You probably know me as no stranger to also accuse stuff coming out of the left as being slippery slope-y and 1984ish. The difference I see is that the former is facing multiple criminal indictments and a lot of people are sitting in jail while the latter is in power and actually doing the bad stuff I find concerning. I'm more concerned about the bad stuff that is actually happening than the bad stuff that is not likely to happen. But the stuff I find bad others here will probably find good so different strokes for different folks I guess.
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United States43746 Posts
On March 31 2024 07:21 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 07:15 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. I was having a similar thought, actually. A lot of Republicans during the Obama administration (including several of my family members) scared themselves silly worrying about the inexorable advance of a Statist dystopia. It’s not hard for me to see how they could get pretty forgiving when they think the Republican Party is the only thing standing between them and 1984. It’s a useful cautionary tale on allowing yourself to accept a self-righteous political narrative too readily. The more convinced you are of the righteousness of your cause and the evilness of the enemy, the more moral compromises you’re willing to make to increase your chance of victory, and as a rule people are extremely ready to accept a narrative in which they’re the good guy. A lot of leftists (not you, I don’t think) insist now is the time to loudly announce our intentions to not vote for Biden, in order to spur him to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. I think that’s a good cause, I hope it works! But I don’t write my TL posts strategically on the premise that Joe Biden might be reading them; I write what I think. And at the moment this election between staying the course and handing power to the fascists, I’m still hoping against the latter. The key difference between Obama and Trump's 'scare' is that one really happened. And the other only existed in the mind of fox news.
How quickly people forget the bowling green massacre.
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United States43746 Posts
On March 31 2024 07:57 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]it would obviously be illegitimate.
And?
Who is going to enforce that?
And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump.
An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider.
But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? If people wanted to give some evidence that some organ of government was about to aid Trump in his quest to stay in power I'll listen. So far the courts, even Trump appointed judges have rejected his claims of election rigging. His own Vice President rejected his plan to reject electors. His own daughter was asking him to stop the January 6 riot. Everywhere you turn everyone around Trump and in every branch of government was disgusted and rejecting what happened on Jan 6, yet everyone here just insists that they were all chomping at the bit to join the plot to keep Trump in power. The Republican congresspeople were eagerly waiting to come out of their hiding places and join a murderous mob that was chanting that they wanted to hang a Republican. That makes total sense. I agree that it's bad and slippery slope-y. You probably know me as no stranger to also accuse stuff coming out of the left as being slippery slope-y and 1984ish. The difference I see is that the former is facing multiple criminal indictments and a lot of people are sitting in jail while the latter is in power and actually doing the bad stuff I find concerning. I'm more concerned about the bad stuff that is actually happening than the bad stuff that is not likely to happen. But the stuff I find bad others here will probably find good so different strokes for different folks I guess.
Some people consider the executive to be part of the government.
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On March 31 2024 09:40 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 07:57 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen."
What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
...
And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
...
They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
...
Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? If people wanted to give some evidence that some organ of government was about to aid Trump in his quest to stay in power I'll listen. So far the courts, even Trump appointed judges have rejected his claims of election rigging. His own Vice President rejected his plan to reject electors. His own daughter was asking him to stop the January 6 riot. Everywhere you turn everyone around Trump and in every branch of government was disgusted and rejecting what happened on Jan 6, yet everyone here just insists that they were all chomping at the bit to join the plot to keep Trump in power. The Republican congresspeople were eagerly waiting to come out of their hiding places and join a murderous mob that was chanting that they wanted to hang a Republican. That makes total sense. I agree that it's bad and slippery slope-y. You probably know me as no stranger to also accuse stuff coming out of the left as being slippery slope-y and 1984ish. The difference I see is that the former is facing multiple criminal indictments and a lot of people are sitting in jail while the latter is in power and actually doing the bad stuff I find concerning. I'm more concerned about the bad stuff that is actually happening than the bad stuff that is not likely to happen. But the stuff I find bad others here will probably find good so different strokes for different folks I guess. Some people consider the executive to be part of the government.
There’s no shortage of people in that branch of government to rebuke him either
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Northern Ireland26450 Posts
On March 31 2024 07:57 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 23:13 ChristianS wrote:On March 30 2024 18:42 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 17:16 Acrofales wrote:On March 30 2024 14:51 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 09:20 KwarK wrote:On March 30 2024 08:01 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 04:51 Ryzel wrote:On March 30 2024 03:41 BlackJack wrote:On March 30 2024 03:24 Gorsameth wrote:
[quote]it would obviously be illegitimate.
And?
Who is going to enforce that?
And we're back to hoping the army 'does the right thing' and that their oath to the constitution out way their possibly loyalty to Trump.
An issue the rest of the first and second world doesn't have to consider.
But America apparently does. Um, yeah. If the army wanted to support an illegitimate government they wouldn't need permission from the shaman guy and his army of neckbeards. I don't understand this line of reasoning. The rebellion was squashed and the full weight of the justice system is coming down on them. How am I supposed to respond to "oh yeah but what if that didn't happen." What if the capitol police joined the mob too and started blasting all the congress people. What then, BJ?!? Are you just going to hope they do the right thing and not murder people?! Respectfully, I find it hard to believe you’re this stupid, and I don’t, so I’ll try and explain it to you. The reason people care about hypotheticals like this is because engaging with these hypotheticals leads to insights on why we should (or should not) put in effort to prevent similar events from occurring again. As many others have pointed out, there are no assurances that this won’t happen again, and if it does there’s certainly no assurances that the Capitol police will be able to handle the situation as well as last time. The divide between parties has expanded not shrunk, and to my knowledge the Capitol police unit has not been strengthened in a meaningful way to better deter future incidents. Finally, the perpetrators have become martyrs for a sizable group of people in the country and people in positions of power (e.g. Trump) regularly validate their actions. The above leads me to believe it is absolutely within the realm of possibility that this would happen again, which again affirms the value of engaging with the hypothetical. You can continue shoving your fingers in your ears and shouting “nah nah I’m not listening” I guess, but if you want to convince people and change minds you’d be better off telling us what you think the consequences of a future insurrection riot would be and why you apparently don’t think that’s a big deal. I have no problem with hypotheticals like "can this happen again" or "how can we better prepared for this." I take issue when hypotheticals that weren't even close to happening are pretended to be plausible or likely just to push the argument that the Jan 6 mob nearly succeeded. The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. The two are inversely related. The idea that if the mob just got a little further Trump would have found the support he needs to stay in power is the opposite conclusion that should be drawn. In fact one of the biggest criticisms of Trump on Jan 6th is that everyone around him was pleading with him to get on television and call down the mob to end the insanity. Not even his closest advisers and family were on board with this and yet people want to pretend that Trump would have found the support from someone (electors, the courts, the army) to continue as a dictator. In your reality is the view that Trump won 2020 not a mainstream one among Republican state level representatives in Georgia and Arizona. In our reality we have a clear path to Trump staying in power. 1. Pence fails to certify the electors. According to Pence he was only actually talked into certifying them by Dan fucking Quayle. Also the Secret Service attempted to remove Pence before certification took place. Also an explicitly stated goal of Trump's mob that he specifically called upon them to do was to get him to certify the election. 2. The Republican controlled state legislatures give Trump the electoral college votes won by Biden. That's wholly plausible given how many state representatives openly say the election was stolen by Biden and that Trump won. Anyway, here's some excerpts from Trump's Jan 6 speech. Because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.
States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president and you are the happiest people.
And I actually, I just spoke to Mike. I said: "Mike, that doesn't take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage." And then we're stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot and we have to live with that for four more years. We're just not going to let that happen.
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And Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn't, that will be a, a sad day for our country because you're sworn to uphold our Constitution.
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They want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")
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Mike Pence, I hope you're going to stand up for the good of our Constitution and for the good of our country. And if you're not, I'm going to be very disappointed in you. I will tell you right now. I'm not hearing good stories. So it's really not clear that the mob Trump raised at that rally was an explicit attempt to send the elections back to the states beyond the literal chants of "send it back" that he led the mob in. And it's really not clear that it was an order and a threat against Mike Pence beyond "we're not going to let that happen" and "I'm going to be very disappointed in you", and of course, the fact that the mob started chanting "hang Mike Pence" for some reason. So which part of the seizure of power do you think was so unlikely. Mike Pence failing to certify or the Republican State officials buying into the Trump election narrative? The part that barely failed because of Dan Quayle and the Secret Service or the part that didn't fail at all? People go "well I don't see how we get from Trump's mob to him staying in power" as if he didn't fucking lay it out for them step by step. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify and we become president Direct quote from Donald Trump on Jan 6 to his mob before sending them to make Pence send it back. Trump explained his plan to his followers but now people, who can literally watch the video in which Trump explains his plan which he specifically states is a plan to seize power, say "I don't think there was an actual plan to seize power". You’re failing to mention that the idea Pence could reject the electors is based on a dubious legal theory that even the creator called a controversial long shot that would likely be rejected by the Supreme Court. Your post treats it as a foregone conclusion that it would have worked if Pence just played along. If this were a similarly dubious plot for Trump to redirect funding to build his border wall it would have been laughed out of the room but because this is useful in implicating Trump it’s become a “clear path” for Trump to stay in power. Okay, so because his clear and well-documented plan to stage a coup was dumb and doomed to fail from the start, that makes it not-an-attempted-coup? That's the conclusion you've decided to draw from reading my posts. I have no issue acknowledging that Trump would do almost anything, legal or illegal, to steal an election. I don't know if his schemes constitute a coup d'etat in the traditional sense but I'm fine with calling them that colloquially. I just also agree with Introvert that it wasn't as on a knife edge as people are making it sound. We might even agree here once you take away the position you've foisted on me. I’m fine with the position “J6 was a coup attempt, but it was hare-brained and stupid and never gonna work.” I don’t think you’ve done a very good job enumerating why – insisting their theories are “legally dubious” when someone is seizing the seat of government by force is kinda absurd. If Congress (under duress) is insisting Trump actually won the election, and Trump is calling in military units to maintain control, your theory is that… Joe Biden would simply say “I’ll see you in court”? But whatever, I don’t actually care that much about wargaming the coup to figure out its exact percentage chance of success. In 2024 I’d rather discuss something you brought up in a previous post: The problem with the line of reasoning many people are employing in this thread is that we saw that the further the mob got the more disgusted average Americans became, not just at the mob but also directly at Trump. See, I think this was right in 2021, and I’m glad because I think that’s an appropriate reaction to partisans, on behalf of the President, breaking into the Capitol and trying to intimidate Congress into overturning an election. Now in 2024 one party still has that reaction to J6ers, while the other calls them heroes and patriots. Trump, as mentioned, is opening rallies with a rendition of the anthem sung by imprisoned J6ers while he stands and salutes. He promises to pardon them on his first day back in office. So, uh, generally speaking: a President openly endorsing armed bands of thugs committing crimes to intimidate his political enemies into submission, and promising to use his legal authority as President to shield them from legal consequences. That’s bad, right? Is this one of those “slippery slopes?” @Intro, can we get a ruling? If people wanted to give some evidence that some organ of government was about to aid Trump in his quest to stay in power I'll listen. So far the courts, even Trump appointed judges have rejected his claims of election rigging. His own Vice President rejected his plan to reject electors. His own daughter was asking him to stop the January 6 riot. Everywhere you turn everyone around Trump and in every branch of government was disgusted and rejecting what happened on Jan 6, yet everyone here just insists that they were all chomping at the bit to join the plot to keep Trump in power. The Republican congresspeople were eagerly waiting to come out of their hiding places and join a murderous mob that was chanting that they wanted to hang a Republican. That makes total sense. I agree that it's bad and slippery slope-y. You probably know me as no stranger to also accuse stuff coming out of the left as being slippery slope-y and 1984ish. The difference I see is that the former is facing multiple criminal indictments and a lot of people are sitting in jail while the latter is in power and actually doing the bad stuff I find concerning. I'm more concerned about the bad stuff that is actually happening than the bad stuff that is not likely to happen. But the stuff I find bad others here will probably find good so different strokes for different folks I guess.
Man the left wish they were in power
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On March 31 2024 07:15 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On March 31 2024 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:On March 31 2024 05:50 ChristianS wrote:On March 31 2024 05:18 Introvert wrote:Again we are guessing about who, exactly, he would pardon. I will give you this much though: Trump has said enough to assume he would pardon at least some of the people convicted of crimes in J6. All are entitled to take that information into account when they vote, though maybe not many will As for my definition, there is also nuance in how to define a position with the knowledge you may have to compromise which is important because it's something voters take it their calculations, I expect. But it's a good start! The insistence goes both ways It appears to matter because people keep telling me that's the party position and that i should acknowledge this. I don't know how many people are voting for him on that proposition though, I think most Republican voters are supporting him because they like the job he did as president. But that's haggling, I am happy to restate my disagreement and call it a day. + Show Spoiler +That’s all very lawyerly. “Introvert hereafter acknowledges that Donald Trump can be assumed to intend to pardon a nonzero number of defendants associated with the event commonly referred to as January 6th, although no assumptions can be made about the number or character of those pardoned, and the possibility that Mr. Trump would merely be attempting to rectify a miscarriage of justice cannot be eliminated.”
Sure, you can say that. Or you can factor in a single thing we’ve learned about this guy’s character in the last, well, I’ll just say 8 years to reduce the cognitive load. I don’t doubt he’ll exclude some of them from his pardon – many J6ers made “I was deceived by the president” central to their legal defenses. He’s all about loyalty, after all.
See what I mean about perpetually defending his flank even as you insist you’re not on his side? I simply don’t believe you would have the same extreme commitment to benefit of the doubt and blindness to dangerous precedents and slippery slopes if it were a Democrat. If Biden were pardoning, say, someone who rumors suggested might testify against Hunter Biden for immunity, Republicans would drown us all in conspiracy and innuendo, and I’m confident you wouldn’t leap to Biden’s defense. In all likelihood you’d join the chorus, maybe in some vague noncommittal way like “I don’t know whether to believe all the conspiracies but there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”
But anyway, I think I’ve got it. You would consider pardoning people that committed felonies on behalf of the president’s efforts to overthrow an election, you know, faux pas. Vaguely distasteful. But it’s certainly low salience, and you see no reason to think there’s any bad precedents or slippery slopes going on. And you certainly see no reason anybody should care enough to vote against him for it. Hopefully this exercise also helps people understand why I see Biden supporters and genocide (their word) in a similar way. Or as Sadist put it: Anyone voting for him, shilling for him, making bad faith arguments is complicit to his bullshit. I was having a similar thought, actually. A lot of Republicans during the Obama administration (including several of my family members) scared themselves silly worrying about the inexorable advance of a Statist dystopia. It’s not hard for me to see how they could get pretty forgiving when they think the Republican Party is the only thing standing between them and 1984. It’s a useful cautionary tale on allowing yourself to accept a self-righteous political narrative too readily. The more convinced you are of the righteousness of your cause and the evilness of the enemy, the more moral compromises you’re willing to make to increase your chance of victory, and as a rule people are extremely ready to accept a narrative in which they’re the good guy. A lot of leftists (not you, I don’t think) insist now is the time to loudly announce our intentions to not vote for Biden, in order to spur him to pressure Israel into a ceasefire. I think that’s a good cause, I hope it works! But I don’t write my TL posts strategically on the premise that Joe Biden might be reading them; I write what I think. And at the moment this election between staying the course and handing power to the fascists, I’m still hoping against the latter.
Part of the problem that I'm attempting to highlight is that "staying the course" means aiding and abetting genocide and building cop cities, which will further enable an openly fascist takeover, whether it is Trump or someone more competent.
Democrats are perpetually running through railroad crossings ignoring the flashing red lights, barriers, and train horns while wailing that the collision came out of nowhere and they got blindsided.
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It looks like Florida's abortion restrictions are kicking in and potentially becoming worse than ever, and that November will have abortion rights on the ballot. Given how abortion has been a huge factor in creating recent blue waves of election victories and preventing red waves, this could actually tilt Florida in favor of Biden. If Biden were to hypothetically win Florida, then his path to beating Trump would be significantly easier (not to mention it would be a nice middle finger to DeSantis).
The Florida Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the state to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, while also giving voters a chance to remove restrictions in November.
The court, which was reshaped by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruled 6-1 to uphold the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, meaning a ban on six weeks could soon take effect. But under a separate 4-3 ruling, the court allowed a ballot measure to go to voters that would enshrine abortion rights in Florida’s constitution.
The court’s decisions could be pivotal in the presidential race and congressional contests this year by driving abortion-rights supporters to the polls. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, voters in every state with an abortion-related ballot measure have favored the side backed by abortion rights supporters.
The 15-week ban, signed by DeSantis in 2022, has been enforced while it was challenged in court. The six-week ban, passed by the Legislature last year, was written so that it would not take effect until a month after the 2022 law was upheld. ...
DeSantis, who took office in 2019, appointed five of the court’s seven justices.
Republican House Speaker Paul Renner said the six-week ban is a good fit for Florida and noted the law includes exceptions for cases involving rape, incest and fetal abnormalities, as well as to save a mother’s life. ...
The proposed constitutional amendment that will be on the November ballot says “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It provides for one exception that is already in the state constitution: Parents must be notified before their minor children can get an abortion.
Most Republican-controlled states have adopted bans or restrictions on abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
A survey of abortion providers conducted for the Society of Family Planning, which advocates for abortion access, found that Florida had the second-largest increase in the total number of abortions provided since the Dobbs decision. The state’s data shows that more than 7,700 women from other states received abortions in Florida in 2023.
Fourteen states, including nearby Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, now have bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions. Georgia and South Carolina bar it once cardiac activity can be detected, which is generally considered to be around six weeks into pregnancy.
Excerpts from https://apnews.com/article/florida-abortion-ban-supreme-court-ruling-6a4949fc7459afe9b5e298086a793126#:~:text=(AP) — The Florida Supreme,to remove restrictions in November.
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It's going to be far too little, far too late, but Biden/Democrats have gotta stop this deal. There is simply no excuse not to.
The Biden administration is close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The transaction, which would amount to the largest US foreign military sale to Israel since the country went to war with Hamas on October 7, comes as the administration is also expected to notify Congress soon of a large new sale of precision-guided munitions kits to Israel, the people said.
The new sales of some of the US’ most sophisticated weaponry underscore the extent to which the US continues to support Israel militarily, even as Biden administration officials criticize Israel’s operations in Gaza, which have killed more than 32,000 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza ministry of health.
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But Sen. Ben Cardin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, as well as the Democratic ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Rep. Greg Meeks, can still hold up the sale if they raise objections.
www.cnn.com
When I talk about organized civil disobedience and not reflexively relying on "lesser evilism" rationalizations, this is what I'm talking about. I mean Biden 2020 voters demanding Democrats and Biden do something like not approve more weapons for Israel to massacre civilians in what those same voters call a genocide as it appears they planned to do up until (and perhaps despite) this particular recent atrocity by Israel.
That Democrats are struggling to stop themselves from aiding and abetting what they themselves identify as genocide while it's completely within their power to do so, is just the kind of precedent setting that is ensuring the US will fall to fascism regardless of how 2024 turns out.
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Massacring civilians/Genocide by F15's and precision guided munitions?
They really spare no expenses hu?
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On April 03 2024 11:25 GreenHorizons wrote:It's going to be far too little, far too late, but Biden/Democrats have gotta stop this deal. There is simply no excuse not to. Show nested quote +The Biden administration is close to approving the sale of as many as 50 American-made F-15 fighter jets to Israel, in a deal expected to be worth more than $18 billion, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The transaction, which would amount to the largest US foreign military sale to Israel since the country went to war with Hamas on October 7, comes as the administration is also expected to notify Congress soon of a large new sale of precision-guided munitions kits to Israel, the people said.
The new sales of some of the US’ most sophisticated weaponry underscore the extent to which the US continues to support Israel militarily, even as Biden administration officials criticize Israel’s operations in Gaza, which have killed more than 32,000 Palestinians since October, according to the Gaza ministry of health.
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But Sen. Ben Cardin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, as well as the Democratic ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs committee, Rep. Greg Meeks, can still hold up the sale if they raise objections. www.cnn.comWhen I talk about organized civil disobedience and not reflexively relying on "lesser evilism" rationalizations, this is what I'm talking about. I mean Biden 2020 voters demanding Democrats and Biden do something like not approve more weapons for Israel to massacre civilians in what those same voters call a genocide as it appears they planned to do up until (and perhaps despite) this particular recent atrocity by Israel. That Democrats are struggling to stop themselves from aiding and abetting what they themselves identify as genocide while it's completely within their power to do so, is just the kind of precedent setting that is ensuring the US will fall to fascism regardless of how 2024 turns out.
While I think it's absolutely preposterous to claim that Biden is as much of a fascist as Trump is, I definitely am not a fan of these fighter jets and munitions kits being given to Israel.
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EPT
