Biden victory: Then Truth and Reconciliation, Then Censorship and Blacklisting, Then... Prisons

Politics & Elections
1

According to THIS article Robert Reich, College professor at Berkeley-California and former Secretary of Labor, wants to put together a “Truth and Reconciliation” committee that will go after Trump supporters. This should lead to black listing and censorship. others want this to lead to prison terms for trump supporters.

To quote:
“When this nightmare is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

Others have added:
" “I am thinking more of using the postwar Nuremberg Trials as a template,” one Twitter user wrote, speculating that criminal trials should be in order. “Felonies were committed as were treasonous behaviors. The guilty should be arrested, tried, convicted and forced to do time.”

Robert Reich further added:
"“As long as unresolved historic injustices continue to fester in the world, there will be a demand for truth commissions,” the article stated. “The goal of a truth commission … is to hold public hearings to establish the scale and impact of a past injustice, typically involving wide-scale human rights abuses, and make it part of the permanent, unassailable public record.”

In the article, the author points to Canada’s recent commission to address “historic injustices perpetrated against Canada’s Indigenous peoples” and South Africa’s commission to address apartheid as models."

So what do you all think?

Do you want to put Trump supporters on trial?

Do you wish to ban all Trump supporters from ever holding public office?

2

The only person in that article who is proposing trials is some random person on Twitter responding to Reich. Why do you suppose that might have been included in this article?

3

Depends on what you mean by “supporters,” and by “trial.”

According to Reich," It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

Naming those who enabled Trump, and publicly calling them out is something I could live with. I don’t think most of them need to be taken out and shot.

The random twitter guy is calling for prosecution of people who committed felonies. Again, something I could live with.

I haven’t heard anyone claim that buying a MAGA hat is grounds for anything more than ridicule.

4

LOL. All it deserves, really.

If the American people want some organized struggle sessions, things have changed in this country more than I’ve feared.

5

For starters, you should know that Truth and reconciliation efforts in the past usually include amnesty for the accused. So there are no trials, it is just that if testimony does not come in exchange of that amnesty then the abusers of power are likely to get into trouble if there are ongoing federal or state investigations.

In El Salvador most did take the amnesty and the ugly truth was found about the abuses of power and human rights committed mostly by the right and paramilitary and military forces.

As for holding office later, that depends on what is found and published, it will depend on the people deciding that finding abuses of power is a deal breaker or not going forward.

6

OP is assuming there is a high likelihood of this happening. It won’t. Biden will have more than enough on his hands and he’s not going to blow his political capital dredging up Trump’s misdeeds.

7

Yup. If “support” means “committed felonies to support Trump, his campaigns, and his policies,” then, yes.

If any administration were to seek out prosection, or even censoring, of the opposition’s supporters, for no other reason than for their political preference – whether that be criminalizing the support of a particular political policy, or using the legal system to baselessly harass one’s opponents – then we’ve completely lost our way as a democratic nation. @urbanredneck2, I hope that you would concur with this.

8

There is clearly on open debate currently raging, as to whether a future administration should prosecute Trump.

I haven’t seen much debate or discussion over whether a future administration should investigate, prosecute, and maybe even imprison Trump’s bootlicking apparatchiks (Bill Barr chief among them). For this, we DO have precedent: See John Mitchell (Attorney General for Nixon who was convicted and jailed), among other Nixon officials.

9

If this bill is going to go forward it needs to try to go full bore. Try to lock up 63 million Americans.

10

Stuff you didn’t quote:

He wrote on Twitter over the weekend that “when this nightmare” — or Trump’s presidency — “is over, we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It would erase Trump’s lies, comfort those who have been harmed by his hatefulness, and name every official, politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled this catastrophe.”

If you disapprove, @urbanredneck2, what exactly should the country do about the tens of thousands of Trump lies or the people harmed by his scum-sucking policies or the fear he has placed in millions of Americans or his attacks on science, reason, facts, and jouirnalism? Do you plan to celebrate them and work hard to perpetuate them and bring them back again in another administration?

11

I dont know. Give them all a million bucks?

So in other words, your saying “YES, put them on trial and lock them up”?

What do we need that pesky democracy for anyways?

12

Literally no one has said that. Unless they have commuted felonies, in which case I assume you would not disagree.

13

Edit: nevermind, best handled via the report post function.

14

Please read posts #2 and #5

15

I must have missed the part where Robert Reich became the Democratic nominee for President.

16

Trump is the only one calling to “Lock 'em up” regarding his political opponents. What do we need that pesky democracy for anyways?

17

Like a lot of proposals such as court-packing, this sounds like something one would only want to attempt if one is sure one has the rock-solid votes in Congress to pass it. Otherwise it would backfire more than help.

A failed attempt at setting up such a Truth and Reconciliation committee/program would cost a lot and gain nothing. Granted, I doubt Biden would start such a committee in the first place, but a failed attempt is worse than no attempt.

18

Do you want to respond to the actual posts in the thread, or to the voices in your head?

19

This, on the other hand, is probably true. Biden wouldn’t do something like this.

20

Good grief, do you even know what South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation was? It was NOT a place where they “put people on trial and locked them up.”

It was a place where victims could tell the stories of the suffering and injustice they experienced. It was a place where perpetrators could, if they wished, express understanding of this and regret for their actions. And in some cases, the Commission granted amnesty to those who were standing trial, in other South African court venues, for their crimes.

The Commission was the brainchild of Nelson Mandela, FFS. Are you really coming in here to defile his memory by implying that something so peaceable and unifying he created, in the aftermath of the horrors of apartheid, was…a bad thing?

I would need to be in the Pit to properly express my feelings about that.