I’m a lot more interested oin how bad the violence will get if Trump loses.
How many of the guys with pick trucks with big US flags and pictures of their gun collections on the rear window will sit still vs how many will decide it’s time to stop the “Commie takeover” of their county vote counting facility or their state legislature?
It won’t be anywhere near as bad.
It seems to me like most of the worst civil unrest that we’ve seen recently, occurs when protesters are met by counter-protesters. Police are called in; the situation usually escalates instead of calming down; then during this standoff between the demonstrators and the police, various flavors of violent shit-stirrers enter the situation and start doing their thing.
If Trump loses, there are only going to be protests from one side, the Trump fans. Everyone else is just going to be celebrating at home.
What is that supposed to mean?
I would assume Trump would use a massive use of force to suppress, imprison, kill or make ‘go away’ anyone who opposes him in such a way. Order of the state will be absolute and freedom will be no more.
If you wanted a preview…
Trump supporter, driven to Portland to agitate and harass protestors, shot and killed.
Let me preface this by saying that I sincerely hope that whoever killed this man is caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
That said…
This guy was out there to stir up trouble, and he got more than he bargained for. If the MAGA’t crowd think they’ll be able to sweep into cities after Election Day and Put Them People In Their Place with impunity, they make have another think coming
Nothing will happen. Dems will roll over and play dead, that’s their MO. Cf Willie Horton, swift boats, Electoral College reform, etc. etc…
There was mention of this “blue shift” in the Atlantic or some other publication. Namely, Trump may very well win on Election Night, but then the millions of mail-in ballots that arrive in the days or weeks after Election Day would be largely blue, and end up changing an apparent Trump win to a Biden victory instead.
If so, it would be the perfect setup for Trump and his base to scream “stolen election”.
I agree that Biden supporters won’t likely roll over if Trump wins by virtue of cheating, but it’s the Trump supporters who pull out their guns over being told to wear a mask. God help us if they hear that Trump is losing an election.
He means it in the same way Trump supporters have yet to concede the Civil War.
Huh?
Democrats acknowledge that Trump legally won the election. They just feel that laws that are designed to let somebody lose the general election and then win the EC election are bad laws.
Or are you saying that Democrats are refusing to buy into Trump’s fantasy of massive voter fraud and his claims he won the general election? (Followed by the biggest inauguration crowd ever.) Because, yeah, we’re sticking with reality on that one.
That’s third term stuff, or later. The Putin timetable suggests that even if the Trump family consolidates power with reasonable speed, we’ll still be reasonably free to post here even five years from now.
Also, in the Americas, dictatorships are rarely absolute. This is what the people who throw out the word fascist don’t understand.
What the Trumpists don’t seem to understand includes how much a populist like Perón or Trump can ruin an economy.
Great, that’s you. I feel like that topic has already been discussed extensively. I started this thread because I’m trying to spark a discussion of a different wrinkle that I find interesting. Can we stick to that here, please?
Yes, this is very worrisome. If you were really evil and were trying to gameplan the best way to spark a powder keg, I think a scenario where there is conflict and the only death is a right winger is it. We haven’t seen the “counterpunch” yet, for which I am grateful. But I have been steeling myself for it.
What he means is that he buys the right wing talking point that the impeachment was trying to overturn the election.
For some reason, and I have no idea why, they think that if Trump is impeached(and removed), then Clinton becomes president, rather than Pence.
It’s based on a willful misunderstanding of the constitution.
It’s really not going to be that bad.
There’s be a whole lot of protesting, some of which may have some rioting and looting.
There may be a couple of incidents like Scalise, but I doubt it.
But, that’s of course, assuming that there are only political differences, and not actual economic desperation.
I’m not sure what the actions of a whole bunch of newly homeless people will do. We’re starting to see a buttload of evictions and foreclosures, now that the moratoriums are over. There is some potential for violence there, but it’s hard to say. I wouldn’t put it past a mob of newly homeless to riot and burn down a few gated communities.
If the economy keeps going south, and if people start getting hungry, then the food riots may end up getting pretty violent. That’s more or less when society has failed, and civilization starts collapsing. At that point, violence is the norm, rather than the exception, as civilization is how we manage to work out our differences without violence.
Most authoritarian governments aren’t absolute. The smart ones typically do allow the little guy to rant in private or even on a message board; it’s when you try to spread dissent that you become a marked target.
Sorry, should have multiquoted, but wanted to address this too.
Indeed, that is probably what is really at stake here. I don’t worry about North Korean style totalitarianism, and I’m not completely convinced that we would completely dismantle democracy. Rather, in much the same way that China talks about capitalism with Chinese characteristics, a Trumpian democracy would apply that to our political system. It would be democracy and republicanism with Trumpian characteristics. But considering that most of the republican (now Trumpian) establishment came to power via democracy, I can’t see them completely turning against that system. Even authoritarian governments have “democracy;” it’s just different. It’s not free and fair.
But to your point, yes, that is what is really at stake here. Democracy may be flawed, but there is something to be said for a government that respects the will of the people and the institutions that flow therefrom, such as the rule of law and acting in the public interest, even if you may disagree with existing policies, rules, laws, and conventions. What you have in places like Russia, like Turkey, like South America in the mid to late 20th Century is a government that is interested in power, not the public interest. Government becomes loaded with grifters who use your hard-earned tax dollars to enrich themselves, either directly by using the government property as their own, or indirectly by using government contracts to benefit their investment interests.
Worse still, government bureaucracies are staffed with people who don’t know how to do their jobs, and have no interest in doing so.
No, it’s based on a willful denial of the legitimacy and substance of the impeachment charges. As long as Republicans never let the evidence be heard, they could continue to assert that there wasn’t any.
Fair enough, it is a double willful misunderstanding.
Congress could bring impeachment charges for eating tacos on Wednesdays. That would still be constitutional, even if silly.
Good point. I just recently reread 1984, and while it’s a gripping read, there are a lot of aspects of how that government operates that aren’t terribly logical.
ETA:
Still pleasantly surprised we haven’t seen a counterpunch from this yet. Maybe those right wing MAGA militia types are more cowardly than I thought.
And as Jonah Goldberg observed, complaining that impeachment is an attempt to “overturn the election” means that you are fundamentally against impeachment itself, which the Founders very purposely put in the Constitution. After all, every impeachment followed by removal overturns an election!
Controlling everyone requires a lot of resources. Yes, North Korea pretty much controls everyone in its borders, but at the cost of famines and perpetual internal threats to their regime. They’ve also created a kind of cult that’s difficult to replicate, and probably impossible in a large and diverse country. Countries like DPRK are extreme outliers.