Insurrection of 2021 - YOU did this

The BBQ Pit
#1

This insurrection has been in the making for years, perhaps decades.

Just to address one piece of this process, every Republican who has been advocating for legislation to make it harder to vote is directly and personally responsible for this because they have been perpetuating the myth that large numbers of ineligible voters are voting, based on zero evidence.

And that includes all the Repiblicans on this board who have ever suggested that the fear of illegitimate voting justified strictures. When it was no one but they themselves falsely stoking those fears.

I can’t remember everyone who did this, but prominent in my mind is one (apparently former) member of this community, Bricker, an educated person, learned in the law, who offered this vile justification repeatedly, cackling in glee over any successful attempt to restrict voting, gerrymandering, and other methods of effecting minority rule.

I don’t know why he chose to leave but I can only hope that it was in part over the shameful realization of his part in bringing about the Trump era.

These views and arguments amount to declaring a desire for some citizenship to be raised above others. Whatever reason given, it is a contemptible position to take.

All these small steps over the years, they were among the rhetoric that slowly paved the way for a violent assault on democracy.

Yes, it was an assault of unprepared and unorganized fools, a children’s crusade. But it marks a turning point. America is permanently changed because of what they have done, and what you have said and done to pave their way.

Shame on you. You have defiled the country. You are traitors to your people. You are traitors to those of us you have tried to disenfranchise. I despise all of you. I shall not forgive you.

#2

There’s also the other side of this coin: (and apologies if I’m repeating a point that you made that I just didn’t pick up on) the degree to which gerrymandering and silencing of voters has elevated minority and fringe political voices, giving the people who hold them a false sense that their positions are majority/mainstream positions. The misguided belief that these folks hold that they absolutely should have won this election is based on a belief that they are the majority, which is bolstered by the amount of red on election maps.

#3

Just for the bookkeeping, that was this thread, and its brief continuation in this thread.

ETA: ? That first URL, the link to which appears to be disabled, is

#4

That thread brings me back. I wonder if Bricker is still a-okay with voter suppression as long as they can claim a pretend reason like security.

I’m kidding, I have no wonder at all. Of course he is.

#5

It’s going to be nice in a few weeks when the hyperbolic, hypocritical rants and essays will be finished and we can enjoy the era of the Biden presidency.

#6

I hope we’ve all learned enough from the last few days, weeks, months and years not to kid ourselves that the Trump phenomenon was just an anomalous blip on the screen and the Biden administration will automatically constitute a “reset” to normal standards of responsible governance.

As this blog post quoted on a concurrent thread explained, it’s clear now that Republicans/conservatives as a group are thoroughly committed to undermining democracy. Not just via voter suppression, but via a large number of dishonest strategies, from outright falsehoods in their media to gerrymandering to treating the concept of bipartisan compromise as treasonous to ignoring multiple conventions and protocols designed to make democracy operate more smoothly and transparently.

Republicans still have the same problem of not being able to win elections or create policies on the basis of sincerely public-spirited governance aims that will actually benefit Americans as a whole. So they’re not going to give up on the large-scale attempts to undermine democracy so that they can continue governing as a crypto-oligarchy (even assuming that they’ll be backing off for the time being from blatantly seditious insurrection instigation so they can govern as an open oligarchy).

This is not normal two-party politics, and is not going to become normal two-party politics when Biden is inaugurated, and is not going to become normal two-party politics as long as the Republicans are still committed to deceitful anti-democracy shenanigans to prop up their elite-enriching, science-denying, bigotry-pandering, resolutely minoritarian agenda. And there’s no end in sight to that.

And honestly, octopus, I can’t see how you imagine you have a tentacle to stand on when it comes to complaining about “hyperbole” and “hypocrisy”. For Pete’s sake, you’re a self-identified 2020 Trump voter yourself. You deliberately pulled the lever for this shitshow of made-up alarmism about fictional “anarchist takeovers” and “stolen elections”, and deliberate incitement to violent riots, and Republican politicians voting on the basis of zero evidence not to accept the results of fairly conducted elections, and an actual mob invasion of the Capitol while Congress was in session. And you sit there sneering that our anger and disgust about this shitshow is “hyperbolic”?

No. As much as any other conservative Doper, octopus, YOU did this: you and all your fellow Republicans/conservatives who imagined you could ride the tiger of Trumpublicanism while condescendingly pretending to Democrats/liberals that this is all just fine and normal and legitimate. You were lying (or perhaps just idiotically credulous), you and Bricker and all the other conservative Dopers who tried to normalize the anti-democracy machinations of the current Republican Party.

You are fooling yourself if you think you can fool us that it’ll all be over on January 20th and we can stop worrying. We may not all be “thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet” as advertised, but Jesus Christ, we’re not that dumb.

What will happen in the next 10 weeks?
Are there high and low roads between disparate groups of political protestors?
#7

Excellent point. I remember well the long gerrymandering thread (around 2013, was it?) — Bricker and elucidator were noted contributors, from opposing sides… — and this is one result.

#8

48 hours away from the time when your president incited a violent mob to try to overthrow the government, and you’re back to calling the left hyperbolic. Cool. coolcoolcool.

#9

I’m making a bold prediction. (Ahem) During the Biden Presidency no Biden supporter will ever, like a Trump supporter, bash a Capitol Hill police officer in the skull with a fire extinguisher. The flags are at half staff today in Washington, except for the flags at the White House.

#10

Outspoken Trump-supporting Capitol Hill police officer.

#11

(Gallows humor ensues) How’d that work out for him?

#12

I’m just surprised that they are still flying Old Glory, rather than the stars and bars or worse.

#13

Seriously? Reminds me of a TV drama on Jimmy Hoffa (I think maybe Robert Blake played Hoffa?) - when RFK was killed, someone put the Teamster’s HQ flag at half-mast and Hoffa apparently had them raised back up.

#14

I guess it’s falgs at the Capitol. But, you know.

#15

Flags there, not falgs. Whatever those are.

#16

A terrorism expert weighs in. The right wing has changed our political culture. Violence is now contemplable.

I study this stuff for a living, so I exist in a rather strange bubble, but I think there’s a societal sense in which a huge line had been crossed. Even last week, I don’t think it’d fully sunk in that we are now facing the consequence of unchecked right-wing extremism being nurtured over the past several years. This wasn’t anything new that Trump heralded. Yet we have seen Trump and his ilk feed it. The most disturbing trend I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks and months has been the way in which people like Ted Cruz haven’t just radicalized Americans, but mobilized them to action. In mobilizing people to come from across the United States to defend in D.C., this is the kind of thing that Anwar al-Awlaki would envy.

The last few decades of expanding gun rights is also implicated. You can’t have a free democracy when so many people are walking around armed. the Second Amendment is a threat to the First Amendment.

#17

I’m so sick of the “Let’s just let him ride quietly into the night” crowd. Say you have a guy that encourages vicious behavior by his dog. His neighbors are afraid to call him on it because they are afraid he’ll sic the dog on them. Besides, they kind of like the dog and he doesn’t really bother them. One day, about two weeks before the owner is going to move to another town, he intentionally gets the dog all wound up and turns it loose. The dog bites several people. Not neighbors but people from the other side of town. The guy willingly gives up the dog and says, “I’m not responsible. I didn’t explicitly tell him to bite anyone. It was the dog!” Do we only punish the dog because, well, the guy is moving anyway so why bother prosecuting him? Fuck no. You need to set an example so that the next guy with an aggressive dog, as well as the original owner, know that there are consequences to training a dog in that manner and turning it loose on the public. Costs be damned.

Its not a perfect analogy. No consequences for the neighbors and we are talking human lives and our democracy here, not dog bites. Still…

#18

I pray that cooler heads in Gotham City’s government will prevail over the intemperate “commissioners” and “police chiefs” and “Batmen” and “Robins” who are howling for vengeance. Those lost souls are clearly suffering from Joker Derangement Syndrome—and not the good kind of Joker Derangement Syndrome, like the Joker has, the other kind! There are far better ways to prevent future dehydration/kidnapping plots against the United World Organization than holding the supervillains who organized a dehydration/kidnapping plot against it just a few days ago accountable for their actions.

#19

[side-track]
@Kimstu – Your first link is broken because there is a spurious new-line near the end of the [url=…] tag.
[/side-track]

#20

I don’t think we can overstate how badly our poorly representative election structures are affecting our democracy right now. Fuck opponents every which way.

What worries me, though, is that Democrats don’t recognize the dangers and will be loath to legislate repairs because the necessary changes will slightly diminish the individual powers of legislators even while greatly benefitting voters. Do the right thing, Dems. This is important.