FREEDOM for business owners and FREEDOM for business workers are not the same thing. The latter outnumber the former by thousands to 1. The Rs are, unsurprisingly, the party of the former. The only surprising thing is how many of the latter vote as if they were the former.
Exactly - it is typically “Might makes Right”, i.e. take over by force, jail or execute the opposers, and claim victory equals justification.
Remember - these people believe they are the patriots. They believe the election was rigged, corrupted by rampant fraud, and nobody in power is trying to stop the illegal election results. Thus, the only recourse is mob action direct intervention by the people themselves.
Exactly. Trump has been violating the norms and the Republican party has largely supported his every effort to disrupt the system and take power. Driving the “people” to “march on Congress” and put on some mock trial or hang a few or whatever “patriotic” extremes they wished to engage would serve to frighten the public into compliance with their desired result.
The saving grace is that if it had gotten that far, it is fairly likely the military would have acted sans Trump. They would have to take a side. There’s no neutral position for them when one branch of government is physically attacking another branch. There’s no neutral when Congressional members are being executed. There’s no neutral when democracy is being decided by mob action. Either they intervene or they are complicit in Trump taking over. “Stand Back and Stand By” for them would be allowing Trump to retain control beyond Jan. 20." That in itself is taking a side.
Once bodies start falling, you are in chaos. The system is broken. You can’t look to the Constitution to save us when the President is violating the Constitution and a large fraction of the American people are helping him. It is revolution time. They might try to frame it as “restore democracy” or whatever, but any steps taken in that timeframe they would self-justify as necessary to preserve the true People’s will.
The American Succession wasn’t resolved by bureaucratic process - it took the Civil War. Once the shooting starts, all bets are off. What happens when your neighbors are waving their guns in the street and chanting “Go Trump!” Do they come knocking on your door for your Biden/Harris campaign poster in your yard?
Yes, this was a coup attempt, and yes, it really could have been a lot worse, and no, the threat is not gone. These people still believe the lies that the election was stolen. They still believe that they are the chosen ones to protect democracy with their Second Amendment gun rights. That they are not invading state capitols and government buildings en masse is a hopeful sign, but the fact we still have to have National Guard members stationed in our Nation’s Capitol is frightening, and police and National Guard are stationed around some of the states, too.
Maybe your Trump neighbors when they start rounding up the traitorous Biden/Harris supporters.
You mean when they come for me?
Yep, pretty much. They want the freedom to enslave; freedom for the plebes, OTOH, is slavery.
My dad’s pretty damn conservative. I had an argument with him the other day where he insisted that a minimum wage is always a bad thing because it inhibits the free market. I insisted to him that it protects against exploitation. I agreed that raising the minimum wage to ridiculous levels just causes unemployment and drives inflation, which defeats the purpose of a minimum wage, but a reasonable one keeps businesses in check from being tyrants.
He then countered that the law can’t force people to behave decently and I asked him what the point of the law is if that’s not the goal, and he realized he’d painted himself into a corner. Not that I was a master debater (heh) but if you get someone with that mindset to just really think through what they’re suggesting rather than regurgitating talking points it inevitably falls apart.
You know what else is free market? The right of employers to not hire people who hold certain political views. My right to not buy products because I disagree with how the owner of the company makes or spends their profits. The right of companies not to hold events in states that don’t protect the rights of all their workers and customers. The right of a venue not to host a speaker because they don’t like their views. The right of social media companies to forbid disinformation on their platforms and their right to ban people that violate their rules.
Pretty much every single thing that conservatives whine about, basically.
They love that invisible hand of the free market while it’s stroking their crotch, but not so much when it bitch-slaps them in the face. They have no real love for the idea of free markets, they just like it when they work in their favor.
Yes. Absolutely. Full extent of the law.
They updated that article. It now says prosecutors removed the line about intent to capture and execute. They don’t quite have the e evidence for that strong of a statement, yet.
Not that I disagree with your point, just pointing out your article isn’t making the point for you.
‘Ordinary’ white citizens. They freaked the fuck out over BLM coming to town, but MAGA gets a smile and a wave.
This whole post is excellent. I just highlighted some of it, but the rest is also great.
No, that’s not about the Constitution. They are laying out how she doesn’t conform to the party ideals, and thus they don’t want her in the party. That’s just the inner workings of a group. They can set the rules for their club and kick out who they want to.
That part I don’t know about, but seems vindictive.
Ok, that part about the Constitution is off, and does support the comment about them not understanding it.
“Erroneously placed behaviors over actual presidential results” really sums up the modern Republican party. The party of “moral values” and condemning homosexuality and Christian values is willing to ignore deeply immoral behavior because he’s one of them. It’s also hypocritical given that they start their censure with comments about her personal behavior.
Funny how they have turned “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” into “Judge now, before ye be judged.”
What are they talking about here? His thumbs down vote over abolishing Obamacare? What serious wrongdoing are they accusing McCain?
Technically, he was a military member assigned to science research. It was military R&D.
There’s a whole debate about what Heinlein meant and what he justified as service and what the book seems to say. Let’s not have it here.
Yeah, the main character let’s slip at the end that he has Maori roots, IIRC. Verhoeven’s take on Heinlein is a total misrepresentation of Heinlein’s ideas.
That’s definitely an unfair characterization. Heinlein expressly wanted service that put the server at personal risk - that was the point of it being military service. It is about putting your health, safety, and life on the line for the country. He tried to find a way to allow everyone the opportunity to serve in some capacity and earn the privilege, but the whole point is to put yourself in harm’s way for the good of the whole.
That’s what makes the whole discussion about what constitutes service complicated. What can a blind, deaf mute with no fingers and toes realistically contribute as a real contribution? They are required to find something.
But hazardous duty is not about dehumanizing anyone, and it’s not about punishing some out group for daring to want to be a citizen. It’s about putting the nation over the self. Like I said, there’s a lot to debate about Heinlein.
That doctor is also a civilian contractor who is not a veteran and not allowed to vote. He seems to think it silly for anyone to want to put himself or herself in harm’s way for such a meaningless prize - the right to vote. There’s no animus meant to the disabled, no they don’t deserve the right.
Yes, the sole benefit was the right to vote. Maybe there were veteran’s benefits like what we currently have. Who knows? The point is that voting is that valuable.
Yes, that is a fundamental flaw in Heinlein’s proposal. His philosophy is that the citizens will inherently work for the good of all and everyone’s best interests, because they have demonstrated a willingness to do so. Except getting the right to vote is such a big deal, they are doing it for personal gain. So that premise is inherently flawed.
Filipino, he quote a proverb in Tagalog and say that’s the language they speak at home.
This one is a bit of fact and a bit of speculation. There were tours in the days organized by insurrectionist sympathizers in congress in the days leading up to 1/6. “Unauthorized” is a reasonable assertion given that all tours were supposed to have been shut down for Covid, but what qualifies as authorized? “That were designed to show the layout of the building” is speculating on motive and intent. It’s not a wild stretch, unlike craziness saying Democrats are baby-eating pedophiles, but it is an assumption.
Still, it’s not a qanon style conspiracy theory.
You could add to that list
- Those same congress members want to carry personal firearms onto the chamber floors, in violation of the rules of Congress, and they are trying to bypass security measures like metal detectors to do so.
No, it is a coup attempt, it’s just not a full authoritarian military coup, and it is not just the day of Jan 6, but starts with his claims that the only way he will lose is by voter fraud. It continues with anti-Constitutional claims about how votes should be ignored as not valid, moves through silly lawsuits of no substance that he led about to his followers, and continues when he started pressuring state officials to change the vote results. All leading up to stirring up a mob that he had to know contained violent and highly motivated elements like the Proud Boys. Point them in the right direction and set them off, not knowing exactly what would happen, but being a master of surfing chaos.
As for this not being a military coup, you should also remember that Trump had just fired Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and three top Pentagon officials, and replaced them with his supporters. He very well could have expected them to step in and help with the takeover.
That’s not crazy talk. Sure, it steps beyond anything we could have dreamed from a US President, but this is Trump we are talking about. When has he ever been constrained by truth, logic, honesty, decency, the Constitution, self-awareness, or respect for the democratic process?
Usually coup attempts are held in authoritarian states with governments not bound by the laws of civil society or democracy. Military leaders trying to overthrow a government are guilty of sedition, which can have the death penalty. But dictatorships don’t require lengthy trials where the accused is “innocent until proven guilty” and the rights of the accused are protected.
They will just do things like poison a popular opposition leader who is running against you in an election.
This is a trap in thinking. There are such things as real conspiracies, and they can be as small as two people, or they can get fairly large.
For example, the assassination attempt on Hitler at the Wolf’s Lair on July 20, 1944, involved a number of senior military and former military leaders, and was an extensive plot developed from groups that began trying to overthrow Hitler in 1938. Various plans were made over the years, and a couple of attempts at assassination were carried out.
That was definitely a large conspiracy and definitely a coup attempt.
The label “conspiracy theory” can conflate actual large conspiracies with ridiculous “grand conspiracies” that would require an undefined group of aware participants that grows to include practically everyone but the theorist.
The idea that the moon landings were a hoax is the latter type. The coup attempt on Jan 6 is by no means the kind of unconstrained expanding list of people who must be in on it.
There appear to be several groups acting independently to effect some form of overthrow of the government to “restore democracy”, from people who just wanted to be heard that they thought the election was rigged and therefore illegal, to people who had the means and stated intent to “hang Mike Pence” and likely kill Nancy Pelosi and any other prominent Democrat they found.
Trump’s act of a coup doesn’t have to have him know details of any particular group or plan. It just requires a reasonable certainty on his part that members of the crowd are committed enough to the idea that he must remain President and willing to take bold action. He doesn’t need to communicate secretly or individually with anyone in the crowd.
All he had to do was fire them up and stir up a frenzy from the victims of years of lies.
The more knowing elements was putting in place military leaders who supported him who, at the very least, obstructed efforts to provide proper security for the anticipated protests. He wouldn’t have to know all the details, such as panic buttons being removed from some offices. Though being the control freak he is, I consider it likely he did. Not that that will likely ever be provable.
(Yes, I realize I am spending a lot of effort on someone already booted for trolling. I think my responses are, nevertheless, important to share.)
Because in a democracy that respects rights and operates with a legal system, it takes time to accrue the evidence to support arrest and conviction. Maybe Trump’s government would hold spontaneous arrests for conspiracy charges based solely on a hunch, but Biden’s is bound to follow the law and actually find the evidence, then charge.
There is, actually, circumstantial evidence to suggest that this was more than Trump’s expectation, that they did, indeed, take active steps to weaken Capitol defenses and tilt the situation in favor of the insurrectionists. See this article. It’s not conclusive that they were seditious collaborators, but if they weren’t, then their best possible defense is that they were wholly incompetent in their roles.
Don’t forget you’re replying to an already-banned sock. (Not that your words are any less valid.)
Besides, Joe Biden isn’t going to be arresting anybody – it’ll be the FBI. The departed poster is just another MAGat assuming Biden voters have made him a personality cult as they did for Donny Two-scoops.
What a shock that someone arguing badly that this was not a coup turns out to be a lying shitstain who re-joined the board after being banned for being an asshole. Who could have predicted?
/s
I sure never saw it coming. 
I keep wondering how it would have turned out if the Democrats had not won control of the Senate the night before the attempted coup. The Republicans could have used it to argue the Presidential election results in Georgia were thus not valid. It does not take a stretch to believe a Republican win on January 5 would have embolded many on January 6th and helped promote the lie that Biden did not really win.
As has been noted elsewhere, Stacey Abrams is an American hero.
I don’t want to exaggerate the dangers that we faced, which were legitimately dangerous enough as they occurred, but I think we were close to something even worse. What happened on January 6th was mostly resolved by that evening. However, had any federal or state court anywhere, or had the DOJ at any time, or had a state refused certification, this would have given weight to the conspiracy theory – regardless of the fact that it would have been just as much of a manufactured truth as the idea of the steal itself, it would have added fuel to the fire because it would have introduced a new twist to the story.
I don’t think the goal was ever to convince a majority of the country that the election was stolen; I think the goal was to inspire enough of their activists to believe it was stolen to the point where they’d be motivated enough to act on that perceived outrage - which clearly worked. And then the other part of that was to confuse enough people in the softer center so that they had doubts about whether the election was actually fair.
The Supreme Court in Wisconsin came very close to adding more doubt. The board of elections in Michigan came relatively close to introducing doubt. Trump tried to use the DOJ to sow doubt. Just enough doubt to justify extraordinary action. Just enough doubt to get more than the 147 Republicans who were already willing to market the great lie.
Did we ever learn whom he/she/it was socking for?
An awesome and articulate response. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
The mods tend to favour inscrutability on sock identifications, with no public announcements.