No,it isn’t, fortunately.
Correct. Anyone who thinks it will is a partisan idiot.
Case in point.
Regards,
Shodan
It is roughly Trump’s approval rating, so no, I didn’t just make it up.
Would Trump’s supporters favor arresting his political opponents? Gosh, I cannot imagine why anyone would think that. Whatever could have given me that idea?
https://twitter.com/hashtag/lockherup?lang=en
Trumpists are authoritarian. This is what they do.
No, you didn’t make that up. You made this up -
Hysterical exaggeration? Partisan blindness? Long-term abuse of habit-forming drugs?
The possibilities are endless.
Regards,
Shodan
Rick, you’re usually a lot smarter than this. What you made up was that there is a one-to-one correspondence between “supports Trump” and “wants him to arrest his enemies”. I know this is the Pit, but like I said-- you’re usually a lot smarter than that.
Someone’s Twitter feed? Really?
That article is about people who want to investigate HRC.
You can get people to chant all sorts of stuff at a political rally. At worst that means Trump supporters who are strident enough to attend his rallies like to chant shit about Hillary and maybe a good number of them actually want it done, but who knows how many? And even then, you’re looking at a small fraction of “Trump supporters”.
Meanwhile, the candidate and party leadership of the incumbent party supplied unverified research (obtained from officials of an adversary nation) to the country’s federal security services in order to open surveillance and a criminal investigation of the opposition campaign. We may be closer than we think.
It is pretty much a 1:1. When a guy runs on authoritarianism and flat out says that those who oppose him should be silenced, then those who continue to support him after that act are saying they support him no matter what. When you can say that you could kill someone and people would still vote for you, and no one disagrees, then it’s pretty clear that they will do whatever he wants. When he runs on “Lock her up” and people don’t disavow him, then it’s clear that they support his enemies being locked up.
The only possibility left is that some of these people are just so out of touch they have no idea what Trump is doing. Then their support could simply be ignorance. But it’s increasingly difficult to be ignorant of what Trump is doing.
If we take a survey of those who support a candidate, this is a pretty good proxy for those who support the underlying message that they ran on. Trump is not special in this regard, and neither are Americans.
It’s comforting to think that nearly all Americans support the ideals of democracy. But it’s just not true. Our enemy is internal this time. Those who support Trump are no different from those who support any other attempted dictator.
This is a guy who fired a guy for investigating him, and tried to do it again. He’s tried repeatedly to silence any unfavorable media. He is a dictator, and supporting him and not those who stood up against him means you support what a dictator does.
I don’t expect this kind of thing anytime soon but here in America we’ve got a little finesse. I wouldn’t expect opposition leaders to be arrested just for being opposition leaders. I’d expect them to be arrested for , say, corruption, or spitting on the sidewalk, whatever.
Those who say it can’t happen here (Hey, that would make a great book title) may be right, but those who say it could may be righter.
And those who are here claiming his supporters aren’t really “supporting” supporting him are, charitably, whistling past the graveyard.
Do you actually think Trumpists would oppose the arrest of Hillary Clinton? Do you really think there will suddenly be a hue and cry from them that that is wrong? Of course they wouldn’t. They would be delighted, and would take her arrest as being evidence she was guilty. Barack Obama would be next. They’ll rationalize a reason to support it. “If he wasn’t guilty, they wouldn’t have arrested him!”
I honestly think anyone who doesn’t think a fascist regime would be quite enthusiastically supported by a substantial fraction of the population is living in a dream world. The Trumpists are extremely riled up. They totally believe The Memo is proof of a Deep State conspiracy. The reason Sean Hannity repeats this crap is tens of millions believe it.
I agree with all of the above, but more than that, Trump’s supporters are knowingly supporting someone who incontrovertibly attacks the truth. When you have 35% of the voting public that believes that truth is always subjective and in the eye of the beholder (i.e. those with power), then we have a massive problem. It’s the attack on the concept of truth based on facts and evidence that are the most irredeemable characteristics of this administration, and those who support it.
About 35 percent of the electorate supports Donald Trump despite the fact that he tells outrageous lies on a daily basis. When 35 percent give a leader the license to create their own reality, then yes, among other things, they’re giving him license to lock up his political opponents – that behavior among many other authoritarian behaviors I’d add.
I wonder, how many of the people who chanted, with Trump and/or Pence “Lock her up!” would be happy as shit if it really happened? I suspect, they ALL would be.
FWIW, I tried to dig for polling on this topic, but couldn’t find it. So we are forced to look for indirect measures of support for authoritarianism.
35% of the public (and 63% of Republicans) think journalists are “An enemy of the people.” That’s supporting evidence for a predilection towards authoritarianism, though of course it’s not proof. Yes, I know that 20% believes anything, which is why I broke the result out by party affiliation.
Though to be honest, stronger evidence involves an absence of a sense of limits among Republicans in general and Trumpers in particular. Democratic norms are routinely broken without any signs of handwringing. The conservative collective doesn’t self-police. (Well that’s not totally the case: there are NeverTrumpers. But they are small in number and routinely dismissed in conservative circles. Exiles.)
Rick’s allegation is, “Not proven.” But the balance of the evidence supports it. The right wing media is certainly chock-full of calls for Hillary’s arrest, as I documented above. This is where we are.
They did? Which candidate and party leadership are you talking about here?
I cannot believe that anyone but your total loon would actually be on board with jailing journalists and the President’s political enemies.
Wing nuts say wingnutty things, but I think even wing nuts know this would be contrary to their own best interests.
And what evidence have you seen that supports this theory?
In fact, history supports the contrary (i.e., people are stupid, vicious, and don’t give a rat’s ass about morality when it comes to shitting on their perceived enemies). Yes, it can happen here.
No, you’re wrong.
They would absolutely go along with it – absolutely.
And the simple reason for this is that perception of reality is reality. You operate on the assumption that, surely, these are just words, that they share the same democratic and libertarian values that the rest of us do. They do not.
I say that because they perceive truth in a completely different way. The truth is subjective to the Trump / Republican supporters. What would appear to be a hyper-politicized investigation to the rest of us is something else to conservatives. I mean, we have intelligence committees that don’t even work together and issue two completely polar opposite findings of their reviews of the intelligence. It’s subjective truth versus objective, fact-based truth.
Republicans absolutely, 100%, without a shred of doubt, would be completely fine with jailing Hillary Clinton, jailing Barack Obama, and jailing anyone that they voted against precisely because of how the conservative worldview operates. Conservatives live in a world of fear, a world of threats, and a world in which objective facts observed and recorded by anonymous bureaucrats living 1000 miles away do not square with their personal life experience, and are thus, not reliable and trustworthy in the subjective sense.
Folks, here’s what you need to understand. The institutions that, over the past 100 or so years, were established on the bedrock of science, process, and facts, are now being politicized beyond repair. When truth based on objective facts and observation is destroyed, it is replaced with subjective truth - and truth becomes whatever the hell those in power say it is. Don’t ever believe for a moment that you are free in that sort of society – you are a slave. You will do whatever the fuck those in power tell you to do, because in that world, the truth will not support you, the evidence won’t support you. Even those who might sympathize with you won’t support you, because power in that society isn’t based on who has the best ideas; it’s based on who has the power to impose their will on you (i.e. throw you in jail for a few years without a fair trial - that kind of thing).
Others have already said it better, but they would not see it as contrary to their best interests. Hillary in jail? What’s so contrary about that? But tomorrow it could be YOUR turn if them evil Dems take over again. (Never mind that it didn’t happen last time them evil Dems held the reins.) Unh, unh, we won’t let that happen.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities”-Voltaire
Navalny was freed following Russian protests. He has been freed without charge, but will have to appear in court at which time he may face additional charges. This is what tyranny looks like. Russian presidential elections: Navalny freed after day of protests - BBC News