It is harsh. If you were in that situation and you weren’t leaving (so you did have everything to lose), how would you feel about being the one to speak out? Would you be prepared to sacrifice yourself?
But that’s the critical difference, isn’t it? If this senator, or anyone else speaking out, had some skin in the game, I would be jumping on the praise bandwagon with both feet.
If I were a US senator, I like to think that yes, I would speak out, loud and often, and I wouldn’t consider it a sacrifice, I would consider it my job. But that’s easy for me to say. That’s why I’m only casting this as my reaction, not as some universal truth.
You might, if there was a knock on the door in the middle of the night, is what I meant. I don’t think we’re very far off from inconvenient people disappearing or meeting with implausible accidents.
Yup. But these ass clowns have about the best benefit package of anybody anywhere, and access to insider stock information, and will protect that at all costs.
Are you saying that this senator faces the real possibility of something like this happening, with no repercussions to the perpetrators and sponsors of the act? So that she does have skin in the game? If I thought that was true, I would be more enthusiastic in my praise. The whole point of my original post in this thread was the supposition that she faces no consequences. You’re really chasing the goalposts down the field.
I have already answered this question in the post you replied to. I don’t think we are very far off from inconvenient people being disposed of. I’m not joking.
And I think it does make a difference whether she would be staying in post (and therefore the statement insulting Musk might have been the first of many and might present an ongoing nuisance), or leaving post (in which case it might be easier to brush off).
I don’t think she has nothing at all to lose in either case, but the risks are different.
I don’t think so, but OK.
Sadly in Washington it’s career and party over country! One course word is a career ending moment! When told jump “ How high &:How far “
Many of us have an acute awareness that – among the ranks of Trump’s supporters – there are any number of David DePapes (the guy who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband), armed with any number of weapons, ready to do totally gratuitous mayhem at a moment’s notice. All they need are marching orders from a totally unhinged demagogue that they were stupid enough to follow in the first place.
Stochastic terrorism: the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.
TL;DR: Of all the things that I simply wouldn’t bet against these days, violence against a brash detractor is high among them.
Especially the ones with something to lose.
Yep. Anyone still alive is someone with ‘something to lose’.
I haven’t forgotten Giacomo Matteotti.
The point of your post escapes me. Did I say this had never happened, nor could ever happen here? I did not.
I think we’re just disagreeing on the scope of ‘nothing to lose’. If you’re leaving your job, you no longer stand to be fired from that job, but unless you are a suicidal hermit, you have something to lose.
I think you also need to consider the likelihood of the various outcomes to assess the actual risk involved.
McConnell nixed most of Trump’s appointees, during his first term, before Trump every even announced them. The few that Trump went ahead with, McConnell sat on and never moved forward with to vote on.
Congress performs most of its “no” votes in private, behind the scenes, in a person to person conversation. Once things have come to the floor, who votes yes and no is purely performance art as part of the behind the scenes bargaining and the story that the congressmen want to tell their electorate (true or not).
So far, everything has been barreling full tilt in the direction of Matteotti, and unless something causes it to swerve course, it’s only a matter of time before it gets there.
Well, I think that’s the point - not that I am failing to weigh the likelihood (I do know how risk assessment works), but that my estimate of likelihood is apparently different from yours.