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Fister Roboto posted:How many times do I have to say that the alternative is letting the coup plotters get away with it? That doesn't shout "preserving democracy" either. That's a false binary. Not immediately engaging in a coup upon election to office does not mean that the administration is "letting the coup plotters get away with it". There's nothing wrong with following and enforcing the existing laws against subverting elections. That is very clearly not what you're calling for, though. You're openly advocating for the president to illegally overthrow democracy, under the justification that his political opponents were going to illegally overthrow democracy. Granted, that's a pretty common excuse dictators use to justify their coups and subsequent one-party rule, but it's not actually very pro-democracy! Besides, you're ignoring the most important part of what I'm saying: federal law enforcement would not obey a clearly unconstitutional order to round up opposing legislators. Regardless of whether or not Biden should carry out a coup, the fact of the matter is that he can't carry out a coup, because he has not won the absolute direct personal loyalty of law enforcement and the military, and thus will be unable to get their cooperation in a blatant power grab done without any regard for Constitutional rights and protections. So while we can go back and forth about whether or not he should have given illegal orders, the fact remains that those illegal orders would not have been followed. Byzantine posted:For as much as people are going "The Constitution!!" to defend doing nothing, I can't help but wonder what those same Founding Fathers would say if you asked "the President tried to overthrow the system and declare himself king, what should we do?". They'd probably assume that the president had a significant military force directly loyal to him, along with far more public support than Congress, and therefore make recommendations that are wildly unsuited to the current situation. Part of that would be your fault for giving them a wildly inaccurate description of what's going on, of course. Turning some disputes over vote-counting into "the President tried to declare himself king" is one hell of an exaggeration.
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Jun 29, 2023 21:52
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https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1674501253265518606 So the school cop in the Parkland School shooting was found not guilty of child neglect and other charges. Which now begs the question... what even is the point of school cops now?
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Jun 29, 2023 21:53
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Logic Probed posted:
To get kids used to submitting to authority figures and supply the prison industrial complex.
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Jun 29, 2023 21:56
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Main Paineframe posted:They'd probably assume that the president had a significant military force directly loyal to him, along with far more public support than Congress, and therefore make recommendations that are wildly unsuited to the current situation. I think they'd be absolutely gobsmacked that Congressmen from the midwest would back a power grab by a New York president since it totally goes against every potential stress point of government they had anticipated to be honest.
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Jun 29, 2023 21:57
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I'm starting to understand why abolishing prisons was such a political nonstarter
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Jun 29, 2023 22:00
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Main Paineframe posted:That's a false binary. Not immediately engaging in a coup upon election to office does not mean that the administration is "letting the coup plotters get away with it". If the GOP can't be taken down RICO style, can we start by enforcing existing laws like sedition, incitement to violence, or aiding and abetting? Directed at the legislators for which there is clearly enough probable cause? No? Why not those existing laws?
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Jun 29, 2023 22:02
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RBA Starblade posted:I'm starting to understand why abolishing prisons was such a political nonstarter I think that has more to do with there being no quick soundbyte for "so what do we do with murderers????" for the public than ( absoutely happening ) profit motive of the PIC.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:06
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Main Paineframe posted:Besides, you're ignoring the most important part of what I'm saying: federal law enforcement would not obey a clearly unconstitutional order to round up opposing legislators. Regardless of whether or not Biden should carry out a coup, the fact of the matter is that he can't carry out a coup, because he has not won the absolute direct personal loyalty of law enforcement and the military, and thus will be unable to get their cooperation in a blatant power grab done without any regard for Constitutional rights and protections.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:07
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Fister Roboto posted:Why? Show your work. Because literally all the things that you're advocating for require there being some sort of constitutional framework for the US government to exist. Fister Roboto posted:
1) There are ongoing criminal investigations. 2) You're advocating for something equally illegal.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:19
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Captain France posted:Also a Supreme Court decision in 2000 ending the Florida recount that might have gone for Gore, IIRC. I dunno, maybe the Dems should have just run someone who actually had a chance to win instead of an also-ran proven loser like Hillary? Seems a lot simpler than a laundry list of excuses and fanfiction about how if a hundred other things had happened differently then the outcome might have changed.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:22
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The Dems cannot fail, but only be failed by each of the millions of voters they are entitled to as the slightly lesser evil (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jun 29, 2023 22:25
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the_steve posted:I dunno, maybe the Dems should have just run someone who actually had a chance to win instead of an also-ran proven loser like Hillary? Both can be true. Hilary is a candidate who couldn't win the election under the rules that specifically put the Dems at a disadvantage but also that disadvantage leads them to losing elections with candidates who can easily win a popular vote.
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Jun 29, 2023 22:27
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Professor Beetus posted:If the GOP can't be taken down RICO style, can we start by enforcing existing laws like sedition, incitement to violence, or aiding and abetting? Directed at the legislators for which there is clearly enough probable cause? No? Why not those existing laws? "Taking down" an entire political party that got 74 million votes in the last presidential election and completely controls 23 state governments is a practical impossibility, sorry to say. It's flat-out not happening. Of course, it's possible to prosecute individual legislators for their personal criminal acts. Keep in mind, however, that the bar for prosecuting over speech offenses is very high by design, and that rushed slapdash prosecutions resulting in acquittals would be politically devastating not only for the Biden administration but for US democracy as a whole. Harold Fjord posted:The Dems cannot fail, but only be failed by each of the millions of voters they are entitled to as the slightly lesser evil The Dems have failed to pull voters to the left. Unfortunately, self-proclaimed leftists have done an even worse job at it.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:07
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There has only ever been a tenuous truce between The Left and Democrats and that was eroded completely after WWII and no serious analysis would say that the party structures or the efforts by the party at large in any way align meaningfully with a Leftist bend. In fact, they are the primary obstacle to left policy in the US—they ostensibly would have credibility and the ability to lead on educating and advocating for collectivist solutions to problems but in fact are the initial barrier to them before any Republican ever gets involved. The Democrats haven’t done a lovely job at promoting leftism; they’ve done a stellar job at preventing it at any cost. The rise of leftist sentiment and labor radicalism we are seeing is despite them, and will eventually have to defeat them if it is to succeed.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:18
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the_steve posted:I dunno, maybe the Dems should have just run someone who actually had a chance to win instead of an also-ran proven loser like Hillary? To be clear, you're talking how she narrowly lost the closest and hardest-fought Democratic primary of recent memory, to someone whose critics frequently called a generational talent at campaigning? And that it was a clear mistake compared to like the 2020 choice between much more distant runners-up Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden? I've heard a lot of reasons why she was a bad candidate. Some are pretty well-reasoned, others are an imaginary Hillary someone made up to be mad at. Please explain real slow and carefully why "also-ran proven loser" falls in the first category for voters in 2016, and not the second.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:21
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Logic Probed posted:Which now begs the question... what even is the point of school cops now? Same as it ever was: A way for elected officials to claim they're "doing something" about school shootings without going after guns. The fact that this particular cop didn't do anything won't stick, and it's unlikely that even more stories exactly like it won't stick either. People who don't want any gun law reform need to believe the school cops accomplish something, so they will keep on believing. Cop unions will keep pushing it too because it creates do-nothing jobs where they can smack around kids sometimes as a bonus.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:21
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the_steve posted:I dunno, maybe the Dems should have just run someone who actually had a chance to win instead of an also-ran proven loser like Hillary? I mean personally I voted for Bernie in both 2016 and 2020 and think he probably would have won / won harder, but we don't know that and we do pretty much know that without any one of these things Hillary would have won because that's how close it was, before you even consider that she got more votes. Probably more because everyone who doesn't love Trump hates him than because of people really wanting 4 more years of Obama style incrementalism, but still.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:34
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If Hillary won, she would've been completely blocked by the GOP-controlled Congress, 2018 would've been a anti-Hillary wave instead of anti-Trump, and then she would've gone down in flames when the disastrous coronavirus pandemic killed 10,000 Americans.Main Paineframe posted:Part of that would be your fault for giving them a wildly inaccurate description of what's going on, of course. Turning some disputes over vote-counting into "the President tried to declare himself king" is one hell of an exaggeration. Wait, was it "some disputes over vote-counting" or a Fascist Coup Against America? Main Paineframe posted:"Taking down" an entire political party that got 74 million votes in the last presidential election and completely controls 23 state governments is a practical impossibility, sorry to say. It's flat-out not happening. And there it is again. Fascism can't be beaten by The Rules because the fash already control half the country.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:51
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Main Paineframe posted:"Taking down" an entire political party that got 74 million votes in the last presidential election and completely controls 23 state governments is a practical impossibility, sorry to say. It's flat-out not happening. I mean obviously the RICO thing was a ridiculous example, I'm just pointing out that there are legal avenues for attack and that legal avenues would be a more effective strategy than simply saying vote and "whoops, didn't vote hard enough" when we can all see how ridiculously stacked it is against Dems to actually have a functioning majority. If you can't fight the fascist takeover of government by voting (you can't) then you have to fight it somewhere. And maybe some of the investigation will bear fruit and we'll see some of them brought to justice. I'd love to be wrong on this and have it turn out I was just too impatient. There are certainly plenty of avenues you could use to dig up financial crimes, but unfortunately those are the crimes that don't exist for people in a certain tax bracket (unless they gently caress with the finances of other people in that tax bracket or higher). But they haven't even been able to nail Matt Gaetz for sex trafficking minors at this point, so I'm not going to hold my breath for anyone in Congress being held accountable for much of anything.
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Jun 29, 2023 23:58
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What were all those anti-terrorism laws for again? Also funny how despite the cops hating Democrats so much, Dems will crawl over broken glass to give them even more money.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:What were all those anti-terrorism laws for again? They just convicted several people for 20 year and 12-year sentences under sedition charges with terrorism enhancements.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:14
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Professor Beetus posted:If you can't fight the fascist takeover of government by voting (you can't) If you can't fight it by voting, why isnt Trump still president?
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Jun 30, 2023 00:16
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Byzantine posted:If Hillary won, she would've been completely blocked by the GOP-controlled Congress, 2018 would've been a anti-Hillary wave instead of anti-Trump, and then she would've gone down in flames when the disastrous coronavirus pandemic killed 10,000 Americans. I don't see a reason to be so confident about that. What would Hillary have done in office to galvanize so much of the squishy middle against her like the GOP trifecta did in 2018? Why should we assume the Republicans would have kept together and appealed effectively to Americans after the Trump experiment blowing up in their face hard enough to put Hillary in the White House? Why would covid have doomed her in 2020 among anyone other than right-wing media addicts who would never have voted for her anyway? That doesn't really line up with how that election year worked in the US or abroad in the real world. I mean, it's possible that Democrats only retook power out of pendulum theory and things would have ended up even worse if Trump hadn't won, but given a chance to go back to November 2016 knowing the costs of what we got it sounds like a really bad gamble. While it's all technically possible, stating it with any confidence sounds really sad-rear end even by the already-low standards of counterfactuals. During the Bush years, a lot of people who waved off the 2000 election as inconsequential would rationalize it with wild claims that it didn't matter, Gore would have staffed the administration/courts with neocons and religious nuts, blown off the Clinton-era intelligence about Al Qaeda the same way, then invaded Iraq to finish his daddy's work. Others realized "that was a big fuckup, let's not do it again." I just get the same vibe from the same "better things aren't possible" arguments about 2016. It feels really uncompelling against repeated demonstration that major US elections have massive material effects on millions and millions of people at home and abroad, many of which resonate for years and decades after.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:21
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James Garfield posted:If you can't fight it by voting, why isnt Trump still president? Congressional police and their weapons
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Jun 30, 2023 00:27
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James Garfield posted:If you can't fight it by voting, why isnt Trump still president? Oh did voting out Trump stop fascism? The fascist party still has control of one chamber and a stranglehold on the functionality of the other. Like, show me how you accomplish that at the congressional level in the face of the massive geographical advantage that only keeps widening. As people with the means to flee red states for their own personal safety, leaving even less D voters to capture in those states. Like how do you get 60 reliable Dem votes in the Senate? Congress is obstructionist enough even without taking into account our current political climate. And it was designed that way, the people who designed it said so! Trust me, I very much want you, Paineframe, and the others to be right, I'd love to see this happen. I reliably vote D in local elections and vote as far left as I can in the primaries. My vote at the national level is meaningless as I live in a safe blue state. I just can't really see things changing for the better with the obstacles in our way.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:31
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Gumball Gumption posted:Congressional police and their weapons I guess the line between democracy and fascism is thin and blue.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:31
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Gumball Gumption posted:Both can be true. Hilary is a candidate who couldn't win the election under the rules that specifically put the Dems at a disadvantage but also that disadvantage leads them to losing elections with candidates who can easily win a popular vote. The whole Hilary campaign was even based specifically around winning in the particular way she wanted to secure a mandate- the explicit focus on abandoning progressive bastions to win over suburban moderates (who had been specifically primed for decades to hate her in a campaign that seems prescient now) and running up the score in blue states seems very specifically an intended strike at the left and validation of her personal brand of politics, as well as staggering arrogance of course. It's really rather hard to read it any other way. That some of the Jan 6ers are seeing small amounts of jail time is at least a sign something is happening, but it's far too little far too late to make a difference; the few right wingers who actually notice at this point are all memory holing it while also believing Biden is doing far worse things just offscreen, and not even emboldening them besides maintaining their belief of invincibility despite their persecution complex. (and fascists don't really do martyrs)
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Jun 30, 2023 00:41
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Ghost Leviathan posted:The whole Hilary campaign was even based specifically around winning in the particular way she wanted to secure a mandate- the explicit focus on abandoning progressive bastions to win over suburban moderates (who had been specifically primed for decades to hate her in a campaign that seems prescient now) and running up the score in blue states seems very specifically an intended strike at the left and validation of her personal brand of politics, as well as staggering arrogance of course. It's really rather hard to read it any other way. How is running up the score in blue states an intended strike at the left? I think you are giving Hillary way too much credit on that plan. Seems much more likely that the lady who has been writing that she wanted to be the first woman President for 36 years probably wanted to win in order to become the first woman President.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:44
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Also funny how despite the cops hating Democrats so much, Dems will crawl over broken glass to give them even more money. Scared people afraid of crime is a bipartisan issue. They lick cop boot because it sells to voters. You have the entire news and media landscape lionizing cops. Even the implication that they defunded police, which never even happened, lost them votes.
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Jun 30, 2023 00:47
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Byzantine posted:If Hillary won, she would've been completely blocked by the GOP-controlled Congress, 2018 would've been a anti-Hillary wave instead of anti-Trump, and then she would've gone down in flames when the disastrous coronavirus pandemic killed 10,000 Americans. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think I've ever claimed that it was a fascist coup against America. That's a rather exaggerated description, in my opinion. If the fash control half the country, then you're not going to beat them by breaking the rules either. You will, however, spark a constitutional crisis, and probably a civil war - one where the military isn't necessarily going to stand with the guy ordering mass arrests of political opponents! I don't know why you keep cutting this out of my posts and ignoring it, but Biden cannot personally arrest people. He uses his constitutional authority as president to give legal orders to the agencies that are constitutionally under his control. Those agencies, and the people within them, don't have to follow blatantly unconstitutional orders. Sure, that doesn't prevent those agencies from following those orders anyway if the agencies like those orders and think the orders are cloaked in enough secrecy that they won't get in trouble for following them (see also, the entire history of the CIA). But I find it extremely hard to believe that any federal law enforcement agency would be particularly inclined to play along with the kind of orders being suggested here. Basically, you're suggesting that Biden does a coup without even making sure he has the personal loyalty of the military leadership first (because he sure can't rely on his constitutional authority when ordering them to trash the Constitution).
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Jun 30, 2023 00:56
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Two more states down and continuing the 100% success rate of lawsuits against bills banning gender-affirming care. This might be one of the fastest and largest switches of policy (in both directions) at the individual state level. In the last year, we went from: 0 states had these laws, to nearly half of them have these laws, and now it appears as though 0 of them will again by the end of the year. 0 to 21 to 0 all within a year. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1674298303985352705 quote:Federal judges in Kentucky and Tennessee on Wednesday blocked state laws prohibiting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and hormones for transgender children from taking effect while lawsuits challenging the bans proceed.
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Jun 30, 2023 01:42
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One thing that I've noticed from the DeSantises of the current GOP is that they pass a lot of heinous poo poo knowing that it's going to get killed in court, but they can still tell their base that they got whatever lovely thing done so it doesn't matter
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Jun 30, 2023 01:51
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:
What are the odds of it going back up to half once the Supreme Court weighs in, though? *sigh*
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Jun 30, 2023 02:09
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Killer robot posted:I don't see a reason to be so confident about that. What would Hillary have done in office to galvanize so much of the squishy middle against her like the GOP trifecta did in 2018? Why should we assume the Republicans would have kept together and appealed effectively to Americans after the Trump experiment blowing up in their face hard enough to put Hillary in the White House? Why would covid have doomed her in 2020 among anyone other than right-wing media addicts who would never have voted for her anyway? That doesn't really line up with how that election year worked in the US or abroad in the real world. I mean, it's possible that Democrats only retook power out of pendulum theory and things would have ended up even worse if Trump hadn't won, but given a chance to go back to November 2016 knowing the costs of what we got it sounds like a really bad gamble. While it's all technically possible, stating it with any confidence sounds really sad-rear end even by the already-low standards of counterfactuals. Electing a black man as President got the psychos so angry that actual Nazis are now duly elected representatives. That hard-right tide won't vanish because a woman got in on the narrowest of margins, especially not Hillary when their mediasphere has spent decades painting her as the Great Satan. And with Trump beaten and the idpol satiated with #girlboss the Dems would continue to underestimate that rising tide, assuming she could sleepwalk to victory in 2020 as she did in 2016. You mention pendulum theory too, and that would definitely come into play after 12 years of Dem Presidents. To be fair, I don't think Bernie would've done much better in the end, since he'd be facing the same GOP congress and similar hatred for his Judeo-Bolshevism. I figure he'd do a lot better at building up a ground game (unless he too turned out to be a worthless lying coward like the Squad), but could he have survived the "China Virus" becoming the "Communist Virus"? 2017-2021 would've been better with either of them, but we might be under President DeSantis now if he toppled the Dem in a covid-anger wave election. I am being a downer here, admittedly, but it's only partly because I believe we're already too far gone for things to get better within our lifetimes. I'm mostly pushing back on the idea that Trump and Trump alone is the problem - he only took command of the hard right after he won, he didn't create it and it wasn't bound to him until he did the impossible and broke the Clintons. Hillary beating him wouldn't kill the alt-right, it would just push it back a bit while they sought a new leader.
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Jun 30, 2023 02:13
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gourdcaptain posted:What are the odds of it going back up to half once the Supreme Court weighs in, though? *sigh* With the way rulings have been going I doubt it. They conservatives on the court seem happy to chip away but shy away from really throwing open the gates with any of their rulings. The EPA changes are probably the most radical and nonsensical ruling so far and I think "not enough people will care or understand this" have them cover to feel safe doing it that these cases wouldn't. They want to rock the boat but really really don't want to have you see them do it.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:27
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Byzantine posted:If Hillary won, she would've been completely blocked by the GOP-controlled Congress, 2018 would've been a anti-Hillary wave instead of anti-Trump, and then she would've gone down in flames when the disastrous coronavirus pandemic killed 10,000 Americans. The legislative and executive branches might be largely hosed no matter who narrowly controls them, but the judicial branch keeps plugging away, making it one of the most important branches to control, and 2016 was one of the most important Supreme Court elections.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:31
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Killer robot posted:To be clear, you're talking how she narrowly lost the closest and hardest-fought Democratic primary of recent memory, to someone whose critics frequently called a generational talent at campaigning? And that it was a clear mistake compared to like the 2020 choice between much more distant runners-up Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden? Remember when Hillary talked about a "vast right wing conspiracy"? And we all laughed at her? Around the time the gop was putting Starr on Bill. She wasn't wrong, and Trump is ultimately rooted in the conspiracy what was an elaborate character assassination across decades. Hell, I voted Bush in 2000, Badnerick in '04, and registered dem in 08 to vote against Hilllary in the primaries. And I'm not defending Hillary. I still don't like her. Or Bill. I was a "Bernie Bro" on Facebook. I didn't vote in 2016 - though I was camping at Standing Rock and watching Tigerswan troll the hell out of my campmates (usually leaving them convinced that Zucc is the villain). poo poo, I was part of the online corner that launched the Low Orbit Ion cannon when Hillary convinced Visa, Paypal and Mastercard to cut off Wikileaks. We all learn and grow. I still don't like hilary. I have learned and fully believe that there was a vast right wing conspiracy to ensure there were a lot of us and that we'd be obnoxious when they (the right wing fascist conspirators) needed us to be. The "Clinton Death Count" was an op, for sure. And i still suspect putin of killing Seth Rich so the fascists could put a body on Hillary before the election. gently caress, I was at the dnc in Philly and saw the claque as the narrative blaming Hillary for Seth's murder was birthed. She wasn't a weak candidate. Uglycat fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 03:32
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Eiba posted:Yeah, probably. But she would have appointed a bunch of Supreme Court Justices Not with Mitch ruling the Senate.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:33
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FlamingLiberal posted:One thing that I've noticed from the DeSantises of the current GOP is that they pass a lot of heinous poo poo knowing that it's going to get killed in court, but they can still tell their base that they got whatever lovely thing done so it doesn't matter It also terrifies the vulnerable in their state while the government goes on insane power trips targeting the vulnerable, so win win from their perspective
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Jun 30, 2023 03:39
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:How is running up the score in blue states an intended strike at the left? I think you are giving Hillary way too much credit on that plan. The point is to make the statement to the left 'We don't need you, we can win without you' and have a mandate with no obligation to even do the bare minimum to improve things for the majority. The villainisation of Bernie and his supporters was a very clear opening to strangle the nascent leftist resurgence in its crib. She spent those 36 years pushing a very specific brand of politics around her personal fulfilment and advancement, not just becoming President for any reason but for the reasons she wanted to, through her ideology and beliefs. That she failed with all this behind her and fell into the trap the right had spent those 36 years straight openly preparing in front of her is testament to some of the flaws in her strategy and ideology, to say the least. shimmy shimmy posted:It also terrifies the vulnerable in their state while the government goes on insane power trips targeting the vulnerable, so win win from their perspective Yep. There's absolutely no reason for them to stop doing it, it riles up their base and they're in safe seats, and encourages stochastic violence.
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Jun 30, 2023 06:20
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