Cont: 2020 Presidential Election part 3

[Meadmaker]

Obviously the 60s start a new chapter, but before Watergate you have
Nixon's Southern strategy
Joe McCarthy
the Red scare
fears of socialism and communism during the New Deal
Jim Crow

I think the difference between that and the butter emails style of investigation is that in those days there were lots of scary stuff being whipped up toward groups, whether or not those group actually existed.

In recent decades, what we have are congressional inquiries targeted at digging dirt on specific politicians, frequently presidents. Sometimes there is a legitimate public policy goal, but often times it is just a fishing expedition hoping to create some pretense that can be used for impeachment. If it can't get to impeachment, at least it can get to some sort of campaign issue where you can allege corruption.

In other words, I think the email investigation, Whitewater, and a few others had no legitimate public policy role. They were purely motivated by trying to make a president or possible presidential candidate look bad.

By contrast, Iran-Contra and Watergate were legitimate public policy issues, although there was certainly an element of political "gotcha" involved as well.

I would say the same thing about Mueller and the collusion investigation, too. I think there was a certain amount of legitimate public policy investigation, but there was also a whole big plate of hoping to get Trump so he could be thrown out of office. This is less true of the investigation itself than it was of the hype surrounding it.

 

[Safe-Keeper]

I would argue that Trump's coup d'etat is already complete ...
... in that the US is, currently, not a functioning Democracy anymore.

Neither the President, nor his advisers, his party, their supporters believe that cast votes is what should decide who wins the election.
Without trust that we have a government of the people, by the people, for the people, we might very well perish from the earth.

It doesn't really matter if Trump wins his coup or loses: the next government doesn't have the sufficient democratic legitimacy, either because it got systematically undermined by lies, or because it stole the election.

The next four years will not be peaceful.

As long as facts don't matter anymore, it's looking pretty bleak, yes.

I didn't really expect too many Trump supporters to believe the Führer's lies about how he won the election, mostly because it was just such a transparent, unbelievable lie. The fact that so many of them fell for it (at least judging from how loud they're still being in various comments threads) is very scary. Trump has built an alternate reality that his followers have all gathered in, where facts just can't reach them, and Trump's failings (mostly) don't matter.

I have always thought of Trump supporters as fairweather friends, as they tend to go quiet when things look bad for them, or when Trump runs into defeats, such as after the midterms, so I expected them to mute themselves after Biden won, too. But then again, after the midterms there wasn't this yuge narrative about a rigged election that they could latch on to.

edit to add: come to think of it, it's a lot like when they decided from day one, with no evidence, that the Mueller probe was a witch hunt. They don't need facts, they don't need to listen to both sides, they just make up a narrative as they go.

 

[trustbutverify]

I know you provided a very well-written post, and I'm not responding to most of it simply because I don't disagree with any of it.

But on this particular point, I would like to direct you to the 10-page thread Trump's Coup d'état, in which several of our fellow forumites appear to actually believe Trump is engaged in a coup.

Oddly, it's a thread in which Skeptic Ginger and myself are in agreement that other people are way overreacting... and that sort of agreement between us is exceedingly rare.

Trump is not engaged in a coup simply because he hasn't yet been able to muster the resources necessary. He's been attempting to create conditions on the ground, so far unsuccessfully. He's tried to encourage violent, far right scumbags to back him in this effort, yet being alarmed by this situation makes one an unhinged fantasist. Trump once said he could shoot someone on fifth Ave and not lose votes. Actually, I think he'd gain them... while his apologists insist we not "overreact".

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Is this Trump asking for that thing that SG told us Trump wasn't asking for?

SG me, or Greg?

I never said Trump wasn't asking for this ****. He's asked pleaded for it in multiple states.

I said there is no evidence any of said legislatures were about to comply.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

He doesn't. But he can't EVER admit to defeat (or being wrong about anything) so he just continues to spout lies, knowing that at around half the Republican voters will believe it and that Republican politicians will support it even they know it's all lies.

I think he fluctuates between outright believing what he wants to believe and kind of/sort of knowing it's not true. That's when he makes up the excuse he's fighting because his followers want him to.

The longer this goes on, the more Trump shifts toward the latter. It's hard to keep this kind of fantasy going when reality pounds on the door.

Eventually it's going to be the latter and he'll claim it was the latter all along.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Trump Retweeted

Kyle Becker
@kylenabecker
MICHIGAN.
WATCH as Democrat State Rep-Elect Abraham Aiyash threatens the children of Wayne County Board of Canvassers member Monica Palmer.
"I want you to think about what this means for your kids, who probably go to [redacted]"...

*CHILLING*

(video in link)

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1329090338984583168

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

David Shafer, Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party tweets with no supporting evidence

@DavidShafer
One of our monitors discovered a 9,626 vote error in the DeKalb County hand count. One batch was labeled 10,707 for Biden and 13 for Trump - an improbable margin even by DeKalb standards. The actual count for the batch was 1,081 for Biden and 13 for Trump.

Had this counting error not been discovered, Biden would have gained enough votes from this one batch alone to cancel out Trump’s gains from Fayette, Floyd and Walton.

We were limited to 1 monitor for every 10 counting tables and we were kept some distance from the tables. There is no telling what we missed under these unreasonable restrictions. The miscounted batch had been be signed off by two official counters.


Biden’s margin of victory in this batch of votes (99.9%) bested Bashar al-Assad’s 2007 margin (97.6%) and Raul Castro’s 2008 margin (99.4%). It matched Kim Jong-il’s 2009 margin (99.9%).

Our attorneys have turned over an affidavit from our monitor to the Secretary of State and requested an investigation.

So chairman of the party, not even an elected legislator. These guys are paid to spout this kind of crap.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Actually it requires people to ignore their duty and act against it to stop him from launching nukes. That is intentional and by design. Now that would be as crazy as US troops obeying orders to torture detainees when they are supposed to have a legal and moral obligation to prevent such actions. Clearly like they stood up against torture they will stand against Trump.

I think the difference here is they didn't have to look at the tortured persons, they could easily disassociate from them.

There are a whole lot of people one has to look in the eyes of if one is going to ignore these election results.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

For me it is bad enough that the sitting President of the United States of ******* America has said that he will ignore the vote of the people and is actually trying to get others to follow his lead. Add on top of these things that he is trying to delegitimize the democratic process where it is to his advantage and it is a playbook for any future aspiring autocrat. Each of these things is something to be upset about, whether he succeeds or not.

Yep. And we won't know for a while just how much damage Trump has and is doing.

 

[ponderingturtle]

I think the difference here is they didn't have to look at the tortured persons, they could easily disassociate from them.

There are a whole lot of people one has to look in the eyes of if one is going to ignore these election results.

They kind of did have to look at them when they were torturing them. It is not easy to torture someone with your eyes closed.

 

[Paul2]

There's a fuzzy line in here somewhere.

Let's take, for example, a five-year-old who is angry and repeatedly says that he is going to kill his mom. If rational adults discount his threat, is it because we don't think the kid actually wants to kill his mom? Or is it because that child's wants are irrelevant to whether or not he could actually succeed in killing his mom?

Or, on the other hand, take the scenario of some of our fellow posters who have, in the past, expressed the desire and intention to do physical harm to people on the other side of their aisle (punch nazis, carve MAGA into people's foreheads, etc.). If we discount their claims, is it because we think that's a line they'd never actually cross, or is it because we believe that realistically, they will never be in a position to competently carry through those desires?

I guess that's where i fall with this. What Trump might want to do is irrelevant to me. I don't care how much he screams and yells. He cannot actually make it happen. It has nothing to do with whether or not he's willing to cross a line, it's whether or not he has the ability to do so. It's the same argument I had when people were all wound up about Trump being the president and starting a nuclear war by calling up the folks in charge of the missiles and ordering a launch. His desire to do so has no value - at the end of the day, regardless of what the technical authority seems to be, it's simply not going to happen. There are other checks and balances in place, and in order for him to actually overthrow US democracy and seize the reigns of power as a dictator (or launch nukes, for that matter) requires a LOT of other people to completely disregard their own duties and oaths to enable that. And the people who need to become outright traitors are exactly the people who are least likely to do so.

You're thinking that the checks and balances of American democracy will hold for sure? Mostly? probably more than 50%? This is the first time we've had to ask that question.

Furthermore, check out how authoritarians come to power these days: it's by using the levers of democracy available to them when they have been democratically elected. I heard an author on NPR the other day go through this (Terri Gross, perhaps?).

 

[Emily's Cat]

I do like to berate people. Make it twice daily and it may be worth losing what is left of our democracy.

Deal... but only for you. I don't think I have the stamina for twice-daily berating from ever forum member.

 

[uke2se]

I think the difference here is they didn't have to look at the tortured persons, they could easily disassociate from them.

There are a whole lot of people one has to look in the eyes of if one is going to ignore these election results.

Do you think a sense of shame for having to look disenfranchised voters in the eyes is going to keep GOP state officials from attempting to help Trump steal the election?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

...

I would say the same thing about Mueller and the collusion investigation, too. I think there was a certain amount of legitimate public policy investigation, but there was also a whole big plate of hoping to get Trump so he could be thrown out of office. This is less true of the investigation itself than it was of the hype surrounding it.

If you only listened to Trump and, to Barr's version of Mueller's report and, you were inclined to believe it was political rather than a legitimate investigation into Russian interference in our election in a way that was more effective than it had ever been in the past... you might draw that conclusion.

There is no evidence it was ever political except maybe for the call for a special investigator. Of course most people probably have a political influence in how they saw the investigation.

But I hope you might at some point in the future take another look at the investigation into Russian interference in out election. How were Democrats supposed to act given the evidence of the interference?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Trump is not engaged in a coup simply because he hasn't yet been able to muster the resources necessary. He's been attempting to create conditions on the ground, so far unsuccessfully. He's tried to encourage violent, far right scumbags to back him in this effort, yet being alarmed by this situation makes one an unhinged fantasist. Trump once said he could shoot someone on fifth Ave and not lose votes. Actually, I think he'd gain them... while his apologists insist we not "overreact".

I agree with all that except for one thing, Trump isn't smart enough to be trying to pull off a coup. It's piecemeal, not a coordinated effort.

His denial he could have possibly lost and his desire to encourage his sycophants to adore him explains things better than that he's trying to pull off a coup.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

They kind of did have to look at them when they were torturing them. It is not easy to torture someone with your eyes closed.

That's individuals following direct orders. It's a whole different thing, not analogous.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That's individuals following direct orders. It's a whole different thing, not analogous.

You already claimed that they would not follow direct orders of their lawful superior and these would be lawful orders not some order to violate the UCMC. Namely that they would not let trump say nuke Iran.

There is no process in place to check the president launching a nuclear attack and that is by design. So you are depending on service men and women standing up against lawful orders from their legal superior. Yea that does not seem likely.

Now I don't think it is likely Trump will nuke Iran, but in the end that is entirely his call as commander in chief. People spout willful ignorance about checks on presidential authority to use nuclear first strike options.

Here is a good episode of Radiolab on Nukes and how during Watergate someone being trained as a launch officer got railroaded out of the military for asking if there was some check on the presidents preemptive nuclear use.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/nukes

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Do you think a sense of shame for having to look disenfranchised voters in the eyes is going to keep GOP state officials from attempting to help Trump steal the election?

See my above post. The analogy is getting lost in the details. Here's the original exchange:

There are other checks and balances in place, and in order for him to actually overthrow US democracy and seize the reigns of power as a dictator

Actually it requires people to ignore their duty and act against it to stop him from launching nukes. That is intentional and by design. Now that would be as crazy as US troops obeying orders to torture detainees when they are supposed to have a legal and moral obligation to prevent such actions. Clearly like they stood up against torture they will stand against Trump.

Some people here did ignore what they should do and instead followed orders. The woman who refused to give Biden access to money and offices, for example, is one of those people though I think it's hard to compare that to torturing someone when ordered to.

But we've come nowhere close to this happening on the large scale it would take for an actual coup.

 

[trustbutverify]

I agree with all that except for one thing, Trump isn't smart enough to be trying to pull off a coup. It's piecemeal, not a coordinated effort.

His denial he could have possibly lost and his desire to encourage his sycophants to adore him explains things better than that he's trying to pull off a coup.

How smart does someone have to be to attempt something they don't have the intellect to achieve? I frequently attempt to beat chess opponents I'm not smart enough to defeat. But I'm smart enough to try.

 

[Stacyhs]

Trump Retweeted

Kyle Becker
@kylenabecker
MICHIGAN.
WATCH as Democrat State Rep-Elect Abraham Aiyash threatens the children of Wayne County Board of Canvassers member Monica Palmer.
"I want you to think about what this means for your kids, who probably go to [redacted]"...

*CHILLING*

(video in link)

https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1329090338984583168

"I want you to think about what this means for your kids, who probably go to [redacted]"...

If you watch the video it's cut off at a crucial moment. Why do I have the strong suspicion that it was edited here because he was not threatening Palmer's children at all?

ETA: I looked at his twitter page. Apparently he mentioned what school the kids may go to but not in a "nice school your kids go to. Pity if something happened to it" way either. While not a smart thing to do, it is certainly not threatening Palmer's children.