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Cont: Trump's Coup - Part 3

Trump wrote a statement saying that Mike Pence could have overturned the election.
 
shuttlt said:
I've given you my political preferences multiple times already, just not at the abstract deracinated level that you want them. I think societies are better when they have some kind of positive shared national story and positive idea of national purpose that almost everybody buys into. If you can't do that, I think you are in a world of trouble. I think the family is the bedrock of society and that for societies to function, families have to function. I think the individual has replaced the family as the basic social unit to a degree that undermines society. Just like with a family, I think there are more important things to the happiness of its members than how democratic it is. I think democracy is largely a shell game. I think the 17th amendment was unfortunate because it meant that senators were no longer answerable to people who had a clue about what they were up to or how the grift worked and hence further centralised power. I think there are dark days ahead. I think getting concerned about whether or not your vote counts the same as somebody else is just fiddling while Rome burns. It might have been a meaningful question 150 years ago, but not now. What I care about is basically an onion that has my family at the center and goes out from there to the wider culture, community, and eventually nation my family is part of and the chain of all that going into the past. Right now it's looking pretty ******. Pretty standard stuff.
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This sounds awfully like the philosophy behind Many Fascist regimes, frankly, VIchy France in particular.
At least now we know where you are coming from. You don't like Democracy.
 
JoeMorgue said:
There's an intentional "difference of opinion" about everything is a key part of the post-fact world.
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And that’s how postmodernism helps authoritarianism. When everything is just your opinion or my opinion, that lays the groundwork for Big Brother to define what is true by force.
 
shuttlt said:
Right, and what would have happened then? They are occupying the Capitol and then? The military, security establishment, police, every country the US is remotely allied with are against them. Trump was still going to be President on Jan 7th anyway.
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The purpose was to disrupt formalizing the results for long enough to maneuver for a scenario that would seat Trump again despite the election--in particular the "House votes by delegation", though a flawed reading of the law, may have been the intended veneer of legitimacy. Once a critical step in the process is broken, lots of things become possible because the rulebook hasn't been written--or even if it technically has, it's down to rules that the public are less familiar with. The further removed the events become from Americans' expected experience, the more opportunity there is for a power grab with the illusion of legality. The same military that, wisely, declared it would not intervene to force an outcome might very well also accept whoever seemed to wind up king of the hill when the dust cleared and everyone had their legal fictions straight.

Some scenarios that would have seriously impeded an orderly transfer of power:

- Physical loss or destruction of the official electoral votes.
- Extended hostage standoff
- Killing or incapacitating key members of the Senate.

Our system proved more resilient, and part of that was the worst possibilities of that day were averted.
 
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dudalb said:
This sounds awfully like the philosophy behind Many Fascist regimes, frankly, VIchy France in particular.
At least now we know where you are coming from. You don't like Democracy.
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No, that's not it either. I didn't say I didn't like democracy. I just said that it wasn't a universal fix and that more democracy didn't necessarily lead to a more peaceful or happier society. That's pretty much what the people who set up the EU thought, so it's hardly a radical thought.

Fascism is a word that people use to mean a vast number of things. I probably won't get much pushback on this, but I doubt it is any universal solution either. As to Vichy France, it's not like an election, no matter how it scored on that scale of democratic purity, would have fixed the difficulties they faced when that government was set up either. There is that old saying about diplomacy being war by other means, I'd say it's the same with democracy. Neither diplomacy or democracy do away with war.
 
Paul2 said:
And that’s how postmodernism helps authoritarianism. When everything is just your opinion or my opinion, that lays the groundwork for Big Brother to define what is true by force.
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I would say that the right believe in facts in quite an old fashioned sense. They don't have decades of French philosophy underpinning them. It may well be that Trump lies, I don't doubt that he does in fact, but he isn't postmodern about it.
 
shuttlt said:
No, that's not it either. I didn't say I didn't like democracy. I just said that it wasn't a universal fix and that more democracy didn't necessarily lead to a more peaceful or happier society. That's pretty much what the people who set up the EU thought, so it's hardly a radical thought.
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There's another way to evaluate democracy. The prior goal of democracy, before the goal of a peaceful or happier society, is to create a society in which the will of the electorate is realized to the greatest extent. Obviously, the theory is that, when the electorate's will is realized, that will tend to produce a happier and more peaceful society. But the process of getting to that happy and peaceful society - realizing the will of the electorate - is essential, given that it is definitional.
 
gnome said:
The purpose was to disrupt formalizing the results for long enough to maneuver for a scenario that would seat Trump again despite the election--in particular the "House votes by delegation", though a flawed reading of the law, may have been the intended veneer of legitimacy.
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OK, it wouldn't have been a violent coup, the House, under Nancy Pelosi would have voted him in?

gnome said:
Once a critical step in the process is broken, lots of things become possible because the rulebook hasn't been written--or even if it technically has, it's down to rules that the public are less familiar with.
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If one side says the other has cheated, the solution is necessarily political. It's like impeachment. The only way to decide what to do is politically. Trump never had the support to win.

gnome said:
The further removed the events become from Americans' expected experience, the more opportunity there is for a power grab with the illusion of legality.
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Grab by what power? How? Talk me through this step by step. Trump didn't have the police, the army, the security services or any US allies on his side. A bunch of armed terrorists take control of the Capitol. That leads to the House voting to make him President again, how? This isn't Hogwarts. If you point machine guns at Congress and tell them to vote on something, that doesn't have any magical power that binds everybody. How do you grab power by taking over the Capitol?

gnome said:
The same military that, wisely, declared it would not intervene to force an outcome might very well also accept whoever seemed to wind up king of the hill when the dust cleared and everyone had their legal fictions straight.
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Yeah, because the FBI, CIA and military brass were just mad keen on Trump. He didn't even have support in the establishment GOP.

gnome said:
Some scenarios that would have seriously impeded an orderly transfer of power:

- Physical loss or destruction of the official electoral votes.
- Extended hostage standoff
- Killing or incapacitating key members of the Senate.
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Those things bring chaos, for sure. But none of them are paths to stealing the Presidency. Again, this isn't Hogwarts. Let's say Trump's dastardly agents switch out the electoral votes and Pence reads out the wrong ones. It means nothing. It's not a magic spell that once uttered can't be un-uttered. If an imposter turns up at the inauguration and is sworn in only to be discovered at the end of the ceremony, he isn't President, just because the magic ceremony has been completed.

gnome said:
Our system proved more resilient, and part of that was the worst possibilities of that day were averted.
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Was it averted by the velvet rope that the terrorists stayed on the correct side of when they were taking photos? There was never any possibility of a coup.
 
shuttlt said:
Was it averted by the velvet rope that the terrorists stayed on the correct side of when they were taking photos? There was never any possibility of a coup.
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I was going to make a detailed response, but now I know you're spouting baloney. Do you honestly think that characterizes the mob that entered? You're deflecting to irrelevancies and so I'm done.
 
Paul2 said:
There's another way to evaluate democracy. The prior goal of democracy, before the goal of a peaceful or happier society, is to create a society in which the will of the electorate is realized to the greatest extent.
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Who says that is the purpose of democracy? I'm sure it's been said, but the people I can immediately think of saying things like this were idealists and philosophers. That doesn't make it true. Democracy in general doesn't represent the will of the people in any genuine sense, it can't at any kind of scale. This has been argued since classical Greece.

Paul2 said:
Obviously, the theory is that, when the electorate's will is realized, that will tend to produce a happier and more peaceful society.
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Well, indeed, "the theory".

Paul2 said:
But the process of getting to that happy and peaceful society - realizing the will of the electorate - is essential, given that it is definitional.
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Just because some eighteenth century philosopher said that that was what democracies do, doesn't make it so.
 
gnome said:
I was going to make a detailed response, but now I know you're spouting baloney. Do you honestly think that characterizes the mob that entered? You're deflecting to irrelevancies and so I'm done.
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Sure there were people that broke barriers, fought with police and all the rest. Honestly though, think of the footage from inside the Capitol. How heavily armed and with what overwhelming force would you need to be going in with to take the Capitol? Did they fire a single shot in the Capitol? You'd need to be going in there like a team of John Wicks. Show me the footage of automatic gunfire being exchanged as they battle there way to where the members of Congress were hiding, and you've got an attempted coup.
 
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Time to quote Winston Churchill:
"Democracy is the worst form of govenrnment. Except for all the others".
 
shuttlt said:
Sure there were people that broke barriers, fought with police and all the rest. Honestly though, think of the footage from inside the Capitol. How heavily armed and with what overwhelming force would you need to be going in with to take the Capitol? Did they fire a single shot in the Capitol? You'd need to be going in there like a team of John Wicks. Show me the footage of automatic gunfire being exchanged as they battle there way to where the members of Congress were hiding, and you've got an attempted coup.
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What total BS.
I agree it was a badly planned coup attempt, but a badly planned bank robbery is still a bank robbery.
 
slyjoe said:
That's exactly what would have happened. In that scenario, each state gets 1 vote as I understand the scenario. There are more republican states than democratic states.
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Now we are getting into the weeds. Thinking about this I have heard two versions and I think your version may be the one I heard at the time. About a week ago I read something different, but that is floating around my brain because it is recent rather than that I have confidence in the source. I'll go with you.

Right, so in a contested election, the House chooses state by state. You still invalidate the whole thing by doing it while you are in armed occupation of the Capitol. Doing that would make it impossible for the Republicans to support Trump, since at that point they would be supporting a coup, and in any case he was struggling to get Senators and Representatives to support him.

The only way it was ever going to work, and if the odds were 1000 to 1 I'd be stunned, would be to have a protest outside to show the level of support he had. The moment people broke into the Capitol, his chances were zero.
 
dudalb said:
What total BS.
I agree it was a badly planned coup attempt, but a badly planned bank robbery is still a bank robbery.
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I won't debate you on this. I we are going to call this a coup, then well..... I keenly await the evidence to be presented in court.
 
dudalb said:
Time to quote Winston Churchill:
"Democracy is the worst form of govenrnment. Except for all the others".
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A politician in a democracy saying that democracy is the best system. I wonder if any kings said monarchy was the best system. I believe George III expressed a concern along those lines to John Adams.
 
shuttlt said:
Who says that is the purpose of democracy? I'm sure it's been said, but the people I can immediately think of saying things like this were idealists and philosophers. That doesn't make it true. Democracy in general doesn't represent the will of the people in any genuine sense, it can't at any kind of scale. This has been argued since classical Greece.
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How do you define the word “democracy?”
 
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