Politics 2021

[Buster's Uncle]

The Founders had good classical educations, them as had much education at all, and they knew ALL about political mob violence, dangers to the Republic thereof, in a lot finer detail than you or I, having been forced to read extensively about it in the original Latin as lads.  Please accept my assurances that what the Treason Pig was doing about 11:30 am on Nazi Wednesday was one of the specific sorts of things they had in mind when they put impeachment in the constitution.

[Buster's Uncle]

This guy just needs to denounce the Cheney Bund, and he'd be eligible for I might consider voting for him for something.  (Torture and Patriot Act and assorted war and other crimes not cool and I swore an oath 'bout Republikkans near 20 years ago.)

[Buster's Uncle]

Drew Griffin @CNN reporting Capitol insurrection Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander said he was getting help from three members of Congress (Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks).

[Buster's Uncle]

It's been a slow day, by the standards of the week, but a busy night.  -And I've been posting a very tiny fraction of what-all interesting I see.

'Tachment embiggens.

[Buster's Uncle]

Michigan Republican Fred Upton says he will vote to impeach [Sleezebag], joining John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney.

[bvanevery]

b? FWIW, I've been pretty satisfied with your behavior/level of civility in this thread.  Keep up the good work.

I have a long history of political debate.  This isn't a challenge.  You should have seen me going up my alt-right learning curve with a bona fide psycho during [Sleezebag]'s 2016 election campaign.  Then he won, and I was like, all my nice words didn't matter at all.  So I've done a lot less political debate in the past 4 years.  There's more history, but basically when [Sleezebag] got in, and the people I'd had debates with got more and more wound up, I stopped engaging them.

I can handle debating people, that I think you've demonstrated, you can't.  But I do have limits.  I've learned that the conspirational windup crowds are like emotional vampires.  The more you push against their ideations, the stronger they become.  That's why I  stopped.

But I do feel a strong moral obligation to speak against evil, at the moments when it's needed.  Getting in a random word fight with a creep, isn't needed.  That can actually get you killed, if you really lack judgment on who you're talking to and what you're saying.  But like in the halls of Congress the other day, that was the time to speak against evil.  And the people who did not, who doubled down, are horrible contemptible human beings.

One of my most taxing workouts ever, was debating a holocaust denier who came to one of our Asheville Skeptics meetings.  I had to take a break for 25 minutes and go for a walk.  Let the other folks handle him for the interim.  We actually became sorta friends afterwards, because we were in similar "living out of our vehicles" circumstances in Asheville.  He had a weird mix of beliefs, and he swore up and down that he was not anti-semitic.  Unpacking the psychology of such a person, was quite an exercise.  We've drifted apart since then.

[bvanevery]

would see him promptly replaced by somebody less stupid.

Again, who is this mythical politician you're referring to?  [Sleezebag] got where he did because he's selling something the mob wants.  Aside from narcissism, he had Reality TV training.  The mob likes dumb.  There aren't a lot of people with his skill set lining up to do his kind of damage.

David Duke?  The country's been there, done that.

[E_T]

You Tube joins Twitter, et al with Banning [Sleezebag]

[E_T]

would see him promptly replaced by somebody less stupid.

Again, who is this mythical politician you're referring to?  [Sleezebag] got where he did because he's selling something the mob wants.  Aside from narcissism, he had Reality TV training.  The mob likes dumb.  There aren't a lot of people with his skill set lining up to do his kind of damage.

David Duke?  The country's been there, done that.

I am extremely thankful that someone with real intelligence had not been in [Sleezebag]'s (and other Wend organizers) position to do the coup correctly instead of the Clown theater that we got instead.

[E_T]

and also thankful that Bearu hasn't been in here

[E_T]

[E_T]

and

[bvanevery]

to do the coup correctly instead of the Clown theater that we got instead.

I think you folks have a bad habit of discounting Clown theater.  Being taken not so seriously, is exactly how someone does operative harm.  "Oh, those protesters?  We didn't take them that seriously."

[Elok]

Identify, then, the strategic purpose served by 1/6.  It didn't stop the certification of the electoral votes, it didn't so much as bruise a single congressperson--though it did nudge several of them away from [Sleezebag] support--and it appalled everyone non-crazy who was otherwise inclined to support [Sleezebag] for he's-not-a-leftist reasons.  It gave Twitter, Amazon et al an excuse to crack down on Trumpist social media.  In terms of actual damage done, they snitched Pelosi's laptop (dunno if she's got it back yet), took some humiliating selfies which doxxed a good chunk of them and are currently leading to arrests, and killed one cop while losing four of their own.  They also lost the "element of surprise" in that the cops will now be compelled to crank up security at all future events so that stunts like this will take considerably more effort, and finally there's yet another bloody impeachment hearing.  Good job, idiots.  From their point of view, it was a complete fiasco.  A halfway competent insurgent commander could have done actual damage under those circumstances.  I don't think it would have achieved any strategic goal either, since Trumpism is a dead-end overall, but it wouldn't have been the flop this was.  Which is not to downplay how alarming it could be to all the non-loons--it's just that alarming is all it was.

BUncle: I think all non-[Sleezebag] Republicans would be wise to repudiate Trumpism to see if they can salvage their party, yes.  I doubt it will work in the near-term; they'll need to lose a bunch of primaries, then have the general contests lost, before the Trumpists learn that the crap won't sell anymore and stick to terrorism.  This will be an extremely difficult position for the GOP to extract itself from, but America's not set up to be a one-party state so it's my hope that something else will pop up to serve the interests of non-Dems.  My hope is they'll rebrand to serious libertarianism but I'm not holding my breath.

[Elok]

As for unshared assumptions, I thought I had referred to them.  To put it more explicitly, you're speaking as if ... how do I put it?  As if there's a solid body of real Americans and a fringe of loons who can be punished.  And also as if getting rid of [Sleezebag] would make those loons significantly less dangerous.  I still believe the country is divided in three (Dem, Rep, Ind/disaffected), they're about equal-sized, and while the rightists differ in fervor and loyalty they will not change their perceived interests just because the doofus goes.  There will continue to be a right-wing party of some description and it will consist of much the same people with broadly similar prejudices to those they have shown their whole lives.  They will have to modify their message, and probably vote in some new messengers, to win over enough of the disaffected middle to gain power again.  Possibly not as much as either of us hopes, though, because the American people have a surprisingly short memory.

The true, true believers might barely change their behavior at all, only remodel themselves as a permanent loyal-opposition-in-exile.  The Shiites have been doing that for over a thousand years and show no sign of slowing down.  It might eventually settle down or fade away, IDK.  Anyway, I should probably be writing or studying or something, so don't take it bad if I don't follow this discussion as closely as you do.