Politics 2023

[Elok]

Mylochka -who is just old enough to faintly recall Kennedy's head blowing up, and Watergate far better than I do (which is all anyone talked about in 1974, even nine year-olds)- said recently that Nazi Wednesday was the most important thing to happen in US politics in her lifetime, 61.25 years now.

I'll add on to that, possibly the most important thing to happen in politics in the world, bar the Soviet Union having a BAD 1991.

Reactions?

Assuming you don't count [Sleezebag] actually winning the 2016 election as one singular "thing," possibly.  1/6, whatever you call it, was shocking, but it's not clear that Donald will face consequences for it even now.  He could actually be re-elected, sad to say.  Which is its own kind of "consequence," and will teach the wrong kind of lesson.  But it might be more like Iran-Contra, where it seems like it should be kind of a big deal (technically the US government committed treason, whoopsie!) but I imagine the average college student today wouldn't be able to coherently define it.  All the Snowden-type revelations were also concerning, possibly more so to me than 1/6, but it's not clear to me that we've done anything about them.  1/6 might simply fade into memory.  A lot depends on if DeSantis is able to shove [Sleezebag] off the road, I guess.

[Buster's Uncle]

Never forget Nazi Wednesday.

[Elok]

Yeah, we said that about 9/11 too, and we haven't forgotten per se, but it's lost its immediate relevance and I can see the same thing happening to 1/6.  I wasn't alive for Watergate, but IIUC it's important because it changed the way a lot of Americans thought about the government, or some such.  1/6 ... didn't change much.  By that point we were already polarized, so that a third of the country said OMG how dare he a little harder and another third said OMG this is a false flag and I looked at it and said "so ... I guess this is a thing we're doing now.  Great."  Its most significant effect to date has been to make [Sleezebag] less credible as a future presidential candidate, though that could change.  [Sleezebag]'s rise and eventual election victory, by comparison, radically shifted the GOP in a way nobody had done since Reagan (whatever one thinks of Reagan).

[Buster's Uncle]

One thinks Reagan was a sleezy bill of goods and an empty suit even before he went senile in office.

-And you're trying to let the bad guys off the hook again.


Permission to please forget that thing that happened in New York, however, granted.  I sorta thought remembering it was a terrible idea six months later.  Things that turn off all good sense and critical thought always are.

[Elok]

-And you're trying to let the bad guys off the hook again.

You're mistaking descriptive for prescriptive speech.  I'm not saying 1/6 should be forgotten, I'm saying it nearly has been and probably will be.  It's just one more outrageous and stupid thing associated with [Sleezebag].

[Buster's Uncle]

Soft-peddling it has that effect.

They tried to take over the government on live TV, their revolution indeed being televised.  He egged them on before the fact, and only failed to take a more direct role in the multiple felony murders that followed because his Secret Service detail forced him to go home.  That has been well-documented.


That numerous major government figures were not in prison two years ago is a disgrace.  The lack of attention to these incontrovertible facts you rightly note, I can only account for as it's a hard thing to have had happen here that people don't want to look at, like so many modern Germans pointedly not talking about Hitler or even expressing German patriotism.

[Elok]

Back up a second.  You said "the most important thing to happen in American politics."  Important, to me, implies something that has a major effect, that changes things.  1/6, to all appearances, didn't.  It was shocking, it was revolting, it was unprecedented, and IIRC it killed four people, one of them a cop and the other three insurgents.  It was a cause for congressional hearings, the same as everything else that ever happens, and a bunch of people got arrested, and talk show hosts talked, and at the end of the day the main effect I could discern was that it somewhat tarnished [Sleezebag]'s never-clean brand.  Biden's still president and [Sleezebag] is hovering at the edge of our political awareness.  It's kind of like the Beer Hall Putsch, as evaluated two or three years later.  It might later look like a harbinger of things which actually are important, but important in itself?  Nah.  And [Sleezebag]'s no Hitler.  He was in power for four years and his Beer Hall Putsch was his final blunder on the way out the door.

[Buster's Uncle]

I somewhat agree, buuutt --- I'll only point out that Nazi Wednesday/Beerhall Putsch -nice comparison, BTW- was unprecedented here.


-And that the high officials/co conspirators/leaders who betrayed their oaths and the public trust getting away with treasonous felony, at least guilty of accessory-after-the-fact, has exactly the opposite implication of what you infer and imply.

Far from being a big nothing-burger all the getting away with it near guarantees that it will happen again.  Not good news, and I won't be surprised to be bringing this exchange up with you again in a few years.

[Buster's Uncle]

-See also what Dr. Pedantry blog said about P-something, the Greek w/ a giant girl dressed as Athena, also d00dz with clubs.

[Elok]

I doubt anything like 1/6 will happen in the nearish term, for the simple reason that 1/6 required a specific set of circumstances (including gross police incompetence) which are unlikely to be duplicated even in the broad outlines.  Various people egging it on or hushing it up is not really anything new or unexpected.  The intelligence community has been getting away for that for about as long as it's existed, for example.

I mean, tbh, the single thing that startled me most about 1/6 was the fact that this pack of ill-coordinated mouth-breathing zealots actually got into the Capitol.  You'd expect us to be more careful with an entire third of the federal government than we were with Charlottesville, for heaven's sake ... the part where a large pack of frothing delusional nutbars were gathered in the area and emotionally keyed up enough to make trouble, now, that wasn't news.  We'd known about that for weeks.  Might as well act shocked about a fight breaking out after a London soccer match.  I was actually pleasantly surprised (and, yes, amused) by the part where, when they got in, they just sorta bumbled around like Kipling's monkeys playing in the ruins.  Which in no way detracts from how terrifying it must have been for the elected representatives gathered there to do their constitutional duty, but even the BHP parallels only go so far.

The BHP was a farce, but it was plainly planned and organized, with an impractical but at least comprehensible path to victory--they were going to violently overthrow the government and establish a new one.  Inciting a riot and then hoping it will (by means unspecified, while you watch it on the news) make your problems go away is not an insurrection or a coup.  It's just another half-baked idea from Agent Orange.  I think we were surprised in large part because it was too stupid for a sensible person to anticipate.  I figured he was whipping up the crowd because he delusionally believed he had a much larger base of support and his enemies would bow to the popular will, or something.  The part where the mob would run around smashing the Capitol if allowed in would thus be a side effect (which would be moot because I figured the people in charge of security had half a brain).  It's entirely possible, knowing Donny, that even he didn't expect them to actually break through, but once they were through his childlike brain took it as a sure sign of victory and he decided to go with it.  Who knows.

[Elok]

-See also what Dr. Pedantry blog said about P-something, the Greek w/ a giant girl dressed as Athena, also d00dz with clubs.

Which was a poor parallel because this isn't an ancient Greek city-state but a country of several hundred million people.  There was a 0% chance that the mob storming the Capitol would have led to an outcome actually favorable to [Sleezebag].  The worst-case scenario--outright massacre of the entire Legislative Branch--would have been terrible for the country and possibly led to profound violence, but it still would not have put him in power.  Very likely he would have wound up dead.  Even the incompetent display we got hurt [Sleezebag]'s image, and led to an abundance of false-flag narratives when even the Trumpists realized it looked bad.

[Buster's Uncle]

His entire central point was that you can't allow a thug to just keep practicing coups until he wins.  P-whatsis did.

Who knows.

Who knows?

I swear that whatever the appearance, I'm not on about vengeance.  It's the deterrent effect, which is really all our sorry 'justice' system is any good for.  But it had to amount to treason and inciting to riot, what he did that day, and people were killed in the riot, and that makes him a murderer - and he'd already killed Mary Anne.

I dunno, man.  We're doomed if there isn't more justice.

[Elok]

His entire central point was that you can't allow a thug to just keep practicing coups until he wins.  P-whatsis did.

Well, as to that, I have two answers:
1. It's not clear to me (I mean legit not clear, as in maybe) that you could prove BARD that [Sleezebag] intended that crowd to do any specific thing when he egged them on.  Everything he said could be interpreted as a rhetorical flourish, and like I said, knowing [Sleezebag], it's not only possible but probable that he had no firm idea what he expected them to do!  The relevant train of thought may have been "big group of excited people on my side good," or some such.  Then when it happened he ... sat back and excitedly waited for them to, by some unfathomable mechanism, deliver him the election he'd lost months ago.  Which is grossly malfeasant and contemptible, but differs from active involvement.  Hard to prove, and I don't want to undermine due process just to nail his dumb ass.

2. No amount of practice could have made 1/6 succeed, and no amount of practice will give that dayglow manchild the kind of brain needed to pull off a real coup.  Someone like DeSantis might perhaps be smart enough, but he'd never be so crude, AFAICT, as to pull something like this.  An actual successful coup would heavily involve the military and intelligence communities--both of whom have been displaying some worrying tendencies in recent decades, but neither of which were involved in 1/6.  Which is why it doesn't worry me.  You wanna rein in the spooks or the military-industrial complex, now, I'm all for it.  Current book is all about them doing horrible things without supervision.

[Buster's Uncle]

Current reading?  Writing it sounds out of your line.

I don't really disagree with any of that, btw.

[Elok]

No, 2Sor was actually inspired by (among many other things) real-life instances of the espionage and military-industrial worlds going completely insane, starting with MKULTRA.  At the start of the book our country is subcontracting out to a guy with a family of magical child soldiers.