The actions today were dictated from the top, by a large portion of Republican leadership. They created the lies, promoted them, and made sure the people heard them wherever they could reach them. It's not the media's fault for taking action against these lies, and in doing so offended people so much that they had to resort to sedition.
It's absurd to me to hear that people just needed to talk it out more openly! If only someone could nicely tell them the truth! As if all these people were discussing things in good faith and would listen to reality about their conspiracy theories. Must we really coddle and give a voice to dangerous conspiracy theorists that have steadily gotten more and more extreme and violent? They are being groomed and egged on by Republican leadership - surely that's the source of the problem, and one that nobody seems to be able to do anything about.
Regarding the Russian collusion... manafort is in jail over those crimes. Flynn and others were charged with obstruction of justice. You don't obstruct justice because it's fun and dandy.
The trump campaign and admin has made huge efforts to cover up crimes relating to it's behavior with respects to Russia. What exactly are they hiding?
I personally believe it isn't as deep as it seems, but it is also very serious. I don't think Trump is given orders by Russia, or that there was deep cooperation. However, even somewhat of coordination and discussions of sensitive information is criminal.
So yes, the Russian collusion narrative is entirely true. The only reason Trump wasn't charged with obstruction of justice is because of a memo saying they shouldn't charge their boss, not because there isn't enough evidence.
One of the big differences between what happened in Portland and DC is INTENT. The insurrectionists yesterday intended on forcing the joint session to declare Trump the winner of the presidential election. They were attempted to do by force what they failed to do at the ballot box, and at the court house. The fact they were inept and failed does not excuse them at all.
That does not compare even slightly to what happened in Portland. Protests that turns into riots aren't good. However, there was not an intent to overthrow the presidential election there at all.
>The actions today were dictated from the top, by a large portion of Republican leadership. They created the lies, promoted them, and made sure the people heard them wherever they could reach them.
None of this is tantamount to incitement, or sedition. Which is why despite whatever bloviating we're not going to see any prosecutions of public officials (at least not regarding the Republican efforts to contest the election.) This is 2020's version of "Lock Her Up!"
These sorts of rhetorical exaggerations are contributing to the problem, and are scarcely better than the outright lies on the other side.
Right, except the protesters were sheep led by Trump and his Republican goons. This was nothing short of a failed coup. That can't be an exaggeration.
Stephen Colbert did a great job of bringing this up in his interview with ex-prosecutor Sen. Klobuchar who went straight back to work with her traitor colleagues. She dodged the question of whether more public officials should be prosecuted with a tactful deflection of laying it all on Trump. That bugged me.
>This was nothing short of a failed coup. That can't be an exaggeration.
Yes it can be, given that Republicans have always framed their arguments in terms of "preventing electoral fraud" and not "overthrowing democracy." You may personally feel like the former is a pretextual cover for the latter but you probably wouldn't be able to prove this in a court of law.
Setting aside completely how I feel because it absolutely does not matter, the question should be, was it the latter or wasn't it?
> but you probably wouldn't be able to prove this in a court of law.
Exactly. And for this to be the standard for how we certify the truth is at the heart of American absurdism. It's how we let politicians, big banks, Wall Street, et al get away with being full of shit. And I am not exaggerating. The partisan impeachment vote, Wells Fargo's fake bank account, and the financial crisis are all examples of absurdism.
Here is Matt Gaetz after the raid. Do you know why they applaud? Because he gave them the well formed arguments they need to get away with betraying their country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfmyACLmZ7s
It's not merely that the prosecutions aren't going to happen, it's that they're not going to receive widespread support among legal experts because that's the tricky thing about the law - you can't just throw people in jail based on tribal hatred, you have to actually assert a definition of concepts like "sedition" or "incitement" or "terrorism" that apply universally and are prosecuted consistently. And there's not going to be a functional definition of these terms that applies especially to the speech of Republican politicians or rioters in the past couple months.
I am not talking about tribal hatred or matters of perspective or what the public thinks or votes about anything here.
I am talking about the masterminds and their intent. Trump clearly intended to steal the election. Wells Fargo and Wall Street clearly intended to cheat for profit.
It's as if intent doesn't matter, when it truly is the source and agency of the bad actors. Wrongful intent continues to enjoy protection in America under the "tricky things about the law", to borrow your words.
You shouldn't be able to steal something just because the lawyers agree with you. In America, that's how it's done (probably everywhere else too, but).
Trump has always gotten away with the things he was gravely incompetent at on the basis of his incompetence. This is just another case. He was pushing Pence to use power he didn't have. His allies all pushed the fraud narrative. And he provoked a riot that proceeded to follow his orders and storm the capital.
This is what a weak coup looks like in 2020 America. None of the action above were based on preserving order or upholding the constitution or fullfilling his oath of office or protecting our democracy or being in the right. It was a power grab doomed from the start, but never the less, a power grab and a sorry attempt at a coup.
That's an interesting and reasonable perspective. If you stretch the definition of a coup to include totally incoherent, incompetent, ineffectual raging that could never actually achieve the outcome, it could qualify. But it still feels like a stretch to me based on what I know of coups (sadly some personal experience there).
I also think calling it a coup inflames tensions and risks credibility for no real benefit. A sober and precise description of events is damning enough.
The struggle over vocabulary is evident. The truth is it could be called all or none of these things. There was a professor on NPR who also said how each term (terrorism, insurrection, coup) has legal connotations. But I call BS on all of it. Getting people to not say coup is already evidence of damage control against the factual, universal, objective, scientific "coup-ness" nature of it all. Semmantics is always arguable, but I am not lying, I have no agenda, and I am not gaming anything with how I express the situation. Like with most "normal" people with no power or say in the situation.
But of course, whether anything crosses legal lines in accordance to legal vocabulary is all these bent politicians are concerned about, because that's the only thing that would stop them by landing them in jail. That's why most of them are lawyers. The non-lawyers have a hard time surviving. We'll see what happens with Trump.
Some of the Republican leadership, including the President, have presented evidence of election irregularities. Much of this evidence is worrisome, even if it does not impact a single vote. For instance - if you run a poll monitoring system and the county operations team cheers and claps when one party's monitors are asked to leave, it does not inspire confidence in the process. If you rely on a voting machine vendor whom both parties have expressed strong reservations against, it does not inspire confidence either.
When people do not have confidence in the most basic aspect of democracy, you start to see what you did in DC. Regardless of party or country. Absolutely nothing has been done to assuage these concerns, and most responses have been dismissive. It is most likely going to reoccur whenever something like this happens.
When you examine the specific actions here, the President's remarks immediately prior to the incident exonerate him because he said in plain language to "peacefully and patriotically protest at the Capitol". There is no way to credibly accuse him of inciting a mob to be violent, but one could certainly accuse him of inciting a protest. This would not be unusual since there have been many peaceful protests at the Capitol during supreme court hearings and gun control related protests.
Who do you trust to supply you with "objective facts" about politics? Why not at least take a look at the New York Times article? Are you afraid you'll forget you don't trust them and take everything at face value?
Even if you don't trust the journalists and editors at the NYT, the article links to primary sources from the US Supreme Court, Wisconsin Supreme Court, Pennsylvania Department of State and more so you can do your own research.
As a non-Trump-supporter who doesn't trust the mainstream media, where do you get your objective facts about politics? Do you just watch CSPAN or something? It seems like you'd miss out on a lot of important news that way.
There are powerful reality filters embedded in the culture of organisations, of classes of people, and with political groups. It is extremely difficult to tease things apart and find the truth in this environment. By exposing yourself to a source you are opening yourself to be being unduly swayed by that source. Unless I am prepared to sit down and investigate the story, the sources found in the story and follow up with my own research, then I will not expose myself to it.
I have not investigated this story thoroughly, but I have tried to get to the bottom of many other stories. Usually at the bottom I find uncertainty. I find lack of evidence. Confusion, bending, warping of reality to fit an agenda. There so much noise it's almost deafening.
"Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see". We are like children in the school playground spinning tales for each other. Imprinting our own thoughts and values and goals into the stories we tell. Barely aware of our own motives.
There are rules for poll monitors. They have to follow specific rules and laws to participate. They cannot talk to workers. They can only ask questions to supervisors and inspectors only. They cannot be disruptive. I mean how would you like to be trying to count things and get interrupted by "poll monitors"?
That is what happened here. The GOP poll monitors kept on breaking the rules and acting like asses. And they were eventually kicked out, totally legally and according to the rules they signed up for. And the Democratic poll watchers clapped, which may be 'unseemly' but isn't proof of "elections irregularities".
The president, with the 1/4 billion he raised, the full support of the GOP and their allies and supporters _at every level of every government_ and with the backing of the federal government were unable to raise a lawsuit that could convince even judges appointed by Trump. If there was evidence of fraud that could sway the election they would have found it, period. They didn't, ergo it doesn't exist.
The reason people didn't have confidence in the most basic aspect of democracy is because they have been lied to endlessly. Without ANY knowledge of how the system works, they took these lies at their face value. Many things were done to assuage those concerns, and they dismissed the evidence out of hand.
For example, Georgia.... does paper ballots counted by optical tabulators. They did a by-hand recount. The hand-counted totals matched the machine tabulation. This totally rules out any computer or machine problems. But people STILL bring up the 'dominion changed the votes' lies.
And you are encouraging it with your irresponsible comment. You're feeding the lies, by encouraging a sense of 'uncertantity' when there is NOT uncertantity. The GOP Secretary of State in Georgia just presided over 2 elections which delivered major Democratic wins. Suggesting that he is 'on the take' just illustrates the sheer desperation of the losers of this election will take to cast any shadow of doubt on anyone if it comforts the sting of their loss, even as they know that their wild accusations will never have an end, and now resembles a literal witch hunt. When your cast of enemies has to grow to include the GOP leaders in the Senate, and the VP, both of who have endlessly protected Trump, then you really don't have reality on your side.
Based on polling there are plenty of folks in both parties who think things were fishy with the election. I am confident that if you took each claim and systematically argued it out in public you would have seen that number go down drastically to an insignificant one.
I think GOP lawmakers had the right idea to hold some kind of public audit of it. Giuliani had a lot of incorrect / blatantly false facts and so he was dismissed out of hand, but many of his witnesses came across as credible and describe things very differently from your explanations.
Logistically I don't think anyone wanted to back the election fraud argument for political reasons but there is still very much a need for it because plenty of people feel like it was stolen.
As for the President - whether he's making it up or whether he's among those who believe it was stolen, nobody reads minds so you cant know one way or another unless you add your own personal bias into it.
Now you can be very angry about the fraud claims because they are baseless etc and be emotional about it or be a problem solver and recognize that those people are fellow citizens and there is no divorce option. Railing against Trump 24x7 actually makes the problem worse because nobody is going to be persuaded. You can also call me also irresponsible for bringing their concerns up, but what you can't really do without being dishonest is to deny that there are millions who believe this stuff, out of whom a few dozen got mad enough about it want to break in to the Capitol, and succeeded.
The fact remains that the media does a tremendous disservice to the public by not casting a wide tent, and the President capitalised on this because frankly what other option is there if you want to win? The American media hoaxed the public into thinking he called Nazis very fine people when he instead said they should be condemned totally, and was said in the context of the broader debate about statues of controversial historical figures.
Now you can again cheerlead for the media and say they are the finest journalists on the planet, but the fact is that more than half the country doesn't believe them. You can dismiss them all as brainwashed or stupid or whatever you like but they're going to be around for a very long time.
> It's absurd to me to hear that people just needed to talk it out more openly! If only someone could nicely tell them the truth! As if all these people were discussing things in good faith and would listen to reality about their conspiracy theories. Must we really coddle and give a voice to dangerous conspiracy theorists that have steadily gotten more and more extreme and violent?
Blue-collar America (manufacturing, middle class) used to be a pretty stalwart blue supporting constituency. Now this group is welcoming populism and is pretty red. We've seen not just jobs but entire INDUSTRIES shipped abroad to the lowest bidder (it's cheaper to make something with slave labor, of course).
You might not care to "listen" but I think they have something interesting to talk about.
Sure, I'm not saying people who vote republican don't have important issues in mind. But those issues aren't censored - they are mainstream non-partisan talking points. That's all I heard about for the past 6 years, from both parties. It's not exactly taboo to talk about trade.
But if a party dilutes their message by embracing conspiracy theories, outlandish lies, bigotry, and authoritarian rhetoric, then what the hell? How is political discussion supposed to be in good faith anymore? If people want to talk to me about trade, they can talk to me about trade on whatever platform they want. I listen to them all the time. If they want to talk to me about how voting machines are rigged by Hugo Chavez, then they're probably not going to say, "oh, your right" when I show them facts that say otherwise.
When "let us go back to work, my family is starving and we're going to lose the house!" is characterized as "they just want to get haircuts!" it's worse than censorship. It's mockery of people's suffering.
Move down the hierarchy of needs a bit and listen to what people are discussing. It's not trade policy.
Lets be clear though, those people would have been better supported such that they wouldn't have needed to make a choice between eating and the pandemic if the outgoing Federal government hadn't made such a mess of their response (and refused point blank to support state and local governments who cannot borrow).
What does any of that have to do with storming the capital building and attempting to halt the election process? There were no protest signs looking to be heard about this issue or that, only Trump flags, union jacks and maga hats.
We're supposed to believe this was a coherent protest for populism and not just sour grapes flamed by the president?
It's absurd to me to hear that people just needed to talk it out more openly! If only someone could nicely tell them the truth! As if all these people were discussing things in good faith and would listen to reality about their conspiracy theories. Must we really coddle and give a voice to dangerous conspiracy theorists that have steadily gotten more and more extreme and violent? They are being groomed and egged on by Republican leadership - surely that's the source of the problem, and one that nobody seems to be able to do anything about.