Merged 2024 Election Thread

[theprestige]

I follow a gun forum where members are calling for a coup to make sure Trump is our next President.

Are they all career military officers holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher?

 

[Ziggurat]

I'd say we have all the evidence we need to evaluate whether he has given aid or comfort to the enemies of the United States.

Who is "he"? Kevin Seefried? Perhaps, though I'm not sure how much an entity that no longer exists really counts as an enemy anymore.

Or is "he" Trump? Well, you'd need to establish that Trump somehow directed Seefried to enter the capitol and/or carry the confederate flag. I don't see that claim being made in the story. In fact, the only reference to Trump within the story comes from here:

"U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump-appointed judge who oversaw the trial, told Seefried it was "shocking" and "outrageous" that he brought a Confederate flag into the Capitol. He also criticized Seefried for using the flag to jab at a Black U.S. Capitol Police officer during the confrontation in the building."​

So we've got a Trump-appointed judge sentencing this man to several years in prison for this. And a guy doing something Trump never told him to do, and who wasn't really much of a threat anyways, is somehow evidence that Trump committed treason? Yeah, this is a stretch.

 

[SteveAitch]

Generals do not lead from the front.
...

Like The Duke of Plaza-Toro?

"He led his regiment from behind -
He found it less exciting."

 

[Aridas]

Listen, I generally don't disagree with except that I really do think a big part of his opposition takes it way to far. Things like the kids in cages story which used photos of kids in cages from the previous administration to make the point, sure it shouldn't have happened but it also happened in a similar fashion under Obama. Obama was in zone 3 and trump in Zone 5 and a good portion of the opposition acted like it was a brand new level of evil.

Potentially. With that said, I think that, first of all, you're skipping over the part where Trump was actively working to keep the media focused on himself. A huge amount of the attention that Trump got was largely spurred on by him pointedly pulling it to himself. As for the kids in cages bit, it's probably worth adding a bit more context. Obama era pictures were used because reporters were being blocked from taking such pictures, IIRC. That already speaks to a distinct difference. As for the larger issue with the kids in cages thing, the Trump Administration family separation policy was more the issue at hand. THAT was very much a brand new level of evil.

The Ukraine phone call, bad yes but it really wasn't that different from the Obama administrations trying to pressure Ukraine to fire a corrupt pol from a few years earlier. It was worse and almost certainly motivated by a desire to smear biden but it wasn't a brand new sort of bad.

Err... honestly, it was very different in pretty much every way other than the most superficial outside forces applying pressure on a government bit, which is neutral, in and of itself. If we're talking about Ukraine being pressured to removed said corrupt official, that was an official and open joint action by multiple countries and was clearly intended to improve things all around. Trump's action, on the other hand, was a unilateral, personal demand to embrace lies and corruption which he used his government power to accomplish as he sought personal benefit.

I think if he is elected, we will have for years of incompetence and law suits that the administration loses. I think there will be a stream of bad, illegal, and/or unconstitutional actions. I think his and his administration's incompetence will be its saving grace. But he's not a NAZI, the primary reason he wanted to stay in office is his ego couldn't take losing.

That's one reason, sure. Fairly certainly not the only one.

There's no way he can get enough of the military on side to actually stay in office and he probably won't want to, assuming he hasn't had a heart attack or stroke by then anyway. Acting like his election will be akin to Caesars dictatorship or Hitler being the next chancellor is just going to help get him elected.

One of the big things that he fairly certainly wants to do is escape accountability for his crimes. Another is to keep the spotlight on himself. Those are both pretty big motivators to try to stay in office. He's also repeatedly made it clear that he wants his loyalists to pave the way for him to stay in power indefinitely. Him getting enough of the military on his side to perform a military coup is questionable, certainly, but focusing only on the potential military coup aspect is rather missing the underlying concerns in play.

The left's over reaction to Trump isn't just outliers. It happens all the time. Even the good people on all sides comment wasn't what it was made out to be. He didn't actually say, white supremacists are good people. In context he was talking about tearing down statues but its trump in the next sentence he was talking about the white supremecist march. So, he makes it easy for sure.

People do become more sensitive when a person's done so much to build up a foundation for concern. As for the very fine people comment, personally, I can say that I didn't hold that against him from the start.

 

[ahhell]

Snip... Him getting enough of the military on his side to perform a military coup is questionable, certainly, but focusing only on the potential military coup aspect is rather missing the underlying concerns in play.

I'm going to concentrate on this for a moment. I agree, we shouldn't be talking about a military coup, that's kind of my point. We should be talking about his profound incompetence, ignorance, and unwillingness to brook opposition. I think the much more likely result of a second trump presidency is a bunch of scandals where in trump tries to order something illegal, his immediate subordinates will be a bunch of yes men that find reason to do what he asks then put pressure on the executive branch professionals to do it. Lawsuits will ensue, some bad actions will happen before that happens though.

At this point the only voters that matter are the ones that might stay home or might vote for either candidate. They don't pay attention that much. The more extreme predictions about what a second trump presidency means will more likely make them ignore the more likely bad outcomes because look at those nuts. Frankly, I'm not sure it matters.

Also, I've been wrong about how bad trump can be before, so I can't be to certain.

 

[thaiboxerken]

You're presuming that he's guilty of all of them. That remains to be demonstrated, doesn't it?

And BTW, if Trump is guilty of insurrection, why wasn't he criminally charged with anything for that? Are you really claiming that the 14th amendment is the only remedy to handle insurrection?

Al Capone was only guilty of tax evasion as well....

 

[Aridas]

Oh, I just love when people try to bring this up. For any lurkers not in the know, "It Can't Happen Here" is the title of a fictional book where America gets taken over by fascists. The implication is that no, it actually can happen here. Most people making that reference don't know anything about the book beyond that, though. They don't know who the villains of the book actually are. Want to know? It's the Rotarians. Yup, the posited group that would lead this fascist takeover of the country is the Rotarians.

Now, I'm not going to claim that fascism can never, ever take over the US. But I will go out on a limb and say that if it ever does, it won't be because of the Rotarians. And it won't be because Trump stages a coup in 2028.

Of some note, it's hardly the first case where later usage isn't entirely accurate to the original material. That doesn't negate the later usage. If we're dealing with trivia, "Justice is blind" was originally rather satirical. The blindfold on Lady Justice was a 16th century addition to speak to how Lady Justice was blind to injustice.

Yes, we do know.

You can see the future?

And they mostly tilt left. Even Fox is a lot less conservative than it used to be. Their bias is corporatism, not conservatism.

I won't disagree that they're more corporatist than conservative. Tilting left would only be on a scale where center is skewed notably, though.

Bwahahahaha!

No. That might be the stupidest thing you've said.

Depends on how one is evaluating, of course. If you're evaluating based on, for example, how much of a reaction there is to some wrongdoing, Democrats and lefties generally get hit notably harder for equal offenses. If you're evaluating based on raw positive vs negative numbers, Republicans likely get more total negative coverage.

Further, there's more general things at hand like that which was poked at with an observation of poll reporting. A poll cites a bunch of bad numbers for Trump? A number of news outlets report on one problematic number for Biden and completely ignore all the bad numbers for Trump.

This is special pleading.

Not really. There's upholding Justice and there's witch hunting. The two have a qualitative difference. With that said, upholding Justice is good, witch hunting is bad. The GOP has worked hard to invert which actually is which, though, of course, and that has had effect among the willing and the ignorant.

 

[theprestige]

I agree, we shouldn't be talking about a military coup

I also don't think we should be talking about a military coup, but wanted to know if anyone was actually serious about that possibility. This discussion started because Hercules56 said:

If President Trump clearly commits undemocratic, impeachable offenses that TRULY endanger our democracy and freedom

And I was trying to think of something the president could do to "TRULY endanger our democracy and freedom".

He can't pass laws. He can't stage a coup without significant support from the armed services. He can't really pervert the civil service bureaucracy into his personal unconstitutional army.

If he does something impeachable, and Congress doesn't impeach, then it's Congress that is truly endangering our democracy. In fact, pretty much all the scenarios I can think of, where our democracy is truly put in danger, the danger originates with Congress, or with the voters, and the president is a symptom, not a cause.

Honestly I was surprised at how much effort some people put into defending the idea that Trump could stage a coup with minimal support from the military.

 

[Aridas]

I also don't think we should be talking about a military coup, but wanted to know if anyone was actually serious about that possibility.

To speak for myself, I think that it's rather dangerous to rule out the possibility in advance, given the factors in play, even if it's not looking likely right now. Our institutions in the US are not weak even now, but they are certainly not invincible or infallible. No need to panic about it at this point, though, or spend undue time focusing on that rather than the much more likely things.

 

[ahhell]

The coup thing is the peak of Trump derangement. Why talk about that crazy unlikely worst case scenario, there are plenty of other much more likely scenarios that are good reasons to vote against him. He does have a corrosive effect on those around him, it won't be good for the institutions. Just look at the GOP, all the stuff they now seem to full throatedly support that would have been crazy to imagine 10 years ago. Putin/Russia love, protectionism, anti-nato, industrial policy, a serial divorcee that pays for sex with pornstars.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Then there's no reason to ask NATO countries to increase defense spending. See, when you ask those countries to do that, you run a risk that they might, you know, actually do that. If you want NATO weak, then don't push to increase spending. Try to limit that spending instead.

Trump's goal was to create an excuse for the US to pull out of NATO.

... he Balkan states, and has been very effective in providing them with security. But is it effective at advancing American security interests? In the cold war, I think it pretty clearly was. Now? That's a harder question, and it also depends a bit on what you think American security interests even are. And there isn't unanimous consensus on that question.

Trump only cares what Trump believes. He's obviously uninterested in any obligation to other countries.

First off, the worst thing Trump could ever do to NATO would be to leave it, but I don't think he can on his own. And even supposing he did, would Russia really be able to steamroll the rest of Europe? No, I don't think he could. NATO would lose a lot of combat power without the US, but Russia has alread revealed itself to be weaker than previously thought, and NATO just added two new members. Even without the USA, NATO is still more than a match for Russia.

Putin is moving one state at a time. It's not like he's marching through the EU like was done in WWI and WWII.

Second, Trump has done too much against Russian interests to make it plausible that he's in Putin's pocket. One of the big ones which is frequently ignored is on energy. He opposed Nordstream 2 construction, even imposing sanctions, which Biden later removed. And he pushed for more domestic energy production, which helps lower energy prices and thus deprives Russia of revenue, while Biden has reversed course. The primary motivation for both Trump and Biden are probably domestic politics rather than concern for how it affects Putin, but it doesn't matter: it's still not what he would do if he was actually in Putin's pocket. You can argue that Trump isn't as antagonistic to Putin as he should be, but it's always been clear that he's not under Putin's control. That was always just tin foil hat conspiracy theories.

All or none, black and white...

Putin manipulates Trump, Trump is not in his pocket beyond that.

While I believe Trump is terrible and he will issue a series of illegal and unconstitutional orders that will result in a series of minor crises, the notion that he'll put a few folks in strategic positions perfectly placed have troops march on congress is.....far fetched. He has not demonstrated any such ability. Seriously, with the exception of stoking a riot, his attempt to stay in office on Jan 6th was laughable. I don't want to rely on incompetence to maintain my democracy, but Trump is as incompetent as he his malign. His administration is likely to be people of equal comeptence and knowledge as he himself. ....

I don't think we know what Trump's incompetent thrashing about as POTUS might result in.

He tried to get the military to take over the capitol? Yeah, no, he didn't.

And he's not eligible for a third term, so he can't even run in 2028 if he wins in 2024. So a repeat of what actually happened in 2020/2021 isn't possible either.

He tried to prevent Biden becoming POTUS. He got the idiotic idea from Eastman apparently. It sounded good to Trump—stop the certification of the votes and after other steps the end result would be he'd be declared the winner of the election. Trump lives in a fantasy world.

Have you ever seen US media? We are at zero risk of it becoming dominated by Trump allies.

It's already dominated by Trump—Trump scandals and outrageous behavior is covered ad nauseum because it sells the news.

The ruling class favors Biden. I don't think you've really thought this argument through. ... Flooding your political opponent with so many prosecutions and lawsuits that something might stick ...

Now who's wearing that tinfoil hat?

... d. Mishandling federal docs, probably not on account of nobody else in power ever gets charged with that but obstruction, definitely. I'm told the only reason they brought the mishandling charge was so he couldn't claim the obstruction charge bs because he wasn't being charged with some other crime.

Nothing any other POTUSes have done compares to Trump's on scale and on his hiding docs instead of turning them over.

... e. I'll had, the other NY fraud case is pretty clear use of courts for political reasons. Run for office claiming you will prosecute Trump for something then prosecute him for a crime that almost nobody else has been prosecuted for. Its fraud where none of the supposed victims claim to have been victims. ...

You aren't paying attention.

I doubt I could explain them to you but:

The stormy daniels charges and fraud charges related to Trumps over valuing properties are both a set of politically motived prosecutions. Trump is being prosecuted under legal theories and for crimes that nobody else has ever been prosecuted for.

Again, you aren't paying attention.

Mishandling documents, its a crime but there are numerous examples of politicians doing the same thing who have not been prosecuted. The current president is one of them. What he did that was different is not cooperate in the investigation and lie about having the documents.

And you don't see that difference as relative?

... The Ukraine phone call, bad yes but it really wasn't that different from the Obama administrations trying to pressure Ukraine to fire a corrupt pol from a few years earlier.

Find dirt on one's political opponent vs clean up corruption in your government... One of these things is not like the other.

... And I was trying to think of something the president could do to "TRULY endanger our democracy and freedom".

Declare Martial Law for one.

Another example would be to remove various departments or parts of departments like he did when he eliminated the pandemic response committee.

 

[theprestige]

Declare Martial Law for one.

That depends on the support of the military. Not just one or two generals, but lots of career officers.

Another example would be to remove various departments or parts of departments like he did when he eliminated the pandemic response committee.

Removing executive branch departments that are under the president's authority to remove can't truly threaten our democracy.

 

[Hercules56]

Al Capone was only guilty of tax evasion as well....

We can see the MAGA-lovers have come out of the woodwork here, huh?

 

[Ziggurat]

Depends on how one is evaluating, of course. If you're evaluating based on, for example, how much of a reaction there is to some wrongdoing, Democrats and lefties generally get hit notably harder for equal offenses.

No they don't. There's an entire genre of "Republicans pounce" press coverage. When a Republican screws up, that's the story, but when a Democrat screws up, the Republican response to the screwup is the story. Keep your eyes out for it, once you've seen the pattern it's hard to unsee.

Further, there's more general things at hand like that which was poked at with an observation of poll reporting. A poll cites a bunch of bad numbers for Trump? A number of news outlets report on one problematic number for Biden and completely ignore all the bad numbers for Trump.

The press is in panic mode about Biden specifically, and a lot of people on the left want him to drop out. That's why we're seeing an uptick in negative stories about him. That doesn't mean the press leans right. It absolutely doesn't.

Not really. There's upholding Justice and there's witch hunting. The two have a qualitative difference. With that said, upholding Justice is good, witch hunting is bad. The GOP has worked hard to invert which actually is which, though, of course, and that has had effect among the willing and the ignorant.

I'm not sure how anyone can look at the Hunter Biden case and not recognize that they're protecting him.

 

[johnny karate]

We can see the MAGA-lovers have come out of the woodwork here, huh?

“Trump is not a danger because someone or something will probably prevent him from carrying out his clearly stated fascist goals” line of argument is really something to behold.

I can’t tell if they’re trying to defend Trump without seeming to defend Trump, or they’re just desperate to use anything to own the libs. Probably both.

 

[johnny karate]

No they don't. There's an entire genre of "Republicans pounce" press coverage. When a Republican screws up, that's the story, but when a Democrat screws up, the Republican response to the screwup is the story. Keep your eyes out for it, once you've seen the pattern it's hard to unsee.



The press is in panic mode about Biden specifically, and a lot of people on the left want him to drop out. That's why we're seeing an uptick in negative stories about him. That doesn't mean the press leans right. It absolutely doesn't.



I'm not sure how anyone can look at the Hunter Biden case and not recognize that they're protecting him.

Just conspiracy theory brain worms all the way down.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

I'm not sure how anyone can look at the Hunter Biden case and not recognize that they're protecting him.

Having looked at the Hunter Biden case, I recognize that Ziggurat's claim is outstandingly ridiculous.

 

[johnny karate]

Having looked at the Hunter Biden case, I recognize that Ziggurat's claim is outstandingly ridiculous.

It’s one of those things that Republicans insist is obvious (e.g. election fraud) but for some reason can’t actually seem to ever prove. It’s all Fox News sound bites with these people.

 

[Aridas]

No they don't. There's an entire genre of "Republicans pounce" press coverage. When a Republican screws up, that's the story, but when a Democrat screws up, the Republican response to the screwup is the story. Keep your eyes out for it, once you've seen the pattern it's hard to unsee.

More specifically, it sounds like you're talking about a larger issue here - narrative building and pushing. There certainly are issues with that, but it's not the only part of the picture and it doesn't even remotely only apply to one side.

The press is in panic mode about Biden specifically, and a lot of people on the left want him to drop out. That's why we're seeing an uptick in negative stories about him.

"The press" is a bit more complicated than that, to put it simply, especially the corporate media. Generally speaking, though, it's not "in panic mode" so much as trying to get more clicks and better ratings, but there's more to it.

That doesn't mean the press leans right. It absolutely doesn't.

It's true that that, alone, isn't much of a case. Rather, there's more issues that arise from how they tend to try to position themselves as neutral, rather than simply as impartial reporters, by engaging in a number of problematic practices. Bothsiderism is an obvious one that is something that provides net benefits to those who are acting worse.

I'm not sure how anyone can look at the Hunter Biden case and not recognize that they're protecting him.

I'm not sure how anyone could look at the obsessive focus on Hunter Biden compared to the actual situation and not recognize that it's primarily an been an attempt to attack now President Biden. I have no objection to Hunter Biden being convicted legitimately (seriously, why should I care?), but frankly, when Republican propagandists seem to have been using something that was likely a politically motivated criminal hack and dump that could easily have been tampered with as a basis for outrage and been relying on what were likely Russian intelligence assets pushing easily debunked lies, among other exceedingly shady crap, that's very shaky ground there.

Here's the thing. The Republicans have been trying hard to find something, anything, solid to go after Biden with. They've been failing badly. As part of that, they've been going after Hunter Biden, because he's certainly had obvious problems. Those problems weren't enough for them, though, so they've literally pushed out those Burisma claims that were nonsense and an inversion of truth, and just kept pushing their narratives as far as they've thought they could, with little regard for actual truth or reason. Hence, that's been a hairsbreadth away from a witch hunt, at best, all along. That's being generous, of course.

With Trump, again, there's been actual solid cause for prosecutions - he's been committing crimes rather openly, especially after the Republican political establishment has made the lengths that they'll go to protect him clear. I don't know how you even could look at Trump and not see the lengths that been gone to protect Trump. The man literally stole nuclear secrets, publicly pretended that they were then his and the government couldn't reclaim them, and he's still not in jail after how long? That's not even remotely a witch hunt going on there!

Republicans - Impeach Biden for a car loan that might somehow be connectable with China, even after it was examined and no problems were found!
Also Republicans - Ignore Trump getting millions of dollars from China while Trump was President, ignore the billions that the Trump family sure look like they leveraged the White House to gain from foreign powers!

 

[Aridas]

Having looked at the Hunter Biden case, I recognize that Ziggurat's claim is outstandingly ridiculous.

If linking to interesting quote sections is in order there -

Hunter Biden absolutely owned Republicans in his testimony