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I expect this loses Trump the normiecons/boomercons, who will "trust the jury", and thus also ensures an election loss. We'll also get a lot of talking head noise from media-appointed "responsible conservatives" who will excoriate Trump for "refusing to accept the verdict" the way he refused to accept the 2020 election result and blame him for "risking tearing the country apart".
Trust a New York City jury?
New York City couldn't be trusted to make picante sauce.
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Your constant righty-blackpilling is the reasoning equivalent of always betting on black. The accuracy of your predictions are a coincidence of a feeling applied categorically, not the result of an astute perspective of the world. You hinder yourself in this habit.
The "normiecon boomers" who are still awake right now to talk in friendly confines are wondering when the shooting's going to start. They've been wondering this for months, with their little polite hedging of "It's a matter of time before someone shoots one of these judges/bureaucrats/politicians."
Trump has no support left to lose he didn't already lose 3 years ago. This doesn't move the meter left, it moves it precipitously right.
And the answer, of course, is "never" because, as you note, it's always some unspecified "someone" who "shoots one of these judges/bureaucrats/politicians." Nobody's going to be the first to stick their own neck out; they're going to wait for someone else to get the ball rolling, and join in only once it looks like it isn't going to be nipped in the bud (which it would be).
Plus, to be anything more than useless lone-wolf terrorism would require organization — solid, pre-established coordination — and, as a Disqus commenter over at Instapundit put it, we've been breeding such things out of the Right (in favor of "I just want to grill" passivism and "don't tread on me", "I don't answer to nobody; if someone orders me to breathe I'll suffocate myself to death to spite them!" individualism) for decades.
The example of Ted Stevens suggests otherwise.
I'm... not so optimistic. I think people here have spent too long in white-collar environments. While I'd expect that anything going hot will involve more garbage person emotional spasms than cold-blooded planning, a serious and dedicated red team attacker with even a moderate amount of certain infrastructure knowledge could cause massive amounts of deaths, infrastructure costs, and/or economic costs, and it only takes a couple highly-reported bad actors for the processes to become Common Knowledge as something that can happen.
That passivism and atomic individuality makes the low-capability people a lot more prone to They Kept Using Discord problems, but despite the increasingly common progressive assumptions, not everyone in that field is low-capability.
That's still not enough to take control over large geographic locations (or even a CHAZ), if that's what you mean, but not everyone's going to have the same idea of what 'winning' means. The sort that take shutting down large parts of New York City are just, you know, not mine.
All of which would turn everyone against them and bring further crackdowns upon the entire Red Tribe.
And all it takes is making sufficiently severe examples of those bad actors (and their family, friends, and general associates) to make it Common Knowledge as something not worth trying.
"Capability" is useless without coordination. The lone actor accomplishes nothing. Only large, well-coordinated groups can get anything done.
You gotta watch how finely you atomize the population -- small well coordinated groups can do a lot of damage, and there are quite a lot of those floating around the US. The kind that don't take in new members, and if moved to action are likely to motivate other such groups to (independently) do the same.
Everybody knows how terrorist cells work, and America is full of cells currently engaged in beer & fishing type activities -- ideally this can remain their focus.
Define "small"
Not if you exclude the Fed honeytraps, there aren't. Small groups, yes, but meaningful coordination is something us Red Tribers are fundamentally, constitutionally incapable of. If a group is "well-coordinated," it can only be because someone on the Federal payroll is providing said coordination.
Not my experience, given some of the myths I encounter people believing about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.
Only if you count a bunch of fat, out-of-shape beer-swilling losers who hang out occasionally as a "terror cell"
Because those are the only activities they're capable of, and always will be the only activities they ever engage in.
We're completely useless, powerless, and hopeless, and I've yet to see someone provide any believable evidence to the contrary.
Anything between two people and a platoon or so I guess.
That's just it -- I'm talking about 'groups' of people in which everyone involved knows and trusts each other entirely, and new members are not invited. Former service members would be a good example, but for me there are single digit people that I've known since childhood who are definitely not feds and could be relied upon to help me out with whatever. 'Overturning the State' is not on our agenda, but I can well imagine social groups in which this might not be the case.
lol -- tell me you've never held a blue collar job without coming out and saying it.
I didn't say they were terror cells; they aren't, and it would be best to keep it that way. That's my whole point.
I have a blue collar job and agree with him. If we could organize politically our wages wouldn't be stagnating as our bosses replace everyone they can with illegals.
If we weren't hopelessly inept at organizing, how did construction workers end up being forced to take "male privilege" training sessions? If we were capable those responsible would already be dangling from cranes and meat hooks by now.
The stories I could tell you about my coworkers who've uncomplainingly slaved away for decades for people who despise them...
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the BBC were reporting about how Trump was breaking norms with his conviction. like he was the one that was acting rather than the one being acted upon.
Well, usually a politician would have quit in disgrace before getting to this point. So kind of.
As in, a politician with grab her by her pussy, AND a few other stories would have given a speech about how he was stepping back from politics for the good of his family etc.
Now of course that is all part of Trumps brand, that he is different from a normal politician such that you can't just brief against him, you have to follow through. But arguably he is breaking the norm of not stepping down after a scandal. Warning shots don't work on him. If you think that norm exists to select out unsuitable candidates with minimal fuss thats bad, if you think its used by the deep state to filter out "unsuitable" candidates that is good.
I'd note Hillary did the same, though I think for different reasons, and mostly through the time honoured tradition of lying through her teeth. So you know, she kept to that norm.
Except that what's happening here isn't actually unusual. Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC got fined $100k by the FEC for the exact same thing (i.e., misreporting campaign expenses - in this case, the "Russia-gate" dossier - as "legal expenses"). The unusual thing is that state legal systems got involved (in cooperation with the White House and under the direction of former White House lawyers, for admittedly-political reasons.
Forget the legal stuff, I'm talking paying off porn stars while married and running for the family values party. That would sink most (but not all!) politicians.
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Usually politicians resign when a scandal comes out and they did something wrong. Politicians don't usually resign when a scandal comes out and they did nothing wrong. It varies, but a lot of politicians have successfully fought scandals on the grounds that they weren't really scandals at all.
Sure, as i pointed out, he is not alone. Bill Clinton as well. But even sticking to every one verified factually he probably has more very public ones than near any politician not named Kennedy.
Paying off porn stars, recorded crude comments etc. For most politicians that would have sunk them.
The Overton window shifted.
Boys use to be allowed to be boys but you did it respectfully.
We live in the social media age. Only fans exists. Sleeping with a porn star isn’t that big of thing (I’ve done it). But besides that grabby them by the pussy and screwing porn stars is normie compared to trannies on the White House lawn and gays banging in bondage in the Senate.
To say the obvious atleast Trump likes girls.
There was a Hollywood movie in the wake of the Clinton scandal, The Contender, about a woman who is chosen to replace a deceased Vice President. However, her confirmation becomes controversial when rumors of a college orgy surface. The Democrat-led argument 25 years ago was this private sexual conduct was wholly irrelevant.
Of course, the movie also pulls its punches by ultimately revealing the rumors to be baseless, drummed up by an Arlen Specter-like Senator played by Gary Oldman.
These are always arguments as kamikaze soldiers, to be used when convenient for maximum shock but with no real ideological committment to using them faithfully and responsibly.
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Did you pay the porn star to fuck you? Or discover you’re dating a porn star and put aside your dignity?
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I still think the average politician especially a Republican one gets asked to step down if it cones out they have been cheating with porn stars. The Overton window among boomer voters hasn't shifted that much for the average politician. But Trump is different.
Are we even sure he slept with Stormy? Her story sure changes a lot.
I'd say it seems likely but certainly paying her off makes it look more likely to be true. And in politics often perception is more important.
Now to an extent that is priced in with Trump which is part of my point. Romney probably would not have survived a revelation he paid off a porn star who claims and many people believe he cheated on his wife with. Trump can.
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Such a classic British elitist attitude to employ. I would love to see a time-warp BBC covering the Irish Potato Famine; "Hibernian brutes act with unabashed lack of gentlemanly courage by not starving to death peacefully"
Surprisingly it was quite peaceful, the Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 was just a single shootout and was the first uprising in 40 years, the real violence started from the 1860s on as the Irish in America never shed their bitter feelings. The American Civil War changed a lot too because from then on you see things like ex-Union captains being executed in Britain for killing police officers.
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I wish we could have disposed of Trump in time to have a real conservative candidate this November.
The parties should be better gatekeepers, but they seem to be broken now in a desparate race to the bottom.
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This just clarifies the system is broken. We need Trump to expose all the flaws. Peoples eyes were shut before. Now we can have the election on lawfare.
It will get more people fired up to do something. Pick Desantis to be VP. He can be like Stringer Bell - your get shit done street boss.
That being said I got this case wrong. Somehow I thought we could find a hung jury.
Erm, can you clarify how this works?
The US needs Trump to 'expose all the flaws'... how exactly? What specifically does Trump do that another populist Republican couldn't?
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How so? It seems to be working just fine at what seems to me to be its primary purpose — keeping the Blue Tribe elite solidly in power, and protecting Our Democracy from the horrible populist threat of the voters getting what they vote for.
It seems to me that it's worth bearing in mind that Trump lost the popular vote both times. 'The populist threat of the voters getting what they vote for' doesn't seem like a good description of Trump, since both times he ran for office the popular majority was against him.
There are cases where I think you can convincingly point to a Blue elite stepping in to overrule the clearly-expressed democratic will of the majority - Proposition 8 is an ageing example but a good one - but Trump, a candidate who has never commanded majority support, seems like a bad example of one.
Politicians campaign under the system as it exists. If the popular vote elected politicians, Trump (and Hillary) would have campaigned differently, and Trump could very well have won the popular vote in 2016.
Sure, it's possible that in a different system the results might have been different - but then you'd be hanging a claim about what the voters want, or what the voters voted for, on a pure hypothetical.
Something I've tried to be very conscious of recently is the way that ideologues construct 'the public' or 'the people' or 'the voters' in ways that agree with them, but in the absence of convincing evidence about what the people actually want or believe. This can be a communist believing that everyone will support the revolution, or a MAGA person believing that Trump in some way represents the popular will, or the way postliberal texts like Regime Change are premised on the assumption that most people on some level support the author's politics.
This is often just not plausible. We have polling on Trump over time as well, including from when he was president. He never broke 50% approval, and right now he clearly does not enjoy anything like majority support.
Like I said, there are issues where I think you can show an elite class stepping in to overrule the democratically-expressed will of the majority. But Trumpism specifically isn't an example of that. Majority popular support is something the man does not have and has never had.
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