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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27236 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.

MEGYN KELLY: This is one of the reasons why I said if this judge [Chutkan] in DC… because we assume Trump's gonna get convicted in that case, I mean, the smart bet would be this DC jury convicts him because they hate them politically. 92% voted for Joe Biden. And she hates him. If she puts him in jail, pending appeal before the election, the country's going to burn. And then all this blowback, ‘Oh my god. She's calling for violence.’ I'm not calling for violence. But there is no way that Trump base is not going to be beside itself with anger at that level of deprivation of being able to simply vote for the candidate of choice. That's what's being taken away here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Speaking of violence, that's what you're gonna get. And speaking as someone who detests violence… If you leave people no alternative, then what do you think is going to happen? The whole point of electoral democracy is that it's a pressure relief valve that takes people who are very frustrated with the way things are going and gives them a way to express themselves, have their desires heard, and ultimately, their will done to be represented in a peaceful way. And if you take that away, if you have staged an unfair election, which 2020 was, if you suppress information that voters need to make an informed decision, you're rigging the election, and they did that.

So if you keep doing that, and people are like, ‘Wait, I have no economic power, you've devalued my currency, so it's like $11 for a dozen eggs, and my vote doesn't matter anymore. Well, then what do I have? Like what power do I have?’ And you're gonna get violence if you keep the shit up. And that's just the truth. And I am very upset about that, I don't want that to happen, I think the counter violence will be much more extreme than the violence. But any rational person can see what's coming. So they have to stop this.

The charges against Trump are not real. They're not even for serious crimes. I was told Trump was like a murderer and had killed a bunch of people in New Jersey or something. He didn't even cheat on his taxes. And they're treating him like a felon at the same time. Like they protect Epstein until they have to murder him in his cell. It's insane and it's all on public display. Everybody knows what's going on. So I do think the people in charge the people were pulling the strings on Tanya Chutkan in or whatever these ridiculous front people they hire. Those people need to really think this through a little bit. You're about to wreck the country. Don't do this, please.

First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".

But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.

No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.

Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.

But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.

Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.

  • -22

This is relevant to much of the discussion here.

Last year, after Elon Musk acquired Twitter and used it to voice his own political and ideological views without a filter, President Biden gave federal agencies a greenlight to go after him. During a press conference at the White House, President Biden stood at a podium adorned with the official seal of the President of the United States, and expressed his view that Elon Musk “is worth being looked at.”1 When pressed by a reporter to explain how the government would look into Elon Musk, President Biden remarked: “There’s a lot of ways.”2 There certainly are. The Department of Justice, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have all initiated investigations into Elon Musk or his businesses.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission adds itself to the growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses. I am not the first to notice a pattern here. Two months ago, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote that “the volume of government investigations into his businesses makes us wonder if the Biden Administration is targeting him for regulatory harassment.”3 After all, the editorial board added, Elon Musk has become “Progressive Enemy No. 1.” Today’s decision certainly fits the Biden Administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment. Indeed, the Commission’s decision today to revoke a 2020 award of $885 million to Elon Musk’s Starlink—an award that Starlink secured after agreeing to provide high-speed Internet service to over 640,000 rural homes and businesses across 35 states—is a decision that cannot be explained by any objective application of law, facts, or policy.

Those are real agencies bringing real claims and making real administrative judgments that will be backed by the full force of the United States of America. They are also total bullshit and not real.

Carr's dissent, which the blockquote is from, is itself misleading in many ways. HN comment:

When applying for RDOF you say what service tier you are targeting and instead of shooting for the minimum 25/3, Starlink applied for 100/20. When they didn't reach those speeds[1], they were ineligible but not just because they didn't hit the required speeds on their existing network. There are more details here[2] but the jist is that Starlink bid to supply 100/20 internet to over half a million subscribers and the FCC was required to assess if Starlink was reasonably, technically capable of supplying those speeds by 2025. Starlink reportedly argued that once they can properly launch Starship, they can surely hit the required speeds. As of yet Starship hasn't had a successful launch. On top of this, the statistics that were available at the time showed that Starlink transfer speeds were already trending down and the network is a lot less utilized than it would be in 2025. There are technical challenges that need to be solved before Starlink is remotely capable of meeting that obligation and the challenges don't appear to be resolved yet. Giving Starlink money is a gamble and the FCC would rather play it safe.

RDOF rules set speeds of 25/3 Mbps as the minimum allowed for broadband service delivered by winners. However, participants were permitted to bid at four different performance tiers: 25/3 Mbps, 50/5 Mbps, 100/20 Mbps and 1 Gbps/500 Mbps. When the auction closed, the FCC noted 99.7% of locations were bid at 100/20 or higher, with 85% bid at the gigabit tier. That means Starlink will need to provide speeds of at least 100/20 in order to meet its obligations.

From subsequent discussion:

  • the "decision today to revoke"
    • "They decided a while ago (2022) that Starlink wouldn't get the RDOF grant. This was essentially an appeal to see if the decision would be reversed, and they upheld the original decision not to fund Starlink. It's not a check after deployment thing, it's a 'check if they actually can deploy in the first place' situation." (HN comment)
    • "They didn't decide now. The program was created as a two step process initially. Starlink succeeded in the first round, but was denied in the second, more in depth, review that lead to the rejection. This was basically an appeal of that rejection. The second round was designed to eliminate providers who didn't seem able to deliver on their promises even with the subsidies. It was made to prevent a situation where either party (but mostly the US Gov and tax payers by extension) was on the hook for unsuccessful delivery." (HN comment)
  • from the dissent, "The trouble with this argument is that SpaceX never indicated that it was relying on the Starship platform to meet its RDOF obligations, and in fact it repeatedly stated that it was not.":
    • "Doing some math, currently each satellite launch sends up 22 satellites at around 2.8 Gbps per satellite. For each launch, Starlink adds [approx] 61.6 Gbps of capacity. If we cut that up into 100/20 slices, each launch supports 616 customers at 100/20. To support 650,000 subscribers at 100/20, it would take about 1055 perfect launches." (HN comment)
      • "They need to do 180 a year [they've done 91 in 2023 so far] to put enough satellites up to even try to hit the 2025 deadline. That's not even counting any satellites which may fail between now and then and need replaced. This is a major reason why the FCC didn't think they could have met the 2025 obligation to reach [approx] 650,000 subscribers with 100/20 and rejected their application." (HN comment)

tl;dr SpaceX's claim was not credible.

Actually I know some people who worked on Starlink. I may update this comment with what they have to say tomorrow.

"Doing some math, currently each satellite launch sends up 22 satellites at around 2.8 Gbps per satellite. For each launch, Starlink adds [approx] 61.6 Gbps of capacity. If we cut that up into 100/20 slices, each launch supports 616 customers at 100/20. To support 650,000 subscribers at 100/20, it would take about 1055 perfect launches."

This is not how bandwidth math works. There are some other HN comments that lean differently, but it seems that you cherry-picked ones that simultaneously lean in the direction you prefer and manage to not know how bandwidth math works.

What does it ignore, overprovisioning, being over the horizon, space lasers, or other stuff? The first two are in the discussion, I don't know how you'd account for the third - yes, you got me, I'm not a domain expert - and I'd appreciate you expanding on if it's something else. Yes, I only took comments supporting my claim; nobody in the discussion was able to produce a satisfactory response to them, so although it's cherry-picking I'm not leaving out promising counter-arguments.

Overprovisioning is pretty huge, to the point of being both an incredibly basic thing conceptually and a significant multiplicative factor that seriously changes the splashy number.

That was covered in the discussion; overprovisioning and horizon/geosynchronicity introduce ~4x factors in opposite directions so the estimate is fine.

ROFL if you think it was "covered" in that discussion. That thread has no real analysis or meaningful argument that they cancel out. It's just throwing up casual thoughts into basically one-liner comments, likely by non-experts. It's classic shit tier internet forum 'analysis'.

OK, so explain how overprovisioning and geosynchronicity were not correctly analyzed in the discussion. "It's wrong but I'm not telling you how" doesn't give me anything to work with.

More comments
  • 38 downvotes

And some claim themotte doesn't downvote opinions. And this is from a centrist regular, not a truly progressive opinion. It appears you still have enough credit with the userbase, and you're socially conservative enough, to avoid the bad faith and strawman accusations for now, Ashlael.

I think one should probably not try to draw too many conclusions from votes on trump threads. I'd hazard at least half of regulars just collapse any thread with trump in it immediately. I suggest others do the same, it makes the place much more enjoyable.

As a leftist liberal, I downvoted this because the commentary was inflammatory with almost no substance. I don't think the downvote count of this comment tells us anything about whether or not theMotte downvotes opinions (it does).

I didn't downvote here, and don't downvote for disagreement in the general case, but I've personally called out and gotten warned for calling out AshLael's bizarre and uneven behavior on this topic.

This post might not have gotten as much downvote-spam as its Red Tribe equivalent, but that's more a fault for the people overlooking the consensus-building and evidence-free claims when their team makes them.

Ashlael is literally a political operative, which might explain some of that bizarre and uneven behavior.

I'm flattered to be the subject of a conspiracy theory, but no, no one is paying me to shit talk Trump on themotte.org. This is entirely my own pathology.

And there's the bad faith accusation. What's the theory, anyway? He's BLM shadow liaison to the australian government, moonlighting as autist whisperer?

@gattsuru

  • Yeah, I still don't see the problem, like I told you in that thread. Your standard for sinister behaviour is frighteningly low. Not denouncing BLM more than once or twice is bizarre and uneven behaviour apparently.

  • What consensus is he building, all alone and despised?

  • And the good thing about evidence-free claims is that one can refute them with evidence. There really is no reason to write everything in blue.

@07mk

Frank disagreement is always inflammatory.

  • -10

Frank disagreement is always inflammatory

Frankly, I disagree.

like I told you in that thread

I'll repeat the arguments from there, then: you can't proclaim law-and-order credentials if you don't care about the law, you can't claim public order as a priority if some disruptions of public order can go unpunished for years lest orderly-but-not-state response squick someone out, and you can't claim anti-violence as a principle if you're willing to excuse it at the drop of a hat when the state wants to use it.

Your standard for sinister behaviour is frighteningly low.

I don't think there's anything sinister, unless you're making a left/right pun -- and even then, Aussie politics doesn't break down into the right/left divide.

But if in one case, people honking horns and blocking traffic are so bad that they justify suspension of civil rights and all the normal protections of democratic processes, and in the other case, riots that burn down buildings with people in them are nothing special and should be resolved through democratic means. Some riots, and some terrorism, it turns out, are special.

What consensus is he building, all alone and despised?

... the sentence structure for consensus-building is around the right-wing posts you (and I) are bitching about.

And the good thing about evidence-free claims is that one can refute them with evidence. There really is no reason to write everything in blue.

And part of the warning I got was that I'm not allowed to do so. So there's a bit of an eyeroll, here.

And part of the warning I got was that I'm not allowed to do so. So there's a bit of an eyeroll, here.

I'll address @fuckduck9000's question below, but stop claiming you were told you're not allowed to refute claims with evidence. That isn't what you were warned about, and you know it. You may disagree with what you were told to stop doing, and you can keep arguing that point with us if you must, but it wasn't "Stop refuting people's arguments."

Some riots, and some terrorism, it turns out, are special.[...]

So he's seemingly guilty of mild, year-spanning contradiction, as interpreted by you. I'm not going to waste my time explaining in detail why ashlael's positions are not contradictory, suffice to say you don't have a smoking gun. And all of this has nothing to do with the downvotes you were trying to justify.

.. the sentence structure for consensus-building is around the right-wing posts you (and I) are bitching about.

You implied he was consensus building, like the post's Red Tribe equivalent. But those posts actually have a consensus to build on. At best he's gathering a coalition of the damned.

You implied he was consensus building, like the post's Red Tribe equivalent. But those posts actually have a consensus to build on.

The rule against "Consensus building" doesn't have anything to do with how many people one is immediately appealing to. "We (you and I) agree on X" can be an appeal to common knowledge to your opposite number, provided they actually do agree; if you're not sure whether they agree, it's best to phrase it as a question rather than a statement.

"We (me and others, not you) agree on X, so clearly you're the odd one out" is consensus-building, whether the others are specified or not, and whether the others are present or not. Speaking for other people is generally frowned upon.

You genuinely do not appear to understand the rules this place operates under, and you are rounding all disagreement with your flawed understanding to evidence of bias. This makes your arguments against the actual, considerable, and quite damaging bias that does exist counterproductive.

This is not an endorsement of the object-level claim above.

I think you confuse consensus building with appeal to consensus. The latter pits an external authoritative perspective against the opponent, the former excludes a perspective from the debate entirely, and is characteristic of echo chambers.

More comments

What's the theory, anyway? He's BLM shadow liaison to the australian government, moonlighting as autist whisperer?

The reason why we have the concept of "conflict of interest" is to prevent that general sort of thing even when it would sound silly and be impossible to prove.

Remember the adage "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Do you think we could convince him that Trump is a good guy, or any other non-left idea, when his lobbying position depends on not believing that? (And yes, I think that applies even though Trump is not running for any office in Australia.)

Whoa. In case anybody didn’t read the link:

NA, $90,000, to buy a year of his time. NA is an experienced Australian political operative "on a first name basis with multiple federal politicians". You might remember some of his comments and stories from the ACX comment section, where he goes by AshLael. He's interested in using his expertise to promote effective altruism, either by lobbying directly or by training EAs in how to produce political change. I have no idea what to do with him right now but I am going to figure it out and then do it. If you're in EA and have a good idea how to use this opportunity, please let me know.

@AshLael, I get if you can't tell us, but I'm curious: what did that year of your time end up going towards?

I'll DM you. My commitment to OPSEC is pretty thin and easily pierced, but I'm not quite willing to fully dox myself here.

I downvoted it because it's not actually contributing anything to the debate.

I can go read people being mad at the right existing and having opinions on /r/politics, I can do the converse on /pol/, this isn't what this place is for.

I wouldn't say I liked it as a post - I'm happy it was posted if only because there just aren't enough toplevel posts in general - but if it was the right-wing equivalent, it'd be at the minimum +10.

I got an actual death threat one time, that was wild.

I always said it's an "I disagree" button, and that we should just get rid of voting, because it seems to cause too much distress for some people.

Better to let the mob have this impotent outlet for their censorious impulse than through accusations of rules-violating behaviour.

Would you like to have a conversation about this?

Anytime. Why don’t we step inside and settle this like women?

That was a legitimate question.

I don't think my behavior was objectionable, but I recognize you didn't like it, apologized for giving offense, and promised not to do it again as a show of good faith. Now you bring it up two comments in a row, which leaves the impression that you don't want to let it rest. So what sort of response are you looking for here?

Look Craven, there is no bad blood between us, I am happy to debate this or anything else with you. No offense was taken, but for obvious reasons I'd prefer not to be accused of bannable actions.

I think the rules can be, and have been, weaponized for censorship. I thought this before I became aware I could be a target too (back when my opinions were closer to motte-mode, instead of somewhat motte-left now, due to the rightward shift).

Believe it or not, we don't go looking for reasons to ban people. That said, I don't know if calling someone "Craven" is an ongoing joke between you two or what, but it looks like a gratuitous snipe.

As for weaponizing the rules for censorship, if you tell us how you think that's happening, we will discuss it. Usually I see these sorts of claims thrown out there as basically a complaint that the Motte is not modded according to how the complainer would prefer.

More comments

But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real".

Because the charges are not real.

It is starkly obvious to anyone paying even a modicum of attention that the charges are politically motivated. That fact is the whole point of the conversation. Trump hasn't done anything that Clinton and Biden didn't also do, and that's the fucking problem.

What I think is happening here is a warning.

We all know that it doesn't matter whether Trump is guilty or innocent. The professional managerial class would despise him regardless. The real stake here wis whether said PMCs are prepared to pick that fight. Because if they are well...

The real stake here wis whether said PMCs are prepared to pick that fight. Because if they are well...

Then nothing will happen. Red Tribe is a paper tiger. Those in the military will obey their Blue Tribe masters, the others who can do organized violence are wholly infiltrated by the FBI, and the mobs will be easily beaten (partially by their own bretheren in red-staffed but blue-controlled police and military forces). That's the lesson of January 6.

Right now there's still a 6-3 majority in the Supreme Court, which could end this particular battle on any number of grounds; either the stupid technicality about whether the presidency is an "office", Brandenberg, or one of the other 9 grounds for appeal Trump brought up. Kagan might even join. But it's pretty easy to see Roberts defecting, and Barrett, Alito, and/or Kavanaugh also, leaving us with the Bill of Rights being for the left only. The right-intelligentsia will of course support this, and Red Tribe will have no choice but to suck it up.

Then nothing will happen. Red Tribe is a paper tiger. Those in the military will obey their Blue Tribe masters, the others who can do organized violence are wholly infiltrated by the FBI, and the mobs will be easily beaten (partially by their own bretheren in red-staffed but blue-controlled police and military forces). That's the lesson of January 6.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who recognizes this.

The real stake here wis whether said PMCs are prepared to pick that fight. Because if they are well...

And now I'm reminded of some comments Yarvin made on the Good Ol' Boyz podcast (I think it was this one). Like when he calls the "Vaisya"/"hobbits"/"chuds" "worse than Morlocks," because the Eloi at least needed the Morlocks to keep the machinery running, but "you can be replaced by immigrants and automation" (that's from memory, so it might not be a perfect quote). Or the point earlier, when he asserts the that chud resistance to inevitable "Brahmin"/"elf" rule is futile because, "What are you going to do, kill us? The mid-century Germans tried that, and look what happened to them. Enough smart elves got out ahead of things, and now their grandkids are back and running the place."

Or there's the left-wing fellow on what was then still Twitter, who, when someone pointed out that it's "red" areas that grow everyone's food, responded with dire warnings that the Red Tribe had better not go there, followed by a thread describing a particularly nasty modernized variant on the early Athenian strategy against Sparta, through which it would be Flyover country that all starves to death while urban coastal elites remain fed.

a particularly nasty modernized variant on the early Athenian strategy against Sparta

Was he talking about what Pericles did or some other conflict?

  • Turn Athens and local vital infrastructure into connected fortresses
  • Evacuate the allied rural population from vulnerable areas to the fortified cities so enemy raids cannot harm them.
  • Use superior Athenian wealth, industry and trade relations to make up for reductions in available harvest by trading for food imports.
  • Deny the enemy a conventional battle or easy areas to pillage, leaving as the only available targets heavily defended urban areas that would take horrific casualties to besiege.
  • Focus on destroying the enemy navy to deny them mobility and give Athenian forces command of the seas.
  • Use the navy to launch unpredictable raids into enemy territory, making them dash back and forth chasing after fleets that have already left and struck somewhere else.
  • Target the Spartan agriculture to destroy their harvests and recruit or arm uprisings of the Spartan's brutalized helots, forcing the Spartans to abandon gains to protect their supply lines and fight uprisings behind their lines.
  • Count on the Athenian wealth and logistical superiority winning out through putting the Spartans into an attrition war where their wealth and logistics will run out first.

Probably would have succeeded if Pericles hadn't died of plague and been replaced by impatient morons keen on decisive battles.

Probably would have succeeded if Pericles hadn't died of plague and been replaced by impatient morons keen on decisive battles.

I agree with this.

But as to the overall point, it was mainly

Use superior Athenian wealth, industry and trade relations to make up for reductions in available harvest by trading for food imports.

and

Target the Spartan agriculture to destroy their harvests

Specifically, they began by pointing out that the US has done a lot of biological and chemical weapons research, not all of it aimed at humans — there are ones targeting crops and livestock, too. And there's a reason it's called "flyover country." This, accompanied with a photo of a crop-duster plane in action.

So, they argued, if red states decide to stop selling the food they grow to blue states, to try to use hunger as a weapon, then the other side will use hunger as a weapon back, go "if we can't have it, no one can," and send out aircraft to drop as many herbicides, blights, livestock diseases, et cetera upon red state farms as necessary. At which point, food will then have to be shipped in from elsewhere… and look at which side controls the coasts, and especially all the big coastal port cities. Oh, yes, and as for the funds with which pay foreign countries for that food, isn't a large majority of America's economy and wealth concentrated in those very same big coastal cities?

I feel like this begs the question, what do you think you're going to do after you've gone scorched earth on Middle America? What exactly are you going to trade with those superior trade relations if not your own lives? Live action remakes of old Disney cartoons? The United States does not export Grain and Produce, the Midwest does. The United States does not manufacture trade goods, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee do. The United States does not have a space program. Alabama, California, Florida, and Texas do. Etc... Etc...

Survive. The hypothetical is one in which red states start the cycle by intiating use of starvation as a weapon against blue states and the blue states defend themselves through MAD-style retaliation. Same logic as making it clear that if a country starts dropping nukes, they will be nuked in return.

It's like the Bomber Harris line about how Germany operated under the rather naive notion that they could bomb everyone else's cities and somehow the Allies were just going to sit on their hands and not return the favor. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Look at the breakdown of states by population, manufacturing, and so on. Bill Sherman's warning to pro-secessionist southerners about their eagerness for war is much more likely outcome. I'm from a hard red state, still live in it and have traveled and worked extensively elsewhere; rural conservatives calling for another civil war and dismissing the northeast, west coast, blue midwest, etc as pushovers and thinking they just make disney movies and the like would be repeating the same error of judgement to their peril. Most places that actually make things are like 60-40% partisan divide among the populace at most, not monolithic.

What exactly are you going to trade with those superior trade relations if not your own lives?

Exactly. There's a difference between the "on-paper" wealth that underlies the "America's economy is mostly Blue coastal cities" and actual material goods and production. But people like the guy who made this argument don't get that.

I bring this up as an example of the Blue Tribe's utter hostility to Red, that they'll openly show how much thought they put into scenarios of smugly enacting "flyover genocide."

It's not that I think something like this would work… but I wouldn't put it past them to try anyway.

I bring this up as an example of the Blue Tribe's utter hostility to Red, that they'll openly show how much thought they put into scenarios of smugly enacting "flyover genocide."

It's not that I think something like this would work… but I wouldn't put it past them to try anyway.

Frankly I don't see how this is any worse than Reds smugly proclaiming "guess who has all the guns".

Yeah if I had a nickel for every time people in my hard red state talked with immense pleasure about the idea of slaughtering, starving or cutting off water to cities I'd be rich.

It’s a ridiculous subject matter for any number of reasons, not least the fact that in any new American civil war the entire rest of the world would pick sides, and those sides aren’t easy to determine from current political dynamics (eg the simple fact that the left is more xenophilic isn’t sufficient to predict whose side various other factions would be on). The dollar and US financial institutions would collapse, and the US is a huge net food exporter, so it’s unclear where the coastal cities would be buying food from anyway.

There won’t be a civil war, though, a slow Orbanization is more feasible and the modern American ruling class is much more disunited than they were 30 years ago (the Israel question discussed above is one example).

The whole nukes thing would probably hinder the potential for direct intervention, and there’s like 5-10 wars waiting to pop off the moment American attention to global interventions would stop in the manner required by a bonafide civil war.

That depends on who has the nukes and who has the army. If the Republic of California invites soldiers of a foreign nation into their territory, that’s not an invasion.

The charges are real. They are being tried in a courtroom with very real consequences if Trump is convicted. That’s not a fake charge. They are politically motivated charges, and I’ll agree this is pretty obvious.

I think conviction is less obvious as you will likely have trouble seating a jury unbiased enough to not instantly lose on appeal. Even then I would give at least a 30% on a hung jury and maybe 15% on a mistrial due to jury misconduct (my best guess Isa juror getting caught writing a book while serving on the jury, which happened during the OJ Simpson trial), which means that you might not get a conviction until next year.

The interesting case to me is states removing Trump from the ballot in absence of a conviction. I don’t think there’s actually a precedent for doing that even at local levels, and Trump is not only a mainstream candidate for president (and the presumptive GOP nominee), but polling even to slightly ahead of Biden. If Trump is removed, that would be pretty clear official interference.

The charges are real

I know that this is going to come across as mean/uncharitable but define "real" because I think that this question of is really one of the core points of disagreement between Right and Left.

I mean that the state thinks it has enough evidence that he did what they’re accusing him of that it’s worth bring to a jury trial. And that if convicted he goes to a real prison.

I think the prosecution is politically motivated and if he were anyone else he would never have been charged with these crimes because they’re pretty common in the political class.

I think conviction is less obvious as you will likely have trouble seating a jury unbiased enough to not instantly lose on appeal.

I think you underestimate how "game-able" jury selection is. And even if it's straightforwardly certain to be overturned on appeal, I again point to Ted Stevens — just secure conviction before the election, but make sure the overturning on appeal only comes after the election.

If Trump is removed, that would be pretty clear official interference.

According to whom? That is to say, who has the legal authority to rule what is or isn't "official interference"? And even if they do rule so, what remedy is available after the fact?

This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".

This has been far from obvious. Actually going ahead with the prosecution and sending Trump to prison, i.e. letting his entire voting base know that they aren't allowed to pick their representative and their votes are worthless, is not going to be a decision without serious consequences. Most people believed that they wouldn't go through with it not due to some opinion on the matter of the law, but the political and societal consequences that would ensue. My personal belief was that the whole point of these prosecutions was to hamper his campaigning efforts - and the dates they chose for the trial were as close to confirmation as I thought possible barring another wikileaks incident. I didn't think they would actually send him to prison simply because that would be so good for his re-election chances, but if they actually go ahead with it I'll be extremely surprised. To quote a joke made by another poster, maybe he could use the time in jail to write another memoir about his political struggles.

DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges

Have you read the news anytime in the past two decades? Are you high? I unironically cannot model the mind of someone who believes that a motivated prosecutor and judge couldn't round up twelve people willing to convict Donald Trump, a man who most members of the blob consider to be worse than Satan, on charges that don't quite hold muster. They were already willing to bend the law much further than allowing a lying democrat into a jury pool with the crossfire hurricane investigation and the bogus Carter Page warrant - they've already gone well beyond what you seem to believe is plausible, and that was in 2015! You have a comical level of faith in an institution that has already been demonstrated as helplessly corrupt - how can you possibly look at the prosecutions of SpaceX for failing to hire enough illegal immigrants for a job they're forbidden to work under law, or the soft-walking of Hunter Biden's countless, impeccably documented felonies, and think that the legal system in the US is actually functioning on legal principles?

You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.

Yes, and there isn't actually a contradiction here - they don't believe that Trump was actually conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights (rather that he was attempting to thwart a conspiracy to do so by others).

This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood.

I'm not going to deny that's one way of phrasing the message being sent. But a more accurate one would be that they believe the government and the democrats are defecting from the political and democratic order - that they're corruptly using their current authority in order to prevent the opposition from gaining power. Functioning democracies generally don't lock up and arrest the leaders of the opposition party! When the social contract that stipulates democracy and a peaceful transfer of power is torn up, why should they continue to bind themselves by rules that their opponents are clearly not respecting? They're saying "If you don't play by the rules, we won't play by the rules either." - which is not exactly the kind of terroristic threat that your interpretation implies.

he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads.

I don't think you've seen much recent conservative social media activity. Do you really think the Trump base needs Tucker Carlson to put the thought of violence in their heads? If the Biden administration announces that the Republican party doesn't get to contest the next presidential election, I don't think the republican base would just sit there and go "Aww shucks, guess that's what the law says! Nothing we can do." if it wasn't for Tucker Carlson whispering in their ears.

All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.

I think that he is absolutely a true believer when he makes that claim, no matter his feelings towards Trump the man. I think Trump is flawed, albeit not as flawed as he's often painted to be, but even if I passionately hated the man I would still have no trouble believing that his incredibly passionate base would get extremely violent if they were told that they weren't allowed political representation anymore.

Yes, and there isn't actually a contradiction here - they don't believe that Trump was actually conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights (rather that he was attempting to thwart a conspiracy to do so by others).

That is not what Carlson is saying!

"The heinous crimes that they are accusing Trump of are in fact the heinous crimes that they themselves committed" is an argument that you can make, and I've seen variations of it elsewhere. But Carlson isn't making that argument. He's saying they're "not real crimes". Tried to steal an election? Pfft, that's nothing, next you'll arrest him for littering.

It's the difference between "I didn't kill the guy" and "Nobody liked him anyway."

  • -14

I disagree - he's claiming that Trump's actions aren't actually real crimes and never rose to that level. I'm extremely certain that if you offered the deal to Trump, he'd be perfectly fine with a scenario where Biden, losing the election, makes a series of phone calls saying roughly the exact same things he did, and Carlson would be too. Even the actual charges against him are reliant on the idea that he knew he was lying, and I fail to see why the idea that Trump made a mistake is so outside the realms of possibility.

letting his entire voting base know that they aren't allowed to pick their representative and their votes are worthless, is not going to be a decision without serious consequences.

Why not? What "serious consequences" do you have in mind, and what reason do our elites have to fear them (as opposed to, say, welcoming them as casus belli to crush the hated enemy tribe even harder).

the political and societal consequences that would ensue

Again, what consequences, other than his supporters giving up and quitting the political scene?

and think that the legal system in the US is actually functioning on legal principles?

So what if people stop thinking our legal system is principled (assuming they haven't already)? The Chinese, for example, rejected the entire concept of "rule of law" and "equality before the law" (the core positions of the "Legalist" school) a bit over 2200 years ago, and soldiered on as a civilization just fine.

Functioning democracies generally don't lock up and arrest the leaders of the opposition party!

Greece? Ukraine?

why should they continue to bind themselves by rules that their opponents are clearly not respecting?

Because the alternative is being subjected to severe punishment for no possible gain?

If the Biden administration announces that the Republican party doesn't get to contest the next presidential election, I don't think the republican base would just sit there and go "Aww shucks, guess that's what the law says! Nothing we can do." if it wasn't for Tucker Carlson whispering in their ears.

Except I think, based on my experience with my "republican base" family and friends, that is what most will do. After all, quite a few already think that 2020 was outright stolen, expect some manner of repeat in 2024, and have given up on voting in favor of one (or more) of three things:

  1. Preparing for the imminent Second Coming/End of Days that is now guaranteed to happen in our lifetimes.

  2. The "Benedict Option" (even if they don't use the term): preparing and strengthening their family and church in hopes their descendants a century or two from now will be better prepared to survive and rebuild in the inevitable Dark Age to come. (I think it was Dave "The Distributist" Greene who argued that the entire right needs to accept that we cannot and will not ever win politically any time this century, and the only possible politics for the right is either forming families or becoming a (Catholic) priest, then preparing said families and Church for the eventual collapse.)

  3. Wait for "someone else" to "fix everything" for them.

This last — the immense "free-rider" problem — cannot be overstated. My Dad, for example, holds that, should this sort of situation come to pass, that "local church groups" will provide all the organization the American right-wing will need to "fight back" and win… while he's (AFAIK) never attended a church service in his life. (He's certainly never attended one in my lifetime. For that matter, he has no friends or social life at all outside our family.) Others confidently that our military will certainly step in and set things right… in between breathlessly repeating the latest thing they watched on Fox News about the Woke-ification of our armed forces.

This was one of the more common right-wing criticisms I used to see of all the Q-Anon nonsense — that, besides being an exercise in unbounded apophenia, it serves as a call to passivity, asserting that right-wing citizens need do nothing at all, because the "patriots" secretly at work behind-the-scenes will fix everything for them.

Others (like the people at Sarah Hoyt's blog comments) will go on at length about how doing anything but hunkering down is "playing into the Marxists' hands," and that we just need to wait until "Zhou Bai-Den's Marxist thugs" come busting down our individual front doors, at which point we need only shoot back in self-defense, and then we automatically win.

I would still have no trouble believing that his incredibly passionate base would get extremely violent if they were told that they weren't allowed political representation anymore.

I think that, for all their passion, very few of them will get violent. Sure, some will, but those that do will do so entirely in the form of "lone-wolf" terrorism, blind lashing-out so poorly targeted and sloppily executed as to make Breivik's assault on Utøya look good in comparison. They will accomplish nothing but giving our government even more excuses to crack down on the right and limit political expression further still.

Why not? What "serious consequences" do you have in mind, and what reason do our elites have to fear them (as opposed to, say, welcoming them as casus belli to crush the hated enemy tribe even harder).

This reaches the point of civil war and potential serious domestic terrorism events. I don't believe you're thinking seriously about the consequences of this if you think that the elites could simply crush them - US domestic infrastructure is utterly impossible to secure in this kind of threat environment and the red tribe at the very least has the ability to reduce the US to a blasted wasteland with no functioning economy at all. Even assuming the elites are as perfidious, powerful, competent and undivided as you claim, their choices are going to be between giving the hated enemy tribe a say in society, or just not having a society at all.

So what if people stop thinking our legal system is principled (assuming they haven't already)?

That section was essentially an attack on AshLael's position - you don't believe that and neither do I, so there's no point discussing it given that I believe we actually agree here.

Greece? Ukraine?

Your idea of a functioning democracy is Ukraine? You are not exactly making a good argument against the claim that functioning democracies don't do this, especially seeing as how Ukraine has actually suspended elections and isn't democratic in the slightest.

Because the alternative is being subjected to severe punishment for no possible gain?

This is going to happen to them anyway if they do nothing, and in fact has been happening for a while. They have a choice between severe punishment, or severe punishment with a chance at victory. Sure, it sucks, but it beats the alternative.

Except I think, based on my experience with my "republican base" family and friends, that is what most will do.

I can't actually argue against your own impression of your friends and family, but I think that the base in general will absolutely get more serious and violent if what is being described comes to pass. Maybe we just see different portions of the republican base?

This was one of the more common right-wing criticisms I used to see of all the Q-Anon nonsense — that, besides being an exercise in unbounded apophenia, it serves as a call to passivity, asserting that right-wing citizens need do nothing at all, because the "patriots" secretly at work behind-the-scenes will fix everything for them.

I agreed with those criticisms, though the bigger issue to me was that Q-Anon was obviously faked.

Others (like the people at Sarah Hoyt's blog comments)

Who?

I think that, for all their passion, very few of them will get violent. Sure, some will, but those that do will do so entirely in the form of "lone-wolf" terrorism, blind lashing-out so poorly targeted and sloppily executed as to make Breivik's assault on Utøya look good in comparison. They will accomplish nothing but giving our government even more excuses to crack down on the right and limit political expression further still.

While it isn't particularly pleasant to talk about, Breivik's assault actually achieved all the aims he was going for. He confessed later on that his manifesto was actually a fake - the reason it was full of plagiarised writing was because he specifically wanted to give the impression that he was inspired by a particular group of writers in order to get the media to attack them. He succeeded, and at the same time wiped out the most promising left wing politicians of the next generation. Breivik unironically achieved the goals he had for the attacks, so you'd probably want to pick a different example.

I think that, for all their passion, very few of them will get violent. Sure, some will, but those that do will do so entirely in the form of "lone-wolf" terrorism, blind lashing-out so poorly targeted and sloppily executed as to make Breivik's assault on Utøya look good in comparison. They will accomplish nothing but giving our government even more excuses to crack down on the right and limit political expression further still.

You've got to remember, post-2020-election the Republican machine did not declare "stolen election, government illegitimate". McConnell outright condemned Trump right after squelching his impeachment trial. You're right that a few lone wolves aren't much of an issue, but if the Republican machine as a whole flips into "rebellion" mode that's quite a different story, and having elections be stolen for real is the sort of thing that might push them over (remember, if the fix goes in that means all their hopes of accomplishing anything via the system - the whole reason they are politicians - just caught on fire). In particular, once one state declares secession or the equivalent, all the other red states are faced with the choice of "join the rebels" or "be made to fight the rebels and then be crushed politically in the ensuing witch-hunt". Texas is the obvious spark, but not the only possibility.

Complicating matters is the fact that the PRC is probably looking to have a Taiwan invasion ready and waiting next year, precisely in order to take advantage of possible chaos in the USA.

Most of my hope is on "the SCOTUS nixes attempts to remove Trump from the ballot". Outside of that scenario... well, I'm sure glad I don't live in the 'States.

You've got to remember, post-2020-election the Republican machine did not declare "stolen election, government illegitimate".

Of course not; that would not be keeping in their role as the Outer Party; the Washington Generals to the Democrats' Globetrotters. It would threaten their cushy jobs and ongoing access to the proverbial gravy train.

if the Republican machine as a whole flips into "rebellion" mode

As the Spartan ephors said to Philip II, "if." I don't think they will, because enough of the long time party establishment are, to use wrestling terminology, jobbers. They're paid to make a show of opposition, to maintain "kayfabe," and then lose. And they likely know it. It doesn't matter how blatant any future "steal" is, they know their continued access wealthy donors, personal influence, and those famous "DC cocktail parties" depends on insisting that the elections were still free and fair.

the whole reason they are politicians

No, that's far from the whole reason. Again, there's the many benefits of the job itself — the pay, the perks, the status, the influence. I think it was one of Chris Rufo's essays that pointed out how the Democratic party has shown a willingness to accept short-term electoral losses in pushing through long-term legal and social changes, highlighting the particular example of LBJ. In contrast, the GOP, most especially the party establishment, trend very much in the opposite direction — they consistently prioritize protecting their phony-baloney jobs (to borrow from the great Mel Brooks) over "making a difference." There are benefits to being in the Outer Party. There are reasons that generally-competent basketball players play for the Washington Generals.

(Then there's the ones like Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich (can you tell I'm Alaskan?), for whom politics is literally the family business. The latter was being "groomed" for his eventual Senate seat all the way back when he was in high school. They were raised to be politicians. There are reasons I say that an openly aristocratic system is just being more honest about the ruling class.)

Plus, even if the GOP establishment does want to accomplish things in office, those aren't necessarily the same things that their voters — especially the Trump base — want. As someone once put it on a lengthy youtube video I once watched (analyzing county-level maps and breakdowns of biennial Congressional elections from the end of WWII to the end of the 20th century), the Republican Party began as the party of New England bankers… and that's what it always will be. They only "picked up" white working voters because the post-Nixon Democrats "dropped" them, as Matt Stoller describes at length in his 2016 Atlantic piece "How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul." The job of GOP elites is to falsely pander to the voter base when campaigning, then deliver for the elite donor class in office — and I remember sometime last year or so a quote floating around the web from an interview with a Republican campaign strategist where he pretty much said that.

Most of my hope is on "the SCOTUS nixes attempts to remove Trump from the ballot".

Assuming they aren't able to delay it from reaching them until after the election.

We seem to have very-different models of these people. I guess if there's an obvious steal and the GOP just rolls over and plays dead, I'll have to give this more credence than I currently do.

When did Trump incite a riot? I listened to his speech that day. At no point did he call for violence. Anything he said is 100% protected free speech. If Trumps guilty then Biden, Kamala, every member of congress, and every Senator is guilty.

To me the only real case is the one in Georgia where he may have crossed some lines. He is also probably guilty of some things with classified documents but since Biden, Pence, Hillary have similar issues that feels a lot like lawfare and should be thrown out because the law hasn’t been equally applied.

The Georgia thing feels pretty much identical to the "very fine people" comment, where he supposedly called neonazis "very fine people", but in context actually said the opposite.

In the call where he was supposedly pressuring Brad Raffensberger to "find votes", he is very clearly saying that his team thinks there is fraud, and is asking for permission (or help) in investigating that fraud. The "finding" votes he's talking about is not a euphemism; he is literally saying that if fraud is investigated, that there will be at least enough to flip the state.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/03/politics/trump-brad-raffensperger-phone-call-transcript/index.html

This seems so blatantly inbounds ethically that it amazes me that this is what they're going after him for. Even the wikipedia page (not exactly unbiased) seems to clearly state that the was trying to get fraud investigated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Raffensperger_phone_call

Sure he may have been pressuring Brad Raffensberger to do something, but the something he was pressuring him to do doesn't seem illegal, or even questionably ethical.

This seems so blatantly inbounds ethically that it amazes me that this is what they're going after him for.

As with the lawsuits, the Trump-Raffensberger phone call is improper (both as a matter of ethics and as a matter of criminal law) if and only if the factual claims Trump made were knowingly false. The Georgia indictment indicts the call as "False Statements and Writings" and "Solicitation of Felony Violation of Oath of Office" (in that Raffensberger knew there was no fraud, and would therefore have violated his oath of office by launching the investigation Trump requested). The Federal indictment doesn't charge individual bad acts, but it describes the phonecall as "the defendant lied to the Georgia Secretary of State".

Filing a false police report is not protected speech.

As a separate matter, Trump threatened Raffensberger with criminal liability for aiding and abetting the (non-existent) fraud. That probably should be a crime, but it doesn't appear to be given that it isn't charged in either the Federal or the Georgia indictment.

I feel like sometimes I’m good at this where you say something in a scissor statement way. I usually do it in a playful way. Trumps good at this. His comments here can come off how you say but also outrage the left. He did it with the Proud Boys in the debates with his stand back and stand by. He did it with Russia and hacking. It’s a fun way to communicate where your meaning has a very mild and what you mean meaning but people can see a way to get offended by it.

I highly recommend listening to that call and/or reading the transcript -- there's very little room for the alternate interpretation, he goes on for like an hour about all the ways he thinks fraud was committed, and how many votes can be 'found' just by looking into one or two of these things. It doesn't really support the idea that he didn't believe what he was saying to be true either, he's very vehement.

I feel like sometimes I’m good at this where you say something in a scissor statement way. I usually do it in a playful way. Trumps good at this.

I think it's more that he says a lot of stuff, and there's an army of people employed at sifting through it to snip out bits that make him look maximally evil out of context.

I think it's more that he says a lot of stuff, and there's an army of people employed at sifting through it to snip out bits that make him look maximally evil out of context.

And that he is imprecise and careless about what he says, especially when he's regurgitating things he has only vaguely committed to memory, so he leaves a lot of room for others to figure out what he meant.

On the latter part I think he does both. “The fine people” thing seemed to me that he was actually trying to be nuanced. The proud boy thing seemed more like a scissor statement and as is it was weird he was asked to condemn an org as white supremacists who had a black man as their president. The Russian stuff maybe a scissor statement.

I've been thinking a lot on the application of the laws. A couple stories come to mind.

First, a literal friend of a friend. We were both at a mutual friend's house for dinner one night. I didn't know him before this evening, and I never saw him again afterward. It was a while ago; I can't precisely age him; I would guess 30s. He was a black man. All I really remember is that nearly the entire evening, he was talking about how unjust he thought marijuana laws were. He expressed that, because of this belief, he thought that it was his duty to continue selling marijuana in violation of the law that he thought unjust. To the point of saying something along the lines of, "I have a child now that I want to take care of, but I will absolutely go back to jail, because I have a duty to keep selling marijuana."

I remember thinking at the time that it was just a terrible pragmatic decision, because regardless of his belief on the justness of the law, it seemed implausible that his persistent violation of it would have any remotely meaningful effect. It's still above my pay grade to have any sort of judgment on the perspective where you're convinced that a law and the means by which it is being prosecuted is unjust at its core, unfairly and unjustly applied, perhaps in a discriminatory way toward unfavorables, and then having to decide what to do about it. But it helped me understand just how much opprobrium many people can have when they see such things that they consider to be abuses of what may be otherwise legitimate political power, especially when they think that a part of the abuse is, "They wouldn't put me in jail for it if I were white."

The second example is Doug Hughes, the mailman who landed his ultralight gyrocopter on Capitol Hill. His political shtick was that he was "delivering letters" to politicians to protest campaign finance laws. But it was all over the news, a major embarrassment to the Obama administration. How could this guy just fly in to DC airspace?! It's one of the most protected airspaces in the world and there are special flight rules that must be observed in order to enter it. (He likely would not have received authorization to enter if he had asked according to procedure.)

However, those rules are just little bitty administrative rules, basically. You talk to pilots who are in the 'pilot community', and they know that you definitely take those rules seriously, because if you even accidentally break them, the minute you land, you're going to be interrogated by someone from the FAA (and possibly law enforcement) to figure out what you were up to, and the likely outcome in any event is that they're going to revoke your pilot's license.

But, uh, Doug Hughes didn't have a pilot's license for them to revoke! You don't need to have a pilot's license to fly an ultralight gyrocopter! The Powers That Be were in a bit of a pickle. They had to make an example of this guy, somehow. Their only normal recourse was to take the license that he didn't even have. Soooo, they scoured the law books, grasping for anything they could come up with. What they found was that, with the added weight of the letters, the total weight of his gyrocopter was just barely above the weight limit for ultralight aircraft, and there's a real big boy statute with real criminal felony penalties requiring a pilot's license to fly heavier aircraft. That's how they got him.

I can't help but think that if Mr. Hughes flew his slightly-overweight gyrocopter literally anywhere else, in a way that didn't bring national embarrassment to The Powers That Be, his criminal conviction would have evaporated at twenty different levels of discretion. First off, probably no one would have even known. Who the hell monitors the weight of these little guys on a regular basis? Nobody. And even if someone did notice, they might have just chuckled. "Can't believe you managed to get that beefy boi up!" Mayyyyyyyybe someone miiiiight have quietly noticed and whispered, "Hey Doug, don't do it again, or at least, don't let other people know, because I just came to the brilliant realization that it's technically illegal, that pretty cool thing I just saw you do and am otherwise giving you social props for." (It is left as an exercise for the reader to estimate the likelihood of criminal sanctions if the flight had gathered attention, but was widely viewed as being politically favorable to The Powers That Be.)

Spoilers: The jurisdiction we were in at the time of the marijuana conversation has now legalized marijuana. Recently, the FAA has basically acknowledged that weight limits have very little to do with safety and may, in fact, be detrimental to safety when it comes to regulation of small aircraft.

I recently read a couple books by William Riker, who to my knowledge, has never stepped foot on any model of the starship Enterprise. Particularly of note here is his Liberalism Against Populism, written in '87. Much of it is mathematical minutia of the the pros/cons of different voting systems and the pathologies which may follow, but in his concluding chapters, he presents a fascinating interpretation of political science/philosophy, public/social choice theory as sort of a general domain that seems to have some sense grown out of economics departments in the late 20th century.

Riker acknowledges the common refrain that economics is 'the dismal science', since it deals with allocation of scarce resources, and sort of no matter what choices you make, someone is not going to have everything they want (especially if what they want is basically everything). Of course, some people lose economically, due to a variety of factors which may or may not be under their control, but he says that social choice is the real dismal science, for at least in economics you can very often find positive sum trades sort of just sitting around all over the place. They can make things genuinely better for pretty much everyone!

In a sort of analogy, in his mind, social choice is also a study of the allocation of a scarce resource, but that scare resource is political and moral values. These are often distributed in a zero-sum fashion (think two-candidate elections). Or, as he flatly says, "Suppose that, ..., it is still the intent of each possible winner to impose some kind of external cost on the losers. Then, no matter who wins, there exists a loser who is the worse off for having participated in the political system." He contrasts economic scarcity, which means that those who cannot pay or convince a Soviet-style planning commission to allocate to them must go without, to political/moral scarcity, which "requires that the nonpossessor suffer additional punishment for nonpossession". He then leverages his long work on voting systems and 'heresthetics' to argue that it will, in fact, often lead to dissatisfaction by a majority of people. This has other implications for his political science, but I think I will stop here.

Regardless of what I think are the personal pros/cons of his strategy, the jurisdiction in which marijuana man lived eventually decided to allocate some scarce political/moral resource to him. Doug Hughes was an incredible loser in the negative sum game of obtaining scarce political/moral resources and punishing one's enemies in the process. He may eventually be vindicated by the FAA on moral grounds, though he had to pay a steep price in the meantime (as I assume marijuana man already had; I recall him saying that he would go 'back to jail' as if he had already been).

Regardless of what I think are the personal pros/cons of Trump's strategy, his case (the case of political and moral allocation, not that of his legal trial) has yet to be decided. The Powers That Be will use every tool at their disposal to deny him any allocation of political/moral value, at least for now, even if that involves scouring the books for anything, even if that means going after him for something that would have disappeared as an issue for anyone else by twenty different offramps.

Riker tells me that the only answer liberalism gives to anyone who is unhappy with this current allocation of political/moral value is to vote people out. He tells me to not worry too much, because a majority of people are usually unhappy with the allocation of political/moral value anyway. He tells me only to worry when people start thinking that they're getting an even shittier deal by participating in the political system and acknowledging it as a suitable means by which to allocate scarce political/moral value. Unfortunately, this is what I hear when I hear Megyn Kelly talk to Tucker Carlson.

Epilogue

I sometimes get angry that so many people violate so many laws in ways that genuinely hurt others. I sometimes get angry that so many of those people are never prosecuted, due to twenty different offramps. I sometimes get angry that other bullshit laws exist and that people get unjustly prosecuted under them. I sometimes get angry that the most common way to play the political game is to punish one's enemies, making the whole thing a negative sum endeavor. I might also even get angry when some political losers start to reject the entire edifice that is built on things that I sometimes hate and get angry at. I used to get more upset at that last one; ya know, the whole 'damaging to our democracy' bit. And sure, I can still see how such degradation can occur, leading to all sorts of political dysentery. But man, I am starting to lean in the direction that when everything is obvious bullshit, "I get mad about every bullshit thing I see," might not be the way. After all, as the video says, I'm just some fuckin' guy, and probabilistically, I'm highly likely to be in the dissatisfied majority most of the time.

It's one of the most protected airspaces in the world and there are special flight rules that must be observed in order to enter it. (He likely would not have received authorization to enter if he had asked according to procedure.)

To be specific, at the time the process to get permission to enter the Capital SFRA involved a pretty lengthy flight planning session going over nearly every component of the flight path, and required certain telemetry types not present in most (maybe not allowed in?) ultralights; the White House and Capitol Hill (and a few surrounding areas) remain prohibited even if you do that. They've since added an online course. Non-standard (eg not straight-line direct-to) flight plans can get more complicated than even that -- I've heard joking-not-joking stories about aerial imaging groups having to bring a police officer on the flight with them.

I can't help but think that if Mr. Hughes flew his slightly-overweight gyrocopter literally anywhere else, in a way that didn't bring national embarrassment to The Powers That Be, his criminal conviction would have evaporated at twenty different levels of discretion.

To be 'fair', the FAA is a petty bitch. They're still the Powers That Be when it comes to aviation, but they're willing to be petty in other environments as well: there's a decent number of 2008-2013 enforcement against 'fat' ultralights. The FAA didn't do hangar-level inspections without a serious complaint first, but if an FSDO gets a complaint, or a FBO knew you weren't behaving well, those complaints and photographic evidence could come in pretty quick.

((This was somewhat complicated by a lot of two-seat light-weight aircraft going around in that timeframe, which were in a weird state until 2008ish.))

This isn't even always wrong: see the Trevor Jacobs thing for a situation where the FAA absolutely came down on him like a sack of bricks (including prison time!) because it was embarrassing for them, but he also could have done a hell of a lot of mischief.

there's a decent number of 2008-2013 enforcement against 'fat' ultralights.

Interesting. Any cites to criminal, felony cases? My quick internet search didn't come up with much but rumors that people were given reprimands, maybe fines, and told that they had to get rid of second seats (but that they didn't care so much if they were a little 'fat').

That's fair. Most recent cases usually just go after airman's certs or private pilot's licenses; criminal cases tend to only get involved when there's risk to passengers or to people on the ground, and even those are pretty rare.

DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges.

Much more importantly, trials are not a vote of everyone in the demographic area. Lawyers can reject jurors who they believe can't judge the case fairly; it's entirely possible to craft a jury of 12 Republicans in 99% Democratic region, if that's crucial to your case being judged fairly (or more likely, craft a jury of 12 people who consider themselves independent/undecided and are not very politically engaged in general).

And, if you don't trust that process because you think teh judge is a shill, then it also doesn't matter what the makeup of DC is because the judge could craft a jury of 12 Democrats in a 99% Republican area. If the judge is a shill then the rest doesn't matter, that's all you need to say.

It's all part of the gish gallop, make a million separate claims instead of proving any one of them.

But, anyway: no, the economy is good and people are comfortable, there won't be major violence.

‘Wait, I have no economic power, you've devalued my currency, so it's like $11 for a dozen eggs,

Eggs are currently $3.69 for 18 at my local target.

and my vote doesn't matter anymore. Well, then what do I have? Like what power do I have?’ And you're gonna get violence if you keep the shit up. And that's just the truth.

Are we doing "riots are the language of the unheard" with the opposite valence now?

Eggs are currently $3.69 for 18 at my local target.

And? If you read the actual sentence that quote is from, he's talking about a hypothetical future that is at the very least set after the next election. He's talking about how if you "keep doing" what was done during the 2020 election, and mentions that same hypothetical individual believes that their vote was effectively worthless.

So what does the price of eggs have to do with what was done during the 2020 election?

People don't like inflation and blame it on the other side so mentioning it riles up the base

I thought we agreed that eggs don't cost anywhere near $11.

he's talking about a hypothetical future that is at the very least set after the next election.

It really goes to show that nobody seems to be able to fit the square peg of $11 eggs in the round hole of whatever else he's talking about.

Hungry people are more likely to upend any system

That doesn't answer my question.

Eggs cost more than a banana, Michael.

The most important thing to understand is that while Tucker is a charismatic individual and a good writer and presenter, he has no real ideology. A decade ago he was literally a standard neocon with occasional libertarian sympathies. His ‘conversion’ to some kind of nativism is driven by his audience and his support for Trump is phoney, as various Fox leaks have made clear. Ann Coulter is much more of a ‘true believer’ than Carlson ever was, which is saying a lot.

I don’t think so. He attacked Trump in the few situations where Trump was bellicose and that was interesting since most people on the right and left praises Trump for it. Tucker also has fervently said he was wrong about Iraq, something you don’t see a lot. I do think he was a neocon but had a road to Damascus moment so to speak.

A decade ago he was literally a standard neocon with occasional libertarian sympathies.

Not really - he turned against the Iraq war pretty quickly after he visited the country and saw what was actually going on:

Outside of the heavily fortified—and relatively safe—U.S.-controlled "Green Zone" that surrounds Saddam's former main palaces in Baghdad, you can spend days without hearing English or seeing an American flag. Almost nowhere is there the faintest whiff of American cultural influence. People light up in elevators and carry Kalashnikovs to the dinner table. Gunfire and explosions are background noise. It is a place with almost no Western-style rules. It's not a bit like Denver.

You'd think it would be. According to the Pentagon, there are more than a 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq. The country seems to have swallowed them. We drove from the Kuwaiti border to downtown Baghdad and back again and didn't see one on the way—more than 700 miles on major roads without catching a glimpse of a single American in uniform.

If the goal is to control the country, there are not enough American forces in Iraq. If the goal is to rebuild it, there could never be enough. The U.S. military simply doesn't have the manpower. As it is, the Pentagon could not fight even a small war without the considerable help of civilian contractors. In Bosnia during the peacekeeping mission, there was at times one contractor for every soldier. That was nearly a decade ago. The military has grown smaller since and even more dependent on contractors. On the battlefield, contractors cook soldiers' food, deliver their mail, provide their housing, and take care of their equipment. (DynCorp maintains virtually all U.S. military aircraft in the Middle East.) In Iraq, they are sometimes nearly indistinguishable from soldiers.

It wasn't until I was flat on my back that the strangest part of the night sunk in: No one outside our immediate compound had seemed to notice the firefight. The gunfire had gone on for 15 minutes. The noise had been tremendous and unmistakable. Yet nobody—not U.S. soldiers, not cops from the Iraqi police station 150 yards away, not representatives of the famously benevolent "international community," whoever they might be—had come by to ask what happened, who did it, or if anyone was hurt. There were no authorities to call. No one cared. We were totally alone.

Not as alone as the rest of the people in the neighborhood, however. We were on a residential street. Iraqi families lived on both sides of us. What did they think? Hundreds of rounds had been fired—hundreds of needle-tipped, copper-jacketed missiles whipping through the neighborhood at half a mile a second. What happened to them all? Where did the bullets go? Into parked cars and generators and water tanks. Into people's living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms, and sometimes into human flesh.

It must have been terrifying to live nearby, or to live anywhere in Baghdad. You couldn't blame the coalition forces exactly. They weren't doing most of the shooting. But they didn't seem to be doing much about it, either. On the street where I was staying, they weren't doing anything. And how could they? All the foreign troops in Iraq hadn't been able to keep the country's main airport safe enough to use. A single block in Baghdad wasn't going to get their attention. By necessity, it was left to civilian contractors, or whoever else had the time, energy, and firearms to police their own tiny sections of Iraq.

He was a quite good magazine journalist for a while. Of course his piece about getting invited to go on a peacemaking trip to Liberia with Al Sharpton, Cornel West, and a bunch of other African-American clergy, is the best.

Tucker is definitely a nativist true believer, he got kicked out of a comfy job at Fox because he went beyond the reservation. I'm sure people explained to him what was and wasn't tolerable beforehand informally, yet he still went beyond the tolerance of his bosses.

Just because Tucker hates Trump doesn't mean that he'd go out of his way to antagonize Trump's supporters. It's called being tactful and diplomatic. Trump did very little for their agenda, he didn't drain the swamp, he didn't extract the US from overseas wars, he didn't fight back against DEI, he was 'monitoring the situation' and passing tax cuts. But Tucker remained silent on this and used/uses Trump to advance his own position rather than creating divisions. This is the sort of quality that real political adepts have and what people like Hanania lack.

Same could be said of pretty much all people. People's views shift over time. Many of us on this board, for example, used to be bog standard liberals.

It's true that politicians and leaders will naturally be influenced by the people who follow them. Of course they are. It doesn't mean they have nothing of value to contribute or are mere grifters.

What irks about Tucker isn’t the ideological transition. It’s that the leaked Fox stuff (which he doesn’t deny) makes clear that he despises Trump and considers him both an idiot and bad for conservatism. From the OP’s link:

We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights," he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. "I truly can't wait." "I hate him passionately," he added. Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air. "That's the last four years. We're all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn't really an upside to Trump."

Carlson isn’t even saying that Trump is a sad reality that the right has to accept. He’s saying there’s literally no upside to his presidency at all.

This isn’t a ‘liberal’ view, plenty of rightists agree with Carlson. But he’s too cowardly to come out and say it and to be honest with his audience. And that is indeed dishonorable.

It has nothing to do with cowardice. Pragmatism is a real thing. We all sacrifice a little of our true beliefs every day. Let’s say he really does hate Trump and shifted some beliefs for his audience.

  1. He tries to be a hero. Every word out of his mouth is the absolute truth. He loses his audience and influence. He hurts conservative causes. Biden wins the next election.

  2. He tilts his message more pro-Trump. His audience loves it. He pumps up more people to vote. Trump wins the next election. He personally makes millions of dollars.

2 is obviously the better play for his personal beliefs. If you want to be intellectually honest then go enter a seminary. If you want to get things done in the real world your going to have allies you don’t love especially in coalition politics.

In May 2020 there was a real chance my mother was going to die alone in a hospital room because of fascist policies enacted to stop transmission of an illness that doesn't kill people. Day after week after month after year I still see people entirely seriously using the term fascist to refer to those most opposed to pound-for-pound the worst lie in the history of this country. Of course I know they don't truly understand what fascism is, if they understood it, they could recognize it; if they recognized it, they would realize everybody screaming fascist over the last 10 years are those most inclined to supporting and perpetrating fascism. I know it just means to them "this thing is viewed by my ingroup as bad, and with this term I am signaling to my ingroup that I am one of them." It's galling, at times I've felt the temptation of a rage and frenzy, but I'm pretty good at keeping a cool head and I know when it comes down to it the people saying these things are deeply unserious.

You provide no substance here; the story of Carlson's supposed texts is old and baseless. Dominion sliced apart internal communications and arranged them to falsely portray things like Carlson hating Trump. His frustration has been known and as a non-federal-voter with limited subject interaction with Trump supporters, my impression has been they too view him as not delivering much on what they had hoped. If he's actually grifting, well his latest grift is getting Alex Jones back on Twitter and being Melania's pick for VP so I imagine Trump might be wondering if he could get any more Tucker-tier grifters on his side. On the prosecution, Carlson voicing concerns is easily explained; he believes the system is sufficiently corrupt to baselessly convict. I'm sure /pol/ is full of the blackpilled who would describe moral certainty of Trump's innocence and equally of his inevitable conviction. Nybbler might have even said it here already. Thinking that means any of them believe he's guilty is kafka shit.

But that's not what I'm here for, this is: is the American government bursting at the seams with depraved criminals? You can answer wrongly, but it's yes.

I have a postulate I put here a while back detailing my view on election fraud, most briefly it's "If possible, certain." The basis is that depravity. I saw someone here last week thinking apropos "They would [defraud voters] if they could" a suitable response is nevertheless "Sure, where's the evidence?" But no, you don't understand, if you truly understand how they are criminals who will take whatever they can the only rational consequent is "Can they prove they didn't?" And so likewise with the prosecution of Trump when you truly understand the overwhelming criminality present within the American government it's not the midwit's pattern-match of "whataboutism" it's the necessary consequent of "Can everyone involved prove their allegiance to justice?" Nope, they can't. So what do you go to, "He's a unique threat to the constitution"? Government organizations and taxpayer dollars censored speech, 1A out. The left is quite clear on guns, 2A out. NSA soldiers spying on homes and American citizen communications, 3A and 4A out. Or to cut to the quick, believing people who don't pay taxes should get to vote, that's the foundational ethos of the country out. The law doesn't matter to these people and the constitution doesn't matter to these people. (And please, I speak not the map but the territory.) What remains?

Trump won't be convicted. If and when this reaches the supreme court they'll rule 8-1 on what could be the utterly flimsiest of procedural issues that won't otherwise be immediately applicable as precedent for however many thousands of cases. The 8 members of actual merit will understand this is all politics, and so those 8 members of actual merit, appreciating their places in history and/as the only people with real power and real principle in 21st century America, will decline from participating in fuckery befitting the Roman senate.

So, if you too understand this truly, that this is entirely politically motivated, then you won't waste my time with the unserious person's poor gotchas or crimestop pattern-matches. Trump could have broken the law, probably even, so arcane is much of American law, but the law doesn't matter to those prosecuting him so why waste everybody's time here talking like it does? Trump does however represent a threat to their particular order, and that finally brings us to the only thing worth discussing in this entire affair: of Trump or those on the side of his prosecution, who deserves power?

My mother survived, and a politician I campaigned for as a bright-eyed youth got my dad in the hospital room. I'll back him forever for that just as I will never forget those who made it so I had to make that call.

Sorry, who are you backing forever? I’m a bit confused on the timeline.

For what it’s worth, COVID did in fact kill people, including one of my uncles. This was especially true in the months before vaccination or Paxlovid. I’m glad your mother survived.

What is your working definition of fascism? I'm not sure I see one under which your outgroup's use of the term is as obviously meaningless as you make it out to be, but at the same time your description of COVID policies as such is not.

Tyranny underwritten by corporations/financial interests.

Lockdowns, mask mandates, mass testing and compulsory immunotherapy are each tyranny. Restrictions to movement and the operation of businesses and of course the money spent to acquire all manner of medical equipment and supplies and pharmaceutical interventions produced significant gains for major multinationals.

Trotsky's actual definition, poor as he articulated it, is just anti-communist populism. But that's not what anybody means when they say fascism.

I think that definition is awfully general, but then surely right-wing preoccupations such as privatised prisons, the military-industrial complex, anti-union laws, and generally every instance where the state collaborates with corporate interests against private individuals (such as the whole legal edifice of copyright and DRM, prosecution of whistleblowers, ...), which historically have been a right-wing domain under the umbrella of pro-business - and let's not start talking about all the military misadventures that the US continues engaging in allegedly in furtherance of the interests of oil companies - should at the very least suffice to make left-wingers' accusations that right-wingers are fascists a plausible thesis to be debated.

(It's true that many of the above have fundamentally become bipartisan ventures, but many lefties within the US and beyond would surely retort that this is just a sign of both US parties being right-wing except for a bunch of wedge issues.)

Not only did you conveniently put your bottom line as it's own line at the bottom of the argument, you even drew a line above it as in the standard notation for a deductive proof of this kind.

It's so on-the-nose it makes me wonder if it's an intentional parable on the topic, but probably not.

Anyway, genuinely sorry for your family's pain in that situation, I'm glad it seems to have worked out ok. But rampant safetyism and trying to avoid legal liability really just isn't qualitatively similar top mass criminality and corruption of the type you speculate. If all politicians were the criminals you model, I would expect you to have to bribe one of them to get in to see your mother, not have one of them compassionately bend the rules to help you.

fascist policies enacted to stop transmission of an illness that doesn't kill people

Lockdowns aren't on the pareto frontier of policy options for even diseases significantly deadlier than covid imo, just because rapid development and distribution of technological solutions is possible, but ... covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.

You provide no substance here; the story of Carlson's supposed texts is old and baseless. Dominion sliced apart internal communications and arranged them to falsely portray things like Carlson hating Trump

The texts were:

“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait,” he texted an unidentified person.

“I hate him passionately. ... I can’t handle much more of this,” he added.

“We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest,” he wrote in another text message, referring to the “last four years.” “But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”

Even for this, I agree it's possible he was just really mad at Trump and is usually pro-trump even in private, and that was his defense. People say a lot of things, in a lot of contexts, and cherrypicking can do almost anything. But ... on the balance, those are very strong statements. What makes you call it baseless?

But no, you don't understand, if you truly understand how they are criminals who will take whatever they can the only rational consequent is "Can they prove they didn't?"

... are they? I know some people in the Democrat Establishment. Mostly, they follow the law and the rules and try to do what's right. I don't think this is good evidence against election fraud, but it is strong evidence against them being moral mutants who hate truth and all that is good. Are my enemies innately evil?

150 million people could have died and the measures would still be tyranny.

A government's mass seizure of power from the people, for any reason, is evil. Governments can do evil things from necessity, using nuclear weapons against Japan was evil even as it saved millions of lives. The failure in discourse is people who either downplay the tyranny of coronavirus policy or else employ the non sequitur of "It was necessary, so it wasn't tyranny." The relevance here is the usage of terms: they care about tyranny when convenient; they care about the constitution when convenient; they care about the law when convenient.

As for Carlson, this picture does some heavy lifting. What we have came via Dominion who had Carlson fired as part of their settlement, they're untrustworthy. If the full communications are available in raw I'd read them to see what he actually said, and if what Dominion released was fair enough it'd ratchet up "Carlson's a grifter." But first, the Trump circle still looks highly on him so they clearly don't consider the communications meaningful, and second, he's the most effective individual political commentator in the US, if this is his "grift", be afraid of when he plays the game for real.

... are they? I know some people in the Democrat Establishment. Mostly, they follow the law and the rules and try to do what's right. I don't think this is good evidence against election fraud, but it is strong evidence against them being moral mutants who hate truth and all that is good. Are my enemies innately evil?

So do I. I like them and I care about them but I wouldn't call them "good" except in the sense of the greengrocer. They do what is expected of them, they are obedient. They are not specifically righteous or moral as their morals are not meaningfully distinct from or independent to their political alignment. They're good members of the herd, just like pretty much everybody who's ever lived. They aren't deliberately seeking ill ends, but they believe what their superiors want them to believe and so they think they're being moral and philanthropic when they don't truly know what good is or what it means to love their fellow. As to their superiors, the politicians, just about all of them are moral mutants. Bernie Sanders probably not, Thomas Massie probably not. Exceptions otherwise few and prove the rule. The desire to have power over people, from the pettiest internet bureaucrat to highest office, is intrinsically inhuman and necessarily evil. It's pretty ancient wisdom that nobody who wants power should be allowed to have it, and equally how the best leaders never want power and are often only spurred to taking it to fight against the former. Or to directly answer your rhetorical question: bureaucrats and politicians are my enemy, for they are innately evil.

If tyranny is necessary to prevent half of a nation from dying, the tyranny is of course justified? You wouldn't let your wife and children die just because it'd be tyranny to prevent it. You might be claiming tyranny isn't actually useful in those cases, but that isn't the same thing.

(although as I noted the lockdowns weren't particularly useful)

As for Carlson, this picture does some heavy lifting. What we have came via Dominion who had Carlson fired as part of their settlement, they're untrustworthy. If the full communications are available in raw I'd read them to see what he actually said, and if what Dominion released was fair enough it'd ratchet up "Carlson's a grifter." But first, the Trump circle still looks highly on him so they clearly don't consider the communications meaningful, and second, he's the most effective individual political commentator in the US, if this is his "grift", be afraid of when he plays the game for real.

I don't think this makes sense. Carlson didn't deny the texts or provide a meaningful clarification, something he could've easily done. The "trump circle" is a hot mess anyway, and would keep him around because of how popular he is however disloyal he was. Your last sentence is just ... not even denying the claim, I'm not a left-winger and am not afraid of him, I'm not sure what you intended that to mean.

As to their superiors, the politicians, just about all of them are moral mutants. Bernie Sanders probably not, Thomas Massie probably not. Exceptions otherwise few and prove the rule.

If this is equally true of Rs and Ds, or of all politicians in history, is it really evidence of election fraud or that someone will or won't be convicted? Like there do seem to have been not-particularly-rigged elections in US history and often politicians or people of influence get convicted of crimes and sometime go to jail.

Getting into the weeds of English, "justified" most literally means "to make right." Deontologically, evil deeds cannot ever be right. My usage of "necessary" was deliberate. Murdering a hundred thousand Japanese civilians in two flashes was necessary to prevent a million from dying in a war on Honshu but it wasn't right. Tyranny can be necessary but it is most philanthropic to understand it as always evil lest we put ourselves on the path to endless destruction as we think we can do evil that good may result. The Nazis, Soviets, and Mao China (and still Xi China) were evil for what they did, not who they did it to or why.

The second part of the issue of Carlson was in my original comment. The right would be ecstatic if every grifter had his competence. As for "be afraid", it's me trying to subtly make people recognize calling him a grifter isn't the criticism they think it is. If he can explicitly say "I hate Trump" and then be welcomed in their circle and eyed for VP, his having ulterior motives would mean he's playing a vastly different game than simple profiteering and that would make him the most terrifying political actor in this country.

Finally, I said in my original postulation many months back I'm not certain of what happened, I'm only certain elections would be stolen if possible. Because of that the burden of proof rationally falls on those conducting the elections. As elected officials and public bureaucrats vested with certain powers of the people, they are specifically bereft of the right to claim a presumption of their acting in good faith (this even before but obviously intensified by the rampant corruption and general criminality), they must be able to prove it; so if they can't prove they didn't cheat, the presumption is they did.

Everyone dies. Protecting people from having their death pulled forward six months is only mildly socially valuable. If the opportunity costs put on the rest of society are even mildly onerous, it’s almost certainly a net loss.

You can look at it in terms of DALYs, or just 'even weighting every life equally, sixty more years is 60x as valuable as one more year'. I prefer to look at it in terms of what one does with that time - productive work done, depth and complexity of experience, et cetera, and young peoples' time is certainly even more valuable by that metric. At the same time, I think lockdowns were more 'dumb and avoidable' rather than 'awful terrible catastrophe'. It was dumb, wasted a bunch of effort, but it was fine, and like 75% of the population thought it was a good idea and actively went along with it at the time. And modern society wastes plenty more effort and time than at the best of times, so whatever. Half of everything is broken and evil, to react with terror and rage to a particular instance while not noticing the rest is simply mistaken, and if you notice it all the "OMG THEY ARE FASCISTS WTF" no longer seems particularly useful. We're all fascists by that standard.

I think it was dreadful. I have small kids. The toll it took on them was immense. We were in the process of moving to Florida when basically the US said “this is BS.”

We are still seeing (and will see) years of damage.

This was true of us as well - having small children, needing to figure out how to work while they were stuck home with basically no support, then watching them flounder in virtual school, and (though better) under masked conditions for a further year was very difficult to watch and live, and the toll it took on their intellectual, social, and emotional development was obvious and extremely painful to watch.

In my case, what made me most angry was that it seemed like nearly a textbook case of a society eating its seed corn. It seemed that there was (in general societal terms and from the ruling political class) a very cavalier attitude of "oh kids are resilient they'll be fine" to save, yes, some number of mostly much-older people, with no acknowledgement that there was even really a trade-off being made. Not that I want (or wanted) anyone to die, but there seemed to be no real discussion of what we were "buying" and what its actual cost was.

It seemed even worse to me. it seemed to pose an inordinate cost on kids (using “their resilient” excuse) to create an at best marginal benefit for the old. It’s like burning your seed corn because it was dark and the flashlight was in an inconvenient location.

One of the interesting things about the Covid responses were how unequally distributed costs and benefits were even within groups of the same rough income and age.

I thought that the lockdowns were wrong, but they mostly benefitted my family, because we got to spend a lot of time with my 9 month old daughter, which was great. (Lower middle class, job that can only be done properly in person, but we made lame attempts to do it remotely that were mostly fake)

Previously, I had to go into work every day, and she was super upset about it, and she screamed about it literally all day. Then, suddenly, I could be kind of a stay at home mom for most of a year, and it was su much better! We walked through the forest, with her in a little pack! We played in streams! We reconnected with old friends with kids of roughly the same age! We tried to go to wildlife refuges, but were turned away because Covid might harm the birds? Anyway... By the time I had to go back in person, she was mature enough (and weaned!) to take it more in stride.

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I think the acceptability of lockdowns entirely depends on where you were in the social ladder. The reason it was initially accepted was the for the PMC and elites, it was basically “work from home in your pajamas, order in, and be told it was all for the greater good.” For them, it was vacation more or less, and they used the time they would have spent commuting baking bread and making terrible videos of themselves dancing. For ordinary people it was absolutely a catastrophe. If your small business wasn’t essential, well, basically you were literally fucked. Sorry about that, but gotta protect people from the Coof. Likewise for people who worked for those businesses, again basically the government forced them out of work, made getting unemployment nearly impossible, and gave them $2000. If they did still have a job because they were fortunate enough to work for a place that the government deemed essential, the rules and regulations made the work more difficult and uncomfortable. Factories and meat processors work at pretty good speed in normal circumstances and you have to move quickly to keep up. Remove a third of the workforce, it’s much harder. Some of those jobs lack climate control, making the required masking miserable.

In part a good point. But I'm friends with plenty of 'ordinary' non-elite people (lol!), and the general vibe I got wasn't catastrophe. I think it was well within the norm of 'bad things that happen sometimes', and as an example I think the great recession was worse.

Lockdowns aren't on the pareto frontier of policy options for even diseases significantly deadlier than covid imo, just because rapid development and distribution of technological solutions is possible, but ... covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.

Speaking of government policy, I wonder how many lives were lost because we couldn't conduct challenge trials on COVID? It was almost the ideal case - a disease with a rapidly-developed, experimental new vaccine and a large cohort of people (anyone under 40) for which it wasn't threatening. If we were a serious society - genuinely trying to optimize lives saved, rather than performatively closing churches and masking toddlers - I wonder how early we could have rolled out RNA vaccines for the elderly?

Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. We could've also done challenge trials on masks, different types of masks, different ways of instructing people how to use masks, ultraviolet sterilization, etc. And probably at least half of covid deaths could've been prevented with the level competence that's present in the best SV companies.

Rather more than half, given that 1st-world Asian countries did in fact prevent 80-90% of the deaths relative to a US baseline, and "the best SV companies" are presumably claiming to be more competent than Taiwanese bureaucrats (are they? Good question, and I don't know the answer). In terms of the combined cost of COVID mortality and morbidity and of unnecessary and ineffective preventative measures, the US was shockingly bad (and the UK was almost as bad - the only thing we got right was the vaccine rollout).

Preventing 1/2 the US deaths isn't the level of competence of the best SV companies, it's the level of competence of a slightly-above-average first world government bureaucracy.

Fair. Sometimes I make claims much weaker than my actual beliefs if they're enough to prove my point. I'm pretty sure a 'competent country' could have prevented 90%+ of covid deaths with no behavioral changes whatsoever other than minor things like masks, better ventilation, uv sterilization, and vaccines. But those asian countries still had significant behavioral changes that I'm arguing are unnecessary, even if less than here." And the standard for competence is somewhat high

There is a mountain of evidence masks did nothing.

Also Sweden looks great as well.

Maybe the solution to doing well with covid is “don’t have a bunch of fat old people”

There is a mountain of evidence masks did nothing.

Yes, I'm implying the competent country would design masks that worked.

Maybe the solution to doing well with covid is “don’t have a bunch of fat old people”

I did a whole thing about this a year or so ago, obesity is much much less of a risk factor than age. Old and thin people still died a lot, 20 year old fat people didn't.

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Lockdowns aren't on the pareto frontier of policy options for even diseases significantly deadlier than covid imo, just because rapid development and distribution of technological solutions is possible, but ... covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.

Whether the policies may or may not have protected any old people has nothing to do with whether they were fascist or not. I could deprive everyone of freedom of movements this holiday season and probably save several thousand people from the flu, but that does not mean it is not fascist.

My reply didn't address whether or not it was fascism, I was replying to him saying covid didn't kill anyone.

I (of course) don't at all agree that covid lockdowns were fascism. And, like, I'm not anywhere near as psychologically opposed to proper Fascism as you'd guess, so I'm not saying that because I like lockdowns, they're just totally different things. But saying lockdowns are fascism is pure 'i don't like it so it's the same as everything else i don't like'. I didn't address it in my OP because, well, it's like arguing with a BLM protestor about how IQ has a strong genetic component that varies by race, it's not going to be a productive conversation unless you put a truly heroic level of effort and persuasion into it.

Lockdowns are fascism because using a trumped-up emergency (whether or not it killed people it was obviously trumped up - particularily the threat to children, young, healthy, and "long COVID") as pretext to confine your population to their homes only to be let out when your approved political causes are up for support is bad, well working with the media and technology companies to censor any opposition to your views is like, basically the dictionary definition. Like what political system would it be if not?

Fascism is when you exalt strength, might, and glory, and Will, when you devote yourself to the State, when greatness takes priority over weakness and the lie of equality is laid bare, when the noble races are given their due, when the parasite of judeo-bolshevism is purged from the blood of the nation.

And so on. Or at least it claims to be that, but if it doesn't sound like that, it's probably not fascism. Moldbug? BAP? Sure, clearly similarities there. Lockdowns may be state overreach, but they aren't fascism.

would you prefer authoritarian?

Forgot about the whole "yeah the 1st amendment doesn't apply anymore, no religious services or protests (except the state-sanctioned ones)"

I still disagree with 'authoritarian', mostly because I think this scale of societal intervention in itself is inevitable, both for good and for ill (consider prohibition, drafts in existentially threatening wars, etc). But it's much closer to what you seem to be arguing than fascist.

yeah the 1st amendment doesn't apply anymore, no religious services or protests (except the state-sanctioned ones)"

Do you think the "state" had a genuine desire to harm religion by closing religious services? That's what this seems to imply. Yet it makes much more sense to me that religious services were shut down along with similar kinds of businesses.

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I'm curious about where you draw the boundaries around "fascist." Are there any circumstances you would consider it acceptable to restrict freedom of movement of individuals or groups?

Would any of the following be acceptable circumstances to restrict freedoms, while qualifying as non-fascist:

  • The government has credible intel that a terrorist attack is planned at a particular airport on a particular day.
  • It is wartime, and the government is concerned about enemies entering the country, or traitors leaving the country to fight for the other side.
  • The government of an island nation, like Australia, starts to hear reports about a new Black Death-like plague with a 40-60% mortality rate in Eurasia

Closing down an airport or adding additional security is the same as mandating everyone stay in their homes, actually.

Securing your borders is very different then securing someone's home. This should be obvious.

If there's a black death like plague close your borders and tell your population what is going on - people will be more careful (as indeed they were in early March, even with popular figures telling them to "go hug a Chinese person" and that "they really should be worried about the flu".

EDIT: Also, saying "would these actions be justifiable with a plague that was 50x worse" is again, not really addressing the point at hand. Is fascism justifiable if things are bad enough (Do you support Korematsu v United States) is a separate question from "Was fascism justifiable in this instance" which is clearly false, especially because everyone abandoned their commitment to it as soon as a more politically favorable current thing popped up at the end of May 2020.

covid killed one million people in the united states. Yes, mostly old people, but we're talking about protecting old people here. No reason to pretend otherwise.

Unfortunately this site also gives him no reason to speak plainly.

Speaking of plainly, do you mean "the site encourages him to be bombastic about covid because it doesn't push back", or something else? Not immediately obvious

I mean that the mods don't care about whether he says that, regardless of the fact that it's literally false and solely exists as rhetoric.

I don't hold voters or commenters on this site to any standard because the whole point of mods is that "the people" lack the coordination to have/enforce healthy norms.

When people say false things, you can just say as much, and provide some evidence?

Sure, then the mods can remove the hot-take rule and be honest about that fact that proactive defense of claims is nice, but that they won’t/can’t enforce it.

I mean that the mods don't care about whether he says that, regardless of the fact that it's literally false and solely exists as rhetoric.

We don't judge truth values. The mods do not want to (and you would not want us to) start modding people according to whether or not we think what they said is "true." Making inflammatory claims without backing them up is against the rules*; saying things that @you-get-an-upvote thinks are false is not.

  • However, contrary to what many people believe, "inflammatory claim" does not mean "an assertion that inflames me, personally."

I'm not interested in another conversation with the mod who thinks all I really want is to silence my outgroup. Happy to talk to literally anyone else, since at least two other mods have shown the ability to be charitable, even if they disagree with me. Also happy to not talk since it's unlikely either party will leave convinced.

Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots.

Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.

I realize you're not American and may not be familiar with American freedom of speech traditions and jurisprudence, but there simply isn't a serious question here, and anyone who IS familiar with such traditions and jurisprudence knows it. You simply cannot take take the fact of a riot, and anodyne political statements made as part of a political demonstration ("I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."), and infer from the latter an attempt to incite the former. Nor can you do things like "Trump claimed the election was stolen; if the election was stolen violence would be justified; therefore Trump called for violence". That's just not valid. The test is that the speech must be intended to cause imminent lawless action, and it must be likely to cause it. Ex ante likely, that is, though that doesn't much matter because it fails the "intent" test. Telling a group to march to the Capital to make their voices heard is unquestionably protected speech of the sort even Robert Bork would accept.

So you are probably right that Trump will not get his immunity. And given a DC jury, chances are pretty good that he'd be convicted; contrary your claims, I think a D.C. jury would convict Trump of anything up to and including murder without evidence of a victim. And he may indeed go to prison. And if that causes widespread violence, everyone involved in his imprisonment absolutely deserves it. I doubt it will, though; the part of Trump's base capable of widespread violence is wholly infiltrated by the FBI and/or cowed by the Jan 6 response, and the rest is all bark and no bite.

Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.

The line from Trump's speech to the riot is that Trump's speech is a but-for cause of the riot. If Trump doesn't assemble the mob and tell them to go to the Capitol, they don't go to the Capitol. No mob, no riot.

The questions "Did Donald Trump incite a riot?" and "Can Donald Trump be criminally prosecuted for inciting a riot, given the 1st amendment?" are not the same question - "incite" has an ordinary English meaning, and on the ordinary English meaning of "incite", Trump so did. The 1st amendment is, for the obvious good reasons, over-protective of political speech - it isn't surprising that it is possible to incite a riot while (just) staying within the boundary of protected speech. Trump shouldn't be prosecuted for inciting a riot, and he isn't being prosecuted for inciting a riot (both the Federal and Georgia indictments focus on his various attempts to overturn the election before Jan 6th). That doesn't mean he didn't incite a riot.

Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.

An opinion that corn-dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn-dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.

Trump assembled an excited mob at the Ellipse, told them that the politicians in the Capitol were stealing an election, and then told them to go to the Capitol and "fight". On the John Stuart Mill test, he has (just) exceeded the bounds of protected free speech. Under the Brandenberg test, he (just) stayed inside it. On this point, the law is on Donald Trump's side, so I am going to pound the facts. Donald Trump did, in fact, incite a riot on January 6th.

  • -16

The line from Trump's speech to the riot is that Trump's speech is a but-for cause of the riot. If Trump doesn't assemble the mob and tell them to go to the Capitol, they don't go to the Capitol. No mob, no riot.

There's direct video evidence of one of the people who enabled entrance into the Capitol talking about how they're going to have to go and break into the Capitol building the night before the actual riot. This same person actually skipped Trump's speech so they could help get people into the Capitol and start a riot - so you're just flat out wrong here. How can Trump's speech incite a riot when at least one of the people involved in that riot spoke loudly about their plans the night previously, and then missed the speech entirely so they could facilitate people getting into the Capitol building? This breaks the "but-for" already - if Trump just said "Welp, looks like I lost, everyone can go home" there's at least one rioter who would have already been in the process of breaking in!

Can you have it both ways, that people were convicted of planning the root and also Trump spontaneously incited it among people who otherwise would not have rioted?

Has there ever been an example of a professional sports organization being held liable for the riot after a team won or lost a game, and the fans damaged parts of the city?

I have a different opinion on “he incited a riot”. I view the riot as justified. I loved Jan 6. The 2020 election was illegitimate in my opinion. Far too many Democratic norms were violated. I also think elites deserved a riot on their land as they spent 2020 inciting riots across the US. The anger that caused the riot on Jan 6 was caused by the left not Trump.

By the standard you are using for Trump isn’t Kamala guilty for Jan 6? She was a primary leader of all the justified grievances that blew up on Jan 6. Sure Trump gathered people there on Jan 6 and led a protest but all the anger that really incited the riot I believe came from Kamela’s words and actions.

Hosting a protest is protected political activity.

Trump should not have held this rally. He is in fact an idiot who should not have done half the things he did. But he should not be criminally liable for hosting this rally.

Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.

Sit down. You lot are literally siccing police on people for saying men aren't women on Twitter.

You can take issue with current UK free speech norms without being antagonistic and personal because someone happens to be disagreeing with you.

(@the_nybbler's post, for example, was fine.)

Oh dear, looks like I'll be the one taking a seat. Sorry, I guess I was trying too hard to be funny.

The line from Trump's speech to the riot is that Trump's speech is a but-for cause of the riot. If Trump doesn't assemble the mob and tell them to go to the Capitol, they don't go to the Capitol. No mob, no riot.

Even if (arguendo) I accept that as true, it does not matter. It is not sufficient for President's Trump's speech to have caused a lawful action that was a necessary precursor to the riot. His speech must have been directed towards causing the riot.

And that's true in the sense of ordinary meaning as well as the law.

Growing up in the UK, our pro-free speech tradition has tended to rely on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty for the moral (not legal) limits of free speech in contexts that look like incitement.

In the UK, your pro-free speech tradition ranges from absent to extinct, and that is itself a cause of the United States's pro-free speech tradition.

Trump did not incite a riot in any way, shape, or form. There is simply no reasonable line you can draw between Trump's statements (which, among other things, were not made at the site of the riot) and the riot. Not by the Brandenburg standard, and not by any standard which has been applied to any politician since Brandenburg.

I realize you're not American and may not be familiar with American freedom of speech traditions and jurisprudence, but there simply isn't a serious question here, and anyone who IS familiar with such traditions and jurisprudence knows it.

Boy it sure would be embarrassing if there was very recent and highly publicised American jurisprudence on this very topic that you were unaware of when you wrote that.

The Court concludes that Trump acted with the specific intent to incite political violence and direct it at the Capitol with the purpose of disrupting the electoral certification. Trump cultivated a culture that embraced political violence through his consistent endorsement of the same. He responded to growing threats of violence and intimidation in the lead-up to the certification by amplifying his false claims of election fraud. He convened a large crowd on the date of the certification in Washington, D.C., focused them on the certification process, told them their country was being stolen from them, called for strength and action, and directed them to the Capitol where the certification was about to take place. 294. When the violence began, he took no effective action, disregarded repeated calls to intervene, and pressured colleagues to delay the certification until roughly three hours had passed, at which point he called for dispersal, but not without praising the mob and again endorsing the use of political violence. The evidence shows that Trump not only knew about the potential for violence, but that he actively promoted it and, on January 6, 2021, incited it. His inaction during the violence and his later endorsement of the violence corroborates the evidence that his intent was to incite violence on January 6, 2021 based on his conduct leading up to and on January 6, 2021. The Court therefore holds that the first Brandenburg factor has been established. 94 295. Regarding the second Brandenburg factor, the Court finds that the language Trump used throughout January 6, 2021 was likely to incite imminent violence. The language Trump employed must be understood within the context of his promotion and endorsement of political violence as well as within the context of the circumstances as they existed in the winter of 2020, when calls for violence and threats relating to the 2020 election were escalating. For years, Trump had embraced the virtue and necessity of political violence; for months, Trump and others had been falsely claiming that the 2020 election had been flagrantly rigged, that the country was being “stolen,” and that something needed to be done. 296. Knowing of the potential for violence, and having actively primed the anger of his extremist supporters, Trump called for strength and action on January 6, 2021, posturing the rightful certification of President Biden’s electoral victory as “the most corrupt election in the history, maybe of the world” and as a “matter of national security,” telling his supporters that they were allowed to go by “very different rules” and that if they didn’t “fight like hell, [they’re] not going to have a country anymore.” Such incendiary rhetoric, issued by a speaker who routinely embraced political violence and had inflamed the anger of his supporters leading up to the certification, was likely to incite imminent lawlessness and disorder. The Court, therefore, finds that the second Brandenburg factor has been met. 297. Trump has, throughout this litigation, pointed to instances of Democratic lawmakers and leaders using similarly strong, martial language, such as calling on supporters to “fight” and “fight like hell.” The Court acknowledges the prevalence of 95 martial language in the political arena; indeed, the word “campaign” itself has a military history. See, e.g., Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. at 928 (“Strong an effective extemporaneous rhetoric cannot be nicely channeled into purely dulcet phrases.”). This argument, however, ignores both the significant history of Trump’s relationship with political violence and the noted escalation in Trump’s rhetoric in the lead up to, and on, January 6, 2021. It further disregards the distinct atmosphere of threats and calls for violence existing around the 2020 election and its legitimacy. When interpreting Trump’s language, the Court must consider not only the content of his speech, but the form and context as well. See Id. at 929 (noting that, if there had been “other evidence” of Evers’ “authorization of wrongful conduct,” the references to “discipline” in his speeches could be used to corroborate that evidence). 298. Consequently, the Court finds that Petitioners have established that Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump’s speech.

But what would I know, I'm from another country.

  • -33

The state district court is plainly full of shit, and is itself going up against all that First Amendment jurisprudence I have mentioned. She either has serious Trump Derangement Syndrome, or is deliberately making a wrong decision to harm her political opponents. It is erroneous to consider "the history of Trump's relationship with political violence and the noted escalation in Trump's rhetoric", even if it would actually be damning to do so (it is not); to see that, we only need look at Brandenburg, which concerned a literal Ku Klux Klan leader (Evers). The Court's use of the dicta regarding Evers is in fact backwards; IF there had been evidence of Evers' wrongful conduct, his use of the word "discipline" could corrobate it. Here the Court attempts to make the "context" of Trump's language not corroboration, but the key piece of evidence. That is not supported even by that dicta.

Also, of course, that's Trump's case itself. If you want to assert that what is being done to Trump is fair, it is not convincing to cite decisions made in this case; you need to cite precedent.

I’m not convinced by the court’s reasoning.

First of all, I don’t think it’s well established that anyone at the rally expected a riot. They expected a protest certainly, but I’m not sure they expected the full force of the crowd trying to breech the Capitol. Exhibit A in my view is that speakers at the event — Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz specifically— spoke at the event and then went to the Capitol to debate certification. If there were reason to suspect a riot, then why would they want to be anywhere near the Capitol when the crowds arrived? If republicans literally believed that the 1/6 rally was going to be a coup attempt, why were they so open about funding people going? If the orders to use political violence were so clear, why is it that after they managed to get into the Capitol, they weren’t doing violence or even real property damage. In fact I’ve seen more property damage done in videos of people in restaurants being charged extra for dipping sauce than happened in the Capitol.

I think there were some elements influenced by Q who wanted to overthrow the election. But the presence of a tiny minority of people who choose to riot doesn’t mean much when it comes to whether or not the leaders and speakers intended a riot.

First of all, I don’t think it’s well established that anyone at the rally expected a riot. They expected a protest certainly, but I’m not sure they expected the full force of the crowd trying to breech the Capitol.

Of course not. Up until then, conventional wisdom was that the left riots, not the right, particularly not the mainstream right (which the crowd mostly was -- aside from some of the actual rioters, some of whom weren't even on the right!). There'd been violence at Trump rallies, but all of the form "Lefties attempt to disrupt rally, Trumpists treat them roughly". Even Charlottesville required the powers that be literally cause the violence by first canceling the legal assembly, then forcing one group through the counterprotestors.

But the presence of a tiny minority of people who choose to riot doesn’t mean much when it comes to whether or not the leaders and speakers intended a riot.

Alternatively, if a riot after a politician speaks on a topic is strong evidence of incitement to riot, there are a lot of BLM riot-promoters that should be rotting in prison for an extended stretch. I wouldn't necessarily have any problem with that, I do think many of these speakers encouraged riots and caused billions of dollars in damage across the country, costing dozens of people their lives directly, and many, many more through riot-enforced depolicing policies. The promotion of BLM was a "threat to our democracy". If nothing that any politician egging on rioters did in 2020 qualifies as causing a riot, then Trump certainly does not qualify either.

Well, sure, if they’re guilty of promoting a riot, then they’re guilty of that. But they’d have to be actively trying to convince people to riot, which at least for the actual Elipse speech (which would be the most relevant here) I just don’t see anything that someone reading the speech cold (with no knowledge of what happened afterwards) would see Trump giving marching orders to have people break into the capitol. In fact, if there’s no break-in nobody would have thought much about it. The reasoning thusly seems to be working backwards— there was a riot, and pretty soon after Trump gave a speech; therefore Trump incited the riots.

I guess that means you're expecting a reversal on appeal then?

No, it's not appealable because the decision was for Trump. It's just dicta, to be cited by other anti-Trump courts so they can pretend that what they're doing isn't unprecedented.

Trump appealed it though.

that's the cheekiness of the opinion. how or why would trump appeal a decision that went in his favour even if the opinion derided him? the original petitions have filed an appeal but i'm not sure if the higher court will just address whether the 14th amendment applies to Trump or whether he engaged in insurrection or not. presumably, if the higher court did find the 14th amendment applied it would eventually have to also make a finding on the free speech issue if Trump pushed it but i'm not sure if this would be done at the same time or not.

it would eventually have to also make a finding on the free speech issue

Baude's original law review article advocating disqualifying Trump points out the 14th amendment is also part of the Constitution, so the 1st amendment doesn't automatically apply the way it would to a normal criminal law. Under the normal rules for resolving conflicts between two laws of equal authority, the 14th overrules the 1st, both as the more specific provision and as the after-enacted provision.

So it is entirely possible that Trump is disqualified for inciting an insurrection, but is still protected by the 1st amendment from criminal prosecution for inciting a riot.

I’m sorry but this is just absolute horse shit.

First, it is true that generally speaking later in time or the specific controls BUT great pains are taken to read the rules as not conflicting where possible.

Second, constitutional law is a different matter from statutory law. The constitution is small. The USC is massive. It is likely that in the latter there will be truly irreconcilable differences. But the idea that in a relatively small legal document the latter in time drafters would silently abrogate literally the seminal amendment in American constitutional history is laughable.

So no, we need to read the 1st and the 14th in unison; not to create conflict. That is, if speech isn’t strong to be criminal it sure isn’t an insurrection (especially since the latter is graver compared to most speech crimes).

Baude beclowned himself. Funny enough he is also losing on the officer argument. Baude is now a laughing stock.

There is nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment that repeals or overrules the First Amendment. It's not in conflict with it; as Trump's lawyers point out, the provisions may be easily reconciled with the ruling that IF something is protected speech under the First Amendment, it does not constitute "insurrection or rebellion" nor "aid or comfort to the enemies [of the US]". Since that provision is not attempting to expand the definition of those things but rather to provide a disqualification as a result of them, this is the natural way to read it. That the Fourteenth Amendment is implicitly limiting the First is an extreme reach.

He did appeal it though. The Colorado Supreme Court had oral arguments on it like 9 days ago.

sorry, i edited my post so you replied to the pre-edited version so it looks a bit odd. i think the original petitioners made the appeal but i'm not sure if they are addressing just the 14th amendment issue or the 1st amendment issue as well. i've seen in some media reports that trump wants to challenge the 1st amendment issue.

Trump brings up 11 possible issues in his petition for review. Included was the First Amendment Issue

G. The district court ruled that President Trump’s political speech “incited” violence, even though the words he used never advocated violence. Instead, the district court found that President Trump’s supposed intent, and the effect of his words upon certain listeners, sufficed to render his speech unprotected under the First Amendment. Did the district court err in its application of First Amendment standards to President Trump’s speech?

Later, in his opening brief:

The trial court erred in its First Amendment analysis for two reasons. First, it failed to evaluate the words President Trump actually used on January 6th. Second, it expanded the context relevant to a Brandenburg analysis beyond anything recognized in precedent.

Courts must harmonize constitutional provisions. Even if “engage” includes “incite” Section Three can easily be harmonized with First Amendment rights protecting political speech under the Brandenburg standards.

Speech cannot be punished as incitement unless it (1) “advoca[tes] the use of force or of law violation,” (2) is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” and (3) is “likely to incite or produce such action.” All three elements must be met: “the speaker’s intent to encourage violence (second factor) and the tendency of his statement to result in violence (third factor) are not enough to forfeit First Amendment protection unless the words used specifically advocated the use of violence….”

Thus, a court must evaluate the content, form, and context of speech.” Foremost is the objective content of the speech— where speech is protected, “its setting, or context, [can] not render it unprotected.” Intent is important, but only as an additional hurdle, not as a substitute for the required focus on the words themselves; tests focusing on a speaker’s intent or the effect on listeners—rather than the speaker’s words—are prohibited.

Despite this clear precedent, the trial court eschewed meaningful analysis of the objective meaning of President Trump’s words on January 6th. President Trump’s words were not as incendiary as language the Supreme Court has already protected as a matter of law. As a D.C. Circuit judge remarked last year, “you just print out the [President’s January 6] speech…and read the words…it doesn’t look like it would satisfy the [Brandenburg] standard.

On January 6th, President Trump called for protesting “peacefully and patriotically,” to “support our Capitol Police and law enforcement,” to “[s]tay peaceful,” and to “remain peaceful.” This patently fails to meet the first element of Brandenburg.

The trial court nonetheless relied on years of speech that long preceded President Trump’s January 6th speech. This broke radically with First Amendment jurisprudence and created a blatant double standard. While acknowledging the “prevalence of martial language in the political arena”—including “calling on supporters to ‘fight’ and ‘fight like hell,’” as Trump did—the trial court still argued that such standard political rhetoric was different for Trump because it “ignores both the significant history of Trump’s relationship with political violence and the noted escalation in Trump’s rhetoric in the lead up to, and on, January 6, 2021.” It concocted a radical new legal rule: in determining whether a defendant had the specific intent required by Brandenburg, courts may consider any speech ever uttered by the defendant, including to distinct audiences.

For this enormous expansion of the context permitted in a Brandenburg analysis, the trial court cited a single line of dicta in a Supreme Court case. That case held only that Brandenburg’s imminence requirement was not satisfied; it did not analyze specific intent and or hold that a speaker’s past speech, to distinct audiences, constituted incitement. No court has so held.

Applying this radical test, the trial court held that in determining specific intent for most speakers, we should examine the speech in the narrow context in which it was made and afford it the traditional protections—but for Trump, we should examine a curated compilation of speech going back years to decipher a hidden meaning. This runs counter to Wisconsin Right to Life’s injunction against an inquiry that leads to the “bizarre result” that what is “protected speech for one speaker” can lead to “criminal penalties for another.” Simply put, the trial court misapplied Brandenburg requiring reversal.

It's a crapshoot whether the Colorado Supreme Court rules for or against Trump on this issue, because it's a charged political question and an all-Democratic court. But it should be a 7-2 bitchslap (Sotomayor and Jackson in dissent) from SCOTUS at worst. If SCOTUS goes against Trump on this, the First Amendment is dead.

Trump didn't appeal it; the petitioners did. Trump did file a petition asking that if the decision is reviewed, the parts you referred to are reviewed also. "President Trump seeks review to ensure that if this Court takes up this case on appeal, it will consider the full scope of the constitutional, interpretive, and evidentiary issues." It is of course not clear whether they will do so.

that's a very cheeky opinion by the court. they find that the 14th amendment doesn't apply to Trump so there is no finding against Trump but then include a bunch of disparaging stuff about him that will never been challenged on an appeal. but this courts opinion on Brandenburg would not be held up by higher courts. they even include a case where the plain language used by the accused was much worse than Trump and the the accused was not convicted but then magically read further than the plain language of Trump to find that he did commit insurrection.

My understanding is that the bar to overturn the factual findings of a trial court is pretty high. I believe it has to be demonstrated that no reasonable judge could have come to that conclusion.

I agree the opinion is cheeky - the part ruling that section 3 doesn't apply to the presidency feels like she's begging to be overturned on appeal (and because it's a matter of law rather than a finding of fact it can be overruled more easily).

  • -14

That isn’t a factual finding; it is a legal conclusion and that is reviewed de novo. The “problem” is the circuit or scotus probably don’t need to address that interim conclusion to decide the issue.

So basically people who want to claim “Trump is an insurrectionist” can point to this case “that even the Republican SCoTUS” didn’t dispute while ignoring that disputing it isn’t relevant.

District court judge making a grand political conclusion antithetical to the law isn’t exactly uncommon. See for example the Republican judge in Texas and the abortion in the mail ruling.

It is and remains a joke of an opinion.

The decision is being appealed. Do you predict that the Colorado Supreme Court will find that Trump did not incite an insurrection?

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Depends a bit on the make up of panel (a lot of Biden and Obama judges on the tenth — I generally have little respect for Biden and Obama judges though there are exceptions such as Kagan). If it goes to SCOTUS I expect a strong bitch slap.

Would add this might stand on the premise that what you quoted is effectively dicta

Cool. My not-super-confident expectation is that the factual finding of insurrection will not be overturned at any point, though anything could happen in regards to the legal questions around applicability to the presidency. We'll see!

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Do you think the issue will be settled as a matter of law? That is, it would be easy to agree with the holding without addressing the issue.

I think that the judicial approach to the issue so far would suggest that the courts will not disqualify Trump but will also avoid saying he did nothing wrong. Judges seem to realize it would cause a massive drama and they aren't game to put themselves at the centre of it. E.g. if you read the part of the Colorado ruling that says the 14th amendment doesn't apply to the Presidency, the judge seems eager to emphasize the weaknesses in her own decision and explicitly says that it is partly based on not wanting to take such a drastic action.

I will be interested to see what happens if and when the issue is addressed by a GOP-aligned judge though. That might give a better indication of where SCOTUS is likely to land on the issue, and we all know it's ending up there.

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Prosecuting Caesar always struck me as a bad idea. Perhaps an ideal, extremely robust democracy could get away with it. At present, I don't think the US is it.

Let’s assume he is guilty, and let’s also assume that 30-40% of the country doesn’t believe he is (apparently 85% of republicans don’t think he should be prosecuted). Shouldn’t a hypothetical, nationally representative jury, nullify the charges?

I too am annoyed by loose threats of terrorism, such as ‘if you don’t give young men sex/poor people money/if you police black people/etc, they will rise up’, but Carlson’s prediction of violence is justified here. If the ballot box and the jury box fail (edit: I forgot, perhaps the most egregious of all, also denied the soapbox when democrats cheered when he was kicked off twitter), what box do they have left? They are, ultimately, a large faction of armed men (like the democrats). Their power to inflict violence should be respected (and democracy, at heart, very much respects it). Their opponents do not have to accede to their every demand, but they should definitely refrain from putting their leader in prison. It constitutes a direct challenge to the war-making potential on which their political power rests, and as such invites the battle democracy is supposed to avoid.

Look, occasionally prosecuting former politicians for obvious misdeeds is a thing that happens in healthy democracies. But this is a government attempting to imprison their head of state’s opponent in an upcoming election when he’s(the opponent) ahead in the polls.

I don’t think it’ll start a civil war- for that matter I don’t think trump will go to prison, the secret service won’t allow it- but I can’t predict how this will fall out. It’s definitely not a sign of a healthy democracy and ‘well what if he was secretly osama bin laden’ hypotheticals are irrelevant and stupid- like pornography, I know it when I see it and well, this is definitely a clearer move towards autocracy than anything trump did.

Problem is, if he were behind in the polls, he’d say the same thing. I suspect he’d still say it if he wasn’t running. It’s a bad look, a third of the country would be furious, and the bastard knows it. He’s going to claim complete immunity for everything until the day he dies, because “witch hunt!” is apparently an effective rallying cry.

Regardless of how I feel about his actual decisions, that’s kind of infuriating.

Well yes, trump isn’t a saint. I just think attempting to imprison the front runner in an upcoming election is rather worse for democracy than trump’s antics.

His claims wouldn't resonate without plenty of people believing him. He's been unfairly persecuted by Democrats since election night 2016. The Democrats have overwhelmed their hands, and if you're upset that nothing ever sticks, you should blame the boys who cried wolf one too many times.

Shouldn’t a hypothetical, nationally representative jury, nullify the charges?

Well, no, because a jury actually hears all the evidence and arguments, a process which most of the voting public will never bother with. They're supposed to come to the correct conclusions after getting all that evidence, not the nationally representative one, and it's no surprise if those two happen to diverge (or don't).

If the ballot box and the jury box fail (edit: I forgot, perhaps the most egregious of all, also denied the soapbox when democrats cheered when he was kicked off twitter), what box do they have left?

'They' Control the Supreme Court and the House and most state Senates where actual things that affect people's daily lives get passed. 'They' have had huge wins in the past decade across all kinds of political domains, including the abortion victory 'they' claimed to care so much about or decades.

And if they want to nominate a non-criminal, they have every chance of electing them President.

The ballot box has not 'failed' anyone, and most people are enough aware of this that they're not going to risk their lives and livelihoods over the rhetoric to the contrary (even if they repeat it themselves!).

I too am annoyed by loose threats of terrorism, such as ‘if you don’t give young men sex/poor people money/if you police black people/etc, they will rise up’,

Of these, only black people have actually done anything about it in recent memory, because the actual material conditions of their lives are bad enough that it's worth the risk. The expected value of rioting to disrupt the system and maybe loot a TV, against the risk of being killed or injured in the streets or arrested, was actually positive-EV for enough poor black people in some urban areas to get them out of their houses.

That's just not true in this case, the average Trump voter will not be materially hurt by another 4 years of Biden in a way where risking violence in the streets is positive-EV for their individual life, and very few people will ever do it just for ideology.

Well, no, because a jury actually hears all the evidence and arguments, a process which most of the voting public will never bother with.

Let's have his trials in republican strongholds, then. I'm serious, this would make a conviction ten times as legitimate and vastly reduce my objections.

'They' Control the Supreme Court and the House and most state Senates where actual things that affect people's daily lives get passed. 'They' have had huge wins in the past decade across all kinds of political domains, including the abortion victory 'they' claimed to care so much about or decades.

If they are so powerful, why would you risk antagonizing them by repeatedly going after their leader? All the more reason to maintain the fragile peace of democracy.

Of these, only black people have actually done anything about it in recent memory, because the actual material conditions of their lives are bad enough that it's worth the risk.

There is no clear relationship between oppression and propension to riot. Slaves rarely revolted. Perhaps the tulsa race riot proves that whites were oppressed. Or Kristallnacht tells us something about the material conditions aryans were forced to live in.

People riot because they can get something out of it, because they can get away with it, and often, for the hell of it.

Let's have his trials in republican strongholds, then. I'm serious, this would make a conviction ten times as legitimate and vastly reduce my objections.

You'll get that in the documents case at least (assuming it occurs). And that's probably the one that's going to result in the longest sentence.

I agree with this. It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.

It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.

Unless it works. If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.

How can it work? It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot, so electorally it wouldn’t work, and any loss from being arrested and being unable to campaign would likely be made up by the zealotry of his supporters and any number of GOP politicians (including the VP pick) being invited to campaign on his behalf.

It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot

Why not? If some set of states indeed use it as an excuse to remove him from the ballot, "allowed" or not, what recourse is available? Particularly if it gets dragged out in the courts until after the election is held? (Again, I look at Ted Stevens.)

It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot

How is that clear? The recently rejected suits were about a pre-conviction determination.

I’m going by the New York Times from last month:

The Constitution sets very few eligibility requirements for presidents. They must be at least 35 years old, be “natural born” citizens and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.

There are no limitations based on character or criminal record. While some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, these laws do not apply to federal offices.

The Republican and Democratic Parties have guaranteed spots on general-election ballots in every state, and the parties tell election officials whose name to put in their spot. States could, in theory, try to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot by passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record, but this would be on legally shaky ground.

“We let states set the time, place and manner” of elections, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School who specializes in election law, “but I think the best reading of our Constitution is you don’t let the state add new substantive requirements.”

Is the New York Times wrong?

Is the New York Times wrong?

Ah, yes: the newspaper that had its baby journalists twittering about being in an unsafe space for BIPOC people because of an opinion piece published by the paper.

They considered that piece a "call for state violence", so I guess the same attitudes are behind "January 6th was an insurrection".

The Republican and Democratic Parties have guaranteed spots on general-election ballots in every state, and the parties tell election officials whose name to put in their spot.

And one or more states doesn't bother "passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record… on legally shaky ground," but just says "Trump's been convicted, so we're not putting him on the ballot; the Republican party can either submit a different name to go in their 'guaranteed spot' or else we leave it blank"? Sure, a court will probably rule that this is illegal and unconstitutional… eventually.(And who enforces that ruling, anyway?) But if you time it right, you can probably have that decision only come after the election, and then what? (Or, failing that, come well after ballots are printed and too close to election day to print new ones.)

The electors can elect whomever they want though, right -- so just throw a placeholder in there, mobilize the base (have rallys with him & Trump, etc to make the situation clear) and then the (Republican) electors throw their votes to Trump.

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I'm not sure. The rule that states may not add additional qualifiers for federal office has some loopholes but some well-established precedent.

However, there's also been serious sets of legal challenges and a well-promoted campaign to argue that the 14th Amendment automatically disqualifies from the ballot anyone who 'participated in insurrection', by a vague and broad definition that includes whatever they think Trump has done.

I'd argue that they're wrong to do so, but I'm not sure what I think matters.

The 14th Amendment is rather quiet about how it's insurrection rule is to be enforced: it's not clear who actually gets the power to decide "insurrection" occurred. The federal courts? The states? Local officials setting up ballots?

Some of those options are better than others, but if you choose poorly I think you'll find "was overruled once by SCOTUS" to be grounds for finding "insurrection against the Constitution" in any case where unfriendly partisan officials are empowered to so decide. Obviously Obama's fake "recess appointments" in Noel Canning were a deliberate attempt (from a famed Constitutional Scholar!) to subvert the Constitution if you let Ken Paxton decide.

To be fair, it's not clear how the Constitution's eligibility rules would be enforced generally if someone nominated, say, a child who was obviously under 35. Birtherism runs a bit more into the Full Faith and Credit Clause, though.

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No, but that is a different set of criteria than who will appear on the ballot. For example, there's nothing in those requirements about having to get a certain number of verified signatures of support, which is a near-universal ballot access requirement. The suspicion is that a conviction will be used to prevent Trump from being on the ballot in at least some states despite him being eligible to be President if he was elected anyways.

Sure, but if those states are California, New York, Vermont, and hawaii, that disqualification is irrelevant.

Is the New York Times wrong?

Dismayingly frequently.

Not about this, I believe, but since the history of the NYT being bafflingly brazenly wrong about things extends from over 90 years ago to under 2 days ago, it still feels weird to cite them as an authoritative source.

Of course, I certainly didn’t mean to imply they’re always right. But they don’t seem to be wrong about this.

It was a while ago, but there literally was a guy who ran for president from prison.

Debbs against Wilson.

Yup, keep trying to remember him by his convict number, and keep falling flat on my face.

If Trump loses either because or despite being imprisoned, the Democrats have successfully shown they're the strong ones and the opposition gets out of line they don't just fade into obscurity, they go to prison.

This doesn't make any sense to me. There are two important groups of people here. People who would vote for Trump if he isn't convicted but wouldn't vote for him if he is convicted and people who wouldn't vote for him if he wasn't convicted but would vote for him if he was convicted. Is it your contention the second group is larger than the first? This strikes me as wildly implausible.

Is it your contention the second group is larger than the first?

If there are people who feel that an important principle is being violated, they may well vote for Trump in that case as a protest vote. Sometimes you have to go with who you got, even if they're not the perfect subject for a case.

I think there are quite a few Republicans who find Trump personally distasteful and would not normally vote for him who would feel compelled to send a message to the Democratic establishment that imprisoning their candidates is not an acceptable political tactic, actually -- and the set of "people who will definitely vote for Trump but respect the decisions of a DC court as to his morality" seems really, really small?

and the set of "people who will definitely vote for Trump but respect the decisions of a DC court as to his morality" seems really, really small?

Why is agreeing with a DC court as to his morality the relevant criteria? How about "the set of people who wouldn't vote for a convicted felon?" I bet that's a much larger set!

Why is agreeing with a DC court as to his morality the relevant criteria? How about "the set of people who wouldn't vote for a convicted felon?" I bet that's a much larger set!

"Wouldn't vote for someone you already support but was convicted by a kangaroo court full of people that you hate" seems pretty small.

How about "the set of people who wouldn't vote for a convicted felon?"

That's true, but what if you think the conviction was unjust? Put him in to get him out was a slogan for an Irish by-election canvassing votes for a political prisoner in 1917.

I suspect these people are outnumbered by Republicans who find Trump distasteful but would vote for him on the grounds he's a Republican -- except that they're happy to have the excuse not to because voting for a convicted felon is just beyond the pale.

I don’t think that true blue resistance warriors would vote Trump because he’s convicted, but there’s a certain kind of lower class conspiracy theorist which to be honest mostly doesn’t vote which might decide that him being convicted is a reason to support him.

I don't think either group is all that clearly outlined, because the world in which Trump is Nominated+Convicted is a different world in more ways than just Trump's location.

Other important groups of people:

-- People who will commit or attempt terroristic violence after Trump is imprisoned.

-- People who won't vote for Trump after the above have committed their terroristic violence on principle. Cops and cop fans, mainly, are likely to fall into this category. While Cops are typically very red tribe, after a MAGA mad hatter kills a cop in cold blood, they will flip.

-- People who won't vote at all if Trump is in prison because they will lose faith in the system.

And the thing is, that upside doesn't just carry across the Presidential race, it carries all the way down ballot in all likelihood, as GOPers will be forced to bend the knee from Senate to City Council.

Campaigning is about rallying the troops. My contention is that the effect of a Trump conviction wouldn’t substantially reduce the number of would-be Trump voters, but would energize his base tremendously.

Ok, but how does energizing his base going to translate into more votes? Were a bunch of people who make up his base also not going to vote for him until he got convicted?

Yes, all candidates have a portion of the base who is insufficiently motivated to get to the polls but can be convinced to do so.

But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.

They don't think there are literally no honest people in Washington. They think that the deep state will ensure that the jury is made up of those who can be relied upon to reach the right answer. The choice of judge is inconclusive but still Bayesian evidence in this direction.

I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.

Likely true. But Trump's supporters are who the US relies upon to shed blood. IIRC the two major institutions that donated more to Trump than Biden were the NYCPD and the US Marines. There are consequences to spurning and rejecting the political candidate of much-maligned stale, pale, white men. In a time where the US needs its shit together on a multitude of fronts (masterful US foreign policy having solidified an anti-American axis spanning half of Eurasia), going out of their way to suppress this element is not terribly wise. Non-violence, let alone violence, may be all they need to bring the whole edifice crashing down.

They think that the deep state will ensure that the jury is made up of those who can be relied upon to reach the right answer.

In which case it doesn't matter what the makeup of DC is like, a sufficiently corrupt judge could craft a jury of 12 Democrats in Texas.

Interesting comment, and your opinion is very firmly stated. I'm not American and I only have a passing familiarity with US political shenanigans, so I'd be very interested to hear why you are so certain Trump committed an "awful" crime and is going to jail. Are we talking about Jan 6th here? My impression is that nothing he did was worse than the what the Democrats did in 2016 and during BLM (including disputing the election, calls to violence, riots and the storming of the White House during BLM), and that prosecuting political opponents is another step the US is taking toward being a failed state. But I'd be very interested to hear you lay out why this impression is wrong.

Yes, the federal Jan 6 case scheduled to start on March 4 is the one I'm talking about. I think he's completely screwed in the Georgia case and the documents case too, but they're more logistically complicated and are unlikely to go to trial before the election.

I think he went way, way beyond "disputing" the election. He actively tried to stay in power despite losing the vote and despite the courts rejecting his false claims of fraud. He had no legal avenues remaining to stay in power, and he tried to use illegal ones.

Jan 6 was effectively a failed coup. It was an egregious attack on American democracy. Heinous crimes like that should not be tolerated simply because they are committed by political opponents.

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January 6 was the culmination of a successful color revolution which had been underway since May of the year prior.

If Jan 6 was a coup then where are the weapons? That is the huge issue for anyone describing it as a coup.

The basic idea with all of this is to make everything (that Jan 6 was an insurrection and a coup attempt, that Trump incited it, that Trump's words were not protected by the First Amendment, and that Trump is barred from the ballot as a result) common knowledge by repeating it over and over in the media as if it is a true fact, and then not giving any of it a rigorous examination in court, instead relying on the fact that it's all obvious already. Unfortunately much of the right has decided to go along with this, so it will probably work.

The first amendment bit is likely irrelevant. That said, showing that it's an insurrection is still probably a fairly steep bar.

Of course, Trump did try to cheat his way to staying in office (assuming he didn't actually believe the fraud claims, I don't know), but that's not any of the things the 14th amendment bars from office for, as best I read it.

The first amendment bit is likely irrelevant.

If his words are at issue, the First Amendment cannot be irrelevant.

That said, showing that it's an insurrection is still probably a fairly steep bar.

It's just assumed as the default now, with a very high bar required to overcome it. This is entirely backwards but is the power of the left's control of the institutions.

If his words are at issue, the First Amendment cannot be irrelevant.

My own inclination is to think that Baude and Paulsen were basically right on the legal analysis, but not on its applicability to Jan. 6.

They argue for a view intermediate between saying it's limited by the 1st amendment, or that it supersedes it, saying that you should interpret it narrowly in order to understand it in the extent possible, consistent with the first amendment, but if they conflict, then the 14th amendment should be the one you follow.

So you're right, it's not irrelevant, but it's probably possible for someone to do things that would both be protected speech under the first amendment and sufficient from the 14th amendment to exclude from office.

It's just assumed as the default now, with a very high bar required to overcome it. This is entirely backwards but is the power of the left's control of the institutions.

Yes, unfortunately.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21183150-oath-keepers-seditious-conspiracy-indictment

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So they were planning for a massively bloody revolution... and left their guns in Virginia?

Yes. It was not a good coup attempt.

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Neither is sitting home on the couch bitching -- what makes this a coup attempt and not that?

The part where they attempted to prevent the democratically elected President-elect from assuming power.

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A 50 page document without a citation for what you think disagrees is a bit bad faith. No one is reading for an hour to respond to figure out what you mean.

You asked where the guns were. I linked you to a high profile Jan 6 case involving a lot of guns.

  • -11

You asked where the guns were. I linked you to a high profile Jan 6 case involving a lot of guns.

...At the protest? Or is this the sort of thing where my last traffic stop involved a lot of guns, if by that you mean that I had a traffic stop, and my guns were home?

It's the sort of thing where you rob a bank with a gun in your pocket with the full intention of shooting people if you don't get the money, but they just give you the money and you never pull the gun.

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And you can’t give me a summary or copy paste the key point?

Like if every time I replied to a message board post I got a 50 page doc to review well nothing would get accomplished.

"The Oathkeeper people bought various expensive AR-15s both before and after Jan 6, also they had a lot of ammo -- all of which they left in Virginia and went to the Capitol more or less unarmed" would be a precis of the relevant parts.

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The federal case against Trump seems to boil down to if you challenge an election then you have to be correct or you are going to jail. That doesn't seem to be a good precedent to set. He is being prosecuted for things that are entirely legal and people have done before in the past and have not been prosecuted for.

Wait, who's the other president who tried to get their VP to reject legitimate election results?

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I don't think that is a fair characterization of what people wanted the Pence to do. The problem was after certification occurred even if the fraud was found it would be unlikely that the courts would allow the final result as certified to be overturned. The idea was to send the contested results back to the states so the irregularities could be properly investigated before certification.

The most similar election was in 1876. It didn't involve the VP rejecting certification himself and infact there was controversy over who had the power to count the votes during certification but there are very strong parallels and no-one was prosecuted for what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidential_election

Tbf 76 wasn't handled by our current laws because those laws were designed in response to 76. From Goodyear's "President Garfield":

In 1887 President Glover Cleveland would sign the Electoral Count Act into law, expressly to ensure the fiasco of a decade prior could never repeat. Hereafter Congress would have to be in session at one o'clock on the afternoon of January 6 following every Presidential election to formalize the results; representatives and senators would have limited authority to challenge certificates submitted by the states; the Vice President would serve as presiding officer but, likewise, not have the power to invalidate election returns.

The Compromise of 77 narrative is also somewhat contrived. Grant had already decided it was time to withdraw troops from the South and Hayes agreed that he would follow him in this policy; they made their decision well in advance of the general election (Garfield approved as well). Likewise, the Democrats at the Wormely meeting who offered to end the Democratic fillibuster were rebuffed because they had no power over their party to actually make this happen, and indeed the fillibuster continued after the meeting, suggesting no deal was made. It wasn't really a meaningful offer anyway - the vote count had already begun and the results were certain, the only issue was how long it would take the fillibuster to end.

That’s insane. One of those bits of history that gets glossed over in high school, and summed up as “this Rutherford guy ended Reconstruction.”

Worth noting that after the debacle, Congress specifically clarified the situation via law. The Eastman strategy tried to get around this by appealing to Jefferson’s precedent. I don’t know how that was supposed to make the ECA unconstitutional, but I guess that’s why I’m not a partisan law professor.

... Were you not awake for 2016 or 2000?

Apparently not if I missed Obama trying to prevent the transfer of power to Trump after the election! Can you give me any more details about it?

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They did extra legal things to harm the Trumps administration ability to do anything. General Flynn having to answer Logan Act violation issues is a big deal to me since no one has ever been prosecuted under the Logan Act so the fbi attacking him for it was extremely extra-legal.

I seem to recall this big controversy about the crossfire hurricane thing.

And you know that SCOTUS case in 2000.

There is a big difference between using recount laws for the purpose for which they were intended (even if those recount laws later turn out to be unconstitutional) and filing lies with the court. Neither Bush nor Gore was ever accused of filing briefs containing false factual claims - the key facts of Bush v Gore (that recounting punch card ballots accurately was sufficiently difficult that there wasn't time for an accurate statewide recount before the electoral College deadline, and that the margin of error of the original count exceeded Bush's margin of victory) were never disputed.

Trump's State court challenges to the 2020 election are criminal if and only if they were based on knowingly false factual claims. Both the Federal and Georgia indictments promise to bring evidence that they were.

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Tell me more about crossfire hurricane. What did they do to keep Obama in the White House and prevent Trump becoming president?

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There are other ways to challenge an election that don't involve threatening violence, like what Gore did vs Bush. That's fine.

As far as I'm aware Trump is not being prosecuted for threats of violence because he never threatened violence. The federal indictment seems to be around what is being referred to as the 'fake electors' plot and trying to get Pence to reject certification. But if you look at historical challenges to election results the parties who have challenged the results have used similar 'fake electors'.

Interesting, I thought the case against him was based on the whole "inciting his supporters to go shit up the capitol" thing.

the situation is weird because the allegations are part of the text of the indictment but Trump is not actually being charged for incitement or anything else in regards to the Jan 6th riot. his lawyers tried to get that part of the indictment removed because they believed it was irrelevant and potentially prejudicial to a jury but the judge did not agree and let the text stand as-is. here is the text of his motion: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24078250-motion-to-strike-inflammatory-allegations

The indictment includes repeated references to the actions of independent actors at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. See: ... The indictment does not charge President Trump with responsibility for any of these actions.

And here is the judges opinion for reference: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148/gov.uscourts.dcd.258148.158.0_1.pdf

An uncharitable reading as to why this text was included in the indictment could be so that third parties reporting on the indictment could muddle things for their audience and give the impression that Trump was being charged for the Jan 6th riots. I believe a similar thing may have happened with the statement by former intelligence officials about the Hunter Biden laptop. If you read the statement on the hunter biden laptop it doesn't actually say anything useful but other people could then portray the statement as saying something meaningful. The way the media works is kind of similar to chinese whispers but if you are aware of this then its possible to manipulate it for your benefit.

He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison.

This reminds me of another person who confidently prognosticated, back in the day, that Trump would be in jail within a matter of weeks. It didn't happen.

More seriously, the tit-for-tat has set in. I see the House of Representatives have voted to proceed with impeachment inquiry against Biden. And it was all done on party lines: Republicans voting 'yes', Democrats voting 'no'.

So the lesson about using the system to get the political opponents has been learned, and the other side is deciding to play now.

Is there something serious there for Biden to answer? Who can tell, now? It's all been reduced to partisan weaponry. Before anyone starts gloating over "Trump is going to jail!", they should look at this. What's to stop multiple attempts to 'get' Biden, including persuading some state attorney to grandstand about taking a prosecution? The playbook has been set out as to how to do it.

So the lesson about using the system to get the political opponents has been learned, and the other side is deciding to play now.

I say normalize the office of People's Opposition to the President. If we're going to get a special prosecutor every damned time anyway and continual allegations of wrongdoing, you might as well. Seriously, from Nixon on, we are now at four out of nine Presidents with allegations of serious malfeasance that are treated seriously by at least one faction in Congress, plus additional Presidents treated as "illegitimate" along at least some lines. If the POP had existed, we presumably would have had major inquiries conducted on the extent of Reagan's involvement in various CIA schemes and Bush's approach to Iraqi intelligence. If this is just the way things are done now, let's formalize it instead of pretending that each new President is uniquely bad in some materially important way.

I agree, parliamentary systems are good.

the extent of Reagan's involvement in various CIA schemes

I was and remain of the opinion that with Contragate, Oliver North should have been shot as a traitor to the uniform.

And I'm a conservative, so that's my view on doing things that are indeed a threat to democracy.

The Trump trials are so stupid by comparison that I have to think they're vengeful partisanship. And now the Republicans are playing the same with Joe Biden. Well, thanks guys who spent four years trying to find any stick to beat the dog with when it came to Trump, instead of letting him fade back into has-been obscurity, I'm sure the nation is the better for it!

I was and remain of the opinion that with Contragate, Oliver North should have been shot as a traitor to the uniform.

And I'm a conservative, so that's my view on doing things that are indeed a threat to democracy.

More libertarian than conservative here, but I'm with you on this one.

I still find the response of Our Nation's Leaders to Iran-Contra to be intensely surreal. The Republicans IIRC thought everything was just fine, and the Democrats were mostly upset about Ollie funneling the proceeds from the arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras, and nobody seemed to much care that US military officers had been selling US military hardware out the back door to an enemy nation.

Is there something serious there for Biden to answer?

Biden refused to collect interest on student loans for nearly three years, and tried to outright cancel them before the Supreme Court told him to cut it out, and then he immediately got to work on trying to do it again.

In a sane world, the President unilaterally misappropriating hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off his base would be clear grounds for impeachment and prosecution, but we don't live in that world, so I guess they're going to try to tie him to his son's shenanigans.

This reminds me of another person who confidently prognosticated, back in the day, that Trump would be in jail within a matter of weeks. It didn't happen.

I also remember that person. And you may recall that at that time I did not make those sorts of silly predictions. Judge me on my own words rather than Impassionata's, if you don't mind.

The situation is different now. We don't merely have an investigation. We have 91 felony charges. We have a trial date. We have clear and compelling evidence that he did exactly what he's alleged to have done. He's been repeatedly sanctioned for breaching bail conditions. We've already seen courts in civil cases find that he committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection. He's defending himself with the nonsense argument that he is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for any crime he committed as President. SCOTUS is not stalling for him. Four of his co-conspirators have already plead guilty. The walls actually are closing in.

To top it off, there's no one on Trump's side who seems to be able to offer a credible legal argument for his innocence. What we get, both from pro-Trump commentators and from Trump's own legal team, are accusations of political bias and election interference. That stuff can rile up the base but it doesn't win trials.

Even today, the truth still matters sometimes. Trump was never going to be jailed on the timeframes Impassionata suggested even if he was obviously guilty, but the reason why he wasn't jailed at all is because Trump didn't actually collude with Russia. However Trump did actually try to overturn the 2020 election. He did it openly, he did it shamelessly, and you saw it with your own two eyes.

Yes, there's a lot of noise and rancour. But underneath it there is also reality. And the reality is about as bleak for Trump as it is for George Santos and Bob Menendez.

  • -21

Being fair, most of his actual defense is not going to be shown to the public, because it would be counterproductive to the job of mounting a defense, telling the public the defense’s position and strategy also tells the prosecutors and thus they can prepare to counter the theory.

My Vibe-Analysis based opinion: if he's going to jail, he's going only if he loses the election. Jailing him before the election is suicidal, to my knowledge it doesn't actually prevent him from running, and it would actually increase his chances of winning. Convicting someone, only to lose to them would be a massive humiliation to the establishment, and I don't know if they want to roll the dice on that one.

Jailing him after he wins might work, but would also lower the legitimacy of the establishment, and might backfire, if Trump picks some lunatic for VP.

The only way this works is if you let Trump supporters hype themselves up for the campaign, beat them in an obviously fair election, and then jail the guy when everybody's deflated post-defeat.

Jailing him after he takes office doesn't work at all, since jailing him doesn't make him not President. He can pardon himself for Federal crimes and refuse to answer for State crimes (at least until and unless the Supreme Court rules against him on that point, which doesn't seem likely). Jailing him on state crimes as President-Elect might work but is even more likely to lead to violence.

My Vibe-Analysis based opinion: if he's going to jail, he's going only if he loses the election. Jailing him before the election is suicidal, to my knowledge it doesn't actually prevent him from running, and it would actually increase his chances of winning. Convicting someone, only to lose to them would be a massive humiliation to the establishment, and I don't know if they want to roll the dice on that one.

You might be right about the political implications, but despite Trumps rhetoric, it isn't Biden driving this train. The people who are driving the train seem very set on that March 4 trial date. If that ends up tanking Biden's numbers, Smith and Chuktan will shrug.

There is a semi realistic scenario where he gets convicted before the election but allowed to go free on bond pending sentencing, with the sentencing date set after the election. So if he wins he pardons himself and if he loses he gets locked up. I don't think it will happen, my bet is he gets remanded in custody, but it's not impossible.

free on bond pending sentencing

Or pending appeal. This case is messy enough that as long as Trump keeps paying his lawyers he can tie it up in the appeals courts until the only sentence that makes sense is house arrest in his nursing home.

it isn't Biden driving this train

I think you're drastically overestimating the integrity of these people. Maybe you're right, but it would be perfectly on-brand for the Dems to think that this is the cleanest way to ensure victory.

It's not really about integrity, I think Biden is corrupt as heck. It's more that working inside politics has led me to model these situations as having many more moving parts and actors with agency than outside observers might assume.

I do think that the Democratic political establishment pressured the DoJ to go after Trump, but it was done publicly through the Jan 6 committee rather than surreptitiously through a private conversation from Biden. I think a lot of people just kind of assume that all the different parts of the establishment work together a lot more closely and seamlessly than they actually do.

I think a lot of people just kind of assume that all the different parts of the establishment work together a lot more closely and seamlessly than they actually do.

Maybe. I used to believe that too, but I think we'd see a lot more friction, on a lot more happenings of the past couple years, if they didn't.

Jailing him before the election is suicidal,

How so? I'm not so sure about it increasing Trump's chances of winning — I'm from Alaska; I remember what happened with Ted Stevens, and that was a much more egregious case of patent railroading.

And, indeed having him win from in jail would indeed be a problem for the establishment, but what then comes to my mind is the case of Tsar Nicholas II.

How so? I'm not so sure about it increasing Trump's chances of winning — I'm from Alaska; I remember what happened with Ted Stevens, and that was a much more egregious case of patent railroading.

Never heard of the dude, but the reason the reaction to Trump's conviction might be worse than Steven's case, is because the knives were out for Trump for 8 years straight, to an absurd degree. It got so bad, that for all I know they got an actual case against him now, and I still think the proper response would be to vote for him, in retaliation for the circus show we've been put through.

And, indeed having him win from in jail would indeed be a problem for the establishment, but what then comes to my mind is the case of Tsar Nicholas II.

I don't want to come off as callous, but they can kill him for all I care. The more officially, the better.

Never heard of the dude, but the reason the reaction to Trump's conviction might be worse than Steven's case, is because the knives were out for Trump for 8 years straight, to an absurd degree.

It's a story; the full investigation report is a wordy read, but it's hard to overemphasize how fucked up that case was. Looking at blogosphere discussions of the incident from before (2008) and after (mid-2009) the real revelations give a good look at the extent that early FBI leaks had managed to poison much of conservatives (even media-skeptical-by-those-times) against him, until the other shoe dropped.

the problem is if they do kill trump then you can't vote for him. you will probably just end up accidentally voting for an establishment candidate in the end even if you try your best not to.

I don't know if that matters much. It's not like my hopes are that Trump wins and manages to fix anything, the point is to convince people that the establishment is illegitimate, and we need to build alternatives.

convince people that the establishment is illegitimate

Why? What is "legitimacy," anyway? The difference between "Don Corleone" and "King Vito I" isn't that one has "legitimacy" and the other doesn't, it's whether or not there's a bigger, stronger "stationary bandit." Whatever group can most credibly tell you "follow this rule or I hurt you" is the government (and that's what "government" simply is).

I wish I could remember where I encountered the argument that Westerners deeply misunderstand the "Mandate of Heaven," mistaking it for a Chinese "divine right of kings" when it's really a much more materialist concept. That what it really means is that "legitimacy" follows from — is a product of — the de facto exercise of imperial power. Whoever most performs the functions of government (however badly) is the government (until someone else is actually doing it better).

and we need to build alternatives.

…but what makes you think this is possible? Both in terms of the forces in opposition, and the qualities of the people in question?

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The problem with me believing yet another "Trump going to prison, for sure this time!" declaration, no matter who makes it, is all the wolves that have been cried as definitely in the sheepfold this time round, and yet he's still out there stumping on the campaign trail.

So what makes this time different? Maybe it is, but after all the grand declarations of treason and fascism, "he cheated on a bank loan" is rather a come-down. Particularly as it's not even the banks taking this case. What was all that about victimless crimes I see online?

I'm not trying to present him as some kind of hero of the people or as anything other than what he is, but the amount of effort poured into "he must be guilty of something we can get him on!" has been ridiculous. It's pure vengefulness and not a crusade for great justice.

I think you should probably take note of the fact that even pro-Trump voices like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly are now conceding that he will be convicted. They may not like Trump personally but they are not people who have hysterically accused Trump of every crime under the sun.

I also don't think it's much of a defence to point out that he was accused of more than just fraud, seeing as he is being prosecuted for more than just fraud. Yes, people who claimed he would be convicted of treason were being over-excitable - the Department of Justice likes to only bring cases that are slam dunks (thus their 99.6% conviction rate). But the charges he is actually facing are still very serious. His own justice department locked someone up for 9 years under some of the same Espionage Act offences he's been charged with in the documents case.

  • -16

They're conceding he'll be convicted because his enemies have the timing down perfectly to meet their goals.

I mean, c'mon. It took 3 years for them to put this case together... exactly? Every hearing and trial date syncopates perfectly with the election media cycle to maximize the damage? He'll be put in jail at the perfect time for the Republicans to have to scramble behind a new candidate or make some other impossible choice?

They're confident this time is different because after 8 years of practice with this bullshit they've exhausted enough of his resources and political capital that they stand a strong chance of killing him. The guy's hawking pieces of his suit for christ's sake.

I suppose at the end of the day this is the fault of idiot boomers and marines for not picking someone other than a narcissistic piece of shit this go-round. Biden should have lost easily, but I guess we're all going to do this the hard way.

I suppose at the end of the day this is the fault of idiot boomers and marines for not picking someone other than a narcissistic piece of shit this go-round. Biden should have lost easily, but I guess we're all going to do this the hard way.

Like who, though? The current bunch of prospective candidates isn't exactly filling me with joyous expectation; out of all of them, Nikki Haley is about the only one I find tolerable, and she has a snowball in hell's chance of getting anywhere.

Remember Mitt "Mormon Theocrat Going to Implement the Handmaid's Tale in Reality" Romney? Now he may be patted on the head as a true patriot and statesman due to criticising Trump, but when he was running for the job, he was painted as Literally Hitler.

When every single nominee you got is going to be pilloried as Literally Hitler, unless they're so obviously hopeless they don't stand a chance, what do you go? Who do you go with? I never in a million years imagined Trump had a chance to win, but the amount of seething and screaming about him ever since the results of the election are demonstrating something. I'm not entirely sure what, but it involves "stop playing the gentlemanly loser game".

When every single nominee you got is going to be pilloried as Literally Hitler, unless they're so obviously hopeless they don't stand a chance, what do you go? Who do you go with?

I've seen some argue that the answer to this is "someone who actually is Literally Hitler?" In the tale of the boy who cried "wolf," eventually a wolf arrived.

Of course, there appears to be a dearth of notable would-be wolves.

In any case, given the nature of our system, the parties, and the available candidates, I simply don't see how you "stop playing the gentlemanly loser game" without, at a minimum, abandoning electoral politics altogether.

Nikki Haley, who would make you use your real name on the Internet? With Republicans like herm who needs Democrats?

That's silly, but it's not out of line with current thinking around hate speech, etc. Besides, nothing will ever be as monumentally stupid, to me, as po-facedly calling your censorship department "Anti-Evil Operations".

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They can’t ‘get’ Biden unless they get 67 seats in the Senate.

But the precedent has been set and is being followed, that's the rub. And there's always the courts, as we see here. Maybe Joe can't be impeached, but thanks to Hunter, he sure can be dragged through the courts on tax charges, bank charges, money charges, whatever else.

Maybe Tara Reade will find a sympathetic prosecutor to special-case this one time extend the statute of limitations for her, as E. Jean Carroll got, so that Trump could finally be "we told you he's a convicted sex offender!"

Tara Reade

She has defected to Russia. This sharply increases my estimation of her always having been a Russian asset. I realize how absolutely bizarre that claim sounds in light of ridiculous Russia conspiracies about election-related mind control, but here we are.

It seem weird to me to use "defected" after the fall of the Soviet Union. If I decide to move to Dubai (or Tokyo or Vancouver) and renounce my US citizenship is that "defecting"? It seems like the only time the word is used is in reference to moving to Russia. Do people defect to Iran?

People defect to North Korea, that happens occasionally.

It seems to me that if she gets a Russian state pension or equivalent, she defected, otherwise she just moved for whatever reason, possibly because she’s a traumatized mentally ill woman.

I can agree with that.

God alone knows, that's the kind of circus we've got going on now. But at the time, why shouldn't her allegations be every bit as credible as Blasey-Ford or, if you prefer, Julie Swetnick? Instead of going "yeah that one is nuts, let's stick with the Blasey-Ford story as at least plausible", they solemnly said "Oh dear, the FBI should investigate!"

When they're holding their hands up in horror about "high school drug rape gang" then I think the backpedalling on Reade was hypocritical, to say the least.

Assuming every Senate seat is filled, present, and voting, conviction and expulsion requires 67 votes, not 60. I don't think either party can get to 67 without either a reasonable fraction of bipartisan support or a truly enormous political upheaval (60 is difficult, but possible). In Biden's case specifically, the only way he gets expelled is if a big chunk of Democratic leadership decides to remove him; even in that case, I strongly believe they would engineer his resignation instead.

Yes, confused it with the filibuster/cloture threshold. The Democrats came closest to 60 in 1992 and 2008 I think with 58.

The Democrats got to 60 in 2008; it was part of the drama surrounding Obamacare. The first draft got 60 votes in the Senate on a vote of cloture, with Ted Kennedy supplying the 60th vote on his deathbed. A special election was held to fill Kennedy's seat after he died--not the usual process for filling a Senate vacancy, but the result of a cascade of political maneuvers and especially large amounts of irony--and Massachusetts elected Scott Brown, a Republican (!), who explicitly ran on a platform of blocking Obamacare. This caused great consternation in DC, and quite a lot of emergency brainstorming as to how to get the final package passed. The details are fascinating, if you like political/procedural trainwrecks.

Note, though, that the Democrats only got to 60 following two successive wave elections in their favor (2006 and 2008; GWB was extremely unpopular towards the end of his presidency). In the modern day, it's hard to get to 60. The Republican party should have a marginal advantage in the Senate, based on state-by-state political tilt, but they have routinely underperformed across the last several cycles.

not the usual process for filling a Senate vacancy,

Says who? Ted Kennedy was origunally elected un a special election after JFK vacated the seat to become president. And if there were supposedly shenanigans, why not just leave the interim appointee in place (former DNC chair Paul Kirk)?

Says me, on the basis of a vast amount of American political history, and the knowledge of what happened in Massachusetts in the 2000s. The usual process for filling a Senate vacancy is the appointment of a replacement by the Governor, and that appointment lasts until the next even-year November election. This is the well-known procedure in most states, both now and for the past several decades at a minimum. There are exceptions; they are unusual.

In 2004, Massachusetts had a Republican Governor (Mitt Romney, as it happens) and a Democrat supermajority in the state legislature (an odd combination, but not unheard of in Massachusetts). Anticipating the vacancy of John Kerry's Senate seat if he won election to the Presidency that year, the legislature amended the procedures for filling a Senate vacancy over Romney's veto, stripping him of his appointment power, and calling for a special election to fill the vacancy temporarily. As far as I'm aware, the legislature definitely had the power to do exactly that, but it was also an obvious political power play, and calling such "(legal) shenanigans" is defensible.

This power play did not pan out as expected. First, Kerry lost the Presidential election in 2004, so no Senate vacancy was had. Second, Romney was succeeded by a Democrat, Deval Patrick, in the 2006 gubernatorial election. Third, Ted Kennedy provided the next vacancy by dying in office in 2009. Shortly before his death, Kennedy persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to re-empower the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement pending the results of the special election. While Patrick could (and did) appoint a Democrat to replace Kennedy, the people of Massachusetts picked a Republican, Scott Brown, in the special election. Brown's election dropped the Democrats' Senate majority from 60 to 59, triggering the next round of drama in DC.

Had Massachusetts followed the "usual process" in filling the Kennedy vacancy, Patrick's nominee would have continued in office for several more months until the next general election in 2010, maintaining the Democrats' 60-vote Senate majority for that period. That this did not occur was the ironic result of political gamesmanship on the part of the Massachusetts state legislature.

calling such "(legal) shenanigans" is defensible.

But the shenanigans were in 2004; you seemed to imply that they were in 2010, in response to Kennedy's death.

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The reason it’s $11 for a dozen eggs certainly isn’t that the dollar has been ‘devalued’, it’s at near historic highs relative to most other developed world currencies. The reason eggs cost $11 in the US while they cost $4 or less in most of Western Europe is because of a combination of bird flu, price gouging (most farmers aren’t Democrats) and the fact that large, warehouse style US grocery stores cost much more to run in terms of electricity, and the US in general has far higher labor costs than the much more compact stores that exist in other countries and the workers they employ. Working class pay shot up across the board after Covid, many grocery store workers went from $9 an hour to $20 an hour, so food prices shot up because grocery stores are extremely low margin businesses in which any rise in costs is passed on to customers. If Tucker considers this a disaster, he should just come out and say it.

In general, the intellectual right have gone all in on accelerationism. They want ‘something’ to happen. It doesn’t really matter what that is, it just has to shake up ‘the system’. Unfortunately they fail to realize that ‘something’ in these cases is usually worse than the present. I’ll vote for Trump next November, but only because I personally dislike a lot of influential progressives and will enjoy the crying and wailing on social media if he wins (and perhaps in the faintest, 5% chance he might do something about immigration). He’s still almost certainly a criminal, a scumbag and will accomplish very little of what his supporters hope for if that happens.

And that is the point. Trump is the only proven vessel for any conservative faction to enter the White House since 2004. Everybody in the movement knows this. Whatever their ideological or political aims, they all depend on Trump. Whether you’re an energy lobbyist or an evangelical or a dissident rightist or a Wall Street business con, Trump is your only hope for your guys getting into the executive. A smart American elite would ensure Trump wasn’t sentenced before the election. But they too have to fight their ideological battles.

Like they protect Epstein until they have to murder him in his cell.

And Epstein probably did kill himself. He was a billionaire pervert whose main (other) hobbies were hanging out with influential people and travelling the world, and who was about to spend the rest of his life in solitary in a federal jail, without sex and without money. Many kill themselves in far less dire circumstances.

Epstein having his lawyers or associates bribe some prison staff to look the other way is vastly more likely than an assassination; if the ‘powers that be’ wanted to kill him, they would have done so discreetly long before he was arrested, especially given he was obviously under investigation for many years. There was no need to attempt an absurdly high risk hit in a high security jail in the middle of Manhattan when they could have arranged an entirely plausible accident any time over the preceding few years.

The motive is also lacking. Why would Epstein have talked? Was the US government going to give him a sweetheart deal and let him out in 2 years if he gave up Clinton and Trump? Clearly not, it’s a ridiculous suggestion (he wouldn’t have been able to provide proof the prosecutors didn’t otherwise have, so would have been accused of lying) and even if he had nothing to lose, he had nothing to gain either.

I’ll vote for Trump next November, but only because I personally dislike a lot of influential progressives and will enjoy the crying and wailing on social media if he wins (and perhaps in the faintest, 5% chance he might do something about immigration).

Setting aside the 'own the libs' part, you've got a better chance of immigration reform under Biden or his successor. Trump being Trump (or the media being the media, depending on your perspective), will inevitably make immigration reform so toxic that no democratic politician could support any proposal he makes without getting absolutely shredded by their base.

The reason eggs cost $11 in the US while they cost $4 or less in most of Western Europe is because of a combination of bird flu, price gouging (most farmers aren’t Democrats) and the fact that large, warehouse style US grocery stores cost much more to run in terms of electricity, and the US in general has far higher labor costs than the much more compact stores that exist in other countries and the workers they employ.

It's disorienting to see a litany of reasons trotted out to explain this "fact" when at my HCOL American grocery store I can buy eggs cheaper than the price you quote for Western Europe. Do Europeans really believe this?

price gouging

Working class pay shot up across the board after Covid

So those basically aren't happening in the EU, or what?

The reason it’s $11 for a dozen eggs certainly isn’t that the dollar has been ‘devalued’, it’s at near historic highs relative to most other developed world currencies. The reason eggs cost $11 in the US while they cost $4 or less in most of Western Europe

They cost $4 or less in most of the US, Tucker is as usual just lying.

(by any reasonable definition of 'lying')

The reason eggs cost $11 in the US while they cost $4 or less in most of Western Europe is because of a combination of bird flu, price gouging (most farmers aren’t Democrats) and the fact that large, warehouse style US grocery stores cost much more to run in terms of electricity, and the US in general has far higher labor costs than the much more compact stores that exist in other countries and the workers they employ.

Egg cost aside, is the latter part of this something you actually believe? That American grocery stores are expensive to run because of electricity and this results in high price of goods? I want to make sure this is a serious claim before doing any actual reading, because at a glance it sounds like an absolutely ridiculous claim to me.

It’s actually a commonly discussed topic in the global supermarket and FMCG business because the cost of fresh produce and indeed the majority of even shelf-stable goods is upwards of 50-100% higher in the US than in much of Western Europe. Identical groceries that cost $50 in the UK can cost $100 or more in HCOL regions of the US. Freight costs alone don’t explain it, the most common explanation within the business is indeed that the much larger average square footage of eg. a Kroger in the US vs a Tesco in the UK and associated higher costs are a core part of the reason, plus higher margins across the supply chain.

What’s your explanation for why groceries cost less than 1/2, sometimes 1/3 of what they do in the US in Germany?

This makes no sense at all. There are economies of scale involved, which is why there are supermarkets in the first place. Smaller stores are more expensive, not less.

Looking at the G20, American fruit prices look unremarkable. Vegetables appear higher, but not anything like two or three times the cost, and still lower than the differences in incomes. Meat prices appears somewhat lower.

This is genuinely one of the weirder claims that I've seen recently. Small grocery stores definitely don't tend to be cheaper than large supermarkets. If there is some actual data that I'm missing, I would find it pretty interesting, but I genuinely don't know where the idea that American groceries are super expensive is coming from.

Small grocery stores definitely don't tend to be cheaper than large supermarkets.

The opposite tends to be true, in fact.

It’s a longstanding question. From The Economist (via stackexchange):

A study in 2017 by the un’s Food and Agriculture Organisation found that the cost of eating healthily in America was 65% more than in Britain, and among the highest in the rich world

...

Why are American consumers not getting a better deal? A transatlantic comparison is revealing. Walmart, which accounts for about 26% of the American market, has a gross margin (its profit before fixed costs like rent and labour are taken into account) of about 25%. For Tesco, Britain’s largest chain, which has 27% of its home market, the equivalent figure is 8%. Since the two firms both have low net margins (overall profitability), this suggests that Walmart has higher fixed costs, and has to charge a big mark-up.

This shifts from "cost of produce" to "eating healthily", which are not clearly interchangeable, and the latter is a questionable category altogether. Your previous posts included "much of Western Europe" and specifically called out Germany as a place with half to one third the cost, but the article you just linked shows France on par and Germany/Spain within ~10%. As percentages of income, these are all higher than what Americans are spending. The article also doesn't reference electric use at all.

I think I'm going to settle on the idea that electric use in supermarkets doubles the price of produce being one of those weird things that some Europeans decide to believe about the States for inscrutable reasons.

Rafa’s half-american and atypical in any case. This all started when an american claimed a dozen eggs costs 11 dollars. Europeans are not aware of this, much less speculating on it, so leave us out of it. If I had to throw a guess for the somewhat higher prices, it would be the massive choice americans seem to prefer. Aldi and lidl are famous for cutting costs by having only one or two of each thing, but even regular european supermarkets do not compare to the diversity offered by american supermarkets in peanut butter flavours and the like.

Eggs in particular are kind of weird. Depending on your perspective, they can be either a fancy food (nice eggs benedict at a fancy brunch restaurant) or a cheap food (substituting eggs in place of beef, which has also gone up in price a lot). Then there's like two dozen varities at any supermarket, for cage free, organic, etc, which frankly leave me baffled which one I should choose. There isn't any one "price of eggs."

Indeed. Baumol cost disease seems a rather more likely reason.

This is hitting Arrested Development levels out here people.

Eggs are not $11/doz because of price gouging or bird flu or operating costs or any other reason, they just aren't $11! Go to Target.com, search for a dozen eggs. Here's the large cage free ones: $2.59. Price fairly consistent across multiple locations.

Seriously. What are we even talking about here?

/images/1702553232279261.webp

Yeah, ‘eggs are $11/dozen’ is clearly false to me; I’d believe that the Whole Foods in San Francisco is selling free range organic brown eggs for that price, but not much else.

Seriously. What are we even talking about here?

There was a period of time where, among a certain set, "high egg prices" was a synecdoche for high inflation and rising prices more generally. Tucker's reference here is probably not to convey that he literally pays $11/dozen for eggs but something closer to "prices high, economy bad."

Damn those are some cheap eggs. Here in the UK they're like 50% more expensive.

It was a thing earlier in the year when prices spiked because of bird flu, but they seem to have come down now. Presumably Tucker doesn’t regularly buy eggs and so remembered some headline rather than commenting on the actual situation.

Tucker was probably just using irresponsible hyperbole. But I've been buying eggs every week for years. I've never paid more than $5 a dozen. There may be weird parts of the country where there were shortages, but that just wasn't a thing in most of the country, for ANY reason.

The use of "$11" suggests to me that it wasn't intended as a literal claim. Unfortunately, egg prices were actually high enough at one point that you probably could have spent $11 if you insisted on Whole Foods eggs at the height of localized shortages, so the claim could be taken literally. Realistically, this seems more like me saying, "with Joe Biden as President, ground beef is now $37/pound". I don't know, maybe it's just that Tucker's completely out of touch with grocery store pricing, that wouldn't surprise me all that much.

price gouging (most farmers aren’t Democrats)

Ah come on, that's a cheap shot. The large agribusiness producers may or may not vote Republican, but I see no reason why - as with Silicon Valley - they can't vote Democrat while enjoying the fruits of capitalism.

Small farmers are squeezed on the margins, and aren't most farm workers/labourers in the USA migrants anyway, who would be the Democratic voting bloc?

I am doing this selfishly - I see this as a money making opportunity. What do you think the odds are that Trump goes to prison by election day 2024? How much do I have to put up for you to pay me 1k if he isn't?

Money, mouth, etc

I don't do bets with internet strangers anymore - too much counterparty risk, too awkward to explain to my wife if I lose, etc. But I put the probability at something like 85%.

There's various outcomes where things get delayed - SCOTUS declines to deal with the absolute immunity issue on an expedited basis, some other delay tactic succeeds in pushing the trial date back, there's a mistrial and they have to go again, etc. But all are pretty low probability in my view. It seems like the courts are taking the view that this should be resolved before the election and will do what it takes to make it happen.

What number do you put on it?

  • -13

You're an Australian, correct?

Trump is the current favorite to win the next election @ $2.40 (Roughly 41.6%). You can bet 1000's of AUD currently on this not to happen at 58.4% (with a minor commission, taking you to about 56% implied) on the Betfair exchange. Tax-free winnings as an Australian hobbyist, too. As you think Trump is 85% to get jailed here, surely that makes your number of him winning the election a lot lower than 41.6%. Can even bet against him to win the Republican nomination at 81.3% with similar liquidity. No counterparty risk there.

I think that price probably is already incorporating a high probability of his legal problems derailing him. 41% is really low considering how big his polling leads are against all his opponents.

It's very unclear to me how many people will abandon Trump if he goes to prison, or even if the political effect will be negative at all. Somehow he's only increased his support as he's been found to have committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection. Maybe this time is different, but maybe the country has just decided "joke's on you, I'm into that shit".

  • -10

Somehow he's only increased his support as he's been found to have committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection.

He's increased his support in the Republican primary, but the primary voters switching to him in response to the indictments are die-hard partisans who were going to vote R in the general no matter what.

538 isn't publishing a poll tracker for the general yet, but the Biden and Trump approval polls have been pretty flat since before the indictments, and anecdotally Trump has consistently been a nose ahead of Biden in head-to-head polling.

He hasn’t been found to have committed sexual assault (the juror returned a really weird verdict), the fraud claim was a judge citing property tax value as real value which shows the absurdity of the holding, and another judge “found” he committed an insurrection despite that being entirely dicta (ie the judge could have found that Trump was literally satan but it would be irrelevant).

He hasn’t been found to have committed sexual assault (the juror returned a really weird verdict)

The verdict was that he committed sexual assault but not rape.

Maybe this time is different, but maybe the country has just decided "joke's on you, I'm into that shit".

To be clear, I think this is actually a good and normal response from a nominally democratic nation's regime jailing the primary political opposition. Even if I didn't like the someone's policies, I would want them to win against an obviously tyrannical regime attempting to deny an electorate a free choice, particularly with as flimsy of grounds as him supposedly causing a riot at the end of a year when riots were egged on all over the country by politicians on the other side.

regime attempting to deny an electorate a free choice

And I'm again reminded of the various things I've read arguing that this is in fact the proper, "democratic" thing to do, to defend Our Democracy against the terrible threat of "authoritarian populism," and that refusing to provide the electorate the choice they want is just about morally obligatory.

Somehow he's only increased his support as he's been found to have committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection.

I'm presuming by the "committed sexual assault" you mean the E. Jean Carroll case? Which is a dreadful example if you're trying to convince anyone that it's the truth of the matter. The claims are very hard to verify - he went into a changing room with her in a department store and assaulted her, but nobody else heard a thing? No shop assistants? No other customers?

And while she was talking and writing about it for decades, she never went to court over it. And the case was, in fact, not for rape but defamation, and it was in a second lawsuit that she added in the assault charges. Which had lapsed due to the statute of limitations, but very helpfully New York State legislation was passed to permit adult survivors of sexual assault to bring cases after they were statute-barred - so long as the case is brought between November 2022 and November 2023.

The Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is New York State legislation enacted in May 2022 which amends state law to allow alleged victims of sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations has lapsed to file civil suits for a one-year period, from November 24, 2022, to November 24, 2023. The act thus expands the ability of plaintiffs to sue for sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact in the workplace.

Now, the act wasn't specifically for Carroll, but it sure turned out convenient timing for her. Well, nothing more than that, maybe.

But compare the Tara Reade allegations against Biden which were pooh-poohed immediately by the same people who were devoutly nodding along that Brett Kavanaugh was a rapist and Trump was a rapist and everyone ever accused of anything was indeed a rapist. If Reade's allegations are nonsense because of where and when they are alleged to have happened, what about Carroll's allegations? The conviction on the basis that "okay, over the years she told a lot of people it happened, so it must have happened"?

Again, I'm not defending Trump's sexual conduct, but this is a very shaky "he said/she said" conviction that is as much, or even more, about politics as anything else.

I actually agree with you that Caroll doesn't seem credible. I have a strong suspicion that Trump would have won that case if he had a better lawyer and listened to their advice. The Serious Trouble podcast ran a demonstration of what a better cross examination might have sounded like and it was brutally effective at painting her as a fantasist. Unfortunately for Trump his lawyer did a terrible job.

I actually agree with you that Caroll doesn't seem credible. I have a strong suspicion that Trump would have won that case if he had a better lawyer and listened to their advice.

Okay, but with that opinion, the best you can muster is apparent bafflement that "somehow" his support increased anyways? Do you, as a human being, dislike people to a greater degree when you honestly think they were railroaded in court because they didn't have the top lawyers? I would assume that like most people, you would be sympathetic, and perhaps more likely to believe that they have been railroaded unjustly in other ways as well. I do not believe that you find this puzzling at all.

It's lacking evidence, is the trouble. Could it have happened? Sure. Did it happen? Who knows? Presumption of innocence should have quashed the case - if it weren't politically relevant.

Though I find it black humour sort of unintended consequences that, per Wikipedia, the Adult Survivors Act ended up with a lot of New York politicians and public services caught up in the trawl for "get yer prosecution in before the deadline":

Complaints against State of New York under the ASA were filed in the Court of Claims; as of November 17, 2023, 1,469 claims had been filed in the Court of Claims, mostly naming the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision as a defendant.

...New York City hospitals and health systems were named as defendants in at least 300 lawsuits filed under the ASA.

...In May 2023, an ex-employee of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani sued him for alleged sexual battery.

...In November 2023, former Governor Andrew Cuomo was sued by his former executive assistant Brittany Commisso on the last day of the law's window. Commisso had previously filed a misdemeanor criminal complaint against Cuomo for forcible touching in 2021 but was later dismissed.

In November 2023, a former New York City employee sued Mayor Eric Adams, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in 1993, when he was a New York City Transit Police officer. Adams denied the allegation and said he did not recall meeting the accuser.

It's lacking evidence, is the trouble. Could it have happened? Sure. Did it happen? Who knows? Presumption of innocence should have quashed the case - if it weren't politically relevant.

More relevant I think is the fact that it was a civil trial so there was no presumption of innocence. The jury decided on the "balance of probabilities" standard rather than "beyond reasonable doubt".

It can be hard to get the best lawyers when that can be a career blackball for them.

And it really doesn't help when the client is notorious for both refusing to pay his lawyers and bad-mouthing them after they quit.

Also when you don't pay them.

but maybe the country has just decided "joke's on you, I'm into that shit".

Or perhaps more charitably, the only effective way to defeat crocodile tears in the marketplace of ideas begins and ends with ignoring them. If you're being interrogated in bad faith- whether it's by the actual police or the moral police- engaging in that context is literally never a good move; you make your case directly to the judge(s) only.

Somehow he's only increased his support as he's been found to have committed sexual assault, fraud, and insurrection

As opposed to what his opponents have been up to the last few years, perpetrating institutional-level assault (sexual and otherwise) by intentionally refusing to prosecute crimes based on skin color, defrauding the public with respect to the seriousness of the uncommon cold (especially financially- that 20% reduction in nationwide life savings was definitely worth the 0.0001 QALY that reduction ended up buying), and burning, looting, and murdering their little hearts out in every major urban center a few years ago.

It seems natural that the political faction responsible for those things should face electoral consequences.

but maybe the country has just decided "joke's on you, I'm into that shit".

I learned to tune out this sort of misrepresentation of the opposing view points, it's par for the course for the modal progressive, but I'm mildly surprised to see you engage in it. Assuming your assessment of his chances of being convicted is accurate, you really honestly cannot think of another reason why his support might go up as a result?

I was obviously being flippant. I can concoct all sorts of reasons why someone might think anything, but it's all speculation. Maybe there's a ton of people for whom a conviction would remind them what a good job Trump did standing up against the obviously rigged election. Maybe some people will think "Good, he breaks the rules and gets stuff done". Maybe some people think that every conviction is further proof of the deep state conspiracy against him. Maybe all those people are vastly outnumbered by those who think the prosecutions are political nonsense but think the courts can be trusted to acquit him and are in for a rude shock. The point is, I have no idea how the public will react when it happens.

Well you can always rationalise any outcome if you're deeply committed to Trump, which is the entire problem really. If Trump is jailed, then Ok some people will say that he isn't actually guilty and the blob/Democratic establishment got him on phony charges, but if he isn't convicted then those same people will say that it proves the charges were fake and politically motivated in the first place. There is no result anymore that would possibly change the view of any committed Trump supporter.

You're still missing a few options. The institutions accusing him have lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned, but I'm actually agnostic as to whether or not he's guilty of one transgression or another. I just think that barring some Epstein-level scandal, you should still vote for him.

Well then even if 'into that shit' was a mild exaggeration, you're more or less agreeing with the sentiment that for Trump supporters his being guilty of insurrection is not something that would notably dissuade them from sticking with him.

More comments

I genuinely think this kind of activity is the way to increase Trump's popularity. There's no way he should be running for a second term, but right now he barely has to campaign because the media is doing it all for him and the actual party debates are being reduced to "this is only to decide who is gonna be his VP".

Ridiculous, but the mania over 'Orange Man Bad' really has led to this. He didn't put the gays in concentration camps, so why is he seen as such a threat to American democracy? And don't "Jan 6th!" at me, this kind of hysteria was in full flow before ever that happened. I have had to come to the conclusion that the rage was all over It's Her Turn Now - how dare anyone take the right, proper, and just transition of power away from the woman and the party destined to possess it in perpetuity? How dare some grubby populist overturn all the pundits who knew it could never, ever happen? And the fearmongering just got stoked higher and higher over the years.

And don't "Jan 6th!" at me, this kind of hysteria was in full flow before ever that happened.

There were warning signs before the 2016 election. At the time I didn't take them seriously, but someone who was better calibrated than me could have done, as could someone who was looking for excuses to hate on Trump. But with hindsight, I think it should have been obvious that Trump was more likely than most other Republicans to do January 6th.

  1. Trump jump-started his political career by being one of the most prominent people to stick with birtherism after Obama's birth certificate was authenticated by the State of Hawaii - and he didn't finally concede that Obama was born in the US until after he had the 2016 primary sewn up. Falsely claiming that the President is ineligible is an attack on US democracy.
  2. Trump engaged in mild brownshirt behaviour during the campaign, like leading chants of "Lock Her Up" and encouraging supporters to beat up protesters. This isn't anti-democratic in itself, but empirically brownshirt behaviour is correlated with someone being a threat to democracy.
  3. Trump either joked about or actively solicited (the GRU didn't get the joke) Russian help in hacking his opponent's e-mails. I don't want to rehash the argument about whether this is collusion or not, but even if it isn't, thinking that attacks on American democracy by a hostile foreign power are a joking matter says something about Trump.
  4. Trump said in the 3rd 2016 debate that he would "keep you in suspense" about whether he would concede defeat if he lost.
  5. Even after winning, Trump falsely claimed that millions of people had voted illegally in the 2016 election and that he was the legitimate popular vote winner.
  6. As President, Trump continues to transgress various norms in a way which constitutes weak circumstantial evidence that he is the sort of person who would transgress the norm that defeated Presidential candidates concede. Notably, he tries to strongarm Zelezny into launching a (probably bullshit) criminal investigation of the Bidens, and to share nonpublic information about said investigation with the Trump campaign.
  7. Before the 2020 election, Trump again refuses to commit to accepting the results.

Trump was a transgressive candidate - for many of his supporters, that was the whole point. The people who said that this transgressiveness was a threat to American democracy were right, for the right reasons - as confirmed by the events leading up to Jan 6th, even more so than by Jan 6th itself.

Immediately after the 2016 election, everyone knows that Trump is publically badmouthing America's democratic institutions. The Orange Man really is saying Bad things. The question is whether he means them, or whether this is just his schtik. "Orange Man Bad" and "Trump Derangement Syndrome" are memes used by the right (and by the centrist punditocracy which is on its last legs before finally being booted out after George Floyd ODs near a cop) to imply that taking him seriously is cringe. But Trump was serious.

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And don't "Jan 6th!" at me, this kind of hysteria was in full flow before ever that happened

His contempt for democracy was already pretty evident before Jan 6th. Pre-Jan 6th anti-Trump feeling wasn't unjustified because Jan 6 hadn't happened yet; Jan 6 was Trump 'hysteria' being proven right! To embrace Godwin's law, this is the equivalent of saying that anti-Hitler sentiment was baseless before 1933 because it was only then that he was able to make any effective attack on democracy. People warned that Trump had no respect for democracy, and they were right. This was 2016;

First of all, it’s rigged and I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged, to be honest

I have had to come to the conclusion that the rage was all over It's Her Turn Now

This is trivially disproved by the number of people who hate Trump who also dislike Clinton, from the Democratic left to the Never Trump Republicans. The former is obvious but it's also true in the case of the latter; McMullin called Hillary 'terrible' in 2016, French wrote a piece in July 2016 harshly critical of Clinton on the emails and saying Comey should charge her etc. etc.

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