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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...
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.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who recognizes this.
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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.
Was he talking about what Pericles did or some other conflict?
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
and
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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?
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