[jedrider]

A nice way to start off the new year, but hopefully paving the way for some needed adjustments and not just paranoia and insanity (is that really possible anymore)?

The Pentagon denied multiple requests to send National Guard during Capitol siege: GOP governor
https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/pentagon/

A nation on hair trigger alert for incoming ICBMs cannot defend itself against a wildly public insurrection six months in the making, well, that is absolutely fascinating.

[Plantagenet]

Federal Prosecutor opens investigation to determine if police used "excessive force" when they shot protesting mom in the capitol

federal-prosecutor-opens-excessive-force-investigation-death-if-ashli-babbitt-report

Cheers!

[jedrider]

Are you a communist or ever were a communist or have associated with communists?

Well, the new line will be:

Are you an insurrectionist or ever were an insurrectionist or have associated with insurrectionists?

Capitol police officer forced to argue with men in his National Guard unit the attack wasn't fake
https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-police-captiol-fake/

And the other article I posted in the Biden thread on how he must now be vetting his security detail.

[dissident]

Putting aside the fact that there were Antifa participants in this "riot", it is really grotesque to whinge about popular discontent in the USA being sedition and insurrection, but promote every rent-a-crowd regime change operation abroad. Real insurrections sponsored by the USA, to which Biden will shortly turn to distract the US sheeple from the election fraud, happen.

But I guess that is why America is "exceptional". It is not subject to the rules to which humanity must conform outside of US borders. What an Orwellian wannabe clown state. Including the ludicrous attempt to remove Trump from office before his term ends using this "insurrection" as an excuse.

And no amount of in-your-face denial about the 4 am ballot stuffing and ridiculous electronic ballot machines that allow revision of votes will make the 2020 US election fraud disappear. Biden supporters can believe what they want. But they do not create reality through the force of their will like all the other Rovian lunatics in this clown land.

[jedrider]

Apparently, we have insurrectionists right here

We may have free speech as a right, but we're still not allowed to yell 'Fire!' in a packed theater.

[Pops]

Putting aside the fact that there were Antifa participants in this "riot",

no

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2 ... ed-antifa/

[Pops]

This is the era of spaghetti politics, if you aren't ashamed to look the fool, just say anything and eventually you'll come across something that sticks. It doesn't matter how many people know black isn't white, if you say it is enough times, in enough ways, eventually you'll convince enough people and you'll reach your goal.

The biggest blow to trump in 10 years is his twitter ban, because each tweet is a stand alone statement, doesn't have to conform with what came before, or what may come after. Each little nugget of fantasy is its own little marketing survey.

The media is once again playing this as the end of trump and maybe when he's out of office a few months his power will wane. But I'd not bet my last buck on it. There are just too many people out there like dissident who either accept as fact anything that reinforces their preexisting conclusion, or pretend to in order to be politically correct, that this could just go into the memory hole like every other affront.

Or worse, it could go into the "feature not a Bug" column:

Among Republicans who responded to the survey carried out by YouGov, some 45 per cent said they supported the rioters who scaled walls, overcame Capitol police, stormed Congress, smashed windows, and planted explosives
link

[aadbrd]

Are you a communist or ever were a communist or have associated with communists?
Well, the new line will be:
Are you an insurrectionist or ever were an insurrectionist or have associated with insurrectionists?

The difference is communist sympathizers never stormed the capitol and never proved to pose an existential threat to the union. So not a great analogy.

Apparently, we have insurrectionists right here

Indeed. I wish I could laugh about it but it's not funny anymore.

I did a little googling into Jefferson Davis. One would imagine the head figures of the Civil War would have been executed for treason but he was merely held in prison for a while and released. Eventually he wrote a huge two volume memoir about the civil war which was mostly an apologia. Moral epiphanies and contrition are more the exception than the rule it seems.

My point is that when it sometimes seems like there's only one right side in an event there is always a rationalization one can mount for the other side.

It's proof positive that, as Aristotle said, all morality is subjective.

The sad thing is that in the era of Trump even basic facts have become subjective.

This thread seems like little more than an invitation for people to attempt to frame this event to suit their ideological agenda.

[jedrider]

This thread seems like little more than an invitation for people to attempt to frame this event to suit their ideological agenda.

No, the purposes in mind (so far):

1. To show how deeply the Republicans have jettisoned the veneer of democracy.
2. To show how disabling this will be for us going forward.
3. To show what the challenge is ahead for us.

It could be an invitation to show division. So, how did the civil war resolve itself? Oh, it didn't completely, I see.

The Republicans I remember were all about some made up principles. Where are they?

This is also about how the Democrats will deal with these issues and divisions. Call it Civil War thread II, but it is also about physical security as well, which was clearly breached, which is also embedded in police brutality and racial tensions and the whole ball of wax.

[jedrider]

Another way to frame this:

‘HOME-GROWN FASCISM’: THE MAGA MOB’S SINISTER ATTACK
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-unfolding-of-home-grown-fascism-in-capitol-assault_n_5ffc5542c5b65671988782cf

“I saw this crowd of people banging on that glass screaming,” McGovern told The Associated Press on Sunday. “Looking at their faces, it occurred to me, these aren’t protesters. These are people who want to do harm.”

[Ibon]

You know, it really isn't funny anymore. I am recalling my time in Venezuela when Chavez early on was called a payaso.... a clown, and how the whole country underestimated his consolidation of tyranny and demagoguery because he was entertaining. Look what happened. The early days of Hitler and Nazism when folks saw Hitler as this small man who was entertaining in his extremism. Look what happened. There are many similar examples.

Trump fits in this mold. As a country we really do need to wake up a bit here and realize the criminal behavior and the undermining of democracy that has taken place. If it was isolated to Trump alone we can just chalk it up to a flawed individual. But a cancer has spread to legislators and Trumps followers which frankly has been sanctioning tyranny and also treason. This is fascism and terrorism period. You can't sugar coat this or excuse it. The raiding of the capital should really be a wake up call. The fact that so many Trump supporters still are excusing this and that republican legislators are against impeachment or even sanctioning Trump is alarming actually. It shows how deep the cancer has penetrated a sizable percentage of the population.

There is a non emotional legal way to carefully now hold those accountable. Since you have tens of millions still spewing their garbage and probably ready to riot again it is important that revenge and vindication take a back seat and just cool and calm legal proceedings now unfold to hold those accountable.

Any rancor or desire for revenge that I may have against Trump is superseded by a much more sincere desire that we rein in this treasonous epidemic that Trump enabled to be unleashed on his supporters and within the Republican Party. The way to do this is to not feed the emotional identity that triggers the tribalism and focus instead on accountability and law and order.

Demagogues don't rise in a vacuum. There was always this potential cooking in the collective soup. But until 4 years ago this was fringe. Trump brought it into the mainstream. We have to kill this and kill it good and legally.

[aadbrd]

We have to kill this and kill it good and legally.

Given the example of the civil war, I don't think you can. You can only contain it.

[Pops]

I agree Ibon.

I'm not a fan of the Govenator but he is good here, kind of what the Republicans have left behind.

News & Guts

[jedrider]

QAnon congresswoman faces calls for arrest after live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi's location to rioters
https://www.rawstory.com/lauren-boebert-twitter/

Most of us just do not fathom the anti-democracy stance of these democratically elected members of our government, but it's there.

I think they should be prosecuted at face value (because extreme stupidity when you have been entrusted with upholding the constitution is no different than culpability).

[jedrider]

Controlling the narrative is the highest on the agenda right now for both sides. So much for Ibon's Law Enforcement initiative!

Melania Honors Dead Pro-Trump Rioters and Claims She’s the Victim
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/melania-trump-statement-capitol-violence/

[evilgenius]

Right now, the question you must ask yourself is whether this is happening as the result of a collection of memes running around in people's heads, all coming together right now, or if it is orchestrated? I'm pretty sure the memes do have the power to get people to do things. More importantly, they also provide a common emotional pool from which people can both take and give. When dealing with emotions, one has to realize they don't just go away because they have been dismissed. Try stopping yourself from feeling something like anger, even if the reason you had for indulging in it has gone away. Emotions, once indulged in, don't disappear simply because they've gotten what they wanted.

If it is orchestrated, then they, and we, have another problem. The ideas that they would be using to control the masses are not the sort that can be finely controlled. To get anything beyond the next batch of road bed rhetoric done, they will have to put so much energy into their thing that they won't really be able to tell what it will do. You know that they don't want to get kicked to the curb, alongside Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Capitol Hill Bunch. Maybe they have a formula? The only way to know for sure would probably be to use big data, and look for how they do control their creation. Then try using that proof to convince your average protester. They would stare at you like a deer in the headlights, while they kept looking for a vulnerable place to strike.

I've been watching conspiracy theory thinking for some time. My introduction to it was not through the internet. The internet makes it worse. It may be that all that humanity needed was to uncork the internet before it uncorked a better understanding of the human mind. The path to understanding how this all works lies in understanding how narcissists get their way. Even they have to give the people they hold in sway something in return. Narcissist always seem so certain.

[dohboi]

I think it's all coming down today.

Trumps going to call his troops into action from Alamo, TX of all places.

I hope all can stay safe in the chaos to come

[Pops]

Right now, the question you must ask yourself is whether this is happening as the result of a collection of memes running around in people's heads, all coming together right now, or if it is orchestrated?

Newt Gingrich was pushing for exactly this back in the 70s

“One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics.”

For their party to succeed, Gingrich went on, the next generation of Republicans would have to learn to “raise hell,” to stop being so “nice,” to realize that politics was, above all, a cutthroat “war for power”—and to start acting like it.

Atlantic

So is it a conspiracy? Depends on what you call "conspiracy." The republican party, it's various backers: Addleson, Koch, murdock, the gun makers, oil companies, corporations, blah blah have been pushing ever more hysterical fear out over AM radio for decades—while they automate, offshore, raid retirements, cut wages, undermine social welfare, eliminate environmental regs. We are at the very locus, the culmination of the anti-abortion, anti-feminist, ant-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-atheist, anti-"socialist" hysteria conspiracy.

So who is backing the conspiracy? Well, trump said it out loud, I pay for politicians and they give me what I want. The people with money, real money, who want more and don't care how they get it.

The anti-regulation and anti-tax 1% have been stoking this derangement all along. But it isn't a conspiracy, they've been right out there in the open

.

[EnergyUnlimited]

I think it's all coming down today.

Trumps going to call his troops into action from Alamo, TX of all places.

I hope all can stay safe in the chaos to come

Trump is out of game.
If there is a coup, he will have nothing to say about details.

[jedrider]

I think it's all coming down today.

Trumps going to call his troops into action from Alamo, TX of all places.

I hope all can stay safe in the chaos to come

Trump is out of game.
If there is a coup, he will have nothing to say about details.

So, if there is really a coup, Trump was just the means to it. Who could be so evil?