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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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It is perfectly obvious that the whole thing is not remotely worth reading, not unless it is capable of making vastly more sense than that deranged sample does.
The rioters had the full support of almost the entire Republican Party. Fact. They voted. They voted to overturn the election.
And the chances of success have never, ever had anything whatsoever to do with the fact of treason. Never. Treason to the state has always been take very, very seriously. If you think about it for more than five seconds, you will realise that it actually has to be, otherwise the state cannot long endure.
They took over the seat of government. That is treason. All day, every day, everywhere.
And don't think for one single moment that Trump "made no attempt to mobilise the power of the state" in his service. He not only tried, he succeeded when he called in the troops to attack peaceful BLM marchers for a photo op. He succeeded when he had the unmarked vans out kidnaping people off the streets.
And he tried again after that, even going so far as to fire several top-level security officials in order to put in flunkies and yes-men, but (to their considerable credit) the military turned their backs on his attempts to suborn them and stood by their oaths of service.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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David, the fascism is fasco-, as I describe it, because it wants to be fascist and has assiduously worked a route to fascism through a coordination technology (social media), unfettered Executive and compliant GOP-dominated political and business apparatus.
The focus on the tawdry Trumpist fist wavers, an inability to believe one's eyes, and above all an outdated model of fascism should not distract from the fasco- nature of what happened here. History will be written very, very differently to the slow-boil desensitisation to this horror show still evidenced in many quarters, and it will focus less on the Capitol incident, and much more on what preceded it.
The frightening thing is how assiduously and relentlessly the fasco- instincts searched for an opening over time. We always knew it was there because it gleefully behaved fascistically overseas or in the usual fasco-controlled states, but it was hamstrung nationally by political competition.
But that wasn't going to stop it. First, it suppressed voters, organised in communities through groups like churches, harnessed the electoral college and state asymmetries, and propagandised through cable TV.
Then, it turbocharged its organisation and propaganda through social media, and began its search for a Trump. Having succeeded, it demolished the flimsy scaffolding of custom constraining the Executive, and immediately tested the fascist waters by enacting 'legitimate fascism', banning entire peoples from certain Muslim countries and moving against 'Mexicans', a euphemism for what it perceived at the time to be a cultural and political threat from the growing Hispanic population (wrongly, perhaps, given the recent election, although the results might show the racist suppression and Red Panic propaganda campaign actually worked and scared key Hispanic blocks into voting for Trump).
With those successes under its belt, and power locked in through a compliant senate put to the test in the first impeachment trial and buttressed by billionaire tax cuts, it was now time to socially cleanse those standing in the way of ubermen like Trump, and righteous True Americans like themselves. Believing Covid-19 to be a Liberal Northeast affliction, it aggressively encouraged the unfettered spread of the disease, organising mass and armed misinformation campaigns. (This is the subject that will become the focus of serious historians, not the Capitol incident; however, the latter is a way of getting to the despicable horrors of the former which people still haven't come to grips with).
Meanwhile, the political apparatus and elite business stood idly by, benefitting from consolidated power through a united Executive, Judiciary, Senate, and Justice Department and State Department as Trump purged the entire government, either eliminating positions altogether, refusing to fill them, or putting lackeys and hacks at their head. Opponents were controlled and purged through mob violence. First, Trump used the Executive to expose internal opponents and the departments he controlled to effectively stand over them, then the mob threatened to kill them and their families if they talked.
However, by the time of the election the mass death of Covid-19 — having spread beyond the Northeast states — was collapsing the economy and scaring enough people to vote against Trump, who was becoming increasingly unstable in interviews. International condemnation had also grown, and the once compliant political apparatus began seeing the writing on the wall. Democrats held their nerve and would not be goaded away from choosing a centrist, while the media refused to fall for another pre-election leak scandal.
Then came the rest, from the deranged efforts to overturn the election (how many court cases desperately trying to find an opening?), to the tawdry 'storming' of the Capitol. That it didn't work, and was so pathetic, is very much a distraction from the real horror show which led up to Trump nearly winning the election and then god knows what. With consolidated power, what horror would've followed? The fasco- would've relentlessly pursued its desire to become fascist, and indeed will keep doing so, hence the very real far-right militia threat.
A few bad bounces of the ball; a war with Iran here, an incident with China there, and its desires — and fascism is essentially a desire — might have been realised to an even more horrifying extent. And still might be if this whole business is not taken seriously enough by people who, for whatever reason, can't believe their eyes and ears.
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In the end the rain comes down, washes clean the streets of a blue sky town.
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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^ Great post
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| Tannin wrote: | It is perfectly obvious that the whole thing is not remotely worth reading, not unless it is capable of making vastly more sense than that deranged sample does.
The rioters had the full support of almost the entire Republican Party. Fact. They voted. They voted to overturn the election.
And the chances of success have never, ever had anything whatsoever to do with the fact of treason. Never. Treason to the state has always been take very, very seriously. If you think about it for more than five seconds, you will realise that it actually has to be, otherwise the state cannot long endure.
They took over the seat of government. That is treason. All day, every day, everywhere.
And don't think for one single moment that Trump "made no attempt to mobilise the power of the state" in his service. He not only tried, he succeeded when he called in the troops to attack peaceful BLM marchers for a photo op. He succeeded when he had the unmarked vans out kidnaping people off the streets.
And he tried again after that, even going so far as to fire several top-level security officials in order to put in flunkies and yes-men, but (to their considerable credit) the military turned their backs on his attempts to suborn them and stood by their oaths of service. |
Members of the GOP showed the mob around, some "lawmakers" even participated. To equate this with Charles Manson is not only a false equivalence but seriously stupid where minimization becomes denial.
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“I even went as far as becoming a Southern Baptist until I realised they didn’t keep ‘em under long enough” Kinky Friedman |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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WPT, David has a bit of a history of parroting the Trump publicity machine's more devious PR scams. We well remember how he went on and on about that fake Biden-is-a-criminal "leak" cooked up by Rudi Giulani, the one that every reputable news organisation on the planet rejected as a transparent dirty trick. Only Murdoch (still a Trump sycophant at that time) was prepared to print it. And only David was prepared to believe it.
Now I know nothing about whether that rag he quoted has a history of printing Trump-team planted memes, or whether this is just a one-off, but it would certainly take a liar of Rudi Giulani's stature to come up with that Manson idiocy by way of minimisation.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | It is perfectly obvious that the whole thing is not remotely worth reading, not unless it is capable of making vastly more sense than that deranged sample does.
The rioters had the full support of almost the entire Republican Party. Fact. They voted. They voted to overturn the election.
And the chances of success have never, ever had anything whatsoever to do with the fact of treason. Never. Treason to the state has always been take very, very seriously. If you think about it for more than five seconds, you will realise that it actually has to be, otherwise the state cannot long endure.
They took over the seat of government. That is treason. All day, every day, everywhere.
And don't think for one single moment that Trump "made no attempt to mobilise the power of the state" in his service. He not only tried, he succeeded when he called in the troops to attack peaceful BLM marchers for a photo op. He succeeded when he had the unmarked vans out kidnaping people off the streets.
And he tried again after that, even going so far as to fire several top-level security officials in order to put in flunkies and yes-men, but (to their considerable credit) the military turned their backs on his attempts to suborn them and stood by their oaths of service. |
There’s a lot of conflation happening here. While Trump and his sycophants in congress unquestionably goaded the rabble-rousers on, they were not exactly working in concert: the first were trying everything they could to overturn a democratic election by legal means (albeit completely cynically and without basis in fact), which is in fact somewhat coup-like; the second had no specific backing in their actions from Trump or Republican leadership and no coherent goal or plan other than to waylay the vote to certify the results. And yes, Trump made no attempt to mobilise the powers of the state to aid them, which is presumably why you just changed the subject and started talking about something else entirely. The rioters, having been stirred up by Trump and his team’s desperate election-stealing efforts and associated rabble-rousing, were essentially acting of their own accord.
The fact that this latter gambit involved physically occupying a building of government is kind of irrelevant for any other reason of optics, despite your and others’ insistence on referring to it as an attempted coup, as if the horned Q shaman were somehow going to declare himself interim leader and capture the levers of the state. How could they overthrow the government when the head of government was Trump himself? It’s complete nonsense, basically. What we saw was scary not because it was a threat to the republic but because it was violent and chaotic, and it’s honestly remarkable that it was allowed to even be as effective as it was – which is to say not really at all. The only thing they actually achieved was to delay the vote for less than 24 hours, i.e. about the same as a garden-variety filibuster (where a representative gets up and speaks for so long that a vote can’t be held, which is allowed in the US democratic rulebook for some reason).
So, no, it wasn’t an attempted coup – something that most mainstream observers agree on. It doesn’t fit the criteria. The Jacobin article happens to put that more definitively, but that doesn’t make them outliers; if you google discussion of the incident in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Conversation and elsewhere, they come to the same essential conclusion (generally, "no, it wasn’t a coup attempt but it was coup-like in certain respects", which I think still gives way too much credit to that view).
Your follow-up post shouldn’t really be dignified with a response, but all I’ll say is: Jacobin is probably the most respected left-wing publication in America and publishes a consistently high standard of journalism and analysis – something that has been broadly acknowledged and that I think you would also find even if you don’t agree with their ideological worldview. So to smear them as a Trump propaganda outlet is pretty silly, and does tend to suggest that you’re not stepping far out of the (increasingly cultish and partisan) liberal-centrist media echo chamber. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| pietillidie wrote: | David, the fascism is fasco-, as I describe it, because it wants to be fascist and has assiduously worked a route to fascism through a coordination technology (social media), unfettered Executive and compliant GOP-dominated political and business apparatus.
The focus on the tawdry Trumpist fist wavers, an inability to believe one's eyes, and above all an outdated model of fascism should not distract from the fasco- nature of what happened here. History will be written very, very differently to the slow-boil desensitisation to this horror show still evidenced in many quarters, and it will focus less on the Capitol incident, and much more on what preceded it.
The frightening thing is how assiduously and relentlessly the fasco- instincts searched for an opening over time. We always knew it was there because it gleefully behaved fascistically overseas or in the usual fasco-controlled states, but it was hamstrung nationally by political competition.
But that wasn't going to stop it. First, it suppressed voters, organised in communities through groups like churches, harnessed the electoral college and state asymmetries, and propagandised through cable TV.
Then, it turbocharged its organisation and propaganda through social media, and began its search for a Trump. Having succeeded, it demolished the flimsy scaffolding of custom constraining the Executive, and immediately tested the fascist waters by enacting 'legitimate fascism', banning entire peoples from certain Muslim countries and moving against 'Mexicans', a euphemism for what it perceived at the time to be a cultural and political threat from the growing Hispanic population (wrongly, perhaps, given the recent election, although the results might show the racist suppression and Red Panic propaganda campaign actually worked and scared key Hispanic blocks into voting for Trump).
With those successes under its belt, and power locked in through a compliant senate put to the test in the first impeachment trial and buttressed by billionaire tax cuts, it was now time to socially cleanse those standing in the way of ubermen like Trump, and righteous True Americans like themselves. Believing Covid-19 to be a Liberal Northeast affliction, it aggressively encouraged the unfettered spread of the disease, organising mass and armed misinformation campaigns. (This is the subject that will become the focus of serious historians, not the Capitol incident; however, the latter is a way of getting to the despicable horrors of the former which people still haven't come to grips with).
Meanwhile, the political apparatus and elite business stood idly by, benefitting from consolidated power through a united Executive, Judiciary, Senate, and Justice Department and State Department as Trump purged the entire government, either eliminating positions altogether, refusing to fill them, or putting lackeys and hacks at their head. Opponents were controlled and purged through mob violence. First, Trump used the Executive to expose internal opponents and the departments he controlled to effectively stand over them, then the mob threatened to kill them and their families if they talked.
However, by the time of the election the mass death of Covid-19 — having spread beyond the Northeast states — was collapsing the economy and scaring enough people to vote against Trump, who was becoming increasingly unstable in interviews. International condemnation had also grown, and the once compliant political apparatus began seeing the writing on the wall. Democrats held their nerve and would not be goaded away from choosing a centrist, while the media refused to fall for another pre-election leak scandal.
Then came the rest, from the deranged efforts to overturn the election (how many court cases desperately trying to find an opening?), to the tawdry 'storming' of the Capitol. That it didn't work, and was so pathetic, is very much a distraction from the real horror show which led up to Trump nearly winning the election and then god knows what. With consolidated power, what horror would've followed? The fasco- would've relentlessly pursued its desire to become fascist, and indeed will keep doing so, hence the very real far-right militia threat.
A few bad bounces of the ball; a war with Iran here, an incident with China there, and its desires — and fascism is essentially a desire — might have been realised to an even more horrifying extent. And still might be if this whole business is not taken seriously enough by people who, for whatever reason, can't believe their eyes and ears. |
I don’t find much to disagree with there, but I think you perhaps paint a more coherent throughline than the history shows: even with the considerable overlap between the Bush-era fundamentalist Republican base to the Tea Party to the MAGA crowd and the corresponding overlap on the part of the party’s big-business funders, lobby groups and corrupt gerrymander-and-disenfranchise state-level powerbrokers that ensure this fringe group remains a viable party of government, I feel that there is no "it" to speak of. There is an appetite for fascism and certain lucky breaks that allow it to flourish, but the Trump presidential campaign and administration is not a formula that can be repeated, and neither can it be so easily pinned down or ideologically summarised. I think it’s ultimately a personality cult – one defined at least as much by its opposition to "the other side" as its own beliefs – around a TV celebrity who weaponised base instincts, a mass penchant for fantasising and xenophobia for authoritarian but also self-destructive ends. And those own goals are as much an integral feature of the phenomenon as the destructive and violent impulses you describe. You don’t get one without the other in a situation like this.
So where does that energy go? Does it get directed to an actually effective fascist political program, or does it dissipate amid confusion and infighting? That such ill-directed discontent and disconnection from reality has so much purchase is worrying, but I think it’s an inevitable symptom of a country in decline. America is in deep trouble culturally and economically, and the best they seem to be able to hope for at the moment is to press pause for a short time until the next wave of chaos comes along. Maybe that’ll be in the form of far-right militias or Qanon adherents, but I suspect America will see totalitarianism from the centre before it sees a viable uprising, fascist or otherwise. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Utter garbage David.
They invaded the seat of government itself.
Violently.
With the intent of overturning a free, fair, democratic election.
Egged on by the losing candidate.
Assisted by the security forces, who did essentially nothing. (There will be investigations into that disgraceful matter, and heads will roll. We don't yet know the exact mix of bumbling incompetence and treason on their part, though we do know that both of those things were on display. Time will tell.)
In support of representatives who were, at that very time, trying to overturn an election.
And with the clear and obvious intention of doing physical harm, probably hanging, government officials they wanted to get rid of, and intimidating all the others.
Pretending that all that didn't happen is beyond foolish.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Your claim that Jacobin has a "consistently high standard of journalism" is ridiculous, given that you just quoted an article of transparently idiotic denialism.
Well, maybe it was the one and only. Perhaps it is consistently good apart from that rubbish which slipped through on a bad day.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | Utter garbage David.
They invaded the seat of government itself.
Violently.
With the intent of overturning a free, fair, democratic election.
Egged on by the losing candidate.
Assisted by the security forces, who did essentially nothing. (There will be investigations into that disgraceful matter, and heads will roll. We don't yet know the exact mix of bumbling incompetence and treason on their part, though we do know that both of those things were on display. Time will tell.)
In support of representatives who were, at that very time, trying to overturn an election.
And with the clear and obvious intention of doing physical harm, probably hanging, government officials they wanted to get rid of, and intimidating all the others.
Pretending that all that didn't happen is beyond foolish. |
Seems there is still some doubt over whether that last claim (which will obviously play a large role in how severely rioters are prosecuted) is actually true. There’s a big gulf between 1) trespassing and property damage and 2) attempted murder, after all.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/15/capitol-rioters-accused-aim-capture-and-assassinate-officials/4174807001/ |
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watt price tully
Joined: 15 May 2007
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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| David wrote: | | Tannin wrote: | Utter garbage David.
They invaded the seat of government itself.
Violently.
With the intent of overturning a free, fair, democratic election.
Egged on by the losing candidate.
Assisted by the security forces, who did essentially nothing. (There will be investigations into that disgraceful matter, and heads will roll. We don't yet know the exact mix of bumbling incompetence and treason on their part, though we do know that both of those things were on display. Time will tell.)
In support of representatives who were, at that very time, trying to overturn an election.
And with the clear and obvious intention of doing physical harm, probably hanging, government officials they wanted to get rid of, and intimidating all the others.
Pretending that all that didn't happen is beyond foolish. |
Seems there is still some doubt over whether that last claim (which will obviously play a large role in how severely rioters are prosecuted) is actually true. There’s a big gulf between 1) trespassing and property damage and 2) attempted murder, after all.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/01/15/capitol-rioters-accused-aim-capture-and-assassinate-officials/4174807001/ |
true, you gotta wonder how many demented souls used the unrest as an opportunity to do the bad things in their head. Id say there would be more than a few just wanting some mischief. but then i dont have much faith in humans at the moment!
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/18/trump-sendoff-ceremony-biden-inauguration-day
| Quote: | Many details of the ceremony are not yet clear, although attendees will have to make a pre-dawn start and have been told to arrive by 7.15am, when temperatures are forecast to be below freezing.
Attendees may not bring items including firearms, ammunition, explosives, laser pointers or toy guns. |
Do these guys ever get pulled up on their hypocrisy? Everyone should be able to carry a gun on their person at all times as long as it's not around me. 
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Pi 
Joined: 13 Feb 2006
Location: SA
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Does this thread get locked tomorrow when Trump leaves office? ...asking for a friend.
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Pi = Infinite = Collingwood = Always
Floreat Pica |
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