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doriswilgus
Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Location: the great southern land
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| David,I don’t consider allegedly sniffing someone’s hair or invading their personal space to be the same as sexual assault.It’s a bit weird admittedly,but it’s not on the same level as sexual assault. |
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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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| David wrote: | | pietillidie wrote: | | The frightening thing is how assiduously and relentlessly the fasco- instincts searched for an opening over time. |
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.
...but I suspect America will see totalitarianism from the centre before it sees a viable uprising, fascist or otherwise. |
Well, that's virtually no disagreement as you noted except for the unfounded expectation of fascism arising from the centre. I call 'fasco-whatever-it-is' an instinct or an impulse looking for an excuse or opening; you don't really seem to disagree.
The two terms that I think capture the present incarnation best are fasco-populism (method - how it takes power) and fasco-protectionism (impulse - how it justifies abandoning principle and decency). Social media has enabled the former, while the latter is on display in all kinds of policy areas, from immigration and China to an irrational yearning for comfortable salaries pulling levers at imaginary 1950's manufacturing plants.
Fascism first comes from an abandonment of principle and fairness, and is then realised through a rage which finds excuse and justification for a completely shameless oppression and violence.
In contrast, hypocrisy, vacillation and plausible deniability are what you get at the centre. From the perspective of social psychology, these are the very marks of decency. If they don't exist, you know no one is even bothering to aspire to decency. There is no non-hypocritical state even in the most moral of societies.
So, mature moral contradictions can only exist if there are conscious, recognised principles that are difficult to uphold all of the time. The far left lives under the delusion that it's hypocrisy free, and the far right that consistency of principle doesn't matter The far left wipes the entire economy from its mind's eye to sidestep the need for hypocrisy, while the far right abandons all principle for a primitive self-serving Darwinianism to achieve the same. One of the far right's favourite moves is to use the very existence of hypocrisy as proof of failure and thus justification for the abandonment of self-denial.
What you point out, for instance, about Trump and co. not wanting arms carried at their events is not hypocrisy in the social psychological sense; it's complete indifference to principle. The principle is not even under consideration; there is no feeling of tension, no sense of shame that seeks to obscure itself. The difference is crucial.
Sure, the centre can be bought off and sit idly by, but the batshit mental case energy fascism needs is not generated at the centre by definition. One might argue this is why the very centrist ALP and the UK Labour Party are not electable; simply, they're not deranged enough to generate the energy needed to overcome the crazies and motivate media coverage and votes (as happened with Brexit).
In fact, there's a strong argument that enough of the centre eventually getting irate enough with Trump — a reluctant counter-rage — got people out to vote and drove the creep and his cult into increasingly extreme fasco-expression as they began to face motivated disapproval. Not party-line disapproval (Russian electoral interference; Mueller; the first house impeachment), but broad-based disapproval. Trump and loons may have got the jump on people reluctant to get into the toxic mud with them, but unlike the one-off Brexit vote by the time the second presidential election came around the broad centre was sufficiently awakened.
So no, I don't think fascism comes or is likely to come from the centre. It can poison the whole, and drag the whole into the filth with it, but it comes from the pathologically motivated and conscience-neutered on the extremes.
Edit: I just tried to make that more concise!
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Last edited by pietillidie on Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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pietillidie
Joined: 07 Jan 2005
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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A coward to the last:
https://www.kten.com/story/43198209/trump-talked-out-of-pardoning-kids-and-republican-lawmakers
| Quote: | Trump is also not expected to pardon Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, whose roles in revealing US secrets infuriated official Washington.
While he had once entertained the idea, Trump decided against it because he did not want to anger Senate Republicans who will soon determine whether he's convicted during his Senate trial. Multiple GOP lawmakers had sent messages through aides that they felt strongly about not granting clemency to Assange or Snowden.
As he departs office, Trump has expressed real concern that Republicans could turn on him. A conviction in the Senate impeachment trial would limit his future political activities and strip him of some of the government perks of being an ex-president. |
He still hasn't released his final batch of pardons (which will apparently be announced within the next few hours), so he may yet prove me wrong. Otherwise, it should never be forgotten that this was a man who pardoned the perpetrators of the Nisour Square massacre but couldn't find it within him to stop the criminal pursuit of someone who brought acts like that to public knowledge. Just a cherry on top of the scumbag sundae.
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/23/7047519/blackwater-trial-nisour-square-massacre-2007-guilty-convicted
| Quote: | Blackwater maintained that its contractors were ambushed at the intersection by Iraqi insurgents dressed as civilians and Iraqi officers, and that they returned fire.
But several other eyewitness accounts, from both Iraqi bystanders and other Blackwater employees, said otherwise. According to those eyewitnesses, guards began to "fire recklessly on innocent people" who were attempting to flee the square — and who did not return fire. According to one account, one Blackwater guard continued to shoot after his colleagues told him to stop; he did not stop shooting until another guard drew a gun on him.
Initial reports said that at least 11 Iraqis were killed in the massacre. A later investigation by the Iraqi government brought that number up to 17 deaths and an additional 20 injuries. |
A more graphic description here. It's distressing, but I think people need to fully appreciate what dry reports about "civilian deaths" and "war crimes" actually mean:
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/blackwater-massacre-iraq-pardons/
| Quote: | Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. Bullets were everywhere. Mohammed would look to see what was happening. He saw the man next to him run. Machine gunfire tore through his body. Shots were fired everywhere. Mohammed could see other cars being shot. The Blackwater guards were firing indiscriminately. Iraqi traffic police initially tried to wave down the Blackwater men that there was no threat, but they too had to run for cover. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. Machine gunfire would cause his lifeless body to shake in his pool of blood. In the middle of the attack, Mohammed could not understand why this man lying dead was a target. He could not understand what was happening or why. But he knew he was surviving as he kept yelling for the children in the back of his SUV to stay down.
The shooting ended as suddenly as it started. The four armored vehicles drove away. Everything was eerily quiet. Mohammed had not been shot. His sister was safe. He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. Then one of his sister’s children said that [nine-year-old] Ali was hurt.
Mohammed quickly got out of the car and saw blood inside the rear window. Ali was slumped over against the glass. When Mohammed opened the door, his son fell toward him as his skull opened and a large part of Ali’s brain fell onto the pavement between his father’s feet. Video of the aftermath includes an image of a human brain on the road in Nisour Square. |
(Now imagine if Julian Knight or Martin Bryant were given a pardon – a pardon, mind you, not a commutation, not just setting them free but also erasing the conviction – after serving a measly three years in prison.)
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| David wrote: | A coward to the last:
| Quote: | | Trump is also not expected to pardon Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, whose roles in revealing US secrets infuriated official Washington. |
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But Assange's selective leaking was what got Trump into office in the first place. Without Assange, it would have been President Clinton no questions asked. Assange was the enabler, the straw that swung the election just far enough.
Obviously Trump will pardon Assange out of gratitude and loyalty and as thanks for a job well done. Trump is big on gratitude and loyalty and .... er ...
Sorry.
As you were.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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watt price tully 
Joined: 15 May 2007
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| David wrote: | A coward to the last:
https://www.kten.com/story/43198209/trump-talked-out-of-pardoning-kids-and-republican-lawmakers
| Quote: | Trump is also not expected to pardon Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, whose roles in revealing US secrets infuriated official Washington.
While he had once entertained the idea, Trump decided against it because he did not want to anger Senate Republicans who will soon determine whether he's convicted during his Senate trial. Multiple GOP lawmakers had sent messages through aides that they felt strongly about not granting clemency to Assange or Snowden.
As he departs office, Trump has expressed real concern that Republicans could turn on him. A conviction in the Senate impeachment trial would limit his future political activities and strip him of some of the government perks of being an ex-president. |
He still hasn't released his final batch of pardons (which will apparently be announced within the next few hours), so he may yet prove me wrong. Otherwise, it should never be forgotten that this was a man who pardoned the perpetrators of the Nisour Square massacre but couldn't find it within him to stop the criminal pursuit of someone who brought acts like that to public knowledge. Just a cherry on top of the scumbag sundae.
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/23/7047519/blackwater-trial-nisour-square-massacre-2007-guilty-convicted
| Quote: | Blackwater maintained that its contractors were ambushed at the intersection by Iraqi insurgents dressed as civilians and Iraqi officers, and that they returned fire.
But several other eyewitness accounts, from both Iraqi bystanders and other Blackwater employees, said otherwise. According to those eyewitnesses, guards began to "fire recklessly on innocent people" who were attempting to flee the square — and who did not return fire. According to one account, one Blackwater guard continued to shoot after his colleagues told him to stop; he did not stop shooting until another guard drew a gun on him.
Initial reports said that at least 11 Iraqis were killed in the massacre. A later investigation by the Iraqi government brought that number up to 17 deaths and an additional 20 injuries. |
A more graphic description here. It's distressing, but I think people need to fully appreciate what dry reports about "civilian deaths" and "war crimes" actually mean:
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/23/blackwater-massacre-iraq-pardons/
| Quote: | Luckily, before his SUV was attacked, Mohammed, his sister, and their children had time to duck into the car. Mohammed and his sister screamed for their children to get down. Bullets were everywhere. Mohammed would look to see what was happening. He saw the man next to him run. Machine gunfire tore through his body. Shots were fired everywhere. Mohammed could see other cars being shot. The Blackwater guards were firing indiscriminately. Iraqi traffic police initially tried to wave down the Blackwater men that there was no threat, but they too had to run for cover. Mohammed kept seeing the man on the ground next to him being fired upon as he lay dead. Machine gunfire would cause his lifeless body to shake in his pool of blood. In the middle of the attack, Mohammed could not understand why this man lying dead was a target. He could not understand what was happening or why. But he knew he was surviving as he kept yelling for the children in the back of his SUV to stay down.
The shooting ended as suddenly as it started. The four armored vehicles drove away. Everything was eerily quiet. Mohammed had not been shot. His sister was safe. He thought they had been given a miracle after he saw so many others killed. Then one of his sister’s children said that [nine-year-old] Ali was hurt.
Mohammed quickly got out of the car and saw blood inside the rear window. Ali was slumped over against the glass. When Mohammed opened the door, his son fell toward him as his skull opened and a large part of Ali’s brain fell onto the pavement between his father’s feet. Video of the aftermath includes an image of a human brain on the road in Nisour Square. |
(Now imagine if Julian Knight or Martin Bryant were given a pardon – a pardon, mind you, not a commutation, not just setting them free but also erasing the conviction – after serving a measly three years in prison.) |
Amongst others the Blackwater pardons are a disgrace. Simple murderers.
Assange should be pardoned but as Tannin correctly identified he played a huge role in getting Trump elected by the timing and the selective leaking of information.
So Assange should be pardoned then put in stocks and have rotten veges thrown at him for 4 years to begin to pardon his behaviour.
_________________
“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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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | | David wrote: | A coward to the last:
| Quote: | | Trump is also not expected to pardon Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, whose roles in revealing US secrets infuriated official Washington. |
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But Assange's selective leaking was what got Trump into office in the first place. Without Assange, it would have been President Clinton no questions asked. Assange was the enabler, the straw that swung the election just far enough.
Obviously Trump will pardon Assange out of gratitude and loyalty and as thanks for a job well done. Trump is big on gratitude and loyalty and .... er ...
Sorry.
As you were. |
The first claim is either impossible to prove or simply wrong on several counts, but this probably isn't the right thread to go into it in detail. Basically, if I had to assign tipping points that led to Trump's election in order of importance, I'd pick 1) Comey's last-minute announcement that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email account and 2) the Democrats' hubris in failing to devote sufficient resources to key swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania in the final weeks before getting to 3) Wikileaks' release of newsworthy information in the public interest about behind-the-scenes corruption in the Democratic Party. I think the latter revelations angered many Sanders supporters, as they ought to have, but probably didn't move the needle in the suburbs, nor in the lower socioeconomic areas where people who voted for Obama simply didn't turn up at all – and, despite claims by Clinton and many of her supporters, the fact remains that the vast majority of Sanders supporters got behind her in the end anyway.
But even if that did play a significant role, the smoking gun still belongs to Comey: his intervention was particularly devastating for Clinton as it reinforced in the public's mind everything Trump had been saying about "Crooked Hillary", even though the private email issue was obscure and most people – including me, to be honest – never really fully understood what it was all about. When you look at the low turnout and the general "a plague on both their houses" sentiment in 2016, the notion that both candidates were equally corrupt was a big factor in how one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history managed to win.
On the second, Trump never gave a damn about Assange, not then and not afterwards. So any notion that he would have any reason to feel "loyal" towards him (even if Trump wasn't ultimately only in this for himself) is fanciful. We already know what Trump thinks of leakers in the public interest and the publishers who work with them; he told everyone who cared to listen on his Twitter account at the time:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/donald-trump-edward-snowden-execution_n_3489944?ri18n=true
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/312679-trump-in-2010-wanted-death-penalty-for-wikileaks
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Bahhh.
Any one of those three was enough. Take any one away and Bingo! different result.
As for your ludicrous pretense that Assange acted "in the public interest", words fail me. Doesn't happen often, but you have managed it.
It was, of course, a deliberate, targeted attempt to sway the election, and it worked exactly as intended.
The US and Swedish attempts to get Assange both have been transparently unjust travesties. The man certainly deserves to be punished for his clueless and very damaging meddling in anything - anything at all - just so long as it makes him feel important, and utterly regardless of how many people it kills - just not for the things he was actually charged with.
PS: pretending that Trump thinks anything about leakers is silly: Trump thinks only of himself and his personal advantage. Hell, he only got into office because of a leaker. Not that gratitude is something he understands.
_________________
�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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I've noticed that a lot of people seem to think that Assange was somehow being "disloyal" by publishing information that might hurt "our side". In this time of increasingly partisan media, that's perhaps an easy mistake to make, but I still have to wonder if anyone ever thinks for a moment about the principles of journalism and what a publisher's responsibility actually is.
Let me ask you this: if you were a newspaper editor and you were given access to documents a few months prior to an election that proved that one party's apparatus had done everything it could to rig its primaries and collude with media organisations to freeze out its non-preferred candidate, would you choose to publish that information – information regarding a clear corruption of the democratic process that would lead high-ranking members of the party to resign if it came to light – even in the knowledge that it might hurt your favoured candidate? Or would you aid its suppression and wait until after the election so people don't get a chance to vote with that knowledge? If so, who, exactly, is taking the undemocratic, unprincipled stance here?
Was Assange motivated by personal interest, a lust for power and attention and a desire for revenge against a candidate who had previously reportedly "joked" about extrajudicially murdering him? Yes, quite possibly. Was he wrong to publish? No, absolutely not.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Wed Jan 20, 2021 10:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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No, he was motivated by ego. His own massive ego.
Anyway, you got the question wrong. The correct question here is this:
If Vladimir Putin's thugs provided you with illegitimately-obtained information designed to enable the election of a spectacularly corrupt and incompetent leader, one who would be properly servile and advance Putin's interest at every opportunity, in the hope that you would spread it, would you help them?
_________________
�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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If it were true information in the public interest, then yes. The morality or intentions of the source are irrelevant, and any journalist who says otherwise is in the wrong profession. Next question, please.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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"In the public interest".
Yer right.
So doing the work for Putin's goons is "in the public interest".
The average whore has better ethics than that.
_________________
�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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No, you have it the wrong way around. The information itself is what's in the public interest. If it happens to work to the benefit of a candidate you don't like, or a country you don't like, what difference should that make to a principled journalist? You're sounding like Tony Abbott when he criticised the ABC for not working in the "national interest", as if journalists' first loyalty ought to be to the motherland.
If Putin's goons take a secret video tomorrow of, say, Scott Morrison accepting bribes and pass it on to the media, you publish it, even if it embarrasses Australia and helps Russia. Every single time. End. Of. Story.
(I also think that dig at the end is unkind and unnecessary and that you should retract it – no need to malign the ethics of sex workers in the context of this conversation.)
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Wed Jan 20, 2021 1:04 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Nothing wrong with the ethics of sex workers. It is the ethics of people prepared to prostitute themselves to Putin just to get a story - that's what we have to worry about.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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