Koronavirus

[dunning1874]

1 hour ago, TRVMP said:

I don't watch the debates because I don't watch TV, and I know very little about the Proud Boys. I'd need to know more of the context about this. 

The moderator (Chris Wallace) asked the question 'Are you willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of cities?' Trump said 'I'm willing to do that but I would almost everything I see is from the left wing' followed by a bit of Wallace and Trump talking over each other.

Trump then said 'Who would you like me to condemn?', Wallace said Proud Boys followed by the quote I've given above.

The Proud Boys are a male only organisation who style themselves as 'Western chauvinists' who defend Western values, they've been involved in Kenosha and Portland recently and going back a few years one of their members was the main organiser of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. They deny being a white supremacist or fascist group and argue they're fighting against 'PC culture' but you don't have to look far to find them spreading racist views.

A selection of quotes from high profile members:

"I am not afraid to speak out about the atrocities that whites and people of European descent face not only here in this country but in Western nations across the world. The war against whites, and Europeans and Western society is very real and it’s time we all started talking about it and stopped worrying about political correctness and optics.” - Kyle Chapman

"I don’t want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life." - Gavin McInnes (founder)

“through trial and error, I learned that women want to be downright abused” - Gavin McInnes again

That gives you an idea what kind of people we're dealing with here.

 

[TRVMP]

A helpful and thorough post. I'll respond later this afternoon when I'm not in meetings.

[TRVMP]

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

The moderator (Chris Wallace) asked the question 'Are you willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of cities?' Trump said 'I'm willing to do that but I would almost everything I see is from the left wing' followed by a bit of Wallace and Trump talking over each other.

I would agree completely with Trump on that. Sure, let's condemn white supremacists and militia groups. Let's also acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of organized urban violence over this summer has come from the organized radical left, whom the political establishment was very, very slow to condemn. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. These seem like perfectly compatible positions to me - and by the way, this was also true in the 2016 campaign, when several police departments (not all) effectively stood down to let anti-Trump protestors attack Trump supporters in the street, most notably in San Jose in June.

In short, Trump is absolutely correct here. Let's defuse this, but let's do so on all sides, and while also acknowledging that one side is posing far graver danger than the other, and that this could be solved almost immediately by fair-handed policing at both the federal and municipal level, which we currently don't have.

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

Trump then said 'Who would you like me to condemn?', Wallace said Proud Boys followed by the quote I've given above.

The Proud Boys are a male only organisation who style themselves as 'Western chauvinists' who defend Western values, they've been involved in Kenosha and Portland recently and going back a few years one of their members was the main organiser of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. They deny being a white supremacist or fascist group and argue they're fighting against 'PC culture' but you don't have to look far to find them spreading racist views.

So he told this group to stand down and said someone has to do something about antifa and the left? I think this is, again, a perfectly reasonable position. I don't want to live in a country where militia groups are going at it hammer and tongs in the street, be they Proud Boys or antifa or anyone else. I want the police - nationwide - to start doing their jobs. In my city, they do their jobs, and thus our frequent demonstrations are by and large peaceful. (There were two nights of violence; the ongoing weekend protests are now peaceful, and while I don't agree with the protestors, I respect their peacefulness and their right to march in the streets.) 

Trump is absolutely correct when he says that left-wing violence is out of control in certain parts of this country, and if he wants someone to deal with it, that someone should be law enforcement. The FBI is a lost cause; he needs to work at the state level to get this resolved, and it's much easier said than done.

I don't see what telling the Proud Boys to stand down has to say about US politics being far right. By this logic, as I said earlier in the thread, the US would be halfway to an anarcho-syndicalist state if we took punditry about Antifa seriously, and acknowledged that in a few key metro areas - Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, increasingly Austin - they are a meaningful political force. Certainly more meaningful than Proud Boys.

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

A selection of quotes from high profile members:

"I am not afraid to speak out about the atrocities that whites and people of European descent face not only here in this country but in Western nations across the world. The war against whites, and Europeans and Western society is very real and it’s time we all started talking about it and stopped worrying about political correctness and optics.” - Kyle Chapman

This is weird hysteria. I don't know this Kyle Chapman guy but he seems like a wrong 'un. European peoples do not, in any meaningful sense, face "atrocities" in Western nations. There is anti-white - particularly anti-working class white - animus in some areas of the culture, and while it is becoming increasingly prevalent, I don't regard is as particularly dangerous to whites qua whites. (I think this is more class-based than anything else.)

Long story short, the current cultural situation in the US is not equal to a war, nor is it equal to an atrocity. Perhaps Chapman should look into what ethnic warfare actually looks like before he spouts alarmism like this.

And it should go without saying that there is also anti-black and anti-Asian and anti-whatever currents in American cultural, and many of these things are far more pressing and prevalent than what anti-white sentiment does exist. As always, this is situational and depends in large part on where you live, but as a rule of thumb this guy is wrong.

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

"I don’t want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life." - Gavin McInnes (founder)

This was the dominant view of immigration in the US right through to the 1990s, even allowing for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the effective "white America" policy. You can gasp in horror at the inclusion of the word "white" if you want, but this was effectively what the "melting pot" idea was, and also during the days of Ellis Island and European immigration, there were periods of large immigration then periods in which the tap was turned off. These refractory periods, introduced by popular demands, were precisely because assimilation was the goal: the idea being that if Texas became too German or upper Michigan too Finnish, ethnic enclaves would develop and the building of the American nation would be in peril.

Note that I type the above neutrally. It's up to the individual if they think this is a laudable goal, or an effective tactic for reaching it. My point is that this has been, for the majority of American history, completely and utterly baked in: the idea is that immigrants were supposed to come to the US, learn English, and melt into the pot. That it doesn't quite work this way in reality - you can take the boy out of Germany etc. - or that people might disagree with it, is utterly immaterial. So I ask you to read this historically first and normatively second.

The raw fact of the matter is this: until very, very recently - that is, within living memory - the United States hovered around 85% European and 13% African American, give or take. The composition of that European population has differed drastically over the centuries, from almost entirely of British (and some French and Dutch) descent early on, to large-scale German immigration, to Irish, Italian, Balkan, and so on. Each wave of immigration has changed the culture - very often for the better. We now have large Hispanic populations, too - populations that were very small and localized right through the early 20th century are now dominant and ascendent in many places, such as where I live. Once again, cultural changes have ensued - many for the better. Also where I live, there are now huge South Asian populations, mostly Indian and Nepali. (Until a few years ago I lived in the most diverse ZIP code in the country, and very nice it was, too.) And so on and so forth. In all cases, the new populations have changed America as much as America has changed them. This is almost axiomatic, and nobody bats an eye at this when you point out the benefits of diversity. Again, read this historically, not normatively.

So, to move onto normative judgement here. What McInnes asks for is also what large number of immigrants ask for. One third of Nicaraguans want to move to the United States, and they want to do so presumably because the United States is qualitatively different from Nicaragua. If the United States was not unlike Nicaragua, then Nicaraguans would have no reason to come to the United States. If the United States is qualitatively different from Nicaragua, it is worth asking why - and any explanation that completely discounts the United States' history in total is insufficient. It is completely reasonable to suggest that the United States' way of life in toto has contributed to its enormous cultural and economic success. That way of life necessarily includes, by way of history, periods of immigration and periods of assimilation, and also a dominant Western culture. Those who fear its "dilution" (to use McInnes' term, not mine) are completely justified in raising that point.

And everyone reading this, as much as they're spluttering about it, agrees with this wholeheartedly when they actually give it five minutes' thought, otherwise what's all the fuss about with Tibet? Every single living Tibetan will tell you that their lands have changed drastically since the mass arrival of Han Chinese. Most Han Chinese will, in turn, point out that Tibet was a dirt-poor autocracy to which the Peoples' Republic has brought technology, healthcare, and the outside world. Who you side with (and I side with neither, because it's nothing to do with me) is completely immaterial to the obvious and axiomatic truth: culture comprises peoples, and when peoples change, so do cultures.

I don't fully agree with him. His argument is simplistic and coarse. I also don't fully disagree with him. He's absolutely correct to acknowledge that a Western society is only prevalent among Westerners. It's perfectly reasonable to expect that an America that is no longer 82% European will have different characteristics to one that is. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to the individual.

And above all, the regrettable existence of Gavin McInnes - and I have heard of him, at least - again says to me very little about the US being nowhere near far-right.

1 hour ago, dunning1874 said:

“through trial and error, I learned that women want to be downright abused” - Gavin McInnes again

That gives you an idea what kind of people we're dealing with here.

Yeah, Gavin McInnes is a tosser, and I assume most of his acolytes are as well. I'm glad the President* told him and his buddies to stand down.

*it bears repeating that I'm increasingly certain that Trump will lose in November.

Side note, but the book Albion's Seed is an utterly fascinating - if extremely dry - look at how the separate British cultures shaped early America.

[dunning1874]

Thanks for the extensive response, as you'd expect there are points I disagree with among the stuff I didn't have any context for previously but to cut straight to the crux here:

15 hours ago, TRVMP said:

So he told this group to stand down and said someone has to do something about antifa and the left? I think this is, again, a perfectly reasonable position. I don't want to live in a country where militia groups are going at it hammer and tongs in the street, be they Proud Boys or antifa or anyone else. I want the police - nationwide - to start doing their jobs. In my city, they do their jobs, and thus our frequent demonstrations are by and large peaceful. (There were two nights of violence; the ongoing weekend protests are now peaceful, and while I don't agree with the protestors, I respect their peacefulness and their right to march in the streets.) 

Trump is absolutely correct when he says that left-wing violence is out of control in certain parts of this country, and if he wants someone to deal with it, that someone should be law enforcement. The FBI is a lost cause; he needs to work at the state level to get this resolved, and it's much easier said than done.

I don't see what telling the Proud Boys to stand down has to say about US politics being far right. By this logic, as I said earlier in the thread, the US would be halfway to an anarcho-syndicalist state if we took punditry about Antifa seriously, and acknowledged that in a few key metro areas - Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, increasingly Austin - they are a meaningful political force. Certainly more meaningful than Proud Boys.

We're possibly back to seriously not literally v literally not seriously here but I find this disingenuous.

Are we really to believe that Trump's intended message to Proud Boys and other right wing groups was simply 'stand back', ie get off the streets and let law enforcement deal with ongoing protests, in a plea to avoid the US descending into Weimar republic level street battles with Kyle Ritttenhouse as an inspiration for the right and Michael Reinoehl for the left?

That interpretation dispenses with the rest of his answer and I don't think it's remotely unreasonable to interpret telling them to 'stand by' because 'someone needs to deal with Antifa' as saying that the Proud Boys and groups like them are the ones who need to deal with the left and should be standing by to do so when required. As you've said in this thread, contrary to popular coverage he's not an idiot and therefore he knew fine well how those words would be understood. In the not at all unlikely event this election result ends up in court with challenges over the validity of postal ballots he has these groups standing by to take to the streets.

[TRVMP]

4 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Thanks for the extensive response, as you'd expect there are points I disagree with among the stuff I didn't have any context for previously but to cut straight to the crux here:

We're possibly back to seriously not literally v literally not seriously here but I find this disingenuous.

Are we really to believe that Trump's intended message to Proud Boys and other right wing groups was simply 'stand back', ie get off the streets and let law enforcement deal with ongoing protests, in a plea to avoid the US descending into Weimar republic level street battles with Kyle Ritttenhouse as an inspiration for the right and Michael Reinoehl for the left?

The US, no. Individual cities, yes. It's a bad look for Trump if there are running battles in Portland, as there have been in recent weeks.

Quote

That interpretation dispenses with the rest of his answer and I don't think it's remotely unreasonable to interpret telling them to 'stand by' because 'someone needs to deal with Antifa' as saying that the Proud Boys and groups like them are the ones who need to deal with the left and should be standing by to do so when required.

It doesn't dispense with the rest of the answer at all. Regardless of what follows, "stand down" is absolutely unequivocal - far less equivocal, in fact, than the US establishment managed with the rioters in Portland and Seattle for several weeks.

Quote

As you've said in this thread, contrary to popular coverage he's not an idiot and therefore he knew fine well how those words would be understood. In the not at all unlikely event this election result ends up in court with challenges over the validity of postal ballots he has these groups standing by to take to the streets.

This is absolute hysteria and no small measure of projection. Given that Trump narrowly avoided a coup attempt orchestrated by the previous administration and our intelligence agencies, and that the radical left currently has several major cities in its pocket, the likelihood of post-election machinations and violence is almost entirely unidirectional. McInnes and his buddies aren't a meaningful force and wouldn't have any role to play in something to do with a constitutional crisis. Wouldn't Trump, in such a case, just deploy the National Guard, rather than a few thousand (I'm assuming) Proud Boys?

[Cappiecat 1.2]

1 hour ago, TRVMP said:

Regardless of what follows, "stand down" is absolutely unequivocal

Yes it is but that's not what he said.

"Stand back and stand by" were his words to the proud boys right wing militia. It is very obviously a call for readiness to act.

[TRVMP]

7 minutes ago, Cappiecat 1.2 said:

Yes it is but that's not what he said.

"Stand back and stand by" were his words to the proud boys right wing militia. It is very obviously a call for readiness to act.

I didn't watch it, as I said - I'm going off what dunning wrote.

If for no other reason that its being a colossal miscalculation, I don't believe for a second that Trump is trying to turn the Proud Boys into some kind of paramilitary force.

Once again this is complete and utter projection from an American media establishment whose own forces have been on the streets in several US cities for months.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

Didn't see the debate apart from a few wee snippets, but from what little I did see  I don't think either of them came away with any credit.

We're good friends with a rural Texan couple who we got to know 20 years ago in The Netherlands when he was on an 3 year ex-pat assignment with Philips, the company we both worked for at the time. They're a genuinely lovely couple who doted on our oldest daughter who was just a toddler at the time. Anyway fast forward to a few years ago and we hooked up again on Facebook. Although I don't think we ever discussed politics once in the time we knew them, it came as no surprise to find out that they're out-and-out Trump lovers. Which is of course fine, they're a product of their environment (rural Texas) just the same as I'm a product of mine (west of Scotland working class shipbuilding). But they're certainly not dungaree-wearing, straw-sucking, banjo-playing rednecks.

What was shocking though is how racist they are, although I'm sure they would deny it. When someone asked what they thought of Trump's refusal to condemn white supremacists, their reply (they have a joint Facebook account so I don't know if it was him or her, ha!) was 'well Biden didn't condemn BLM'. So they were implying there was a moral equivalence between BLM campaigning against racism and inequality, and the Proud Boys (amongst others) campaigning for supremacy. And they're not stupid people.

Interested on your thoughts TRVMP, are these opinions the norm among Trump supporters, or the exception?

[TRVMP]

This question is based on a false premise, so let's get that resolved before getting deeper into it (and we will.) Trump has condemned white supremacy to an almost nauseating degree on more occasions than I can count. I don't think you are being dishonest here by not knowing this, but the US media has dishonestly painted for years that this isn't the case. He condemned it yesterday, he condemned it a month ago, repeat ad nauseam all the way down. Frankly he needs to stop doing it because he's said it enough times.

You can easily, easily find examples of his doing so.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

9 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

This question is based on a false premise, so let's get that resolved before getting deeper into it (and we will.) Trump has condemned white supremacy to an almost nauseating degree on more occasions than I can count. I don't think you are being dishonest here by not knowing this, but the US media has dishonestly painted for years that this isn't the case. He condemned it yesterday, he condemned it a month ago, repeat ad nauseam all the way down. Frankly he needs to stop doing it because he's said it enough times.

You can easily, easily find examples of his doing so.

The question wasn't actually about Trump condemnation of white supremacy. The question was, is the moral equivalence of BLM and white supremacy a commonly held view amongst Trump supporters?

[TRVMP]

6 minutes ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

The question wasn't actually about Trump condemnation of white supremacy. The question was, is the moral equivalence of BLM and white supremacy a commonly held view amongst Trump supporters?

The question rests on the following assumptions:

Trump: didn't condemn white supremacy
Biden: didn't condemn BLM
Trump: at fault because he doesn't condemn something that's wrong
Biden: not at fault because there's nothing about BLM worth condemning

The very first premise here is untrue, and we can't go (or at least I won't go) further until it's resolved.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

21 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

The question rests on the following assumptions:

Trump: didn't condemn white supremacy
Biden: didn't condemn BLM
Trump: at fault because he doesn't condemn something that's wrong
Biden: not at fault because there's nothing about BLM worth condemning

The very first premise here is untrue, and we can't go (or at least I won't go) further until it's resolved.

Again though, the question has nothing to do with what Trump or Biden did or didn't condemn.

The question is, is it common among Trump supports to morally equate BLM to white supremacy?

[TRVMP]

I'd need to see the exact formulation of the question and answer to even be able to try to answer that, because based on our discussion so far I can't be any more than 50% sure that you're representing their views honestly.

edit: and even then there's no guarantee I'll be able to answer it. I know hardly any Trump supporters, and it's not the kind of formulation that shows up easily in polling. But given the actual, exact wording of your question and their answer, I will be able to at least gauge the question.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

Bit of context, the Facebook friends of our friends are to a man and woman fervent Trump supporters. In the thread in question they were discussing the debate and they unanimously declared Trump to be the clear winner. In the thread was the following discourse...

Person A -  I see they're (me: the media, I presume) making Trump out to be racist again

My Friend: Because they're saying he didn't condemn the KKK and stuff?

Person A - Yes, they set him up

My Friend - Well I didn't hear Biden condemn BLM either, but they don't report that

[TRVMP]

OK, that helps. I'm assuming that this isn't verbatim but whatever, it'll do. For the record Trump has condemned the KKK numerous times - again, far more than he should, given that there's around a dozen of them and half of them are feds anyway. It's ludicrous that people are up at night thinking he's a white supremacist and I lay the blame for this entirely at the door of the media, who don't believe it but know that it drives the outrage machine.

Again, I don't think someone verbatim compared the KKK to BLM, but if they did, this is obviously stupid and from what I know of Trump supporters this would be an extremely niche view.

The contention that "BLM" as a hashtag is fighting for equality and racism is obviously correct. The contention that it's doing so effectively is one that I imagine some Trump supporters would take issue with. Personally I regard the movement as utterly disastrous for black lives, much as it was in the Ferguson era, following the clear-as-day corrolation between a reduction in police activity and the explosion of the murder rate in black communities. However, it's really got nothing to do with me, and as such it's not something I worry about.

For what it's worth, here in Dallas, as I think I mentioned, BLM have been peaceful but for the first two nights, in which they merrily smashed up a bunch of shops, among other things. I respect their remaining peaceful since then and I am glad that they do so. They seem to self-police pretty well around here.

 

[Cet Homme Charmant]

7 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

I think I mentioned, BLM have been peaceful but for the first two nights, in which they merrily smashed up a bunch of shops, among other things. 

Was it BLM who did the rioting, or just violent opportunist thugs masquerading as BLM who explored the situation to loot a few shops? Genuine question.

[TRVMP]

27 minutes ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

Was it BLM who did the rioting, or just violent opportunist thugs masquerading as BLM who explored the situation to loot a few shops? Genuine question.

Very fair question and the answer is, it's impossible to say at this point. I would be hugely, hugely surprised if the bulk of the damage wasn't done by people just attaching themselves to any public disorder. That isn't to say that they aren't BLM supporters: they probably are, most people are. But it's perfectly fair to say they're probably not representative. Here in Dallas what I'll call the "true" supporters - the ones still marching at weekends and (temporarily) blocking traffic to make themselves heard - are disruptive, but peaceful and non-violent. (They do have several people among them carrying heavy weaponry, it has to be said, but that is not evidence of violence.)

The genuine leftist terror in places like Portland and Seattle was BLM-adjacent but it's more antifa and anarchists than anything else. I would not call it representative of BLM.

The carnage in Minneapolis is a bit murkier. I'd call that BLM for the most part, but again, with diffuse groups, and people representing "ideas" more than groups with membership lists, the line is far from clear.

[Cet Homme Charmant]

I see Trump and his missus have tested positive. 

[dunning1874]

15 hours ago, TRVMP said:

The US, no. Individual cities, yes. It's a bad look for Trump if there are running battles in Portland, as there have been in recent weeks.

It doesn't dispense with the rest of the answer at all. Regardless of what follows, "stand down" is absolutely unequivocal - far less equivocal, in fact, than the US establishment managed with the rioters in Portland and Seattle for several weeks.

This is absolute hysteria and no small measure of projection. Given that Trump narrowly avoided a coup attempt orchestrated by the previous administration and our intelligence agencies, and that the radical left currently has several major cities in its pocket, the likelihood of post-election machinations and violence is almost entirely unidirectional. McInnes and his buddies aren't a meaningful force and wouldn't have any role to play in something to do with a constitutional crisis. Wouldn't Trump, in such a case, just deploy the National Guard, rather than a few thousand (I'm assuming) Proud Boys?

Stand back rather than stand down, appreciate it's easy to misplace a word with the length of posts we're running with here. Discounting what he said in the rest of the sentence divorces it from the context. To give a hypothetical opposite, if some establishment Democrat or other was asked their views on BLM and said 'I think violence in the streets is wrong and protests have to stop, but I agree that something has to be done about the number of black Americans being killed by law enforcement' - that wouldn't be taken as an unequivocal condemnation. Even though they'd be saying they want them off the streets in the name of law and order, they'd be expressing sympathy with their aims and that would be seized on by their opponents; I think the exact same applies in reverse.

In terms of post-election machinations, there's only one candidate consistently talking up the potential for fraud among postal votes in an election which will have more postal votes than ever due to Covid-19, is attempting to savage the USPS in the run up to the election as part of the attempts to discredit postal voting, has openly spoken about the election ending up in court due to postal ballots and said the following when asked about committing to a peaceful transfer power if he lost the election:

"Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very - you'll have a very peaceful - there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation."

[TRVMP]

12 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Stand back rather than stand down, appreciate it's easy to misplace a word with the length of posts we're running with here. Discounting what he said in the rest of the sentence divorces it from the context. To give a hypothetical opposite, if some establishment Democrat or other was asked their views on BLM and said 'I think violence in the streets is wrong and protests have to stop, but I agree that something has to be done about the number of black Americans being killed by law enforcement' - that wouldn't be taken as an unequivocal condemnation. Even though they'd be saying they want them off the streets in the name of law and order, they'd be expressing sympathy with their aims and that would be seized on by their opponents; I think the exact same applies in reverse.

In terms of post-election machinations, there's only one candidate consistently talking up the potential for fraud among postal votes in an election which will have more postal votes than ever due to Covid-19, is attempting to savage the USPS in the run up to the election as part of the attempts to discredit postal voting, has openly spoken about the election ending up in court due to postal ballots and said the following when asked about committing to a peaceful transfer power if he lost the election:

"Get rid of the ballots, and you'll have a very - you'll have a very peaceful - there won't be a transfer, frankly, there'll be a continuation."

We need to parse that hypothetical quote out a bit:

"I think violence in the streets is wrong and protests have to stop, but I agree that something has to be done about the number of black Americans being killed by law enforcement."

This would be taken as an unequivocal condemnation. What has happened is that some leaders have denounced the violence and burning and looting, but have not called for an end to the protests in general, and believe that the cause is just. So we'd take out the middle of the sentence about stopping the protests. Then it would not be unequivocal, but it would be (I believe anyway) a reasonable enough position for someone to hold, even if I don't agree with it. (If we remember back to the distant days of July, some of the same health authorities that had been telling us to lock down then claimed, hilariously, that anti-black violence among the police was a public health emergency, and thus protests were not just permissible but actually required. It was around this time that I began abstaining from television in earnest, rather than just out of habit.)

And now we need to parse the last part of your claim out a bit: "Even though they'd be saying they want them off the streets in the name of law and order, they'd be expressing sympathy with their aims and that would be seized on by their opponents; I think the exact same applies in reverse."

This would only apply if the aims of the Proud Boys were analogous to the aims of law enforcement. I don't know enough about Proud Boys to know their aims - and frankly I think I'm with 95% of Americans on that, the ones who aren't breathlessly tweeting about nazis all day - but I'm going to assume that they are not. I'm going to assume that their aims are more around getting Gavin McInnes in front of cameras. Some of them are also presumably spoiling for a fight with antifa. Some presumably have noble aims and goals. I don't know. All I know is, they're not analogous to law enforcement in any way, and their aims are not the same, so the comparison falls apart.

The second half is once again pure projection, 100%, nothing but projection. I repeat: Trump narrowly avoided a coup. The opponent he defeated last time has already said she will not respect the election results if he wins. The post office situation is a ridiculous red herring, hence most liberals here have stopped talking about it: would Trump not, if he were A Grave Threat To Democracy, not have done the literal, exact opposite of this? Republicans are far better at postal voting than Democrats, and this has been true for decades. Meanwhile early voting in places like Florida and North Carolina - that is, early, in-person voting that has been taking place for several days - is so far resulting in massive turnouts of Democrats. Why not use COVID to suppress the Democratic core vote in the most obvious way - stop them from going to the polls (which they are doing in huge numbers?)

And again I'll ask the extremely obvious question: why use the "Proud Boys" for this and not the National Guard?