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I like TRVMP (the poster) and don’t want any kind of beef, but I cannot fathom going to that much effort in your head to justify corruption when the very man alleging it doesn’t himself. I can’t process being fairly level-headed and not being able to see it for exactly what it is, an utterly desperate attempt at clinging on to power. Fucking hell, even FOX & OAN are struggling to work with it. 

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1 hour ago, TheGoon said:

I like TRVMP (the poster) and don’t want any kind of beef, but I cannot fathom going to that much effort in your head to justify corruption when the very man alleging it doesn’t himself. I can’t process being fairly level-headed and not being able to see it for exactly what it is, an utterly desperate attempt at clinging on to power. Fucking hell, even FOX & OAN are struggling to work with it. 

There's no beef. I'm looking at this fairly dispassionately. I understand that I'm swimming against the tide. Maybe one day I'll look back and think myself wrong, or hoodwinked, or whatever. Maybe I'll think I was blinded by loyalty. But I can say with all honesty that I knew (for example) the claims about racism from Trump were nonsense; the claims about collaboration with Russia from Trump were nonsense; and on and on and on and on and on. This supposed fascist, this supposed dictator, this supposed egomaniac who would stop at nothing in an eternal quest for power, ended up a picture of moderation in power, a guy who couldn't even bring himself to dispatch of clearly disloyal members of his administration, much less open the FEMA camps. The last four years have been a parade of media figures breathlessly pronouncing The End of Democracy, and in reality absolutely nothing of the sort has taken place.* So am I about to say now, after a series of false alarms that would shame a big bad wolf, that Trump is somehow acting beyond the pale? No, I'm not.

So, to address your first point:

First of all, the reason you can't process it, or see it as justification, is because you're a television viewer. There's not much to say beyond that. The authoritative people all have one opinion (just as they all had one opinion that there were WMDs in Iraq and that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming President) so anything beyond that is unimaginable. That's the long and short of it. The screen talks and the viewer listens. That's it.

To address the broader point:

Of course it's an attempt to hold onto power. Why on earth would anyone think otherwise? Why would anyone act otherwise? Do you think anyone involved in this is thinking of the electoral integrity? If they are, it's selective, and entirely based on whether or not they believe that an appearance of propriety helps them in the moment. I remind you again, there are several disputed results in recent history: Stacey Abrams still claims publicly that she was cheated out of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Hillary Clinton, admittedly quiet about it for a couple of years now, has publicly said on literally ten or more occasions that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that swung the election. It's patently false, but we got three years of an outrageously illegal and ill-founded investigation about it, countless lives ruined, and - and this is the really ironic part - virtually no oversight of the actual Trump administration in that time as the media chased shadows.

Elections are a means to an end. They are a means of attaining power, not something done for the sake of doing them. If there's an advantage to be gained, you gain it. If you can go door to door and get an X in the signature line and shove it in the box, you do it. If you can hold elections on a weekday, deny same day registration, and close the polls an hour after most people get off work, you do it. If you can apply stringent registration standards, you do it. If you can get away with no ID requirements, you do it. If you can gerrymander districts into the most outrageously weird shapes with no regard for geography civil nor physical, you do it. If you can lawfare your way to victory - as Bush did in 2000 - you do it.

As such the question isn't whether or not Hillary Clinton is somehow acting weirdly to proclaim the election results illegitimate, nor whether Trump is acting in a way that's Not Who We Are As A Democracy to challenge the results in court (in which he'll lose at least two of his four state challenges, by the way. In fact from the summaries I've read, I think he loses three, and there's a very real chance of his PA challenge failing too.) The question is rather, does he have the standing to do so? And the answer to that question is yes, he has both the legal and the moral standing. So why on earth wouldn't he - and why, in the face of a three-year coup attempt perpetuated at the highest level of government, shouldn't he? If he has the slightest chance of prevailing in court in what is, you must admit, a very unique election, I need you to explain to me why he shouldn't take that chance, and do so in a way that you'd apply universally and not because orange man bad.

Also, I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Fox News says. I mean, you didn't before tonight, so why would you now? I didn't before tonight, and I certainly didn't when they called Arizona the winner. Here's how I like to look at this: every time someone says "well even [source I don't normally agree with] says it", I flip it to "I'm even agreeing with [source I normally don't agree with]." So you've found yourself on the side of Shaun Hannity. Now what? Am I to take you more seriously, or less?

*edit: and it's been a completely dishonest complaint, because the clarion call from the media in the US has been that Trump hasn't been restrictive enough during COVID. "Why isn't this fascist locking us in our homes?!" cried the television.

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And I repeat once again that I don't believe that voting corruption is widespread, I don't believe it to be coordinated, I don't believe it to have been decisive within my lifetime in a Presidential election; and while from history we know it's largely (but by no means entirely) isolated to Democratic machine areas, it generally takes place in primaries and local elections because those are the ones in which a few people stuffing boxes are likely to make a difference. To pull off actual, genuine fraud in a Presidential election, from the top down - as in a state party saying "we need to magic up 90,000 votes somehow", and then do it without being caught, coordinating turnout and absentee ballots and all the rest of it... well, if it's not literally impossible, it's not too far off impossible. It would have an extremely low chance of success.

I don't believe any of the above to be in any way a barrier to Trump's four state lawsuits. Nor John James' in Michigan, for that matter.

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4 minutes ago, TRVMP said:

There's no beef. I'm looking at this fairly dispassionately. I understand that I'm swimming against the tide. Maybe one day I'll look back and think myself wrong, or hoodwinked, or whatever. Maybe I'll think I was blinded by loyalty. But I can say with all honesty that I knew (for example) the claims about racism from Trump were nonsense; the claims about collaboration with Russia from Trump were nonsense; and on and on and on and on and on. This supposed fascist, this supposed dictator, this supposed egomaniac who would stop at nothing in an eternal quest for power, ended up a picture of moderation in power, a guy who couldn't even bring himself to dispatch of clearly disloyal members of his administration, much less open the FEMA camps. The last four years have been a parade of media figures breathlessly pronouncing The End of Democracy, and in reality absolutely nothing of the sort has taken place. So am I about to say now, after a series of false alarms that would shame a big bad wolf, that Trump is somehow acting beyond the pale? No, I'm not.

So, to address your first point:

First of all, the reason you can't process it, or see it as justification, is because you're a television viewer. There's not much to say beyond that. The authoritative people all have one opinion (just as they all had one opinion that there were WMDs in Iraq and that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming President) so anything beyond that is unimaginable. That's the long and short of it. The screen talks and the viewer listens. That's it.

To address the broader point:

Of course it's an attempt to hold onto power. Why on earth would anyone think otherwise? Why would anyone act otherwise? Do you think anyone involved in this is thinking of the electoral integrity? If they are, it's selective, and entirely based on whether or not they believe that an appearance of propriety helps them in the moment. I remind you again, there are several disputed results in recent history: Stacey Abrams still claims publicly that she was cheated out of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Hillary Clinton, admittedly quiet about it for a couple of years now, has publicly said on literally ten or more occasions that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that swung the election. It's patently false, but we got three years of an outrageously illegal and ill-founded investigation about it, countless lives ruined, and - and this is the really ironic part - virtually no oversight of the actual Trump administration in that time as the media chased shadows.

Elections are a means to an end. They are a means of attaining power, not something done for the sake of doing them. If there's an advantage to be gained, you gain it. If you can go door to door and get an X in the signature line and shove it in the box, you do it. If you can hold elections on a weekday, deny same day registration, and close the polls an hour after most people get off work, you do it. If you can apply stringent registration standards, you do it. If you can get away with no ID requirements, you do it. If you can gerrymander districts into the most outrageously weird shapes with no regard for geography civil nor physical, you do it. If you can lawfare your way to victory - as Bush did in 2000 - you do it.

As such the question isn't whether or not Hillary Clinton is somehow acting weirdly to proclaim the election results illegitimate, nor whether Trump is acting in a way that's Not Who We Are As A Democracy to challenge the results in court (in which he'll lose at least two of his four state challenges, by the way. In fact from the summaries I've read, I think he loses three, and there's a very real chance of his PA challenge failing too.) The question is rather, does he have the standing to do so? And the answer to that question is yes, he has both the legal and the moral standing. So why on earth wouldn't he - and why, in the face of a three-year coup attempt perpetuated at the highest level of government, shouldn't he? If he has the slightest chance of prevailing in court in what is, you must admit, a very unique election, I need you to explain to me why he shouldn't take that chance, and do so in a way that you'd apply universally and not because orange man bad.

Also, I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Fox News says. I mean, you didn't before tonight, so why would you now?

I might be a television viewer but I do know and interact with a fair few Americans that are of the exact same view. I don’t know if you’re talking about the media altering my view of things as an international outsider or the population in general, either way I struggle to agree with it - and it would appear an awful lot of Republicans are the same.

There’s no point in us squabbling about the actual details/reasons behind it as we’ll obviously never agree, but do you not see a significant communication issue here? Whatever your network of choice is at the minute and whatever your view is on coverage overall in America, none of them know how to present what they’re being given at the minute, because it’s not being presented as anything worth taking seriously. Trump’s last two speeches were obviously emotional and he isn’t great with detail, but they were so utterly shambolic even traditional allies don’t know how to work with them. There was nothing offered of substance for them to run with.

I mentioned FOX because whilst their relationship with him has changed recently, they’ll obviously still present issues of potential corruption against him better than CNN and I fully believe would still go all in and jump right on the bandwagon if there was anything for them to actually sink their teeth into. They haven’t. They’re still very much dancing around it. 
 

Maybe we’re arguing about different things altogether and I’m looking more at the optics, but there’s nothing Trump or the GOP have put forward at the minute for this to be perceived as anything other than taking a loss extremely badly.  

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6 minutes ago, TheGoon said:

I might be a television viewer but I do know and interact with a fair few Americans that are of the exact same view. I don’t know if you’re talking about the media altering my view of things as an international outsider or the population in general, either way I struggle to agree with it - and it would appear an awful lot of Republicans are the same.

There’s no point in us squabbling about the actual details/reasons behind it as we’ll obviously never agree, but do you not see a significant communication issue here? Whatever your network of choice is at the minute and whatever your view is on coverage overall in America, none of them know how to present what they’re being given at the minute, because it’s not being presented as anything worth taking seriously. Trump’s last two speeches were obviously emotional and he isn’t great with detail, but they were so utterly shambolic even traditional allies don’t know how to work with them. There was nothing offered of substance for them to run with.

I mentioned FOX because whilst their relationship with him has changed recently, they’ll obviously still present issues of potential corruption against him better than CNN and I fully believe would still go all in and jump right on the bandwagon if there was anything for them to actually sink their teeth into. They haven’t. They’re still very much dancing around it. 
 

Maybe we’re arguing about different things altogether and I’m looking more at the optics, but there’s nothing Trump or the GOP have put forward at the minute for this to be perceived as anything other than taking a loss extremely badly.  

That many Americans are against Trump, and are spinning this (as they've spun fifty things before) as Democracy Dying In Darkness isn't exactly news to me. I live in an extremely liberal part (Oak Lawn) of a fairly liberal city (Dallas) in a heavily Democratic county (Dallas) and literally all of my close friends here are leftists, as is my wife of ten years, as is my best friend. You're not telling me anything I'm not aware of. You do not need to America-splain to me. I'm already here.

Again, because you're a television viewer, you see reasons as secondary to optics and images, so we are (as to your credit you understand) arguing about two different things. You're convinced I'm "justifying corruption" because I understand the motivations of the Trump administration in trying to preserve power, and saying that he has every legal and moral right to do so - much as you felt that the administrative state had every legal and moral right to remove Trump from power for colluding with Russia to undermine the 2016 election.

If filing four civil lawsuits before results are even certified in many states is taking it badly, (and it is) I'd hate to hear what an attempted coup d'etat from the intelligence services is supposed to be (a far greater threat to US democracy than at any time since the mid-1960s).

We need to prize honesty above everything else - so review the last few pages. The reason we're in this discussion is that Dunning was utterly convinced that Trump would have something called the "Proud Boys" enforcing martial law in DC right about now. I went for a run tonight and didn't see any gun-toting fellows in polo shirts. The beer garden I ran past seemed to be full of happy punters, unmolested by the looming specter of armed fascists. Where am I supposed to be looking at the End Of The Republic? Whoever it is, they're not doing an especially good job of overthrowing the election results, are they?

Is this what we've gone to - Trump sending his stormtroopers onto the streets one day, to filing some lawsuits the next? What's his angle here? Is it not more probable that he's... trying to stay in power by following the same legal path that's been trod many times before him? And I'm supposed to be worried about this?

A sober look at the facts presents the following: Trump has held power as a moderate, governed as a national conservative, and one day anyone with a shred of honesty about them will look back on what was a Presidential term marked by misjudgement, restraint, and hysteria, and realize all their Hitler comparisons and tearful rants about Threats To Democracy were fraudulent at worst and misguided at best. His challenging the electoral results does nothing but reinforce this fact. Or do you think Al Gore was a brownshirt-in-waiting as well?

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I’d say it’s a bit early to be counting any chickens about potential violence. I doubt we’re getting the civil war Sky seem to think they’re on the brink of reporting on, but some of the rhetoric peddled in the last few days certainly isn’t going to help a nation already at boiling point.

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5 minutes ago, TheGoon said:

I’d say it’s a bit early to be counting any chickens about potential violence. I doubt we’re getting the civil war Sky seem to think they’re on the brink of reporting on, but some of the rhetoric peddled in the last few days certainly isn’t going to help a nation already at boiling point.

Speaking as someone who has infinitely more to lose than you do if he's wrong, I'll go on record right now is saying that any organized, large-scale unrest in this country will be originated and perpetrated by the left, just as it has been all summer in my neighborhood, my city, and this country. I don't exclude 'lone wolf' attacks elsewhere, and I especially don't exclude the infiltration and break-up of right wing militia groups. But organized political violence in this country is a one-way street, it has been for almost a decade, and it has to be acknowledged that Trump's half-assed handling of the DOJ means it will continue thus in the near future. 

Once again, when you and Dunning find the Proud Boys out on patrol, do let me know so I can lock the front gate. 

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Even if nothing comes of the Proud Boys though, lone wolf idiots and militia haven’t exactly been discouraged, have they? Fuel has been added to the flames here. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if nothing comes of it. 

My decision to stay up until Half 5 hoping for some movement appears to be Warren Hawke/Interstadia-esque. I’ve seen John King more than my own family. 

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I totally understand and accept TRVMP's point about one's perception of Trump being largely governed by the media outlets they read and watch, and I openly admitted that of course includes me in previous posts. But, what is unfiltered are his own tweets. Surely sane, educated Republicans like TRVMP can't do anything but cringe with embarrassment when they read some of them?

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2 hours ago, TRVMP said:

Elections are a means to an end. They are a means of attaining power, not something done for the sake of doing them. If there's an advantage to be gained, you gain it. If you can go door to door and get an X in the signature line and shove it in the box, you do it. If you can hold elections on a weekday, deny same day registration, and close the polls an hour after most people get off work, you do it. If you can apply stringent registration standards, you do it. If you can get away with no ID requirements, you do it. If you can gerrymander districts into the most outrageously weird shapes with no regard for geography civil nor physical, you do it. If you can lawfare your way to victory - as Bush did in 2000 - you do it.

As such the question isn't whether or not Hillary Clinton is somehow acting weirdly to proclaim the election results illegitimate, nor whether Trump is acting in a way that's Not Who We Are As A Democracy to challenge the results in court (in which he'll lose at least two of his four state challenges, by the way. In fact from the summaries I've read, I think he loses three, and there's a very real chance of his PA challenge failing too.) The question is rather, does he have the standing to do so? And the answer to that question is yes, he has both the legal and the moral standing. So why on earth wouldn't he - and why, in the face of a three-year coup attempt perpetuated at the highest level of government, shouldn't he? If he has the slightest chance of prevailing in court in what is, you must admit, a very unique election, I need you to explain to me why he shouldn't take that chance, and do so in a way that you'd apply universally and not because orange man bad.

Okay, there is a point where I think we're going to find a bit of common ground here. Some of the handwringing about how Trump has single-handedly destroyed American Civility & Democracy is startlingly naive and laughable, from what I suppose you could call The West Wing set. People who genuinely believe that idealistic portrayal of politics is how the US actually functioned until 2016 when the bad man appeared, with exclusively good faith actors furthering democratic ideals through bipartisanship and compromise.

These are the same Democrats who now cuddle up to George W Bush and hold him up as a picture of civility, the rule of law and What Our President Should Be, as if Guantanamo and Iraq never happened and the Kafkaesque immigration courts whose inhumanity they decry under Trump weren't created by Bush and continued under Obama. They are seemingly blind to the fact that the Republicans have been gerrymandering electoral districts in an unashamedly undemocratic - and by extension in many cases racist - manner for decades, to the flagrant hypocrisy on the part of the GOP leadership such as McConnell which long predates Trump or even the Tea Party, to Obama's own foreign policy track record with his apparent personal mission to drone strike every house in the Middle East and the Democrats' own tendencies to ratfucking, as Bernie Sanders found to his cost in 2016 and also amounted to the DNC shooting themselves in the face.

All of these things and hundreds more were around before Trump and won't go away after him.

I get that generally you think there’s an impossibility for us to look at this from the same perspective, as everyone you're discussing with here is a) not in the US and therefore more reliant on the interpretations of television, 99% of which has been vehemently biased against Trump, sometimes to the point of hysteria and b) generally more sympathetic to the left, so our conclusions are going to be warped by that perspective. Yeah, context is everything and you have a better chance of a more nuanced picture through actually being there.

However, do you not think there's a chance your being on the ground makes it more difficult to look at this dispassionately? You earlier invoked the banana republic comparison yourself about how the US has always done a poorer job of running elections than most of them. Step back from this, and what would you think of Trump's comments if this was an election in a banana republic where you weren't invested in who the winner is? I'm aware that equally applies to everyone arguing with you here.

If we can run with the comparison to Florida in 2000 so I can say why I think this is different to that, or to Georgia in 2018 where Abrams could actually present the evidence that over 300K registered voters were illegally purged before losing by 50K votes. You're entirely right about motive, and this ties back to the whole sanctity of US democracy pre-Trump thing being bollocks - neither the Bush or Gore campaigns gave a fuck about what was actually morally right or who had really won, they just wanted to find a way to win. Had the roles been reserved it's not just feasible but almost certain they'd have taken the exact same stances with the shoe on the other foot. The Bush campaign didn't care less whether the vote was actually correct, they were ahead and wanted it to stay that way - the fact they found grounds within the law to stop the recounts doesn't make a moral difference. Similarly, the Gore campaign didn't give a shit that the law didn't allow for recounts, they wanted one and were determined to get it, bollocks to the law and try to force it through friendly courts anyway.

Trump just wants to find a way to win as well as does Biden, as did Bush, as did Gore. Where he goes further than Bush v Gore is not in filing lawsuits to stop the counts - fine - it's in publicly declaring it's a fraud, that he has won and the only explanation if he hasn't is fraud. You said up the thread that politicians declaring that they believe they've won, which Biden did as well, is normal. Of course it is, but Trump didn't just say that.

"We will win this and, as far as I'm concerned, we already have won it. So, I just want to thank you. And... This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So, our goal now is to ensure the integrity-- for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud in our nation."

That's not asking for a recount or wanting legal clarity on whether ballots posted before polls close but arriving after. It isn't about procedural failings - he said that when ballots whiçh had arrived before polls had closed just hadn't all been counted yet. The PA count was only about 50% done at this point. I'm winning, so it doesn't matter whether the remaining votes are unquestionably 100% legal and legitimate, they must be disqualified, the count must stop. I have won and votes that could change that are illegitimate, if I don't win the only explanation is fraud, anyone who says otherwise is trying to steal the election from me. The American public need to defend our democracy and stop this theft.

That's a descent into authoritarian rhetoric which wasn't present in 2000. That's why I think it's different.

And lo and behold, there are crowds of his supporters gathered outside counts demanding entry, some armed. No doubt you're going to find this laughably ironic as you think I'm being ridiculously melodramatic with the above interpretation, but that the kind of thing I was envisaging with the Proud Boys stuff, not that there are going to be militias goose stepping into Weimar Republic street battles with BLM. Maybe if/when Biden is declared the winner they'll pack up and go home just like protestors in Florida in 2000 and their protests will be nothing but harmless crankery, and hopefully that's the case. Again though, if this was occurring in South America it would be reported as 'tense, potential for violence, intimidation of electoral officials, appeals for calm,' and if it happened to be, say, a Bolivian leftist making baseless claims to both victory and opposition fraud to mobilise their supporters, the CIA would have a coup going in La Paz in hours.

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Oh Lord, Brian Wake

 

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3 hours ago, TRVMP said:

A sober look at the facts presents the following: Trump has held power as a moderate, governed as a national conservative, and one day anyone with a shred of honesty about them will look back on what was a Presidential term marked by misjudgement, restraint, and hysteria, and realize all their Hitler comparisons and tearful rants about Threats To Democracy were fraudulent at worst and misguided at best. His challenging the electoral results does nothing but reinforce this fact. Or do you think Al Gore was a brownshirt-in-waiting as well?

Thought I'd break this into a different post as the last was more than long enough. 

I do think, where you say in time people may look back and see they were being hysterical and Trump's image might be rehabilitated, that regardless of how hysterical they are now and how he should be judged, he will in 10 years time be held up as a picture of civility and obeying the rule of law, exactly as Bush has been.

When the Republican nomination for 2032 is being contested by Ben Shapiro, Kodos, Kang and Alex Jones, the DNC will be tacking right to appeal to Never Kang Republicans hoping to get the endorsement of Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani for 92 year old Nancy Pelosi, just as they've gone after Bush era stalwarts like Kasich and Flake this year by reminiscing about how great the days of extraordinary rendition were. They'll be talking about how Trump would never have been so damn rude as that Jones character, can't we have that GOP back? We can't allow three year olds crossing the border to be cooked and eaten like Kodos wants, let's work together in a spirit of bipartisanship with the moderate sensible Republicans to separate them from their parents and make them stand trial alone like we used to!

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Brian Wake my Lord, Brian Wake

Oh Lord, Brian Wake

 

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6 hours ago, TRVMP said:

There's no beef. I'm looking at this fairly dispassionately. I understand that I'm swimming against the tide. Maybe one day I'll look back and think myself wrong, or hoodwinked, or whatever. Maybe I'll think I was blinded by loyalty. But I can say with all honesty that I knew (for example) the claims about racism from Trump were nonsense; the claims about collaboration with Russia from Trump were nonsense; and on and on and on and on and on. This supposed fascist, this supposed dictator, this supposed egomaniac who would stop at nothing in an eternal quest for power, ended up a picture of moderation in power, a guy who couldn't even bring himself to dispatch of clearly disloyal members of his administration, much less open the FEMA camps. The last four years have been a parade of media figures breathlessly pronouncing The End of Democracy, and in reality absolutely nothing of the sort has taken place.* So am I about to say now, after a series of false alarms that would shame a big bad wolf, that Trump is somehow acting beyond the pale? No, I'm not.

So, to address your first point:

First of all, the reason you can't process it, or see it as justification, is because you're a television viewer. There's not much to say beyond that. The authoritative people all have one opinion (just as they all had one opinion that there were WMDs in Iraq and that Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming President) so anything beyond that is unimaginable. That's the long and short of it. The screen talks and the viewer listens. That's it.

To address the broader point:

Of course it's an attempt to hold onto power. Why on earth would anyone think otherwise? Why would anyone act otherwise? Do you think anyone involved in this is thinking of the electoral integrity? If they are, it's selective, and entirely based on whether or not they believe that an appearance of propriety helps them in the moment. I remind you again, there are several disputed results in recent history: Stacey Abrams still claims publicly that she was cheated out of the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election. Hillary Clinton, admittedly quiet about it for a couple of years now, has publicly said on literally ten or more occasions that it was Trump's collusion with Russia that swung the election. It's patently false, but we got three years of an outrageously illegal and ill-founded investigation about it, countless lives ruined, and - and this is the really ironic part - virtually no oversight of the actual Trump administration in that time as the media chased shadows.

Elections are a means to an end. They are a means of attaining power, not something done for the sake of doing them. If there's an advantage to be gained, you gain it. If you can go door to door and get an X in the signature line and shove it in the box, you do it. If you can hold elections on a weekday, deny same day registration, and close the polls an hour after most people get off work, you do it. If you can apply stringent registration standards, you do it. If you can get away with no ID requirements, you do it. If you can gerrymander districts into the most outrageously weird shapes with no regard for geography civil nor physical, you do it. If you can lawfare your way to victory - as Bush did in 2000 - you do it.

As such the question isn't whether or not Hillary Clinton is somehow acting weirdly to proclaim the election results illegitimate, nor whether Trump is acting in a way that's Not Who We Are As A Democracy to challenge the results in court (in which he'll lose at least two of his four state challenges, by the way. In fact from the summaries I've read, I think he loses three, and there's a very real chance of his PA challenge failing too.) The question is rather, does he have the standing to do so? And the answer to that question is yes, he has both the legal and the moral standing. So why on earth wouldn't he - and why, in the face of a three-year coup attempt perpetuated at the highest level of government, shouldn't he? If he has the slightest chance of prevailing in court in what is, you must admit, a very unique election, I need you to explain to me why he shouldn't take that chance, and do so in a way that you'd apply universally and not because orange man bad.

Also, I wouldn't put too much stock in anything Fox News says. I mean, you didn't before tonight, so why would you now? I didn't before tonight, and I certainly didn't when they called Arizona the winner. Here's how I like to look at this: every time someone says "well even [source I don't normally agree with] says it", I flip it to "I'm even agreeing with [source I normally don't agree with]." So you've found yourself on the side of Shaun Hannity. Now what? Am I to take you more seriously, or less?

*edit: and it's been a completely dishonest complaint, because the clarion call from the media in the US has been that Trump hasn't been restrictive enough during COVID. "Why isn't this fascist locking us in our homes?!" cried the television.

That's an excellent post. What a shan world it has become. Bling ignorance of the sheep willing to follow the media and twitter. 

TIME FOR CHANGE!

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Trump is now getting scudded in Pennsylvania. His dignified concession will surely come any minute now.

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Peter Weatherson is the greatest player since Ritchie, and should be assigned 'chairman for life' 


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There's obviously a lot of responses to get through, and I am at work, so I'll be doing these piecemeal and perhaps slowly.

11 hours ago, TheGoon said:

Even if nothing comes of the Proud Boys though, lone wolf idiots and militia haven’t exactly been discouraged, have they? Fuel has been added to the flames here. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if nothing comes of it. 

My decision to stay up until Half 5 hoping for some movement appears to be Warren Hawke/Interstadia-esque. I’ve seen John King more than my own family. 

I can only repeat myself: the only organized, large-scale political violence in this country comes from the left. Antifa has a significant body count over the summer. The opposite is untrue. I don't exclude the possibility of lone nutters on the right but the right is too poorly-organized, too poorly-motivated, and too infiltrated by federal agents to pull anything off, even if they wanted to. (The left, by comparison, operates with impunity in much of the country, with Portland being a defacto city-wide safehouse for criminals.)

You're not going to see WW3 kick off over this, it's just not going to happen, and any time spent giving CNN viewership and ad revenue is profit for them and not for you. They're selling a product and fear is the smell of fresh donuts that gets you in the door.

10 hours ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

I totally understand and accept TRVMP's point about one's perception of Trump being largely governed by the media outlets they read and watch, and I openly admitted that of course includes me in previous posts. But, what is unfiltered are his own tweets. Surely sane, educated Republicans like TRVMP can't do anything but cringe with embarrassment when they read some of them?

Yeah, but I also don't care. The front row kids - the West Wing set that dunning alludes to - are polished, polite, and the most bloodthirsty people you'll ever meet. Trump by comparison is impulsive, rash, egotistical, and has governed with the lightest hand since Carter.

I recall vividly your saying that you had little interest in domestic US affairs and were instead concerned that Trump's maverick style and lack of care and attention meant that he threatened the geopolitical world order, even world peace itself. Yet in reality Trump's foreign policy has been restrained and largely successful. He's the first President since people wore top hats not to start a new military engagement. He's negotiated in good faith with Mexico, who in turn have contributed to the security of North America by enforcing first-safe-harbor asylum law and cutting by 80% the meat grinder migratory routes. He's contributed greatly to normalization of Israeli relations with several Middle Eastern states.

Now, I regard most of the above as less - far, far less - important than domestic policy. I don't really care much about the Middle East, for example. But remember, this was your justification for being worried about his administration (and it wasn't exactly an unreasonable one), that he'd be a nutter on the world stage and place the planet under threat. Not only has this not happened, but the exact opposite has happened.

So that's why I don't really care about Tweets. You buy the meat, you get the sauce. You get the Trump who's worked hand in hand with AMLO and you also get the guy firing off nutty conspiracy theories at 4am. I'll take this over cold-eyed, ultra-professional people like Clinton and Buttigieg every single day of the year.

2 hours ago, GiGi said:

Trump is now getting scudded in Pennsylvania. His dignified concession will surely come any minute now.

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This is a decent summary of the pending lawsuits:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-05/trump-election-lawsuits-filed-state-by-state

Most, if not all, are doomed to fail. But as I keep on saying, why should Trump concede while he still has legal challenges which he has both moral and legal standing to undertake? I've yet to hear anyone even try to answer that.

My hope, however, is that the shocking way in this election has played out will see more strict federal control over Presidential elections. There are literal Third World countries who can run and tabulate an election all in one day. We need, among other things, a national voting holiday (or weekend voting) and standardized counting methodologies and standardized deadlines for general elections.

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Not sure what moral standing he has to outright accuse several states of corruption and electoral fraud without a lick of evidence while claiming it as the sole reason he's getting humped. Get it right, right up him.

 

Peter Weatherson is the greatest player since Ritchie, and should be assigned 'chairman for life' 


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19 minutes ago, GiGi said:

Not sure what moral standing he has to outright accuse several states of corruption and electoral fraud without a lick of evidence while claiming it as the sole reason he's getting humped. Get it right, right up him.

I agree, isolated incidents of corruption - I simply don't believe it possible to carry out widespread electoral fraud without being caught, even if a party wanted to - aren't even mostly responsible, much less solely responsible for his defeat.

But because I have a brain in my head I've noticed that the entire political and media establishment of this country has dealt in nothing but evidence-free statements for going on five years now with regards to Trump's election and his conduct while in office, so I don't begrudge him his claims in the slightest. I'm also not cutting up onions for the state of Pennsylvania, which frequently (as recently as last month, in fact) needs the federal courts to clean up its corruption, and whose Attorney General prejudiced the electoral results in his state in the first place. This isn't some hot centrist take - it's acknowledging the plain and simple fact that if you think Trump's accusations are some kind of material damage, then what he faced prior to this was worse, far worse, and carried out by a far larger and more meaningful group, and has much longer-term damage?

Can you say the same? Can you honestly say that you're as furious with the FBI, the Democratic National Committee, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and all the rest of them as you are with Trump? 

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10 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Okay, there is a point where I think we're going to find a bit of common ground here. Some of the handwringing about how Trump has single-handedly destroyed American Civility & Democracy is startlingly naive and laughable, from what I suppose you could call The West Wing set. People who genuinely believe that idealistic portrayal of politics is how the US actually functioned until 2016 when the bad man appeared, with exclusively good faith actors furthering democratic ideals through bipartisanship and compromise.

These are the same Democrats who now cuddle up to George W Bush and hold him up as a picture of civility, the rule of law and What Our President Should Be, as if Guantanamo and Iraq never happened and the Kafkaesque immigration courts whose inhumanity they decry under Trump weren't created by Bush and continued under Obama. They are seemingly blind to the fact that the Republicans have been gerrymandering electoral districts in an unashamedly undemocratic - and by extension in many cases racist - manner for decades, to the flagrant hypocrisy on the part of the GOP leadership such as McConnell which long predates Trump or even the Tea Party, to Obama's own foreign policy track record with his apparent personal mission to drone strike every house in the Middle East and the Democrats' own tendencies to ratfucking, as Bernie Sanders found to his cost in 2016 and also amounted to the DNC shooting themselves in the face.

All of these things and hundreds more were around before Trump and won't go away after him.

There has never been a case in US history when a sitting President was accused by the entire national and media establishment of collusion with a foreign power, and there has also never been a case when that President and his electoral campaign, followed by that President and his administration, were placed under surveillance based not just on faulty intelligence, but intelligence that was known to be false. 

Other than that, yeah, it's business as usual.

I get that generally you think there’s an impossibility for us to look at this from the same perspective, as everyone you're discussing with here is a) not in the US and therefore more reliant on the interpretations of television, 99% of which has been vehemently biased against Trump, sometimes to the point of hysteria and b) generally more sympathetic to the left, so our conclusions are going to be warped by that perspective. Yeah, context is everything and you have a better chance of a more nuanced picture through actually being there.

However, do you not think there's a chance your being on the ground makes it more difficult to look at this dispassionately? You earlier invoked the banana republic comparison yourself about how the US has always done a poorer job of running elections than most of them. Step back from this, and what would you think of Trump's comments if this was an election in a banana republic where you weren't invested in who the winner is? I'm aware that equally applies to everyone arguing with you here.

No, I don't think that. Here's a pretty tortured analogy:

Let's say there are two people who are motivated and ready to go on diets in order to lose weight. They're both disciplined and ready to put in the effort. Both have a pretty solid grasp of nutrition - they know what's calorie-dense and what's fatty, they know what's healthy and what's fibrous.

One of these people turns on the TV one day and is told of a startling discovery: it turns out that, in the long term, chocolate cake is almost calorie-free and helps you lose weight by sating hunger without adding calories. No other cake behaves thus: but chocolate cake is a miracle diet food. You can utterly gorge yourself with chocolate cake and as long as you otherwise eat healthily, you'll lose weight. So Dieter A - let's call him Alfonso - eats meals of skinless chicken breast, broccoli, and massive heaps of chocolate cake.

Dieter B - let's call him Bertrand - doesn't watch TV and doesn't hear the wonderful news about chocolate cake.  He eats meals of skinless chicken breasts and broccoli.

Alfonso ends up gaining weight while Bertrand loses weight. Alfonso passes Bertrand in the street, and asks him, "How can you diet if you don't know about chocolate cake?"

If we can run with the comparison to Florida in 2000 so I can say why I think this is different to that, or to Georgia in 2018 where Abrams could actually present the evidence that over 300K registered voters were illegally purged before losing by 50K votes. You're entirely right about motive, and this ties back to the whole sanctity of US democracy pre-Trump thing being bollocks - neither the Bush or Gore campaigns gave a fuck about what was actually morally right or who had really won, they just wanted to find a way to win. Had the roles been reserved it's not just feasible but almost certain they'd have taken the exact same stances with the shoe on the other foot. The Bush campaign didn't care less whether the vote was actually correct, they were ahead and wanted it to stay that way - the fact they found grounds within the law to stop the recounts doesn't make a moral difference. Similarly, the Gore campaign didn't give a shit that the law didn't allow for recounts, they wanted one and were determined to get it, bollocks to the law and try to force it through friendly courts anyway.

Abrams presented nothing of the sort (which is one reason why she never took it to court.) 300,000 voters were not purged. This is another example of people just not knowing the basic facts of what they're talking about. Every single one of those 300,000 voters was able to vote with no additional requirements compared to any other Georgia resident. That is, they receive a ballot if they attend a polling station with valid ID. You can question whether or not Georgia's ID and registration requirements are too stringent, but it is incorrect to say that the voters were illegally purged, because 1) the lawsuit is still ongoing and 2) every single valid Georgia voter was, then as now, able to vote.

Trump just wants to find a way to win as well as does Biden, as did Bush, as did Gore. Where he goes further than Bush v Gore is not in filing lawsuits to stop the counts - fine - it's in publicly declaring it's a fraud, that he has won and the only explanation if he hasn't is fraud. You said up the thread that politicians declaring that they believe they've won, which Biden did as well, is normal. Of course it is, but Trump didn't just say that.

I will remind you of the literally ten-plus occasions on which Hillary Clinton has said the 2016 election was decided against her solely due to Russian interference and Trump's machinations therein. I will remind you of the Democratic members of Congress, up to and including John Lewis, who refused to attend Trump's inauguration on account of its being illegitimate due to Russian interference and Trump's collusion with Putin. Because this was all a few years ago doesn't mean it didn't happen.

"We will win this and, as far as I'm concerned, we already have won it. So, I just want to thank you. And... This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election. So, our goal now is to ensure the integrity-- for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud in our nation."

That's not asking for a recount or wanting legal clarity on whether ballots posted before polls close but arriving after. It isn't about procedural failings - he said that when ballots whiçh had arrived before polls had closed just hadn't all been counted yet. The PA count was only about 50% done at this point. I'm winning, so it doesn't matter whether the remaining votes are unquestionably 100% legal and legitimate, they must be disqualified, the count must stop. I have won and votes that could change that are illegitimate, if I don't win the only explanation is fraud, anyone who says otherwise is trying to steal the election from me. The American public need to defend our democracy and stop this theft.

That's a descent into authoritarian rhetoric which wasn't present in 2000. That's why I think it's different.

And the outcome of this authoritarian rhetoric is...? I'll ask you again: where are the Proud Boys? You entered this conversation on the Coronavirus thread because you were convinced that Trump was calling on his right wing stormtroopers to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. Now there are... some lawsuits and some tweets. Some tweets - and these seem to be pretty valid questions to me - about electoral observation and the discrepancy in state level voting laws. You were talking about civil unrest from a racist militia and now you're telling me I'm supposed to be worried about rhetoric? Seriously, pick one and stick with it. I've given you countless examples of "rhetoric" that's been far more consequential than this, up to and including the political takeover of the intelligence services. Why on earth am I to be shocked by rhetoric?

And lo and behold, there are crowds of his supporters gathered outside counts demanding entry, some armed. No doubt you're going to find this laughably ironic as you think I'm being ridiculously melodramatic with the above interpretation, but that the kind of thing I was envisaging with the Proud Boys stuff, not that there are going to be militias goose stepping into Weimar Republic street battles with BLM. Maybe if/when Biden is declared the winner they'll pack up and go home just like protestors in Florida in 2000 and their protests will be nothing but harmless crankery, and hopefully that's the case. Again though, if this was occurring in South America it would be reported as 'tense, potential for violence, intimidation of electoral officials, appeals for calm,' and if it happened to be, say, a Bolivian leftist making baseless claims to both victory and opposition fraud to mobilise their supporters, the CIA would have a coup going in La Paz in hours.

Oh no, not peaceful demonstrations! You are being ridiculously melodramatic. I'll remind you - your side has an actual body count this summer and last year, a pretty impressive one, from the civil unrest that went on in several major metro areas. And now some people are outside a courthouse and now you want to panic?

The media's wet dreams of being the last line of defense against a violent Nazi menace is completely and utterly made up, and in no small part is it evidence of projection. 

How can you type the second half of that paragraph after the first? How can you acknowledge that intelligence-led media narratives in Latin America are hopelessly, laughably inaccurate, then point to them as evidence of some kind of right wing putsch orchestrated by Trump on the other?

Seriously, go back and read what you actually wrote about the fucking Proud Boys (and I'll remind you again that virtually no normal person has even heard of them, much less seen them). There's no scope, none, zero for any kind of organized civil unrest orchestrated by Trump, carried out by right wing militias, or any combination thereof. It is a non-factor. It is not happening.

 

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10 hours ago, dunning1874 said:

Thought I'd break this into a different post as the last was more than long enough. 

I do think, where you say in time people may look back and see they were being hysterical and Trump's image might be rehabilitated, that regardless of how hysterical they are now and how he should be judged, he will in 10 years time be held up as a picture of civility and obeying the rule of law, exactly as Bush has been.

When the Republican nomination for 2032 is being contested by Ben Shapiro, Kodos, Kang and Alex Jones, the DNC will be tacking right to appeal to Never Kang Republicans hoping to get the endorsement of Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani for 92 year old Nancy Pelosi, just as they've gone after Bush era stalwarts like Kasich and Flake this year by reminiscing about how great the days of extraordinary rendition were. They'll be talking about how Trump would never have been so damn rude as that Jones character, can't we have that GOP back? We can't allow three year olds crossing the border to be cooked and eaten like Kodos wants, let's work together in a spirit of bipartisanship with the moderate sensible Republicans to separate them from their parents and make them stand trial alone like we used to!

You're not entirely off the mark but you're missing two very important points:

1) Bush wasn't rehabilitated for what he did. He was rehabilitated because the Bush family opposes Trump.

2) Inasmuch as Bush and the ever-increasingly number of 'national security experts' are being welcomed in the Democratic Party post-Trump, it's wholly due to the foreign policy and military-industrial establishment, and not because of anything to do with domestic governance or norms.

As part of the ongoing realignment in American politics, the Democrats are in the (lengthy) process of inheriting neoconservatism. The lines will be blurred for the next decade but the seeds are already planted, as we saw in 2016. Trump's failure to promise troops on the ground in Syria was a near-exact reversal of the pre-Iraq War dynamic, wherein it was the Democrats who were cast as squishy appeasers and the Republicans were the hawks.

As I say, this is an ongoing process, and there remain plenty of hawks (such as Graham) on the Republican side, and guys like John Bolton remain inexplicably influential, but you just need to look at things like this to see which way the wind is blowing:

https://www.nationalsecurityleaders4biden.com/

The pro-NATO order is alarmed by what they see as a rejection of American global leadership by Trump and, increasingly, by the Republican base, which is growing increasingly isolationist. I mean, this letter has it all. Could you imagine this being an anti-Republican position even ten years ago?

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Thanks to his disdainful attitude and his failures, our allies no longer trust or respect us, and our enemies no longer fear us. Climate change continues unabated, as does North Korea’s nuclear program. The president has ceded influence to a Russian adversary who puts bounties on the heads of American military personnel, and his trade war against China has only harmed America’s farmers and manufacturers.

I will add that several of my Democratic friends are very aware of this, and they are not welcoming to the neocons one bit, but as they're just rank and file members they're not going to get a say in it.

Enjoy!

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