U.S. Presidential Election 2020

Sorry if I’m going in a bit hard thols, I’m enjoying the debate but it seems to me that as well informed as you might be you’re missing the elephant in the room and in danger of getting trampled by a heard.

This is all about race.

The American democratic system is all about race.

As a constitutional expert, perhaps you can explain to the viewers why Mississippi (population 0.5 million) has equal representation in the Senate to California (population 60 million)

Was it because the Senate was set up that way after the civil war to appease the slave owning states?

Many of us rejoiced when the Democrats won the run offs in Georgia but how many of us asked ‘why do they have run offs and not single vote, multi candidate elections?

Could it be that Georgia introduced run offs in the 1930’s in order to obstruct black candidates? If a black candidate got the most votes in the first round of a multi candidate election he would assume office. A run off would ensure that the split white vote would coalesce around the white candidate in a 2 horse race.

Could it be that the run offs were introduced in synch with the Republican party deselecting black candidates en mass under President Hoover during the 30’s in order to regain traction in the south and the mid west? Hoover did promise to reselect said candidates in the medium term once the party had regained a foothold. Guess how that one worked out?

These are the systemic problems with American Democracy and I doubt theyll be resolved in my lifetime.

And if it wasn’t for voter suppression the Republicans wouldn’t have won an election this century.

Yet the republicans seem very sucsesful at making the changes they want.

Because they dominate the state legislatures and governors’ mansions. The U.S. census is held every decade. That’s used to apportion congressional seats. In the 2010 elections, Democrats got routed and Republican’s took over a lot of state legislatures and governorships. That gave Republicans control of congressional redistricting following the 2010 census. They gerrymandered like crazy. It also gave them control over appointment of state judges and other positions.

Democrats need to win back statewide races in order to get stuff done. Police reform won’t happen without changing state laws and local judges. The President and U.S. Congress are limited in what they can do about local issues because it’s a federal system.

Big’n’daft.

That is really daft, they won’t return with Trump as their leader, look down the line a little. Their next leader won’t be as incompetent as Trump and could easily have some Generals on their side.

You should ask yourself the question, ” What if Trump hadn’t trashed the military as losers, won a second term and got more George C Scott types from Dr Strangelove at the Pentagon and in the top army roles There’s plenty of demagogues waiting in the wings who will have learned from Trumps mistakes.

It isn’t over you know.

The American democratic system is all about race.

“All” is an exaggeration, but it’s a major factor. “Law and order” is mostly about race. It’s a dog whistle to white people who are scared of black people stealing their shit. “Order” means that things are ranked in the correct order. Rich people on top, poor people on the bottom. Black people are right at the bottom of that order, so they know exactly what law and order really means.

Problem is, knowing there’s a problem doesn’t fix the problem. Fixing the police system and all the other problems won’t happen by burning down police stations. It requires years, or decades, of building support and winning elections. Winning elections requires getting centrist voters on board, so scaring them with dumb slogans like “Defund the Police” is totally counterproductive.

You should ask yourself the question, ” What if Trump hadn’t trashed the military as losers, won a second term and got more George C Scott types from Dr Strangelove at the Pentagon and in the top army roles There’s plenty of demagogues waiting in the wings who will have learned from Trumps mistakes.

It isn’t over you know.

Yep. This is why moderate Republicans like Romney need to be given some respect and support. I think he would have been a lousy president, but not being a fascist is quite remarkable in Republicans these days.

Thols,

Executive order, banning open carry and armalites.

Purge the police of any that have demonstrated support for insurrection (federal crime) that should take care of most police union chiefs.

I know that federal powers are limited in relation to State powers but Biden needs to go Gangsta on their asses. I’d advise him to take time out and watch a movie on Netflix, I reccomend “The Irishman” (If he can stay awake for 3 hours at his age!)

Act now and there might be turmoil, act later and there could be civil war / the end of democracy as we know it. It’s not a case of what you can’t do it’s what you must do. If that means running the country by executive order then so be the case. A new tyrant will be coming down the pipeline very soon and the Democrats need to use every tool at their disposal.

Stuff this bipartisan nonsense. The Republicans have 7 working days to demonstrate if they’re prepared to work in a bipartisan fashion. They can do this by voting to impeach Trump. If they don’t then the Democrats should just say ‘f*** ’em’ and make those first 100 days count. They could lose out in the mid terms so they have to do everything they can before 2022.

Trump isn’t a facist, he’s a White Supremesist Neo Nazi.

Yep,

Defund the police was a terrible phrase. The idea, redistribute some funding that is being used by the police to buy guns, tanks and Robocop costumes was a good one.

Executive order, banning open carry and armalites.

That will go to the Supreme Court, which is dominated by conservatives because Republicans won elections. At best, it will take years to get through the legal appeals. At worst, it will be rejected as unconstitutional.

Purge the police of any that have demonstrated support for insurrection (federal crime) that should take care of most police union chiefs.

The problem with the police is much deeper than the minority who are actual fascists. The problem is that there is a police culture where cops are afraid and they view all situations as hostile. They approach every situation as something to be dominated, not negotiated. Every living cop has been trained and worked in that culture, so sacking a few high-profile assholes won’t change the culture.

So sack the assholes both high ranking and low. You have to do some think.

You’re probably right about banning the open carry of long guns by executive order. The last time they were banned was in the 60’s I think, when organised black groups like the Black Panthers took up open carry. History usually repeats itself so I expect this to be the thing that would precipitate any further banning.

I don’t think any of us would be surprised if the white supremacist militias get more active and more black people organise themselves with guns for protection. It would only take a couple of messy incidents for a ban to be reinforced.

Large groups of organised, heavily armed black people would scare the shit out of the supreme court and they would act in accordance with history.

Trump isn’t a facist, he’s a White Supremesist Neo Nazi.

Cod pyschology warning! (Although I have some years vocational experience working with psychologists and behaviourists)

I see a highly dysfunctional, dishonest, poorly-educated, spoiled, narcissistic/machiavellian conman/wannabe mobster who will go where the power, money and fame is. Nothing is too much for him try and maintain maximum ‘narcissistic supply’ and power over others. If that means courting white supremacists then so he has. But a neo-Nazi? Really? Evidence? He is (I think) a symptom and part-puppet of a misanthropic and narcissistic subculture that has been growing and sprewding (by design) from lonely, disparate (sometimes organized) often sociopathic keyboard warriors for nearly two decades. Actually since the year foloowing 9/11, the Tea Party and Free Republic days. It can all be timelined if you look enough. It mutated into the ‘intellectual dark web’ or (as someone put it) – ‘the intellectually dark web’. Pseudo-intellectualis dressed up intellect but really the same old racist, bigoted neo-nazi and/or fascistic talking points. Consoiraxy talk. The Jewwwwwss did it. The Universities are evil liberals. The Muslims are all terrorists. The aliens/immigrants are trying to take over. The (sic) blacks. The gays/trans. The commies etc etc. They are all out to get the true white people and defenders of Truth/God/Objectivism/Muh Freedoms (delete as applicable). Etc etc. Dressed up in smooth talk or ‘comedy’. Often both.

Far right grifters and motivated nutjobs are at this night and day. Lies travel fast and memes faster. Combine the two and you have a kind of hypertabloidism that makes tabloids look like those polite old fashioned kids playing with a cup and string compared to a 24hr network of sociopathic PC Gamers with the fastest tech who experience even less real-workd accountability than they do natural daylight.

Sorry to bust your bubble guys, but this isn’t about Trump, he is just the front man put up there for our entertainment. What follows will be worse.

Trying to analyse him is like reading tea leaves. He’s the big distraction. He’s not the elephant in the room, he’s the hippopotamus that we are watching whilst far more dangerous wildlife is sneaking up behind us.

EDIT:

Although having been chased by a hippopotamus myself I can testify that they are absolutely bloody terrifying and responsible for more human deaths than any other animal.

So sack the assholes both high ranking and low. You have to do some think.

One of the big hurdles to overcome on the police reform thing is the “bad apples” thing. Both sides seem to misunderstand this. The police apologists use it to argue that it’s just a few bad cops and most cops are good.

The problem is that the original saying is, “One bad apple spoils the barrel.” What that means is that the rot spreads, it’s not just one bad apple, you have to dump the whole barrel.

Sacking a few individual cops won’t make any difference because the system is broken. It’s not an individual thing, nobody can be a good cop in that system. So, that would take a 10 year or 20 year project to retrain all the cops and change the culture.

But. It’s a federal system, with every town having its own police force and negotiating their own contracts with police unions. The President can’t just order all the cops to stop being assholes and leave it at that.

dantsw13
Free Member

No we arent. There’s not the support for that. Whoever claims the centre ground will win the next election.

Maybe. I mean, maybe on 2 fronts. One is that another right wing populist government could still pull it off, have no doubt. The odds might be shifting.

The other is what do we mean by “claims the centre ground”. Theresa May claimed the centre ground in the same tory conference where we had “if you think you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere, and you don’t even understand what citizenship means”. Cameron/Osborne claimed the central ground while privatising stuff that Thatcher didn’t dare, and that wee brexit thing.

Anyone can claim the centre ground. The same thing also enables you to declare actual centrists to be leftists or hard left or communists. if you’ve got the media support and the right words, then it doesn’t even seem to be hard- certainly way easier than actually being a centrist.

And of course, just because you managed to claim the centre ground for the election while actually moving further right, that doesn’t mean you have to keep pretending the day after.

But still, the left are obsessed with “moving to the centre” and compromising. In the US, that’s what gets you Obamacare- you literally end up bringing in a GOP policy because you know you can’t possibly get your own wishes passed, and 10 seconds later the GOP declare it communist, unamerican and evil. In the UK, it gets you Labour leaders who don’t believe in anything, and it gets you giving complicated unpopular answers to complicated questions while your opponent shouts 3 word meaningless slogans.

Do the tories look like they want to genuinely move to the centre? These days they’re less interested in even bothering to claim it.

Yep,

It’s not just the apples it’s the barrel that’s rotten.

Whilst history tends to repeat itself it doesn’t stay the same. Just because things are the way that they are doesn’t mean there can’t be fundamental change. I’d posit that the attempted coup is a signifier that fundamental change is needed.

Fundamental change only happens in extreme moments and we are certainly living in one of those moments. In relation to the gun issue it will have to get worse before something is done. I predict a few Waco type sieges and if the White supremacist militias come into the inner cities to stir up trouble I expect them to be shot by local residents. Because of this, the militias will run scared and turn their attention to agencies of the State, namely the police. The Army will be called in to keep order. (Just like it was in the 60’s, history repeating itself and all that.)

The Police will find themselves fighting some of their own kind, just as they were a couple of days back. Some degree of martial law will be imposed, and hurried legislation passed in the wake of it.

So whilst I agree that it is vert difficult to see what Biden can do with regards police and guns at the moment, that doesn’t mean that options won’t present themselves in the very near future.

The upside to banning fascists is seeing who complains loudest about losing their precious fashy followers without realizing what’s happening pic.twitter.com/ASVET7UPxD

— Slade (@Slade) January 9, 2021

Ha ha,

Outing themselves unwittingly! Interesting how often we say social media companies have taken over, I’m the last 24 hours they have shown more power and influence than congress and the Senate combined.

Northwind,

Who are the Tories? I thought we were governed by UKIP ?

Unfortunately, I think the only centre ground you’ll find left is on this forum (when the Corbynistas and Chewkw are sleeping of course)

Big’n’daft.

That is really daft, they won’t return with Trump as their leader, look down the line a little. Their next leader won’t be as incompetent as Trump and could easily have some Generals on their side.

I really doubt it. The military would implode long before, plenty of democrats serve, you couldn’t keep any planning secret, you definitely couldn’t keep any preparations secret, it’s hyperbolic to suggest that it’s a real risk other than in the minds of fantasists on both sides

Somebody might try but they would always fail because the structures and agencies are so siloed so they would be caught early, or foiled in action,

It’s not hyperbolic big man, nothing I’ve said on here is fantastical or wishful thinking. It’s just history repeating itself. What’s happening now is just a re run of what happened before, post civil war and post civil rights. The events line themselves up like dominoes.

Every time black people have acquired rights in America there has been a steady but inevitable push back that takes a couple of generations to reach it’s climax.

I’n the short term we are likely to see an improvement in civil rights but mark my words, within a decade we will begin to see the push back all over again. And the next time the climax could result in tyranny.

Sorry to bust your bubble guys, but this isn’t about Trump, he is just the front man put up there for our entertainment. What follows will be worse.

You seem determined that the entire American system is too corrupt/stupid to learn from the years of mistakes that led to this week’s events. You may be right, but your determinedly “glass half empty” take on the issues that you’ve (rightly) identified seems unlikely to me.

And I’ll start with your theory on the military. At every point Trump has threatened to bring them in, the top brass have explained why, constitutionally, they weren’t going to do what he wanted. The American military does not want to fight American citizens.

NEW: Rally that led to the Capitol attack was billed as an outside event but White House, former Trump campaign staff, and allies worked behind the scenes on its planning w. @Santucci @KFaulders https://t.co/lE0cpHBbvk

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) January 9, 2021

MoreCashThanDash
Full Member

You seem determined that the entire American system is too corrupt/stupid to learn from the years of mistakes that led to this week’s events

See, I don’t think they’re too stupid or corrupt. But the forces that brought them here are very strong and will resist change just as hard as they fought to bring it. Meanwhile the new government is inheriting an absolute shitshow and will have too many priorities and not enough time or capability.

Even in a normal year, it would be difficult to get significant movement before the next election. This time? I’m not convinced it’s possible. For sure it’s extremely difficult.

Trump just showed up on IRC, trading warez with the username MagaHatter.

— Alex Winter (@Winter) January 9, 2021

That Pie video is utter bollox IMO – Trump becomes irrelevant without twitter.

Trump’s frantically trying to remember his Myspace password as we speak

Pie is half of a tool.

Trump’s frantically trying to remember his Myspace password as we speak

Theres always Trumponline – which, I think is a big fat ball of grease that has a meltdown in a deepfat fryer which you then dip your chain into. I think he got the idea from Putinonline

Whats he going to pardon himself from?

How long a list do you want?

Trump isn’t a facist, he’s a White Supremesist Neo Nazi.

the difference is?

big_n_daft / morecash,

I’ll ask you both; on Monday, did you think America was about to succumb to domestic terrorism and mob rule? Or did it seem unlikely to You?

I did, and I posted on here at the begining of the week saying that the biggest threat to America is domestic terrorism and that the nation was about to descend into mob rule. Go back and check my posts if you don’t believe me.

I’m not psychic, or particularly clever, I just said what I saw and what I thought most likely. It’s not a glass half full or a glass half empty perspective, just an accurate one.

What surprised you most about the Trump rally / coup? We’re you surprised that BLM didn’t put in an appearance? Wouldn’t you have thought that they would be there to defend Biden’s victory?

I wasn’t surprised because like me, they knew what was about to go down, that the Trump supporters would disgrace themselves. Rather like BLM left Boris’s Pretorian guard of racist football hooligans (trademark) to fight the police rather than engage them in combat.(though I’ll concede that they did pick them off one by one as they tried to leave the capital that evening)

The Trumpists erected a scaffold with a noose outside the Capitol building, they made a noose for their own necks, the reason being that BLM gave them enough rope to do it. The biggest winners from the coup attempt are BLM. Their case thoroughly vindicated for all the world to see and they didn’t have to lift a finger.

The RW and conservative press were desperate for a clash with BLM and BLM’s absence from the scene left said media in complete paralysis. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t guesswork or fantasy, it’s all laid out in the history books (unless they’ve been redacted by Michael Gove). Black America knows this, they’ve been through it all before and know how to play the game. I think we can call their strategy “rope a dope” agitating before delivering the most almighty knock out punch whilst sitting on the sofa at home playing playstation.

I’ll stop with the rope metaphors now before things begin to sound a bit ‘ropey’.

Where is Chewk?

succumb to domestic terrorism and mob rule?

But it didnt did it. An isolated incident that was resolved relatively quickly and the Senate back in charge in the main condemning the violence. Compared to the duration of some of the BLM actions that went on for weeks and cost many lives it was a flash in the pan and achieved the opposite of what the protesters wanted, Trump is now thoroughly discredited and has thrown his supporters under the bus.

Unfortunately societal improvement is usually 2 steps forward, 1 back, we are firmly in the one step back phase at the moment but the wheel will turn.

Sorry to bust your bubble guys, but this isn’t about Trump, he is just the front man put up there for our entertainment. What follows will be worse.

Absolutely this – Trump got to the White House because his campaign was funded. While he garnered headlines, the bad stuff happened behind the scenes. We won’t rid ourselves of this malignant influence until the billionaires who backed Trump are made responsible for his behaviour.

Where is Chewk?

Christ, the last few weeks have been insane enough without him being summoned to grace us all with another non-sequitur. Reminder – I’ll fund a crate of beer for the person who builds a new working killfile.

“Where is Chewk?”

Last I heard he was auditioning for a job as a Jamiroquai impersonator?

I’ll ask you both; on Monday, did you think America was about to succumb to domestic terrorism and mob rule? Or did it seem unlikely to You?

I’ve said on here several times that from my son’s experiences in the States last year, there are two different Americas, and he couldn’t see how the two could continue to live side by side.

If I’d been asked for a prediction last Monday, I expected trouble at the rally, and I was surprised that there wasn’t better security to prevent the events that unfolded, whether it was carelessness or conspiracy, I don’t know.

I expect further trouble around the inauguration – beginning to think it may be a lone nutter as much as more crowd trouble like this week, possibly both.

But if you think a fairly localised mini riot like the Capitol is “America succumb[ing] to domestic terrorism and mob rule”, I think you’re over estimating what happened. They were back in and debating and voting within 6 hours or something. Catastrophising (sp?) that event in the language you used is giving them more credit than they deserve.

But then I’m usually at the “glass half full” end of the STW spectrum. America/Biden has a huge problem to solve, but it’s not succumbed to mob rule yet.

Great thread here about the more serious looking militia types

WOW: Was there a plan to take hostages? This man is carrying police-style zip-tie handcuffs. And mace(?) pic.twitter.com/np3i1pUc6n

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) January 7, 2021

@p7eaven

Lies travel fast and memes faster. Combine the two and you have a kind of hypertabloidism

I think you just invented a new and very relevant definition.

Hypertabloidism

Nice one!

Although having been chased by a hippopotamus myself I can testify that they are absolutely bloody terrifying and responsible for more human deaths than any other animal.

Hippopotamuses kill c 500 people per year
Dogs kill c 20 000 to 50 000
Mosquitoes kill in the millions