Thought for the Day

[filghy2]

Also, I was really surprised to see how easy it was to break into a building on Capitol Hill ,WTF. I heard that the White House security director resigned.

There's a good discussion of the failures here. There seem to have been some unaccountably bad judgements made.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...failure-456237

I notice the usual suspects are arguing that it's really the fault of the left because police were afraid to respond forcefully after the outcry over their response to BLM protesters.

[Stavros]

Here is a question, what do the supporters of Trump actually want from Government? We know there are a diverse group of Christian Fundamentalists, New Wave Fascists, Neo-Nazis, Armed Militias, QAnon conspiracy bots -but in practical terms what do they want?
-To impose Christianity as the official religion of the USA?
-To expel all Black people from the US, followed by Muslims, Asians, Jews and Latinos?
-To make same-sex relations illegal?

We know what they are agains, but what are they in favour of?

[filghy2]

Here is a question, what do the supporters of Trump actually want from Government?

I doubt that many of them have any clear idea how to get there, but I think what unites them is that they want to return the USA to something like its 1950s state, when the predominance of white heterosexual Christians was unquestioned, before civil rights, before feminism, before environmentalism, before political correctness, before big government and its 'nanny state' restrictions - a time when (in their minds) people like them were free to do as they liked.

[broncofan]

I notice the usual suspects are arguing that it's really the fault of the left because police were afraid to respond forcefully after the outcry over their response to BLM protesters.

I'm curious how a fully erected gallows made its way to the foreground. How people were able to plan to hang Mike Pence without the FBI noticing some planning on usual forums. We're still waiting to find out who brought the pipe bombs and whether the guy arrested with napalm in his truck had coordinated with everyone else. I'm not suggesting authorities intentionally let it happen but we're going to need some time to figure out how there were so many failures. And not just with capitol police.

The DOJ will be under the control of Biden in 11 days. I expect finding out everything about the planning that went into this and the institutional response by our law enforcement agencies will become a greater priority then.

[broncofan]

I'm also not suggesting there was one plan or that everyone there was a co-conspirator to the same thing. Everyone who entered the capitol committed a bunch of federal crimes, but I think we will find some whose plans were more explicit and violent.

[broncofan]

One last thing: for those who are curious about the progress of identifying the people involved in the attack you can follow this guy on twitter
https://twitter.com/jsrailton

His work was featured in a new yorker article by ronan farrow that came out yesterday or something. I don't have a link but I'm sure it comes up with google search. The story was about a recent identification but more are coming in.

[Stavros]

I doubt that many of them have any clear idea how to get there, but I think what unites them is that they want to return the USA to something like its 1950s state, when the predominance of white heterosexual Christians was unquestioned, before civil rights, before feminism, before environmentalism, before political correctness, before big government and its 'nanny state' restrictions - a time when (in their minds) people like them were free to do as they liked.

I think the past is a major factor, but if one looks at the issues around the Bundy successes (he is still grazin' his steers on public land) , it seems more like a 'frontier' mentality that doesn't believe in Government, full stop. Cliven Bundy looks more like one of those robber ranchers in Wayneless Westerns, laid low, eventually, by the Man with No Name, who sucks a cheroot and shoots to kill - only this time, the Bundy's have won. Moreover, this has emboldened the militias who see that when they seek confrontation with the armed forces of the Government, it is law and order's fear of massacre that lets the cowboys go, to roam across the range free of the Government's laws. But, this is a rural movement that idolises the Land, and cannot be effectively transorted to the urban areas that dominate the USA. Yet the Bundy Clan and people like them are satisfied if they can carve out their autonomous zones within the USA where 'the Feds' choose not to reach them.

Indeed, by letting them go, 'the Feds' have enabled the Bundy's to consolidate their 'freedom' and become a baseline for the other Militias to emulate, with impunity. The Oath Keepers and the III Percenters have built on these foundations to threaten local state officials, often with some success. Indeed, the canny thing to do was to confront 'the Feds' locally, rather than nationally, so though I doubt Bundy would have chosen to attack the Capitol, they must approve of it, as any attack on Govrnment is an attack on 'the Feds' who are opposed to the individual liberty and tax-free life established by the Pioneers of the 17th century. The problem with a direct attack on 'the Feds' is that too many Americans have a stake in Government, but for Cliven and Ammon Bundy, my guess is they don't care, as long as they are free to do what they want without the irritating intervention of the law.

The Guardian has an article on this here-
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...nce-rural-west

[broncofan]

There are questions about how the U.S. can avoid becoming a failed state. The simplest answer is that those who have threatened our form of government can stop acting in bad faith and engaging in corruption. In the past year we've seen our President bribe a foreign leader to investigate his future adversary, spread health misinformation that cost tens of thousands of lives, and spend two months inciting insurrection with conspiracy theories.

There are people in every society who have resentments and are disgruntled. To the extent we can point to any systemic unfairness or inequity our political system can provide solutions. To the extent that people will believe anything no matter how easily disproved and believe patriotism means subservience to a cult figure they cannot be accommodated. We cannot bribe the seditionists with a brand new gallows out of fear they use the old gallows they erected. We cannot lend credence to their lies or pretend maybe they have a point when they don't. We cannot pretend that maybe some extortion is okay or that they've found the righteous version.

We have primed ourselves to believe that everything in politics is a matter of perspective and to find the right answer one takes the average of the existing views. But what if one view is extreme and the other only points out that it's extreme? I am reminded of Hannah Arendt's observation, "the ideal subject of the totalitarian state is not the convinced Nazi or Communist but people for whom...the distinction between true and false no longer exist."

If our legal system can rebut 60 different theories about election fraud and people can still believe that their view is true, then we have to blame the purveyors of this information. We can try to adopt policies that give people greater hope for the future but I can't see that people carry around racist insignia and flags and scale walls and erect gallows because they are out of work. They do these things when they've been radicalized into a belief system that consistently inflames them and requires them to deny reality in order to justify themselves. Republicans can stop inciting these people and they can be held accountable for their failure to respect our democracy. But I'm not sure what other option there is.

[Stavros]

If our legal system can rebut 60 different theories about election fraud and people can still believe that their view is true, then we have to blame the purveyors of this information.

But, as discussed on the BBC news this lunchtime, does this mean the regulation, by law, of social media? And if platforms become engines of hate, misinformation, lies and incitement, shut them down? At what point does free speech become a threat to freedom itself?

[Stavros]

I don't know if it was provoked by Arnold Schwarzenegger's video in which he referred to the events in Washington DC last week as America's 'Kristallnacht', but Jeanine Piro has taken this analogy into the gutter-

She went on to say of Democrats: “And now that they’ve won, what we’re seeing is the kind of censorship that is akin to a Kristallnacht, where they decide what we can communicate about.”
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/jeanine-pi...183152559.html

If it means anything, it means she is ignorant. Kristallnacht was not censorship, it was not a stunt, it was a deliberate, planned and violent attack that changed the relationship between the German State and its Jewish population and, indeed, the non-Jewish population, and was another step forward in the consolidation of Nazi power and the implementation of its laws on 'Racial Purity'. It was a major event in what became the Holocaust, and cannot be separated from it.
What happened in DC last week is not comparable, even if Schwarzenegger had cause to reference his father and his father's generation's acquiesence in the Third Reich. I don't know much about Piro to be honest, but this is not the time to make idle comparisons with the Third Reich when the only reference points she needs are provided by the relationship her own TV station has with the truth. And if she says in response, 'well this is my opinion', then her opinion is worthless, and she has made a fool of herself for broadcasting it.