TrickstaPriest

Not just that, I rather prefer having them online rather than offline.

More legitimate political discourse https://occupydemocrats.com/2020/09/21/republican-senator-runs-bizarre-dark-new-ad-featuring-attila-the-hun-joking-about-killing-liberal-scribes/

I mean, fundamentally, people don't care what the rules are, they just want 'what benefits me'. So they don't care what the excuse is, as long as it shoehorns 'their' president back in. If he stays in forever? Great! Except what it really does is give 'their guy' every reason to seize power and utterly abandon them... the whole point of a Democracy is to make the leadership dependent on the people to maintain their job, not vice versa. Reversing that means the powerful can do whatever they want, the people would have no choice but to take it or fight... and fighting seems unlikely against a modern army. FLIR makes all those scenes from the movies, with the plucky heroes peeking up over the hill or hiding in the forest, laughable. On top of that, 'their guy' in this case is just a few years younger than Biden, which means he wouldn't be around long... and the next guy will happily use the path they laid to stay in power, cause that's how the mechanism would work. This comes from the same mindset that the government 'wants' people to wear masks... to control them... somehow... because people are so obedient... and would obey... wearing masks ...and blocking facial recognition... ... one of the most useful technologies for the autocratic state... ... ...

VPs tend to also run for Pres later. So if a VP is given the right to overturn an election, what's to stop a party from maintaining their President for two terms using the VP as a spoiler, then having the VP run and act as a spoiler for their own election, assigning a VP from their party, and doing it again? Forever?

So Trump released an official statement suggesting that, among other things, Pence should be investigated for not sending back the votes? Is he saying Pence had no choice but to refuse it? Because that seems... like a questionable statement. Either Pence 'had the right' to do so (and chose not to), or he didn't... if Pence needs to be investigated for choosing not to, is that because throwing out the votes should have been considered a presidential order? >_>

Exactly what I expected. The remark isn't going to do a thing in terms of popularity, and he's already done such things as vaguely threaten someone on the witness stand live through twitter, so... when the House changes, it seems guaranteed all will be forgiven.

Has made me wonder if moving back is all that...

That's a very good point. Like, regardless, Pence chose not to do this... or at least believed he could not. Pence appeared to make the deliberate choice not to exercise this authority, or to push if he could. That throws out the implied point of "redoing all this", what Trump is trying to shoehorn in. If Pence wanted to, he could have pushed the point, but chose not to. Trump wants to say the media was lying about his VP's authority, without him saying -should- the vice president have the power to throw out a presidential election? It, again, comes down to the idea of him being 'cheated out' without him saying that he'd have to say VPs have unprecedented control over elections in order to do so. Plus there's nothing to say he's really been 'cheated' unless he concedes that Pence didn't want to push for him to get it - or is he saying Pence had to throw it out, by order of the president? He's towing a line there of not outright-saying what he said beforehand, that Pence was being cowardly, but it comes down to no one wanting to throw away limits to VP authority for Trump's sake.

Anyone could come up with an excuse for that phrasing though. That's my problem with hanging so much on it. What should be more concerning is that people are accepting that the vice president can throw out ANY election if they want to without oversight or consequence? What the literal *(#$&*( ??????????? edit: Just imagine if that was actually a thing people started doing in elections. "Oh yeah the vice pres says he didn't like how the election was conducted in two of the states, so he tossed out the election. sorry."

Trump's back to rabble rousing - implying there'll be a million-man protest/riot if he's charged "illegally" - which is of course whatever Trump says is illegal. Basically giving people open permission, just like last time.

If anyone feels the seditious conspiracy charges are inappropriate or overblown:

Just reminds me of stuff like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-locations-idUSKCN1VV09J https://www.salon.com/2020/06/22/kentucky-election-expected-to-be-a-disaster-after-polling-locations-cut-voting-rights-advocates_partner/

...

Absolutely agree with Iuz, and he's probably doing more than I have on this very issue because of that. It's also why I do respect "Beau of the Fifth" at least to an extent - I don't necessarily trust or believe him, but he's much more constructive than destructive. Giving people the tools to act is vital. It's also why I wholly agree, appealing to the 'American Revolution' does ignore a lot of context. Violence is the last resort, and when it's the first it shows a lack of willingness to try. My feelings on property damage, harm in general, is that it's bad. That doesn't mean I equivocate the causes, or not listen to the messages, but it's inherently destructive. Even to its own cause, it's inherently destructive.

(I am being short and cruel on possible economic arguments for right wing militia causes, but I have little patience for that thoroughness these days)

Much of the right-wing militias are about fear of 'racial replacement', foreign influences, other factors you want to quantify. If you want to claim climate change isn't real or won't threaten to collapse modern society, boy do I have some information for you. edit: sorry, in reflection 'you' is unfair. I was saying that because it rolls off the tongue, not to be rude to you specifically. After all, we agree on this on a pragmatic level. Is the right-wing militias arguments valid? 1) influx of Mexicans was highest from 1980-2010, and slowed down between 2010 to 2020. Not that this is what you'd get if asked, but that's what the official data appears to be. Fear of 'whiteness being bred out' is madness not just because of the fear of the consequences being ludicrous, but we'll have naturally born blue hair designer babies before 'whiteness is bred out'. 2) foreign influences are a problem. They exist for every nation. Grow up. 3) eco fascism? why should we provide the right-wing militias with the resources over anyone else? seems like advocacy for a king (or group) to hoard all the goods and 'trust' they'll be fair. Or beneficial to me. Right.

I wouldn't trust political violence to ever 'go well'. We are making progress, again, in some areas. It's easy to forget that MLK did exist in an era of riots, property damage, and more. The 'tea party' was exactly that. So I can be sympathetic to people's message despite what they do. I do not automatically invalidate it because of what they did. But I do not recommend advocating for political violence. In terms of the survival of our species, however, the conditions will not wait for us to 'progress'. In actuality, even if we made major political advancements tomorrow and accomplished incredible bursts of technology, the very requirements to build and spread and incorporate those tools and advancements, I do not believe it would be soon enough to prevent widespread shortages to the American population. When you add the lag time on the symptoms of climate change from the causes of it to the time to incorporate any new technologies, it will be thirty to forty years for it to even slow down.

I don't disagree, but as someone who's watched the inevitability of global warming to crush all human civilization continue almost literally unabated, I wonder at what point do we admit that a system that results in the death of its entire species and possible end of the viability of the planet for life may not be working. At what point do we wait for to change things? There's very limited examples of slavery in modern day, such as the criminal enterprise broken up in Cali recently? It was only a handful of people. Certainly that is not political violence. Is political violence equivalent? I think the question isn't whether there's an ethical similarity, but a pragmatic question that treating them as different may tear society down. In that respect I agree with you. In the respect of how current politics is literally ending our species, and no method has changed that nor will change that before our 'society of plenty' crumbles to dust? I'm not sure if that is an acceptable answer.

Unfortunately in extreme cases, such as literal slavery, you don't really have any law supporting you. Those authorities often don't respect anything but money, power, and the ability to inflict violence. Those unfortunates have nothing, will always have nothing, and will never be recognized as having more than nothing, let alone the law. Of course, slave revolts also almost always fail. Those few that succeed often are proceeded by very trying, difficult times for the whole country. The same goes for many other kinds of revolt.

That's interesting. I had been watching some interviews during the protests and riots, and there were definitely people who traveled to the area who barely understood what the protest was about. My take, at least, is that with 15-27 million potential protestors... well, that's a huge concentration of possible problems. But that's assuming that 'density of protestors' somehow maps to 'possibility of damage'.

I have been wondering about the amount of people involved in the GF protests - the only estimates I found were only off wikipedia, based on surveys sent out. 15-27 million Americans, which seems high. I'm not a fan of political violence either - it far more often collapses a country than 'saves' it.

It's incredibly frustrating to me that all of the voices crying for this sort of thing don't understand/care that action like this would inevitably start a third world war.

You can have my hugs, at least

Given how little of my ancestry survived Germany, I quite dislike these people

Lots of that, particularly the latter.