02-08-2021, 07:36 PM
(02-08-2021, 12:13 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(02-08-2021, 05:27 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:Quote:We also note that Biden is ordering the army to "stand down" so that
"extremists" can be weeded out. To the Democrats, all 74 million Tea
Partiers and Trump supporters are extremists or cultists that need to
be "deprogrammed."
Millions of them are going to deprogram themselves as they realize that what the words seemed to mean was very different from what they meant.
John is one of those believers in lies. I've been projecting that Trump would produce no evidence of voter fraud in his second impeachment when he will have as much reason as any to produce the evidence, but even if he doesn't John will still favor what he wants to believe over what there is evidence of. Xenakis is just that intellectually bankrupt.
There is simply no legal defense of any contention that Trump got cheated out of an election. Official results sworn to on pain of perjury and achieved in accordance with state laws that must adhere to the Voting Rights Act (the federal legislation called for in the mandate clauses of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution) are definitive whether the margin is six votes or sixty percent. State governments have done much to preclude double voting, voting in two different places, and the recognition of votes by those who die before Election Day. Tight rules about custody of voting materials and voting devices make manipulation of the vote nearly impossible. Forged ballots? The methods used for ensuring that fraudulent ballots cannot be counted are modeled after accounting controls that Big Business uses for cash and high-value items that could easily be sold after misappropriation. The only dirty characteristic of this election was COVID-19, which would have scared voters from voting in person about as effectively as would an armed militia that intimidates potential voters selectively. States had to accommodate the danger of voting in person at the polls. In my case (Michigan) the state gave people the option to use an absentee ballot without needing one of the usual excuses (which include being over 60, being away from the community for work, incapacity to vote at the polls for medical purposes, being a poll worker, or being in a jail lockup while awaiting trial or if incarcerated for a misdemeanor offense.
Quote:Many of the extreme followers are just racist. Note that most of the people who led the capitol insurrection were with the racist organizations. They just would rather destroy democracy than let go of their hate. Holding on to a racist presidency was worth it to them lest Biden reduce the immunity to murdering minorities and make it harder to suppress votes.
Freedom includes the freedom to be wrong. People are as free to be racists as they are to believe in a flat earth or that they can square a circle. We have always had racists, and nobody can be sure that they will go away. But even racists can see what is in their best interests. What is more dangerous is that those who harbor the authoritarian mindset that adulates a near-fascist leader, accepts conspiracy theories as truth irrespective of their lack of validity, considers force acceptable in choosing the results of elections, attacks lawful authority that gets in the way of its desires, and sees blind loyalty to its chosen idols as the sole expression of patriotism. The Confederate banners and Trump flags did not belong in the Capitol building. What one cannot do is overt crime, like attacking Capitol police, disrupting a lawful session of Congress, putting members of the House and Senate and their staffers at risk, breaking into the Capitol itself (that is called burglary!), or either taking or exposing classified data. People who have never been in legal trouble before and now facing long prison sentences will talk to save their skins. Let us remember that killing federal police (which includes the Capitol police) is still a federal capital offense.
In the longer term we will need educational reforms, most obviously the expansion of liberal education that can ensure that people be less ignorant of economics, formal logic, psychology, probability and statistics, and the rhetorical techniques of deceit. If such was good for fighting Soviet-era Communism and good for gutting Jim Crow, then it should be good for defanging the authoritarian cult that is Trumpism. One can be a conservative without being a fascist just as one can be a liberal without being a Marxist-Leninist.
Quote:I would hope it would be clear that Trump lied and your anticipated self deprogramming happened. I will believe it when I see it. There is still the hope that a small government scheme to not provided services to minority won't backfire to hurt the working poor as well, but the hurt is real and folks are starting to see reality. If Biden makes a big dent in the problems which Trump ignored, we should be all right.
If you can't convince Archie Bunker, then perhaps you can convince his kids. The original idea behind the medieval university was to improve young men so that if they ever got responsibility they would handle it in accordance with moral standards instead of blatant, predatory self-interest. If they learned something along with the trivium and quadrivium... wonderful. In recent years we have made the training of youth to fit initial roles in a capitalist society the objective. We have not taught them how to think and how to seek meaning in life. The liberal arts taught youth how to think and how to seek meaning in life.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
