01-14-2021, 08:22 AM
(01-13-2021, 02:42 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(01-13-2021, 04:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Are you saying that Trump had no chance of getting re-elected? That would have stopped him. Whoops! He encouraged people to nullify the election on his behalf. Mercifully he has failed.
Don't worry too much about having no second chance at some right-wing authoritarian with a despotic streak getting within range of the Presidency, especially should there be some economic, military, or diplomatic calamity. Millions of Americans would gladly sacrifice their essential liberty for economic betterment or for assertions of national pride.
I'm saying Trump and the Republicans showed no signs of functioning or signs of having any interest in becoming a dictator or dictatorship unlike Biden/Harris and the Democratic party and its group of corporate allies who are currently operating above the law and positioned become right now.
Treating the opposition as if it has no relevance and never will have it again. I suppose that that is a rather mild form of dictatorship unlike the sort that eliminates opponents.
People taken away in unmarked vans? Formation of a secret police? The vehicles were all similar and they had US flags and Trump banners. When quasi-official activity (even if it is 'volunteer' activity has the banner of a political figure and it serves the ideology and person of the Leader... that is commonplace in a dictatorship. I mocked this as "Trump-Trump Macoutes" in an allusion to the horrible secret police of Duvalier-era Haiti. To be sure, people never started to disappear, but voting out Donald Trump is one way to ensure that inchoate tendencies to tyranny be aborted.
Then there is the the Trump cult of personality. Anyone who falls short of unqualified acceptance of it is suspect in his mind and that of his supporters.
Quote:EYES DON'T LIE. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES DON'T LIE.
You neglect the wisdom of collective experience. I see enough in common between Donald Trump and dictators in other countries and different from prior Presidents of the United States to recognize the danger of a dictator. Maybe he didn't go as far as fast as someone like Hitler or Pinochet in establishing tyranny, but he has certainly gone too far and too fast. Maybe we would be wary if there were any politicized youth group.. Trump has no youth appeal and that is one of his weaknesses.
Still, this is America, and the only people well equipped to deal with any incipient totalitarianism are those that have lived under dictatorial regimes as in China, Cuba, or Iraq, or under dictatorial regimes that have bitten the dust. Plenty of Americans are naïve about the nature of dictatorship. Enough people got cold feet about the threats to liberty under Trump, and that is why he will soon be an ex-President. He tried to nullify an election on demonstrably specious grounds... we all know the rules for deciding who is President, and Trump sought to bypass those rules.
Quote:You represent a fascist regime right now. A fascist regime that has the power to control speech and target and sensor political opposition and make its own rules and apply its own laws.
Your projection SHOWS. You accuse people who disagree with you of doing the sorts of things that they do themselves. An example of projection: look at what Hitler claimed the Jews were up to... and that is exactly what the Nazis were doing!
Freedom of expression is not absolute. Criminal speech and communication is not free speech. A the extreme
"This is a stick-up. Put all money in this satchel and don't turn on any alarms, and nobody gets hurt" while in a bank is obviously not free speech. It might be permissible in a screenplay about bank-robbers, but not in a real bank. Incitement to riot, political violence, or genocide is not free speech. What someone in a position of command or influence says is particularly under scrutiny, which means that the howling of a skid-row drunk mean far less and are under far less control than what a schoolteacher or military officer has to say.
Quote:So, my question to you is are you an American or a quasi socialist supporter of some sort who doesn't care if America remains American or not at this point in his life?
Socialist? Do you mean "Big Government"? The Right has found that Big Government can serve it well in enforcing monopoly and crony capitalism while ensuring sweetheart contracts off which profiteers can fatten themselves. Wars for profit (and we can be glad that Trump did not bumble his way into one) need Big Government to enrich the war profiteers and draft the cannon fodder. Maybe we can't eliminate Big Government, but we can prevent Big, Bad Government. Ideally we shrink the government until it is little more than a Welfare State, but that may be a pipe dream.
Your idea of what constitutes "America" is far narrower than mine. It obviously includes First Peoples as well as land-grabbing white people who took away land that belonged to First Peoples. It obviously includes the descendants of slaves who have no connection to any culture other than what their masters allowed -- and who through their toils as slaves earned American citizenship for themselves and their progeny so long as they remain in America. There is no established church (First Amendment), which means that there is no conflict between being a member of any religion (except perhaps for one that does human sacrifices or rites of sexual abuse) and being American.
Quote:We are seeing another calamity going on in Washington DC right now. What's a government full of shitty hell bent politicians worth?
Just remember what liberals with conscience thought of the fecal policies and vile expressions of Donald Trump. Those would have been just as wrong had we done them. You are free to believe that Obama was a dreadful President; indeed you are also free to believe in an Earth-centered universe, young-earth creationism, that the mathematical constants π and e are rational. You are free to be very wrong, too.
Trump violates my conscience. Beware anyone who has no conscience or who sacrifices conscience for gain, power, indulgence, or ego.
Quote:What's a government that doesn't respect the Constitution or obey the laws of the land worth these days?
The Trump Presidency, of course! Remember well that the Constitution is an expression of political morality.
Quote:What's a bunch of insecure women who will do anything for power and a group of ball less males who go along with anything and say anything for power worth?
You are not the first person to allege that truth has a strong connection to testosterone. Male penitentiaries are full of frustrated testosterone. I prefer to stay clear of those places.
Quote:So, what does a free country with Constitutional rights that believes in America and the American rule of law have to do as a country when the party that represents all of its interests doesn't have the power to stop them even though the two are more or less evenly matched.
Your narrow definition of what constitutes America practically necessitates the denial of Constitutional rights to people who 'fail' to share your vision. For example, I listen to very un-American music:
There's nothing American about this music.
Quote:Does America have the right to revolt and disrupt and use violence like them?
Ask the experts -- Jefferson, et al:
Quote:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
You have no right to enforce your delusions upon the rest of Humanity, and neither does any tyrant any more than I can force you to listen to classical music (if I were to make any guess, your favorite is either country or classic rock. Am I right?) We Americans have elections, and we can turn quickly upon a President taking on dictatorial tendencies.
The American political divide that we now know is more along lines of culture than of economic conditions. Trump chose to find the largest part of American culture, nearly half, and pitted it against the rest of America. But know well: that was not enough. Worse, Trump has shown that the part of America that he could win over is anything but moral in its intended treatment of the rest of America. Doing bad things to people is immoral.
Quote:I hope your not foolish or naive enough to believe that it doesn't today? Do you know what I don't like about the silly notion of having a living Constitution. I understand that everything that lives eventually dies and a living Constitution would die like everything else that lives. Welcome to the 4T.
Better a living Constitution than dead people in a concentration camp. We now take our chances with Joe Biden.
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.