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  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: deficiT | tryptakid | Foreigner

Jan 6 Attack on the Capitol and the aftermath

JessFR said:
There was a time when I might agree with left and right being two sides of the same coin, especially the far left and far right.

But that was before the cancer of trumpism and conspiracy theories infected the republican party and the American right. Now I see a very noticeable difference, and see it less as left vs right but left and right vs trumpism.

The more sensible members of the right, the traditional right so to speak, need to realize this is destroying their party and they need to fight it.

Because the trumpist conspiracy theorists are not like the Republicans of old. They are most like a fanatical cult that has emerged from the more extreme side of the American right and infected the rest of the right wing political alignment.
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I think that's a collection of good observations.
My question would be - how do you know Trump in fact created these fanatics, fuelled the division, cultivated the environment we see today? It's like me stealing your car and then saying Joe did it and then getting the entire street to side with me while in the meantime we devise a way to create an entire fabricated reality by which to then pin everything on Joe so that any resistance you offer is responded to tenfold with an entire universe of fabricated alternative realities. Right at the very beginning those who are guilty are the ones creating the script and whose creating the script today? Democrats. It has been a Democrat bloodbath in terms of politics with them hitting out at EVERYTHING to do with Trump in the name of Trump because of Trump to protect 'us' from Trump etc. How do you know whether the truth is in fact this entire debacle is PRECISELY the two sides of the same coin and it's intentional? That all the US needed to lock it's entire population down and bring in a new normal was to have a strawman like Trump to burn at the stake in order to bring in sweeping changes? That requires BOTH parties complying, regardless of whether the Republicans (some of them anyway) comply by simply pretending they are not complying meanwhile actually complying because they are falling for the narrative.

What is destroying things is the fact that BOTH sides are fuelling the fire therefore isn't that the purest form of the two sides of the same coin argument? If you don't want to wear red when everyone else is wearing red you wear something different. That's when you ARE different in the fact you make a conscious choice to be different. When we look at the political landscape, Republican or Democrat makes no difference because they are wearing the same clothes only parroting different things. 99% of the entire situation is a shit show and regardless of who 'wins', it's still a shit show and the penny has already dropped and things are already changing. The domestic war on terrorism is coming and no matter what you're being told, both sides are making it happen. To me that's a perfect example of how obvious it is that words mean nothing and the actions being taken mean everything and what we can see from the actions is things ARE changing and if you think this is going to be a temporary change think again. You have BOTH sides to thank for that. What's happened throughout the last year or so, including with COVID-19 should have illuminated very clearly how farcical the illusion of different sides in politics with one side being good and the other being bad. If that was the case, why hasn't things changed? Where are the supposed good people? Why is the world being held hostage still after a year? And why has the political environment around the world coicindentally started to boil? Why are we ALL being pushed in a direction that from all sides is essentially agreed upon and we are simply told IS happening?

And you think that's because of Trump? That's what I would tell you if I wanted you to vote for me. But what am I doing? Doing the same thing. Whether I'm red or blue, I'm exploiting the environment to leverage control, change laws, bring in new social policies, change how people live their lives, change the futures of generations for years to come, stomping on everything that EVERYBODY including the most rational, most loyal supporters of hardcore regimes past and present would be raising their eye brows at. Even the most extremist views have nothing on what is going on right now and you have to look at what is behind all this. Is Trump involved? Absolutely. But so are those who have created the illusion that Trump is the spawn of the devil, just like they did with every other person they've gone after in history, foreign or domestic. So you have to look at everything and because now you're looking at everything - what is the difference? Really? Tell me, what is the difference? The difference is illusory.
 
The point you're making that the problem is larger than, precedes, & exists independently of Trump is correct.

So did the problem (specifically, the divisions in the USA) exist before Trump? Yes, absolutely. But did he aggravate, exploit & worsen the problem? Again, I'd argue "yes".
 
finitelifeform said:
My question would be - how do you know Trump in fact created these fanatics, fuelled the division, cultivated the environment we see today?
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I don't think anyone is claiming Trump created this division or the fanatics. But he without a doubt fueled the division and prayed on the fanatics in order to create a cult of personality. He threw gasoline on the fire, but no he definitely didn't create the problem. He opportunistically exacerbated the problem.
 
this is somewhat related to the events of january 6th: Fox News Is Sued by Election Technology Company for Over $2.7 Billion

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Corporation and three of its popular anchors are the targets of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed on Thursday by a company that became a prominent subject of discredited theories about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed the suit in New York State Supreme Court against the Fox Corporation, Fox News, and the anchors Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro. As part of the same action, the company is suing Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who made the case for election fraud as guests on Fox programs while representing President Donald J. Trump.

In its 276-page complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell “created a story about Smartmatic” and that “Fox joined the conspiracy to defame and disparage Smartmatic and its election technology and software.”

“The story turned neighbor against neighbor,” the complaint continues. “The story led a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.”
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giuliani and powell have now been sued by both smartmatic and dominion.

alasdair
 
mal3volent said:
But Democrats can force a vote on it right?
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She’s off her committee assignments. 11 Republican House members voted to remove her, which surprises me.
The House voted Thursday evening to remove Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, a decisive step that comes in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements from the congresswoman that have triggered widespread backlash from Democrats and divided congressional Republicans.
The vote tally was 230-199 with 11 Republican House members voting with Democrats to remove Greene from her committee assignments.
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Full story:
www.cnn.com

House votes to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments

The House voted Thursday evening to remove Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments, a decisive step that comes in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements from the congresswoman that have triggered widespread backlash from Democrats and...
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
 
There’s an interesting piece in the Atlantic about why the Republicans are in a complicated position with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Here are a couple of excerpts that caught my eye:

The sequence shows McCarthy is not in charge of his caucus in any meaningful way. Now his members face a painful vote on Greene. On the one hand, she is a dangerous lunatic espousing horrifying lies, and her positions are damaging to the Republican Party and the nation; not voting to strip her assignments is a moral abdication. On the other hand, she is a reliable Republican vote. Significant portions of the Republican base believe in the same conspiracy theories as Greene, so voting to remove her risks alienating some of the party’s most enthusiastic base voters and small donors, along with former President Donald Trump, who has backed Greene and (according to her) remains in touch.

Put more finely, the Republican Party will struggle to win national elections without purging people like Greene, but individual members will struggle to win GOP primaries if they do purge them. (Already, Democrats have rolled out a TV ad targeting eight Republican representatives for enabling Greene.)
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The whole situation is reminiscent of how Republican leaders tried to handle Trump’s spurious claims of a fraudulent 2020 election. (Not coincidentally, Greene has also backed those bogus claims.) They knew that the election hadn’t been stolen, but they also didn’t want to get crosswise with Trump or his fervent followers. McConnell and several other high-profile Republicans declined to acknowledge Biden’s victory until after the Electoral College voted on December 14. When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (acting as a sock puppet of the Trump campaign) filed a bogus Supreme Court case to overturn the results, 126 House Republicans signed a brief in support—including McCarthy and his deputy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise.

“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change,” a senior Republican official told The Washington Postin November. And if the result did change … well, that just meant Republicans kept the White House.
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Full article:
www.theatlantic.com

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just a Symptom of What Ails the GOP

How can the party hold one individual accountable for espousing repugnant beliefs it previously indulged as a route to victory?
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
The Republicans need to get over their moral and political cowardice. For the good of the country, and in the long run, themselves.
 
Yeah I think that this is going to, eventually, lead to the destruction of the Republican party unless they take responsibility for their complicity in allowing and encouraging this to happen, either soon or years down the road. History books are going to view these times in a cold, objective light, and wonder how the hell both sides didn't band together to excise the rot after how dramatically things went sideways. Decades ago we had Nixon, whose abuses of power were tame compared to the end of Trump's presidency, and both sides united together against him to remove the guy. Now here we have events much more fundamentally damaging to our society, and all we get is excuses except from a few voices.

it really says a lot that in these intensely partisan and polarizing times, we actually have at least 5 Republican senators who are strongly speaking against their party line out of an appeal to something greater than party loyalty.
 
It's not even really party loyalty. Party loyalty, at least for the politicians who joined pre 16,would be fighting to preserve the republican party as it was in the past.

What we are seeing is loyalty to a cult of personality that has infected and hijacked the republican party.
 
Agreed. I'm just saying that it's really unusual to see members of congress going against the party line on anything these days, so it's quite telling that there are even a small handful who are vocally pushing against the rest of the party. That should be something to pay attention to and question why, especially for the Republican party
 


Look I'm not calling them Nazis, but this is extremely concerning behavior. Ted Cruz had balls for 2 seconds and then swiftly cut them off and handed them to Tucker Carlson
 
Snafu in the Void said:
Don't tell me conservatives don't do the same exact thing. If Hunter got busted for crack y'all would be parading in the street.
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Because the prosecution would finally go in the other direction politically, which it rarely does.

Recent example is Sussmann found not guilty even though he was obviously guilty
 
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