My answer to some common replies:
1) "But the [left/right] is much worse": you're sorta making my point. Even if the other "side" may be worse now, if you're honest with yourself, I'm sure you can see where your partisans have crossed some lines, too. And the whole point of this piece is authoritarianism and fascism grows slowly over time, so "We're slightly further down the fascism hill right now so we're better" isn't a heartening response
2) "This is 'Both sidesism'!!!" First of all, I don't claim there are good people on both sides, I claim there are bad people on both sides. Very bad, sycophantic people who see the worst in others, assume the worst motives, and are willing to stop at nothing, including murder, to achieve their ends. Yes, for many issues there is a "right" and a "wrong" and these could theoretically be discovered through empirical testing and observation. But we're not talking about individual issues here, we're talking about national / political identities and the complex social and tribal bonds that make people even choose "a side" in the first place.
3) "You have to speak out / choose a side, or are you morally complicit in evil" Don't entirely disagree. That said, extremism is polarizing and destructive of rationality and humane discourse, regardless of where it comes from. Just because we are all sort of forced to "pick a side" when the gravitational forces are so strong, that doesn't mean that the side we pick will be right all the time or even a force for moral good, just a temporary stopgap against moral evil. That doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to identify evil and speak against it when you see it. It's just a lot harder for those people who see much evil amongst two large constituencies that see themselves as wholly Good, than it is for those people who are wholly convinced of their Good and the absolute Evil of the other side.
And although I don't claim to be either rational or in the middle, I do believe I am right about the creeping fascist tendencies present in the polar extremes of American politics -- and there's no better evidence of the truth of my comment that it is being downvoted and commented into oblivion by partisans on both sides :)
There's a sense in which the root comment of a flamewar is responsible for the flamewar whether it was intended or not: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Still, if you hadn't posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25086238, I wouldn't have replied. Note the phrase "nor perpetuate" above! And I certainly didn't single you out:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25086665
Thanks for the explanation and for the great work you do moderating this community!
These days, I see more and more the acting chops of Christopher Plummer - the bad guys are already here and all that's left is hope and trying to maintain a bubble for your children. From scene one he is a goose on a pond. Serene above the waterline but roiling below.
http://www.critical-theory.com/watch-zizek-explain-why-the-s...
They are both irrelevant comparing to the US military. Germany, when Hitler rose to power, had a bad economy and weak military but I think he did give up to the military choices at the end of the day. The US military is a behemoth who could decimate the left and right paramilitaries in a few days, and then go to invade Argentina.
Having lived in a region where countries changed regimes from dictatorship to democracy to dictatorship multiple times, it seems that there is one similarity: The military has the final shot; and a weak or no military meant chaos (Libya/Yemen/Lebanon) since every paramilitary now has a shot at power.
It'll be much easier to predict the outcome by knowing the US military. Does it support Republican or Democrat values? Does it care for democracy? Is it fed up with current day politics?
>” We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution. And every soldier that is represented in this museum, every sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman, each of us will protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price," Milley said during remarks at the opening of the US Army's museum.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/12/politics/mark-milley-pentagon...
If you believe this, you are severely misinformed; if you don't believe this, you are a liar. Either way, it is nefarious.
I've been to every single counter-protest of the proud boys in Portland.
Who brings guns? Proud boys, 3%ers, PatPrayer, and Trump supporters.
Who doesn't bring guns? Counter protestors.
Who gets arrested from bringing guns to a protest? No one.
Who protects the proud boys? The police.
Who gets shot at by police? Counter protestors.
I had a gun pointed at me by a Proud Boy amongst his militia several months ago. I've been bear-sprayed but thugs with ARs strapped to their bloated bellies. Don't for one instant try to pull this "both sides have mililitias" bullshit.
It is so clearly right-wing propaganda.
P.S. And I know what you are about to say next, "But a Trump supporter got shot in portland..." YEs, he did, and it was awful, and then the Feds shot the perp w/o due process, while Rittenhouse gets a pat on the back. There were NOT heavily-armed groups of counter protestors on the left, but there sure as hell are from the right, all the time.
I'm not denying that the left has ever used extreme violence in the US. The Weather Underground is the most famous example. I will however argue that those days are over for the left, with the vast majority of leftists being nonviolent and pacifists, and a small few committed to armed defense, but not offense.
That's not to say the issues aren't important; of course they are. But this site has a particular scope and repetitive flamewars aren't in it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Please see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25086595. 40+ comments in a thread like this is beyond excessive.
I'm a fairly liberal person, but it doesn't take an inhuman amount of mental gymnastics to look at riots, anti-police sentiment, etc, and see a coordinated hostile agenda. I am lucky that I get to talk to both hardcore right and hardcore left people regularly, and they both tend to follow logical interpretations to inevitably polarizing and unhealthy conclusions. Both are not living in current reality, they are projecting their beliefs about the other side's agenda based on what they see on the news, and saying "I don't want to live in that world".
We should regard "perceived intent by the other side" as most important, and there's no way that dishonest actors could weaponise that? No risk of concern trolling, double standards or phoney outrage?
Are you not paying any attention at all to modern politics?
"What am I supposed to think about the intent of the other side when they're trying to get a legitimate election result overturned to support their preferred presidential candidate" indeed?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not disagreeing with you, I respect your views and feelings and the importance of the issues. But HN's mandate is curious, thoughtful conversation about topics of intellectual interest. When the thread gets reaches this degree of fiery political minutiae, it has left that far behind. In fact it's at the far end of the solution space from ontopicness.
Anyway, we're not shifting the goalposts to the leaders, we're talking about the people, which is the subject of the article. The people of the left were completely down with the faithless electorate concept, whoopie!
And somehow you missed this point. Which leads me to a question: why? Perhaps you didn't hear about it. Perhaps you forgot it. Maybe you brushed it aside. Or maybe you recalled it and decided it wasn't worth mentioning. Each of these are mechanisms through which people are steered.
You accuse the far right of doing something that the far left was doing just four years ago, and still you have thought yourself objective, but it doesn't work.
Equating that with what's going on now does not seem like an argument made in good faith.
And partly because they don't count as real Americans in popular rhetoric and are getting increasingly ressentful about that.
Well, I certainly wasn't, and I contest that this belief was widespread within the left, but without evidence one way or another we're not going to resolve this aspect of the disagreement. What I do know is that no significant number of people with political positions and political power used that power to throw the election results into doubt, as Mitch McConnell and GOP congresspeople are now doing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307536-obama-urged-cli...
You really can't bothside this.
You should think the same way about this as you do about the "russia hacked the election" cries about how the 2016 election was illegitimate.
Russian interference however in the 2016 election is well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20....
The impeachment vote could have been easily avoided if Trump had come out and denounced Russian meddling and let the investigators do their jobs.
Be patient and let the process play out in a legitimate way.
There will be some on the right that will never be convinced that this election was legitimate, but this pacifies the more reasonable people on the right. Trying to kick the Republicans while they are down , chastising them them for using legal means to fight the outcome of the election, or engaging in grievance politics just further reinforces the perception that the left isn't operating in good faith.
Remember once all of this is over we still have to live with these people.
You're getting this backwards. The legal means are not there to fight the outcome of the election, they are there to make sure every vote is counted properly. This is a subtle but important difference: nobody denies that there may be minor and insignificant improprieties in this election, as there are whenever a country of 300 million people votes. What is being denied is that there was whole-scale interference with the election system. I'm fairly confident that they will not be able to convince a court that there was, but that doesn't make it ok that they are filing lawsuits on no evidence. People being upset about an election outcome is no reason to ignore the reality of this situation.
I agree and so do the courts which is why this problem will likely solve itself if you just let it play out.
The kind of pacification you call about is not something Trump or republican party awarded to anyone last 4 years. They enjoyed to trigger libtards. There was no patience I could detect.
What you suggest does not work, because it demands one side to follow norms that other side does not have to follow.
Give them their time and then we can all move on.
No, I don't think this and never said anything like that. I believe the right ultimately poses the greater danger in this context. What I am saying is it's very obvious what Trump wants to do: he wants to build and support a narrative that this election is illegitimate. He wants to do it through stoking resentment against the left and center and suggesting systemic bias. We resist this by calmly saying that we as a nation are committed to fair elections, and we agree that we need to investigate any cases of impropriety that he can find in courts which are independent (and if anything are largely friendly towards his party).
If he fails to discover any issues, we say we cooperated fairly / openly, he failed to produce evidence of impropriety, this suggests the process was fair, and now we can move on. What we don't do is scream that he's wasting our time, that Republicans are assholes, that they're trying to undermine democracy, and that this whole process is bullshit. If we do, it allows Trump to say "SEE?! I told you they are biased against us! What are they trying to hide??? Why are they so impatient?!" It hands him the ammunition to build the narrative that there has been a conspiracy. If there was no conspiracy, why is the left so impatient and hostile? Why are they trying to subvert the process? Politics isn't just about facts it's about feelings and opinions. At the end of the day we want Republicans to accept the results willingly, and in my opinion that's best served by being calm and patient in our dealings with them rather than by being angry or impatient. This is a lesson the left generally fails to grasp: screaming at people and calling them assholes is not a particularly effective way to get them to agree with you.
The most effective thing we can do is allow Trump et al to burn themselves out.
The thing is, most Republicans already accept the result. And I'm not saying the whole process is bullshit! Nobody is saying that. It is pretty bad that we can have an election with the popular vote won by five million and counting and have the result disputed, but that's mostly orthogonal to this situation.
Once this all plays out, and it will in the near future, then we can determine the "legitimate election result", per the Electoral College.
Should Biden continue to prevail, I'm not expecting any significant unrest. Unhappiness, yes, but that is normal.
There are allegations by enormously unscrupulous people which have as yet been completely debunked by the courts and labeled by government officials as misinformation attempts: https://apnews.com/article/top-officials-elections-most-secu...
This was a very partisian election, in which half the country was not going to be happy with the result. I don't see a smooth acceptance of the outcome regardless of how it comes out.
What are your beliefs for?
This is a conflation. Trying to be rational is valuable independent of what message you have. Messaging is secondary. When messaging becomes primary, the truth suffers, and freedom dies. I'd rather be self-satisfied and correct than highly influential and wrong. The latter is far more dangerous.
Residents and businesses owners are currently suing the city for abandoning the neighborhood’s police station, providing porta-potties to the armed occupiers, and ceding control of this area to the violent mob for roughly a month.
edit: Downvoted for relevant, if uncomfortable factual statements on HN? I thought we were better than this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone
https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/07/seattle-times-rep...
I am friends with people who lived close by and visited the CHAZ/CHOP, and I watched live-streams from the CHAZ nearly 24/7 for the entire span of its existence. It was a lawless area patrolled by gun wielding far-left activists who routinely harassed journalists, ripped phones out of streamers’ hands to delete footage of the “security team’s” deadly mistakes, assaulted visitors of the wrong political stripe, and ultimately were responsible for the shooting deaths of several people. While the atmosphere was more “street festival” during the day, at least for a while, at night and as the occupation wore on it swiftly devolved into violent anarchy.
Remember Raz Simone, the local rapper who showed up on the first night with an AK-47? Remember how he handed out rifles to seemingly random untrained people from the trunk of a car? Remember how his crew assaulted and pistol-whipped a graffiti tagger on the very first night of CHAZ/CHOP, on a Facebook Live stream, saying “we are the police now?” Many similar incidents.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-autonomous-zone-leaders-w...
https://youtube.com/watch?v=q5bA-iUPvqI&t=1m27s
Lorenzo Anderson was shot inside CHOP (though not by the “security team”), and died after amateur CHOP medics and confused city EMS flubbed his medevac. EMS couldn’t get to him quickly since the shooting scene wasn’t able to be secured.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/seattle-police-and-fire-confusi...
Let's break down what actually happened.
1. After weeks of protests, police intimidation, beatings, and frequent gassing of the entire street (much to the delight of people living there, who were unable to breathe inside their own apartments), including a right wing chap driving a car through a crowd, and shooting someone trying to pull him out of his vehicle, the police leave the east precinct, based on an FBI claim that it will be burnt down.
2. The protest moves into the blocks around it, and starts protecting the precinct.
3. The precinct does not burn down.
4. The protest moves elsewhere, and a block party starts.
5. An idiot called Raz, and his boys start providing 'security'. Nobody asked them for it. People who ran the protest didn't ask for it. People living in the area didn't ask for it. Smells like a gang moving into a power vaccumm to me.
6. Homeless folks move into the park area of CHAZ. The area gets a bit rough at night, but is still a block party during the day.
7. Someone in the homeless encampment gets killed in the early hours of the morning, presumably over drugs, but who knows.
8. A teenager steals a car and takes it on a joyride through the pedestrian areas of the CHAZ. (Remember all the car attacks against protest areas over the past few weeks in both Seattle, and the rest of the country? Not a smart move.)
9. Some unknown person kills him and injures his friend.
10. The police move back in to an unburnt district. They then set up a multi-block checkpoint, that demanded all entrants into the former CHAZ to show their ID to be allowed entrance. (When we were under the thrall of Warlord Raz, only drivers had to show ID at his checkpoint.)
Driver Dawit Kelete (who is black, and not politically affiliated) was high on pills when he plowed through BLM protestors occupying a section of the freeway in the middle of the night. Tragically, one protestor died and another was seriously injured.
Most “car attacks” this summer have turned out to be simply reckless or confused drivers caught in the middle of unplanned, unannounced, often heavily-armed and aggressive street protests. Armed protestors have shot or shot at several such drivers, such as in Provo, UT and Aurora, CO.
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/6/30/21308526/gunman-shot-...
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/03/man-charged-murder-sho...
By my reckoning, the actual count of “car attacks” this summer where a politically-motivated driver rammed a BLM/antifa protest can be counted on one hand. There has been a greater number of unprovoked attacks on drivers by protestors. This is the product of extreme paranoia among armed protestors, amplified by social media.
The driver 'accidentally' turned, with speed, off an arterial, into the protest street, and despite having clear visibility of hundreds of people in his line of travel, kept driving, with people scattering out of his way.
He stopped when he hit a blockade, shot at one person who tried to open his car door, waved his gun around (With extra magazines jungle-taped together), and ran through the crowd directly into the police line. So much for being lost and confused, he seemed to know exactly where he was.
He was either planning a mass shooting, and lost his nerve at the last second, or was trying his damned hardest to provoke an attack on himself, presumably so he could respond with violence.
For an exercise - you try driving your car into a line of right wing militants protesting (or into a police line), and then shoot one of them. I doubt you will succeed in running to a line of safety, and I doubt their press will describe you as lost and confused.
Unless you directly witnessed these events (which few people did, even amongst Seattleites), then you're getting your information second-hand just like everyone else.
>The charges say Kelete told jail officials that he was withdrawing from the narcotic Percocet and that he struggled with an “untreated addiction.” Washington State Patrol accident investigators found “several implements commonly used to smoke illegal substances” and a substance “that appears similar to crystal methamphetamine” in the car, according to the charges.
I hadn’t read about the field sobriety test (so thank you for providing that information!), only the drugs in the car and his opioid addiction. I don’t know whether a field sobriety test would detect that type of intoxication.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/seattle-man-...
I live here. I've spent weeks going to sleep to the sound of police grenades going off. I've been to CHAZ. I've watched, in bafflement, for weeks, at how news coverage - particularly national, but also local has painted an entirely different picture from what I've seen with my own two eyes.
The events he cites have taken place - but because of the superficial level of knowledge he has of the situation, he is omitting vital context.
I will absolutely gatekeep on this. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but it's quite clear that _iyig has no first-hand knowledge, and only superficial second-hand knowledge of what he's talking about.
At least, that's my most charitable interpretation of the situation.
So you blocked the police out of a whole neighborhood of a few square blocks, and a gang moving into the power vacuum is a surprise? Come on!
It was completely unexpected. And it will be completely unexpected the next time, and the next time, and the next time...
And because they ran out of gas.
Contrast the SPD's behavior to how the Bellevue police department handled BLM protests. The police chief met with the protest organizers, treated everyone involved with respect, set some ground rules, and did not start a dozen unprovoked attacks on the public.
When all you have is a warrior cop, every problem looks like an insurgency to be put down. The SPD has an incredibly antagonistic attitude towards the public, and is institutionally incapable of de-escalating. It also seems to not actually be subject to any form of democratic oversight - as city council, despite passing many, many resolutions, is unable to reign them in.
I have a feeling you know this.
Short clips from several of the vantage points (skip to roughly 1:40 - warning, disturbing):
The last I heard Antonio Mays murder was an active investigation with no arrests made: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/everybody-down-wha...
If it's an open and shut case and the shooter is clearly identifiable why is that? Is the Seattle Police in on this conspiracy?
I of course assumed you meant the other kid because the murderer was actually, yknow, detained and charged so their identity is obviously known.
Once again, I'm sure you actually know all of this.
Video taken in the aftermath captures people discussing how they will collect and hide the evidence. Seattle Police found and questioned the woman who filmed that video, but she told them she didn't know anything: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/woman-releas...
This kind of talk is quite small.
Here is a protestor describing in vivid detail the killing of Antonio Mays Jr. by CHOP security, minutes after it happened while his blood is still wet on the street. The video was clipped from a stream recorded by Omari Salisbury, an independent reporter who lives and works on Capitol Hill. His coverage was some of the most immediately on-the-scene (warning - disturbing):
https://youtube.com/watch?v=q5bA-iUPvqI&t=1m27s
You’re right that witnesses aren’t talking. This is part and parcel with the “didn’t see shit, don’t know shit” mantra of BLM/antifa protestors. As another user linked, there is video of protestors intentionally destroying the crime scene. Due to this lack of cooperation, Antonio Mays’ family may never receive justice.
they call that feeling "paranoia"
In Portland, an anti-fascist protestor shot a man (rightly or wrongly). Anti-fascists can and do show up with weapons. It is not a false equivalence to say so.
Please don't create accounts to break the site rules with; it eventually gets your main account banned as well.
This is not how the justice system works in America, just so you know. The system you describe is horrifying.
Its no secret that the mentally ill, badly damaged and socially disadvantaged have historially flocked to extreme campaigns -> on either side <- of this inflamed debate
Peace as espoused by various religions, becomes a powerful antidote as a social message -- I support that messege, personally
(Here is a reminder video:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3LrRUfJsY
I am all for BLM protests in general, but the looting only provokes more extreme responses from the right. I also blame the police- they rather confront peaceful protesters than go after actual thugs. Having a class of people redlined into ghettos who have no stake in the wealthier parts of society is the root of this, but what to do about it?
edit: Downvoted for relevant, if uncomfortable factual statements on HN? I thought we were better than this.
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/08/aaron-jay-daniel...
https://denver.cbslocal.com/2020/10/16/lee-keltner-wife-want...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_Dorn
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/everybody-down-wha...
> But while the White House beat the drum for a crackdown on a leaderless movement on the left, law enforcement offices across the country were sharing detailed reports of far-right extremists seeking to attack the protesters and police during the country’s historic demonstrations, a trove of newly leaked documents reveals.
According to what I saw and interpreted, it was mostly right influence attempting to escalate the situation to "hurt the left".
Saying "fake spin" is not going to convince me otherwise. I'd prefer statistics though.
( Belgian, so not in the US)
In the age of agent provocateurs[0], it is hard to really know the truth even if you are present at the scene. There is only so much time in a day.
>There’s no evidence that the suspects arrested in connection with a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer are antifa activists.
>Before his arrest, one of the suspects attended a Black Lives Matter protest. Another suspect criticized the movement.
>State and federal documents make no mention of antifa or Black Lives Matter. Rather, they reference an anti-government militia group.
>Michigan’s attorney general has said white supremacist and anti-government groups acted “in concert based on a shared extreme ideology.”
They're not [1][2]?
[1] -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/aug/08/wearea...
[2] -- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/29/key-finding...
That's not to say the issues aren't important; of course they are. But this site has a particular scope and repetitive flamewars aren't in it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Hillary Clinton has been claiming that Trump's election was illegitimate for years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum.... 66% of Democrats believe that Russia directly hacked and manipulated vote counts in the 2016 election: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
But she does not deny the fact that he did win. She's just saying that he won because of dirty tricks (voter suppression, intentional promulgation of falsehoods), which is plausible. Certainly within the bounds of an opinion one could legitimately hold.
> 66% of Democrats believe that Russia directly hacked and manipulated vote counts in the 2016 election
Sure. A fair percentage of Democrats would probably say that they think that Trump is Satan incarnate. That doesn't change the fact that Democrats do in fact recognize the fact that Trump won the 2016 election. Republicans by and large are not conceding that Biden has won the 2020 election. (They also deny basic facts about climate change, COVID, etc.)
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Eg. Part of the redacting were removed and this was an example:
> But there are a few shreds of information that are really, genuinely new, and they’re damning of the president. Namely: Trump had direct knowledge of Roger Stone’s outreach to WikiLeaks, according to multiple witnesses interviewed by Mueller. He encouraged that outreach and asked his campaign chairman to pursue it further, those witnesses said. And Mueller’s office appears to have strongly suspected, without putting it in so many words, that Trump lied to the special counsel in his written answers to Mueller’s questions about the Stone affair.
I'm not going to read the version where they hide the important bits.
I would read a complete one though.
And yes, there was an investigation into possible collusion with the Russians. That investigation was launched and conducted by Republicans.
What does any of that have to do with disputing election outcomes or denying basic facts?
This is a straight-up lie. Mueller said explicitly they found evidence, but left it to Congress to pursue prosecution.
Instead of reading what "he said" I'd appreciate reading what the evidence is and what it shows. I'd honestly like to learn.
Edit: just checked, the linked Time's "debunking" confirms that there was no evidence of collusion: the best that they can come to is to claim:
"But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable."
So the fact is, as I read it, there was no evidence of conspiracy. And that's it.
Edit 2: The quote in the answer doesn't say anything better:
"While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”"
Again, the fact in there is "none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy." Then, claiming that it "could be described" ([by whom?] -- there would be at least such mark in a Wikipedia article) is just an attempt to rationalize that fact to these who were emotionally invested. The Democrats could have invested their energy in many other much more important problems they have among them. IMHO Hillary failed not because Trump or any foreign action but because there was awareness of Democrats rigging their party's election process and of she as a war hawk:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clin...
[1] https://time.com/5610317/mueller-report-myths-breakdown/
Edited in response to Parent's edit:
"While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”
You don't appear to be having an honest conversation, so I'll bid you good day.
"1. Trump was receptive to a Campaign national security adviser’s (George Papadopoulos) pursuit of a back channel to Putin.
2. Kremlin operatives provided the Campaign a preview of the Russian plan to distribute stolen emails.
3. The Trump Campaign chairman and deputy chairman (Paul Manafort and Rick Gates) knowingly shared internal polling data and information on battleground states with a Russian spy; and the Campaign chairman worked with the Russian spy on a pro-Russia “peace” plan for Ukraine.
4. The Trump Campaign chairman periodically shared internal polling data with the Russian spy with the expectation it would be shared with Putin-linked oligarch, Oleg Deripaska.
5. Trump Campaign chairman Manafort expected Trump’s winning the presidency would mean Deripaska would want to use Manafort to advance Deripaska’s interests in the United States and elsewhere.
6. Trump Tower meeting: (1) On receiving an email offering derogatory information on Clinton coming from a Russian government official, Donald Trump Jr. “appears to have accepted that offer;” (2) members of the Campaign discussed the Trump Tower meeting beforehand; (3) Donald Trump Jr. told the Russians during the meeting that Trump could revisit the issue of the Magnitsky Act if elected.
7. A Trump Campaign official told the Special Counsel he “felt obliged to object” to a GOP Platform change on Ukraine because it contradicted Trump’s wishes; however, the investigation did not establish that Gordon was directed by Trump.
8. Russian military hackers may have followed Trump’s July 27, 2016 public statement “Russia if you’re listening …” within hours by targeting Clinton’s personal office for the first time.
9. Trump requested campaign affiliates to get Clinton’s emails, which resulted in an individual apparently acting in coordination with the Campaign claiming to have successfully contacted Russian hackers.
10. The Trump Campaign—and Trump personally—appeared to have advanced knowledge of future WikiLeaks releases.
11. The Trump Campaign coordinated campaign-related public communications based on future WikiLeaks releases.
12. Michael Cohen, on behalf of the Trump Organization, brokered a secret deal for a Trump Tower Moscow project directly involving Putin’s inner circle, at least until June 2016.
13. During the presidential transition, Jared Kushner and Eric Prince engaged in secret back channel communications with Russian agents. (1) Kushner suggested to the Russian Ambassador that they use a secure communication line from within the Russian Embassy to speak with Russian Generals; and (2) Prince and Kushner’s friend Rick Gerson conducted secret back channel meetings with a Putin agent to develop a plan for U.S.-Russian relations.
14. During the presidential transition, in coordination with other members of the Transition Team, Michael Flynn spoke with the Russian Ambassador to prevent a tit for tat Russian response to the Obama administration’s imposition of sanctions for election interference; the Russians agreed not to retaliate saying they wanted a good relationship with the incoming administration."
[2] https://www.justsecurity.org/63838/guide-to-the-mueller-repo...
"Although the Mueller Report does not squarely address these questions of “collusion” that fall outside the scope of potential criminal liability, it can be mined for substantive information that provides some meaningful answers." Which precedes all the claims.
So even there it's written as scare quotes "collusion" while admitting that that "falls outside the scope of potential criminal liability."
In short, Trump's yes men behaved then as stupid as they continued to behave later, including now, but being stupid wasn't a crime. Sadly, the obsession of Democrats with all that wasn't less stupid (obviously, I'm writing completely non-partisan).
Conspiring does not matter. It is entirely irrelevant to the goal of validating the integrity of the election. If they care so much about fraud they would have continued to investigate all of the irregularities around the 2016 election.
Which is not the same thing. And given the way it turned out with late-counted postal votes, quite wise.
1) https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-clinton-idUS...
Res ipsa loquitur.
Neither side should concede until the ballots are sufficiently evident. We’ve reached that point.
The unfortunate refrain of too many people repeating falsehoods online and in person these days.
1. Trump's legitimate election in 2016 - see all the hysterical reactions like "Not my president" protests or urging faithless elector to vote for anyone else but trump route or "Russia-gate" (left's Benghazi?) or the impeachment farce. (I don't think I need to provide any citations here).
2. Illegal immigration - left doesn't acknowledge that this is a problem. And then you see left's contradictory messaging ("illegal immigration has slowed down to a trickle") to thousands of children showing up on our borders. Couple that with ridiculous demands like "Abolish the ICE" or calling Obama the "Deporter in Chief". Concrete example of a prominent leftist: https://www.newsweek.com/aoc-abolish-ice-hysterectomy-whistl...
3. Economics: there is a broad agreement among the economists (including someone like Krugman) that rent control doesn't work. Yet you keep seeing repeated attempts from the left. Latest example: CA Prop 21.
It certainly does. That's why the left supports policies like DACA.
The disagreement is not about whether or not illegal immigration is a problem. The disagreement is very much about what the right way to fix the problem is, which is well within the bounds of legitimate policy disagreement.
> rent control doesn't work
Of course it does. Rent control keeps rents from going up. Whether or not this is desirable, or whether it has undesirable ancillary effects that outweigh the benefits, is again the subject of legitimate disagreement over policy.
It amazes me that because the Senate didn't convict or even have a trial (for political self-preservation alone), people just think it's a farce.
You could just watch the House testimony? Trump clearly tried to use the United States' leverage to get another country's leader to create bad press for the man who he saw as his biggest threat to the re-election.
Imagine if nobody blew the whistle and the Ukrainian president did what Trump wanted. Trump could've beaten Biden off the back of that. Off the back of abuse of power!
You may not be old enough to remember, but Al Gore (democrat) did _exactly_ this 20 years ago.
I didn't recall the date though, I checked and it was on December 13th, 2000.
Come back on 14 December 2020 and tell me if that aspect is "exactly this".
because the narrow vote count margin aspect that time really isn't, and the claims of fraud and rigging this time really isn't. And neither bode well for a hypothetical Trump concession speech.
"does not attempt to dispute the outcomes of elections when the results are clear"
In 2000 the results were not clear. This year they are.
Furthermore, once the Supreme Court shut down the Florida recount, effectively handing the White House to George Bush (on very questionable legal grounds [1]), Al Gore conceded.
[1] https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/please-dona8217t-cite-t...
FACT CHECK: What's Happening In This Election Is Not Like Florida In 2000
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/13/934190243/fact-check-whats-ha...
Reference?
Ohio in 2004: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Boxer-delays-preside... . (It should be noted for the sake of fairness that the leaders of this attempt claimed they weren't trying to overturn the election results by blocking the count.)
Again: there is no moral equivalence here.
If Gore hadn't tried that stunt, the process wouldn't have dragged on until December, and the Court wouldn't have been able to interfere. Even more ironically, later attempts to check the count show that all of the recounting standards Gore had actually asked for would have led to Bush winning; Only a complete and fair recount may have allowed Gore to win.
[0] http://www.floridalawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/L...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidentia...
See especially the NORC results. The wiki entry argues that if the Florida court had continued the proceedings, it may have applied a uniform standard where Gore would have won - but none of the existing orders did that, they used standards where Bush would have won [based on NORC]. Anyway, by Dec. 12 time was running out, the Federal deadline was Dec. 18.
I believe that if Gore had pursued the fair strategy from the beginning than there would have been time enough for the uniform standard recount and no cause for the partial recounts and the appeals that wasted so much time.
The rational middle will be dwindling as long as they are always referred to in abstract without ever naming names.
Naturally, any rebuke of my position is evidence of their extremism, for steeped in their emotion they are unable to be rational. I, on the other hand, am wise beyond belief, empowered by the reason that Nature and my own path to self-growth have given me.
¹ To be clear, I always think about things carefully. I only mention this because it is clear that almost everyone else doesn't, as evinced by the fact that they do not agree with me.
This gets to a larger point. When the country was first founded, the different religious and political factions deeply distrusted each other. Religion was extremely important, and those who differed were considered wrong and/or corrupted in a way much deeper than I think modern, non religious people fully understand.
And yet despite this, they managed to cooperate with each other. It wasn’t perfect. And it didn’t always work; we did have a civil war. But it allowed for a regional plurality between peoples that were deeply different and factional, and no doubt considered the others evil or dangerous or a threat.
The only means by which I think we can escape this is a return to a respect for local autonomy. Allow people to shape the law where they live as they desire and reduce nationwide impositions. Give more authority to the states to create the world in which the people there want. If you think others would be trapped in repressive systems, give them a means by which to escape to yours.
Evil is perpetrated by violent coercion. The beliefs might be come to voluntarily, and may be more common in one framework than another. But the actual execution of evil requires coercion, which usually seems justified to the person perpetrating it.
Because the law inevitably requires coercion, coercion itself cannot be eliminated without lawlessness. But the laws people concede to can and should be varied. The social contract is only valid if the people have a choice. If we allow people that choice, people will flee the systems which coerce them unjustly, and they will wither. It will be painful to endure systems that seem obviously terrible without intervening. But there is no other way to audit your own biases then to let the people in each system decide which is better over time themselves, and no other way to avoid the inevitable violent conflict of imposing your values onto others who fundamentally disagree with them.
The democrats are a center right party. The republicans are at this point, a far right party. It has been a deliberate strategy of the far right to paint the center as "socialism" (which a lot of Americans seem to mistake for communism...), because it makes their ideology seem less extreme. A lot of Americans have fallen for that nonsense, unfortunately. Definitions and framing and perspective matters a lot.
Americans aren't against socialized medicine or safety nets, just the "socialism" boogieman.
It’s obviously more complicated than this, but that’s the 5000 foot view.
Trump literally uses cult-like techniques to control his followers, traffics in conspiracy theories, attacks as "fake" any news media which doesn't praise him effusively, and is actively undermining democracy itself by claiming that any votes against him are illegitimate. There is no vaguely liberal or left politician in US history who has done what Trump has.
"Proud Boys" are an organized domestic terrorist group, not a label for a set of beliefs.
There was real, violent, semi-organized left-wing radicalism in the USA in the 1970's. Not since. It may return! But it hasn't yet.
You might want to be more skeptical of the media you're consuming that led you to believe this. Or the persons you've been talking to.
That's not to say that the same thing couldn't happen on the left or that the people on the left in some way are superior. Quite the opposite. I think the people on the left are just as susceptible to the type of effects happening on the right.
I often wonder what would have happened if Trump had run as a democrat in 2016 instead talking about being pro-choice and how we need to get medicare for all etc. If he had run against someone like Ted Cruz, I would not be surprised if a lot of the left (myself included) had voted for Trump and excused all his talk as "locker room talk" or "speaking his mind" just like the right ultimately did. It may be nothing more than an accident that the right was the side that "fell victim" to his antics.
This brings me to a serious worry of mine. A lot of people are talking about how Trump is too incompetent to successfully install himself as a dictator, but that the next person may be much more competent. These "warnings" are directed toward the right. However, there's nothing that prevents the next dictator wanna-be from being on the left, and the left needs to be equally vigilant.
The left seems to suggest that only an immoral (or possibly dumb) person could possibly vote for Trump and that we need to put country over politics. That's easy to say when putting country over politics happens to agree with your own political views. I don't know if many democrats would have voted for a person like Ted Cruz in 2016 if Trump (or someone like him) had been the democratic candidate. I can almost certainly say that I personally would have played the same games of semantics that the right was playing then (and still are).
There's a lot of "right-shaming" going on when I suspect that it's just an accident that the right was the side that fell for it this time. The left should be extra vigilant to make sure that we don't fall for it ourselves.
I’m not an American though, so I may be missing some context.
The groundwork has been laid, on both sides. And the Democrats got raked over the coals for tilting the scales against Bernie, so they might not do it next time.
I only see Republicans doing this, but I am not American so perhaps my perspective is not as acute as someone "on the inside". Can you link to instances of Democrats calling free speech and elections into question?
The left is not friends of free speech, at least not the current US left.
Getting fired because of views you espouse is not a violation of your First Amendment rights.
That's just the tenor of American politics right now in general.
And given the oddly pervasive connections between Trump's family and Russia, I can't really fault people for thinking there might very well be a connection. An awful lot of smoke, there is.
Correct. Which is why most of the grousing centered around the electoral college being archaic and undemocratic. Many people want to see the rules changed.
Claiming "they stole the election" is not that.
I suspect that readers will see this piece as a reflection of their greatest fears about our own Republic. Unfortunately, the message will be lost by those who are most in need of hearing it. That includes many of the readers of this piece who think their side are the victims and the other side are the creeping fascists.
Hate to break it to you, in the United States we're screwed two ways over. Both the left and the right in the US have paramilitaries (antifa, proud boys). Both the left and the right in the US have enemies lists, and have effective propaganda wings that eviscerate opponents and call basic and decent democratic norms into question (free speech, elections). Both sides use identity and demographics to sow division and resentment between groups.
Maybe there's some hope for the shrinking, rational middle that two creeping fascisms cancel each other out, and will in the future. But that's a pretty long bet to make, too.
For the rest of us paying attention and who, in the words of the piece, "think about fundamental things", it has already started and it is very, very scary where it may end up.