Break Glass - 2020 USA Elections

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  • stetson wrote: »
    Just saw where Trump played Fortunate Son as his entrance music at a campaign rally in Michigan yesterday.

    Obviously, he's being mocked in saavy liberal circles, though I suspect the punch-line will be lost on the kind of person who would attend such an event.

    Maybe Trump is just seeing how far he can push it before his followers catch on. In North Carolina he promised to appoint "very pro-crime judges". At least he's being open about it.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    Just saw where Trump played Fortunate Son as his entrance music at a campaign rally in Michigan yesterday.

    Obviously, he's being mocked in saavy liberal circles, though I suspect the punch-line will be lost on the kind of person who would attend such an event.

    Maybe Trump is just seeing how far he can push it before his followers catch on. In North Carolina he promised to appoint "very pro-crime judges". At least he's being open about it.

    A forgivable slip, but it does sort of neutralize the GOP's whole "Biden can't finish a coherent sentence" line of attack.

    re: Fortunate Son, I wonder if it was chosen BECAUSE of its lyrics, in that they are essentially pro-grunt and anti-brass, in keeping with Trump's efforts, in the wake of his "loser" comments, to portray himself as a friend of the common soldier. But no one considered that insofar as the song is anti-plutocrat and anti-draft dodger, it is also suggestive of the candidate himself.

    Or maybe they just liked the general macho, backwoods ambience of the tune.

  • Why are people predicting Biden will concede? He is leading Trump by 7.5 points today compared to 7.0 this time last week. Previous Presidents won by 6.3 points (Bush) and 6.5 (Obama). Don't count him out, people.
  • Gramps49 wrote: »
    Why are people predicting Biden will concede? He is leading Trump by 7.5 points today compared to 7.0 this time last week. Previous Presidents won by 6.3 points (Bush) and 6.5 (Obama). Don't count him out, people.
    Nobody is counting him out. People are being realistic. He very well may win, but just because most polls are showing him ahead right now is not any kind of guarantee that he will win. Trump still has viable paths to re-election. People are simply saying that if Trump wins, Biden likely will not concede, at least not unless and until it is very clear that Trump did win.

  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    I'm not concerned about Biden losing a free and fair election so much as I'm concerned about the election being free and fair. Trump will do whatever he has to do to steal it with both legal maneuvering and illegal machinations. Biden needs to have a clear win in the Electoral College, but to get that he'll need an army of lawyers in every swing state making sure the votes are all properly counted.
  • PowderkegPowderkeg Shipmate Posts: 46
    I agree that it's too early to count Biden out, but I'm not convinced that the polls accurately represent the number of people who:
    -- will vote for Trump but aren't going to admit it to a stranger, or
    -- are deliberately giving pollsters false answers just for kicks.

    I also suspect that much of the 7-point national lead comes from five states (CA, NY, IL, MA, NJ) that were never in doubt anyway, and the swing state numbers are much closer (although the data is all over the place, depending on who's doing the polling).
  • To all of which I'll just add "It ain't over 'til it's over."

    Those of us on American soil might be wise to prepare for Some Unanticipated and Unforeseen Unpleasantness Commencing on Nov. 4 no matter what the election returns are. The T team must have some dire contingency plan up its sleeve in the event of inarguable defeat. Perhaps that's what Kelly Anne is working on in her retirement.

    I doubt this fella's doing to manage do-able re-election even by illegal means (but note that I'm still struggling with the results from 2016). I am sure that this guy ain't gonna go quietly.
  • The latest (9 September 2020) CNBC poll shows there are six battleground states. Compared to a week ago, Biden is still ahead in each of them and there was very little post-convention bounce.

    Arizona: Biden 49%, Trump 45% (was Biden 49%, Trump 47%)
    Florida: Biden 49%, Trump 46% (unchanged)
    Michigan: Biden 49%, Trump 43% (was Biden 50%, Trump 44%)
    North Carolina: Biden 49%, Trump 47% (was Biden 48%, Trump 47%)
    Pennsylvania: Biden 50%, Trump 46% (was Biden 49%, Trump 46%)
    Wisconsin: Biden 50%, Trump 44% (was Biden 49%, Trump 44%)
    The poll, taken Friday through Sunday, surveyed 4,143 likely voters across the six states and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

    It was very interesting how the two candidates approached the 9/11 ceremonies yesterday. Trump was boasting of the American military might. He even boasted about the Veteran's Choice Act, which was written by McCain and signed into law by Obama ironically.

    Biden, on the other hand, took the time to speak with a number of family members of the dead and shared in their grief.

    One has no compassion, the other is compassionate.

  • So it looks like Republicans are taking to the judiciary to create chaos in the upcoming election. First there's Florida. The background here is that in 2018 the voters of Florida approved a referendum that restored voting rights to most Florida felons after they have completed their sentence. The text of this referendum was:
    This amendment restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation. The amendment would not apply to those convicted of murder or sexual offenses, who would continue to be permanently barred from voting unless the Governor and Cabinet vote to restore their voting rights on a case by case basis.

    Pretty simple and straightforward, you'd think. Of course this did not please the Republican-controlled Florida state legislature who didn't fancy nearly a million mostly non-white and/or poor people gaining the franchise in a perennial swing state, so they passed a law specifying that "all terms of their sentence" included fines, fees, and other monetary assessments. One complicating factor was that the state of Florida apparently does not keep good records so they could not tell any felons what they owed the state, if anything, with any certainty. In the event someone thought they had paid their debt but the state decided there was some additional court fee owed, all legal jeopardy would fall on the ex-convict who tried to register to vote (or actually cast a ballot).

    Naturally this got taken to court as a violation of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, which forbids denying someone the right to vote for failure to pay a tax (a common tactic during the Jim Crow years) and a violation of due process (in that Florida couldn't come up with a total amount owed by any felon). The District Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs [PDF], saying the legislature's requirements were akin to a poll tax and that the state of Florida should be able to come up with an amount for each case and be able to specify which portions were fines, which were restitution, and how much were fees. For those not wanting to wade through 125 pages of legal opinions, here's a summary from the Tampa Bay Times. The key bit:
    [ U.S. District Court Judge Robert ] Hinkle called the law a "pay-to-vote system" and noted the difficulty in finding out how much a felon might owe.

    The ruling calls on state elections officials to determine the amount owed and allow felons to seek an advisory opinion for the full amount. If there's no response in three weeks, they should be allowed to vote, the ruling states.

    Again pretty straightforward. But then the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals got involved and overturned the District Court, ruling on farcical and tendentious grounds [PDF] that money owed by felons (some of which was assessed regardless of innocence or guilt) doesn't count as a poll tax for . . . reasons. There's even a massive error of fact in the opening paragraph.
    Florida has long followed the common practice of excluding those who commit serious crimes from voting. But in 2018, the people of Florida approved a historic amendment to their state constitution to restore the voting rights ofthousands of convicted felons. They imposed only one condition: before regaining the right to vote, felons must complete all the terms of their criminal sentences, including imprisonment, probation, and payment of any fines, fees, costs, and restitution. We must decide whether the financial terms of that condition violate the Constitution.

    That condition was imposed by the state legislature. It's nowhere spelled out in the text of the amendment. For those who don't want to wade though legal opinions (i.e. most people) the Tampa Bay Times once again provides a useful summary. This will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but it seems unlikely anyone who could have been re-enfranchised by Florida's Amendment 4 will be able to vote in November, so mission accomplished.

    Next up is Wisconsin, not coincidentally another swing state, where the state judiciary is doing its best to monkeywrench mail in voting.

    The background: The Green Party submitted a bunch of signatures to get their presidential (Howie Hawkins) and vice presidential (Angela Walker) candidates on the ballot in Wisconsin. Unfortunately the address listed for Angela Walker on the signature sheets was different than the address on her declaration of candidacy. The Wisconsin Election Commission pointed this out and asked for the Green Party to explain the discrepancy in an affidavit. They did not, so the WEC followed state law, discarded the signature sheets with the non-matching address, and ruled that the Green Party's candidates did not have the requisite 2,000 signatures to get on Wisconsin's 2020 general election ballot.

    So far, so bureaucratic. A third party committing a basic fuck-up and state officials following the law. The real election disruption came when the Green Party appealed this decision two weeks later. That timing is critical, because it means the Greens waited until mail in ballots were being finalized and sent to the printers ahead of the September 17 deadline to begin mailing them out established by state law.

    Instead of doing the simple thing and telling the Green Party that it had had it's chance for relief earlier and they waited too long the Wisconsin Supreme Court (last seen trying to ratfuck its own election) issuing this order [PDF], demanding a lot of information that the WEC would not have immediately to hand and instructing them to tell Wisconsin's municipal clerks not to mail out any more ballots. Given the timing and depending on how long this drags out this could leave a lot of municipal clerks stuck on the legal fork of either defying the State Supreme Court or defying state law.

    This Slate article goes over many of the points I've just summarized, but this bit was concerning:
    Under all this disarray lies a puzzle: Why, exactly, did the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s conservatives force the commission to turn over all this information? The court could plausibly claim to need details about balloting to determine whether it’s really too late to add names to the ballot. But why ask “who requested the ballots to be printed” when the answer is simply “state law”? The court’s order implies that the justices believe something sinister may be afoot — a conspiracy, perhaps, to rush printing in order to keep the Green Party off the ballot.

    Conspiracism seems a regular feature of American conservatism these days.
  • Re felonious tangent:

    California sometimes uses inmates to fight wildfires, including this year. AIUI, they do good work. But when they've finished their prison time, they have a very hard time trying to get firefighting work, because of their records. So Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill into law that expunges the records of certain inmates when they leave prison, so they can more easily get firefighting work (USA Today).

    I'm not sure of California's policy re felons and voting rights, nor of what it should be. But if the former inmates' time fighting wildfires earned them a non-felony record, ISTM they should get to vote, too.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    In California people convicted of felonies can vote once they're out of prison and off parole. Proposition 17, on the ballot in November, will let these folks vote while they're still on parole. (People on probation can already vote.)
  • Thx, Ruth.
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    No problem - I'm studying up on the ballot propositions early this year. There are 12. Ugh.
  • Mad stuff, not using fire fighters with skills and experience. Isn't that part of the rehabilitation goal of sentencing law? Good on Newsom for doing something about it, and timing the legislation right.
  • I'm guessing the original reason for limiting the kinds of work ex-felons could do was that they might misuse their position of trust.
  • I have found it offensive that the "tough on crime" folk (in just about every nation) bang on about making sure that the criminal "pays his/her/their debt to society" but once the debt, as determined by the court, has been paid, society goes on collecting on the paid debt. To give a truly ridiculous example, a few years ago the City of Toronto was gingerly tiptoeing to permitting food trucks. Amongst the raft of Kafkaesque regulations was that you could not work in a food truck if you had a criminal record. You could work in a restaurant kitchen, but not in a food truck. This is evidence both of bureaucratic stupidity and of a reflex hypocrisy vis-à-vis ex-convicts. How are they to be fully reformed if we prevent their full re-integration? Tangential rant over.
  • So, is it just me, or are Bob Woodward's covid-19 revelations now heading into the same dustbin of forgotten scandals as eg. Trump revealing an allied nation's military secrets to Putin?

    That's sorta the impression I'm getting anyway, that the electorate is not exactly enraptured with outrage about this. Except for the ones who were never gonna vote Republican anyway.

    (And, full disclosure, I would be partly happy if that were true, since it's what I predicted, and I like to be proven right.)

  • @Pangolin Guerre

    A possible defense of those food-wagon restrictions could be that city-hall thought an open-air food venue would provide more opportunities for the criminally inclined to make mischief than would a regular restaurant. Like, say, a drug dealer would find it easier to interact with clients than if he were waitering in a burger joint.

    OR...

    It could just be a case of the bureaucracy thinking, well, the public seems to want this, but gee whiz, we have to show our disapproval somehow, so let's throw a bunch of restrictions in, and "no criminals" is one of the old standbys.

  • Isn't the idea that by giving the 'criminally inclined' a means of earning a respectable living and respecting themselves they will be less likely to commit criminal acts.

    I am 'criminally inclined', in that I have committed numerous crimes. I just never got caught, and/or when I did get caught I was forgiven by the victim or the apprehending police officer, who happened to drink with my Uncle at the East Ringwood Social Club.
  • @stetson

    Anyone who has any amount of inside knowledge of the restaurant business knows that its chief function is to employ the otherwise unemployable - addicts (of all substances and activities), criminals (past, present, future), and different -pathics of varying type and degree. I've seen drugs dealt from some pretty high end kitchens. And I say this as both as patron and former dogsbody, and who loves the people and work.

    Which leaves us with B. I think that there was a bureaucrat who so disliked the concept that the plan was to smother it in its cradle under blanket upon blanket of regulation. Oh, and just disliking ex-criminals, as well.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    It’s a litigious world and employers in both the public and private sector are more conscious of the legal and media risks they run when taking a risk with an employee. If something bad happens to a client or a customer there is often enough an immediate search for who is to blame.

    That can get paranoid of course but I’m sure it’s a factor people think about more these days when recruiting staff.
  • I'm having an argument with someone who reckons Stephen Miller isn't a White Supremacist because he went on Fox and denied it. He has linked the powder puff interview and I have linked the series of stories published by the SPLC. But I can't find copies of the relevant emails so I can tell my annoyingly smart interlocutor to stick them in his pipe and smoke them. Does anyone know where I can get them? There were 900 released by the Breitbart editor who decided she didn't want to be on the forces of darkness any more.
  • stetson wrote: »
    @Pangolin Guerre

    A possible defense of those food-wagon restrictions could be that city-hall thought an open-air food venue would provide more opportunities for the criminally inclined to make mischief than would a regular restaurant. Like, say, a drug dealer would find it easier to interact with clients than if he were waitering in a burger joint.

    OR...

    It could just be a case of the bureaucracy thinking, well, the public seems to want this, but gee whiz, we have to show our disapproval somehow, so let's throw a bunch of restrictions in, and "no criminals" is one of the old standbys.
    Restaurants often fight food trucks, restaurant owners are more likely to have political connections. Food trucks have been around for decades, but ISTM the more restrictive laws have come about when food trucks went upscale, appearing to be a threat to traditional restaurants. That and politicians tend towards conservative. Thing new, new=bad: thing bad.


  • @Pangolin Guerre

    Yeah, I, too, am familiar with indoor restaurants being used for criminal enterprises. Totally second-hand accounts, y'understand.

    And I do have a slight, crypto-libertarian bias against moralizing bureaucrats(and this IS Toronto The Good we're talking about), so I'm quite prepared to believe that that's what these restrictions amounted to.



  • stetson wrote: »
    So, is it just me, or are Bob Woodward's covid-19 revelations now heading into the same dustbin of forgotten scandals as eg. Trump revealing an allied nation's military secrets to Putin?

    That's sorta the impression I'm getting anyway, that the electorate is not exactly enraptured with outrage about this. Except for the ones who were never gonna vote Republican anyway.

    Hard to say about "the electorate", but America's elite political media certainly seems to be losing interest. Or I suppose I should say they're no longer pretending to have an interest. The first 24-48 hours after the Woodward revelations there were numerous columnists dismissing it as nothing that was of interest to anyone outside the beltway. I mean, it's not as if he failed to follow e-mail server best management practices or something really serious like that. It was only after the non-elite media started covering the story and people started getting outraged that America's elite political media got dragged, kicking and screaming, into covering Trump's massive failure with the COVID-19 pandemic. And yes, as you've noticed, they've dropped the story as soon as they felt they could do so, similar to the way they stopped covering the fact that one of America's major political parties had nominated a self-confessed sexual predator as their presidential candidate in 2016. I'd say this isn't because "the electorate" isn't interested, but because America's elite political media is, for the most part, fundamentally lazy and not that interested in anything that's mostly killing poor people (i.e. not them).

    At any rate, I'm a bit skeptical of elite media gatekeeper's judgment about what the electorate is interested in and what's newsworthy.
  • @Croesos

    Thanks.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    stetson wrote: »
    @Pangolin Guerre

    A possible defense of those food-wagon restrictions could be that city-hall thought an open-air food venue would provide more opportunities for the criminally inclined to make mischief than would a regular restaurant. Like, say, a drug dealer would find it easier to interact with clients than if he were waitering in a burger joint.

    OR...

    It could just be a case of the bureaucracy thinking, well, the public seems to want this, but gee whiz, we have to show our disapproval somehow, so let's throw a bunch of restrictions in, and "no criminals" is one of the old standbys.
    Restaurants often fight food trucks, restaurant owners are more likely to have political connections. Food trucks have been around for decades, but ISTM the more restrictive laws have come about when food trucks went upscale, appearing to be a threat to traditional restaurants. That and politicians tend towards conservative. Thing new, new=bad: thing bad.


    It was actually more nuanced. Food trucks beyond the usual chips, hot dogs, etc., were very much a novelty in Ontario until a few years ago. Other major municipal governments (Ottawa, Hamilton, St Catherine's) rather embraced the concept. Toronto put up almost every imaginable road block (sorry) short of saying "No". When I confronted a very liberal municipal bureaucrat about the background criminal check, she said that it was to ensure safety, etc. My response was unless the person in question was a serial poisoner, and that the other municipalities (despite some Toronto attitudes) were not Third World jurisdictions. I shall derail no more.
  • Just saw where Trump's campaign defended his "First Amendment" right to hold a huge indoor rally in Nevada.

    Tump then proceeded to use said rally to call for imprisoning people who burn the American flag.
  • Mr. Trump graced my state, Arizona, with his presence today -- supposedly trying to drum up Hispanic support. All I know about it is that he flew in, spent 1/2 hour at his event, and left.

    Mr. Pence will be here for two events this Friday -- one for Hispanics and one for Veterans.

    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state. This can also affect our election for a Senator and all of our House members.
  • Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state.

    If Illinois bills itself as the "Land of Lincoln", Arizona was the "Land of Goldwater". Maybe that's changed.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state.

    If Illinois bills itself as the "Land of Lincoln", Arizona was the "Land of Goldwater". Maybe that's changed.

    I think the Republican Party has changed more. Barry Goldwater has been rapidly whirling in his grave for the past four years.
  • Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state.

    If Illinois bills itself as the "Land of Lincoln", Arizona was the "Land of Goldwater". Maybe that's changed.

    I think the Republican Party has changed more. Barry Goldwater has been rapidly whirling in his grave for the past four years.

    And I would hope all that spinning is tinged with a little guilt, for having played footsie with the Birchers back in the early 60s.
  • Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state.

    If Illinois bills itself as the "Land of Lincoln", Arizona was the "Land of Goldwater". Maybe that's changed.

    I think the Republican Party has changed more. Barry Goldwater has been rapidly whirling in his grave for the past four years.

    I don't know about that. One of Goldwater's big campaign issues was opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would put him right in the middle of the contemporary Republican mainstream. It's not a coincidence that the only states Goldwater carried in 1964 were his home state of Arizona, the four states carried by Strom Thurmond in his 1948 Dixiecrat third party run, and Georgia. If anything, Goldwater is the precursor of Trump's Republican party.
  • Arizona is becoming purple because there has been an influx of people from California, I think.
  • Crœsos wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Pigwidgeon wrote: »
    This does encourage me in a way -- it means that Arizona, once very, very red is now a battleground state.

    If Illinois bills itself as the "Land of Lincoln", Arizona was the "Land of Goldwater". Maybe that's changed.

    I think the Republican Party has changed more. Barry Goldwater has been rapidly whirling in his grave for the past four years.

    I don't know about that. One of Goldwater's big campaign issues was opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would put him right in the middle of the contemporary Republican mainstream. It's not a coincidence that the only states Goldwater carried in 1964 were his home state of Arizona, the four states carried by Strom Thurmond in his 1948 Dixiecrat third party run, and Georgia. If anything, Goldwater is the precursor of Trump's Republican party.

    In the 80s, Goldwater publically criticzed the Religious Right, especially around the issue of abortion, famously saying that "every good Christian should kick Jerry Falwell's ass." Later, he sided with Clinton on allowing gays to serve in the military.

    Based mostly on that, there has of late been a bit of a revisionist history around Goldwater, portraying him as a lifelong social liberal. Which, for the most part, he wasn't. Even allowing that his opposition to the 1964 CRA might have been based on a belief in the sanctity of private property, he quite intentionally courted the votes of people whose views on that matter and others were rooted in simple racism and bigotry.

  • The writers of this political satire we're living through are getting even more heavy-handed. I had thought that to be impossible, but . . .
    A digital ad released by a fundraising arm of the Trump campaign on Sept. 11 calling on people to “support our troops” uses a stock photo of Russian-made fighter jets and Russian models dressed as soldiers.

    The ad, which was made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, features silhouettes of three soldiers walking as a fighter jet flies over them. The ad first appeared on Sept. 8 and ran until Sept. 12.

    “That’s definitely a MiG-29,” said Pierre Sprey, who helped design both the F-16 and A-10 planes for the U.S. Air Force. “I’m glad to see it’s supporting our troops.”

    He noted the angle of the aircraft’s tail, the way the tail is swept far back, and the spacing of the engines, along with the tunnel between them.

    Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies in Moscow, confirmed that the planes are Russian MiG-29s, and also said the soldier on the far right in the ad carries an AK-74 assault rifle.

    The Trump Make America Great Again Committee is run by both the Republican National Committee and the campaign. Most of the low-dollar and digital donations raised by the committee goes to the campaign.

    The image in the ad is a stock photo available on Shutterstock.com with the title “Military silhouettes of soldiers and airforce against the backdrop of sunset sky.” The creator of the image, named “BPTU,” says they are based in Andorra, but did not respond to a Facebook message.

    After this story was published, the creator of the image, Arthur Zakirov, confirmed in a Facebook message that it shows a 3D model of a MiG-29, and that the soldiers were Russian models. He said it was a composite photo created five years ago and taken in three different countries showing Russian sky, Greek mountains and French ground.

    “This is a completely recreated scene from various photographs of mine,” said Zakirov, a 34-year-old oil company analyst and hobbyist photographer based in the Russian city of Perm, about 700 miles east of Moscow.

    So apparently to the Trump campaign "our troops" are Russians.
  • Maybe they are just being honest for a change?
  • RuthRuth Shipmate
    I wonder if the ad was actually made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee or given to them by someone else.
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    Maybe they are just being honest for a change?
    Ruth wrote: »
    I wonder if the ad was actually made by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee or given to them by someone else.

    My guess is that someone found a cheap militaristic image on Shutterstock, slapped some photoshopped text onto it, bought some Facebook ad space for the image, and then invoiced the Trump Make America Great Again Committee $100,000 for their hard work. As to whether that someone was with the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, that runs into the problem we encountered with Brad Parscale where Trump campaign staff can also be outside vendors.
  • As most of you have probably heard/seen/read, social media have taken on an especially, and immediately dangerous role in the context of the western 20% of the continental US burning down. It has been rumoured (and on FB, so it must be gospel) that the fires are the result of arson by Antifa members. Antifa doesn't have membership in a conventional sense, but, well, that's irrelevant to the narrative. Now, one could go on for thousands of words on the causes (malicious spreading of the rumours, innocent spreading of the rumours based on genuine belief in the conspiracies, blind political and physical fear), and how this is being exploited. I won't do that. I want to point one small aspect, that will, I swear, become very important in the coming weeks.

    Antifa is a truncation of "anti-fascist". Anti-fascists and anarchists (God, it feels like 1890 again, and I think that I might run into Emma Goldman in my local kosher dairy restaurant when I hear that) are being blamed for this horrendous conflagration, and locals have been warned to 'keep an eye out for strangers' (advice from a local police department), which fuels the paranoia, so they do that, armed. They see their property and lives threatened, probably by "Antifa members" they are told. It's irrelevant that most of their grandparents in one way or other were Antifa seventy years ago when our civilisation was, truly, in the physical throes of an existential crisis. Now, Antifa are the agents of destruction, they are told. I ask you, how long before some politician, commentator, or other public figure ups the ante and says something like "I'm anti-Antifa. If that makes me a fascist - fine. I am protecting my loved ones and my country. If that makes me a fascist - fine. I am a fascist for my family and for America." Once the word "fascist" is reclaimed and normalised like that, the behaviour, and the whole set of attitudes, will be normalised. Fascism will have reclaimed its formerly respectable position. And that will not end well.

  • IIRC, one of the rumor spreaders is a cop (?) in Oregon, and he got into trouble for it.

    I'm not sure that using the *word* "fascist" openly and approvingly is necessarily a major tipping point, on its own. I'm more concerned about behavior. And that's already going on, much of it for years.

    Speaking of which:

    "Health Aide Pushes Bizarre Conspiracies and Warns of Armed Revolt" (New York Times, via Yahoo)

    Michael Caputo put out quite a live video on FB. (I've only read about it, not watched it.) I feel a little sorry for him: he mentions having mental health issues because of the Covid situation; he says he and his family have been threatened; and he's in a health-related job for which he has no experience nor training.

    He basically had a meltdown, live on FB. But/and he said and advocated things that are in tune with many people's fears and wonderings.

    Including stocking up on ammunition.

    Yikes.
    :votive:

  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    One possible vector for the antifa rumor is militia types (and others) listening to police scanners and hearing them talk about BLM. In the context of wildfires BLM usually means Bureau of Land Management, but it seems likely a good number of folks would think they were referring to that other BLM. So I'm guessing there's a combination of malicious rumor mongering and ignorant misunderstanding at work.

    Oh, and Russian state media. Can't forget those guys.
  • Makes sense, re BLM confusion.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    I'm not sure that using the *word* "fascist" openly and approvingly is necessarily a major tipping point, on its own. I'm more concerned about behavior. And that's already going on, much of it for years.

    My point is that once those on the right/alt right recognise who they are, any scruple is out the window. Yes, be concerned about the past and current behaviour, but once the right acknowledges what they are - and some of them assuredly will - then the time for pearl clutching will be long passed, if it has not already. I am quite sure that the open and approving use of "fascist" will give license to those straining at the bit. Fascism is the manifestation, usually in a capitalist, bourgeois context, of much darker instincts of collective identity and its expression through violence. I fear that once the word is used from within, its moment is at hand.

  • gustavagustava Shipmate Posts: 26
    I think many on the right, due to videos on youtube of black-clad black-masked people assaulting people, consider antifa to be fascist rather than anti-fascist (seeing the name in the same light as Democratic Republic of Congo, People's Republic of Korea and Ministry of Truth), so it's probably unlikely anyone on the right will be describing themselves as fascist in the near future.
  • I agree. They will use terms consistent with American ideals, but the meaning will be distorted. Also, I think its possible that some people don't perceive Antifa as having anything to do with fascism at all, especially if people say it with a stress on the TI syllable.

    If only Americans could learn to speak with an Australian accent the world would be far more comprehensible. (this is a joke, or at least I feel like its a funny thing to say.)
  • Re Antifa:

    I think they probably served a good purpose at Charlottesville, when they stood between the white supremacists and everyone else. But I found them scary. IIRC, I read some things afterwards along those lines--and *not* alt-right stuff.
  • I'm sporadically watching "The President And The People" on ABC's "20/20" news magazine show. It's T in one-on-one convo with George Stephanopoulous, plus various people in a scattered studio audience.

    Mostly his usual craziness and lies and self aggrandizement, so far. An African-American woman with a lifelong serious health problem asked him about health insurance. He didn't handle it well.

    But with another woman, he was almost...normal. Even compassionate. Seriously. She's an immigrant, now a US citizen. (Not sure where she's from, originally, but definitely a POC.) Her mom also became a citizen--10 days before she died from Covid. The woman speaking was clearly grieving, and T was actually sympathetic and kind. She asked something about immigration (don't remember details), and IMHO he was actually respectful.

    Maybe if I click my heels together three times, the last several years will be rewound, and we can get back to at least the reality we had before...and maybe something even better.
  • @Golden Key

    I believe you about Trump's sounding normal in talking to the immigrant woman. I've seen him interviewed one-on-one numerous times, and he didn't come across as a ranting lunatic.

    I've been saying this since the beginning: Donald J. himself isn't the real problem, and focusing on his supposedly dysfunctional personality is a red-herring, both because it's peripheral to what's going on, and anyway none of his supporters are likely to accept the diagnosis anyway.
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