It’s called being led by propaganda. You yourself admitted you believe Trump sympathized with neo-Nazis.

They’ve lied.

And you’d be wrong. But no one’s going to stop you going through life like that. In fact, it’s encouraged.

You cite show trial.

The only way to destroy American democracy is to say that you are protecting it from a clear and obvious threat. And then really believe in what you are saying (to be clear, obvious and true).

Biden’s whole theme was unification and decency but he has done the exact opposite. Now he is ramping up his rhetoric, treating his opponents like domestic terrorists. He has already sent his goons to rifle through Trump’s documents, perhaps worried what sort of info Trump had on him. Since we now know the FBI was working to suppress info that would reflect badly on Biden, I’m going to conclude that this deep state shit has been occurring even before he became president, and he is only its most recent hydra head.

Timothy Thibault, the FBI agent alleged to have interfered with an investigation into Hunter Biden, was assigned by the Washington Field Office as “point man” to manage whistleblower Tony Bobulinski, the first son’s former business partner, before the 2020 election — but he suppressed his damning revelations, sources say.

Bobulinski spent over five hours secretly being interviewed by the FBI on Oct. 23, 2020, about his inside knowledge of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s business deals with China.

The previous day he had revealed in a press conference that Joe Biden was the “Big Guy” due to get a 10% cut of a lucrative joint venture with Chinese energy firm CEFC, according to an email found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop.

Bobulinski gave the FBI the contents of three cellphones containing encrypted messages between Hunter and his business partners, along with emails and financial documents detailing the Biden family’s corrupt influence peddling operation in foreign countries during Joe’s vice presidency.

But his evidence appears to have fallen into the same black hole at the FBI as Hunter’s laptop, never to be seen again.

FBI agent Timothy Thibault hid intel from whistleblower on Hunter and the ‘Big Guy’ Joe Biden

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (Reuters) - The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.

Though federal officials have arrested more than 570 alleged participants, the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump, according to the sources, who have been either directly involved in or briefed regularly on the wide-ranging investigations.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-fbi-finds-scant-evidence-us-capitol-attack-was-coordinated-sources-2021-08-20/

Yes, we’ve already gone over the chants, but thanks.

Thank you. Not one shred of evidence that anyone wanted to hang Mike Pence.

That’s not a clarification of my position. That’s an obfuscation of my position. If you want to know my position you can ask for it.

When reading Trump’s speech he uses the word “fight” numerous times, and in no instance is the word used literally like you pretend he did. For instance when he says “Jim Jordan and some of these guys, they're out there fighting”, or “the House guys are fighting”, or when speaking of Rudy “He fights; he fights”, or “And if they don't fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don't fight”, it takes a man governed by propaganda or stupidity to believe Trump is speaking of acts of violence here. In fact, Trump assumed “everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.

The ones who gave anyone the idea that something besides a rally was going to occur was the press, who promised everyone that Trump would declare martial law, invoke the insurrection act, and use the military to change the results of the election. (https://www.justsecurity.org/73986/invoking-martial-law-to-reverse-the-2020-election-could-be-criminal-sedition/) these were utter lies and conspiracy theories of the highest q-anon order, as we now know, and the press believed them.

Absent the evidence there’s nowhere else to go but to cower in the comfort of a circle jerk with another true believer.

Again, I do not know what the motivations were, and nowhere did I claim it was or was not intended to be used. But the reporter who found the noose said the gallows was too small and weak to be used, anyways, so there is that. But if you have evidence it was going to be used it may be a good idea to provide it.

A good read.

Intolerance, abuse, calling of names because of differences of opinion about religion or politics or business, as well as because of differences of race, color, wealth or degree of culture are treason to the democratic way of life. For everything which bars freedom and fullness of communication sets up barriers that divide human beings into sets and cliques, into antagonistic sects and factions, and thereby undermines the democratic way of life. Merely legal guarantees of the civil liberties of free belief, free expression, free assembly are of little avail if in daily life freedom of communication, the give and take of ideas, facts, experiences, is choked by mutual suspicion, by abuse, by fear and hatred. These things destroy the essential condition of the democratic way of living even more effectually than open coercion which- as the example of totalitarian states proves-is effective only when it succeeds in breeding hate, suspicion, intolerance in the minds of individual human beings.

The victims of bigotry and coercion should remember insights such as these, especially when terms such as “democracy” leak from the other side of a hater’s mouth.

Oh, right, only you know what happens in your alternative universe.

If they somehow got their hands on Pence do you think he would have been safe? Judging by the signs, it would seem reasonable to think he would not have been safe.

If in some alternate universe they got to Pence they would not have hung him. They would have embraced and sung revolution songs together as they tore down American democracy.

I know what threat means, I just do not pretend to know someone’s motivations. Do you really believe there was a lynch mob there conspiring to hang the Vice President?

Insurrection to overthrow a free election

And just like that, the propaganda speaks where one’s own thinking cannot. The act of repeating the phrase makes it true.

Executed for trying to crawl through a window. Watch the video.

Instead of guessing try thinking. There is a difference between a threat and the fulfillment of a threat. Threats can be averted. Do you really not understand the difference?

The fact that there was not an actual hanging does not mean there was not an actual threat. The fact that the mob was not able to get to Pence does not mean that there was not an "actual threat".

That you feared for Pence’s life only proves your propensity for imagination. Your fears should have dissipated by now given that nothing of the sort has happened.

The person executed that day was an unarmed woman. I’m supposed to disregard that to make room for your imagination.

Such wild thinking. I bet you couldn’t tell me why the “insurrection” was so bad without resorting to propaganda. What, you didn’t like someone hold a lectern?

An “actual threat” that didn’t turn into an actual hanging wasn’t much of an actual threat, I guess. In comparison to your effigy burning the result was the same: no hanging. Maybe you’ve been duped by the deep-state dinner theater enough to believe they’d lead to wildly different results.

Oh, I see, so if a crowd of left-wing protesters had smashed their way into a building Trump was in looking for him and threatening to kill him, the police would have just laughed it off because they were probably just joshing.

I don’t get it.

I’m not sure where you are going with this.



Protesters chant crazy shit all the time. Trump was burned, beheaded, and hanged in effigy on countless occasions, for example.

I’ll just say I wouldn’t put it past them.

And?

One tiny riot among many during those days. The problem for some is that this one in particular injured political symbols and tribal pride rather than the homes and businesses of ordinary citizens. This time it was the politicians cowering behind their armed guards. An unarmed woman was executed. Men and women are still in jail for glorified trespassing on state property. Now Biden’s rhetoric about the evil within pits American against American.

It’s very tedious. A single riot at the capitol is seen as an attack on democracy while years of political violence and persecution is met with a hand wave.

How quickly you forget. There was no insurrection when Trump was elected. There was no attack on the nation's Capital. Clinton did not attempt to undermine the electoral process.

Once again, to pretend that all this is politics as normal is disingenuous, and, I should add, dangerous.

There were riots at Trump’s inauguration and the Whitehouse. The feds and the 4th estate spent years pushing a Democrat hoax. Disingenuous doesn’t cover it.

January 6th is Biden’s Reichstag moment and will remain a pretext to the persecution of his political opponents and the consolidation of his and his party’s power.

This goes far beyond contesting or disputing an election. To pretend that all this is politics as normal is disingenuous. This is the first time in US history there was not a peaceful transfer of power.

How quickly we forget. I remember quite vividly the violence at Trump’s inauguration, and up until then his rallies, with his supporters being beaten and harassed. The spying on Trump and his staff, the “unmasking”, the Russian collusion nonsense. The same might have occurred at Biden’s inauguration but the venue was surrounded by national guard and razor wire. “Democracy”…

It's good to have praxis chime in wherever his insights are not required.

Look at all this effort to defend Biden :starstruck:

Contesting or disputing an election is nothing. During the last presidency the legitimacy of the election was doubted with the strength of the 5 eyes, the "intelligence community", the 4th estate and the entire Democrat party, all premised on utter nonsense. So whoopidy doo, they might have to lay in the very beds they made.

Someone doesn’t like criticism of Joe Biden :rofl:

Biden goes dictator in his latest speech, the whole time hinting at using the full power of the US government against his political opponents, “MAGA republicans”, and the millions of Americans that vote for them.



It’s comforting to hear heckles such as “Fuck Joe Biden” come from the back, though.

It cannot be any other way. That’s why the “common good” is a myth and collectivism fails. No man can know what’s best for others—he can hardly sort out his own life—let alone the sum total of human beings in any given territory. No man should ever be forced to live under another man’s schemes for that reason.

Anyone who believes people have a right to such things ought to start providing them immediately. You’re violating someone’s rights when you don’t. Personally I don’t think anyone owes anyone else a living, so do not see them as rights, and especially as rights worthy of government protection.

We’re not meeting. I’m sitting alone. I’m just saying that perhaps it isn’t as social as we make it out to be. The problem with social media is how anti-social it all is. There is a severe absence of social cues, body language, proximity to others, and so on. I wager none of this would be a problem if we were all kicking it the pub, face-to-face. It’s an exercise in reading and writing, maybe tantamount to writing letters or leaving messages on a board or something, but little more than that.

At any rate we know nothing about one another. That’s why all attempts at bullying and cruelty are a swing-and-a-miss and shouldn’t be taken so personally. It’s almost cringeworthy how far they miss the mark. Their efforts could never be more than catharsis or propaganda. But to silence them is a double evil because not only does it negate their right to express themselves but also my right to read it.

In the end the final decision is left to the owners and those delegated to the task of moderation. If we don’t like it we leave, find another space, or make our own.

The inability to individuate is a key component to racism. It opens up a host of fallacies that the racist can never overcome, relegating his beliefs to a lower order of thought, and any action motivated by it to injustice.

But some things are stark, crazy obvious, staring us in the face.
Perhaps we've become immune.
Increasingly hostile and personal insults would not be acceptable in a real-life meetup.
What makes people think they can get away with it on internet forums?
Disrupting and distracting from a serious subject.

The analogy isn’t strong, here. This isn’t a meetup. There is no social setting. We’re just reading and writing in largely solitary situations, where no harm, distraction, or disruption from other members can really befall us.

This explains why people think they can “get away with it” on Internet forums. There are no social repercussions for being hostile to other members. No threat of violence, ostracism, or shame. But we’re also largely anonymous, so much so that any insulting and hostile poster is really swinging at a caricature in his own head. Thus, each insult or hypocrisy reveals much more about the offender than his intended victim. He’s fighting something of his own creation. That’s the irony of the whole thing.

More importantly, insult, satire, diatribe, are all important facets of democracy in particular, politics in general, and I agree with the mods that some leeway should be given in such discussions. To maintain a modicum of decorum without eliminating these important facets is no easy task, but to make it easier on all involved, maybe we ought to grow thicker skins.

No where have I equivocated between personal prejudice and systemic persecution. You’ve got nothing, as usual.