They’re provable lies, I’m afraid, and on a level that makes newspeak look like child’s-play. But that’s the sort of discourse we’re forced to deal with here.

Well, no, all four are plainly true. Their implication is another thing. But I'd hazard a differing between us there too.

They’re not only plainly false, they’re obvious lies. And they follow the same pattern of propaganda, namely, “contextomy”.

Yes. Those things seem to be clearly true.

They’re complete lies. These sorts of lies are just another reason people are abandoning the sinking ship that is establishment politics.

But the lies obviously work as we can watch in real time as people repeat them. At this point it’s just a question how well they work.

I don’t see any of that. I don’t know what to tell you.

What subscription?

I clicked on a link and read the article. Maybe you’re at your Fox News limit.

I was refuting the claim that Trump brought it all on himself, which is absurd because one can never bring charges on himself. Prosecutors bring charges. The prosecutor’s motivations along with the frivolousness and novelty of the charges reveal the political motives.

Nope.

House Jan. 6 Committee deleted more than 100 encrypted files days before GOP took majority: sources

Fox News Digital has learned that Loudermilk’s committee hired a digital forensics team to scrape hard drives to determine what information they were not given.

The forensics team, according to sources familiar with their search, determined that 117 files were both deleted and encrypted. Sources said those files were deleted on Jan. 1, 2023 – just days before Thompson’s team was required to transfer the data to the new committee.

Fox News Digital has learned the forensics team has recovered all 117 deleted and encrypted files. Now, Loudermilk is demanding answers and passwords to access the data.

I wonder what they’re trying to hide?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-committee-jan-6-deleted-encrypted-117-files-was-required-share-house-gop-sources.amp

Stealing someone’s taxes and releasing it to a partisan press is a huge violation of privacy. Thankfully the charade dispelled a host of myths that were regnant at the time.

Removing their opponents from the ballot, indicting their opponents during an election, altering voting laws beneath the noses of the voter, flooding the country with illegals, criminalizing the ability to contest an election, for example.

It’s just not the case that he brought it on himself. Many of the people indicting him campaigned on doing so. They brought it on him, and not because they were searching for justice or any nonsense like that, but because he decided to run again. He’s being sued in civil cases for alleged crimes from the 90’s and 2000’s. It’s just a shame that the flimsiness, novelty, and unprecedented status of all their cases only attests to the grasping nature of their efforts, and finally how desperate they all are.

Observe the case of Charles Littlejohn, who was just convicted of stealing Trump’s taxes and leaking them to the press. Apparently he started his job for the sole purpose of stealing and leaking Trump’s taxes. I wonder who convinced him to do that? These kinds of people are not above violating the law, human rights, nor any notion of justice because they believe they are stopping some existential threat. They are trapped in a moral panic, like Pizzagate, but far more prevalent, far-reaching, and consequential. They are the existential threat. They are threatening democracy.

But to those of us who remain unconvinced, their schemes continue to read like the conspiracy theories of the same people who believed he was a Russian spy, or that a 3-hour riot was a violent insurrection and worse than Pearl Harbor. You can actually trace the word “insurrection” from Joe Biden all the way down, just as you can the Russian hoax from the Clinton campaign.

He had indicated earlier that he had already made up his mind, that it was only a question of when he’d announce. A month later they raid Mar-a-lago.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-2024-decision.html

I actually think Trump is running for POTUS again to get out of his legal troubles...

He announced his campaign months before the first indictment.

Sorry, but Trump was looking for illegal votes, which if found would have put him in the lead. He wasn’t telling the governor to fabricate votes or find hidden Trump votes. So Not only are they corrupt, but they’re misinforming you, persecuting innocent people, and making a mockery of the justice system while doing so.

You can witness fallacy at work. Guilt by association, fallacy of composition, and a whole host of social categorization biases leading to the typical stereotypes. If this is the quality of reason and criticism then it’s no wonder no one wants to hear it.

My guess is it is not born out of any knowledge or experience or insight, but passed along from one pliant head to the next in the form of moral enterprise. It’s why you can claim people dream of Trump leading them to a promised land, a kingdom in which they're the elite and not those other ones you see on TV all day, without being able to show an actual sample of this being the case. It’s difficult to tell if this is actually true or the result of a fevered imagination.

This is what a moral panic reads like. Observe the conspiracy theories, fortune-telling, and fear mongering, derived as they were from the reporting of a press trapped in the exact same hysteria. Here we have a consortium of unelected lawyers and activists ready to subvert the will of the people should it not go their way.

Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-military-fears-rcna129159

“We are preparing for litigation and preparing to use every tool in the toolbox that our democracy provides to provide the American people an ability to fight back,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward. “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy and it’s incumbent on everybody to do their part.”

“There are an array of horrors that could result from Donald Trump’s unrestricted use of the Insurrection Act,” Blumenthal said in an interview. “A malignantly motivated president could use it in a vast variety of dictatorial ways unless at some point the military itself resisted what they deemed to be an unlawful order. But that places a very heavy burden on the military.”

“He’s a clear and present danger to our democracy,” said William Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine and defense secretary in the Clinton administration who is not involved in the loose-knit network. “His support is solid. And I don’t think people understand what living in a dictatorship would mean.”

In an interview, Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said of Trump: “He’s going to be one creative motherf----- when it comes to trying to figure out how to abuse it [power]. Whatever your guess is, open up your imagination a little more.”

“The military is hundreds of thousands of people strong, and ultimately Trump will find people to follow his legal orders no matter what,” said a former senior official who served in the Trump administration, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely.

“The Insurrection Act is a legal order, and if he orders it there will be military officers, especially younger men and women, who will follow that legal order,” the former official added.

“A second Trump term would be day after day of constitutional crisis — the Justice Department one day, the Pentagon the next and Homeland Security the next,” Bolton said in an interview. “It would be unremitting.”

“Like any good dictator, he’s going to try to use the military to basically perform his will,” said Leon Panetta, former defense secretary and CIA director in the Obama administration.

“We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Cohen, the former Republican senator and defense secretary. “I think that’s how close we’re coming to it when you have a presidential candidate who can be indicted on 91 counts, who can be [found liable for] sexual aggression, who we have seen lies pathologically, who has flouted every rule in the book.”

Shadowy cabals of special interest groups are already forming. The rhetoric and activity is all grooming for election interference, cheating, a coup, or worse. They’ll destroy “our democracy” in order to save it.

I don’t see how you can conclude from my quote that I was speaking about that particular statement alone. Clearly I wrote, and thankfully you quoted—something of a rarity around here—“of course, as is evidenced by the transcript, he’s looking for fraudulent ballots, the ones that were shredded, and so on.” Not as evidenced by the statement, but by the transcript.

I’d love to see you dispute that. But I know you’ve swallowed whole something else.

You seem to think wrong. I was speaking about election crimes, not election management.

Election crimes become federal cases when:

• The ballot includes one or more federal candidates
• The crime involves an election official abusing his duties
• The crime pertains to fraudulent voter registration
• Voters are not U.S. citizens

Given that he was the victim of the biggest scam in American history, the Russia hoax, of course he had a personal interest in the following election, as did many of his constituents, millions and millions of them in fact. Might they try to steal it a second time? Either way, they got away with it, installed their puppet, a complete husk of a human being who in his half-century of living off the tax-payer’s dollar has never created a damn a thing in his life. At least with this election it’s all out there for anyone to see. The only fun part is to watch how hard you deny it and follow along.

Here’s a better quote because we don’t want to accidentally spread a little misinformation.

So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.

And of course, as is evidenced by the transcript, he’s looking for fraudulent ballots, the ones that were shredded, and so on. That’s entirely within his purview because he is expected to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. So I don’t know why his opponents took that silly line for their propaganda.

It would have been a better angle to go after him for what he did do wrong, which was to offer the Secretary of State the opportunity to absolve anyone of criminal guilt by saying it might have been all a mistake, and that he just wanted to find enough fraud in order to win. That could be construed as criminal.

Yes, one thing the Conservative Incorporated likes to forget that Reagan implemented harsh and targeted gun control, especially in California, where he did it to arguably stop the Black Panther party from policing their own communities. The racist beginnings of American gun control are well-enough known, but it’s surprising to see it implemented in almost the same fashion today, not so much on racial terms, but to defend the established order.

Fascism is undoubtedly conservative, as is gun control. But i would argue that the "American left", if there was such a group, is as conservative as the right when it comes to its culture and institutions. Liberalism and freedom and individual rights are are nothing but rhetorical play-things for all of them.

We observe the entities in order to derive their properties, relations, and activities. I suspect I lack the necessary abilities to abstract a property from that which it is a property of, but I do not see how they can be distinct from one another. One cannot measure the mass of a thing without measuring the thing.

Just to add, Fascism is against "individual self-defense" and "class self-defense". Defense was the sole job of the state, which is a common idea nowadays.

"The Fascist doctrine, enacting justice among the classes in compliance with a fundamental necessity of modern life, does away with class self-defense, which, like individual self-defense in the days of barbarism, is a source of disorder and of civil war." (Alfredo Rocco - The Political Doctrine of Fascism).

I suppose that's why they enacted some pretty harsh gun controls.

Prosecuting politicians who try to remove the guardrails off the political process (illegally asking for votes, encouraging, aiding, and not calling off a violent insurrection in the Capitol as sitting president?).

Prosecuting political opponents for trumped up charges, yes. Though such activity could be construed as communist, or Putinist, I suppose.

Also, again, it's a slow build whereby the guardrails get taken off a bit at the time and normalized. Then use whatever norms that aren't strict laws to make decisions that work against the spirit of democratic governance, if not strictly illegal.

Like prosecuting one’s political opponents or removing them from the ballot? Given the unprecedented nature of each of these, we can watch in real time as the guardrails get removed one piece at a time.

I see nothing adjacent here and see much of what you described in the activities of his opponents. At any rate, there is a thread for that topic and if you wish to debate it we can take it up there.

Ah, fascism improper. Ok

I also focused on the philosophical premises, which you avoided.

Hallmarks and echoes aren’t good enough, I’m afraid. One has to show that fascism is the guiding “thought and action” behind he who implements it.

Which “various aspects” have I missed?

Fascism has long been absorbed into the structure of the American state, starting with FDR. It's corporatism, grand public works, state propaganda, have a frightening similarity (Wolfgang Schivelbusch – Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939) with the policies of Mussolini and Hitler. The missing element is the abject totalitarianism, although we’ve seen it rear its ugly head during the pandemic.

But Fascism was rarely a policy program. Though in Italy it was founded on corporatism, it was willing to use any economic system, whether liberal or socialist, to advance the interests of the State. In the mouths of its founders, Fascism was more of an ethos. It held a quite common view of man as a political animal, a la Aristotle, and thus conceived of man's duty towards the polis as obligatory, one of duty rather than freedom. Any bourgeois aloofness from the political life was denounced. Wherever man focused more on his own life he risked atomizing the whole.

Its weird statist ethos is observable in some rhetoric nowadays. For instance any ideas that regard the State as "the foundation of all rights and the source of all values in the individuals composing it" (Giovanni Gentile – The Philosophic Basis of Fascism) agrees with fascism at one of its most fundamental points. Another is its opposition to individualism—"Fascism is opposed to all the abstractions of an individualistic character based upon materialism typical of the Eighteenth Century" (The Doctrine of Fascism – Benito Mussolini). Anti-individualism is absolutely rife nowadays. Defending individualism on this very forum is sure to be met with disdain. Fascism also despises historical materialism and class conflict, a la Socialism, because it refutes homo economicus and the division of classes; but it seeks to retain the "sentimental aspiration" of it, "to achieve a community of social life in which the sufferings and hardships of the humblest classes are alleviated (The Doctrine of Fascism – Benito Mussolini)". Of course, this is achieved through the state rather than communal responsibility, from one man to another.

At any rate, fascism is dead. At best we can have some philosophers and some parties that could be described as Neo-Fascist, even where they themselves might repudiate the label. One can read philosophers Alexander Dugin or his French collaborator Alain De Benoist to see what they're up to. Their whole project, as of now, is illiberalism. And I fear that, from all sides Left and Right, their ideas are catching on.

This is the position of Trump's attorney, but I'm pretty confident it will fail, but more importantly- I feel strongly that we should all hope it does fail.

We should hope it fails, because it would permit a President to commit any crime that a small number of Senators are willing to countenance.

I hope it passes because a salty prosecutor could indict the presidents he doesn’t like, and it would render useless a check on the executive and judicial branch. Impeachment is far better measure because it leaves the power to convict and acquit their leaders in the hands of the representatives of the people, such as it is.

They have the power to fire a President if he commits a crime. They don't have the power to try and convict an actual criminal case which is why he wouldn't have been jailed if found guilty by the Senate.

Right, impeachment is not a criminal trial. It's a unique process. Trying impeachment involves both the judicial and legislative branches. The Senate tries, the Chief Justice presides. If convicted he "shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law". And through this process he has been acquitted.

Yes, and the only punishment. But someone who does things like kill or steal military secrets should be punished by more than just being fired. They ought be criminally prosecuted and jailed if found guilty.

They should be criminally prosecuted, and probably would if they were convicted of those crimes in the Senate. They should not be criminally prosecuted if they were acquitted.

From being fired, yes. That doesn't preclude subsequent criminal prosecution.

It doesn't include it either. What precludes it is the double jeopardy clause of the 5th.

Or a real scenario: what if the President tried to prevent the legitimate certification of a Presidential election that he lost?

It was all above board. I say this because it is exactly what some Dems did in 2016. The only difference is that House members in 2021 had the backing of a Senator, as per the rules.

The Constitution provides a mechanism to fire a President. He wasn't fired. It doesn't then follow that he can't later be criminally prosecuted.

They have the power to try and convict of high crimes and misdemeanors. The firing is just the punishment for that process. He was acquitted.

It’s such an outlandish scenario that would never happen, but if it did, It would no doubt lead to a constitutional crisis.

At least their wild thought experiment runs parallel to a more realistic scenario. What if the president sent the DOJ or some AG to prosecute his political opponents in the lead up to an election?

At any rate, none of it applies in Trump’s case. The constitution provides a mechanism to sort it out, and he was acquitted through this mechanism.

I fear that a political solution would not work. The power of government is illegitimate to begin with. It functions on monopoly and plunder. Taking power in such an institution requires one to wield illegitimate power against his fellows, something my own conscience could not bear.

A rapid abolition of any kind would be cruel to the unweaned, those who view the government as the solution to all their problems and rely on it to subsidize their lives. Generations of people who were raised under the auspices of that promise could be met with troubles I would wish on no one, like poverty, once they found themselves responsible for their own lives and communities. They would view you as if you killed their god and resentment would grow.

In my view the reversal of nanny government would occur naturally in tandem with a decline in statism, which is the defining belief of our age. The power and reach of the church, for instance, declined only as people stopped attending, participating, and believing in its authority.

But can you not see that a direct attack on the Whitehouse (literally storming it, occupying political offices and stealing government intel - lets leave aside whether Trump wanted that) is absolutely a serious, serious problem that raises it to a similar level of undesirability?

I’m afraid I can’t. As stupid and belligerent as the affair might have been, the political class has been largely insulated from the pathologies they have unleashed on the country. For a few hours on January 6th they weren’t.

I can appreciate your view. But Had the rioters on Jan 6th pointed their ire at the public or on private businesses, and looted wherever they went, destroying the livelihoods of regular Americans, I would be more even handed.

You’ve never done anything besides playing games to pass the time?

Paine’s projections reveal that everything he does to pass the time is a game.