So let’s say we let him run to avoid a violent backlash.
What happens if he loses? We let him overturn the election to avoid another violent backlash?
All we’re doing is proving to the fascists that we will kowtow to them if they are angry and violent enough. If we want to remain a free-ish country we’re going to have to piss them off at some point by doing the right thing, and we’ll need to deal with the fallout.
And if he wins the fascists will take that as endorsement. Whatever they would have done via backlash will become the norm since their present supports it.
I really think people either forgot or still don’t understand just how close the insurrection was to succeeding. Change one part of Mike Pence’s story and we’d be in a whole different – and much darker – timeline. There’s plenty of evidence that suggests a different outcome if a similar coup is attempted this time. The law is on our side, and so are states’ rights, we need to enforce them.
By ‘deal with the fallout’, of course you mean apply the law to criminals. Arrest them, charge them, send them to court, let them be convicted, and serve their sentences. Justice delayed is justice denied.
I personally can’t wait. All the 2nd Amendment idiots trying to take on the police and military?
It’d be glorious.
I personally can’t wait. All the 2nd Amendment idiots trying to take on the police and military?
Well, I’ve got some news for you.
House Republicans All Vote Against Neo-Nazi Probe of Military, Police
The call is coming from inside the house
How many police and military do you think are 2nd amendment idiots?
Being a traitor and being police/military is not the same. I’m suspicious of police AF but betraying your country is a bigger leap than liking guns.
Betraying my country? I’m saving it from this woke mind virus trying to overthrow the people’s will! /s
didn’t think that one through much did you?
Which we deals with the fallout though? Would you, as an individual, risk being their target? That’s the hard part. Easy to say we as a society shouldn’t cave, but would you like to be name dropped by Trump as the enemy?
I’ve seen your and other similar comments getting a lot of downvotes. Are people suggesting it’s acceptable innocent people have to fear for their and their family’s safety, because they choose to uphold the law?
They’re going to be violent; it’s only a matter of when, how much, and for how long. Kicking the can down the road puts “when” further away by making “how much” and “for how long” much worse.
Right? Jan 6 was a taste.
It was comically incompetent but almost successful. They had a practice run, the next time will be better (for them) if we let this continue. Gotta rip the bandage off at some point.
One thing I’ve wondered about is if the police that were part of the maga following have come to their senses AT ALL after having hundreds/thousands of people threaten them, beat them, etc when they were supposed to be “on the same side” during the January 6th nonsense.
So much of that uprising, protest, whatever you think it should be called, would’ve normally been squashed before people ever made it to the capital building if the police would’ve responded in a similar fashion to the many much smaller protests that came before it.
It was comically incompetent
It was done so undercover and with a hamstrung/compliant law enforcement that national security didn’t see it coming, although General Milly seems to have anticipated it. Right wing terrorists are treated with gentle hands. They will be much more careful and thorough the next time. They are telegraphing it every day through Republican speak. Listen closely.
But that’s how we solve every problem in life.
Something something always do the right then when we have no other choice.
i wish they would get violent and we would respond in kind with greater force. give me a reason to start shooting these stupid fucks. let’s get this over with ffs.
I get what you’re saying, though I would frame it differently.
Knowing that there will be fascist violence, sooner or later (and with the election in November, that’s the cutoff date), I may be put in a position of protecting myself and others. I need to be prepared to do that protecting.
Rudy has already hinted at violence Republicans are priming the cult. Tonight the rural red folk are out at night practicing with their night scoped rifles. Prepare accordingly.
Good point, though I would counter that there’s a lot of blustering about taking our country back but I haven’t seen many serious attempts or people capable of actually planning and executing such a thing, and I’ve had a good bit of contact with what y’all would consider to be American far right rebels.
For all I know, the far righties talking about their revolution is about as productive as the tankies talking about theirs. Nobody sees a future in this country where the workers seize the means of production and we actually eat the rich, right?
Nobody sees a future in this country where the workers seize the means of production and we actually eat the rich, right?
Comrade, I think you might be lost. I’m confident there are plenty of people on Lemmy who 100% envision such a future – I can’t be the only one!
Well, it’s Lemmy, so in all honesty I’d say that there definitely are a lot of tankies here who are as delusional as the far right MAGA idiots. Blind adherence to ideology makes madmen of us all, just as does a cult of personality like Trump’s.
If the backlash is the scary imagine how frightening the presidency would be. Fucking cowards.
Remember how frightening the first one was. You know, with the Nazi “very fine people” and giving Putin a BJ on international TV and trying to destroy NATO and…
Pick your poison:
Backlash now from an angry mob
Full-swing shift into an oppressive authoritarian state once he’s elected
Many of these politicians are hoping that it will be someone else’s problem.
For them, the poisons are:
A) Backlash now and get possibly killed
B) Meh. Let someone else deal with it after I retire
Keep in mind that in 2020, many of the Republican Secretaries of State were threatened for not giving the election to Trump. They did the right thing and got death threats over it.
When people stand their ground, we have to remember that they are the last line of defense against democracy. I don’t say that lightly. Many Republicans saw the resistance and either replaced these people or wrote laws to make overturning an election easier.
If the Republicans see that they have lost, it won’t be another January 6th. It will be a bloodless coup because they’ve already done the work to bring themselves into power.
And that’s why this election is not only important but potentially dangerous. I don’t know many liberals who are willing to put their lives on the line to stand up to fascism. Myself included. I’d like to believe I would. But I don’t know if I could if it came down to it.
I don’t know many liberals who are willing to put their lives on the line to stand up to fascism. Myself included. I’d like to believe I would. But I don’t know if I could if it came down to it.
I’m with you on that. Honestly, I don’t think I’d trust someone who sounded sure on that. They’re either lying to themselves or a little too eager for violence.
There won’t be a " bloodless coup." It won’t happen because there is only one president at a time, so no matter how the election goes, Biden sits alone at the levers of ultimate power until Trump is sworn in.
The only way a “bloodless coup” could happen is with the full foreknowledge and cooperation of the US military’s senior officer corps, but that’s impossible both because it’s too difficult to coordinate, and because the senior officer corps absolutely despises Trump as a liar and a coward and for many other reasons that I’m sure will occur to you when you think back on his presidency.
He is widely seen as a gutless incompetent and deeply dishonorable idiot.
Your comment is bang on. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s should be mandatory reading for everyone. I bet less than 5% of the US population know how the Fascists came to power in Germany and Italy. Most people probably don’t realize that Hitler was a populist who rose to power through legal means and then used a false flag operation to jail his opponents and seize power permanently, again using legal means. It would be all too easy for Trump to replicate that scenario if he gets the presidency again. If he gets elected legally (or at least with the appearance of legality), and then uses false flag operation to take out a good chunk of Congress, he could terrify the public and declare martial law. January 6 shows that he has the kind of supporters that would be willing to do something like that. In that scenario, even the US military probably wouldn’t stop him.
What a lot of liberals often forget is that our constitution is just a piece of paper. What makes it powerful is the honesty of people in power to execute it to the best of their abilities.
We may disagree with how we accomplish our goals, but so long as we agree that the constitutional is worth protecting, we can dialogue.
The Republicans have shit on the constitution, and have threatened to institute a government based on dogma, where everything is made up and justice is only for the chosen few.
Some have said, “Well, at least I can change it from the inside.”
My response has been, “Well, why haven’t you?”
The sad thing is that the GOP has become overrun by a small minority who have a dispositional amount of influence. We need good spirited debate in this country. But the GOP is more concerned with power than they are with governing.
I’ve been saying for almost 20 years that there will be a civil war in my lifetime. I fear that we’re getting closer and closer.
We just need to rip the band-aid off and do it now before the election while we still have somebody semi-sensible in the Whitehouse, rather than wait for things to play out during the election. It’s already going to be a chaotic time then, with everything being up in the air. Just push it now so we know what to expect walking into that shit. Otherwise we’re going to be sleepwalking into that election potentially on the cusp of turning into a dictatorship virtually overnight.
I also “fear backlash” if he runs and loses the election. He won’t hesitate to get his followers to commit acts of violence. According to the logic of the “for fear of backlash we should allow him to run” people, we should just annoint Trump President for Life. After all, we can’t do anything that might cause MAGA to become violent, right? /s
Being a little sarcy there pal? Telling everyone too? Totally warranted
It’s a habit I formed back when I frequented Reddit. You sometimes couldn’t tell if someone was being serious or not and since I didn’t want anyone to mistake my sarcasm for MAGA-ism, I used /s liberally.
I think it’s useful. It’s not uncommon for people to not pick up on written sarcasm. I actually think we should adopt diacritics that denote emotion. Like emojis but more systematic.
No insurrectionists in any elected office. Makes perfect sense one would wish to have this key point in one’s constitution, heck, even from the beginning. What about insurrectionists who were appointed by insurrectionist(s)? Seems pretty dubious. We need to either remove the insurrectionist appointees, or expand the SCOTUS to water down the insurrectionists in government. Putin must be chortling in his cocoa puffs.
Yes, we need to remove Scotus and retry all those cases
Awful lot of extra words for “terrorists”.
Because that’s exactly what they are threatening, doxing, death threat, shooting up clubs hell even tried to attack the FBi and of course the attempt to overthrow the government… Literally the most successful terrorist there ever was and we still won’t call it at face value for what the maga group is…
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-cincinnati-armed-man-b4701596a0eb9770e3b29e95328f5704
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889
It becomes a reason if it were to work… - hence why they keep trotting it out I suppose, just to see what sticks.
If the only backlash there is to fear is death, then I have nothing to lose.
Donald Trump is not qualified to be considered a decent human being let alone president.
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If Jan 6 shows any indication, a simple police presence will be enough to stop most violence and the outliers will be found.
I think this is a lot more true than many people here suspect. What we’re realistically looking at is relatively low-intensity insurrection on the level of, say, Northern Ireland during the height of The Troubles. It’s still a very bad thing, but it’s not existential and if the comparison to The Troubles is accurate, the violence will mostly target federal law enforcement and any military that’s brought to bear should Biden invoke the insurrection act.
The real existential threat is Trump actually winning another term.
Trump miscalculated. He thought Pence was spineless. Had Pence stopped the transition as they wanted and instead assisted with the fake electors they created and intended to deliver that day the insurrection would likely have worked. Trumps lawyer has already agreed to testify about the faked electors, and we know Pence got thrown off that day and then thrown to the wolves. I think Trump wanted the crowds of his followers there so when they submitted the fake electors and denounced the official vote he could have video of “everyone” cheering on live TV and he could look like he stopped a stolen election while he himself stole it. Narcissistic idea one might say.
The “backlash” will be that the people that take him off the ballot may end up being murdered. Or their family might be killed. Or both. Sure, maybe it’s the duty of the secretary of state in each state to remove him from the ballot. But would you be willing to do that if it was likely someone would try to murder you? And consider for a moment that it’s likely that a significant number of cops that you might expect would protect you probably sympathize with political violence in favor of Trump.
Those are the stakes for the people that need to remove him from the ballot.
Are you ready and willing to fight? Because you might have to.
This is why Mexican politicians kowtow to the cartels.
I thought America was better than this.
Thanks for nutshelling the point of the article.
If I took an oath of office you bet your ass I’d be willing. That’s what it means to serve your country in office. If you aren’t willing to uphold your oath, resign.
I would hold no ill will to any person who resigned their position because they are unwilling but if you want to do the job, do it.
