rkymtnman
Well-Known Member
Our first out of the closet Russian troll. I thought this day would never come.
January 21st, 2021
- Thread starter Jimdamick
- Start date
Because the media says Russia is evil it must be so. Russian troops in Syria bad. American troops in Syria good. Never mind the history.
Trump is a lard ass, the thought of ever seeing Biden without his shirt on scares the hell out of me. Yep, Putin looks pretty damn good in comparison.
Trump is a lard ass, the thought of ever seeing Biden without his shirt on scares the hell out of me. Yep, Putin looks pretty damn good in comparison.
Grandpapy
Well-Known Member
Crimea feels your pain.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
poke the Eagle, lose your hand
Biden vows to impose 'costs' for Russian aggression when he becomes president
Biden vows to impose 'costs' for Russian aggression when he becomes president | CNN Politics
President-elect Joe Biden's approach to Russia is now an even tougher challenge with news that Moscow may be responsible for a massive cyber attack on US federal agencies -- one Biden said he will impose "costs" for.
President-elect Joe Biden's approach to Russia is now an even tougher challenge with news that Moscow may be responsible for a massive cyber attack on US federal agencies -- one Biden said he will impose "costs" for.
The President-elect and his team are preparing a "cost imposition strategy" to respond to Russia -- not just for the hack, if Moscow is responsible, but for Russia's other disruptive actions also -- measures that will include but won't be limited to sanctions, according to a source close to Biden.
"A good defense isn't enough," the President-elect said in a Thursday statement about the hack that did not mention Russia by name. "We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place. We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners."
Last edited:
injinji
Well-Known Member
When you need a political opponent poisoned, Vlad is your man. Not sure how he would do in a free and fair election.
You mean the Crimea that was Russian back when our founding fathers were still shagging their slaves? I don't see where we have much business poking around in Russia's back yard. As I recall we got pretty pissy when they were getting all kissy face with Cuba. Where btw we still have a military base where we stick people who don't fit well into our legal system.
Perhaps Russia considers our recruitment of former block countries into NATO a threat? Anyway, Ukraine is mostly a made up country and spent the bulk of it's existence as part of something else.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Sure, also the one they lost when the Soviet Union fell apart and they became their own country.
and lol at 'we'.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
Velshi: The Death of Shame
Everything is different now, and one thing with which we will struggle in this new day for America is the death of shame. In addition to the other norms the former president destroyed, he turned lying - deliberate, casual and often with the force of law - into an art form and, with that, contributed to the death of shame. If we as humans do not feel shame in doing something wrong, or in getting caught doing something wrong, what guardrails exist? When the powerful can’t be embarrassed by the bad choices they make, people suffer, democracy erodes, institutions crumble, justice is strangled and lies proliferate.
Everything is different now, and one thing with which we will struggle in this new day for America is the death of shame. In addition to the other norms the former president destroyed, he turned lying - deliberate, casual and often with the force of law - into an art form and, with that, contributed to the death of shame. If we as humans do not feel shame in doing something wrong, or in getting caught doing something wrong, what guardrails exist? When the powerful can’t be embarrassed by the bad choices they make, people suffer, democracy erodes, institutions crumble, justice is strangled and lies proliferate.
Grandpapy
Well-Known Member
So was the United States. Are you saying Ukraine deserves to be over-run by Putin instead of chosesing it's own destny?
TacoMac
Well-Known Member
You make a point. Not a very good one, but a point nonetheless. The easier point to make is this:
- Distance Russia has moved its military bases closer to the United States since the end of WWII: 0 miles
- Distance the United States has moved it's bases closer to Russia since the end of WWII: roughly 430 miles.
But that has nothing to do with a nation of people fighting for their independence from Russia, which is exactly what Ukraine is doing. When the USSR dissolved, Ukraine became its own independent nation and Crimea was a part of it. Crimea has been a part of Ukraine dating back to 1954.
Russia stole it during an attempted coup in Ukraine organized by them. They're still fighting over it to this day.
mysunnyboy
Well-Known Member
It was dissolved? Yeah right.
CunningCanuk
Well-Known Member
mysunnyboy
Well-Known Member
What’s up red?
injinji
Well-Known Member
Greetings for The Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Where Green Corn is still a national holiday and everyone respects the sacredness of the Square Grounds.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
How many political parties in the U.S.? Numbers suggest four, not two. (nbcnews.com)
How many political parties in the U.S.? Numbers suggest four, not two.
American voters increasingly divide into what is essentially a four-party system. If our system was dictated by coalition-building, that might work.
WASHINGTON — A new president, a new Congress, and the same partisan divide, right? Already the familiar laments about the red/blue split in Washington have started, and there are many signs those left/right differences are still alive and well. But as both parties deal with internal tensions, that simple binary color code might miss some important nuances in 2021’s politics.
The latest NBC News poll shows that both the Democratic and Republican parties have clear divides within themselves as well, and that could have real meaning in the months ahead on a range of issues.
On the surface the partisan identification numbers look very familiar.
About 4 in 10 registered voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. A smaller number identify as Republicans or lean Republican. The remainder are what we call hard independents or simply don’t care to answer.
But dig into those two partisan groups a bit and the numbers change. In fact, four “parties” emerge in the data.
About 17 percent of those surveyed say they are Republicans who consider themselves to be mostly supporters of former President Donald Trump. Another 17 percent would characterize themselves as Republicans who are more supporters of the Republican Party.
And the numbers look familiar on the other side.
About 17 percent of those surveyed say they are Democrats who were supporters of President Joe Biden in the primaries. And another 17 percent of respondents say they are Democrats who were supporters of the further left-leaning candidates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Yes, you read that right. Those are 17's across the board — all even. Of course, those numbers aren’t hard and fast. A different poll would probably find slight variances in the groups. And all together those numbers still leave about a third of the registered voters in the survey without a camp.
Still, there are clearly some real divides within the parties and other questions in the poll suggest they might have meaning in the year ahead.
Consider the way the two groups view the leaders of their respective parties at the moment.
The 17 percent of the poll that is made up of Trump Republicans doesn’t just like the former president, they are extremely enthusiastic about him: 99 percent of them give him a positive personal rating and 87 percent of that is “very positive.” To be clear, that is not a job performance rating; that is a measure of whether they have positive feelings about him personally.
Among the party Republicans, the number is still high, but a bit lower and not so solid. The “positive feelings” number drops more than 20 points to 78 percent and only 44 percent of that group is “very positive” about Trump.
For the Democrats, Biden has a similarly strong hold over his part of the party. A full 93 percent of Biden Democrats say they have positive feelings about the president, and 74 percent are “very positive.”
Among Warren/Sanders Democrats, the number drops. Just over 75 percent say they have positive feelings about Biden and only 27 percent say they have “very positive” feelings about the president.
There is considerable daylight between each of the Democratic and Republican groups. And those attitudes could shift over time as Trump’s post-presidency and Biden’s Democratic honeymoon periods wear off. Each party could find itself with some strong internal disagreements.
The fault lines between the segments become even more pronounced when you look at policy.
With Joe Biden in White House now and Democrats in control of the House and Senate, the question is where each of these four groups stands on a Biden agenda. There are disagreements.
Among Republicans, the Trump part of the party is firmly against compromising with Biden in order gain consensus on legislation. Only 25 percent of the Trump Republicans favor that approach.
But party Republicans feel very differently. More than half, 55 percent, favor making compromises with Biden to gain consensus on legislation.
On the Democratic side there are also splits: 7 in 10 Biden Democrats want the congressional Democrats to work to pass the Biden agenda, while 20 percent of that group would rather “hold the line” for more progressive policies.
But among Sanders/Warren Democrats, the support for passing the Biden agenda falls to 60 percent, with about 30 percent favoring an approach that holds the line for more progressive policies.
Those are figures that at least suggest there could be some surprises in Congress in the coming months. They are not numbers that scream party discipline for either side.
Again, these data are from one poll that came during a very tumultuous moment. It was conducted from Jan. 10-13, just after the Capitol riot and before Biden’s inauguration.
But these splits are nothing new; they reflect divisions in the parties we have been tracking for years now. And the fact that these splits are this even and this clear as a new administration and Congress checks in may be telling. For all the social media chatter about a “civil war” brewing in America, these figures suggest the real story in coming weeks may be intra-party conflict.
How many political parties in the U.S.? Numbers suggest four, not two.
American voters increasingly divide into what is essentially a four-party system. If our system was dictated by coalition-building, that might work.
WASHINGTON — A new president, a new Congress, and the same partisan divide, right? Already the familiar laments about the red/blue split in Washington have started, and there are many signs those left/right differences are still alive and well. But as both parties deal with internal tensions, that simple binary color code might miss some important nuances in 2021’s politics.
The latest NBC News poll shows that both the Democratic and Republican parties have clear divides within themselves as well, and that could have real meaning in the months ahead on a range of issues.
On the surface the partisan identification numbers look very familiar.
About 4 in 10 registered voters identify as Democrats or lean Democratic. A smaller number identify as Republicans or lean Republican. The remainder are what we call hard independents or simply don’t care to answer.
But dig into those two partisan groups a bit and the numbers change. In fact, four “parties” emerge in the data.
About 17 percent of those surveyed say they are Republicans who consider themselves to be mostly supporters of former President Donald Trump. Another 17 percent would characterize themselves as Republicans who are more supporters of the Republican Party.
And the numbers look familiar on the other side.
About 17 percent of those surveyed say they are Democrats who were supporters of President Joe Biden in the primaries. And another 17 percent of respondents say they are Democrats who were supporters of the further left-leaning candidates, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Yes, you read that right. Those are 17's across the board — all even. Of course, those numbers aren’t hard and fast. A different poll would probably find slight variances in the groups. And all together those numbers still leave about a third of the registered voters in the survey without a camp.
Still, there are clearly some real divides within the parties and other questions in the poll suggest they might have meaning in the year ahead.
Consider the way the two groups view the leaders of their respective parties at the moment.
The 17 percent of the poll that is made up of Trump Republicans doesn’t just like the former president, they are extremely enthusiastic about him: 99 percent of them give him a positive personal rating and 87 percent of that is “very positive.” To be clear, that is not a job performance rating; that is a measure of whether they have positive feelings about him personally.
Among the party Republicans, the number is still high, but a bit lower and not so solid. The “positive feelings” number drops more than 20 points to 78 percent and only 44 percent of that group is “very positive” about Trump.
For the Democrats, Biden has a similarly strong hold over his part of the party. A full 93 percent of Biden Democrats say they have positive feelings about the president, and 74 percent are “very positive.”
Among Warren/Sanders Democrats, the number drops. Just over 75 percent say they have positive feelings about Biden and only 27 percent say they have “very positive” feelings about the president.
There is considerable daylight between each of the Democratic and Republican groups. And those attitudes could shift over time as Trump’s post-presidency and Biden’s Democratic honeymoon periods wear off. Each party could find itself with some strong internal disagreements.
The fault lines between the segments become even more pronounced when you look at policy.
With Joe Biden in White House now and Democrats in control of the House and Senate, the question is where each of these four groups stands on a Biden agenda. There are disagreements.
Among Republicans, the Trump part of the party is firmly against compromising with Biden in order gain consensus on legislation. Only 25 percent of the Trump Republicans favor that approach.
But party Republicans feel very differently. More than half, 55 percent, favor making compromises with Biden to gain consensus on legislation.
On the Democratic side there are also splits: 7 in 10 Biden Democrats want the congressional Democrats to work to pass the Biden agenda, while 20 percent of that group would rather “hold the line” for more progressive policies.
But among Sanders/Warren Democrats, the support for passing the Biden agenda falls to 60 percent, with about 30 percent favoring an approach that holds the line for more progressive policies.
Those are figures that at least suggest there could be some surprises in Congress in the coming months. They are not numbers that scream party discipline for either side.
Again, these data are from one poll that came during a very tumultuous moment. It was conducted from Jan. 10-13, just after the Capitol riot and before Biden’s inauguration.
But these splits are nothing new; they reflect divisions in the parties we have been tracking for years now. And the fact that these splits are this even and this clear as a new administration and Congress checks in may be telling. For all the social media chatter about a “civil war” brewing in America, these figures suggest the real story in coming weeks may be intra-party conflict.
DIY-HP-LED
Well-Known Member
What to Do With Trumpists - The Atlantic
What to Do With Trumpists
The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.
At noon tomorrow, our four-year experiment in being governed by the political equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse will finally end. It is ending in Juggalo style (some have called it “Trumpalo”), violently and pointlessly, with a handful of deaths, the smearing of various bodily fluids, and a riot on the way out. After any bacchanal of this magnitude, the sober dawn is almost as disorienting as the hysteria itself—and the most urgent task, after wiping the shit from the Capitol hallways, is to prevent a repeat performance.
First, the Senate must convict Donald Trump. I confess bewilderment that the Senate will have to deliberate at all: Inciting an insurrection that threatens to kidnap and possibly murder members of the Senate (including the vice president of the United States) seems to me the kind of activity the Senate should frown upon. Enemies of Ted Cruz like to point out that Trump called Cruz’s wife a hag and insinuated that his father killed John F. Kennedy, and Cruz cuddled up to Trump anyway. Any senator who excuses his own near lynching by a shirtless, horned shaman will make Cruz’s self-debasement look dignified by comparison.
Second, law enforcement should hunt down and charge all of the insurrectionists, from the flex-cuff guys to the grannies posing for photos. The vigor with which federal prosecutors have been pursuing them proves that the United States has not been corrupted completely. Prisons exist to hold people such as these.
RECOMMENDED READING
Barbed wire around the Capitol
The Senate Trial Will Test Whether Senate Republicans Care Even About Themselves
JANE CHONG
House of Representatives votes to impeach Donald Trump on Jan 13.
Trump Has Left Congress No Choice
ADAM SERWER
An illustration of elephants
Republicans Can Agree to Disagree Over Democracy
HANS NOEL
Here ends the easy part. Options for what comes next are harder to imagine, and have left everyone casting into a dark, vacant pool for the right paradigm. The Federalist Papers do not contemplate a Juggalo-in-exile postpresidency, so we search in unlikely places for comparably miserable predicaments to guide us. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan argues that we should think of Trump’s followers as if they were al-Qaeda members, who move freely among us because they are white, rather than brown and Muslim. The former DHS official Juliette Kayyem agrees that we should treat MAGA as a terrorist movement and Trump as its Osama bin Laden. What do we do with terror movements? “Decapitate” their leadership. In this case, she says the decapitation should be figurative: Isolate Trump; embarrass his followers; make Trump repudiate them.
Whiteness, as Hasan suggests, is one difference between MAGA and al-Qaeda. Another is MAGA’s failure thus far to murder 3,000 people in a single day and promise to keep it up until the survivors surrender. The U.S. did not kill bin Laden because he prayed to Allah instead of Q, and the latter is going to be much harder to neutralize. (Thomas Hegghammer also notes a strange tension in Hasan’s position: If Trumpism is like al-Qaeda—or worse—and the authorities are giving it a free pass, why is the Trumpalo-terrorist body count in the single digits?) Because bin Laden still looms as the villain par excellence in the American imagination, to bin Laden we turn for analogy when trying to impress upon one another the gravity of a threat. But when the analogy guides policy and is wrong—and here it is not even close—it leaves the real threat unbothered, and everyone as defenseless as the Capitol was two weeks ago. The comparison fails even though the mob in the Capitol included at least a few honest-to-goodness, unambiguous terrorists, who came there with the express purpose of violently scaring the hell out of politicians in an effort to change policy. It fails because the category of terrorism is diverse, and so is the category of MAGA.
Even if we agree that Trump is a “terrorist,” consider how unlike other terrorists he is. Trump resembles bin Laden not at all: One was an ascetic who gave up riches to live in dangerous and squalid isolation; the other avoids even mild danger or physical discomfort, and will humiliate himself to add mere pennies to his bank account. One commands the military of the United States, for at least a few more hours, and the other never had more than a few thousand men swinging on monkey bars in Afghanistan to his name. Trump had powers bin Laden only dreamed of (and that if he had, he would have used genocidally). I consider Trump the biggest threat to American democracy since Robert E. Lee—a terrorist who had at his disposal a great army and used it to great effect. Trump’s strategy, by contrast, was to keep and maintain power, by gathering, very loosely, a gang of self-marginalizing anti-Semites, cosplay brownshirts, and flabby gun nuts, plus others who may be high-functioning in normal life but on January 6 were too stupid to refrain from geotagging their crimes on Facebook.
Seventy-four million Americans voted for Trump, and tens of millions believe his lies about a rigged election. These numbers do not suggest that this credulous minority is on to something—but they virtually guarantee that treating the post-Trump problem like a terrorist movement will fail. If you think MAGA is a terror movement, you will trick yourself into thinking that the United States can subdue and destroy it using the tools that have destroyed al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and many terror groups before them. MAGA is far more entrenched, and impossible to eradicate using any means dreamt of by counterterrorism. This problem cannot be decapitated like a terrorist movement, and it will not go away when one man is droned to bits or apprehended and perp-walked in his underpants. Besides, contrary to Kayyem’s suggestion, even terrorist movements do not reliably end with decapitation, and one trait that makes them resilient against decapitation is having extensive popular support. Of course those who murder cops and raid government buildings should enjoy a long, leisurely prison stay, similar to those meted out to terrorists. (Someday they can emerge and tell their grandchildren that they committed sedition because a bat-faced incompetent named Rudolph Giuliani told them to, and he was very persuasive.) But you cannot treat tens of millions this way—and that means we need to lure back many of the 74 million, including some whose brains have been pickled by exposure to QAnon and 8chan.
Start by distinguishing among MAGA subtypes. In the past week, some erstwhile Trump supporters have turned on him. In Congress, most of these disavowed him when doing so became pragmatic—Mitch McConnell, for example, saw his majority slip away because of Trump’s Georgia strategy. To the extent possible, their repentance must be accepted, even with some light denial of their former MAGA fervor. “When this is all over,” David Frum prophesied, “nobody will admit to ever having supported it.” That is the way of many sheepish ex-radicals. Plenty of reformed hippies prefer to remember the free love, doobies, and social justice, without dwelling on the gonorrhea, heroin, and murder. If Trumpists are embarrassed enough to deny what they have done, then fine. When their denials shade into wistfulness, we have pictures and tweets to remind them of what they said and did. (I would rather have gonorrhea than a record of passionate and convinced #MAGA tweeting.)
Opportunistic amnesia is, like terrorism, a manageable problem. Far worse—and, I believe, nearer to the source of the disease—is a mental defect afflicting MAGA extremists as well as normal people: a near-total vulnerability to the hyperstimulation of our political senses. The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.
A young, successful politician once told me that at his events, he always deals with shouting protesters in the same way: He sends staff to escort them to the front of the audience, where they can shower him with spittle and fan him with their placards. The fight makes better TV, especially if a protester loses it and says or does something really crazy, such as disrobing. Wild TV clips are a source of endless attention, which is a currency fully convertible into power. Unless the camera is on you, you lose. That is the lesson of Trump, in a sentence.
This annihilating tactic has rendered truth irrelevant, and like some horrible viral variant, it has rapidly come to dominate as a hysterical style in American politics. To see the MAGA insurrection and the dissociative, unhinged words of full-blown QAnon believers is to observe the hysterical style as a way of life. It resists persuasion by ordinary argument, because it persuades instead by domination of attention. When Trump said in his inaugural that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” it turns out his most fervent supporters thought that the best way to resist oblivion is to dominate others’ attention for attention’s own sake—for example, by prancing half-naked wearing body paint and pelts and threatening violence if their attention flags. Nothing matters more than the production of images too bonkers to ignore, and ensuring that everyone is looking at you and not at someone else. Some subset of the population lacks natural immunity to this performance and surrenders entirely.
more...
What to Do With Trumpists
The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.
At noon tomorrow, our four-year experiment in being governed by the political equivalent of the Insane Clown Posse will finally end. It is ending in Juggalo style (some have called it “Trumpalo”), violently and pointlessly, with a handful of deaths, the smearing of various bodily fluids, and a riot on the way out. After any bacchanal of this magnitude, the sober dawn is almost as disorienting as the hysteria itself—and the most urgent task, after wiping the shit from the Capitol hallways, is to prevent a repeat performance.
First, the Senate must convict Donald Trump. I confess bewilderment that the Senate will have to deliberate at all: Inciting an insurrection that threatens to kidnap and possibly murder members of the Senate (including the vice president of the United States) seems to me the kind of activity the Senate should frown upon. Enemies of Ted Cruz like to point out that Trump called Cruz’s wife a hag and insinuated that his father killed John F. Kennedy, and Cruz cuddled up to Trump anyway. Any senator who excuses his own near lynching by a shirtless, horned shaman will make Cruz’s self-debasement look dignified by comparison.
Second, law enforcement should hunt down and charge all of the insurrectionists, from the flex-cuff guys to the grannies posing for photos. The vigor with which federal prosecutors have been pursuing them proves that the United States has not been corrupted completely. Prisons exist to hold people such as these.
RECOMMENDED READING
Barbed wire around the Capitol
The Senate Trial Will Test Whether Senate Republicans Care Even About Themselves
JANE CHONG
House of Representatives votes to impeach Donald Trump on Jan 13.
Trump Has Left Congress No Choice
ADAM SERWER
An illustration of elephants
Republicans Can Agree to Disagree Over Democracy
HANS NOEL
Here ends the easy part. Options for what comes next are harder to imagine, and have left everyone casting into a dark, vacant pool for the right paradigm. The Federalist Papers do not contemplate a Juggalo-in-exile postpresidency, so we search in unlikely places for comparably miserable predicaments to guide us. MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan argues that we should think of Trump’s followers as if they were al-Qaeda members, who move freely among us because they are white, rather than brown and Muslim. The former DHS official Juliette Kayyem agrees that we should treat MAGA as a terrorist movement and Trump as its Osama bin Laden. What do we do with terror movements? “Decapitate” their leadership. In this case, she says the decapitation should be figurative: Isolate Trump; embarrass his followers; make Trump repudiate them.
Whiteness, as Hasan suggests, is one difference between MAGA and al-Qaeda. Another is MAGA’s failure thus far to murder 3,000 people in a single day and promise to keep it up until the survivors surrender. The U.S. did not kill bin Laden because he prayed to Allah instead of Q, and the latter is going to be much harder to neutralize. (Thomas Hegghammer also notes a strange tension in Hasan’s position: If Trumpism is like al-Qaeda—or worse—and the authorities are giving it a free pass, why is the Trumpalo-terrorist body count in the single digits?) Because bin Laden still looms as the villain par excellence in the American imagination, to bin Laden we turn for analogy when trying to impress upon one another the gravity of a threat. But when the analogy guides policy and is wrong—and here it is not even close—it leaves the real threat unbothered, and everyone as defenseless as the Capitol was two weeks ago. The comparison fails even though the mob in the Capitol included at least a few honest-to-goodness, unambiguous terrorists, who came there with the express purpose of violently scaring the hell out of politicians in an effort to change policy. It fails because the category of terrorism is diverse, and so is the category of MAGA.
Even if we agree that Trump is a “terrorist,” consider how unlike other terrorists he is. Trump resembles bin Laden not at all: One was an ascetic who gave up riches to live in dangerous and squalid isolation; the other avoids even mild danger or physical discomfort, and will humiliate himself to add mere pennies to his bank account. One commands the military of the United States, for at least a few more hours, and the other never had more than a few thousand men swinging on monkey bars in Afghanistan to his name. Trump had powers bin Laden only dreamed of (and that if he had, he would have used genocidally). I consider Trump the biggest threat to American democracy since Robert E. Lee—a terrorist who had at his disposal a great army and used it to great effect. Trump’s strategy, by contrast, was to keep and maintain power, by gathering, very loosely, a gang of self-marginalizing anti-Semites, cosplay brownshirts, and flabby gun nuts, plus others who may be high-functioning in normal life but on January 6 were too stupid to refrain from geotagging their crimes on Facebook.
Seventy-four million Americans voted for Trump, and tens of millions believe his lies about a rigged election. These numbers do not suggest that this credulous minority is on to something—but they virtually guarantee that treating the post-Trump problem like a terrorist movement will fail. If you think MAGA is a terror movement, you will trick yourself into thinking that the United States can subdue and destroy it using the tools that have destroyed al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and many terror groups before them. MAGA is far more entrenched, and impossible to eradicate using any means dreamt of by counterterrorism. This problem cannot be decapitated like a terrorist movement, and it will not go away when one man is droned to bits or apprehended and perp-walked in his underpants. Besides, contrary to Kayyem’s suggestion, even terrorist movements do not reliably end with decapitation, and one trait that makes them resilient against decapitation is having extensive popular support. Of course those who murder cops and raid government buildings should enjoy a long, leisurely prison stay, similar to those meted out to terrorists. (Someday they can emerge and tell their grandchildren that they committed sedition because a bat-faced incompetent named Rudolph Giuliani told them to, and he was very persuasive.) But you cannot treat tens of millions this way—and that means we need to lure back many of the 74 million, including some whose brains have been pickled by exposure to QAnon and 8chan.
Start by distinguishing among MAGA subtypes. In the past week, some erstwhile Trump supporters have turned on him. In Congress, most of these disavowed him when doing so became pragmatic—Mitch McConnell, for example, saw his majority slip away because of Trump’s Georgia strategy. To the extent possible, their repentance must be accepted, even with some light denial of their former MAGA fervor. “When this is all over,” David Frum prophesied, “nobody will admit to ever having supported it.” That is the way of many sheepish ex-radicals. Plenty of reformed hippies prefer to remember the free love, doobies, and social justice, without dwelling on the gonorrhea, heroin, and murder. If Trumpists are embarrassed enough to deny what they have done, then fine. When their denials shade into wistfulness, we have pictures and tweets to remind them of what they said and did. (I would rather have gonorrhea than a record of passionate and convinced #MAGA tweeting.)
Opportunistic amnesia is, like terrorism, a manageable problem. Far worse—and, I believe, nearer to the source of the disease—is a mental defect afflicting MAGA extremists as well as normal people: a near-total vulnerability to the hyperstimulation of our political senses. The proper response to these extremists isn’t counterterrorism. It is mental hygiene.
A young, successful politician once told me that at his events, he always deals with shouting protesters in the same way: He sends staff to escort them to the front of the audience, where they can shower him with spittle and fan him with their placards. The fight makes better TV, especially if a protester loses it and says or does something really crazy, such as disrobing. Wild TV clips are a source of endless attention, which is a currency fully convertible into power. Unless the camera is on you, you lose. That is the lesson of Trump, in a sentence.
This annihilating tactic has rendered truth irrelevant, and like some horrible viral variant, it has rapidly come to dominate as a hysterical style in American politics. To see the MAGA insurrection and the dissociative, unhinged words of full-blown QAnon believers is to observe the hysterical style as a way of life. It resists persuasion by ordinary argument, because it persuades instead by domination of attention. When Trump said in his inaugural that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,” it turns out his most fervent supporters thought that the best way to resist oblivion is to dominate others’ attention for attention’s own sake—for example, by prancing half-naked wearing body paint and pelts and threatening violence if their attention flags. Nothing matters more than the production of images too bonkers to ignore, and ensuring that everyone is looking at you and not at someone else. Some subset of the population lacks natural immunity to this performance and surrenders entirely.
more...
printer
Well-Known Member
The gift that keeps on giving. Rudy we miss you.
Dominion Voting Systems files $1.3B defamation suit against Giuliani
Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani alleging that the former New York City mayor spread numerous defamatory statements about the voting machine company while he helped lead former President Trump’s failed post-election legal campaign.
The company is seeking $1.3 billion in damages over what it called a “viral disinformation campaign,” alleging that Giuliani made malicious false accusations against Dominion, including that the company had engaged in voter fraud and election fixing.
“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” reads the 107-page complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Dominion alleges that Giuliani continued to falsely accuse the company of fixing the 2020 presidential election by manipulating votes even after independent audits and hand recounts disproved his claims.
It also notes that while Giuliani lodged numerous accusations against Dominion in media appearances, he was unwilling to do so when he represented the Trump campaign in federal court in Pennsylvania, where he would risk sanctions for knowingly false statements. “Notably, although Dominion machines were used in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election, the Trump Campaign’s complaint did not include any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit filed Monday states.
The defamation suit against Giuliani comes after Dominion filed a similar lawsuit earlier this month against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for promoting “a false preconceived narrative” about the 2020 vote, which included unsubstantiated claims that the company was established in Venezuela as part of a vote-rigging operation in favor of the late socialist leader Hugo Chávez.
Dominion has also left open the possibility that it might sue Trump and his media allies for defamation.
The complaint against Giuliani claims he worked in concert with Powell and pro-Trump lawyer Lin Powell, as well as Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, to press false claims that have fueled harassment and death threats against Dominion employees. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week Giuliani was the subject of multiple requests for legal disciplinary action. A national lawyers group asked a New York court panel to suspend his law license and undertake a review of his role in promoting false election fraud claims that some argue fueled the insurrection at the Capitol earlier this month.
Separately, New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D), who chairs the state Senate Judiciary Committee, referred Giuliani for disbarment.
thehill.com
Dominion Voting Systems files $1.3B defamation suit against Giuliani
Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani alleging that the former New York City mayor spread numerous defamatory statements about the voting machine company while he helped lead former President Trump’s failed post-election legal campaign.
The company is seeking $1.3 billion in damages over what it called a “viral disinformation campaign,” alleging that Giuliani made malicious false accusations against Dominion, including that the company had engaged in voter fraud and election fixing.
“For Dominion — whose business is producing and providing voting systems for elections — there are no accusations that could do more to damage Dominion’s business or to impugn Dominion’s integrity, ethics, honesty, and financial integrity,” reads the 107-page complaint filed in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Dominion alleges that Giuliani continued to falsely accuse the company of fixing the 2020 presidential election by manipulating votes even after independent audits and hand recounts disproved his claims.
It also notes that while Giuliani lodged numerous accusations against Dominion in media appearances, he was unwilling to do so when he represented the Trump campaign in federal court in Pennsylvania, where he would risk sanctions for knowingly false statements. “Notably, although Dominion machines were used in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election, the Trump Campaign’s complaint did not include any allegations about Dominion,” the lawsuit filed Monday states.
The defamation suit against Giuliani comes after Dominion filed a similar lawsuit earlier this month against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for promoting “a false preconceived narrative” about the 2020 vote, which included unsubstantiated claims that the company was established in Venezuela as part of a vote-rigging operation in favor of the late socialist leader Hugo Chávez.
Dominion has also left open the possibility that it might sue Trump and his media allies for defamation.
The complaint against Giuliani claims he worked in concert with Powell and pro-Trump lawyer Lin Powell, as well as Fox News, Newsmax, One America News Network and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, to press false claims that have fueled harassment and death threats against Dominion employees. Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week Giuliani was the subject of multiple requests for legal disciplinary action. A national lawyers group asked a New York court panel to suspend his law license and undertake a review of his role in promoting false election fraud claims that some argue fueled the insurrection at the Capitol earlier this month.
Separately, New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman (D), who chairs the state Senate Judiciary Committee, referred Giuliani for disbarment.
Dominion Voting Systems files $1.3B defamation suit against Giuliani
Dominion Voting Systems on Monday filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani alleging that the former New York City mayor spread numerous defamatory statements about the voting machine company while he …
thehill.com
printer
Well-Known Member
Trump trolled with 'worst president ever' banner flown near Mar-a-Lago
Former President Trump was trolled on Sunday when sky banners were flown near his Mar-a-Lago resort calling him a “pathetic loser” and “the worst president ever.”
Trump left Washington last week and took up residence at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was spotted playing golf a day after President Biden's inauguration. During Trump's first weekend as a private citizen post-presidency, sky banners flew near his Florida residence. One appeared to read “Trump you pathetic loser go back to Moscow," according to local CBS 12 reporter Paxton Boyd.
Election results from November show Trump is disliked by the majority of his new neighbors. Biden won Palm Beach County with 56.1 percent of the vote versus Trump’s 43.2 percent, according to results from the county’s Supervisor of Elections Office.
In December, a demand letter was delivered to the town of Palm Beach and addressed to the U.S. Secret Service asserting that Trump lost his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club. A majority of Palm Beach County commissioners told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last week that they won’t support renaming the local airport, Palm Beach International, after Trump.
thehill.com
Former President Trump was trolled on Sunday when sky banners were flown near his Mar-a-Lago resort calling him a “pathetic loser” and “the worst president ever.”
Trump left Washington last week and took up residence at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla., where he was spotted playing golf a day after President Biden's inauguration. During Trump's first weekend as a private citizen post-presidency, sky banners flew near his Florida residence. One appeared to read “Trump you pathetic loser go back to Moscow," according to local CBS 12 reporter Paxton Boyd.
Election results from November show Trump is disliked by the majority of his new neighbors. Biden won Palm Beach County with 56.1 percent of the vote versus Trump’s 43.2 percent, according to results from the county’s Supervisor of Elections Office.
In December, a demand letter was delivered to the town of Palm Beach and addressed to the U.S. Secret Service asserting that Trump lost his legal right to live at Mar-a-Lago because of an agreement he signed in the early 1990s when he converted the storied estate from his private residence to a private club. A majority of Palm Beach County commissioners told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last week that they won’t support renaming the local airport, Palm Beach International, after Trump.
Trump trolled with ‘worst president ever’ banner flown near Mar-a-Lago
Former President Trump was trolled on Sunday when sky banners were flown near his Mar-a-Lago resort calling him a “pathetic loser” and “the worst president ever.”Trump left Washingto…
thehill.com
Herb & Suds
Well-Known Member
Compared to...Hitler?
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I think he meant sexually.