US Politics: Locked, Loaded, Fired Up and Capitalized

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Every time I quote "The Second Coming" people say I'm over reacting and things calm down.  Here's hoping this has the same effect.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

OH ffs, read some of these links.

 

I'm against all that, but most of those links are citing jailing immigrants, no? I asked who's rounding people into camps. Many of the instances described here seem to be of the Gitmo variety. This has been going on now through 3 different administrations, 2 Republican and 1 Democrat. It's not really something you can lay specifically at Trump's doorstep. So in the context of this particular argument (The Trump administration is weakening the effects of Rule of Law as it applies to neo-nazis and the like) i'm not sure it's applicable.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

I'm against all that, but most of those links are citing jailing immigrants, no? I asked who's rounding people into camps. Many of the instances described here seem to be of the Gitmo variety. This has been going on now through 3 different administrations, 2 Republican and 1 Democrat. It's not really something you can lay specifically at Trump's doorstep. So in the context of this particular argument (The Trump administration is weakening the effects of Rule of Law as it applies to neo-nazis and the like) i'm not sure it's applicable.

 

Oh, Trump hasn't doubled down on stirring up animosity towards Latinos, immigrants and undocumented workers?  Obama was shit on deportation too but Trump is jamming that xenophobia pedal to the floor.  He didn't start this fire but he's stoking it enthusiastically.  

 I'm not calling for a civil war.  I'm just saying let's get our priorities straight.  A alt-right, Proud Boys, or NeoNazi gets punched in the face or beaten by counter protesters?  I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.  There are bigger fish to fry than jumping to the defense of Nazis just to prove how balanced you are in applying the law.  In the meantime, these fuckers are killing people.  They seem to have , if not the tacit support of the POTUS, at least his refusal to call out their terrorism.  

 

[Bonnot OG]

Pretty sure we heard all the Nazi arguments over half a century ago, and then we executed them for their crimes.

[LongRider]

15 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 This has been going on now through 3 different administrations, 2 Republican and 1 Democrat. It's not really something you can lay specifically at Trump's doorstep. So in the context of this particular argument (The Trump administration is weakening the effects of Rule of Law as it applies to neo-nazis and the like) i'm not sure it's applicable.

 

This is true, and it makes things easier for Trump due to precedent.  Remember how much the private prison stocks went up on election night?  Right now we have an avowed racist with a history as AG.  With established camps and private prisons at his disposal, a compromised Executive with Nazi (Alt-Right) counselors, the possibility, alas is there.  Remember, Trump admires Putin as does the Neo-Nazi's, and one strategy Putin uses is to jail his enemies and critics. See Magnitsky.   

So currently, we have an increase in immigrants and refugees being detained, Gitmo still open and profiteers happy to build more detention centers.  So the question of 'Is Trump weakening the Rule of Law as it applies  to Neo-Nazi's?'  If they happily detain the venerable and let the domestic terrorists go and won't call them out like they should.  I would say, yes.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

Oh, Trump hasn't doubled down on stirring up animosity towards Latinos, immigrants and undocumented workers?  Obama was shit on deportation too but Trump is jamming that xenophobia pedal to the floor.  He didn't start this fire but he's stoking it enthusiastically.  

 I'm not calling for a civil war.  I'm just saying let's get our priorities straight.  A alt-right, Proud Boys, or NeoNazi gets punched in the face or beaten by counter protesters?  I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.  There are bigger fish to fry than jumping to the defense of Nazis just to prove how balanced you are in applying the law.  In the meantime, these fuckers are killing people.  They seem to have , if not the tacit support of the POTUS, at least his refusal to call out their terrorism.  

 He absolutely has. It's a piece of the puzzle that has emboldened these fascist dickheads, no doubt. I'm in full agreement there. It was a cornerstone of his fucking campaign.

Agree with the 2nd bit as well, outside of violence committed in the name of an ideology. If it's not self-defence, it's illegal. If you're okay with normalizing that, you're going to get Civil War. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

Pretty sure we heard all the Nazi arguments over half a century ago, and then we executed them for their crimes.

Yet you're cool with advocating their solutions, just so long as they are only applied to them. Who do we put on trial after that genocide?

[Sivin]

1 hour ago, kairparavel said:

It's the summer of 2017 and white people are openly marching with confederate flags, nazis flags, chanting slurs and decades-old slogans. Racism continues to be alive and well in each generation in this country. White supremacy is not condemned at the highest post of government in this country. White people assemble in groups while conjuring up inflammatory and painful images of the past. It hasn't died out. It's not going away under rule of law. Free speech allows and quite frankly accepts it's existence, as if all ideas are equal. Spoiler: they aren't. 

One group says : this is bullshit, and if it takes force to wipe it out so be it.

Another group says: free speech, slippery slope, rule of law.

One group says: none of that is working guys, they need to be silenced and stomped out because what they promote is wrong, yeah? It's wrong and needs to be eradicated, right? Right?

Another group says : we don't like your solution, it's equally bad to them, free speech, slippery slope, rule of law, here's this MLK meme I found on the internet.

Another group, provide a solution(s) to the problem instead of protection for it. All your countering to restricting it is allowing it to keep happening. Somehow eradicating movements with destructive histories, movements becoming normalized on a daily basis, makes you more worried about what might happen instead of what is actually happening. Your desire to cling to words from hundreds of years ago continues to allow the marginalization of, abuse of, and death of fellow citizens. 

If we can't go to war against Nazis, against white supremacy, then what exactly are we going to do about? The status quo of this country is broken so what are you proposing to fix it?

 

1 hour ago, Dr. Pepper said:

We went to war with our fellow citizens once before.  It was for a just cause.  I'm not exactly down with the idea of going to war with my neighbors, but I'm absolutely positively without a doubt not down with my neighbors electing and supporting white supremacists and nazis and all that entails.  This is one of those actual 'lesser of two evils' things.  Fuck the nazis.  They should not be allowed to gain more power, recruit more people, don't give a fuck if they are fellow citizens or not.  Think about what it looks like when they start rounding people up into camps (oh wait, they already do, are you ok with that?).  

I'd like to think that if I were living in the 1930s, I would have been ok warring with my fellow German citizen who was also a nazi.  In the 1860's, I hope I would have been ok warring with my fellow citizen who was also a slaver.  I can name off a whole bunch of places in the last two decades where I feel I would be ready and willing to face off against my fellow citizens if the cause were just.  

I don't think YOU'VE effectively visualized what it means to just advocate doing nothing but try to share some ideas and cross your fingers the rule of law will somehow maybe kinda hopefully work itself out.

 

Just now, Sword of Doom said:

Pretty sure we heard all the Nazi arguments over half a century ago, and then we executed them for their crimes.

The arguments against the people I've quoted seem more and more like intellectual appeasement of the worst kind as the year progresses. 

At what point does refusal to endorse action to prevent the rise of genocidally motivated authoritarians become complicity in their inevitable crimes?

I think that moment approaches even now.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

11 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

So currently, we have an increase in immigrants and refugees being detained, Gitmo still open and profiteers happy to build more detention centers.  So the question of 'Is Trump weakening the Rule of Law as it applies  to Neo-Nazi's?'  If they happily detain the venerable and let the domestic terrorists go and won't call them out like they should.  I would say, yes.

Again, I agree with all of this. It's scary as fuck. 

[Bonnot OG]

10 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

Yet you're cool with advocating their solutions, just so long as they are only applied to them. Who do we put on trial after that genocide?

And youre cool with arguing in favor of nazism being allowed to exist and breath? 

Does reading any info on World War II bother you since nazis were actually killed and many executed after being on trial?

 

im gonna guess nazi policies wouldn't impact you which is why you have no issue arguing in favor of the ideology having a right to exist.

 

 

 

 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 That would be great if this was a foreign power we were talking about. This is not a WW2 sort of dynamic. We don't have an army of Nazis occupying say an ally, or one of our states. These are our fellow citizens we are talking about. How do you go to war with your fellow citizens? By what barometer do we determine who the enemy is? What methods are we going to employ to excise this cancer from our society? Think about what that might look like and tell me you're down with it. Because I don't think you've visualized it effectively. 

You've noticed that these ilks of fellow citizens have no problems whatsoever about making war on those who aren't them, of course.

You've noticed their chief enabler-ally is in the Oval Office, of course, and that others just like him are staffing police departments, and other parts of government all over the country, though in some parts more than others.

Thus the barometer is that we are being made war upon.

History tells us the answers.  But it seems that for most people, even those who possibly even know some history, at best history is a closed book.  It happened, it's over. At worst for so many who possibly even know some history, history is really a fairy tale, and doesn't have anything to do with us living now.

However, for some others of us, some of whom actually know a great deal of history and know very well in granular detail, history is neither a fairy tale nor a closed book.  We know, we see, we can trace the histories right into this very day, yeah lordessa, into this very hour in which we ourselves are walking the earth.  Or, which more people like, as Faulkner wrote in  Requiem for a Nun (1951), "History is never dead, it's not even past."  This is particularly true with the US's history of violence and white supremacy.

This is history not an abstraction that is over and done with.  We live it every day.  Even these white males insulated by their infantile sense of victimhood -- so appropriately expressed in their cosplay military armor, out for all to see guns, strutting their cosplay infantile aggression in other people's home -- have that sense of history not being past.  They invoke it constantly, the outrage that "I'm being pushed around because I'm white!" so I'll fix you (as Miller has now threatened Charlottesville  -- "I'll be back in your little stupid town" -- as a whole).

The rule of law is nowhere to be seen here because the violence-approving neo nazis own it, starting with the POTUS. That adrenaline pumped (maybe steroid pumped as well -- he looks like it -- can you hear him howling as it occured?) 20-year old Fields who plowed his car into living human beings -- how much you all want to make book that he gets a sentence no greater than Zimmerman got for stalking and murdering Treyvon Martin?

Gandhi's non-violence resistance worked primarily because it was resistance to the British, who at that time, had a clear-cut line of command and rule of law with it, and so his opponents observed it to more or less a degree -- and there was an influential and very large number of cadres within and without the British government who sympathized with Gandhi's objectives.

We ain't there now, folks.  What we have running the country are infantilized, pouting, victims of their own sense of entitlement and contempt for others -- all others -- who aren't themselves, who are armed, heavily armed and want more than anything else the great catharsis of violence.  If nothing else, the history of the decades run-up to the War of the Southern Rebellion teaches us this. 

We've had at least 40 years of media and entertainment drumbeating violence into us, promoting violence, promoting infantilization, promoting white victimhood and hatred of African Americans, women and any other others you can think of.  This was Kansas-Nebraska. Secession and Fort Sumter are coming down the National Road.

And alas, also probably coming down the road will be a John Brown event.  Recall, to this day, John Brown is revered as a perfectly self-conscious martyr to the cause of anti-slavery, and his raid was 100% in response to the violence of Kansas-Nebraska slaveocracy.

 

 

[snowleper]

2 hours ago, Starkess said:

And therein lies the problem. You're so offended that I don't want to use violent means against nazis that now, in your line of argument, I am easily conflated with nazis. So now I'm one of the ones that ought to have violent means used against me. Once you start advocating for a loss of rights based on ideology, it becomes really easy to expand that to basically anyone. 

I think I would be comfortable vilifying you based entirely on your apparent enjoyment of Frozen -- which is one of the worst Disney productions I've ever encountered.

 

20 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I'm shocked that people in this thread are essentially arguing for a civil war. Lord help us all. The fall of the US is going to be swift at this rate.

It worked once -- to somewhat mixed long term results.

People want things to be better now, or next year, or after the next election cycle. A lot of what we are seeing has roots extending deep into our cultural history. A lot of what we are seeing is a result of a systemic failure of our education system, and a commodification of news - where everything has become an editorial and opinion is now valued equally to events, sequences and facts.

There are no good long term solutions offered here. Or at least nothing seemingly easy, or practical. I very much doubt that we can get a plurality of reasonable people ready who are willing to help drag the rest of this country where it needs to go in the long term.

If we want better short term change, we are going to need to engineer some instability. But revolution isn't a pretty thing. And a disruption of the current system has a more than equal chance of taking us to some very dangerous places instead of anywhere that we agree is really worth going.

I think armed resistance and revolt is too risky. Which leaves nonviolent direct action. 

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Just now, Sword of Doom said:

And youre cool with arguing I'm favor of nazism being allowed to exist and breath? 

Does reading any info on World War II bother you since nazis were actually killed and many executed after being on trial?

My Great Uncle (who I'm named after) died at Anzio fighting nazis. So no, I actually tend to enjoy reading about nazis getting killed. Totally down with Nuremberg. Big fan of Simon Wiesenthal. Totally different context as to what we are looking at today.  

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

1 minute ago, snowleper said:

I think I would be comfortable vilifying you based entirely on your apparent enjoyment of Frozen -- which is one of the worst Disney productions I've ever encountered.

Let it go, man. Let it go.

[ljkeane]

2 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Gandhi's non-violence resistance worked primarily because it was resistance to the British, who at that time, had a clear-cut line of command and rule of law with it, and so his opponents observed it to more or less a degree -- and there was an influential and very large number of cadres within and without the British government who sympathized with Gandhi's objectives.

Rein in the melodrama a bit. No you don't currently have it worse than Indians resisting British rule in the Raj.

[Zorral]

6 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Rein in the melodrama a bit. No you don't currently have it worse than Indians resisting British rule in the Raj.

Tell it to the communities like Ferguson.  Tell it to the people on the Res (speaking of camps or, depending on, invasion).  Tell it, o, to the many people being rounded up on suspicion of being Other, undocumented, whatever.  Moreover the orange monster is far worse than Churchill.  Churchill, as we recall, actually fought nazis, wasn't one of them.

 

[James Arryn]

32 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

Pretty sure we heard all the Nazi arguments over half a century ago, and then we executed them for their crimes.

Not if they were useful in the fight for power, sorry, I mean against Communism.

[Mexal]

10 minutes ago, snowleper said:

 

It worked once -- to somewhat mixed long term results.

People want things to be better now, or next year, or after the next election cycle. A lot of what we are seeing has roots extending deep into our cultural history. A lot of what we are seeing is a result of a systemic failure of our education system, and a commodification of news - where everything has become an editorial and opinion is now valued equally to events, sequences and facts.

There are no good long term solutions offered here. Or at least nothing seemingly easy, or practical. I very much doubt that we can get a plurality of reasonable people ready who are willing to help drag the rest of this country where it needs to go in the long term.

If we want better short term change, we are going to need to engineer some instability. But revolution isn't a pretty thing. And a disruption of the current system has a more than equal chance of taking us to some very dangerous places instead of anywhere that we agree is really worth going.

I think armed resistance and revolt is too risky. Which leaves nonviolent direct action. 

 

620,000 Americans died during the Civil War and that was without modern weaponry. This was also at a time when the government was on the right side of the cause. If this is what people want, I hope they are the first casualties.

[Bonnot OG]

1 minute ago, James Arryn said:

Not if they were useful in the fight for power, sorry, I mean against Communism.

Of course! The US was supporting Franco just like Hitler was before we started killing one another.

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, Mexal said:

620,000 Americans died during the Civil War and that was without modern weaponry. This was also at a time when the government was on the right side of the cause. If this is what you want, I hope you are the first casualty.

A major cause of death in the War of the Rebellion was dysentery. More died in captivity, of disease, than on the battlefield -- and those battlefield deaths were enormous.

https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties