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The Trump Administration 2017-


Ms. Spam
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[tl;dr] It is very worrying to me that you have two warring factions in the American polity, and neither of them seem to give a rat's arse about democratic norms, values and conventions. And this war is being waged both on and over social media monopolies, which also aren't good for democratic norms.

First, the easier case. Trump's behavior, especially since losing the election, should be absolutely disqualifying for anybody who lives in a liberal democracy. While I have never believed him to be fit for political office, that should now be painfully obvious to anybody who casts a vote. There are always salty losers, and allegations of stolen elections in any election that was not an absolute landslide for one side have been a thing now since 2000.

There have been court cases. There have been recounts. So Trump's claims of voting irregularities have been duly investigated. And as well they should have been. It just turns out that Trump was wrong, and now he and his followers are chalking it all up to a massive conspiracy. That therefore makes the antics that took place on January 6th not only acceptable but necessary. At least in their bizzarre and paranoid minds.

Trump has phoned State Governors and Attorneys General and simply asked them to cough up the votes needed to flip the state for him. He is abusing the leverage that comes with his political office to insist that Republican members of Congress and even his own vice president get on his absurd bandwagon, and his kooky followers are threatening with violence those GOP politicians who did not comply. What the hell do those lunatics think this is? Every damn one of them needs to face very stern justice because of this. I'm glad there has been a lot of clamoring for a very no-nonsense response to it all.

When you lose an election fair and square, doing anything other than immediately conceding and aiding in a peaceful transition is the kind of thing that you would expect to see in a banana republic. But then, from the outside looking in, America certainly looks to have been heading in that direction for a while now.

Suffice it to say, the sight of some lunatic in a horned helmet and furs running around inside of the Capitol building should put to rest any question of whether America can be compared to Rome. History really does repeat. First time as tragedy, second time as farce.

On the other hand, it is bizarre to me the supposed progressive people rush to this social media platforms can  deplatform whoever they want line of reasoning so quickly. I wonder if they really believe it, or is it just a matter of political expediency? In fact, I don't wonder that at all. Were the shoe on the other foot - as it was when the Christian right pressured book and music retailers into dropping heavy metal music albums and Harry Potter novels - the tune would be and indeed was very different.

The right of private businesses and to deal with or not whomever they wish has been a thing that civil rights activists have been pushing against for a very long time now. And no doubt for the best. Nobody had a problem forcing private bakeries to bake cakes for LGBT couples, for instance, when the ownership of said the bakeries were evangelical fruitcakes (no pun intended). Indeed, if "liberal" people really believe that it is up to Twitter to decide who does and doesn't get deplatformed, they would not apply pressure to the platform to suspend people who they do not like.

I am not saying that there isn't a time and a place to remove people from social media platforms. I am not actually a free-speech absolutist. But let's be honest here. Progressives want conservative removed from social media and other platforms because they don't like what conservatives are saying. They have convinced themselves, within their own echo chambers that are not any less air tight than those of the Qanon crowd, that any deviation from the sacred dogma of critical race theory amounts to nothing more then advocacy of full-on racial genocide. With this kind of a one minute to midnight mindset, who has time to entertain the regular politics of give and take and debate? The thing to do then is to go out and burn your cities to the ground. And fire from their jobs media pundits who suggest that this might not be such a good idea.

We should not, however, assume that the right-wingers are now the real champions of free speech. These are the same people who make memes celebrating Operation Condor. This was when military juntas in Central and South America persecuted leftists by throwing them out of helicopters. Do these people sound like civil libertarians to you? 


I think we should all get a bit of a chuckle out of a group of people who believe in the free market above all now clamouring for government intervention to regulate the tech sector, because they are losing the culture War.  But they also do make a point. Stopped clocks and all that. We should be worried about concentration and monopoly in social media. Especially if the social media platforms are going to outrightly become partisan players in our political processes and dialogues. Conservatives are right to be aggrieved by this, just as progressives would be right to be were the shoe on the other foot.

Besides, I have no doubt that the tech trusts won't have a problem deplatforming leftists also, once it becomes expedient for them to do so. Given their class interests, I would say that is a matter of when, not if.

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10 hours ago, The Kurgan said:

[tl;dr] It is very worrying to me that you have two warring factions in the American polity, and neither of them seem to give a rat's arse about democratic norms, values and conventions. And this war is being waged both on and over social media monopolies, which also aren't good for democratic norms.

First, the easier case. Trump's behavior, especially since losing the election, should be absolutely disqualifying for anybody who lives in a liberal democracy. While I have never believed him to be fit for political office, that should now be painfully obvious to anybody who casts a vote. There are always salty losers, and allegations of stolen elections in any election that was not an absolute landslide for one side have been a thing now since 2000.

There have been court cases. There have been recounts. So Trump's claims of voting irregularities have been duly investigated. And as well they should have been. It just turns out that Trump was wrong, and now he and his followers are chalking it all up to a massive conspiracy. That therefore makes the antics that took place on January 6th not only acceptable but necessary. At least in their bizzarre and paranoid minds.

Trump has phoned State Governors and Attorneys General and simply asked them to cough up the votes needed to flip the state for him. He is abusing the leverage that comes with his political office to insist that Republican members of Congress and even his own vice president get on his absurd bandwagon, and his kooky followers are threatening with violence those GOP politicians who did not comply. What the hell do those lunatics think this is? Every damn one of them needs to face very stern justice because of this. I'm glad there has been a lot of clamoring for a very no-nonsense response to it all.

When you lose an election fair and square, doing anything other than immediately conceding and aiding in a peaceful transition is the kind of thing that you would expect to see in a banana republic. But then, from the outside looking in, America certainly looks to have been heading in that direction for a while now.

Suffice it to say, the sight of some lunatic in a horned helmet and furs running around inside of the Capitol building should put to rest any question of whether America can be compared to Rome. History really does repeat. First time as tragedy, second time as farce.

On the other hand, it is bizarre to me the supposed progressive people rush to this social media platforms can  deplatform whoever they want line of reasoning so quickly. I wonder if they really believe it, or is it just a matter of political expediency? In fact, I don't wonder that at all. Were the shoe on the other foot - as it was when the Christian right pressured book and music retailers into dropping heavy metal music albums and Harry Potter novels - the tune would be and indeed was very different.

The right of private businesses and to deal with or not whomever they wish has been a thing that civil rights activists have been pushing against for a very long time now. And no doubt for the best. Nobody had a problem forcing private bakeries to bake cakes for LGBT couples, for instance, when the ownership of said the bakeries were evangelical fruitcakes (no pun intended). Indeed, if "liberal" people really believe that it is up to Twitter to decide who does and doesn't get deplatformed, they would not apply pressure to the platform to suspend people who they do not like.

I am not saying that there isn't a time and a place to remove people from social media platforms. I am not actually a free-speech absolutist. But let's be honest here. Progressives want conservative removed from social media and other platforms because they don't like what conservatives are saying. They have convinced themselves, within their own echo chambers that are not any less air tight than those of the Qanon crowd, that any deviation from the sacred dogma of critical race theory amounts to nothing more then advocacy of full-on racial genocide. With this kind of a one minute to midnight mindset, who has time to entertain the regular politics of give and take and debate? The thing to do then is to go out and burn your cities to the ground. And fire from their jobs media pundits who suggest that this might not be such a good idea.

We should not, however, assume that the right-wingers are now the real champions of free speech. These are the same people who make memes celebrating Operation Condor. This was when military juntas in Central and South America persecuted leftists by throwing them out of helicopters. Do these people sound like civil libertarians to you? 


I think we should all get a bit of a chuckle out of a group of people who believe in the free market above all now clamouring for government intervention to regulate the tech sector, because they are losing the culture War.  But they also do make a point. Stopped clocks and all that. We should be worried about concentration and monopoly in social media. Especially if the social media platforms are going to outrightly become partisan players in our political processes and dialogues. Conservatives are right to be aggrieved by this, just as progressives would be right to be were the shoe on the other foot.

Besides, I have no doubt that the tech trusts won't have a problem deplatforming leftists also, once it becomes expedient for them to do so. Given their class interests, I would say that is a matter of when, not if.

I don’t fit into any clean US political boxes. I’m not a liberal, but I’m certainly also not a conservative. In fact, my political leanings fall directly within Catholic social teaching - a teaching that, sadly, most Catholics don’t understand, or follow.

Having said that, I agree with politicians on both sides who have found that Big Tech is dangerous and the companies are monopolies - while the Republicans are crying about deplatforming, these issues have bipartisan agreement. The media just isn’t covering it well. 
As of today, however, the companies do have the right to not to do business with people who violate their terms, and Trump and Parler have done so. Amazon gave Parler two months warning to do something about death threats. All they had to do was show they had some type of cursory moderation system, but instead they gave Amazon the middle finger. It wasn’t a surprise thing at all. And we’re not just talking about speech that liberals dislike, we’re talking credible threats being shared and grown via Parler.

Big Tech is a problem, but Republican violence is a more urgent manner, since they actually stormed the Capitol and wanted to murder people. Ending the ability of terrorists to communicate is a major method of fighting terrorism, and since the government refuses to do anything about it and the police are part of the problem, I’m glad someone is taking some steps to save lives, even if they aren’t the Good Guys.

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I have a FB freind who keeps saying this 'road of censorship' we're on is dangerous. She keep yelling Trump is being censored and when I point out that even the definition of the word in the dictionary includes an authority, she ignores me and says it's still censorship. According to her, it's also censorship when every TV channel doesn't go live to trump whenever he speaks anywhere on anything.

By these standards, I'm being censored by the MSM

 

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I've pointed out he's the president so he has other avenues than his preferred way of "tweeting" to say his nonsense. For instance he's got his own damn press room. He's not being censored. But honestly if your kid calls you a bitch at your dinner table you gonna do something because it's your house or your kid just gets out of hand. Someone has to say no and set some boundaries or we just have this. This is not working. 

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  • 2 years later...

I am kind of frustrated.   All the stuff they could go after him for, like tax evasion, inciting the Jan 6 riot, trying to strong arm people into finding non-existent votes for 2020, and all they can hang their hat on is Stormy Daniels, which he will likely get off?  I want him locked up for sure, but let's go after him for the big crimes. 

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So I guess no mugshot and all.  When I  a 19-year-old broke ass college kid I got caught buying beer from a grocery store.  I was handcuffed, rode in the back of the police car, booked, mug shot, put in an holding cell, and had to post $1500 bail. 

This fucking system.  Honestly, I’m not even mad at Trump—he is just some selfish, greedy fuck doing things selfish, greedy fucks do.  But this fucking system…

Edit: To be clear, the cops were totally cool.  That is what happens when you are arrested--or at least supposed to. 

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the only mugshot we got was his political machine making t-shirts to sell to the rubes who will still vote for him and give him money.

MSNBC caused some rage and crying in my circle of friends for their endless coverage of the worlds dumbest president getting in his motorcade and going to and fro.

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  • 2 months later...

Given that Mango Mussolini's lawyer(s?) will engage in various methods of delaying and general ducking and fucking, what will happen if The Trumpkin gets elected and the trial doesn't end until after his next term begins? My fellow Americans, we are in deep, murky, uncharted waters with this mess. Or, even smilier thought, what if he's convicted (lol) and sentenced to some prison term (lol wut?), and is elected president while serving time? How does any of this even work?

 

Note: I think he might be convicted on some of the charges, but his lawyer(s?) will get some/most of them dismissed. If he's convicted of anything, he will receive some ludicrously short suspended sentence, first because there is no legal precedent for a former President to serve time -- how you gonna do Secret Service protection in the big house? -- and second because his trifling ass has never gotten what he deserves or deserved what he has gotten. Also if he is sentenced to even a day in prison, his MAGAtty cultists are going to lose their shit and we'll be seeing Timothy McVeigh level fuckshittery every other day. What a time to be alive, my friends.

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I really don’t believe he’s electable in a general election. Most republicans know this. They know they screwed up by going along with his bullshit all these years because they can’t lose his base, but they also know he won’t win in a general election. It’s why I don’t much care that Biden is on the ballot again. He’s electable. His only real liability with the general public is his age. 

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HAHAHA. Don't fall for the oops he did something utterly ridiculous he'll never get elected now because I did and I was disappointed when Hillary lost and we went through endless this will be the time he goes to jail fun while he was president and he made it through a WHOLE 4 years. He's better than teflon!

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17 hours ago, Cerina said:

I really don’t believe he’s electable in a general election. Most republicans know this. They know they screwed up by going along with his bullshit all these years because they can’t lose his base, but they also know he won’t win in a general election. It’s why I don’t much care that Biden is on the ballot again. He’s electable. His only real liability with the general public is his age. 

I totally agree.  I wish the media would make as big a deal about Trump's age, though.  Trump is now 77, the same age Biden (he is 80 now) was when he started running for president.  

 

 

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On 6/17/2023 at 11:26 AM, Ms. Spam said:

HAHAHA. Don't fall for the oops he did something utterly ridiculous he'll never get elected now because I did and I was disappointed when Hillary lost and we went through endless this will be the time he goes to jail fun while he was president and he made it through a WHOLE 4 years. He's better than teflon!

It's not really that. His base does not care one iota what he does. That won't change. But all this culture war bullshit is starting to really grate on many other people in their party, those that care more about their corporate profits than banning books or drag shows or whatever new thing they come up with next. Culture war fatigue. It's real. Even most of the leftists I know have it. People will vote for less drama. 

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If he doesn't the the republican nomination, he will 100% run as an independent.  As of now, this election is for the democrats to lose.  I wish they would seize this opportunity to move on from Biden.  I would love to see Buttigieg, Michelle Obama, or Gavin Newsom get the nod.

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