Rioting might be wrong, but a century-plus of police brutality against peaceful protests only continues to push the people into a corner, where rioting and violent reprisal are the only options left.
And you know, we're out of time. Blue ocean events. Global temperature change. We're projected to not have a civilization by 2100 and not have a species to see 2200.
So please, provide some working alternatives to La Résistance. The police seem to be unable to stop killing people (while they're neither armed nor resisting). There's a real problem here, and while violence isn't necessarily even a solution, it's the only card we haven't played.
Yeah, I'm still sensitive about when Jason Leopold was called a FOIA Terrorist. The word Terrorism / Terrorist had completely cycled into generic derision the way teenagers might call something gay or a retard.
At some point in the aughts people tried to suggest terrorists were those who did wanton violence (or wonton violence) to political end. But in the late 20th century, it was used to mark freedom fighters not favored by the current US administration.
Before that, it terror weapons referred to ones that were used against civilian population targets, like railroad guns, buzz bombs and V2 rockets. Oh and firebombing air raids.
Destruction of property falls well into the category of sabotage. And I can think of plenty of viable targets, myself. (Police IMSI-catchers, Predictive policing systems and fruits of asset forfeitures are the first that come to mind.)
I have to be pedantic, he's a radical, perhaps a seditionist, a vandal or a saboteur. Maybe even an insurrectionist, but to be a terrorist, you have to actually kill civilians.
Like some law enforcement.
Or the military officers that assign drone-strike targets.
Don't worry. Unless our government can work a Panamax freighter's load of miracles, we're going to see New America emerge in 2024 or 2028, and the Federalist Society Six will be there to assure that the Ermächtigungsgesetz of 2033 is totally constitutional.
The intelligence community (that is, spies from allied nations) seem to be communicating intel that Trump had bigger plans in mind, and expected some law enforcement departments to collaborate with his pro-confederate mob.
So that might explain why some backup for the Capitol officers was scant or missing.
Ashli Babbit chose to be a foot soldier in a war she believed was hers.
I'd like to think a fourteen-year career in the Air Force would condition her to gather intelligence regarding news media the way you do in a theater of war, but obviously not.
To be fair, my dad is a literal rocket scientist and a brilliant mathematician, and yet has been caught under Trump's thrall. (I'm pretty sure he doesn't like brown people and he likes having a leader that makes that okay. More than he likes having one that holds the nation together.)
All Babbit had to do to survive the day was stay the fuck home. And her regiment of irregulars would have accomplished about as much without endangering her.
We can simultaneously be pissed off at law enforcement who kill people relentlessly at a rate of four per day (more than two of them unarmed and unresisting) and be outraged at revolutionaries who want to overthrow democracy for a fascist white Christians only state.
It is noted that many law enforcement were unresponsive, or even collaborative with the raiders storming the Capitol Building on January 6th, and maybe if they were doing their jobs, officer Sicknick might still be alive.
Granted, I don't know the exact circumstances in which Officer Sicknick died so I'm only speculating.
It's also conspicuous the difference between the law-enforcement response to a and attempted coup d'etat by a white crowd in comparison to (largely) peaceful protests by BLM. Twitter remains alight about this juxtaposition.
But if the police are going to keep gunning down American citizens in cold blood, they well deserve having their precincts demolished and their departments abolished. If they keep it up too long, they'll end up with detectives and field operatives hunting them down to the ends of the earth to face justice. (The whole ICE department deserves no less.)
I was thinking about that lately, since the massacre was not one of the only things that happened only in White House propaganda, but the arrests are an example of the FBI terror-sting program that is used the bolster the Bureau's numbers of captured terrorists, and justify the department's continued existence.
It's a theme of articles here on TechDirt: someone is selected by the FBI for being susceptible to radicalizing rhetoric. The program seems to prefer the dimwitted (that is those unintelligent enough to warrant a mental disability) over those who are angry and ideological. And they'll gaslight these targets, sometimes over months, and ostracize them from friends and family until everyone they know is an FBI plant. Then they get the poor chump to do something substantial (e.g. purchase some nails from a hardware store) that is enough to convince a court that he'd be a terrorist if it weren't for all his terror contacts being feds.
It occurred to me, this is remarkably similar to what was done to Winston by the Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty Four.
The US has been a two-party system since the inception, and in fact the wording in the Constitution of the United States belies that it was intended to be and stay a two-party system.
There are a tuck-fun of ways our election systems could be revised to allow third parties (and fourth and fifth) to have a decent chance, but electoral reform has not been a priority of our professional politicians, ever, and since Boss Tweed assured one had to cozy up to plutocrats to even run for office, it's only gotten worse.
This is why I occasionally call for violent revolution. We cannot get public-serving officials into office, and when we do (sat Carter or Ocasio-Cortez the party establishment immediately maneuvers to make their primary system less democratic, and lean more towards gerontocracy and plutocracy.
We're not going to get a public-serving government by adhering to the system...at least not in time to stop industry from making the world uninhabitable.
Trump doesn't have respect from his supporters, he has worship.
Feel free to name a feature or trait you respect about Donald Trump. Be warned that this might reflect what you value, yourself.
But yeah, the election has shown us how the people are really susceptible to campaigning based on feels rather than based on fulfilling what they need from a government. And that's how we got a wrestling-character as President.
The question is, then, how do we get the people to be less stupid, because a poorly run democracy always wends its way back to feudalism, and governance by force.
I mean, really happy. Happy-helmet happy. Thousands (thousands?) of people were marching off to war for him and committing crime for him. That's devotion. That's love.
So when he tried meekly to tell them to go home, he so way didn't mean it. It was his moment.
In Bob Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House there's a point where mustachioed lawyer Ty Cobb is talking with Mueller about an oral interview of the president would be really detrimental because Trump is a compulsive liar, who can not only not tell the truth but is driven to embellish any statement with... well what is in marketing is called fluffing.
In that moment, Cobb realizes his client has diminished capacity, and really is unfit for office, and in hours posts his resignation.
Everyone who has routine interactions with Trump knows he's a narcissist with inclinations very dangerous for an elected official, but also he cannot deal with normal everyday living or everyday interactions. One of those being, making a statement while under oath without committing perjury.
The adults in the room myth is quickly dispelled by the fact that no half of the room is willing to do the adult thing and declare him unfit for office when he obviously is. They like too much having the power of being the President's friend and confidant, even when they know full well he has no sentimentality and they all are expendable as soon as he needs to betray them.
First, I'd want to know where this poll came from.
But also, 80%-ish (I'm not looking it up this moment) of the soldiers and marines we sent into Operation: Iraqi Freedom believed we were there to get revenge for 9/11. I won't argue that the US has a problem of an uninformed (and vastly misinformed) constituency.
In fact our whole society revolves around treating its citizens as patsies starting when they're toddlers. All Putin's social-media-influence team had to do was capitalize on it, and recognize that most people don't bother to check to see if their news sources are wrong.
And to be fair, considering we overwork and underpay our labor, they have neither time nor energy to engage in civic duties or self-information.
So yeah, it's not a GOP problem, but it's a problem that the GOP openly exploits and then doesn't work to fix.
This looks to me like a new tool in the toolbox. The FBI would move in on a local case at the pleasure of Hoover, and finding a justification was only a formality (even when the county didn't want federal intervention).
These days, the FBI's mission is no longer Law Enforcement but National Security (I believe because that justifies a larger budget. Comey did that.) though unofficially they also serve as a ]secret police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police) serving to hunt down enemies of and threats to the current administration. (Such as whistleblowers.)
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Praising riots
Rioting might be wrong, but a century-plus of police brutality against peaceful protests only continues to push the people into a corner, where rioting and violent reprisal are the only options left.
And you know, we're out of time. Blue ocean events. Global temperature change. We're projected to not have a civilization by 2100 and not have a species to see 2200.
So please, provide some working alternatives to La Résistance. The police seem to be unable to stop killing people (while they're neither armed nor resisting). There's a real problem here, and while violence isn't necessarily even a solution, it's the only card we haven't played.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Turning the frogs gay
Oh we have plans. Great plans
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Re: Re: Terrorist
Yeah, I'm still sensitive about when Jason Leopold was called a FOIA Terrorist. The word Terrorism / Terrorist had completely cycled into generic derision the way teenagers might call something gay or a retard.
At some point in the aughts people tried to suggest terrorists were those who did wanton violence (or wonton violence) to political end. But in the late 20th century, it was used to mark freedom fighters not favored by the current US administration.
Before that, it terror weapons referred to ones that were used against civilian population targets, like railroad guns, buzz bombs and V2 rockets. Oh and firebombing air raids.
Destruction of property falls well into the category of sabotage. And I can think of plenty of viable targets, myself. (Police IMSI-catchers, Predictive policing systems and fruits of asset forfeitures are the first that come to mind.)
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Terrorist
I have to be pedantic, he's a radical, perhaps a seditionist, a vandal or a saboteur. Maybe even an insurrectionist, but to be a terrorist, you have to actually kill civilians.
Like some law enforcement.
Or the military officers that assign drone-strike targets.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Goebbels' new man.
Don't worry. Unless our government can work a Panamax freighter's load of miracles, we're going to see New America emerge in 2024 or 2028, and the Federalist Society Six will be there to assure that the Ermächtigungsgesetz of 2033 is totally constitutional.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Presidents elected without popular support.
Considering what happened in the George W. Bush administration, in retrospect maybe we should have stormed the federal buildings in January 2001.
Imagine an America without the Iraq War, without the Disposition Matrix, without torture.
Nope. Don't forgive them. May never.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Oh yeah, it's worth adding...
The intelligence community (that is, spies from allied nations) seem to be communicating intel that Trump had bigger plans in mind, and expected some law enforcement departments to collaborate with his pro-confederate mob.
So that might explain why some backup for the Capitol officers was scant or missing.
It's a situation still unfolding.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Ashli Babbit
Ashli Babbit chose to be a foot soldier in a war she believed was hers.
I'd like to think a fourteen-year career in the Air Force would condition her to gather intelligence regarding news media the way you do in a theater of war, but obviously not.
To be fair, my dad is a literal rocket scientist and a brilliant mathematician, and yet has been caught under Trump's thrall. (I'm pretty sure he doesn't like brown people and he likes having a leader that makes that okay. More than he likes having one that holds the nation together.)
All Babbit had to do to survive the day was stay the fuck home. And her regiment of irregulars would have accomplished about as much without endangering her.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Are we missing some nuance?
We can simultaneously be pissed off at law enforcement who kill people relentlessly at a rate of four per day (more than two of them unarmed and unresisting) and be outraged at revolutionaries who want to overthrow democracy for a fascist white Christians only state.
It is noted that many law enforcement were unresponsive, or even collaborative with the raiders storming the Capitol Building on January 6th, and maybe if they were doing their jobs, officer Sicknick might still be alive.
Granted, I don't know the exact circumstances in which Officer Sicknick died so I'm only speculating.
It's also conspicuous the difference between the law-enforcement response to a and attempted coup d'etat by a white crowd in comparison to (largely) peaceful protests by BLM. Twitter remains alight about this juxtaposition.
But if the police are going to keep gunning down American citizens in cold blood, they well deserve having their precincts demolished and their departments abolished. If they keep it up too long, they'll end up with detectives and field operatives hunting them down to the ends of the earth to face justice. (The whole ICE department deserves no less.)
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
The Bowling Green Affair
I was thinking about that lately, since the massacre was not one of the only things that happened only in White House propaganda, but the arrests are an example of the FBI terror-sting program that is used the bolster the Bureau's numbers of captured terrorists, and justify the department's continued existence.
It's a theme of articles here on TechDirt: someone is selected by the FBI for being susceptible to radicalizing rhetoric. The program seems to prefer the dimwitted (that is those unintelligent enough to warrant a mental disability) over those who are angry and ideological. And they'll gaslight these targets, sometimes over months, and ostracize them from friends and family until everyone they know is an FBI plant. Then they get the poor chump to do something substantial (e.g. purchase some nails from a hardware store) that is enough to convince a court that he'd be a terrorist if it weren't for all his terror contacts being feds.
It occurred to me, this is remarkably similar to what was done to Winston by the Ministry of Love in Nineteen Eighty Four.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
"Nobody will forget them"
Do you remember Smedley, who stopped the last time some VIPs decided they wanted some of that new-fangled Italian fascism?
It's extra creamy!🍨
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Quixote and Sancho
I like those character too much to befoul their names with associations with Republican US Senators.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Two party system
The US has been a two-party system since the inception, and in fact the wording in the Constitution of the United States belies that it was intended to be and stay a two-party system.
There are a tuck-fun of ways our election systems could be revised to allow third parties (and fourth and fifth) to have a decent chance, but electoral reform has not been a priority of our professional politicians, ever, and since Boss Tweed assured one had to cozy up to plutocrats to even run for office, it's only gotten worse.
This is why I occasionally call for violent revolution. We cannot get public-serving officials into office, and when we do (sat Carter or Ocasio-Cortez the party establishment immediately maneuvers to make their primary system less democratic, and lean more towards gerontocracy and plutocracy.
We're not going to get a public-serving government by adhering to the system...at least not in time to stop industry from making the world uninhabitable.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
Commanding respect
Trump doesn't have respect from his supporters, he has worship.
Feel free to name a feature or trait you respect about Donald Trump. Be warned that this might reflect what you value, yourself.
But yeah, the election has shown us how the people are really susceptible to campaigning based on feels rather than based on fulfilling what they need from a government. And that's how we got a wrestling-character as President.
The question is, then, how do we get the people to be less stupid, because a poorly run democracy always wends its way back to feudalism, and governance by force.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Also, Trump was happy.
I mean, really happy. Happy-helmet happy. Thousands (thousands?) of people were marching off to war for him and committing crime for him. That's devotion. That's love.
So when he tried meekly to tell them to go home, he so way didn't mean it. It was his moment.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
Diminished Capacity
In Bob Woodward's book Fear: Trump in the White House there's a point where mustachioed lawyer Ty Cobb is talking with Mueller about an oral interview of the president would be really detrimental because Trump is a compulsive liar, who can not only not tell the truth but is driven to embellish any statement with... well what is in marketing is called fluffing.
In that moment, Cobb realizes his client has diminished capacity, and really is unfit for office, and in hours posts his resignation.
Everyone who has routine interactions with Trump knows he's a narcissist with inclinations very dangerous for an elected official, but also he cannot deal with normal everyday living or everyday interactions. One of those being, making a statement while under oath without committing perjury.
The adults in the room myth is quickly dispelled by the fact that no half of the room is willing to do the adult thing and declare him unfit for office when he obviously is. They like too much having the power of being the President's friend and confidant, even when they know full well he has no sentimentality and they all are expendable as soon as he needs to betray them.
On the post: Politics Is Not A Game
"60% of Democrats"
First, I'd want to know where this poll came from.
But also, 80%-ish (I'm not looking it up this moment) of the soldiers and marines we sent into Operation: Iraqi Freedom believed we were there to get revenge for 9/11. I won't argue that the US has a problem of an uninformed (and vastly misinformed) constituency.
In fact our whole society revolves around treating its citizens as patsies starting when they're toddlers. All Putin's social-media-influence team had to do was capitalize on it, and recognize that most people don't bother to check to see if their news sources are wrong.
And to be fair, considering we overwork and underpay our labor, they have neither time nor energy to engage in civic duties or self-information.
So yeah, it's not a GOP problem, but it's a problem that the GOP openly exploits and then doesn't work to fix.
On the post: Wednesday, January 6th: The Day The Game Of Politics Turned Into Insurrection
"What a world, what a world!"
Was that late-game existentialist reflection she was doing?
On the post: Appeals Court: Just Because Someone Used An Email Account To Send Threats Doesn't Make It An 'Interstate' Crime
☕ ☕ ☕ ☕
But I already had my morning coffee!
On the post: Appeals Court: Just Because Someone Used An Email Account To Send Threats Doesn't Make It An 'Interstate' Crime
Feds just like to step in when they feel it.
This looks to me like a new tool in the toolbox. The FBI would move in on a local case at the pleasure of Hoover, and finding a justification was only a formality (even when the county didn't want federal intervention).
These days, the FBI's mission is no longer Law Enforcement but National Security (I believe because that justifies a larger budget. Comey did that.) though unofficially they also serve as a ]secret police](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police) serving to hunt down enemies of and threats to the current administration. (Such as whistleblowers.)
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