Forget the mandate of heaven, Trump has now lost the mandate of capitalism:
“Armed violent protestors who support the baseless claim by outgoing president Trump that he somehow won an election that he overwhelmingly lost have stormed the U.S. Capitol today, attacking police officers and first responders, because Trump refused to accept defeat in a free and fair election. Throughout this whole disgusting episode, Trump has been cheered on by members of his own party, adding fuel to the distrust that has enflamed violent anger. This is not law and order. This is chaos. It is mob rule. It is dangerous. This is sedition and should be treated as such. The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favor of anarchy. Anyone indulging conspiracy theories to raise campaign dollars is complicit. Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.
“This is not the vision of America that manufacturers believe in and work so hard to defend. Across America today, millions of manufacturing workers are helping our nation fight the deadly pandemic that has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives. We are trying to rebuild an economy and save and rebuild lives. But none of that will matter if our leaders refuse to fend off this attack on America and our democracy—because our very system of government, which underpins our very way of life, will crumble.”
–Press Release, Manufacturers Call on Armed Thugs to Cease Violence at Capitol
The thing that has been the most disturbing about this election is the fact that what appears to be fraud seemed to happen. There is video evidence of things like the same stack of ballots being run through machines multiple times. There are many many affidavits from poll workers claiming suspicious things. There is obvious statistical and mathematical evidence that the numbers we have been presented with don’t make sense. And some of the people that supposedly perpetrated some of this alleged fraud are ACTING like they perpetrated fraud.
I don’t know what really happened. And even if there was some amount of voting shenanigans, I don’t know that the numbers would make any difference.
So the country (at least among the people who DO care about politics – most don’t really) has divided into two camps: those who claim something clearly happened, and those who claimed that absolutely NOTHING happened and that any claim to the contrary is baseless and without any evidence whatsoever.
What is disturbing to me is that the side claiming that nothing happened is totally unwilling to entertain and address the suspicions of the other side. REAL problems exist with the record of this last election and the winning side refuses to simply hear and address the concerns of the losing side. Is there an explanation for the odd things seen in the video evidence? The only thing offered is the old, “are you really going to believe your lying eyes!?” defense. “There are more registered votes than people who voted in some states?…no, that’s just made up…you shouldn’t be looking at the State’s official numbers anyway.” It goes on and on.
I can’t believe but that a lot of this could have been avoided if the winning side was simply willing to sit down and investigate these allegations, instead of ignoring them, censoring them, calling those who bring them up lunatics, and seeming, true or not, to have perpetrated a soft coup. Address the issues, address the questions, investigate what happened, even if only to show how the claims were really misunderstandings.
It’s that complete failure on the Left to appreciate how this looks from the other side that is disturbing. THAT is the gulf in our country, not who voted for whom. Both sides are guilty of it at various times. In this instance, it’s the elite left. I really don’t care that Biden won, I DO care that even he is uninterested in showing it was an honest win.
That’s what storming the capitol was about yesterday. It was about being ignored by a Government that claims a mandate to rule. Democrats AND Republicans are ignoring the reasonable questions being raised and telling us to just get back to worrying about our closed businesses and leave the ruling to the adults.
It’s the same thing that was going on 245 years ago when ANOTHER legitimate Government claiming the mandate while ignoring the people forced to live under it with no attention or recourse. What we saw yesterday, whatever we might feel about it, goes to the very root of this country. It is the basis of our very founding and I don’t think it is helpful in the long run to ignore one half of the country, denigrating them, doxxing and getting them fired for thought crimes, letting one side riot, loot and cause harm against Federal structures, while calling it seditious and terrorism when done by the other. That doesn’t make this go away.
The election happened. If questions exist, let’s talk about them. Let’s see what happened. Explain why claims are incorrect. ANY government is illegitimate so long as it won’t answer to its people – especially when it is Constitutionally subservient to them. All we have is another George III with the media as Lord North. That didn’t end well.
You are mainlining the Kool-Aid: AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s made-up claims of fake fake Georgia votes; Did Georgia Poll Workers Hide ‘Suitcases’ of Ballots From From Republican Observers?
That influential people make stuff up and con their followers is on them, not us.
I love how your idea of a “fact check” is to ask the people alleged to have been involved in fraud whether they were involved in fraud. Have you ever practiced in a criminal court? I can assure you, this is not how actual fact checking works.
Look, I don’t know what happened, or whether whatever might have changes anything. But when you have video tape SHOWING a GA poll worker, after observers have left, running the exact same stack of ballots through the same machine over and over again, it at least merits a sense of curiosity. This very thing is on video. Can you think of an innocent reason, or do you think that an explanation would be helpful?
As I said, those on the winning side are actively showing no interest in even asking questions about things. Instead offering “fact check” distractions about whether the container was actually a “suitcase” or not. Who cares? The fact is on a table in the room you can WATCH a woman feed the same stack into the machine multiple times. That has been “debunked” just because someone who wasn’t even in the room, and offers no explanation, says so?
Stop creating straw men. I don’t know what actually happened, so there is no use arguing to me about suitcases. But there is a LOT of evidence that SUGGESTS there are things that have not been explained. When there is video showing apparent fraud, someone needs to explain how it is not fraud, with particularity, and perhaps an understanding of how one could misinterpret what they saw. That sort of care would satisfy a whole lot of people. Instead we get non fact checks and name calling.
If you really can’t understand what I am actually saying, then I don’t know what to think.
Let’s try the following comprehension test:
If there were any serious information that tended to show fraud, wouldn’t Trump and/or GOP lawyers introduce that evidence into at least one of the 60 or so court cases that were filed to contest the results?
No such factual filings were made in any of the cases.
It follows that no such information actually exists, regardless of what Epoch Times, Newsmax and others spout on Youtube.
Which of those steps escapes understanding?
Knowing that tossing out the votes from one or more states would cause riots that would make the George Floyd riots look tame, do you really think any judge or Congressperson would ever actually do it? I sure don’t. That Trump has no hope of EVER finding anyone with the capability of it taking that upon their shoulders is the monster that has been created by modern politics.
Sadly, I think that the riots that would ensue if Biden had lost, or had it taken from him by a court, would be destructive beyond comprehension. As bad as the far right has been here, and they have, the left makes them look like amateurs on a regular basis. I have friends who live very near the miles long stretch of distruction in Minneapolis. I’ve eaten in some of those restaurants, and shopped in many of those stores. That destructive mobs of one sort or another, reacting to one thing or another, can do such things without containment being practically possible, is just the reality.
There was plenty of evidence of fraud. Again, it’s on video tape, it’s found in the real time number feeds, it’s found in the blatantly unconstitutional election rule changes, and numerous other places.
If you can’t see that as a real possibility, then you are purposely ignoring facts. Again, I’m not saying the result would be reversed, only different. And if you think ANY judge is going to do anything to enflame the mob, you are high on something. This is, unfortunately, a case where there can be no legal recourse for Trump.
The response to all of this can only be to recognize that problems occurred, and FIX them in the Legislative branch or the Federal and State governments. A court CAN’T and certainly WON’T fix this.
Vic:
You write: “It’s that complete failure on the Left to appreciate how this looks from the other side that is disturbing. THAT is the gulf in our country, not who voted for whom. Both sides are guilty of it at various times. In this instance, it’s the elite left. I really don’t care that Biden won, I DO care that even he is uninterested in showing it was an honest win.”
To quote Sen. Lindsey Graham from last night, “Fraud. They said there’s 66,000 people in Georgia under 18 that voted. How many people believe that? I asked, ‘give me 10,’ hadn’t had 1. They said 8,000 felons in prison in Arizona voted. ‘Give me 10.’ I hadn’t had 1 . . . Enough’s enough.” Start this video at 3:00, https://abcnews.go.com/US/video/lindsey-graham-delivers-remarks-capitol-breach-75103055
Is Lindsey Graham a member of “the left” or even better, the “elite left?” What a laugh.
Here’s Sen. Mitt Romney last night: “Now we gather due to a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here this morning was an insurrection incited by the President of the United States. Those who choose to continue to support his dangerous gambit by objecting to the results of a legitimate democratic election will forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy . . . for any who remain insistent on an audit in order to satisfy the many people who believe the election was stolen . . . no congressional audit will convince these voters particularly when the president will continue to say the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth! . . . The truth is that Pres. Elect Biden won the election . . . scores of courts, the President’s own Attorney General, state election officials both republican and democrat have reached that unequivocal decision.” See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFj2Br8nxoc (its a short speech, watch the whole thing).
Is Mitt Romney a member of “the left?”
You also appear to draw the false equivalent between BLM protests and last night’s violent failed coup. Shame on you. There is no comparison between protests in the street in favor of civil rights (even when those have sometimes turned violent – violence which I think we all condemn), and last night’s invasion and temporary capture of the Capitol building on the night that an election was to be certified with the intention of supplanting the will of the people. This was violent insurrection, plain and simple. It was, I believe, a failed self-coup.
You ask if Mitt Romney is a member of the Left, as if the answer we all should agree with can only be that he is not.
I offer to you that if you think that Mitt Romney is respected by people on the real right as one of them, you are completely uninformed on the subject. Among ACTUAL conservatives, not the people that pretend to be conservatives on TV and in Congress, like Karl Rove and half of the Republican caucus, Mitt is reviled as a creature of the left who only pretends to be a real conservative for reasons I am not going to argue about here. He shows no actual evidence in Congress that he is a conservative, so don’t expect me to respect his conservative creds. I couldn’t care less about what Mitt thinks on such topics.
Courts cannot be the answer here anyway, this is a problem of political process for Congress to take the lead on solving.
So Mitt Romney IS a member of “the left” according to you? I think that would be news to roughly 126 million people who voted in the 2012 presidential election.
I wonder how actual leftists feel about that. I’m not sure if Michael considers himself “left,” but I’d say its pretty clear that he is well left of either of us. What say you Michael, is Mitt Romney part of “the left?”
I think you confuse party affiliation with Left and Right. Mitt is, in fact, a Republican. That can’t be denied. But he is not even remotely right wing. He is at best centrist and is about as Left as you generally find among people who actually claim to be Republicans. It is what he says and does that matters for his ideology. The R is just for image and funding.
Have you heard the expression Lindsey 2.0? That refers to the fact that Lindsey Graham was not considered very conservative, just another R in a suit saying platitudes, like Mitt. UNTIL the Kavenaugh hearing, when he went ballistic on the utter insanity coming from across the aisle and at least SEEMED to be on the President’s side on most things. A lot of conservatives (including myself) have been skeptical that Graham’s newfound conservatism is more than show, much like McCain’s.
Having an R next to your name means nothing. Running for President with that R also means nothing, which is my both McCain and Mitt lost. Trump, for all his bullying bombast and knee-jerk reactionary vitriol is actually a lot more conservative than those two recent candidates and most of Congress. The fact that Trump is an ass does not mean that McConnell is doing conservatism any real favors.
I suggest that looking at the political world in terms of party, rather than works, is a false path. As is assuming you actually know anything conclusive about my beliefs based on what I have written here. You do not, I assure you.
Lindsey is not a conservative in the way actual conservatives expect a conservative to act. He simply is not. Putting an R next to someone’s name and mostly voting with the President’s policy ideas does not make you a conservative, except on TV, which always needs a polarity.
Seriously, I don’t think you have the faintest idea that there is a difference between “conservatives.” Or that “conservatives” can also be mostly useful to the Left when it matters.
Based on that, I would not expect you to say anything but what you have. Cool story, Bro.
You change the rules of your own argument as you go with astounding frequency. Your point was, “[i]t’s that complete failure ON THE LEFT to appreciate how this looks from the other side that is disturbing.” But, when I showed you Lindsey Graham’s comments – someone who without question could not be called “on the Left” – you changed the criteria and attack me for not knowing “that there is a difference between “conservatives.”” Frankly, I don’t give a damn about someone’s “conservative” credentials (or their “liberal” credentials for that matter).
Apparently, even when one of Donald Trump’s closest allies during his term of office acknowledges that there was no evidence of meaningful fraud presented, all that means to you is that I (and apparently not you) am somehow brainwashed by the media.
You cannot be persuaded by the facts.
It also makes me angry that irresponsible people like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and other present day incarnations of Joe McCarthy think so little of their responsibility to this country and have such little love of its values that they continue to feed dangerous lies to the public in order to advance their own careers. And it makes me sad that people like you, and some of my own friends and family, continue to buy those lies.
Lindsey Graham is a Republican. That’s about all you can objectively say about him. Otherwise he is whatever gets him the attention and votes he craves. See my other post about him.
See, you’ve bought into the game they want you to play. There is an entire ecosystem of players in Washington. They keep in the game by saying whatever they need to say to stay in. Look at the incoming Biden Admin. It’s the same people from the last Dem Admin. Just as Geo. W. Pulled in all his dad’s folks, and his dad, Reagan’s. It’s how the game is played.
How long has Elaine Chau worked in DC? Don’t you think the smart money for HER is to say the right things, distance herself from Trump, and resign in a real-looking huff? Of course it is. As it is for Barr, and everyone else. Trump is over, it’s time to start looking for another sugar daddy.
You can’t really understand what is going on and what the game is if you insist on thinking that their party affiliation and whether they pretend to be Left or Right makes any real difference. It’s a grift. You’ll think what they want you to think if you refuse to think for yourself. That’s how grafts work.
As I said, too many fail to appreciate how this all really looks to the other side. That’s why none of this makes any sense to you and never will. It does not address the argument to state that proof hasn’t been offered. It’s not about proof.
The problem here is all optics, yet, ironically, you can’t see that. This will all be simmering until EVERYONE in Washington starts to understand the real complaint. Neither of you give me any feeling that it will. So enjoy the world you’ve created.
The “optics” of which you speak are the “optics” of the knowingly false narrative pushed by Trump and his ilk. That’s it. That’s all of it. He breathes life into people’s worst impulses instead of leading with courage and honesty. I strongly entourage you, if you did not already do so, to watch Mitt Romney’s speech on the Senate floor from last night. I already provided the link above, but here it is again. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFj2Br8nxoc
I don’t even remotely care what Mitt thinks about anything. He says nothing important on any subject.
I don’t think you understand what I am saying, based on this reply. That’s OK, I wouldn’t expect a lot of people to understand anyway. We are arguing from two completely different lexicons.