Election 2020

WashYourHands said:

Can see martial law being enacted

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this was also discussed in another thread, either Trump or George Floyd I think

when Trump was threatening to declare martial law in the immediate wake of the first George Floyd protests

the President can't enact martial law on a whim

you have to gather everyone together, prepare all the logistics, distribute people and stuff to places

there has to be a reasonable reason for it - look at the military's extremely rare public pushback when Trump suggested it a few months ago

and also, I highly doubt it's feasible to just put the whole country under martial law

a state or a city or several cities, OK. blanket for the whole country, no

look at how difficult it's been to get people to obey COVID restrictions, ffs. this ain't the PRC.

padraig (u.s.) said:

I remain skeptical of sweeping European appraisals of America

like "the expression of the white soul of a country born and thriving through genocide, deportation and mass slavery" fuck off, bro

(Franco Berardi, not @yyaldrin, tbc)

of course the country was born and thrived through genocide and slavery. so was every colonial power in fucking Europe.

the only reason Italy wasn't is because it largely missed out on the colonial era due to there being no Italy until the Risorgimento.

I don't need an old Italian communist to tell me about the white soul of America

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i agree with you but also he doesn't say that europe is different in that regard.

Leo said:

trump can be indicted once he is no longer president

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I wouldn't assume this would happen

assuming he loses, I wouldn't be surprised if immunity is included in some kind of deal as part a transfer of power

not to belabor the Rome/U.S. comparisons

but a dispute over immunity from crimes committed while in office was the immediate casus belli of the Caesarean Civil War

which, of course, was the literal beginning of the end of the Republic

yyaldrin said:

i agree with you but also he doesn't say that europe is different in that regard

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that's fair

I do think tho that Europeans just see all the madness and assume everything's like that

it's like watching movies set in Middle America by European directors. They are inevitably off by some significant degree.

@version - sure

another thing Trump's done is inadvertently expose how completely "support our troops" was always first and foremost self-serving ideological bullshit

padraig (u.s.) said:

what I hope we don't wind up with is a Northern Ireland situation of endless protracted sectarian violence

although again, it's hard to see it exactly - for all the polarization, there's no single organizing issue like religion there

right and left are not fixed tribal positions in the same way

@WashYourHands could comment here I'm sure

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Left and right are tribal though, even if not currently fixed. However, in the face of escalating violence, those positions could become more entrenched, more fixed. What does the landscape the day after the election look like to folks here? It’ll get worse before it gets better, as I see it.

The north of Ireland is not exactly the same but there are broad comparisons - civil rights issues and militant autocracies in positions of power, police collusion with militia groups which undermines so much good that can be achieved at a community level. The US is still a powder keg - number of overall Covid deaths, the prevalence of weapons in pvt ownership, lack of dialogue, growing numbers of fringe loons organising militarily and......the election.

Can’t recall a general election here where peace in the north rested on such a result? Blair’s election win maybe - no Blair, no GFA, even if he is/was a minion of Satan on other fronts. The US isn’t experiencing a bombing campaign, but it is haemorrhaging lives, opportunities, squandering talent and sustains/upholds huge discrepancies in equitable and legal parameters for different class and race groups. Not sustainable peacefully.

By no means a complete overview and there’s plenty missing, but until all sides can sit down together with common interests in mind (which seems impossible until those interests are recognised), without screaming and histrionics, it can only get worse and I say that as a foreigner who was treated especially well as a guest in your nation. A major reset is needed but that would put too many vested interests at risk. Result? Watered down compromises, like woke capitalism.

version said:

Yeah, right wing "virtue signalling" too. Making a point of being seen thanking people for their service.

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@WashYourHands I would dispute a couple of your points

if it wasn't clear, "fixed" is the distinction from NI, not "tribal"

political beliefs are, of course, tribal, but they have no official dogma

we can speak of political dogma, heresy, etc but only metaphorically

which is a crucial distinction if you're talking about sides self-selecting and organizing for literal civil war

and there is, again, no single organizing issue like slavery before the actual Civil War that can take the place of a religious or ethnic division

civil rights and the police are as close it as it gets but anyone familiar with the 1850s will know it's just not comparable

I would also dispute the level to which people are "organized" militarily

having weapons and belonging to a bunch of FB etc groups isn't the same as being militarily organized

the IRA - whatever its other issues - was organized and disciplined enough to wage guerrilla warfare against an occupying power for many years

(as well as, of course, sectarian warfare, and the internal disputes and other less organized violence around the edges of the Troubles)

does MAGA have a hard core of discipline and organization on that level, in significant numbers?

terrorism, I can see - small groups or lone wolves - we already have a long tradition there

a long-term, disciplined paramilitary campaign, I have a much, much harder time seeing.

there's also the issues of size and heterogeneity - NI is a tiny and - besides the C/P split - homogeneous place compared to the US

also, the occupying power had solid incentives to systemically collude with one side there, which is not the case here

having said all that, of course the situation is bad and unsustainable for the reasons you mention and more

does peace rest on the election result? it depends on what is meant by "peace"

there is no GFA equivalent, precisely bc there aren't 2 defined sides that can sit down and negotiate with leaders to largely enforce the results

it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better. more violent deaths are likely. the question is, how much worse, and how many deaths?

people have been telling me every election cycle since 2000 that if the Republican lost there would be mass violence and/or a military coup

I grant it looks worse now than ever before - for widespread violence at least, a military coup for Trump ain't happening

but I retain some skepticism about what people say vs what they'll actually do when the rubber meets the road

open war is a fantasy of white supremacists as per The Turner Diaries but it's just that, a fantasy

even in The Turner Diaries the way white supremacists succeed isn't by open military conflict

they take control of an Air Force base with nukes and use them to kick-start a global nuclear war which conveniently leaves them in control of Earth

padraig (u.s.) said:

I would also dispute the level to which people are "organized" militarily

terrorism, I can see - small groups or lone wolves - we already have a long tradition there

a long-term, disciplined paramilitary campaign, I have a much, much harder time seeing.

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What are the chances of a base like that (MAGA) getting any serious funding from some (above-the-clouds) higher-up? Couldn't a war of any scale be lucrative financially, in one way or the other?

Am I missing something, or is this worth taking seriously? Progressing as if the accelerative incline is a few steps before us?

Then again, that also sounds like the secret ingredient of some permanent paranoia.

@padraig (u.s.) agreed, the comparisons are loose and can be vague. History overlaps, but many of the contributing factors are specific to place and time.

Observation? The potential for the more belligerent elements of the right to coalesce further can't be excluded. The right must be viewing the NFA militia as a particularly distasteful development. On the flip, i fully understand the position of those who'd question your patriotism if you're troubled by the prospect of armed black folks, because that sums up the politics of an ex's father who was NRA to his core.

A long-term, disciplined military campaign is the history of the US, so i'm picking up on the right's ability to bring a series of situations (in their eyes) to a head. It's the overlap of people with views across this spectrum, combined with compromised federal agencies using snatch squads, that warrants wholesale worries about the outcomes of a Trump win. Do i think he'll be a one term president? I didn't see him being in the White House full stop. If it was the Greek Bronze Age, his corpse would be dragged around in public by a chariot, so there's hope.

There doesn't have to be a coup as a single event - more the erosion of already appalling policing at ground zero, leading to more civil unrest and then one mass shooting (timing and location are critical) to force hands in a bilateral sense. I know a few open-minded, progressive/left-leaning people on your side of the pond who've purchased fire-arms in the last year. That development alone raised a proper wtf. Factor in medium term effects of Covid too. These are exceptional times, which makes the rubber on road analogy even more stark.

padraig (u.s.) said:

I wouldn't assume this would happen
assuming he loses, I wouldn't be surprised if immunity is included in some kind of deal

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I hope not... I think there need to be closure to heal the wo.... no I'm just very vindictive.

padraig (u.s.) said:

I wouldn't assume this would happen

assuming he loses, I wouldn't be surprised if immunity is included in some kind of deal as part a transfer of power

not to belabor the Rome/U.S. comparisons

but a dispute over immunity from crimes committed while in office was the immediate casus belli of the Caesarean Civil War

which, of course, was the literal beginning of the end of the Republic

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yeah, I was just saying that technically trump could be indicted after leaving office, not that he would be. if biden wins, it would be interesting to see if he'd be pressured to pursue it or let it slide.

there could be trump business crimes worth indicting to make the presidential crimes moot.

constant escape said:

Couldn't a war of any scale be lucrative financially, in one way or the other?

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we're not talking about some Tom Clancy fantasy with kewl tank battles and whatever with hella expensive weapon systems

we're talking about an increase from civil unrest to "low-intensity conflict" - bombings, shootings, cycles of revenge killings, etc

if the military became involved in counterinsurgency style there would be profiteering to be done there

but the military-industrial complex itself doesn't need to start wars to profiteer. it does that already just by existing.

and if it did start wars - a plotline ripped straight from a pulpy technothriller - it would hardly choose to do so on American soil

in other words, not really. of course if it did kick off people would find ways to profit, but that's a given in any situation.

now, are there MAGA etc financiers somewhere interested in bankrolling domestic terrorism? maybe? who the fuck knows?

but it would have to be for ideological reasons. it's not something you're really going to get a solid ROI on.