Politics

Quaoar · 2021-01-10 13:28:13

RobertDyck wrote:

So, Twitter suspended Trump's account. That's a violation of the First Amendment.

In the former Soviet Union there was the Communist Party who established what you can say and what you can't, in western democracies there are Facebook and Twitter who play this role. In USSR you could be executed by a firing squad or interned in a gulag, in current US and Europe, if your posts are non politically correct, you can be banned from Facebook and Twitter, which means almost a civil death sentence. That's intriguing: it remembers me the difference between George Orwell's 1984 and the non-violent totalitarian regime of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Last edited by Quaoar (2021-01-10 13:35:38)

kbd512 · 2021-01-10 13:42:09

GW,

You can make the argument that nearly any speech risks hurting other people. That is not the litmus test for whether or not speech is permissible.

Twitter is NOT operating as a content provider / platform. They're operating as a publisher. Publishers are subject to libel laws. Common sense says you can't only publish political opinions that you agree with and expect to be treated as a content provider / platform protected under Section 230, from libel laws.

Edit:

Speaking of common sense, I argued that it is not a violation of our First Amendment for Twitter to do what they did. You seem to have missed that part of my last post.

Last edited by kbd512 (2021-01-10 13:44:17)

RobertDyck · 2021-01-10 14:44:58

Trump called on his supporters to sit in the gallery and encourage Republican senators to support his agenda. He never called on violence. Capital Hill security should have allowed that. Locking Trump supporters out was as much an in incitement as anything Trump ever said.

GW Johnson · 2021-01-10 14:50:11

Kbd512:

Well, you missed my point, too. It's not a single litmus test. It's at least two: (1) false plus (2) danger to the public safety. Not either, both. Besides, I may not be quite exactly correct. It would take a real legislator working with real lawyers (NOT lobbyists!!!) to word such a thing correctly. I am neither, and never claimed to be.

You also seem to have missed my other point: your rights are not absolute. Mine are not absolute. Nobody's rights are absolute! They have common sense limits. Many others make the same mistake, so don't feel alone.

But don't feel too bad. I don't. Actually, I think you and I are saying pretty much the same things, just couched in far different words.

RobertDyck:

Sit in the gallery? That is NOT what I heard in the live video footage! It sounded like a call to do more than just demonstrate. And so they did more.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-01-10 14:53:47)

SpaceNut · 2021-01-10 16:24:09

The impeachment process does more than remove the President from office that is currently held as it also prevents any future holding of any office as well. Its can also lead to criminal charges for the Riot incitement along with more so its not just about removal in the remaining 10 days. Something that else can happen if removed before inauguration day is allow Pence to pardon Trump for his crimes even if he is removed as pence could be sworn in. keep in mind that even after he is not the president the actions to impeach are still finished. It does not stop suits being brought by others such as the Georgia contacts to change results.

His followers heard what they wanted to from all of those that spoke to incite actions and there were a few...

The broadcaster or publisher section code is libel protection to the company as they did not say it as its still liable from the person that did.
Pretty much they take no ownership of the content....

kbd512 · 2021-01-10 16:57:42

GW,

1. Who gets to decided what is true and what is false?

2. I listened to the speech. He explicitly told the protesters to remain peaceful.

3. I understand something about human behavior that you and other leftists clearly don't. Only allowing speech on platforms that leftists agree with doesn't cause the people who disagree to stop talking to each other. No, instead what happens is both schools of thought retreat into their ideologically-driven echo chambers.

4. Nobody here has claimed that any right is absolute, so your point has no bearing on any actual claims. It's a straw man argument.

kbd512 · 2021-01-10 17:00:47

SpaceNut,

Democrat politicians, such as Vice President Harris, set up a defense fund for blm rioters.

If a content platform starts editorializing content, then they become a publisher. Publishers are subject to libel laws.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-10 17:55:11

Here is part of your argument but it also contains why it is not as it does not editorialize why Faceboo is consideered to be so as it creates and puts content from staff on its electronic media communications.

Facebook Admits It’s a Publisher in Court Filings

https://www.jamesmadison.org/social-med … hing-else/

The argument for framing platforms like Twitter as a publisher goes as follows: Twitter publishes their users’ content, therefore Twitter is a publisher and is held accountable for content it publishes. Therefore, Twitter must make sure to facilitate online speech and remain viewpoint neutral.
But this argument quickly fails in light of section 230 of the CDA, which states that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” So, Twitter is not a publisher and, as nothing more than a curator, it has no obligation to censor user content or remain viewpoint neutral.

Thats why we have rules and Admins for the NewMars Forum as well...

A fellow Texan has this to say Jack Dorsey says Twitter isn’t a publisher amid questions on Post censorship

Notice that the article is dated and signature line quotes whom wrote it....

Is Twitter a publisher or a distributor? There’s a crucial difference

Calliban · 2021-01-11 04:53:37

The constitution includes the right to bare arms precisely to allow the American people to remove a tyrannical government by violent revolution. The US now appears to have exactly the sort of government that the founding fathers had in mind. It won an election by cheating, using counting machines which contain embedded software specifically designed to twist the vote. It benefitted from absentee voting, which was prone to corruption. A large number of dead people apparently voted for the incoming administration. This isn't a hunch or a suspicion, it definitely happened. It is also benefiting from a technocratic elite which deliberately silences contrary political opinions. That is the direct opposite of democratic forum.

The normal checks and balances failed; the judiciary and Supreme Court failed to order an electoral investigation, even after the evidence of vote fraud was overwhelming. In doing so, they legitimised cheating and essentially destroyed democratic government in the US forever. From now on, government rules without the will of the people. If it loses an election, what is to prevent the losers from cheating to stay in power? They need never lose an election again.

America's fate would appear to be sealed. There is no way out now. And the policies of the incoming administration will push up national debt rapidly, degrade the value of the dollar, add millions of hostile foreigners to America's population and make America a slave to an arrogant corporate elite on one side and the Chinese communist party on the other. All of these things will hasten America's decline.

The losers in this election are the American public. Already Biden is planning a domestic terrorism bill, designed to degrade freedom of speech and the right to bare arms. It will make the people slaves to the state. The Democratic National Party are Marxists. Marxists do not value human freedom. They believe in identity politics, absolute control, ideology and the grandeur of the state. Little people are just things in their way. That is exactly how they behaved in the last election. The incoming administration is conspiring with corporate interests to undermine the rights of the American public. They see public opinion as a threat to their priorities and something that should bend to their will, rather than the other way around. GW Johnson apparently thinks they are decent people and that efforts to silence the desent are justified. How can he possibly think the way he does? However clumsy and inept Trump may be, his opponents are clearly evil.

This has come to pass and people here worry that an angry crowd stormed a building? You need to get some perspective. This is a turning point in history. It marks the point where the will of the state irrevocably diverges from the will of the people. When future historians study the fall of the American Republic, the 6th January 2021 will be a landmark in history, right up there with the October Revolution. It marks the point where a 240 year experiment in democracy finally came to an end.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-01-11 05:33:10)

kbd512 · 2021-01-11 12:51:12

Calliban,

The only possible outcome of politically-motivated censorship of free speech is forcing dissent underground, where governments and corporations have no control whatsoever over what is being said, nor input as to whether or not any of it is actually true, to the point that there will be no push-back on bad ideas. All of those people who blindly supported everything that President Trump did will, as GW already illustrated, go completely off the rails, yet none of the left's counter-arguments will ever be heard in whatever forums they end up at, because that's what happens when you divide people politically and then remove one or the other factions completely, by refusing to allow them to interact with each other.

The only good aspect of all of this is that an increasing number of angry people will start having personal interactions with the other side, rather than impersonal online interactions. That tends to have the effect of limiting what you can say / do to someone else without starting a physical altercation. At least 50% of the population will have their brains detached from the psychosis-inducing social media world. I've never had a Facebook or a Twitter or an Instagram or any of these other social media accounts, specifically because I think they cause people to project and believe in crazy ideas.

I'm all in favor of keeping leftists safely ensconced in their echo chambers of bad ideas, because so many of them are utterly incapable of simply tolerating any ideas they disagree with. The nutty ideas that the radical left holds can be every bit as crazy as anything from the radical right, but all of them believe it and that is what matters most. Having the belief "makes it true" (to them, not necessarily anyone else). It's the "I thought it, therefore it must be" silliness. Ultimately, that is what finally deconstructs the self-deceptions associated with a dysfunctional worldview. The conservatives and Republicans are only first. The liberals and Democrats are invariably next. Only profoundly stupid people, irrespective of how much education they have, actually believe that governments or corporations are censoring ideas they disagree with for "the public good". Only simpleton logic can rationalize beliefs like that. There are no historical examples where censorship of free speech didn't ultimately lead to censorship of any speech that was tangentially critical of bad behavior of governments, corporations, or political parties. Unfortunately for everyone, the left simply don't have any built-in mechanism to let them know that they've gone too far in their quest to create utopia. We know that the radical right has gone too far when they start talking about discrimination based upon superficial physical characteristics. I'm willing to bet good money that nobody on the left can tell you when they've gone too far, because I've asked that question of lots of leftists and none of them could provide a coherent answer, or any answer at all, in most cases.

Anyway, the prior paragraph succinctly explains why so many leftists who previously lived in Democrat-controlled states like California ultimately fled to live in Republican-controlled states like Texas. After they arrive, they immediately begin applying their failed ideology, to re-create the living conditions they fled from, then the cycle repeats, until there's nowhere left to run to, and then there's a very destructive period of time between the establishment of another dictatorship or the birth of a new republic.

The Second Amendment (2A) is a particularly thorny subject, but in general the mainstream media and Democrats want to abolish 2A so that the state, which they naively believe will always defend their interests, has a monopoly on violence. As I said before, the people who want nonsense like this are typically low-information / low-IQ individuals who naively think the state will protect them, despite the continuously growing mountain of evidence to the contrary, indicating that the state simply doesn't care about its citizenry, and never will, no matter who is in charge. Most sane / rational / intelligent people implicitly understand that violent criminals will always be armed, irrespective of what laws the state chooses to impose upon those who voluntarily choose to obey the laws. The very notion that the government will ever restrict a criminal's access to anything by making it illegal is, by definition, one of the most naive and stupid ideas imaginable. We have thousands of laws against assault / rape / robbery / murder, but none of them have ever deterred violent criminals, let alone stopped them, from committing acts of violence. All criminals interviewed in prison said they weren't the least bit afraid of the Police stopping them, but were terrified of running into a homeowner with a gun.

The mere fact that we have so many violent crimes is proof positive that the only people doing anything effective about the problem are the law abiding citizens with firearms who shoot violent criminals while said violent criminals are in the process of committing their violent crimes, permanently ending those criminals' unlawful activities. The only other viable alternative is to lock up violent criminals after the first violent offense, rather than the 50th violent offense after they've already murdered several people, until they're old men and women. Unfortunately, the number of people who would be incarcerated would be so great that I'm not sure if the American people could afford to feed and house them. Despite the high cost to society from criminals and crazies and morons, the pervasive distribution of firearms throughout society truly is the best way to tamp down on violent criminals. Lots of fundamental truths are quite sad, and quite true nonetheless.

I would much rather have an automatic rainbow cannon that fires a barrage of happy thoughts and flowery words at violent criminals to make them stop what they're doing and reconsider hurting other people, but since that absurdity doesn't exist and wouldn't work even if it did, I find that a 2 pound chunk of finely machined cold hard steel, using a tiny quantity of gunpowder and Lead, have the desired effect at affordable prices.

Anyway, all of this absurdity is the end result of blind ideology run amok on both sides. In less than four years, we will all be living in a brave new world.

Quaoar · 2021-01-12 14:43:00

Calliban wrote:

The constitution includes the right to bare arms precisely to allow the American people to remove a tyrannical government by violent revolution. The US now appears to have exactly the sort of government that the founding fathers had in mind. It won an election by cheating, using counting machines which contain embedded software specifically designed to twist the vote. It benefitted from absentee voting, which was prone to corruption. A large number of dead people apparently voted for the incoming administration. This isn't a hunch or a suspicion, it definitely happened. It is also benefiting from a technocratic elite which deliberately silences contrary political opinions. That is the direct opposite of democratic forum.
The normal checks and balances failed; the judiciary and Supreme Court failed to order an electoral investigation, even after the evidence of vote fraud was overwhelming. In doing so, they legitimised cheating and essentially destroyed democratic government in the US forever. From now on, government rules without the will of the people. If it loses an election, what is to prevent the losers from cheating to stay in power? They need never lose an election again.
America's fate would appear to be sealed. There is no way out now. And the policies of the incoming administration will push up national debt rapidly, degrade the value of the dollar, add millions of hostile foreigners to America's population and make America a slave to an arrogant corporate elite on one side and the Chinese communist party on the other. All of these things will hasten America's decline.
The losers in this election are the American public. Already Biden is planning a domestic terrorism bill, designed to degrade freedom of speech and the right to bare arms. It will make the people slaves to the state. The Democratic National Party are Marxists. Marxists do not value human freedom. They believe in identity politics, absolute control, ideology and the grandeur of the state. Little people are just things in their way. That is exactly how they behaved in the last election. The incoming administration is conspiring with corporate interests to undermine the rights of the American public. They see public opinion as a threat to their priorities and something that should bend to their will, rather than the other way around. GW Johnson apparently thinks they are decent people and that efforts to silence the desent are justified. How can he possibly think the way he does? However clumsy and inept Trump may be, his opponents are clearly evil.
This has come to pass and people here worry that an angry crowd stormed a building? You need to get some perspective. This is a turning point in history. It marks the point where the will of the state irrevocably diverges from the will of the people. When future historians study the fall of the American Republic, the 6th January 2021 will be a landmark in history, right up there with the October Revolution. It marks the point where a 240 year experiment in democracy finally came to an end.

Calliban, I'm neither a Democratic nor a Republican, I'm only an Italian who is trying to understand what is happening in US.
In the 2016 election Mrs. Clinton get a little more votes more than Mr. Trump, but Mr. Trump won due to the arrangement of electoral colleges. So Blues and Reds are almost half and half and there is a few percent of swing voters who shift the balance sometimes for the Dem candidate and sometimes for the Rep candidate.
If this election had hold in November 2019, when US economy was good and the epidemic didn't still erupted, likely Mr. Trump would have won. But he didn't manage the epidemic very well, and the economy went wrong, so it seems to me quite likely that the swing voters have turned to Mr. Biden.
Assuming that mail ballots are opaque and easy to cheat - I don't know if it's really so because I never vote in US - but having no evidence of cheating, I'm interested to know how can you be so sure that Mr. Trump has won and the election was stolen.

Last edited by Quaoar (2021-01-12 16:27:45)

SpaceNut · 2021-01-12 17:47:58

Remember that the Democrats wanted to check the voting in 2016 for the irregularities that did come in much like the Republicans want to do now so if its fair one way its fair the other until both sides agree not to cheat the system. No more gerrymandering of districts just count the votes to win in a state period...No mix voting ballots when its meant to be for just one thing only...do the others on another day....

kbd512 · 2021-01-12 22:27:14

SpaceNut,

Are you ready for a war with China?

That's what's flowing downhill from the sewer that Washington DC has become.

clark · 2021-01-13 16:36:13

oh look, revolution fantasy continues unabated. This time we don't even need a Martian canvas to paint our latest masturbatory masterpiece.

Election wasn't stolen. Some politicians lied. Sh*t got out of hand because American education is terrible at teaching people how to reason.

And now, we privileged few, get to see what brand of crazy associates with this dream that is Mars. Look around. This is the basket case of rejects that all agree that living in a tin can at the bottom of a gravity well in near vacuum is a step in the right direction for the human race. We are the "inspired" that see freedom and liberty on a glorified submarine a million miles from the nearest bucket of free standing water. These are the fools we conspire to draw equations with on orbital dynamics and self sustaining bio-domes.

So give 'em a rocket. Cause only madmen can make sense of it all.

Now off to our bunkers to prepare for a day that will not come.

kbd512 · 2021-01-13 17:32:35

clark,

Who here is calling for a revolution, or did your three pound universe come up with that all on its own?

As opposed to all the mental self-pleasuring about staying on Earth forever and "fixing it", never taking the leap into the cosmos, when the opportunity to do so is nearly at hand?

The left are the ones who control academia. Are you saying they fail at teaching people how to reason? If so, I'd agree with that sentiment, because they fixate on teaching people what to think, rather than how to think.

As a bonus associated with living on Mars, everyone gets their own tin can to "contain the crazy".

There's almost certainly a literal ocean of free standing water under the ice, same as here on Earth.

How is space exploration foolish?

Is it more foolish to want to explore space, or to fixate on one tiny pale blue dot in a literal sea of infinite possibilities on other worlds?

All of us were born here, but I've never seen it written anywhere that all of us must die here.

Eventually, this pale blue dot will become uninhabitable, which is inevitable even if humans never existed, but if there are other pale blue dots out there, then humanity will continue.

Since we are humans, we're going to make lots of mistakes along the way. Life is very messy, but I've learned to enjoy the mess, and I would hope that any other creative soul would as well.

Speaking of teaching, can you learn to forgive the mistakes, or do you wish to fixate on them until the end of your days?

We're going back to the moon and onto Mars. It doesn't matter if you believe that or not. It's happening anyway, even with everything else going on here on Earth. Whether we first set foot on Mars in 5 or 10 years is immaterial. Human progress will not be stopped merely because nay-sayers are doing their best impression of a horse.

Calliban · 2021-01-13 19:49:57

Quaoar wrote:

Calliban, I'm neither a Democratic nor a Republican, I'm only an Italian who is trying to understand what is happening in US.
In the 2016 election Mrs. Clinton get a little more votes more than Mr. Trump, but Mr. Trump won due to the arrangement of electoral colleges. So Blues and Reds are almost half and half and there is a few percent of swing voters who shift the balance sometimes for the Dem candidate and sometimes for the Rep candidate.
If this election had hold in November 2019, when US economy was good and the epidemic didn't still erupted, likely Mr. Trump would have won. But he didn't manage the epidemic very well, and the economy went wrong, so it seems to me quite likely that the swing voters have turned to Mr. Biden.
Assuming that mail ballots are opaque and easy to cheat - I don't know if it's really so because I never vote in US - but having no evidence of cheating, I'm interested to know how can you be so sure that Mr. Trump has won and the election was stolen.

Here are a few things that come to mind. There was a great deal of postal vote fraud. Large numbers of dead people voted through postal votes, exclusively for Biden. Some of those that voted were old enough to have fought in the civil war! Many postal votes were also found to have been binned (mostly those for Trump). There were statistical irregularities that could only have resulted from fraud. Some districts containing thousands of voters, did not produce a single Trump vote when counted. There were oddities in the way that the votes were tallied using the dominion machines, with sudden dramatic swings towards Biden, with no such swings visible in the other direction. How could that happen without software manipulation or binning paper votes for the other side? There is the fact that the counting machines were designed to fiddle votes in the first place.

The vote counting was deliberately opaque, with windows boarded up and republicans barred from the count. In spite of all of this, state and supreme courts repeatedly refused all requests for investigation. The full extent of the crime was therefore covered up. Trump may indeed have won the election were it not for fraud and I think he can justly claim to have been cheated. But nothing can be proven because investigation was refused at every turn.

Maybe I shouldn't care about this as much as I do. I am not an American either, I am British. It just pains me to see America sink into the dark abyss of socialist totalitarianism. I live in a country that is far from poor, but where personal liberty is virtually non-existent. Where expressing the wrong opinion can land you in jail. That is what happens when far-left authoritarianism takes over countries. Personal freedom is always the first casualty. No body benefits except a few members of the greedy globalist elite.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-01-13 19:53:05)

Calliban · 2021-01-13 20:11:41

clark wrote:

And now, we privileged few, get to see what brand of crazy associates with this dream that is Mars. Look around. This is the basket case of rejects that all agree that living in a tin can at the bottom of a gravity well in near vacuum is a step in the right direction for the human race. We are the "inspired" that see freedom and liberty on a glorified submarine a million miles from the nearest bucket of free standing water. These are the fools we conspire to draw equations with on orbital dynamics and self sustaining bio-domes.

Clark, I am starting to notice that you really get off on knocking other people down. It is not a good way of making friends and influencing people.

No one said that Mars colonisation would be easy. It is a tough environment, but you make it sound more tough than it is.
There is plenty of ice, untapped minerals and ingredients for life. All of the things needed for humanity to thrive, provided we have access to abundant energy. I have never doubted that it was the right direction for humanity. A new beginning on a new world.

If we can get past the approaching debt-energy depression, then I believe that the Martian Republic as envisioned in the Expanse series, is probably a good depiction of what a future Martian civilisation will look like a few hundred years hence. A technologically advanced, but largely subterranean civilisation. Very high per capita energy use, supporting a high tech manufacturing based economy. Almost all energy provided by advanced forms of nuclear power. It would be a mostly indoor existence, but so be it. Talking about how to make that a reality, gives me hope and provides an escape from the depressing reality of the world around me.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-01-13 20:19:50)

GW Johnson · 2021-01-13 20:33:20

Quaoar:

Glad to see you are still with us. To respond to your inquiry about American politics, I offer the following. Our Republican party has been taken over by far-right extremists spouting false claims that I can pretty-much trace to the Qanon conspiracy theory on-line.

These Qanon believers played a big role in the attempted insurrection and coup at the US Capitol on Jan 6th. Of that there is no doubt. None. Allied groups include the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and a wide variety of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups. I saw their flags and their insignia in the insurrection mob on the 6th. Most all of these groups share the Qanon claims in one form or another.

Qanon Claim 1 (not made so often since the election): "There is a stealthy Deep State that controls everything, composed almost entirely of Democrats and rich elites, running a pedophile ring." -- It's been over 4 years since this conspiracy theory began. If it really were true, don't you think there'd be an independent (!!!) whistleblower by now, who would confirm what the Qanon adherents believe about this? There has not been one!

Qanon Claim 2 (not made so often since the election): "The Deep State is to be overthrown in an event known as "The Storm" or "the Awakenening", leading to mass arrests of Democrats and rich elites, mass deportations of them to Guantanamo Bay, mass military tribunals, and mass executions."

Trump leading the US military to do this overthrow was the usual version of this claim, and post Deep State, he was to run America as a dictatorship under martial law. -- the similarity of this to other authoritarian plans (such as the Nazis and the Bolsheviks) should indicate how false and unAmerican this is. Total BS. Yet they fervently believe it, and work to achieve it.

Qanon Claim 3 (still made often): "The Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax to increase government control over people's lives." Corollary claim (often made): "It is unAmerican and an infringement upon liberty to wear a mask to prevent spread of disease". Corollary claim (often made): "People who feel well cannot spread the disease". -- The statistics alone disprove this BS, plus centuries of experience with public health measures that are well proven to slow most pandemics.

Qanon Claim 4 (still being made very often): "The 2020 election was a Trump win stolen by voting fraud". -- 60-some court cases thrown out specifically (!!!) for lack of evidence prove conclusively that this claim is utter BS. The 2020 election was one of the most secure we have ever had in the US, and its results are quite conclusive. Biden won, Trump lost, and it was not even close, except in 4 of the so-called "swing states".

Qanon Claim 5 (still being made, although not so loudly as before the election): "The mainstream media are fake news controlled by the Deep State, and they are out to get Trump". -- In an age of deep-fake video, it is hard to tell what you are seeing, but live feeds have not yet been faked with this technology. The live feeds confirm this claim to be utter BS. Thus the real fake news is coming from Qanon, through many different outlets on an internet still mostly unpoliced for truth, although that seems to be changing for a few outlets. Too little and too late.

Claims 1 and 2 seem to be one fairly important source of the widepread notion among Republicans, especially the more extreme ones, that all Democrats are evil and must be opposed, no matter what. It is very wrong when party advantage out-prioritizes the public good, but these people ignore that.

Claim 3 still shows up in widespread misbehavior by Republican voters and politicians at meetings, in violation of what is known to be good public health guidance. It was in fact painfully evident among House members sheltering from the mob on Jan 6th! Several Republican congressmen refused masks! So far, 3 Democrats have been diagnosed with Covid-19 infections since that event. Is that attempted murder? Maybe. Is it an assault? Yes.

The best estimates I can find are rather fuzzy, but they range from 50% to 75% of Republican voters, and other Trump supporters out there, being believers in at least Claims 3, 4, and 5, and some portion of them still believing in Claims 1 and 2. As a crude guess, 67% is as good an estimate as any. With Republicans being about 50% of the electorate, that implies that something on the order of 33% of American voters believe in some or all of this BS Qanon nonsense.

Some significant fraction of our elected representation also falls in this category of at least partial Qanon belivers, which explains why they enabled Trump to commit his various misdeeds for the 4 years of his term, and why there are serious suspicions that some congressmen may have aided the mob on the 6th. There is nothing harder to overcome than a belief system, especially a false one. Believers value their false beliefs over any facts. We have seen this for centuries. It kills people.

Now, as near as I can tell, this far-right Qanon-sourced BS has spread far beyond American shores. It seems to have infected significant fractions of populations in Britain, Germany, and I don't know where else. I'm unsure how widespread these beliefs might be in France or Italy, maybe you know more.

Lest you get me wrong, I am NOT (and have never been) a Democrat, or any other type of leftist. I have been a political independent, and until recent years, voted for more Republicans than Democrats in the US elections. But since the party began to shift extreme, beginning with the Newt Gingrich-led adoption of "party-of-no" tactics after Bill Clinton was elected, that mix of my voting choices has shifted somewhat away from the Republicans.

With it gone totally extreme in 2015 by letting that fraud and charlatan Trump take the nomination in 2016, I have not voted for a Republican at the national level since. I absolutely detest extremists (political or religious)! There are few Republicans left who are not extremists. And that is why I vote the way I do.

I fully expect that I will get "flamed" for this. So be it. I am who I am.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-01-13 20:39:21)

SpaceNut · 2021-01-13 21:38:19

The FBI and Law enforcement have done quite a job to round up and Identify those that we and are involved including those that fed information to them as they attacked.
Some even scouted the building out hidden as tour members in the days before...
They are beefing up all of the forces to protect against attacks at each states capitols but who knowns just how many or when they might come into the fray of this issue.

clark · 2021-01-13 21:52:00

kbd512,

Thank you for taking the bait- anything that brings the discussion back towards the boundless cosmos seems better suited than such pedestrian conversations around which political party said what, did what, and can't tweet.

You mistake me if you lump me in with the dimwits who rail against space exploration. You misunderstand me if you assume I then must be your brand of crazy thinking that living in a tin can, wrapped in plastic, on a barren planet with no air is a good idea. I've mentioned I've been frequenting this board for 20+ years. Accessing this sh*t before there was a google or a bing. I've been waiting for mid 2030 precisely because 20 years ago the writing was clear as day that this was the likeliest window for humans to mars. And here we are, having the same conversations that never really ever addressed the primary purpose of the Mars Society, which I found odd, and still do. And here I wait, for someone smarter than I to figure out how exactly people are going to live on Mars.

Like live. Really live. Live in a way that is sustainable. That isn't fragile. That isn't prone to the vagaries of one mad man intent on self destruction, and able to take everyone else with him. If our own shared human history is to judge, the martian colony of tomorrow is highly regulated, little to no privacy, limited personal freedoms, and a high degree (or total) of social state ownership and oversight. The irony of a pro-independence group pushing for something with this inevitable outcome has been delicious for years.

And before some reply, there is a reason there are no democratic or independent states aboard submarines. One person can kill 200 others on a whim or a desire. And you all want to put children into this scenerio, which, as history shows, human people have a tendency to do a lot of sh*t to keep kids safe, up to and including giving up rights or bestowing more authority and oversight to a larger entity, like a government. Everyone, in effect, is a nuclear armed state. MAD theory works up to a point, but falls apart if every lunatic has a button.

So hooray, we figured out how to get people to Mars so they can visit, but no one has openly talked about the real problem of living there. But the fantasy everyone clings to is cute, if it weren't so misguided and sad.

Calliban, thank you for noticing. You have a propensity to minimize a real problem with unsupported optimism and a faith in as yet unknown technology solving the constraints of known physics. But who am i to argue with bright eyed wonder when I can Amazon Prime the next season. If you liked the show, try the books. Cheers.

kbd512 · 2021-01-14 01:02:13

clark,

I'm here for you, bubba. I don't need any bait to talk about going to Mars. To be frank, I care less and less about the political machinations of both parties with each passing day. At this point, both parties seem far more interested in screwing over each other and the American people in the process, than doing anything simply worth voting for. They'll bring the entire system crashing down long before a guy in a Chewbacca bikini ever will.

Our "special brand of crazy", with respect to living in sealed metal cans, is simply normal everyday life for those of us who served in the Navy. We used enough gray paint to make plastic wrapping superfluous. I assure you that there's nothing fragile about a Navy ship because the ocean would destroy it if there was, long before enemy action did. They're built with the best quality iron that money can buy, with the price tag to prove it.

Although it's possible for one lunatic to destroy our nuclear reactor and kill us all in the process, in more than 70 years of continuous operation of more than a hundred nuclear powered ships and submarines, that has never happened. We have had one fatal accident from human stupidity because some genius decided to shut down the reactor while the boat was in a dive, but that has never happened since. Speaking of keeping kids safe, a bunch of 17 to 23 year olds are in charge, in an absolute sense, of the most powerful weapons of war that the world has ever known. If they're simply one lunatic away from world annihilation, then they've done the absolute best job imaginable to prevent that from happening. Those of us who served fully understood that, as a final resort, that very unfortunately meant that you may have to kill your best friend if he or she goes completely off the rails. It's simply part of the job. Whether you trust the kiddos or not, they make all the difficult decisions where the rubber meets the road.

None of us were operating under any illusions that there was anything democratic about our chain of command, but most of the time we were asked for input on difficult decisions. Minimally, we were informed of what was expected of us ahead of time. If we know that we're about to make a consequential decision pertaining to a task with a high probability of getting people killed, then even the most arrogant of commanders typically asked their crews for input or ideas about the least costly way to accomplish said task. There was something of an unwritten but religiously followed rule that stated something along the lines of, "you can tell people what to do or how to do something, but not both at the same time". The best leaders learned to inform their subordinates about specifically what they wanted to accomplish, leaving the details to the men and women executing the task. There were plenty of mistakes made, but part of every after-action report was "lessons learned". You could validly state that a bad Captain could get everyone killed, which is certainly true, but all failures to effectively lead were dealt with rather harshly. I don't think any of us ever questioned the level of commitment of the man or woman standing next to us, or that all of us would do absolutely anything to ensure success, and that's what makes us so dangerous to our enemies.

You seem to conflate people voluntarily working together towards common goals that they consider worthwhile with socialism, which is rather peculiar. Nobody forced us to be there. We showed up because we felt that defending our nation was worth every last drop of blood spilled. In the military, we have lots of communal property, but thievery of personal property was limited to taking covers (special hats) for inspection. You could leave a gold bar on your rack and it would still be there a week later. Your cover would be gone in a jiffy, but then it would be returned after morning uniform inspection. There's no concern about anyone sabotaging one of our jets, either, because all of us rely upon our jets to rain death and destruction upon our enemies. The Admiral could come down there and tell us to mess up one of our babies, and the newest Seaman Recruit would tell that Admiral to go piss up a rope, albeit with proper respect shown.

I guess I have more faith in humanity and our technology than you do. One of the first things they teach you in the military is to take care of and trust your people and your equipment. You're taught every seemingly unimportant (at the time) detail, and how attention to detail truly matters. A bunch of teenagers with GEDs manage to maintain the most sophisticated war machines engineering can devise. A fighter jet may seem absurdly complex from a distance, and in a sense it truly is, but the more you understand about how it works, the simpler every aspect of the design becomes. Guys and gals with maybe 80 to 90 IQs can make a stealth fighter run like a Singer sewing machine into perpetuity.

As far as "truly living" is concerned, I value my wife and children, as well as my fellow humans. That is what I truly live for. At the end of the day, they actually matter, and nothing else I have to endure ever does. If I get to come home and see them at the end of the day, then it was a great day, even if the rest of it was abhorrent. For humans to truly live in the farthest reaches of our solar system or indeed the universe, love and warmth between each other is required, and we'll figure out the rest as we go along, just as we always have. It's going to be messy, mistakes will be made, and some people will inevitably die before old age along the way, but humanity will overcome every challenge presented. I'm more certain of that than I am of living to see the next sunrise. After hundreds of thousands of years and unfathomable suffering, we have persevered in the face of all challenges, a game of whack-a-mole that we've never lost, if you will, both from the natural environment and those of our own making. You can call that being cocky if you want to, but I think it's experience-based confidence.

SpaceNut · 2021-01-14 20:35:41

There re many getting rounded up and arrested for there crimes and the Justice Department launches webpage tracking individuals charged in Capitol riot with those that did conspire to give aid to them as Lawmakers who conspired with Capitol attackers in legal peril While those that were against the election stoked the issue to a fever pitch in the final hours in which The members of Congress who objected to Joe Biden's Electoral College win amid Capitol riot are not out of the woods....

There are still being made a call to arms over the election and the states are all deploying the Nation guard units ahead of it taking place on the Inauguration day.

Quaoar · 2021-01-16 07:34:39

Calliban wrote:

Here are a few things that come to mind. There was a great deal of postal vote fraud. Large numbers of dead people voted through postal votes, exclusively for Biden. Some of those that voted were old enough to have fought in the civil war! Many postal votes were also found to have been binned (mostly those for Trump). There were statistical irregularities that could only have resulted from fraud. Some districts containing thousands of voters, did not produce a single Trump vote when counted. There were oddities in the way that the votes were tallied using the dominion machines, with sudden dramatic swings towards Biden, with no such swings visible in the other direction. How could that happen without software manipulation or binning paper votes for the other side? There is the fact that the counting machines were designed to fiddle votes in the first place.
The vote counting was deliberately opaque, with windows boarded up and republicans barred from the count. In spite of all of this, state and supreme courts repeatedly refused all requests for investigation. The full extent of the crime was therefore covered up. Trump may indeed have won the election were it not for fraud and I think he can justly claim to have been cheated. But nothing can be proven because investigation was refused at every turn.

You need to consider the danger perception bias: reds, who are more prone to consider the epidemic a hoax, have no fear of covid-19, so they mainly voted in the presence, while blues, who fear the virus, preferred to vote by mail. This bias can explain the difference between red and blue votes in the polling stations and in the mail ballots without the need to assume a fraud.

Last edited by Quaoar (2021-01-18 04:31:08)

GW Johnson · 2021-01-17 17:24:43

Quaoar:

Your perception is quite correct. Amazingly (or disappointingly), many Americans do NOT understand those points you made. Instead they believe the election fraud lie.

GW

Quaoar · 2021-01-18 04:51:51

GW Johnson wrote:

Quaoar:
Your perception is quite correct. Amazingly (or disappointingly), many Americans do NOT understand those points you made. Instead they believe the election fraud lie.
GW

Hi, GW. Happy to hear you.

I had a scientific training, so I'm used to look for hard evidence and I know that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.

What is happening is vary sad.
It seems US people are split in two, and the two halves hate each other. In Italy is almost the same and TV debates, where politicians only traded insults without saying noting of constructive, are the new normal now. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that formal education and respect of the rules are essential for a civil society, regardless of our political orientation.

Last edited by Quaoar (2021-01-18 06:38:14)

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