ck4829
ck4829's JournalA reading from Gene Sharp's "From Dictatorship to Democracy"
The principle is simple. Dictators require the assistance of the people they rule, without which they cannot secure and maintain the sources of political power. These sources of political power include:
•Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
•Human resources, the number and importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
•Skills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
•Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
•Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources,the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
•Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and noncooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.
https://www.aeinstein.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FDTD.pdf
Trump may not be a dictator (yet), but his administration relies on these same sources of power, this also goes to show that Trump is just a symptom, not the root problem. Many of these sources of power are entities unto themselves and working together to keep Trump in place. Right wing evangelicals, white nationalism, the Republican Party, the erroneous belief that being rich makes you more of an expert on everything, prosperity gospel, IOKIYAR, etc.
They all need to go.
It seems like whenever someone is going on about "Cultural Marxism" and it's not online...
That someone is murdering people.
This is 4chan-created bull.
Both parties and leaders across the ideological spectrum need to come out against this conspiracy theory... how racist it is, how nonsensical it is, how it's not connected to civility and debate but murdering people, etc.
We need a test for our leaders and pundits:
"If you do not denounce the "Cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory, then you are not fit to serve. Do you denounce this conspiracy theory?"
Maybe there should be a "Trump Bar" when it comes to impeachment of future presidents?
One of the things I am advocating is the wholesale removal of "impeachment" from the political landscape. Not having impeachment for the POTUS would have several benefits, it would increase the value of every vote (As in if we're stuck with that potus, then maybe we collectively won't vote for the joke candidate or for the candidate who won't disclose everything. And in the case of Trump, then it's both. Your vote will not be something to throw away now) and I am also a Democrat... I know that when a Democrat is potus, impeachment won't become this last-resort option that we should never actually use, but there will be people who are OK with using impeachment as a way to "cleanse" the office rather than removing a president for "high crimes and misdemeanors", I don't like double standards, maybe we should remove the standard.
In my studies of doing this, I have found out that there is 'hard removal' and 'soft removal'.
Hard removal - Actually amending the Constitution to remove impeachment from it
Soft removal - Make the bar as a whole harder to reach
I am OK with both ways of hard removal and soft removal of impeachment, a way of soft removal is maybe there should be a "Trump Bar" for impeachment of a future potus.
As in... "Do the actions of this president exceed the Trump Bar?"
If the answer is "No", then impeachment is not on the table. Discussion ends there.
This has a couple of benefits:
1. We raise the bar for impeachment, this is one of many potential ways of getting soft removal and I've got people who don't want impeachment removed but yet agreeing with me that impeachment is broken. This is how we can do it.
2. We protect a future Democratic president from impeachment, it is no longer something that can be wielded as a petty weapon against a 'radical' potus that a future right wing House and Senate would not like.
3. This uses Trump as a standard for corruption, Trump becomes the line where corruption becomes too much. This would be an unwanted version of Trump's face on Mt. Rushmore or on the dollar bill. If you don't like the cult of personality associated with Trump, then this is a good counterattack against that cult.
Hard removal and soft removal... Both of these things need to happen to protect the party and to patch a hole in the rule of law.
It starts here, it starts today. Let's repair the political landscape.
It's time to begin discussion of amending the Constitution - To remove impeachment from it
I don't think the framers of the Constitution envisioned the partisan risk that could come with wielding impeachment as a weapon.
To see that the bar of "high crimes and misdemeanors" change simply because of the parties in Congress and who is in the White House change, I don't think that is what the serious charge of impeachment is supposed to be about.
Nothing will get Trump impeached today, what if years from now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is president, what will be the bar? Will it be in the words of Senator Lindsey Graham in 1999, in his own words that "impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office", do you want to wait for President Ocasio-Cortez's mere presence in the White House to be enough to become worthy of impeachment, to "cleanse" her from the office?
The law should not be a partisan game, remove impeachment from the Constitution if we're not going to use it for Trump and have lawmakers who will be more than willing to use it for a president who will do much less than he has already done.
"And Roger Stone", that's one redacted line of the Mueller Report revealed!
Look for quotes and context!
Page 128, where Trump says it was brave that Manafort did not flip.
“But I had three people: Manafort, Corsi — I don’t know Corsi, but he refuses to say what they demanded. Manafort, Corsi and Roger Stone.”
- That's the full quote in the media, the bold part is redacted in the Mueller report.
I wonder if we can do this elsewhere?
For all them saying "Omar minimized 9/11", Trumpies REALLY don't like talking about Trump-Alex Jones
I've tried it with several angles...
"You know, Donald Trump is chummy with a man who says 9/11 was an "inside job", how is that better than what Omar said?"
-I've been blocked
-I've been called "IDIOT!" and they don't talk to me anymore (Which is a little rude since I never call them idiot)
-I've been met with silence... by people who were more than willing to go on and on about Ilhan Omar
Literally everything BUT answering my questions about why did Trump go on this man's show, why Roger Stone is friends with this man, why his administration gives him friendly coverage, or what he thinks about this man's conspiracy theories.
Kind of makes me wonder if there's something else going on when they are attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar, hmm, I wonder white it is?
If you're on Twitter, let's get #TrumpJones911 trending
Trump wants stochastic terror against Rep. Ilhan Omar with a spliced video, but he, his administration, his family, and his fans associate with and love Alex Jones... a man who has repeatedly claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job".
How's that for "some people did something"?
This isn't just a double standard, this is a gross injustice.
Let's make it known, let's get it out there.
#TrumpJones911
What if it's less Russia colluded with Trump, and more the American ultra right used Russian power?
Not saying Trump-Russian collusion didn't happen, but I'm starting to think that as bad as Putin is, as bad as his regime is, it's just another pawn.
I'm talking about the group that saw the "upcoming war on Iraq" as part of the end times
I'm talking about the group that sees surviving school shootings as "socialism"
I'm talking about the group that ran Iran-Contra and destroyed Inslaw
I'm talking about the group that heckled with "Yeah!" when the question was about letting someone without health insurance die long before Russians propped up Trump
I'm talking about that Reagan admin fixer Oliver North who is now leading the NRA
I'm talking about that Reagan admin fixer Elliott Abrams who is now in the Trump White House leading Venezuelan policy
I'm talking about that 33%.
We like to talk about Russian bots, Russian manipulation, Russian influence, and so on. But what if it was mutual? What if there was some influence on Russia as much as it influenced the rest of the world?
The name of the game is nationalism; we're seeing it in the US, in Russia, in Brazil, in Hungary, in Israel. Israel has occupied the West Bank and the Golan Heights, with the latter the Trump admin plans to recognize as Israeli and with the former Netanyahu himself has said he plans to annex.
Now go over to Russia which has claimed areas in Georgia and Ukraine with military force (It's an occupation) and is deploying soldiers in Venezuela... which of course the US here does not recognize.
I think we're going to reach a flash point sooner rather than later with these two permanent UN security council members each backing and involving themselves in separate causes that have similar backgrounds. There's going to be a winner and a loser here and it's going to put a very dark mark on that security council of the UN... which just happens to be a very big bugaboo for that ultra right which hates multiculturalism and transnational entities like the UN.
Our ultra right.
"QAnon" revealed to be a stalker with erotomania?
Months of attacking some sort of "deep state conspiracy of satanist pedophiles", creating a cult-like army of followers, making grandiose promises of Trump making mass arrests of Democrats, and getting people to, I guess go into a suicide oath with "where we go one, we go all", already whipping up some fanatics to violence, the "storm" has arrived with QAnon attacking...
A random woman?
But disturbingly, the QAnon poster refocused the subject of their cryptic posts away from the deep state and the ever-approaching Great Awakening and onto individual people. First came a series of portraits of Obama-era officials that followed posts referencing words like “kill” and “ammunition.” This came just days after the 8chan-driven massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand—and the posts were seen by many as a kind of hit list.
But after that, Q became hyperfocused on one particular person, and it’s someone that has no political footprint whatsoever: a photographer and casting director named Rachel Chandler, a member of the newspaper-dynasty Chandler family.
https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/qanon-rachel-chandler/
It's quite clear that "QAnon" is stalking this woman, and take a look at this...
https://www.powerandcontrolfilm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/blueprint-stalking.pdf
Red flags everywhere. Enlisting others, impersonating an authority figure, implied and literal threats, a fascination with violence, upcoming dates, talking about "suicide watch", etc. Now all pointed at her.
This QAnon person is a stalker and the target is this woman, she interacted with this QAnon person in some minor way that for everyone else would just be an interaction with someone on the street that we forget about, maybe she hired him to do something for him and gestures we see as normal, QAnon is fixated on now, seeing as signs of something else.
We need to call this out, this isn't right. It's bad enough when the far right makes conspiracy theories about "the libs" and everything being "socialist", but now to involve some non-political woman? It's crazy, we need to reject this, this should not be the new normal.
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Member since: Sat Mar 20, 2004, 11:37 AMNumber of posts: 35,041
