stay tuned!

K: I for one, don’t believe this issue has been highlighted enough…
IQ45 has taken dictatorship 101 and that starts with troops in the streets…
to allegedly to “prevent anarchist and liberals” to destroy property…
and what weak excuse that is… is property more important then
people? Well yes, to a conservative… the preservation of property
is the highest value of the conservative… see Locke for that…

the value of the state is to protect property…

lives, not so much… we see time and again, conservatives approve
of capital punishment for a variety of crimes and we see conservatives
approval of the American gun culture which is predicated upon the
use of violence… to own a gun is to approve of violence for that is
what a gun does… it is a means of violence… it has no other use…

the continue militarization of America comes from the conservative
fears… to militarize the police is to escalate the violence the police
can use…

if the right fought for peace as much as it does for violence,
the world would be a far safer place…

the use of troops in democratic cities isn’t to deescalate violence, it
is to increase it… for political purposes… to 'prove" that the greatest
criminal ever elected for president is the “law and order” president…

and more importantly, this trial run of sending troops into democratic
cities seems to me to be a trial run for when IQ45 loses the election
and he sends troops into the streets to hold onto power…

I fear for our country because if he sends in troops into cities,
that it could lead down the path of dictatorship… using troops to
hold power is an old trick by dictators… one that both Stalin
and Hitler used…nothing good, absolutely nothing good can come
out of sending troops into cities… it is dictatorship 101…
and a preview of our very near future…

Liberals are trying to maintain democracy and conservatives
are hell bent on creating a dictatorship…

whose side are you on?

Kropotkin

however, I must note that all those “patriots” who claim
to own guns to fight government tyranny, are really quiet…
I’m mean cricket quiet…

We have government forces on the Streets of a major American city
practicing just the thing that the gun culture in America has been
predicting for decades. Government forces pulling people off the streets
in unmarked cars and vans without any, any justification for these
“arrests” and detaining them without any legal justification…
this is a travesty of the rights of American citizens and yet, not
a peep from those who claim to uphold American rights with guns…

so only two possibilities exists, either they just don’t give a shit about
any potential government tyranny or they are just gutless cowards
who run away from from any potential conflict unless they can
have a sizable advantage even with guns… 8 guys with guns attacking
one women type of thing… which is something gutless cowards love to do…

try to feel brave while attacking people who can’t fight back…

I cannot believe the silence the right wing is doing while basic American rights
are being taken away by troops in the streets… you would think that this
is the entire point of the bill of rights… but not to conservatives…

J’ACCUSE… the conservative faction which resides in America are
really gutless cowards

J’ACCUSE… the conservative faction of America doesn’t give a shit
about the constitution or the bill of rights…

J’ACCUSE… the right wing of hiding when the government tyranny which they
have so long predicted finally comes…and they are hiding in their basements…

one cannot say enough bad things about the gutless right wing…

they cannot even follow through on the one thing they claim to fight
which is government tyranny…

Kropotkin

Authoritarianism.

Which, from my frame of mind, is the moral and the political equivalent of objectivism.

Below is a NYT op-ed that basically embraces the belief that conservatives are far more likely to embody authoritarian personalities than liberals. Something that, as an “existential contraption” rooted subjectively in my own political prejudices rooted in dasein, I have long believed.

Though I’m sure conservatives here can concoct their own “intellectual” assessment to “prove” just the opposite.

nytimes.com/2020/07/22/opin … e=Homepage

What I am always quick to interject with here, however, is speculation that many politicians and Wall Street magnates – crony capitalists – are basically moral and political nihilists instead. They may come off as dogmatic politically, but their main concern is always the bottom line: show me the money. The powerful nabobs across the globe that in an amoral manner own the operate the global economy.

Donald Trump? Which one is he?

I don’t know. Not really. But if come November the coronavirus has exploded given an even more virulent second wave, the economy is at the breaking point and social unrest is at or beyond the boiling over, it’s certainly possible that Trump and/or the deep state ruling class in America may actually choose to “cancel” the results if Trump loses.

Thus: “stay tuned”.

Another take on our “what if?” scenario

washingtonpost.com/opinions … Fstory-ans

[b]‘President Trump is laying the groundwork to do something that no previous president has ever done: falsely claim that an election was fixed against him in order to discredit the vote. Trump has repeatedly — and incorrectly — claimed the election will be “rigged” against him. By promoting a series of wacky, debunked conspiracy theories, he has primed his supporters to wrongly believe he is the victim of some unknown, shadowy “deep state” plot. In an interview that aired last week, he refused to commit to accepting the results in November.’

'Such crises never happen in other functioning democracies. But they happen all the time in broken countries around the world. In contentious elections from Africa to southeast Asia, incumbents who lose often refuse to accept defeat. Welcome to the club, America!

‘All the warning lights are blinking red. University of Birmingham professor Nic Cheeseman , an expert on contentious elections and political violence with whom I co-authored the book “How to Rig an Election,” normally worries when contested votes happen in Kenya or Zimbabwe. Now, he’s worried about the United States. “There are five warning I always look for,” he told me. “Organized militias, a leader who is not prepared to lose, distrust of the political system, disinformation, and a potentially close contest. Right now, the U.S. has all five.”’[/b]

On the other hand, others argue that there is a greater likelihood that the election will not be close. That Biden could win by double digits. What then if the other four lights are still blinking red?

Then this part:

‘Consider ourselves warned. The question, then, is: What do we do about it? If Trump ends up trying to torch crucial norms of democracy in order to save face, how can we prepare? Other countries offer a series of lessons we should urgently learn from, so that if (or when) the worst happens, Trump’s matches don’t light.’

Also, there’s this: theguardian.com/commentisfr … wa-mahdawi

If staying out of the slammer means staying in the Oval Office, that just one more reason for Trump not to pull any punches in November.

[b]'Now the president is threatening another crisis, tweeting that we might have to delay the election because there could be mail-in voting fraud.

'In his view, either he wins or the election is rigged. He’s trying to make mail-in ballots socially unacceptable the same way he made masks socially unacceptable for the first five months of the plague.

'The Washington Post reports that backlogs at the U.S. Postal Service are causing some employees there to worry that the Trump lackey in charge, a top donor, is intentionally gumming up the works just in time for the election. It is astounding the corrupt lengths the administration seems willing to go to — destroying the Postal Service to win the election. Ben Franklin would be incensed.

As Axelrod notes, “Whatever happened back in the Bush v. Gore recount days will seem like the Garden of Innocence compared to what’s going to happen now. Trump is not going to walk to the rostrum and say, ‘The people have spoken and I accept their verdict.’’’

Even Trump’s closest allies in Congress, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, couldn’t stomach the idea of postponing the election, and both have swallowed a lot over the last three years. Trump’s little trial balloon blew up like the Hindenburg.'[/b]

Maureen Dowd

On the other hand, I’m actually beginning to think that Trump really will refuse to step down unless Putin and others can once again rig the election in his favor. After all, are the Democrats really a match for Vladimir when it comes to rigging elections?

As always though with things like this, it’s not the moral or the political arguments that count, but what Trump can actually accomplish in regard to those who have the boots on the ground power either to stop him or to do his bidding.

Like I was saying months ago… this guy is such a perfect moron I have trouble believing all this is by accident. It almost seems staged somehow.

[b]'Gail Collins: You told me once you thought Trump was too cowardly to actually try to pull off a coup. I can’t tell you how much comfort I’ve been taking from that thought. So — just checking — is that still your opinion?

‘Bret Stephens: Still is. What I think this tweet tells us is that Trump knows in his heart that he is likely to lose in November. He’s laying the groundwork not for a coup but for an excuse, both for himself and for his followers. It creates a mythology to explain defeat, attack Joe Biden and keep the Trump family relevant in the Republican Party. The fact that he’d pull a stunt like this is another reason it’s so important that he lose in a landslide in November.’[/b] NYT

Wow, just bringing up the possibility of a “coup” should Trump lose in November is unnerving. Then the question becomes, if he goes there, how will those in the military/“tactical teams”/police etc., react to orders from him to go there?

Though, sure, he could just be hinting in that direction in order merely to have that as an excuse should he lose. He does leave office quietly [more or less] and then immediately gets behind Don Jr. – Ivanka? – for 2024.

Stay tuned.

Don’t dismiss a wag the dog scenario, as commander in chief he may consider it as a final option.

Remember, he can not pardon himself against any civil or criminal prosecution once he leaves office, wasn’t he the one to proclaim “lock her up” in reference to Clinton’s problems.

Willing up a war scenario becomes easy to conjure among the type of constituancy that appears oblivious to anything but the virtues of this administration, and violence can commence at that point both nationally and/or internationally.

Uh-oh…

washingtonpost.com/national … Fstory-ans

[b]'The government of China prefers that President Trump not win reelection in November, seeing the incumbent as “unpredictable,” and Russia is using a range of measures to try to “denigrate” the president’s opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, including selective leaks of information and efforts on social media, a top U.S. intelligence official said in a statement Friday.

‘The statement by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was notable for identifying three countries seeking to influence the 2020 election — China, Russia and Iran. But he portrayed Russia as the most active source of interference. Evanina also said that a Ukrainian lawmaker who has been in contact with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, is part of a Russian disinformation effort.’[/b]

In other words, aside from all the accusations regarding what Trump might do to steer the election in the right direction [and what Trump claims the Democrats are up to], we have these “foreign powers” pitching in as well.

On the other hand, the stakes here for those who own and operate the global economy are enormous, aren’t they?

“Show me the money”, as it were.

Makes you wonder if how the high school civics texts portray democracy might have been a bit off.

You know, if there still are high school civics text.

Like back in my day.

Here’s the part where we assume Trump loses the election but then refuses to leave office:

slate.com/news-and-politics/202 … -coup.html

[b]'Two retired Army officers have written an open letter to Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, basically urging him to mount a military coup if President Donald Trump loses the upcoming election but tries to remain in power on Jan. 20.

‘“If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term,” they write for Defense One, a widely read national security site, “the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.”’[/b]

To wit: we can discuss “philosophically” as, say, “political scientists” how nations like America are run “socially, politically and economically”. But the bottom line historically always revolves finally around who has the actual military and police power to enforce any particular interpretation of any particular context.

Sure, that’s become buried deep in the background in our modern industrial world. A world where “democracy and the rule of law” seem so deeply entrenched that nothing could possibly upend them.

But let a “crisis” [or crises] be deep enough and prolonged enough, coupled with an authoritarian leader chummy with national security factions of the MIC and, well, who the hell really knows?

Still, let’s be optimistic:

[b]'The fear that Trump will refuse to leave office, even if he loses the election, has been circulating for over a year now. I addressed the fear in a June 1 Slate column, arguing that Trump may want to lock himself in the Oval Office, but “he wouldn’t get away with it.” At 12 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2021, wherever Trump may choose to plant himself, all but a small retinue of security guards will abandon him, the nuclear launch codes will change, his Cabinet secretaries and ambassadors will lose all authority, and the entire U.S. military establishment will pivot away from ex-President Donald Trump to salute President Joe Biden. “The principle of civilian control is hammered into American officers from the time they’re cadets,” I wrote, “and the 20th Amendment of the Constitution states, ‘The terms of the President and Vice President end at noon on the 20th day of January’—no ifs, ands, or buts.”

‘The Secret Service will escort Mr. Trump out of the office. If a mob of Trump’s favorite sheriffs and militias block the doors and circle the White House—if, in short, a few tanks need to roll down Pennsylvania Avenue to restore order, then it will be Biden, the duly elected and sworn-in commander in chief, who gives the order.’[/b]

Stay tuned…

If a security risk can override the politically divisive intelligence, ( military, FBI, CIA, Interpol, them a guy like Trump may see this as easy entrance into a nuclear issue.

Using nuclear in a very general sense.

Murphy’s law suits well with the kind of constituancy he relies on, for remember it hasn’t been that long ago that the FBI director was brought to task and let go, and other assets were equally dealt with. harsh blows of the kind which formerly were in inconceivable.

Here, however, we can only imagine a particular president in a particular context with access to the football codes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football

What could he do with those nuclear warheads all the way up to an election that he sees he is clearly going to lose?

Wag the dog? At home in regard to antifa…or abroad in regard to the “terrorists”?

What orders would or would not be obeyed?

On the other hand, given the existence of the “deep state” [in whatever manner it is imagined] even hereespecially here? – shit will unfold behind the curtain that none of us here are likely to have access to.

The ‘Deep State’ could incite a reversely manufactured scenario, where a sent black mail could divide military type intelligence and conquer.

This may fit the fodder of the overused distinction between fact and fiction, the accounted root of which may be lost by now. Any incidence could be invented as trigger, and the nuclear option could be initially used as a hidden possibility, as it always had

The neo Kantian approach of centering , a recurrent mode of procedure applied , could literally explode the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’, figuratively reducing the difference between a dialectic between the material and the quasi trace of the spiritual.

This mix, utilizes simplified reconstitution of familiarly resembling motives.

Trump is famous of this kind of amphitheatre of absurdity, as the incident that created an effective sense of incredulity, when he bible thumped in midst of the protestations. .

This theater appears nowadays as an unstoppable trainwreck in the making.

Then this part:

nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opin … e=Homepage

‘Last week, NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Joe Biden whether, if elected, he could envision Donald Trump being prosecuted. Biden replied that the prosecution of a former president would be a “very, very unusual thing” and probably “not very good for democracy.” The former vice president said he would not stand in the way if the Justice Department wanted to bring a case, but when Garcia-Navarro pressed him, he suggested she was trying to bait him into a version of Trump’s threat against his 2016 opponent: “Lock her up.”’

Clearly, to the extent that Trump feels threatened – in a truly existential sense – by the prospect of prosecution after leaving office, is the extent to which staying in office “by any means necessary” becomes a prospect that cannot be ignored.

If Biden wins the election for the White House and the Democrats retake the Senate, will the Democratic Party “establishment” go the way of Gerald Ford in pardoning Nixon? In other words, claim that for the good of the country it is time to “heal old wounds” blah, blah, blah and go back to reconfiguring the crony capitalist “deep state” juggernaut so as to reflect the days before Trump.

Here we can only check in from time to time with Biden, Schumer and Pelosi and see where the soundbites take us.

Then there’s this…

washingtonpost.com/politics … Fstory-ans

[b]'President Trump said Thursday that he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.

'“Now, they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting, they just can’t have it.”

‘Trump has railed against mail-in balloting for months, and at a White House briefing Wednesday, he argued without evidence that USPS’s enlarged role in the November election would perpetuate “one of the greatest frauds in history.”’[/b]

A sign of just how far he is willing to go to stay in office. And it’s not even September yet!

On the other hand, maybe the Trumpworld folks here can provide us with ample evidence to back up his claims.

Let’s all exchange political prejudices [rooted in dasein] with as many actual facts as we can. :sunglasses:

I would not want to be Trump. He’s been trying to destroy democracy around the globe (including the US) since he became president. But now the pressure is REALLY on him!!!

He will be sent to prison for obstruction of justice if he loses. If he wins… he can probably destroy destroy democracy enough to stay out of prison entirely.

Even the elites who always wanted to destroy democracy (and did about 30 years ago) see trump as a liability. shh… people aren’t supposed to know that yet trump!. If trump continues on this path of revealing that democracy no longer exists, not because he said it, but because he’s such a colossal asshole… the elites will have no choice but to make an example of him.

Or worse.

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=195930

One month to go, right?

Still…

washingtonpost.com/opinions … orst-last/

[b]On Friday, as the New York Times first reported, Trump met at the White House with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a pardoned felon, and attorney Sidney Powell, who was fired from the Trump legal team after promoting conspiracy theories about the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez too wacky even for Trump. Trump reportedly discussed with the duo Flynn’s idea of declaring martial law and having the military “rerun” the election — or, failing that, appointing Powell as a special counsel to probe (nonexistent) election fraud.

These dangerous ideas may not be implemented, but simply the fact that they are being discussed marks a new low. Never before in U.S. history has there been a record of a president discussing a military coup to stay in office. Is there any doubt that if Trump could find any active-duty generals willing to carry out this plot against America, he would give it the go-ahead? In this instance, all that is preserving the Constitution is the military’s fidelity to the rule of law.[/b]

my emphasis

How about this: stay tuned.

Especially so, since he is on top of the heap of the chain of command until Jan 20, 2021.