Here's my question: How does this happen?
How do people just say "Yeah, no, we're not going to obey court orders"?
Like, if normal people did that, wouldn't they be arrested and stuff? Wouldn't their decisions/actions be invalidated and overturned?
Yet here these people are, just flaunting it with no consequences. Sure, the GOP is talking their game - they always do - but where are the arrests? Where are the decertifications? Where are the actual CONSEQUENCES? As long as there are none, they keep doing it. Like a kid that gets a "stern talking to" but is never punished for misbehaving. They know the steps to the dance, they get the talking to, they pretend to care, they say a pretend apology, and then do it again.
...except here, we're not even having the pretend to care or pretend apology anymore!
Agreed. Basically, this would make it invalid on two fronts - first because Trump is no longer a government official and cannot be impeached, and second by violating the clearly laid out rules for impeachment.
And that's ASSUMING they could get 67 votes to convict, which I'm still dubious about.
Maybe they've decided it's a sham AND they don't have the votes anyway, so just fork it for the PR with their fawning media to say "Trump's impeached AGAIN but the bad ol' GOP wouldn't convict AGAIN!!" or the like.
Basically this. It's for leftist keyboard warriors and liberal media to use to say "THERE WAS NO FRAUD!! BIDEN IS LEGITIMATE!!!!"
DOJ couldn't get its thumb out of its ass long enough to investigate anything of meaning for 4 years under Trump, and they couldn't do it for two months after the election before Biden became "official"...but SUDDENLY, they're able to look into the issue - but only after the fact and with the framing of trying to see who wanted to "change" the outcome (meaning after Biden had been decided), as opposed to looking into the election itself?
If anyone thinks this is anything OTHER THAN cover for the lefties, you're insane.
Again, the ILLUSION is important to them. The normies need to see (and think) that there are two parties. The reality is we have Democrat and Democrat-lite, because when the GOP wins, they put Romnies and Ryans at the helm and basically get nothing done other than give some money to billionares to piss off the left so the Democrats can win again.
I give Trump props for doing something, but look at the Congress. What did we get from 2 years uncontested Republican power? Tax cuts - a lot went to the middle-class, sure, but the wealthy got a lot - and criminal justice reform, which is long overdue.
...and that's it. The Republicans drug their feet on EVERYTHING ELSE, and even defeated an Obamacare repeal. People can blame McCain for that all they want, but they were able to put something like 100 times various repeal bills under Obama, and even from 2014-2016 when the GOP had the House and Senate...but they COULDN'T BE BOTHERED to try more than A SINGLE ONE under Trump when they had a President to sign them?
But the illusion makes the normies think we have a choice, and gives the left carte blanche to say to the right "Your side wins half the time, you can't say 'taxation without representation' or say you're oppressed!" even though we ARE unrepresented other than a few cases like Cruz or Trump.
Right, but they need the ILLUSION that there are two. It's why when the GOP wins, we get Ryans and Romnies that are Democrat-lite instead of actually being conservative. To the low info normies, this means that both sides win so our elections MUST be fair, and the right can't complain to be oppressed when they're running things at least some of the time.
If we went full uni-party, the illusion would break.
Eh, they still want power, and they can't just switch to D, as that would destroy the illusion. With a two party system, they can say "See, you aren't being oppressed, you win half the time", even though when we win, get the likes of Ryan or Romney that just do Democrat-lite.
They NEED that, though, as it keeps the normies in line.
It's not "can't be bothered" it's "not stupid".
I'm from Texas. I'm not going to travel to DC for a day trip to take part in a protest that doesn't do anything, and certainly not to storm the Capitol and hold it for all of 3 hours before it goes back to how it was before with hundreds of potential warriors needed for later battles being jailed.
"He will triumph who knows when to fight and when not to fight."
When you have a battle worth fighting where there's a possible victory condition, that'll be different. And even then, going to DC is stupid. I'm going to avoid that hell hole for the rest of my life if I'm able. In fact, I don't plan to go anywhere that doesn't allow me to carry, and DC is included in that.
It's one city in one part of the country that is invested to the point a mere protest has no impact on them, no matter how big, and an armed conflict there is pointless since there's no way in hell it would succeed.
There's simply no logic to it. It's a good way to throw your troops away on a figurative killing field, which is how you lose wars.
Not everyone will.
Don't assume everyone will go willingly, no matter what they promise. If your first requirement is "It's only for a little while...oh, and you can't bring guns or knives with you", that's a hard nope for me. If it's pushed to force? Then force will be answered with force, because at that point, I'm already dead, may as well make it count for something.
That won't work very well. The actual numerical power of combat troops in the military is relatively low. Maybe 500,000 to 750,000 possible boots on the ground.
Carpet bombing, cruise missile strikes, or nuclear weapons used against American cities won't work. It'd be more like Fallujah, which nearly broke the US military's back and was a slog that saw the highest casualties of the War on Terror.
Door to door, house to house, apartment to apartment fighting on the ground.
Tanks, planes (/drones), nukes? They don't help there. Body armor is the only usable protection, and it won't protect you well if you bust into the wrong house.
There literally aren't enough US troops in the military to take - not destroy, but TAKE - a single major US city, much less several dozen across a score of states. The very notion of being able to rule the US as a military dictatorship that DOESN'T commit rampant warcrimes is absurd.
Not to mention half the military - under conservative estimates - would revolt, and the US military has already decided it would release from service anyone from states in rebellion (if actual states seceded) because having moles/plants is far more dangerous than losing the bodies/boots.
That won't work very well. The actual numerical power of combat troops in the military is relatively low. Maybe 500,000 to 750,000 possible boots on the ground.
Carpet bombing, cruise missile strikes, or nuclear weapons used against American cities won't work. It'd be more like Fallujah, which nearly broke the US military's back and was a slog that saw the highest casualties of the War on Terror.
Door to door, house to house, apartment to apartment fighting on the ground.
Tanks, planes, nukes? They don't help there. Body armor is the only usable protection, and it won't protect you well if you bust into the wrong house.
There literally aren't enough US troops in the military to take - not destroy, but TAKE - a single major US city, much less several dozen across a score of states. The very notion of being able to rule the US as a military dictatorship that DOESN'T commit rampant warcrimes is absurd.
They ARE scared...after a fashion.
It's far easier to have slaves if you have convinced your slaves that they are free.
Likewise, it's far easier to have a totalitarian dictatorship if you have the people convinced that elections matter and work. When they realize that elections are meaningless, you have to go hard dictator instead of soft dictator. And that's more expensive, harder, and runs a higher risk of overthrow.
Though as far as nations are concerned, "it's better to serve in heaven than reign in hell" (yes, I'm flipping it). What I mean by this is, a soft dictatorship having the full power and resources of the United States of America with a docile public grants more power for the ruling class than having a split USSA/USA as separate nations, or a single nation with hard dictatorship having to be exercised to maintain power and keep the people in line.
They are scared of losing the status quo of the docile public.
They aren't scared in the sense they are more than willing to flex that hard power, but they recognize that actually makes their position more precarious and makes their power weaker.
Partially.
More to go after the base. The new talking point out of the left-wing echo chamber is that Trump supporters/MAGA are "just like Al Qaeda".
Trump will be out of the public eye soon, and they need an excuse to keep going after Trumpian populism - the only true threat to the Establishment Uniparty's iron grip on power.
Looks like they're going hard on the "domestic terrorism" angle. Watch how they will totally memoryhole that they blamed Jan 6th on Trump so they can blame it on "Y'all Qaeda" instead and use that to justify their crackdowns.
Right?
The right has been saying this is what the left would do, but I'm shocked at the speed and the nakedness of it. I thought they'd be more slow about it and more duplicitous.
Don't get me wrong, they ARE being duplicitous about things, like the gaslighting of all MAGA over Jan 6th, but this is also amazingly naked.
I like how it's "here's one teen's story", but the story is HER tearing apart her family, not her family being torn apart by politics. It's her taking willful action to harm her own family because she hates that they won't agree with HER.
That's not politics, that's her being an evil little snot.
It's hard to say, ultimately Oklahoma is the reddest state by county (in 2016, Ok and West Virginia were the only two states to have every county go red, and I think Wyoming joined them in 2020), but WV is in the heart of the eastern enclave of "Blue America", unfortunately for them.
Secession is a weird animal. It's illegal unless you do it successfully, then it's patriotic. Before it can be done, it has to be a thing that people are CERTAIN they want to do, and certain with enough of a critical mass they cannot be ignored. And, by nature, it tend to require at least part of the ruling class to support it - which is true of civil wars in general, and also of coups. Though "ruling class" can sometimes be more open here (disenfranchised nobles, military officers), it requires some basis of power to do.
That said, it's also the modern era. A civil war today would look VERY different than one in 1860.
As to the mood - people seem pissed, but also jovial. Still plenty of joke and shitposting going on.
That area, actually. Hopkins/Wood/etc. Hour and a half or so east of D.
I feel like the most natural partnering if Texas did secede and brought friends would be Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. (And, honestly, the eastern half of New Mexico)
Basically, from the Rio Grande to the Mississippi and south of whatever parallel Ok and Ark's northern border is would be a geographic fit and a cultural one (Ar/La aren't exactly "South" to the extent that the Deep South east of the Mississippi is.)
I think concerns about things like capitals can wait until later, honestly.
The fact of the matter is that the US should really be splitting into something like 6 nations. Ever hear of "The 11 American Nations"? A book by a guy talking about the waves of immigration to the colonies (and, later, across the US), how they're allied/opposed politically, etc. There's even DNA support for this now in the sense of whose descendants went largely where.
Needless to say, they do not neatly cut at state lines, but basically, the Left Coast + Hawaii as a nation, Alaska + the greater Mountain West as a nation, New England as a nation, the Midwest as a nation, Tidewater (and its outgroths) as a nation, the Deep South as a nation, and Texas & friends as a nation would all make sense, culturally speaking.
The idea of exchanging one nation for two doesn't have all that much merit to me, because you still get a lot of conflict and differences that don't necessarily mesh. But the different ones could be allied (Tx + South + Mountain, for example) relatively easily in time of need or to achieve success of the dissolution itself.
I honestly feel EVERY American should read the Wikipedia page on "Dissolution of the USSR". Wikipedia is Wikipedia, but the page as a whole isn't that hard to read, and lays out how the USSR went from a World Superpower to a collection of distinct nations with various alliances/enmities, and how Russia was the inheritor to much of the USSR's global position and power (with other nations, like Ukraine, getting some of the assets, such as the nukes that they...foolishly traded away for promises of Western protection that didn't materialize when they needed them the most...)
Because a lot of people aren't super religious so that would drive them off, and because that doesn't really specify what they are and what they do.
The first step to defeating an enemy is to understand how they operate.
"Zionists" tells you nothing - it tells YOU things because you have things associated with that word, but "Zionist" isn't an action, it's a state of being. And one many people won't think of the same things you do.
Same with "satan's minnions".
But Statist or Globalist? While people might not know EXACTLY what you're going for, they can pick it up very quickly. Globalist obviously implies someone thinking of some kind of global system of infrastructure/government/society, and likewise, statist implies someone who worships/has a strong preference for the state and state powers.
Neither have religious connotations, extremist connotations, can be tied to attacks on people groups (like Jews), and so on that turn off the normies or have people recoil away from you.
.
I really think you understand what I'm saying, but if you did not, this explanation should make it clear.
I'm not one to mince words - I see statist/globalist as one of the ultimate insults you could call a person - but I make my insults match the actions of the people, describe them, and not be of a sort that people I'm trying to convince to join me recoil from me instead.
As far as I'm concerned, people in the patriot movement that insist on using the term "Zionists" (even after being told all this) are subversive agents trying to discredit the movement and cause people to turn away from it or recoil from it from the very start.
Yeah, but keep in mind that "globalist" is a word everyone can get behind opposing.
When you say "Zionists", many people think that means "Jews", and you're just shooting yourself in the foot.
Call t hem what they are: Globalists/Statists
Mark Levin uses the term Statists, and I think that's 100% accurate.
somethingsomething uphill in the snow both ways somethingsomething freedom isn't free...?
That is to say: What is right is not always what is easy. The road to hell is easy and broad. I get that it sucks, but that's part of how you know it's the better option. It wouldn't be under siege in that way were it not so.