January 6th hearings

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iambiguous
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January 6th hearings

Post by iambiguous »

David Brooks at the NYT

January 6th hearings in a nutshell:

'The core problem here is not the minutiae of who texted what to chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 6 last year. The core problem is that there are millions of Americans who have three convictions: that the election was stolen, that violence is justified in order to rectify it and that the rules and norms that hold our society together don’t matter.'

Yeah, there will always be those on both sides of the political spectrum convinced that if only they are given a platform, their arguments will prevail and all reasonable men and women will finally see the light.

Meanwhile for those millions upon millions of Trumpworld fanatics, fulminating and fanatical objectivists all, their gripe is not that Trump went too far but that he didn't actually succeed.

Whatever it takes to bring America back to the 1950's again is justified. Whether it revolves around race or gender or sexual orientation or abortion or guns or God, the end ever and always justifies the means.

Then this part: https://youtu.be/8X0UmfBwA_U

Sure, the rich and the powerful crony capitalists like Trump are always ready, willing and able to distract "the masses" from their own economic exploitation by making it all about "values".

But don't expect the Democratic establishment in Congress itself to aim the hearings in that direction.

It's like making Watergate all about CREEP and obstruction of justice and not about Operation COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS, the bombing of Cambodia, the Pentagon Papers and Nixon's own attempt to reconfigure America into a fascist junta.

Or so it seems to me.
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Sculptor
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by Sculptor »

The whole world saw Donald Trump incite a massive riot in which several people dies.

It is shameful of the USA that this man is still at liberty.

With many of the participants already serving long sentences, it is beyond my imagination how Mr orange face has managed to use his privilege to avoid justice.
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iambiguous
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by iambiguous »

Sculptor wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:12 pm The whole world saw Donald Trump incite a massive riot in which several people dies.

It is shameful of the USA that this man is still at liberty.

With many of the participants already serving long sentences, it is beyond my imagination how Mr orange face has managed to use his privilege to avoid justice.
Admittedly, my thinking here is entirely conjectural...

In however one imagines it, there is indeed a "deep state" here in America.

Here is my own rendition of it: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... a#p2187045

The powers that be -- the crony capitalist components of the ruling class -- coalesce in ways no one fully understands to come down on questions like this. From the Warren Commision to the Watergate farce to Ford granting a "full and unconditional pardon" to Nixon to Iran-Contra to the war in Iraq to the financial crisis in 2007 to Trump, the powers that be push the agenda in a direction that, from their frame of mind, serves the overall interests of the rich and powerful.

Why hasn't Trump been indicted? Why isn't he in jail?

You tell me.
promethean75
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by promethean75 »

Dean Koontz said it well once but I can't find the quote. The whole process could be orchestrated by a single party (for its interests) to appear as if there are two parties holding conflicting values. Imagine a state working toward abolishing the second amendment, and creating it's own opposition through the republican party to generate rebellious attitudes and potential for violence (gun violence recently) in the people. The violence that would follow would then justify the government's concern and greater control of the situation; it is needed now more than ever, at least I'm the minds of many people who believe legistlation needs to happen... essentially at the demise of second amendment freedoms.

Say this whole process were staged. I'ont believe it is REALLY, but if it was, it would be like that.

A central party of extremely wealthy oligarchs that bi-partisan political systems... sometimes fake ass representational democracies... all work for at the end of the day.

The transition into the future form of society in a post-industrial age of environmentally friendly AI digital technology has to be gradual, bruh. The worst the future will be would be something like Elysium. The erf would become a districted manufacturing plant populated by a single class of working citizen equally obligated to work, while all the bourgeoisie live with Jody Foster on a terra formed ship orbiting the erf. And there'd be robot police patrolling everywhere. But that's way, way later. Lotta shits gotta go down first.

Anyway at some point weapons have to be removed from society for this transition to happen.
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iambiguous
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by iambiguous »

Ruth Marcus

'If Trump is ever to be held criminally accountable for the coup attempt, prosecutors will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew what he was doing was wrong and unjustified. Here, the committee demonstrated there may be ample evidence of that.'

So, what exactly is the connection here between the Committee hearings and, say, the Justice Department?

Will this end up in court -- in a prosecution, in a trial -- or not?
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Sculptor
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by Sculptor »

iambiguous wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 5:51 pm
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 10:12 pm The whole world saw Donald Trump incite a massive riot in which several people dies.

It is shameful of the USA that this man is still at liberty.

With many of the participants already serving long sentences, it is beyond my imagination how Mr orange face has managed to use his privilege to avoid justice.
Admittedly, my thinking here is entirely conjectural...

In however one imagines it, there is indeed a "deep state" here in America.

Here is my own rendition of it: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p ... a#p2187045

The powers that be -- the crony capitalist components of the ruling class -- coalesce in ways no one fully understands to come down on questions like this. From the Warren Commision to the Watergate farce to Ford granting a "full and unconditional pardon" to Nixon to Iran-Contra to the war in Iraq to the financial crisis in 2007 to Trump, the powers that be push the agenda in a direction that, from their frame of mind, serves the overall interests of the rich and powerful.

Why hasn't Trump been indicted? Why isn't he in jail?

You tell me.
Elite privilege exists the world over.
I'm not sure what value there is in calling it a "deep state".
A good old "class war" would make more sense.
And the people have dropped the democracy ball, handing it over the the rich guys.

Take the case of Bernie Saunders. Whatever you might think of him, he was definitely representing ordinary working people and his popularity in the Democratic party was way above Hilary C who was nothing more than an establishment stooge who started her political career as a Republican FFS.
Why was he not selected for the 2016 Presidential? He had the vote and the support, so what the F?

Of in the UK with Jeremy Corbyn - so popular in the Labour party that he attracted and extra 200, 000 party members making it the largest party in Europe.
Despite being a fighter against Racism his whole life he was destroyed by false accusations of anti-Semitism to narrowly loose the 2019 GE by around 2% of the popular vote.
commonsense
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by commonsense »

iambiguous wrote: Fri Jun 10, 2022 5:51 pm Why hasn't Trump been indicted? Why isn't he in jail?
You tell me.
We’ve gone down the rabbit hole.😦
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iambiguous
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by iambiguous »

From the NYT

'He had means, motive and opportunity. But did Donald J. Trump commit a crime?

'A House committee explicitly declared that he did by conspiring to overturn an election. The attorney general, however, has not weighed in. And a jury of his peers may never hear the case.'

'Several former prosecutors and veteran lawyers said afterward that the hearing offered the makings of a credible criminal case for conspiracy to commit fraud or obstruction of the work of Congress.'


Again, I'm guessing that, as with the examples I noted above, there are those who occupy various positions and functions "behind the curtains" in the "deep state" who will be instrumental here.

What is in the "best interest" of "the country"?

Stay tuned as it were.
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iambiguous
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by iambiguous »

One particular political prejudice rooted existentially in dasein...

Donald Trump, American Monster
By Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — Monsters are not what they used to be.

I’m reading “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley for school and the monster is magnificent. He starts out with an elegance of mind and sweetness of temperament, reading Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” and gathering firewood for a poor family. But his creator, Victor Frankenstein, abandons him and refuses him a mate to calm his loneliness. The creature finds no one who does not recoil in fear and disgust from his stitched-together appearance, his yellow skin and eyes, and black lips. Embittered, he seeks revenge on his creator and the world.

“Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded,” he laments. “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.”

Before he disappears into the Arctic at the end of the book, he muses that once he had “high thoughts of honour,” until his “frightful catalogue” of malignant deeds piled up.

Shelley’s monster, unlike ours, has self-awareness, and a reason to wreak havoc. He knows how to feel guilty and when to leave the stage. Our monster’s malignity stems from pure narcissistic psychopathy — and he refuses to leave the stage or cease his vile mendacity.

It never for a moment crossed Donald Trump’s mind that an American president committing sedition would be a debilitating, corrosive thing for the country. It was just another way for the Emperor of Chaos to burnish his title.

We listened Thursday night to the frightful catalogue of Trump’s deeds. They are so beyond the pale, so hard to fathom, that in some ways, it’s all still sinking in.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time hearing was not about Trump as a bloviating buffoon who stumbled into the presidency. It was about Trump as a callous monster, and many will come away convinced that he should be criminally charged and put in jail. Lock him up!

The hearing drove home the fact that Trump was deadly serious about overthrowing the government. If his onetime lap dog Mike Pence was strung up on the gallows outside the Capitol for refusing to help Trump hold onto his office illegitimately, Trump said, so be it. “Maybe our supporters have the right idea,” he remarked that day, chillingly, noting that his vice president “deserves it.”

Liz Cheney cleverly used the words of former Trump aides to show that, despite his malevolent bleating, Trump knew there was no fraud on a level that would have changed the election results.

“I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit,” William Barr, Trump’s attorney general, said.

Breaking from her father, Ivanka Trump — in a taped deposition — said she embraced Barr’s version of reality: “I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying.”

(Her husband, Jared Kushner, won the prize for gall in his deposition: He was too busy arranging pardons for sleazeballs to pay attention to whether Trump aides were threatening to quit over the sleazeball in the Oval.)

Trump’s data experts told him bluntly that he had lost. “So there’s no there there,” Mark Meadows commented.

Trump just couldn’t stand being labeled a loser — his father’s bête noire. He maniacally subverted the election out of pure selfishness and wickedness, knowing it is easy to manipulate people on social media with the Big Lie.

It was fine with him if his followers broke the law and attacked the police and went to jail, while he praised their “love” from afar. It’s amazing that no lawmakers were killed.

Everywhere you look, there’s something that makes your blood run cold. The monster in “Frankenstein” is not the only one who has forsaken “thoughts of honour.”

Russia, also in the grip of a monster, is invading and destroying a neighboring democracy for no reason, except Vladimir Putin’s delusions of grandeur.

In Uvalde, the unfathomable story unspools about how the police delayed rescuing schoolchildren for an hour because a commander was worried about the officers’ safety.

Greedy golf icons joined a tour underwritten by the Saudis, even though the Saudi crown prince ordered a journalist dismembered. (Kushner is under investigation about whether he traded on his government position to secure a $2 billion investment from the Saudis for his new private equity firm.)

As Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the committee, noted, when the Capitol was attacked in 1814, it was by the British. This time it was by an enemy within, egged on by the man at the heart of the democracy he swore to protect.

“They did so at the encouragement of the president of the United States,” Thompson said of the mob, “trying to stop the transfer of power, a precedent that had stood for 220 years.”

It’s mind-boggling that so many people still embrace Trump when it’s so plain that he cares only about himself. He was quick to throw Ivanka off the sled on Friday, indicating her opinion did not count since she “was not involved in looking at, or studying, Election results. She had long since checked out.”

Let some conservatives dismiss the hearings as “A Snooze Fest.” Let Fox News churlishly refuse to run them.

The hearing was mesmerizing, describing a horror story with predatory Proud Boys and a monster at its center that even Mary Shelley could have appreciated. The ratings were boffo, with nearly 20 million viewers.

Caroline Edwards, the tough Capitol Police officer who suffered a concussion, was sprayed in her eyes and got back up to return to the fight, described a hellscape.

“I was slipping in people’s blood,” she recalled. “You know, I — I was catching people as they fell. I — you know, I was — it was carnage.”

In his dystopian Inaugural speech, Trump promised to end “American carnage.” Instead, he delivered it. Now he needs to be held accountable for his attempted coup — and not just in the court of public opinion.
commonsense
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by commonsense »

iambiguous wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 8:33 pm
What is in the "best interest" of "the country"?
Which country do you mean? The one with roughly one half of Americans who say the insurrectionists were jolly tourists, or the roughly half of Americans who believe democracy was nearly lost that day?

For there are two countries now as surely as there were at the time of the War Between the States. Hopefully there will be no more bloodshed this time than what was already spilled that ominous day in January last year.
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by Sculptor »

commonsense wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 10:26 pm
iambiguous wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 8:33 pm
What is in the "best interest" of "the country"?
Which country do you mean? The one with roughly one half of Americans who say the insurrectionists were jolly tourists, or the roughly half of Americans who believe democracy was nearly lost that day?

For there are two countries now as surely as there were at the time of the War Between the States. Hopefully there will be no more bloodshed this time than what was already spilled that ominous day in January last year.
Where are you getting those numbers from?
It sounds like you are dragging them out of your arse.

Last poll I saw, the insurrectionists had a 17% approval rating, against an 83% disapproval rating.
That is possibly one of the most decisive polls I've ever seen in any democratic question.
Even 73% of Republicans disapprove.
commonsense
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by commonsense »

Sculptor wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:03 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 10:26 pm
iambiguous wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 8:33 pm
What is in the "best interest" of "the country"?
Which country do you mean? The one with roughly one half of Americans who say the insurrectionists were jolly tourists, or the roughly half of Americans who believe democracy was nearly lost that day?

For there are two countries now as surely as there were at the time of the War Between the States. Hopefully there will be no more bloodshed this time than what was already spilled that ominous day in January last year.
Where are you getting those numbers from?
It sounds like you are dragging them out of your arse.

Last poll I saw, the insurrectionists had a 17% approval rating, against an 83% disapproval rating.
That is possibly one of the most decisive polls I've ever seen in any democratic question.
Even 73% of Republicans disapprove.
Deep in their hearts, and in my arse as well, all Republicans love Trump and his antics, while all Democrats despise him and his ilk. Roughly half and half.
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Sculptor
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by Sculptor »

commonsense wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:13 pm
Sculptor wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 11:03 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Jun 11, 2022 10:26 pm

Which country do you mean? The one with roughly one half of Americans who say the insurrectionists were jolly tourists, or the roughly half of Americans who believe democracy was nearly lost that day?

For there are two countries now as surely as there were at the time of the War Between the States. Hopefully there will be no more bloodshed this time than what was already spilled that ominous day in January last year.
Where are you getting those numbers from?
It sounds like you are dragging them out of your arse.

Last poll I saw, the insurrectionists had a 17% approval rating, against an 83% disapproval rating.
That is possibly one of the most decisive polls I've ever seen in any democratic question.
Even 73% of Republicans disapprove.
Deep in their hearts, and in my arse as well, all Republicans love Trump and his antics, while all Democrats despise him and his ilk. Roughly half and half.
That is deluded talk.
commonsense
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Re: January 6th hearings

Post by commonsense »

:)
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