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Post-Trump: III (decline, further tantrums, legal proceedings, book deals etc)

The judge had his finger on the scale right from the start, and the prosecution was not competently run.

This verdict will be seen as license for other adventure tourists to go hunting for libtards.

The judge’s bias was on full display throughout the trial. For example, he forbade the prosecution from referring to the the two dead people as “victims”, but allowed the defense to refer to them as "arsonists" and "looters”.

You are also correct about the horrible precedent this sets for future protests.
 
The judge had his finger on the scale right from the start, and the prosecution was not competently run.

This verdict will be seen as license for other adventure tourists to go hunting for libtards.

I very much fear that you are correct.

Up next is the Ahmaud Arbery verdict - I really hope that justice is served in that one or all hell will break loose.
 
The terrifying thing is it basically legitimises Trump’s “Proud Boys” heavily armed white-supremacist terrorists etc. This and the very deliberate attempts from the Republican far-right to rig/remove votes from non-whites makes the prospect of America descending into civil war and fascism increasingly plausible.

Fourteen Steps of Fascism:

1 : The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”


2: The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”


3: The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”


4: Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”


5: Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”


6: Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”


7 : The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”


8 : The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”


9 : Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”


10: Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”


11: Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”


12: Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”


13: Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”


14: Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

-- Umberto Eco
 
Fourteen Steps of Fascism:

1 : The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”


2: The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”


3: The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”


4: Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”


5: Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”


6: Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”


7 : The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”


8 : The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”


9 : Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”


10: Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”


11: Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”


12: Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”


13: Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”


14: Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

-- Umberto Eco

I fear that 2024 will see the dismantling of America as we know it. Violence and civil war look more likely with each passing day towards the Endarkenment.

#GileadRepublicans
 
It appears he was acquitted within the strict definition of the law which surprisingly includes entitlement to shoot if he believed he was going to be assaulted. You have to wind back from the trial and then consider gun and public order laws that allow a creepy white 17 year old to march into a crowd where his appearance with a semi automatic rifle would generate alarm and anger. It goes without saying that had he been black he’d have been hunted down and killed by the police.

The precedent this sets is appalling- basically armed individuals can freely turn up at a protest and start shooting if they believe they are going to be assaulted. Armed militias is a term you associate with Lebanon or Gaza, instead this is Wisconsin and Michigan. It’ll end in a blood bath or white suprematists and fascists in America will drive all protest off the streets. After that they’ll come to victims’ homes looking for them.
 
You didn't think they were buying all these guns (400m or 50% of all civilian held guns in the world !) for the shooting range did you ?
 
I’m amazed he wasn’t charged with transporting weapons across state lines or taking an illegal weapon into a curfew zone. I cannot believe no laws were broken here.
 
The verdict in the Ahmaud Arbery murder trial went the other way, all three defendants have been found guilty.

Thank goodness for that. Had it gone the other way it would have been a license for people to roam their neighborhoods shooting any anyone who "looked suspicious".
 
Legal Eagle on the Rittenhouse trial. It's quite long as the specifics are quite involved, although he does make an interesting point: many of the people at the protest would have had at least as good a case than Rittenhouse if they had killed him.


Not sure what to make of Rittenhouse telling Tucker Carlson he supports BLM (other than like that it annoyed Carlson and many of the his unpleasant supporters in the middle of their victory laps). I suspect it's mostly about his "I am not a racist" narrative, but we shall see what he does next.
 
Legal Eagle on the Rittenhouse trial. It's quite as the specifics are quite involved, although he does make an interesting point: many of the people at the protest would have had at least as good a case than Rittenhouse if they had killed him.


Not sure what to make of Rittenhouse telling Tucker Carlson he supports BLM (other than like that it annoyed Carlson and many of the his unpleasant supporters in the middle of their victory laps). I suspect it's mostly about his "I am not a racist" narrative, but we shall see what he does next.

The verdict means that if someone points a gun at someone else, and that someone else in turn points a gun at the someone, then both have a case for self-defense if one shots and kills the other. A totally bizarre scenario.
 
The verdict means that if someone points a gun at someone else, and that someone else in turn points a gun at the someone, then both have a case for self-defense if one shots and kills the other. A totally bizarre scenario.
So back to this then...

scene-of-duel-between-two-cowboys-in-the-american-western-vector-id1227150276
 
Trump’s legacy looks likely to be the far-right “pro life” judges he appointed. Mississippi now on the verge of setting abortion rights back to Taliban times. White conservative religious men dictating what women do with their own bodies. What could possibly go wrong? Lead item on Newsnight now.
 
Trump’s legacy looks likely to be the far-right “pro life” judges he appointed. Mississippi now on the verge of setting abortion rights back to Taliban times. White conservative religious men dictating what women do with their own bodies. What could possibly go wrong? Lead item on Newsnight now.
The argument seems to be that, as it doesn't appear in the Constitution, it cannot possibly be a constitutional right. But then, a lot of things don't appear in a document written in the late 18th century!

Of course, this is a wedge issue, invented to rile the "Christian" right. Frank Schaeffer, son of the US religious leader Francis Schaeffer, founder of l'Abri in Switzerland,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Abri

claims to have been the first one to come up with it, but says that he never intended for it to become a political football.
 
I believe Susan Collins is now officially concerned. Also Justice Sotomayor is the best Justice.

 
The right wing is trying to reestablish traditional gender roles. Rolling back gay marriage is coming next, I'm sure.
 
Thank goodness for that. Had it gone the other way it would have been a license for people to roam their neighborhoods shooting any anyone who "looked suspicious".

Hmmm 50 shades of grey on that one. Or at least gray.
 
I believe Susan Collins is now officially concerned. Also Justice Sotomayor is the best Justice.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. Over the past decade Justice Roberts has been key to keeping what last shreds of legitimacy the court has intact (in the eyes of democratic voters) by protecting the ACA, while at the same time allowing the republicans free reign on gerrymandering, campaign finance and other issues that will *REALLY* shape the coming decades in the USA.

I've always been of the opinion that the GOP's focus on Roe was a sop to keep the evangelicals onside, but the GOP clearly does not care about the life of unborn babies, because they repeatedly block funding for maternal and child healthcare and public education. It would be surprising if the SCOTUS strikes down Roe because it would be a clear signal to all left of center (and center in the US is pretty far right) that the court is just another political wing of the government - potentially leading to court packing.

I would have thought it would suit the GOP much better to *appear* to try to strike down Roe, but fail, so they could say they tried, while quietly continuing the process of dismantling democracy in the USA.
 


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