A Very American Coup

That sounds like politics rather than treason and that's what they do in Washington. Instead of calling them traitors maybe just call them politicians, same class of people different sins.

 

No. Politics was the election. Traitors are the people financing and supporting the end of Democracy in the US by not accepting the winner of this election. Erdogan shot them.

 

I would guess how we respond depends a lot on how far Trump tries to take it.

 

There is no winner at this point.

Shoot them? That doesn't sound very democratic

 

My girlfriend is from Brazil, she has been watching this election through a different lens, she turned to me the other day and said "congratulations, America has become Brazil". They have fraudulent elections always, and everyone knows it. Biden will be installed not elected. Orange is the new black, America is the new Brazil.

 

Biden has won. You saying there is not a winner just because the Dictator you support is working for a coup does not make it so - regardless of the number of militas groups he has on command. Your refusal to accept the result of the Election illustrates your position is against the democracy of your country and possibly you are working to destroy it.

I said Erdogan shot them. It's up to you how democratic you think Turkey is but you clearly find Democracy a despicable system which you refuse to accept. When people belong to a country and they work to destroy how that country is governed - well take you pick traitors or working for a coup.

 

Trump did not really promise anything other than the wall... everything else he said he had plans, but wasn't gonna tell anyone that they were

well Trump did promise socialized healthcare insurance too

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...verybody-in-replacing-obamacare-idUSKBN15005C

"“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”"


by the way, I do not believe all Trump supporters are a cult, I think some act like it, but they are a small vocal percent

 

He promised immigration reform and trade reform. I always expected a sterner policy for both and I believe he delivered. He opened areas for oil development, withdrew from the climate treaty which allowed governments outside our own to dictate that policy. He actually took action against both our business exodus to China and their very real theft of American industrial product. He reimposed sanctions on Iran and killed their terrorist in chief without involving us in another open war. He got our European allies back in the game of financing NATO. Those are things I both wanted and expected from him, you may disagree on some or all of them but they are part of the package.

 

There are literally new allegations every time I look. And every time these are investigated that are proved not only to be bogus but maliciously so and so baseless that they can only represent a wilful attempt to lie by those who are trying to allege election malfeasance here. What is the point me looking into that case you cite when tomorrow we will find that (a) it's bollocks and the numbers aren't true (b) there actually were a lot of 90 year olds who voted for the GOP or (c) there was some lawful procedure that these old folks were helped to fill out absentee ballots whilst preserving their anonymity etc. etc. What's the point in answering this continuous stream of here-today-gone-tomorrow allegations? Look at this link for how it works out when these allegations get to court:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/new...p-team-case-maricopa-county-votes/6260414002/

The Trump campaign's outrageous lies that there is a conspiracy to steal an election suddenly melt into "we don't really mean that" when faced with a court and a judge:

Demonstrating that screaming fraud in a Trumpian echo chamber is a bit different from having to demonstrate it in court, the whole case starts to fizzle away when reality meets Trumpian delusion:

Horrible legalese there from the pretentious Trump lawyer. Hypocrisy exposed... as soon as someone blew on him.

I suppose if you don't like reading what was said in court you can just call it Fake News and return to the delusions. You see what happens is that an allegation is raised, it is then debunked and it is then it is forgotten whilst new allegations come from the Trump lie factory. The point is not to win these in court - Trump is not trying to do that - but to create enough noise, give an appearance of legal substance, to have his base all hysterically screaming fraud and citing false and debunked allegations as facts, so that GOP legislatures will override the popular vote and send an Electoral Slate which votes for Trump against the results of the Election. The only question outstanding is "will it work?". The complacency of Democrats suggest it might have a chance.

Yes - read your own sentence - "if one didn't know better" you might believe that, as you said. But one does know better doesn't one?

You seem to have a problem with the US branch of an international media group operating as a free press entity in the USA? Have you looked at the ownership and global structure of "Fox News"? Do you think that the Aussie who owns it got a US passport because he loves the Constitution? The Guardian is a legally established organisation in the USA. You just don't like what its journalists are saying so you want to ban it? Kind of goes with not liking the result of a popular vote so wanting to replace it with Electors appointed by the State Legislatures.

I think you might have disappeared down the rabbit hole now. Who is "casting fear, or distrust of, the election process"? I think it's the German guy with a mother who didn't speak English as her first language.

The Guardian article is showing a path to a Trump second term which is feasible and arguably Constitutional. It is informative and exercising the authors first amendment rights to criticise such a process. First amendment rights in the USA, you might be surprised to know, apply both to the US citizen who wrote the article and the legally constituted press organisation that employs him. Again it seem the Right is trying to take away the first amendment rights of the citizenry of the USA.

Windy rubbish without evidence... you really are getting the gist here! For this sentence too mean anything you would have to give us meaningful examples that demonstrate where the journalist got it wrong. As you don't do that the Hitchens (another foreigner) rule applies to your spurious claim: "what is cited without evidence can be dismissed as easily."

Yes this follows the pattern (it is good evidence of the duplicity of the campaign). It mixes up normal post election processes to resolve electoral anomalies with specious allegations.Whether what you say is true or will be found tomorrow to be bogus when it is put before a judge, this election was very different from history in that it had an enormous turnout of voters who would not normally vote and who may or may not be interested in voting down the ballot.

I suppose the xenophobia is compulsory for membership of the club. I mean conservatives wanted to kick John Lennon out of the US for similar reasons! Unfortunately the set of facts you cite are typically alternative facts. Or are they the "feely facts"? The Guardian US is of course well established in the US, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and its journalists largely being US based and US citizens (like this one). You don't like iyt because it is liberal. The fact that Trump often tweets from British media sources (like the Daily Mail) wouldn't of course strike you as hypocrisy. Of course a media outlet doesn't have "citizenship" (unless you are talking about legal entities when the guardian US is certainly an American entity) so that's a piece of drivel you have thrown in there, but it certainly has standing. Try looking at RealClearPolitics website, where they always try and have an article ration 50:50 liberal:conservative, and you will find many links to the Guardian. Additionally Brits have to put up with their media being dominated by US owned and directed outlets (you know that "American" Aussie Rupert Murdoch who owns Fox). On a cursory examination the conservative claims to hating globalilism (citing a few liberal journalists in the US who have collaborated with a few Britis liberals to form an effective media outlet) all melt like butter when the globalist nature of their networks is unmasked with ease.

To sign off and get the stench of xenophobia out of my nostrils I will cite the person whose pamphlets lit the touch paper of the American Revolution:

 

Look you are basically countering an analysis which suggests that the MSM is covering events to say Biden has won with the specific intention of fomenting violence when Trump finally prevails. It was a disgusting piece of sophistry which probably doesn't even merit being rebutted. If the election is stolen by trump there may be unrest. The changes at the DoD may indicate that Trump is already preparing to bring in Federal troops to suppress protests. Our correspondent here shows us that they will be ready to blame the MSM for that violence. Everything looks towards the suggested scenario in the OP.

But then you go too far here in underestimating the American people. This paragraph to me seems to misunderstand the USA and I say that as a liberal foreigner who's experience of Americans is as a result of very frequent business travel, a short residence in North Carolina and membership of message boards like this, so I am not in any way an expert. But maybe in another way my experience as an outsider could be instructive to US liberals. I have traveled frequently (in excess of a hundred trips, enough to make me fascinated by the place) to conservative areas of the USA, such as North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, as well as Ohio, California, and probably twenty other states. I employed directly Americans who were and are highly conservative. The first shock I had was when a senior executive I had just hired, nicest guy, friend of mine who regularly had me round to dinner told me that the sitting President of the USA (Slick Willy) was a Chinese spy. After wondering if I had hired the wrong guy and had accidentally gotten a crackpot I slowly discovered that there were many, many very nice but perfectly extremist people in America just like him. If in politics they were raving lunatics, in business they were quite normal and often exceptionally effective. I lived in the conservative bubble where everyone watched Fox News and went along with it because the people were so nice and seemingly normal. As to their ignorance I would have too disagree with you strongly.

They suffer from selective knowledge not defective knowledge when it comes to matters of history and the Constitution. You will hear widely over and over (and have for years) that the USA is not a democracy but a Republic. They can quote to you Franklin's quip that "democracy is two wolves and a lamb arguing what to have for lunch whilst liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" (think about that one today!). That's a complex concept that they have understood that is straight from the eighteenth century and it characterises their view of the Constitution. This alone will mean that they understand that the POTUS is selected by an Electoral College that was constitutionally designed to defy the will of the people. It's true that their consideration of the subject stops at Franlin's quip and that the subtlety and nuance of juxtapositioning a republic and a democracy is beyond most of them. But you should recognise that millions of Americans, that control the GOP, have already heavily qualified in their own minds any commitment to democracy. The "deplorables" are not stupid, just a victim of their own bubble in terms of being selectively fed, just like liberals. It's a perfect example of Pope's "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing". They have been fed just enough knowledge that they are not wholly ignorant. They are very well disposed to accept a victory for Trump by a rigged Electoral College.

This acceptance of authoritarianism in politics has absolutely nothing to do with Trump because it has been like that in America for years. Not to be rude but only metropolitan elite coastal liberals who never step out of their cultural bubble would think this is a new phenomenon. It is entirely due to complacent liberals who have forgotten about the white working class in America. Try reading Thomas Frank's "What's wrong with Kansas?" to see how liberals have betrayed liberalism with an obsession with a mixture of identity politics (perceived as blaming poor white folks for racism, and poor white men for sexism), unrestrained corporate globalization, and cultural snobbery.

 

It's all legal. Malicious maybe. Deceiving the people, surely. Rewarding people for giving evidence - an established practice. But not illegal. A legal, constitutional coup.

 

Apologies Heartburn for editing the order of your words - it's not done maliciously.

A common position that seems reasonable

If only they were all like you

OK. Yes you are right that he didn't do anything. He didn't make it better despite saying he would. Maybe secretly he agreed with it and just didn't like the fact people called it Obamacare. So he gets a "well he didn't do any harm" on that one as the ACA lingers in SCOTUS?

But the vast majority of his followers voted for Republicans down the ballot that hate the ACA and want to repeal it and everything about it. There is no GOP support for what Trump talks about. They do believe "if you can't pay for it you don't get it". Probably why Trump could do nothing except say he was going to do something, over and over again.

Ok now you're going to show us what he has done and argue that his silly culture war antics can be set aside when we look at his achievements.

Well on immigration he built a bit of wall, didn't get Mexico to pay for it, separated kids from their parents to deter refugees... and on the whole treated refugees so badly that his supporters are happy. There was no great immigration reform, just a lot of vulnerable refugees being shown that the USA's no soft touch. There is still massive immigration (as is required by a country where all the bad jobs can only be done by immigrants and whose population is getting older and older). Still, even though a lot of it was optics rather than substance, he did make the USA an unfriendly place for those facing persecution to flee to. Let's give him that one. Well done Trump.

No. That's made up. Again it's the optics. I know why you think that...I mean it had the word Paris in the title and not the Texan kind. The fact is that the USA volunteered its own targets and was free to change those targets at any time. No foreign control whatsoever. Just that it was signed in France and involved getting foreigners to do the same thing eh? Still, on oil, yeah, he made the oil guys happy. Instead of supporting, empowering and advocating for the world-leading companies in the USA that are leading the movement away from fossil fuels, he made sure the USA was looking backwards in energy policies and protecting the GOPS biggest donors and some of the wealthiest elites on the planet. So a partial well done for that then Donald!

You would like to think eh? Check your local Walmart. As to businesses exiting the USA it's still happening which is why he lost PA, MI and WI. He did with his tax cuts enable one trillion dollars to come back to the USA which big corporates were holding off shore to avoid tax and this was a good thing. The deficit with China is slightly down, but that's more because Chinese labour costs are higher and higher as China turns its own economy inward (no longer cheap lab our competition). China basically got the best of Trump in these negotiations. IP protection in China is still incredibly challenging for US companies. So Trump gets credit for they Corporate tax cut but everything else is just perception based own a lot of rhetoric and noise.

He did do that on the sanctions yes. Thereby strengthening the Iranian hardliners, weakening those Iranians who wanted to end confrontation and weakening US alliances with Europeans. Killing the terrorist was a standard US POTUS thing and it wasn't him it was the US military. So well done for screwing up US alliances. That's another welcoming action to isolate the USA.

Wrong again. He insulted European allies a lot who had already (before his Presidency) agreed to increase funding over time to higher levels. Ultimately he has created a scenario where Europe increasingly sees the USA as an unreliable ally and will likely increase defence spending even more and move away from NATO. On the basis of what you wrote he failed here, but maybe this isolationist result from Trump is a success to you.

Well these were mainly perceived rather than actual achievements, the perception arising mainly from the obnoxious "style" that you object to.

Let's face it the USA is about a culture war not about politics or achievements and Trump is the ace culture warrior par excellence. Getting things done as opposed to telling you about them? Not so much!

 

He successfully survived the impeachment attempt of the "Deep State"!!

 

no he did not, he was impeached for trying to cheat on the election, he just was not removed

Trump is a one term impeached loser of a President

 

I'm shaking my head! You have weird rules!!

 

are you not American?

 

No, I'm Canadian.

 

Trump can't prevail by the numbers. If the Republican state legislators disregard the will of the people, there will be unrest unlike anything this country has ever seen and it will not be the fault of the MSM.

If it is at all common that people thought Clinton was a Chinese spy, it seems I have overestimated the collective intelligence of the American people. Believing Clinton was a Chinese Spy is the very definition of defective knowledge.

 

The states need to verify a count the first week of December, I believe. They then send the proper electors to do the actual vote late December or early January.

 

You believe I am a fool. I will take care never to make a post on any thread you set up. I put in a post and a link which itself indicated that there was a legal way how Trump can destroy Democacy in the US - if he is supported as he is by Republicans who do it because their main support now is white Nationalists and Christian Zioinists. If the US did not have this legal loophole there would be nothing to worry about and while it may have a legal loophole in US law, it is an attempt to destroy the way the US is governed so on any level supporting this is as much an attempt to be a traitor to one's country as anything could be. If successful it risks civil war and/or the destruction of the US. In this (original)late is correct that the consequence of this action will depend on how far they are able to take it. If it were kept to just Trump being Trump the effect might be minimal

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/obama-says-republicans-humouring-trump-over-election-are-putting-democracy-on-dangerous-path/ar-BB1aXTEY?MSCC=1598960167%252520%252522%252520target%25253D%252522_blank%252522%25253ERead%252520the%252520Article

but a lot has been done already been done to convince Trumps followers to believe another Trump term is their right. In a situation where the people of the US were divided so much that I read more than once yesterday that they are 'not as divided as they were at the civil war' being the one thing that people can say to suggest they are not too divided this has added salt to a very raw wound. This makes the ability to heal the country - a country where militias who support Trump have grown enormously during his Presidency, much harder. It is time for Trump's supporters to decide whether they support the way their country is governed and will come together as one country or whether their intention is to follow those who are working to destroy that country and hence are traitors to their country and feel fine about destroying it because that is what this is about.

 

And that is when we have a President elect and the peaceful transition of power takes place.

 

You are making a significant assumption. You are assuming that you know that people a) didn't also vote for Trump, and b) that enough folks voted for Biden in the states that mattered. Those are pretty big leaps of faith on your part. As for the attempted coup, wouldn't you agree that when election tampering vis a vis the mail in ballots is exposed that your belief in who tried to steal the election and execute a coup is falsely attributed, by you? Will you be that honest when this happens? Hard to say. I have doubts.

 

Ah... a scolding. I know, you're probably not used to having folks challenge your authority. Do you really work for the Guardian as you alluded to? Does that provide you the platform bias that underpins your willingness to assert such declaratory statements? It seems as much.

So, here's the thing. When journalists come at the story from a position of authority, you've lost. You want to tell us what to believe, as opposed to simply relaying the story. When you leap to editorializing, you've lost. Folks don't need or want media to tell them what to think. We just want the story. And we are capable of interpreting those stories. But sure. You feel like you're insulted, but what you are really feeling is embarrassment. Enjoy.

 

Yes I do. There is ample circumstantial evidence showing the rules were broken.

 

100% agree with this.