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Daily thread - United States 2021 transition of power - January 10
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It just occurred to me that this whole attack on the capital follows the pattern of a lynching almost exactly.
The impetus of the event is the success of a group that they hate, combined with constructed facts - that is to say, lies they tell themselves. This has been churning for a while until they were spurred into action by the words of someone with power.
The crowd was almost entirely made up of white people, with the most violent group being made up of white men. And just like a historical lynching, there was a relatively small number of people actively hurting people while the majority were there to see their perverted views of “justice” being carried out. And like many historical lynchings, the police were ineffective at controlling the crowd.
With how many far-right rallies there are nowadays, this is kind of frightening. How many more lynchings are there going to be in the years to come?
That's usually how this goes.
Most people show up for the party/solidarity without a second thought for anything beyond a good time. Then there's the folks with an agenda using those useful idiots as cover. Give it a little time and everyone's getting pissed off, worked up, and less rational. Before you know it you've got a bloodthirsty mob on your hands. This is the danger whenever you get large groups of people congregating together.
Make no mistake, we came very close to losing several members of the house, senate, and white house yesterday. We could all be watching live video feed of kidnapped senators right now while listening to batshit crazy ultimatums from homegrown terror groups... and we still have to get past the 20th of this month before we can even begin to pretend we're in the clear. At least the mob has lost the advantage of surprise (not like they ever should have had it in the first place).
L. Lin Wood, attorney for Kyle Rittenhouse, explicitly called for Pence's death on Parler during the events at the Capitol on Wednesday. Parler has since removed the message.
Here is Wood's response (imgur link, partly because I don't want to link to Parler and partly because it will likely be gone soon). He describes his threats as "rhetorical hyperbole".
Take special note of the metrics. I had thought Parler was a tiny site with a small group of users. At the time I screenshotted it, Wood's post has 7.4 million views, with ~10,000 comments, ~24,000 echoes, and ~105,000 upvotes. Chilling.
Wasn't there an article (or articles) that came out when the site started becoming popular that said their numbers were hugely inflated due to bots, dupe accounts, etc? (I may be misremembering, though)
Nothing I'm familiar with, but I'll admit that while I was browsing their site I was skeptical of the numbers as well.
If they are true, the amount of support for some of the stuff I saw there is haunting. If they are false, they still create the perception that there is far more social support for their positions than is actually true. Either way is deeply troubling.
Is Parler starting to moderate their site now?
From the article you linked
I thought the whole shtick about Parler was that it's a free-space to post anything.
They definitely bill themselves as such, but they do have a (very minimal) moderation policy. You can see their guidelines here and here (both PDFs).
They're getting loads of funding from the Mercers. I suspect they are having things removed when it becomes counter-productive to the site's goals.
Well said, this is the message that needs to be repeated right now.
The F.B.I. arrests a man who had carried zip ties into the Capitol.
p.s. The "internet researcher" credited by the NYT works at U of T's Citizen Lab, which makes me proud to see. :)
Related Justice.gov press release:
Two Men Charged in Connection with Events at U.S. Capitol
YouTube bans Steve Bannon's podcast channel hours after Rudy Giuliani appeared on an episode and blamed the Capitol siege on Democrats
This is a reminder that even though this is good news, we should not be giving YouTube any kudos for doing the right thing here. Bannon called for Fauci's execution 2 months ago and YouTube was content to leave him on their platform then.
Pipe bombs found at DNC and RNC buildings were viable
Stripe Stops Processing Payments for Trump Campaign Website
AWS and now Stripe, awesome. It's nice to see not just consumer-facing companies but also the infrastructure/fintech, lower-level companies do this too. Domain registrars next? Can LetsEncrypt revoke certificates?
I wonder if Cloudflare will get in the game. Their DDoS protection enables a lot of questionable websites to remain online.
Gab is still under Cloudflare protection AFAIK, and it's not much better than Parler. However, they did cut ties with 8chan and Daily Stormer at inflection points revolving around those two sites though, so who knows what they will do now. Matthew Prince has some pretty awkward ideals regarding not wanting to be an arbiter of hateful content online (See: Terminating Service for 8Chan). But maybe this failed coup nonsense will get him to finally step up and take some responsibility for what his customers allow to take place on their sites. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Second U.S. Capitol Police officer dies
It's now being reported as a suicide. :(
Off-duty U.S. Capitol Police officer has died; law enforcement officials cite suicide
A newly elected Republican congresswoman has apologised for quoting Hitler in a speech in Washington.
Truth is
strangerstupider than fiction. If you wrote dystopian fiction where a group named "Moms for America" defended a politician quoting Hitler, it'd be dismissed as completely unrealistic.Pelosi: House ‘will proceed’ to impeachment of Trump
Pelosi's press release of the letter can be found here:
https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/11021-0
Disappointing but not surprising how slow they're making the timeline.
Monday, trying to get unanimous consent for a resolution. This requires only a single Republican objection to block it, which will certainly happen.
Tuesday, full house vote on the resolution. Crucially, this isn't impeachment - it's a non-binding resolution asking Pence to pretty please invoke the 25th.
Then Wednesday, they start bringing impeachment to the floor. That means the full impeachment vote in the House probably won't even happen this week.
Does Pelosi realize this isn't chess-by-mail?! You're allowed to make more than one move per day.
Apparently the Senate won't start the trial until after Trump is gone, so a few days more or less doesn't matter.
While I agree, I also am not surprised. Religion is not limited to the Republicans, and America has a lot of influential religious groups that need to be appealed to.
There has only ever been one openly atheist person in the US Congress in its entire history.
Currently, 88% of Congress is some form of Christian.
To be fair, many minorities are very religious and vote democratic. According to pew, half of Black people and 40% of Hispanics who vote for the democrats believe you need God to be moral.
Capitol police were overrun, ‘left naked’ against rioters
Seattle man charged with assaulting a federal officer at U.S. Capitol siege
More bullshit "kid gloves" treatment. He punched a cop. Released without bail, allowed to fly home on his own, and not even put under house arrest or GPS monitoring or anything else.
Lawmakers may have been exposed to coronavirus in Capitol lockdown, attending physician says
If it was the new strain, the answer to that last bit is: all of them will be exposed.
Jake LaTurner tests positive 19 hours after the vote. Everyone who was in that room with him has been exposed - he would have been highly contagious before showing those symptoms. I'd assume anyone who was there that day has it by now.
Man With Assault Rifle Charged With Threatening Pelosi, Officials Say
New Marist poll (A+ rating) shows that only 77% of Republicans approve of Trump after Wednesday, a sharp decline from the 90% he held before.
It's really incredible that in context, the use of "only" to describe a proportion of 77% is actually entirely reasonable.
It would be quite impactful electorally - if even half of that trend existed for the prior election, and those who disapproved simply did not vote, Biden would have won in a absolute landslide with >400 electoral votes.
Republicans are already the smallest group between Democrats and Independents, and naturally are the most ardent Trump supporters - that is quite a slide, even if there is some reversion to the mean as Wednesday fades from memory.
I'm gonna have to reccomend this album of charts on Republican opinion linked to me by @moonbathers here.
But yet there's still fucking 89% that believe the election results are inaccurate?? I'm kind of sad I even clicked on that link now.I totally misinterpreted. He has 89% approval among those who think the results are inaccurate. Okay, that makes more sense, and is significantly less surprising. Still, thanks for providing it. :)eta: From page 8 of the PDF, the actual Republican % that believe the election results are inaccurate is still 72 goddamn percent. Reading that makes my blood pressure high.
edit2: Okay, the mental gymnastics are actually heavily on display here. Roughly 18% of Republicans support the actions at the capitol on Wed (pg 10), but they are basically evenly split, 47%-47% on whether it was criminal actions or a legitimate protest. (pg 12) For a silver lining, at least 33% of Republicans believe the police were being "not aggressive enough" towards the insurrectionists. (pg 13) And yet, 17% of Republicans believe the insurrectionists should not be prosecuted?? (pg 14) I mean, at least the first and last numbers line up, but how do you make sense of such conflicting beliefs?
edit3: Nevermind, I just found it... It seems the numbers are even betweeen Dem and Rep on "When thinking about the issues that divide the nation, do you think this is a serious threat to the future of our democracy?" Dem 86% yes Rep 85% yes (pg 18). BUT, the very next page, "When thinking about the issues that divide the nation, do you think our democracy is likely to survive?" Dem 85% yes, Rep 63% yes. 85%-63% = 12%, I think these are the Republicans who think that:
a) Democrats have stolen the election
b) The actions taken by the insurrectionists were justified
c) If they cannot overthrow the government, the government will be controlled by a shadow entity and they will never have representation again (what they perceive as the literal end of democracy)
But that's just my theory. Anyway, I need to step away from this doc for a bit.
Goldman, JPMorgan, Citi Suspend Political Donations
I wasn't expecting a corporate backlash, surprised and happy to see one. That's some serious pressure.
Youtube footage of The Capitol Riot: As it Happened
In blow to Trump, golf’s PGA strips major championship from Trump-owned course
Is anyone else worried we are headed for de facto one party state (controlled by the Democrats, pushed even further to the right by welcoming anti-Trump refugees of the GOP) where the primary organized opposition is literal fascists?
Short answer: I'm not worried about one-party government, I'm worried about the continuation of our two-party government being completely ineffective and unable to do anything meaningful.
Long answer:
Democrats will only barely have a Senate majority. It's a 50-50 tie which means that VP Harris will be casting the tie-breaker on essentially every vote. They can't afford to lose a single Democratic vote which means the most conservative Democrat (Joe Manchin from West Virginia) has effective veto power over anything the Democrats would like to pass.
And all of this is just to get to 51 votes, which isn't enough to pass major legislation because of the filibuster. Democrats will be able to confirm Cabinet appointees and judges, and pass continuing resolutions to fund the government. And...that's about it. Any non-budget legislation requires 60 votes to override a filibuster, and there's zero chance that 10 Republican Senators will vote to allow Biden to have a major legislative accomplishment.
Because the rules of Congress make zero sense, it takes 60 votes to override a filibuster on any one particular bill, but it would only take 51 votes to end the filibuster entirely. That means it could be done by the 51 Democrats, but Joe Manchin has signaled he's opposed to that.
Even if a miracle happens and Manchin is convinced to end the filibuster...you're back in the realm of not being able to lose a single Democratic vote. Want to pass climate change legislation? Manchin would have a veto. Infamously, the Affordable Care Act didn't have a public option because of Joe Lieberman, who was the Manchin-esque conservative Democrat of that era. Back then, Democrats did have a 60-vote Senate majority, but losing Lieberman's vote by including a public option would have cut that to 59 votes. And again, because the rules of Congress make zero sense, you can't pass major legislation if you "only" have a 59-to-41 majority.
Also, all of this is only possible because Democrats won both runoff elections in Georgia. It's easy to imagine a parallel universe where one or both of those seats was lost. If that had happened, we'd be facing a Biden administration where zero federal judges were appointed, where Cabinet appointments could be vetoed by Republicans, and where continuing resolutions to fund the government required at least one Republican vote, leading to increased likelihood of government shutdowns because Republicans have no incentive for the government to run smoothly or efficiently.
Long-term, none of this is going to get better, it's only going to get worse. By 2040, 70% of Americans are going to live in the 15 largest states. That means 70% of the population are represented by 30 Senators, and 30% of the population is represented by 70 Senators. Over the next 10-20 years it's going to become increasingly less likely for Democrats to even have a 50-seat-plus-VP "majority" in the Senate.
We've gone back and forth on this stuff but I have to say, I completely agree this is a possibility and also seems to be our chief risk going forward. That's why I'm so keen to keep the pressure up on congress, and get the media covering them like they haven't covered them in ages. Put them in the spotlight, and hope that pressure is enough to get them to work as a unit, at least until this mess is over.
I'm a bit worried that people still think this is all about Trump. Every scrap of coverage out there has his name all over it. That always has been his superpower. Even now, he has every single idiot out there hypnotized. The news networks really are chumps, aren't they?
Forget Trump exists. He's out of here one way or another, and when he's gone, it's not going to get better.
We need to impress on our senators and representatives and on Joe's cabinet that they need to get their shit together and get moving. This upcoming legislative session will determine the fate of this country. These will be the most important 100 days of any Presidency in living memory.
If you've got issues with representatives and protesters and Trump's GPS coordinates after he's out, let the bureau sort it out. That's their job, and they are good at it. Keep the pressure on congress. I want to see those live view numbers skyrocketing on those sessions. I want them to know that when they rise, they are under a microscope. Make them sweat bullets and choose every single word carefully.
I can’t tell if you want Trump to have more or less attention.
What I want, is for all of the attention we're focusing on Trump right now to transition directly to congress once Trump is out of the picture. All the news networks are panicking about the loss of Trump ratings. I suggest CSPAN, and lots of coverage of what's discussed there.
Do you consider my original comment to be "focused on Trump"? The only time I mentioned his name was to give a reference point to the philosophical rift that is forming within the GOP.
Not at all. I just thought since you shared what was worrying you, I'd share what's been worrying me so we could commiserate. :P
You can have a one party state where other parties are allowed to exist. That's why I said "de facto" one party state, as opposed to "de jure" one party state, where there legally cannot exist any kind of opposition party.
Yeah, and I am saying that the GOP is on the verge of fracturing, and that I think that the most likely outcome of that is a bunch of Republicans joining the Democratic Party, pushing the party further to the right, and making it impossible for the actual GOP to win basically any elections at all, at least at the national level. Creating a de facto one party state controlled by the democrats where the primary organized opposition is literal fascists.
Parties adapt to win elections. I don't think you need to worry about this.
Longterm if the crazies split with GOP and they don't think they can win with them in the party, GOP will walk towards the middle and chew into D voters. Ds will walk left.
There can still be plenty of within-party dissent and it would increase without strong opposition. Also, it seems likely that another party would form eventually. (The Republican Party started after the Whigs imploded.)
For the moment, the Democrats will have very thin majorities in both House and Senate, and some defections might give them a somewhat stronger one, but not overwhelming.
Just so it's clear, I don't think that a one party state is necessarily something that should be avoided at all costs, or that it can't function in the interests of the people. For starters, I've tried to think about what the difference between a "no-party" state and a "one-party" state would be, and I can't come up with any good answers, which makes me think the line between party and government is ultimately kind of an arbitrary one, anyway.
I also regret writing that I think this is the "most likely" outcome. It's really more like I think it's probable enough that I think people should be really giving it more thought.
I feel like that's where we've been for quite a while already, just with the opposition periodically in power. While it's only recently-ish that they've started to embrace actual fascism, the GOP has been the biggest extant threat to American democracy for a long time, and the Democratic party has for years struggled to build a coherent platform around having to contain the full spectrum of democracy-compatible political beliefs, as an effective monopoly on national level small-d democratic politics.
Could you give me the deets on that? I haven't heard anything.
Could you expand the acronyms, please? I’m drawing a blank.
I don't think that changes anything w.r.g to political power and party control in the US considering the PSL gets around 0.05% of the vote when they're on the ballot.
If that were to happen, while in the long term bad in the sense of placing de facto power in an unrelated, 3rd party organization, having the Democrat primaries effectively be where effective democratic power is vested honestly sounds like a more effective form of governance than what I think is the more likely outcome, namely that that it's a two-party state where one of the parties is controlled by fascists and is competitive.
Somewhat, particularly if more senators and house reps right-shift their economic policies to acomodate them, making the party an even bigger tent and making proper progressive change even more distant, but given they'll have to share the tent with progressives, not very badly.