2022 elections. The steady march for sanity continues.

DIY-HP-LED said:

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DIY-HP-LED said:

He wouldn't like a world where Trump won, Putin would have still invaded, and America would sit on its hands. China would have been emboldened by it, attacked Tawain and Australia would be on the front line, but Julian would have gotten home with a presidential pardon from Trump, so Luke would be happy, but probably in the army.

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Lucky Luke said:

I didn't like the world when trump did win..Americans failed the intelligence test there that's for sure.

I'm still not sure if America getting interested in Ukraine was good or bad- seems economically bad so far. For everyone. I'm sure the American armaments industry is making a packet though. Im paying nearly $2 a L for unleaded so its hurting me in the hip pocket daily. Guess we will see when it's all over but economically the worlds hurting by America deciding to have their proxy war. Its a war nobody seems to care about or has an interest in. Will be lots of money to be made in rebuilding though no matter the outcome but a stable stock market right now would be great.

Australia doesn't have to support Bidens defence of Taiwan. Granted we seem to support all the American wars so we probably would- but its not a given. Like Hong Kong Taiwan is historically Chinese and Australia has a huge chinese population. I get that the itty bitsy tiny islands of Taiwan is an American strategic spot for their coming war on China.

Not sure why id be in the army for as we don't have conscription. Australia is a fair way from little Taiwan so not a front line even if we decided to back US forces. Front line will be Korea- again/still.

Trumps the one who started the legal battle to get Assange and discussed assassinating him. The hope was Biden would see sense and stop the battle to extradite him. Obama didn't want to risk the legal precedence on Free speech to start legal proceedings remember. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-assange-idUSKBN2602BH " WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is wanted by the United States because he is a “political enemy” of President Donald Trump, his London extradition hearing was told on Wednesday. "


By the way:
The terms of our Joint Communiqué dictate the fundamental basis of Australia's one China policy – the Australian Government does not recognise the ROC as a sovereign state and does not regard the authorities in Taiwan as having the status of a national government.

Also worth a watch and extremely current https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-04/asis-spy-chief-paul-symon-fears-for-future/101607986

"Beijing views the self-ruled island as a breakaway province that should eventually be reunited with mainland China.
The United States has a deliberately vague agreement to provide Taiwan with the means to protect itself.
But US President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that his forces would defend the island in the event of a Chinese invasion."
Why would Biden say that unless he wanted war with China? And didn't Trump start the China Western world decline?
What's America's game plan? Destabilize large regions to attempt to keep its dominance perhaps.

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US nuclear-capable B-52 bombers head to Australia as China slams move

The United States is planning to send nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China continue to simmer, the Pentagon confirmed Tuesday. The Australian Broadcasting Corporat…

thehill.com

Fogdog said:

As with any google search, the article my search took me do did not provide what I asked for in my google search -- "statistical analysis of republican and democrat use of violent rhetoric". Instead, the article looks at the contradiction between surveys that show between 10% to 40% of Americans support political violence with the observation that politically motivated hate crimes in the US are very rare -- less than 1%. The article is to me a hard read. Some to the figures do not include adequate labels to describe the different markers in the graphs. It's also laden with jargon that I'm not familiar with. So, I'm relying on what I could glean from what I could understand and the conclusions the authors provide.

Nonetheless, the article contains an alternative view. That political rhetoric, is mostly just that. We may disagree but our political views do not lead to accepting violence. The authors don't say it but their findings disgree with people who say we are headed for a civil war. This article would dispute that. Their study suggests that the US is not decaying toward a violent civil war.

Current research overstates American support for political violence

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116870119

The basic conclusion from this study:

Support for Partisan Violence Is Lower than Previously Reported

Yet, evidence suggests that affective polarization is not related to and does not cause increases in support for political violence (20, 21) and is generally unrelated to political outcomes (21, 22). Moreover, partisan violence appears to be unrelated to many other political variables (2). We are therefore left with a phenomenon that is not explained by the current literature on partisan animosity, that is rarely observed in the world, but that is based on prior work supported by a near majority of the American population (1–3).

High sounding words. Political animosity: or "affective polarization" is up, meaning apolitical consequences such as who we marry or socialize with at work or elsewhere. Who is awarded a scholarship and employment can be affected by partisan animosity. The authors found that support for political violence does not appear to be related to political animosity. An apparent contradiction that they address in their study.

Other conclusions:
Ambiguous Questions Create Upward Bias in Estimates of Support for Violence.
Disengaged Respondents Upwardly Bias Measures of Support for Political Violence.
Respondents Reject Extreme Violence, Whether It Is Political or Not

Summary statement:

Not only is support for violence low overall, but support drops considerably as political violence becomes more severe. The most serious form of political violence—murder in service of a political cause—is widely condemned.
Importantly, our results are not conditional on partisanship (SI Appendix, Tables S2, S20, and S33). Our results are robust to several other predicted causes of political violence. We find that several standard political measures (i.e., affective polarization and political engagement) are less predictive of support for political violence than are general measures of aggression

If this is true, then the concerns coming from those who are to the left of the radical right MAGA types are overblown. There are violent actors in that group and as attempted assassination of Kavanaugh indicates, there are violent actors on the left too. Trump did incite a mob to attack the Capitol Building but this article indicates most people who are Republicans do not support that kind of violence.

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Bagginski said:

This ties in exactly with what I’ve been saying about manipulative polling, which has been in heavy rotation for many years - almost entirely on the ‘right’. My crash course in manipulative polling came the night of the ‘94 midterms, when Gingrich was taking over the House with his”contract” - yes, I got a call from a Republican-adjacent pollster on election night, while I watched the debacle unfold.

“Which of these boilerplate GOP issues is THE most important facing Congress? No, you MUST pick one of the provided options, or we’re done here; you’ll get a chance at the end to register your opinion.”

“Which of these steps is MOST URGENT to combat [made-up shit]? No, you can’t skip this question or insert another option, or we’re done here.”

“Select your top 3 *priorities* for the new Congress…like I said, you’ll get a chance to say your piece at the end.”

“Okay, that completes our questions; would you be willing to take another poll like this in the future?”
HELL, NO!!!

…and THAT was the extent of me “having my say”

TL;DR = they didn’t want OPINIONS…they wanted *support* for the plans they’d already laid, and posed “questions” that virtually eliminated any possibility of real opinion…raw sludge they could process into “support”. Given that they are simply making shit up to fit the takeover narrative, I must regard “polls” as generally meaningless at this stage of the game…more chaff & bullshit, flooding the zone, hoping to move the needle against the tide

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Demonstrations and Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020

Preliminary analysis of key trends from May to August.

acleddata.com

Fogdog said:

On the other hand, looking at what the researchers found: that increased political division in the US is not changing people's attitudes toward political violence. Despite all the rhetoric and loaded words thrown about by politicians these days, despite the huge protests we saw during the summer of 2020 supporting the BLM movement, this country is not becoming an unsafe place to live. Between 15 and 24 million people took to the streets during the BLM protests and a tiny fraction engaged in violent acts, most of which were connected to apolitical looting.

Demonstrations and Political Violence in America: New Data for Summer 2020

Preliminary analysis of key trends from May to August.

acleddata.com

AN OVERWHELMINGLY PEACEFUL MOVEMENT
The vast majority of demonstration events associated with the BLM movement are non-violent (see map below). In more than 93% of all demonstrations connected to the movement, demonstrators have not engaged in violence or destructive activity.

We can (still) voice our differences and be peaceful about it too.

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sweetisland2009 said:

Does that 7% of violence/destruction dismiss the 93% of peaceful protest?

Of the 20 million +/- how many were in the wrong and used violence or destruction?

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• There were 13,600 arrests nationwide. source
• Between 85% and 95% of all charges were dropped. source
• 120 pled or were found guilty of charges. source
• Some were right wing trouble makers.
• From the link in the post you responded to, there were 2,400 peaceful protests during and 220 protests where violence or destruction of property occurred.

Fogdog said:

• There were 13,600 arrests nationwide. source
• Between 85% and 95% of all charges were dropped. source
• 120 pled or were found guilty of charges. source
• Some were right wing trouble makers.
• From the link in the post you responded to, there were 2,400 peaceful protests during and 220 protests where violence or destruction of property occurred.

Anecdotally: Speaking as a person who was either at Portland protests or knew those who were, the violence that is referred to in that article was not necessarily caused by the protesters. Some was caused by the police, some was caused by Proud Boys, some was due to actions by protesters, some was from apolitical looters.

So, 20 million protesters. 120 found guilty of violence or property destruction. Do the math, the percentage of BLM protesters or onlookers who committed violence or property damage is practically zero. In more than 90% of all locations where protests occurred, no violence was reported. AT ALL. Even where violence or property damage took place, there were no BLM leaders involved and not all of the 120 who were found guilty of a crime were BLM protesters.

So; The rare instances of violence that occurred did not dismiss (invalidate?) the very reasonable complaint voiced during those BLM protests.

But that wasn't my point. I'm saying that we held massive demonstrations with tens of millions participating in a political protest and only a tiny fraction felt that violence or property damage was justified. The tens of millions who did not agree with the protests also did not act out in violence. To me, this demonstrates that the US is not about to break apart in violence and people on the other side are not disposed toward violence. I think this is a good sign for the future. The study that I cited provides insight into why and refutes reports by others that the US is prone to a storm of political violence from any side. debunks "Civil War" talk.

That said,

Trump and other MAGA rhetoric is attracting a number violence prone individuals. They are capable of violence. But they are so few that their acts of violence proves my point. Shame on Trump. Shame on other MAGA leaders for doing this. But their politically violent acts are not representative of even their ardent supporter's attitudes toward political violence. I could be wrong but the evidence supports this conclusion.

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cannabineer said:

I cannot resist observing that the thesis of your last paragraph was recently hammered home.

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Fogdog said:

Yep,

I cannot resist observing the pun in the observation you couldn't resist observing.

That guy who drove your pun home was just another sick person that Trump and his Wrenfields used for political advantage.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

Hot civil wars in counties like America are not fought with classic battles like the last one, there is cold civil war, and one side only is waging it. The violence is political and rhetorical, and the damage is done to democracy and its institutions while it leads to radicalization of its followers. The battles are fought by one side only and they involve making the government dysfunctional while blaming the government for the problems they create, exacerbate, they blame the other side using their propaganda arm. Back in the good old days the news media would bust them for this bullshit, but now we have alternative universes, Hellscapes of disinformation and social/emotional support for any fruitcake idea, including flat earth.

There is a cold civil war of sorts going on, waged by one side, it's a chronic problem in America and recently became acute with Trump. The political characteristics and traditions of the USA allowed for the suppression of minorities, minority rule, the existence of fascist states with in the union and large-scale terrorist organizations like the KKK that were successful for a century. America is an imperfect democracy who's constitutional and social framework is undergoing a periodic stress test, in the past other than the civil war and several crises, there were massacres and genocide too.

So, this shit should be no surprise, there won't be a lot of violence in a cold civil war, the objective is to gain power through the ballot box and then rig and ignore the will of the people while using the power of the state to crush the opposition. Once they gain power their next logical target is the courts or any other institution of liberal democracy that gets in their way. Many republican voters might be mild mannered folks, but the radicals will set the agenda and the con artists will go along.

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Fogdog said:

As usual, I think you are speaking from some kind of delusion. Cold civil war? Rhetorical violence?

As long as issues are settled peacefully at the ballot box. As long as people peacefully use their 1A rights and others respect that right, we are going to be OK. If we can do that, Trump will become a strange fact of history.

I'm not saying we will do that but I'm pointing out that there is a valid argument we are and will.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

I'm speaking of people being in a psychological state of war, an instinctive reaction caused by fear and cultivated by rightwing media. It's what the culture wars are all about, when someone attacks your culture, they attack your community and can be othered. Tribalism needs an "other", to be most effective it needs enemies and victims. It is exemplified by "closed pool " politics when public pools became integrated, in war sacrifices have to be made.

The republicans are doing everything they can to screw things up and cause division so they can get total power and it's becoming more evident that once they have it, they won't give it up easily or peacefully. Not all republicans are in this mind state, but the more mentally unstable they are the more vulnerable they are to these primal instinctual forces. Most aren't driven by logic or facts; I think we can agree on that.

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cannabineer said:

The question becomes: to what extent are you projecting and thus generating/propagating fear? We have interlocking obligations to speak truth and to know when discretion is the greater part of valor.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

Tribalism is an established fact of social psychology, and it is invoked on left and right and helps to motivate and organize people to meet perceived threats. It is a paradigm to help us understand human behaviors and is not the only factor, but an important one, those going to Trump rallies are both crazy and at war. It's why they play up the culture wars to extend the tribalism from its racist core to a larger community of people who don't care and will tolerate it. I believe some of the people involved in this are using well known psychological methods of manipulation.

Helping people to understand the forces that are driving them or their loved ones to do and believe stupid shit is not fear mongering, its actually compassionate and hopefully for some educational. We can't solve this problem until the roots are addressed and policy can make it go away quicker, policy based on facts and understanding works best. This is a battle of hearts and minds for the soul of the nation above all else, nobody can win the war, just the peace.

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cannabineer said:

You’re missing my point.

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