DJT indicted on four counts related to January 6

SB wrote:

Serious question for Trump stalwarts (and, presumably, intended 2024 Trump voters):

While you clearly reject the idea that he's a potential criminal, do you not think that what this latest indictment has revealed indicates that Trump is unfit for high office, let alone one with as much attendant power as the US Presidency?

Think about it: If he knew the election had not been stolen and acted to undermine the peaceful transfer of power anyway, then he is a clear and present danger to the rule of law in the most fundamental sense. If he somehow believed that election had been stolen (as per his legal defense), in spite of all evidence and expert counsel to the contrary, does this not indicate that he is dangerously delusional, and thus unfit for high office?

Note: This is a question for people whose rational faculties are still intact Please don't bother responding if you're crazy enough to think the election actually was stolen. Not even Trump's legal defense is sticking with that insane line.

P.S. My own view is that a non-trivial number of diehard Trump supporters (maybe even close to a majority) believe that he knowingly tried to prevent the legitimate and peaceful transfer of power with the aim of remaining in office unconstitutionally, and that he was right to do so even if Biden won the election. American fascism today is founded on the belief that extreme defensive measures are required to prevent what amounts to a "lib/woke/communist" destruction of American society and culture (they believe it has already subverted the political order beyond reform). The increasingly mainstream American far right sees erstwhile partisan political struggle as having morphed into total war in which the majority of the country's major institutions are arrayed against it, the "real America", and are prepared to use every means available, legal and otherwise, to maintain a decadent and corrupt liberal order. It (the far right) sees establishment attempts to stop Trump as clear evidence of this intent. In attempting to stop Biden's ascension to the Presidency, many see Trump as having merely played by rules established long ago by corrupt liberals and their "deep state". In which case, he's only called out liberal establishment hypocrisy. There are no crimes when your enemy is criminal.

Monkeys Skyping wrote:

SB wrote:

In spite of the idiotic back-and-forth you see on this site, this is not a battle between the "smart/realistic" and the "stupid/deluded". Basic intelligence and common sense, or lack thereof, is always pretty evenly distributed within any population. What I genuinely wonder is exactly what kind of country (and larger world), practically speaking, the newly radicalized GOP and its hardest core supporters actually envisions for itself and other Americans. We now have an idea of what sorts of things it's giving itself permission to do in order to realize this new "post-lib" order (i.e. crash the most basic institutions of the country), but what do they imagine this order actually looking like? What is their plan for the 100s of millions of people who just don't fit into or accept their vision?

People tend to be motivated by loss more than gain so the difference isn't "smart/realistic" vs "stupid/deluded" as it is a difference between what individuals value and are in fear of losing.

Rather than using a "left/right" model, consider Daniel Kahan's two dimensional "individualist/communitarian + hierarchical/egalitarian" worldview model. In this view persons are on a spectrum between favoring individual rights/liberty vs social welfare on one axis and favoring maintaining the hierarchical social structure (their de facto caste if you will) and an egalitarian (e.g. social justice) worldview.

Link:www.framology.org/?p=240

The shift in recent decades has been largely in the ranks of blue collar workers who post-WW2 held relatively high social status seeing that being eroded by lower wage immigrant labor and industrial globalization. Their concerns are very real but placing the sole blame on government policy exclusive of inevitable market forces seems misguided. In any case it leaves a significant portion of the population susceptible to nationalistic/isolationist messaging if they believe that is the path to retaining class.

This is hardly isolated to the US. There are growing nationalistic tendencies throughout Europe.

Jeff Wigand wrote:

Blah blah blah blah blah wrote:

Especially compared to the Republican plan to improve health care in America. Oh right, they’ve never been able to come up with one, because they’re too focused on the REAL existential threat to America: Drag Queens reading books.

Obama took what Republicans had been proposing on health care for decades, sent it to Congress, and only then did it suddenly become a bad idea.

One of the very few positives that would have come out of a second Trump administration would have been a substantially reduced controversy with respect to the COVID vaccine. Had he won in 2020, his administration would have touted it as the way forward and all his cronies would have gotten in line. But because distribution fell under Biden’s administration, it was attacked as poison, forgetting that it was Trump’s administration that developed the whole f-cking thing.

Jeff Wigand wrote:

TheAdultInTheRoom wrote:

Nonsense. Democrats are the "defund the police" party. Animosity towards the DoJ and FBI from the right in recent years stems wholly from the left's weaponization of those institutions against the right.

You disagreeing with the platform doesn't mean they don't have one. Lower taxes, border control, ending the forever wars were solid policies. Trump didn't get 75 million votes despite purely negative press for his personality.

Obamacare is a disaster.

Why is Mike Pence not a contender for the GOP nomination? What policies that a Mike Pence administration would pursue are not popular with the GOP base? What was the magic healthcare plan that Trump kept promising to replace Obamacare with? Wasn’t Trump going to eliminate the national debt?

Liz Cheney and Pence are unelectable with Republicans not because they espouse anything remotely left wing or even centrist but because they’re against hijacking the government.

Wink wink wrote:

Monkeys Skyping wrote:

People tend to be motivated by loss more than gain so the difference isn't "smart/realistic" vs "stupid/deluded" as it is a difference between what individuals value and are in fear of losing.

Rather than using a "left/right" model, consider Daniel Kahan's two dimensional "individualist/communitarian + hierarchical/egalitarian" worldview model. In this view persons are on a spectrum between favoring individual rights/liberty vs social welfare on one axis and favoring maintaining the hierarchical social structure (their de facto caste if you will) and an egalitarian (e.g. social justice) worldview.

Link:www.framology.org/?p=240

The shift in recent decades has been largely in the ranks of blue collar workers who post-WW2 held relatively high social status seeing that being eroded by lower wage immigrant labor and industrial globalization. Their concerns are very real but placing the sole blame on government policy exclusive of inevitable market forces seems misguided. In any case it leaves a significant portion of the population susceptible to nationalistic/isolationist messaging if they believe that is the path to retaining class.

This is hardly isolated to the US. There are growing nationalistic tendencies throughout Europe.

The right has been the driving force behind the decline in blue collar wages. Deregulation and the offshoring of jobs is a page from the GOP playbook.

Conservative leaders are good at pointing fingers and placing blame elsewhere. The modern conservative is good at being told what to think.

Wink wink wrote:

Monkeys Skyping wrote:

People tend to be motivated by loss more than gain so the difference isn't "smart/realistic" vs "stupid/deluded" as it is a difference between what individuals value and are in fear of losing.

Rather than using a "left/right" model, consider Daniel Kahan's two dimensional "individualist/communitarian + hierarchical/egalitarian" worldview model. In this view persons are on a spectrum between favoring individual rights/liberty vs social welfare on one axis and favoring maintaining the hierarchical social structure (their de facto caste if you will) and an egalitarian (e.g. social justice) worldview.

Link:www.framology.org/?p=240

The shift in recent decades has been largely in the ranks of blue collar workers who post-WW2 held relatively high social status seeing that being eroded by lower wage immigrant labor and industrial globalization. Their concerns are very real but placing the sole blame on government policy exclusive of inevitable market forces seems misguided. In any case it leaves a significant portion of the population susceptible to nationalistic/isolationist messaging if they believe that is the path to retaining class.

This is hardly isolated to the US. There are growing nationalistic tendencies throughout Europe.

The right has been the driving force behind the decline in blue collar wages. Deregulation and the offshoring of jobs is a page from the GOP playbook.

Conservative leaders are good at pointing fingers and placing blame elsewhere. The modern conservative is good at being told what to think.