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I'm sorry but you are missing the point. You could argue we haven't had a proper transition of power in several administrations. In Bush v. Gore we had (perha

• ModernMech 5y ago
  > Trump's validity was questioned on the grounds that he was a Russian plant - a claim which was pursued with a years-long very public official investigation which yielded smoke and no fire. The craziest voices claimed he was a Russian plant, but the mainstream claim was always collusion, which was proven by the Senate Republicans in volume 5 of their report on Russian Active Measures. The report established that the Trump campaign, through its chairman, was funneling internal campaign data to a Russian Intelligence Officer, as Russian Intelligence was running a psyops campaign against American citizens [0]. So yes, there was smoke and it was coming from a fire. There was collusion, and there was obstruction. It's been proven and documented. When we look at the transition of power, yes it's true that there have been issues in past elections and that's what I mean when I say this has been going on for a while. There was actual violence in the 2000 election (the Brooks Brothers Riot). But at the same time we are someplace new when an actual coup plot is formed and executed by the sitting President of the United States. And I hear you about material conditions, but at the same time the people who stormed the Capitol flew there in planes. They stayed in expensive hotels. They captured their crimes live on their expensive cell phones. They included doctors, lawyers, and business executives, and politicians. This isn't about economic anxiety. That's a narrative that's been going on since 2016, and it's just hard to find real evidence of that. It's true that there have been some temporary shortages of specific items, but in general I can go out and buy cream cheese today, and really anything else I would like. Material conditions are fine in America. > Political alienation plus the degradation of material conditions is absolutely how wars are started. Wars also start when leaders deliberately lie to masses of people, claiming their votes are being stolen when they aren't. Sometimes wars just happen because of conditions, and sometimes powerful people and groups take a situation and tip it over because they would like to see a war happen, because it's preferable to the alternative. That's where we are in America. [0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
  • skohan 5y ago
    > So yes, there was smoke and it was coming from a fire. There was collusion, and there was obstruction. It's been proven and documented. There may have been some Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but the effort has always been to blame Russia for Trump's election. In my opinion this has been very damaging to American politics. It gave liberals and democrats an out to ignore the very real reasons for which Trump attracted a very real base of support leading up to that election. If you remove Trump's nationalistic rhetoric and racial dog-whistling, his populist messaging was not all that different form Obama's. If you ask me, a lot more good would have been done by actually reckoning with the fact that something like 30-40% of the voting population genuinely wanted him to be president rather than trying to live with the fantasy that Putin is so all-powerful that a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ad-buys were able to overthrow American democracy. > But at the same time we are someplace new when an actual coup plot is formed and executed by the sitting President of the United States. I agree that the events of Jan 6th were unprecedented, and uniquely disturbing. I think the leaders of the movement should have been brought up on treason charges. > Wars also start when leaders deliberately lie to masses of people, claiming their votes are being stolen when they aren't. Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? > It's true that there have been some temporary shortages of specific items, but in general I can go out and buy cream cheese today, and really anything else I would like. Material conditions are fine in America. I hope you are right, and that I was just particularly unlucky to encounter a series of market failures in a single 3-week period due to extraordinary circumstances.
    • ModernMech 5y ago
      I'm not really here to relitigate the 2016 campaign. I have a lot of thoughts on it but I'll spare you them here. If you're genuinely interested let me know and I'll shoot you an e-mail. But I will say this much because it relates to my previous post directly: > trying to live with the fantasy that Putin is so all-powerful that a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ad-buys were able to overthrow American democracy. I will note that the Russian GRU was able to hyper-target Facebook advertisements in large part because they were receiving updates on who to target from the Trump campaign. I think it's a fantasy to suggest that Putin can overthrow democracy this way, but that's not really what happened. Trump and Putin coordinated through public channels and behind closed doors through intermediaries (let's not forget that Trump's son, son-in-law, and aforementioned campaign manager turned GRU liaison, met with a Russian spy at Trump's residence to discuss an explicit cooperation deal). Putin couldn't have done what he did alone -- he needed a willing, like-minded, yet distant partner in one of the two major political parties in America, and he found one in Trump. > Hasn't this been the exact claim of the Clinton campaign post 2016? That the election results are illegitimate? It's was entirely warranted to question the results of our electoral system, and honestly it was Trump's right to do so after the 2020 election as well. I think it is important to probe weaknesses in our system and to fix them where appropriate. But after that probing is done and the vote is certified legitimate, the questioning needs to cease. However, when a candidate has exhausted all legal remedies, they can't continue to call into question the results of the vote. That's where this all fell apart. Trump lost his claims in 62/63 cases and that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't, and look where that got us. I think no one should listen to Clinton anymore, and I never wanted her to be President, but she has a point about Trump's legitimacy. The legitimacy of a leader in the US is usually established by the results of an election, but what if material crimes are committed to win the election? And once a leader is elected, are the legitimate for their term or can they lose that legitimacy through abuse of their power? Trump aided and abetted the hacking of his opponent and then lied about his campaign's direct involvement with the organization that did the hacking, both to the American people and the FBI. He lied about the fact that at the time, he was in talks with Putin about building a Trump Tower Moscow, with a penthouse gift dedicated to Putin. After he was sword into office, he swiftly used the authority granted by the American people to quash the investigation into that very malfeasance. He also obstructed the subsequent Special Counsel investigation by destroying evidence, lying to investigators, and attempting to quash it as well. This behavior is not the legitimate exercise of trust placed on our leaders, it's a pattern that more closely resembles a prolific serial criminal covering his tracks.