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  #101  
Old 01-23-2018, 12:30 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

Trump's minimization of racist violence by his supporters began quite a bit earlier than Heather Heyer:

A Donald Trump-Inspired Hate Crime in Boston - The Atlantic

From August 2015:
Quote:
Police in Boston say that one of two brothers who allegedly beat a homeless Hispanic man cited Trump’s message on immigration as a motivation for their attack. "Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported"
[...]
"I think that would be a shame," he said, according to The Boston Herald, in reference to the report. He said he hadn’t heard about the incident but then defended his most ardent supporters as "passionate."
Quote:
I will say, the people that are following me are very passionate. They love this country. They want this country to be great again. But they are very passionate. I will say that.
People who urinate on a man and beat him with a metal pole, putting him in the hospital, because he's Hispanic, they just have passionate love for their country.

Now Trump doesn't control the Boston DA's office. How sure is But that Trump would prosecute them to the full extent of the law if it were his personal decision?

Anyway, the real problem is that Democrats aren't measured enough in their rhetoric in pushing back at attempts to undermine the independence of the justice system.
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  #102  
Old 01-23-2018, 12:35 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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Remind me, how am I worse than him? You seem to have no problem with that comparison. You jump in because I went too far, but passed right over that comparison, strangely enough.
Am I supposed to read the whole thread, take notes, and write an essay about it?
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  #103  
Old 01-23-2018, 12:37 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

It was mentioned after you got involved. And curiously, you still don't have anything to say about it.
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  #104  
Old 01-23-2018, 12:40 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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How sure is But that Trump would prosecute them to the full extent of the law if it were his personal decision?
About as sure as that erimir would not start murdering people if he was sitting at Putin's desk.
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  #105  
Old 01-23-2018, 12:51 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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How sure is But that Trump would prosecute them to the full extent of the law if it were his personal decision?
About as sure as that erimir would not start murdering people if he was sitting at Putin's desk.
:rolleye2:

If there's anything that's been a constant throughout erimir's posts on this message board, it's been his full-throated advocacy of murdering one's political opponents.
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  #106  
Old 01-23-2018, 01:12 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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Just remind me, how many Democrat politicians and party members have been tortured and beaten to death by Trump's minions, after which the state refused to prosecute?
Trump pardoned Arpaio:

I mean, we're not there quite yet, but Trump has already made prosecution of certain crimes at the federal level a gamble.

This is why the indictments from Mueller's investigation have state crimes associated with them - to make it harder for those people to avoid prosecution through pardons.
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  #107  
Old 01-23-2018, 01:39 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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Originally Posted by specious_reasons View Post
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Originally Posted by But View Post
Just remind me, how many Democrat politicians and party members have been tortured and beaten to death by Trump's minions, after which the state refused to prosecute?
Trump pardoned Arpaio:

I mean, we're not there quite yet, but Trump has already made prosecution of certain crimes at the federal level a gamble.

This is why the indictments from Mueller's investigation have state crimes associated with them - to make it harder for those people to avoid prosecution through pardons.
Yes, that was just two months after the paramilitary arm of the GOP, I mean the NSDAP, arrested and tortured more than 500 political opponents in Washington, I mean Berlin. They had to mop up quite a lot of blood and remove body parts from the floor after interrogations.
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  #108  
Old 01-23-2018, 01:41 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

So what's this resistance? Are you hiding people who are going to be transported to death camps in your attics?
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  #109  
Old 01-23-2018, 02:10 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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Originally Posted by But View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by specious_reasons View Post
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Originally Posted by But View Post
Just remind me, how many Democrat politicians and party members have been tortured and beaten to death by Trump's minions, after which the state refused to prosecute?
Trump pardoned Arpaio:

I mean, we're not there quite yet, but Trump has already made prosecution of certain crimes at the federal level a gamble.

This is why the indictments from Mueller's investigation have state crimes associated with them - to make it harder for those people to avoid prosecution through pardons.
Yes, that was just two months after the paramilitary arm of the GOP, I mean the NSDAP, arrested and tortured more than 500 political opponents in Washington, I mean Berlin. They had to mop up quite a lot of blood and remove body parts from the floor after interrogations.
You did read about how people literally were tortured and died in Arpaio's death camps, right? And about how the Gestapo, I mean ICE, actually has been rounding people up en masse and deporting them?


Trump's actions don't have to be identical in every detail to the Nazis' in order to be legitimately comparable to them. Mike Godwin, he of the eponymous law, has explained this on several occasions. You've demonstrated little interest in listening to him, or to any of the people who are resisting Trump, for reasons that I can't entirely comprehend. Perhaps you're offended by a historical analogy to the extent that you've lost the ability to reason about it, or perhaps you've simply invested yourself so deeply in attacking Democrats that you've concluded the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Or perhaps there's something else; I can't tell.

In any case, you're demonstrating that nuance is lost on you. With that in mind, I can't say I'm surprised you're defending Trump. (And yes, "Trump isn't literally as bad as the Nazis in every specific detail, therefore people who are comparing him to the Nazis are more worthy of negative attention than the actual bad shit the Trump administration [or Putin, or Assad, or etc.] is doing every day" is in fact a defence of Trump [or Putin/Assad/etc.], whether you intend it as such or not.)

And it's certainly nice to see that you're still too cowardly to acknowledge Trump supporters' murder of Heather Heyer. Not that I expected anything else of you.

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So what's this resistance? Are you hiding people who are going to be transported to death camps in your attics?
Most of what I said to But directly above also applies to you. In addition, you might as well have just posted "tl;dr", because it's clear you didn't actually read anything Kael or I have written. We literally already addressed this. You could at least provide us the courtesy of admitting that you didn't bother reading it.

In any case, congratulations; the two of you have successfully made this thread essentially useless for productive discussion. If I don't reply again (a distinct possibility), the likeliest explanation is that I'm convinced there's no point in engaging further. I really can't conceive of many ways it could have been made any more blatantly obvious that nothing I write is even being read by the people it's addressed to.
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Last edited by The Man; 01-23-2018 at 08:00 AM.
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  #110  
Old 01-23-2018, 02:21 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

Can't even come up with an original straw man :sadno:

Anyway, much easier than explaining why he prefers Trump, with reference to historical events showing the great success of "heighten the contradictions" strategies. I've pointed to one example of that strategy going catastrophically wrong.

Well, they say, Trump doesn't seem likely to be as catastrophically bad as Hitler, that's a ridiculous example... Therefore it's a good strategy this time? Good argument.
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  #111  
Old 01-23-2018, 02:21 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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Originally Posted by But View Post
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Originally Posted by specious_reasons View Post
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Originally Posted by But View Post
Just remind me, how many Democrat politicians and party members have been tortured and beaten to death by Trump's minions, after which the state refused to prosecute?
Trump pardoned Arpaio:

I mean, we're not there quite yet, but Trump has already made prosecution of certain crimes at the federal level a gamble.

This is why the indictments from Mueller's investigation have state crimes associated with them - to make it harder for those people to avoid prosecution through pardons.
Yes, that was just two months after the paramilitary arm of the GOP, I mean the NSDAP, arrested and tortured more than 500 political opponents in Washington, I mean Berlin. They had to mop up quite a lot of blood and remove body parts from the floor after interrogations.
Like I said, we're not quite there yet, Arpaio only tortured and abused the unwanted illegal immigrants, rather than his political opponents. His political opponents he only investigated and attempted to drum up false charges.

Arpaio is one of the worst examples of right-wing authoritarianism in the USA, and he was pardoned. This is a warning sign.

But no, it's not that bad.
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  #112  
Old 01-23-2018, 02:42 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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But no, it's not that bad.
:nope:
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  #113  
Old 01-23-2018, 02:43 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

I don't want to get into the argument at hand, but I find the history being discussed interesting. So:

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Instead it lead to them being murdered by the fascists.
The KDP had been violently suppressed and had leaders murdered by an SDP-led Government just 15 years before. While the Nazis were clearly dangerous for the KDP, I'm not sure it would have been apparent at the time that the SDP wasn't.

Quote:
A lesson there being that relying on the excesses of the right-wing to work out to the favor of the left is a dangerous game.
Internationally communism came out of WWII much stronger than it had been before 1933. Not that I'm in favour of Stalinist communism or following any kind of strategy that lets fascists have power, even temporarily, nor was the result a foregone conclusion. But it's an interesting outcome given the point you're making.

Quote:
And I'd remind you, in 1933, Hitler wasn't "Hitler" either. He had committed no genocide and many dismissed his bigotry as rhetoric to rile up the rubes. The time to ally to stop him was before the 1933 election.
The 1933 election was too late. Hitler was already Chancellor. The KDP was de facto banned already following the Reichstag fire decree and the Nazis were able to form a majority with the DNVP. The KPD and SPD only got 30% of votes between them, and the proportional system meant that the vote splitting didn't matter. The time to unite against Nazis was before then.
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  #114  
Old 01-23-2018, 03:58 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

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I don't want to get into the argument at hand, but I find the history being discussed interesting. So:

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Instead it lead to them being murdered by the fascists.
The KDP had been violently suppressed and had leaders murdered by an SDP-led Government just 15 years before. While the Nazis were clearly dangerous for the KDP, I'm not sure it would have been apparent at the time that the SDP wasn't.
I wasn't aware of this event, although it still doesn't seem like there'd be much reason to conclude that Hitler was less dangerous other than by not taking his rhetoric seriously (which I do think is a fair comparison to the many people who thought Trump's racism was just a strategy to pander for votes, rather than indicative of how he'd govern - I think you should take those campaigning on racist/xenophobic/etc. bigotry at their word). In the context of the Russian Revolution a couple years prior, KDP folks advocating revolution and seizing buildings also would not seem to be simply benign political activity, although obviously I wouldn't like to support either those allied with the USSR nor those wanting to use violence against striking workers.

Nonetheless, Trotsky in 1932 seems to have been more prescient than Ernst Thälmann: "Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank... And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory"

I can see how, of course, at the time they didn't have the same historical examples we have now to consider. Such examples don't help very much, however, if they're seen as essentially singular, unique events, to which comparisons are automatically dismissed as histrionics regardless of the content of the comparison. Perhaps by referencing Godwin's Law without understanding it, as just a random example.
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Quote:
A lesson there being that relying on the excesses of the right-wing to work out to the favor of the left is a dangerous game.
Internationally communism came out of WWII much stronger than it had been before 1933. Not that I'm in favour of Stalinist communism or following any kind of strategy that lets fascists have power, even temporarily, nor was the result a foregone conclusion. But it's an interesting outcome given the point you're making.
I suppose, but the SPD came out of WWII in a stronger position than those in the KPD did (even if we talk about the ideology as opposed to the actual members, a large number of whom were murdered by Hitler). And while I'd grant the existence of East Germany for a few decades, more moderate factions within Germany as represented by Merkel, seem to have been ultimately more successful than the Communists. Certainly a far-left utopia is not the final result. I don't think many 1930s and 40s Communists would be pleased with the developments in China and other places either, even if it is still Communist in name.

And anyway, like you, I don't find the USSR to have been much of a positive force anyway. Although I can see some arguments for it having some positive effects in the world. It's arguable, for example, that the political pressure created by the USSR on the US is partially responsible for the advances of the Civil Rights Movement during the Cold War. Jim Crow was a potent propaganda tool for the USSR (for good reason), which provided some motivation to US presidents to undermine it.

Not to mention that the USSR came out of those events as they did because of international warfare that killed tens of millions, including millions of their own citizens. I don't think Watser is suggesting that Trump is preferable because he'll go to war with Iran, which expands into a regional war, and out of the wreckage of millions of deaths, a more democratic Middle East with greater human rights and economic equality will arise.

If I were as charitable as Watser, of course, I would suggest that was exactly his hope - that Trump would nuke Iran and the millions of deaths would lead to a free Palestine or something stupid like that. Since you know, he's worse than Putin or whatever.

Regardless, the outcome doesn't much recommend heightening the contradictions as a strategy. Relying on the excesses of the right-wing to lead to good outcomes is rather risky and even if it did empower the Communists, it still imposed a heavy, heavy cost in exchange.
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Quote:
And I'd remind you, in 1933, Hitler wasn't "Hitler" either. He had committed no genocide and many dismissed his bigotry as rhetoric to rile up the rubes. The time to ally to stop him was before the 1933 election.
The 1933 election was too late. Hitler was already Chancellor. The KDP was de facto banned already following the Reichstag fire decree and the Nazis were able to form a majority with the DNVP. The KPD and SPD only got 30% of votes between them, and the proportional system meant that the vote splitting didn't matter. The time to unite against Nazis was before then.
I suppose you're right.

Push the date back to 1932 and my critique doesn't change substantially though, I don't think.

Point being that being vigilant against the threat of Hitler in the early stages would've required responding to far less than genocide, suppression of opposition parties, and passage of oppressive anti-Semitic laws, etc.

And I wouldn't want to wait for him to have roving violent mobs attacking political opponents either before I recognized him as a serious threat.

And the even larger point is not that Trump is like Hitler (even if he were merely like Putin, that would still be a very bad thing), but that heighten the contradictions as a strategy (and that is the reason that Watser prefers Trump) can backfire rather spectacularly, and that false equivalences between the center-left and right-wing demagogues are dumb.

And of course, this all started because Watser came into this thread to compare me or Democrats or something to Nazi collaborators, on the basis that this thread was named based on the common term used in the media for the protests and energized left-wing/Democratic opposition to Trump and is, as The Man pointed out, a very common trope in Western media, despite there being no discussion of Nazis in the thread, and therefore I invited a comparison to Nazis wherein I'm the Nazi collaborator or something.

And then he called me worse than Putin and Assad.

Yet he and his But buddy are outraged that I would compare him and his "heighten the contradictions" "both sides are the same" bullshit to the KPD. Okay :rolleyes:

And I mean, it should be obvious that I wasn't totally precise in that comparison given that I was responding to that "you're worse than Putin" tantrum. I do stand by the point that expecting that empowering the right-wing over the center-left will redound to the far-left's benefit is idiotic and not supported by history. And I don't need to be saying that Trump is Hitler for the example of the KPD to be relevant to that point. Empowering the right-wing is most likely to benefit the right-wing, I know it seems too obvious an answer, but sometimes the counterintuitive idea is wrong.

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  #115  
Old 01-23-2018, 09:16 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

So here, I'll try to salvage this thread.



I, too, immediately thought of a Batman villain when I saw Yertle McTurtle's tweet, though I'll admit that, due in large part to my age, it was Jim Carrey's Riddler. Who was doing the same shit the Joker was in TDK. And McTurtle is now. Though it's not like those are the only two examples in comic book film history - forcing heroes to choose between two hostages is pretty much an archetypal supervillain move.

Fuck off, McTurtle, is I guess what I'm trying to say. You're literally acting like a fucking Batman villain.

Bonus tweet correcting McTurtle's dishonest framing:



And one more pointing out his hypocrisy (not that hypocrisy actually means anything in the Age of Trump, and I've argued that hypocrisy arguments are overrated elsewhere);


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  #116  
Old 01-23-2018, 06:44 PM
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  #117  
Old 01-24-2018, 03:26 PM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

For the record my point was never that Trump is not Hitler but that the Democrats are not 'the Resistance' but are collaborators.
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  #118  
Old 01-24-2018, 05:33 PM
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  #119  
Old 01-24-2018, 05:48 PM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

In more important news:

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  #120  
Old 01-24-2018, 06:41 PM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

That's good, because given how thoroughly the Republicans have managed to gerrymander voting districts, Democrats frequently have to outperform Republicans by a large margin in order to have any hope of winning.
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  #121  
Old 01-24-2018, 07:10 PM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

Yeah, the quantitative election types seem to think that Democrats need to win the House popular vote by about 7 pts to be favored to win the House. They could win it with less, or fail to win it with more. There is some chance that Democrats will do better than that, of course. The special election results point to a stronger performance than that, and while the generic ballot is currently at about D+8 it has been fluctuating between D+7 and D+13 for the past 6 months, suggesting that D+7 is probably at the low end of what we'd expect in November...

The decision this week on Pennsylvania gerrymandering (which, fortunately, does not rely on the US Constitution, which will make it unlikely that SCOTUS would step in) could reduce that by a little bit. Even flipping 2 or 3 seats as a result would have a non-trivial effect, given that it looks like a close outcome in the House is relatively likely. The PA GOP is going to try the hail Mary to get SCOTUS to intervene, based on the notion that the US Constitution empowers the state legislature, not the PA Supreme Court, to create districts. But the legislature is bound by the PA Constitution, which is arbitrated by the PA Supreme Court, so it doesn't seem likely to succeed. I'm sure Gorsuch, Alito and Thomas would be willing to say that state constitutions don't matter if it meant partisan gain for the GOP, despite all their states' rights BS, but I'm less sure that Kennedy or even Roberts would agree.

Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered House map was just struck down — with huge implications for 2018 - Vox

The Supreme Court is hearing some cases about partisan gerrymandering this session, but it seems that even if they rule favorably, it probably won't affect this year's elections (they'd have to issue the ruling quite soon, given that they seem reluctant to force redistricting with only a few months before elections). I'm cautiously optimistic about the ruling, but you can't totally rely on Kennedy... But it would be a political earthquake if Kennedy ruled that GOP gerrymanders had to be redone this year and lower the threshold for Democratic control significantly, I think.
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  #122  
Old 01-26-2018, 12:40 AM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

The kids seem alright.
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  #123  
Old 01-26-2018, 10:32 PM
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Fred Clark, whom I really should be reading more often, on infiltration of American evangelical groups by the Russkies.

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Thinking through the roster of major players on the religious right, it’s not hard to come up with a list of those who would be susceptible to such infiltration — or to come up with a list of those who would be eagerly receptive.

Of course, “targeted” does not necessarily mean successfully targeted. But I don’t see a lot of religious right organizations displaying either the intellectual or the moral capacity to resist such targeting.

Special counsel Robert Mueller runs a famously tight ship, ensuring that there are no leaks in his ongoing investigation, so if the leaders of some religious right group had, responsibly, contacted the FBI, reporting that they had been subjected to overtures from “Russians … pursuing relationships” in service of Putin’s political aims, then we likely won’t hear about it until Mueller’s ultimate findings are made public. But I have a hard time imagining that this is how any of those groups would have reacted. Their response to Russian overtures, I imagine, would likelier have been as enthusiastically incriminating as the sort of thing we’ve seen from Carter Page and Don Jr.

We need to know the names of those “various religious groups” that were “targeted” and — perhaps — “infiltrated” by Russians representing “banker-slash-Duma member-slash-Mafia” interests. And we need to know how this influenced them.

We could frame this in high-minded terms, arguing that Simpson’s vague assertions unfairly cast a shadow of doubt upon all conservative “religious groups,” and insisting that we require a list of tainted and compromised organizations so that all of the legitimate, untainted, un-infiltrated religious right organizations may be publicly exonerated. That’s also true.

But mainly I just want to see the names. Who was targeted? Who took the bait? And what were the consequences of that?
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Old 01-28-2018, 02:03 PM
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News Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

Candidates Who Signed Up to Battle Donald Trump Must Get Past the Democratic Party First
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Old 01-28-2018, 08:50 PM
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Default Re: Vive la Resistance! aka non-Trump US politics

Getting candidates actually elected is secondary to filling the coffers of the National Conventions (Democrat and Republican). The DNC today is hardly better than Tammany Hall under Boss Tweed. The biggest difference is they are better at hiding the corruption and graft today than they were in the 1800's.

The DNC doesn't want progressive candidates, it wants ones who can pull in big corporate donations. It wants candidates that will maintain the status quo. Candidates who, if elected, will kowtow to their corporate masters.
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