Trump Kicking and Screaming Transition Thread

The evidence in in your posting history.

Lying to judges and wrongly accusing other people of crimes? If that's covered by your idea of free speech, you need to get your concepts straight.

If they're stupid enough to give their money away, fuck em'.

And this isn’t some rando promoting a conspiracy theory on his YouTube channel. It’s the fucking Republican President of the United States and the majority of the Republican Party doing it from the Rose Garden and on every TV channel and radio station!

Which is why 71, 71! percent of Republicans don’t believe Biden rightfully won!

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-fraud-insight-idUSKBN2801D4

Which @Paladin thinks is just great and how it should be.

I never said I thought that was great. I said that having this process play out will ultimately be good for the country.

So further right-wing terrorism is a good thing? Because that's the end goal and the eventual result, based on past experience.

Glad to know you not only support genocide, but terrorism as well.

What an odd take from someone whose paycheck comes from the forced claim on others time and labor, done because protecting the collective is seen as more important than those individuals.

There are some people with that mindset here for sure, but not to the extent of America. Since most of the continent is so hostile we're actually one of the most urbanized populations in the world.

So now you are saying that your Republican President and the majority of your Republican Party convincing 71% of Republicans to believe that the election was stolen through massive fraud is not a good thing?

Scum always rises to the top.

I don't think you can shrug it off as "that's politics." Al Gore could have easily tried the Trump gambit and had it be much more defensible. He didn't. Richard Nixon probably had an even better case in 1960. He didn't pursue it.

Trump is letting his raging narcissism hurt the country in a way that no president (or presidential candidate) in living memory has done.

What do you mean "now?" I never said that was a good thing.

It's not either/or.
It's not flag underwear guy in a cabin in Montana waving an AK-47 over his head vs a Borg cube.
Collectives are made of individuals.
Being part of one doesn't make you a zombie.
Unless it's a full-blown cult.
Like Trumpism.
I find it fucking hilarious how the right thinks they're individualist, and treat that cock-knocker like the risen Jesus.
And they all wear the same costume.

"Ohhh, the radical left and their collectivism!! ".

Fuck off with that tired Randroid bullshit.
I said it before, you're trapped in the WF of the 00's.
You and UA.
It's heartbreaking, really.

But it's not the politics of a party with which I want to be associated, no matter how distantly. That kind of behavior, to me, is simply unacceptable. Period, full stop, end of line.

You have refused three times now to answer what percentage of Republicans still believing the election was stolen through massive fraud would make your Republican President and the majority of your Republican Party lying to convince folks of said imaginary fraud a bad thing.

We now have a number at last. 71%. If in six months less than 71% of Republicans believe that the election was stolen through massive fraud, @Paladin thinks that his Republican President and Republican Party lying to try and convince the American people otherwise was a good thing.

That’s a high number but at least it is something.

Why did you pick that number? Isn’t that a lot of people falsely believing that democracy doesn’t work? Won’t that likely lead to terrorist acts as these people feel they have no other means to ‘take their country back’?

False.

More people believe in Flat Eartherism now than before the ‘light’ was shone on them.
All shining a light on conspiracy theories does is allow more people to see them.

And your Republican President and your Republican Party is doing more than just highlight a dangerous conspiracy theory, they created it and are actively promoting it!

Imagine looking at the history of politics and trying to claim that a leader with devoted followers spouting baseless claims, lies, and demonising his opponents doesn't tend to lead to bad things. At this point the two options with Paladin are that he knows his claims are full of shit, or he believes them which proves the point of how dangerous what Trump is doing is.

Give me one example or stick to your conspiracy theories. At least they're good for a laugh.

This isn't about censoring ideas, it's about acknowledging the damage done by outright lies perpetuated by the occupant of the world's most powerful office seeking to undermine the fabric of society rather than accept defeat.

Absolutely we should challenge them.

We should also realise that in a significant number of cases we will fail if success is measured by changed perceptions. The louder and more farcical this becomes the more those ideas spread, whilst the hardest core of believers will never budge.

Ever tried arguing someone out of a religious belief with logic?

Rarely works, it just undermines their faith in logic itself.

I'm not a fortune teller. I don't know how many will believe or when, and it's immaterial to my position.

The outcome of the election will not change, and people will accept that there just isn't sufficient fraud to have made a difference.

I picked no number. You're having a conversation with yourself and imagining it's me.

Sure, but the failure rate is 100% if we don't try.

Yes, and more people seeing them means more people to oppose them.

The democratic ideal isn't shielding people from bad ideas. It's letting the people hammer out--in a public way--which ideas are bad. We don't need guardians to protect the public from wrongthink.

Flat Earthism is an extreme example, only because it's so easily and convincingly proven wrong. And, sure, some people who didn't know about it will embrace it. But many, many more people will be aware that it is an idea that has some currency and will be better positioned to oppose it.

Unchallenged? No.

Given equal weight and an open platform on a major news network? Also fucking no.

Flat Eartherism AND Trump's bullshit don't deserve equal opportunity, precisely because they HAVE been challenged and defeated.

You're a clever man but by gods you have no idea about people. They aren't necessarily rational agents, they don't always weigh evidence without prejudice. Thee people aren't going to accept a court ruling, they'll just assume the court is in on "it" because they've already got their truth.

This isn't an idea being hammered out or debated, it's a deceit which has become an article of faith for those who view Trump as a messianic figure. His honesty and wisdom is, for them, a given and any suggestion to the contrary will only ever make the person making it suspect.

What is really needed is for Trump to openly admit defeat, because no court rulings will satisfy his followers. They don't see "the system" as credible, only Trump himself can undo what he has done.

This is the point, whilst he is denying it all a court judgement can possibly do is undermine faith in the courts, congress, democracy itself because at the moment they trust Trump above all those things.

This is what we have been warning you about all along. Day in, day out.

A dictatorship in the making.

When dictatorships fail there's almost always conflict.

Where I write "people," you should not read it as "every person."

And I fully expect people to make flawed judgments. And that means all people, even those who would appoint themselves guardians of truth.

Some will.

You're creating a caricature. Most people accept the legitimacy of the system. When Biden is sworn in, there won't be militias forming to march on Washington.

If your theory about people is right, they won't accept even that. The conspiracy theory will simply evolve into "the conspirators won."

I don't think he's going to get a court judgment in his favor. The Supreme Court only reviews cases appealed from lower courts, and none of those cases had anything explosive.

The worst that can be said about Trump is that he may be damaging faith in the electoral process by pursuing his challenges. That doesn't meet the standard of dictatorship just because you don't like it.

There has to be a dictatorship for it to fall.

The only reason Trump isn't a dictator is because he is too incompetent to be one, which while a good thing doesn't stop his intent being very concerning.

He's literally saying things publicly like asking what the point is of the SCOTUS if they aren't going to give him what he wants, after his party did everything possible to jam it with his picks.

The fact that the US has dodged a bullet here doesn't mean that it's a sign that there is nothing wrong with the madman wildly firing in all directions.

You've just spent four years watching the dynamic by which a nascent dictatorship forms.

You didn't even see it until (I suspect) recently, possibly because you insist on holding people in high regard as objective decision makers.

It can't be stressed enough that a massive proportion of people lack sufficient critical thinking skills to step away from the mob and question what they are supporting.

That's how cults happen, that's how charismatic dictators gain power.

It doesn't require all people to be blinded, it merely requires enough to create instability which threatens the institutions of society and time and again we've seen how fragile those institutions become when the illusion of permanence becomes transparent.

I appreciate your faith in people but your assessment of this as a cathartic process is not one I can share. The radicalization of Trump supporters has, I submit, gone way past the point of being a dismissable fringe element. That polarisation is contagious, pull in one direction and you find others pull back, the right moves further right, the left moves further left and constructive discussion gives way to hatred and violence.

By that logic I'd argue the best strategy for Biden is to buck the trend and find a workable centrist position which is still palatable to democrats.

Problem is the more scorched earth tactics we see over the coming weeks the more Trump decisions he'll be forced to reverse to keep an even keel. That will be scrutinised and challenged by the far right who will not be sympathetic, seeing it as a betrayal

Expect extremism in the coming months.

So.. I got this invitation on Facebook.