Senate Prepping for US Autocracy

are you referring to Quigon Mike, or whatever his name was?

edit, I mean I read the US politics thread, I’m still not sure what you’re referring to?

 

oh the drama

 

@anakinfansince1983 There was a special border exemption created last year in NZ for teachers to apply for. Not sure how relevant it still is, but teachers definitely seem to be in demand here.

 

@anakinfansince1983 , you're very much living up to your username more than ever before here

But seriously, while I strongly disagree with Vivec and others on some key issues on this... what do you think you would have done during the Civil War in the 1860s or the Revolutionary War in the 1770s? (And I could also think of a certain fictional universe but I won't say it for fear of being booed at again)

 

Also just want to add to this... MLK said he thought change could be achieved through nonviolent means, but that this view could be wrong and facts on the ground could change. And the current state of the US shows his wins might have been wiped away within a generation. As for India... its independence and partition led to mass displacement and death, due to apathy and spite of the British. And even then, it only worked due to India becoming too expensive of an investment that wasn't a worthwhile ROI for them anymore, full of disruption that might have been nonviolent but was extremely disruptive. Not out of the goodness of their hearts.

Yes, the Confederates made the first violent act.

But, it could be argued, that the capitalists and government agents have been making the first acts of violence against people countless times and enforcing an unfair system.

If you're saying the North was justified to use force in the Civil War, why not now? What's different? That's the argument.

I'm getting caught up on the thread, but earlier resistance to Nazi Germany was brought up. If violent force against Nazi Germany was justified since it was defense, why not now when acts of violence in an unfair system continue to play out?

That this is defense, not the first act.

I'm not necessarily saying I agree. Or even if I agreed it was justified, that I myself would. I think there's still more hope for reform and for nonviolent protest. It fits more with my values, and honestly if we ever broke out into civil war / revolution it would probably lead to an even more sweeping victory by the right due to the bias of the military, intelligence, federal agents, the large militarized police departments, etc. But I understand the argument.

 

This thread is great.

 

lol


lmao

 

These laws are wanted by the Democratic base, but are being blocked by Republicans and "moderate" "centrist" (aka conservative/corporatist) Democrats.

There's separation of powers between the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court, and in a way that encourages supermajority (not majority) support and elitist support in order to change the status quo.
-the House is gerrymandered, and too small
-the Senate is equally rewarded to each state, no matter the population, which prioritizes the rural, white, conservative, and less-populated states. And even despite being naturally undemocratic, the Senate is even more undemocratic by basically requiring 60% to pass anything, not 50%+1.
-the Presidency is elected via Electoral College, again too much power to the less-populated states
-the Supreme Court, due to chance, Trump, and the system, now leans way too conservative, and they struck down part of MLK's championed Voting Rights Act a few years ago, saying racism is basically over
-the elections in this country at every level are increasingly flawed, especially due to the above
-there's also separation of powers between the federal government, and the states, too, limited explicitly in the Constitution and enforced strictly by the Supreme Court
-then there's the rich and corporations dominating campaign financing, and lawmakers have to spend over 50% of their time fundraising each week just to survive (legislating is like 10% of their week)
-and the lack of civics education, with most voters not understanding all the above, or the candidates, or the parties, or root causes, or basic history and science and logic and fact-checking
-and the media which exploits all the above

If you don't think it's worth having a conversation about, then why are you participating? No one is forcing you to. Many people think it is worth discussing, apparently. And you're not autocrat of the JCC.

NZ doesn't give good health insurance to its noncitizens. My sister was there for 1-2 years after Trump was elected.




Also, geographically and ecologically and geopolitically, Canada and northern US are best situated in the world for the climate change crisis. Island nations will largely die off in a worst case scenario where global trade collapses. Antarctica won't warm up fast enough, and no where else in the southern hemisphere is there a large enough landmass in the "cool" zone... Australia is too hot and dry, South Africa is too far north and small, and the tip of South America is too small. Notherrn Eurasia will just be violent chaos with so many ways for climate refugees to try to get in, and well-guarded by nuclear-armed Russia, or the too-small Scandinavian peninsula. This leaves northern US and Canada - in the cool zone, large landmass, lots of natural resources, separated from others by water, and Central America and Mexico literally shaped like a physical tactical chokehold and the US-Mexican border already fortified by a strong military power against climate refugees. And Canada only seems to accept people with specialized professions who are bilingual in English/French and have zero debt and able to make some big downpayments up-front. Yes, I know, I'm just a ball of sunshine tonight

 

They don't give citizens health insurance either, but I don't think that's what you're referring to.

 

Whatever they call their healthcare system, my sister had to pay way too much out-of-pocket because she wasn't a citizen yet and needed anxiety medication that it was unaffordable and/or too long a process.

 

Let's go through this a little bit. You started by asking "who I'm talking to." Who are you talking to? Your defense of BLM is fine, but also has nothing to do with anything I've posted in this thread or any other. Let's go through the things that actually have been brought up: the Holocaust, the Black Panthers, the Deacons of Defense, and BLM protests.

My first concern is that many of these examples are fundamentally dissimilar from what we're discussing. The Holocaust was a program of mass murder and genocide committed by Nazi Germany. The Deacons of Defense, much like Martin Luther King's use of bodyguards, were facing down the most effective, powerful terrorist organization in American history and trying to stay alive long enough to make their protests and proposals for change. This usually involved avoiding people that were actively trying to attack or assassinate them, and firing back when shot at. Their literal lives were in imminent danger. Even the Black Panthers were primarily using shows of force to discourage physical assaults on black people that were contemporaneous to the moment of their presence.

We are not discussing anything like that. There is no present danger to anyone's life. There are poor, objectionable conditions. That's a great reason to take objection. To protest. But there's a huge gulf between "things are unfair right now" and "I am about to come into serious bodily harm due to direct violence perpetrated intentionally by another human being." There's really no reason to keep talking about the second situation, which doesn't meaningfully exist, unless you are trying to justify violence on some broader basis by way of analogy. Otherwise, it's as irrelevant as asking whether it's "violent" for a caveman to battle a mastodon with his spear. I really don't know, and it has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Any fair analysis would also admit that the Holocaust has nothing to do with the trends we are talking about in this thread. We're just not in that place. At all.

My second concern is that in many cases, your examples of violence are bad. I understand there was some property destruction associated with BLM protests. While I don't encourage it, it has never really bothered me much. It's a somewhat unavoidable consequence, in my view. That said, I would argue that on the whole, it doesn't help the movement. I know of no one that thought the movement more credible because stores were burned down. Whereas I can name many people that complained about this as a way to discredit BLM, and several white supremacist saboteurs who were arrested posing as BLM members while destroying things precisely so that it could be de-legitimized in this way. It allowed the conversation to shift from a focus on injustices against Blacks to vague complaints about "unrest" in cities and the criminality of Blacks. So for all that I understand the explosive frustration of oppressed people, and agree that these things will probably happen, I would not argue in a "How Should We Prepare" thread that this is actually a smart tactic. It's a visceral reaction that didn't really help move things forward.

Likewise, the Black Panthers. They were doing tremendous good in their community. Local breakfasts programs, schools, and other initiatives. They also rhetorically embraced the use of force. But, again, what was the net effect of this? It largely attracted hostile attention from law enforcement, leading to the death of several of their members and US intelligence agencies working to destroy the group from within. In 10 years, the organization was basically non-existent. What, then, was the value of carrying weapons? Though it slowed some abuses acutely, in the long run did it change the trajectory of conditions for Black people? Did this actually add to their efforts in the way that other parts of their program did? I would say no. Though they talked about using force, there wasn't a lot they achieved through this particular means, whereas there's a tremendous amount that they lost. Once again, while I understand their motivations--I have family members that were in the Panthers, I've had these conversations on a personal level--when I participate in a thread that is supposed to look prospectively at how to prepare for an unjust government, I can't honestly say that this is the most successful model to follow.

That's the pattern that I see in this thread. The examples where violence was the best choice are not similar to what we face in the US today, and in the ones that come closer, violence was sometimes understandable but almost always strategically sub-optimal. So what rationale does that leave me for actually embracing it?

I'm participating because, in spite of some people's best efforts, this is not the "list all the reasons violence is awesome" thread. It's a debate about how to respond to a deteriorating political situation in the United States. My position is that violence is not the best response. Is that a somehow illegitimate view to hold?

 

For not thinking this is a discussion worth having, you sure are discussing a hell of a lot.

 

The discussion not worth having is about how to use violence, because I don't think it should be used at all. That said, you clearly weren't reading to have missed that distinction, so I'm not clear why it bothers you either way.

 

Unfortunately, the right-wing will mainly target humans who are not white, since those are the people they hate the most. But they will attempt to force many transgender folks to de-transition or die, and they will also target enby people and pretty much anyone who does not conform to heteronormative stereotypes. But the thing is that most trans people I know would rather be martyrs than give up who they are. I can't speak for all of them, but let's just say that the Nazis targeted Dr. Hirschfeld and his books first (and by extension LGBTQ folks), and then they rounded on all ethnic minorities and leftists in Europe. So, yeah. With the internet, they pretty much target anyone who is not a right-wing racist. which would be over 54% of the country.

Not looking forward to it. Many children of Gen Z and the younger generation refuse to say they are straight and several of them refuse to persecute nonbinary folks. I was just at my sister-figure's house, and her 11-year-old daughter defends an enby kid from two bullies at school.

 

She sounds like a model for more kids to follow. Here’s hoping the edgy bigotry dies out, although I doubt it will. The desire to be edgy is a problem in my generation and in actual kids as well.

 

She's a good kid. Many kids in Gen Z make signs that say, "If you can't love your queer kid, you shouldn't have kids." That's not unusual. I was born in 1986, and Gen Y goes from 1981 to 1996. I'm not sure if you're in this generation or not. You may have mentioned as much a couple of years ago, but I've slept since then. Heh heh.

Anyhow, I agree with what was being said earlier on the thread here. It's interesting how the right keeps talking as if the left is going to be violent when the majority of leftists are not violent. When people have low wages and they're dealing with a cofounded pandemic that should have been contained several months ago, they don't have time to contemplate an uprising...let alone one that they would lose (due to the vast array of dangerous weapons in the government's possession). Food on the table is essential. This pandemic has sped up extant corruption, and it has revealed to more people the lack of humane systems we have (in terms of healthcare, economics, and more). I pretty much figured it out by 2010 and 2011, but this plague has brought more class consciousness to swaths of moderates who previously didn't realize how unfair the system is.

 

It just seemed very clear to me that that was what they were saying earlier. They explicitly said defense, and they were going against the idea of you saying violent force is never justified… which most would then assume violent force is never justified, even in defense, even against Nazi Germany or the Confederates etc. It just seemed plain to me that there was a misunderstanding somewhere, that someone misspoke and then people just dug in and assumed worst intentions@anakinfansince1983

Now, I’ll leave it to them to explain how the current system has been using first acts of aggression against Americans here in the US. I’m not sure what examples they’ll prioritize, but I have some predictions, and it think you could too. With the police, FBI, CIA, exploitive capitalist practices similar to slavery, etc. And there’s the colonization of indigenous land, conquest of parts of Mexico and Spanish colonies and Hawaii and others, etc.

I still think there’s hope for peaceful reform and protest, but I can see how they can argue that there have been things that are indeed first acts of aggression against American citizens, and how self-defense arguments can then come in. But I think that’s what they want your opinion on. It just seemed like you were both talking past each other.

 

Please do expand on what this example has to do with anything happening in the present day.

Chattel slavery has a couple analogues (eg there’s a good argument that the encomienda system wielded against Native Americans in the Southwest was just relabeling the phenomenon).

Do you know what it has the the present does not? Ownership of other human beings. Systematic denial of humanity and denial of legal rights in the most literal sense. The casual allowance—if not outright encouragement—of rape, torture and murder. The extinction of huge fractions of the targeted population.

Things can need change without being this bad. There’s no need to reach for this and cheapen the suffering of those people.

 

You know, after sleeping on it, I'm not ready to just let Wocky and Anakinfan pretend that I made things overdramatic by bringing up political violence. Anakinfan brought up dying as a response to prepping for US autocracy. Now they pretend that I made things overdramatic by saying violence should be considered before laying down and dying? No, they don't get to do this.