I though the protests last January around time of inauguration were great. Let’s make this an open thread about protests of the tax scam bill. In particular, let’s hear about any protests going on in your area and let me know if you hear of any centralized place where people can about protests they can go to.
Protests
by DougJ| 217 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
gvg
local evening news here was listing multiple protests across the country. Also the Pennsylvania Congressman’s town hall will 1600 angry people showed up and mentioning it had voted Republican last election by a large margin but now is very unhappy. Gave a good for our side view of what’s happening across the country. Apparently there are a LOT of protests
marcopolo
St Louis. Tomorrow. Noon. Senator Blunt’s Clayton office. 7700 Bonhomme Ave. Maybe I’ll see some of y’all there.
laura
Freeway Blogging!
Check the website for freeway blogger for instructions.
Let 10,000+ protests bloom!
GOP is coming for your Social Security…
As an example.
JohnO
Too many things to protest, too many places to be, too many outrages to even bother.
Still, I’ll be attending (if all goes to plan) a net neutrality protest in front of a Verizon store on Thursday at noon.
Set up by an outfit I had never heard of, demandprogress.org
Alas, I still feel it (everything) is too late. You just don’t get away with giving this much power to someone with this much venality.
MomSense
Five Protesters Arrested at Collins’ Office
Betty Cracker
This is unrelated to the shitty tax bill, but it might soon become relevant now that Bloomberg is reporting that Mueller’s team subpoenaed Trump’s banking records from Deutsche Bank: a site to coordinate rapid-response protests in case Trump fires Mueller:
https://act.moveon.org/event/mueller-firing-rapid-response-events/search/
You just plug in your ZIP code, and it tells you where and when a protest in your area is planned. Trump’s finances can’t survive serious scrutiny. I don’t know how Trump sits still for this, even if firing Mueller would trigger a constitutional crisis.
themann1086
My mom went to this protest on Sunday. Sounded fun! She’s even quoted:
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Senator Collins:
But she still has them arrested?
OT, did you get the email where I sent you the Jacquie Lawson Advent calendar?
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Betty, the story I read made it sound like the records have already been turned over. The horse has left the barn. I don’t see what Trump could effectively do now to stop it.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
CNN is reporting that Trump says he’s moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem
Served
In today’s edition of Horrifying SCOTUS Reports:
amorphous
@marcopolo:
>Clayton
Shocking I know
Yarrow
Who are we calling today? What’s the latest status of the tax bill?
I will call–again–about CHIP and ask them to reauthorize it. Falling on deaf ears, I fear.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
I think so but I was inundated with emails on my phone so I’ll get to them today after work!
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: He could get someone to fire Mueller and shut the investigation down. Fox News has been setting its rage-grandpa viewers up to expect that outcome for weeks now. I’m not sure this will happen, but I think this development makes it A LOT more likely. There’s no way Trump’s bank records won’t reveal oodles of corruption and quite possibly blatant money laundering for Putin pals. We should be ready.
MomSense
Protest Outside Collins’ Portland Office
Protesters waited at Bangor Intl. Airport but she stayed in DC to go on Meet the Press.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: I asked about this in the previous thread. How does firing Mueller game out? Trump can’t do it himself. He has to get Sessions to do it and Sessions won’t do it. So he’d have to fire Sessions and get the next person to do it. That person is Rosenstein who has already said he won’t do it. So he’d have to fire Rosenstein or try to get someone else appointed Attorney General. The chair of the committee that would approve a new appointment already has said they don’t have room on their schedule to deal with that so that would have to wait.
Would he fire both Sessions and Rosenstein? Who’s third in line and would that person fire Mueller? I’m interested in how people are gaming this out. As we discussed in a late night thread several months ago, Trump can’t just fire Mueller. He can say, “You’re fired!” to him but it would do as much good as you or me saying that to Mueller. It means nothing. So how does he get Mueller fired? How would that work?
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Some Balloon Juice FPers have been saying that M is going to be fired for months now. DougJ has a post that says the same thing practically every other day, sometimes twice a day. But they haven’t explained the process yet.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I know! There is a process. Mueller made sure to get himself hired under some rules (civil service?) that mean he can’t just be fired by the president on a whim. Smart guy.
I really am curious how people think this is going to work out. Trump fires Sessions and then Rosenstein because neither will fire Meuller? What if the next person won’t do it either? What happens in the larger society as we watch that happen? How does it play out? How does Trump get Mueller fired?
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: If you ask them they will type IOKYAR or something similarly lame.
MomSense
@Yarrow:
Isn’t Mueller working with Schneiderman? Trump can’t fire the New York Attorney General.
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: I really don’t know if people just don’t understand that Trump can’t fire Mueller and he has to fire at least two people to find someone who will, or if they think because all norms are being broken that someone he can just break this one and it will work. It won’t work. Mueller doesn’t have to leave if Trump “fires” him. Trump himself is powerless to do anything about Mueller.
Yarrow
@MomSense: Yes, he is. And state charges are separate and are also not pardonable by the President.
Betty Cracker
@Yarrow: There’s an interesting what-if scenario at FactCheck.org.
randy khan
@Yarrow:
Sessions has recused himself from the investigation, so it’s not clear he could fire Mueller. (I mean, he could unrecuse himself, but that’s a really bad look.) That said, I think he might be willing to fire Mueller if ordered to do so by Trump, on the theory that he wasn’t interfering in the investigation because firing Mueller wouldn’t shut it down. But assuming that Sessions would think that’s a bit too cute (which it is), Rosenstein is Mueller’s direct supervisor, so Trump probably would tell him to fire Mueller. If Rosenstein refused, then you’d work your way down the line within Justice until you found someone who’d be willing to do it. There are a fair number of appointed officials who could wield the ax if Trump told them to do it, and presumably you’d hit someone eventually.
In the Saturday Night Massacre, it was Robert Bork who agreed to fire Archibald Cox. Bork was Solicitor General and acting Attorney General after the AG and Deputy AG resigned. The SG now is Noel Francisco, who was just confirmed in September. He’s a longtime right-wing legal warrior, so there’s some reason to believe he would go along.
FlyingToaster
@schrodingers_cat: IIRC the Saturday Night Massacre, Trump has to fire Sessions, Rosenstein, and then if the Solicitor General (Francesco) won’t fire Mueller, fire him, and it comes to the USAAG Brand.
But the problem is the legal framework for firing may be stymied by the Carter era Ethics in Government act. At the time, Cox’s firing was ruled illegal, but there was no process for reinstatement. And given that, even Trump’s lawyers can see that firing Mueller won’t stop the process; firing Cox (and having him replaced by Jaworski) probably only delayed the impeachment process by 2-3 months. Trump needs something that will stop the clock altogether.
Repatriated
Thee endgame after (and almost certainly precluding) a successful investigation shutdown is that EVERYTHING on anyone even tangentially involved, leaks. From anyone, domestic or allied, that has it.
Ridnik Chrome
@Yarrow: Hasn’t the Senate leadership already made it known that they won’t approve a replacement if Sessions is fired?
randy khan
@Yarrow:
The real spectacle would come if Mueller said the firing was invalid because it wasn’t within the rules. That could cause a significant delay in the investigation as it got wrangled through the courts.
mai naem mobile
Is throwing a glitter bomb illegal? Is it assault or vwhatever? Would one be arresred?
Ridnik Chrome
@randy khan:
Just as an aside, that by itself should have been enough to disqualify Bork from a seat on the SCOTUS. The fact that Reagan even nominated him was a direct challenge to the incoming Democratic Senate majority in 1987.
Chyron HR
@schrodingers_cat:
A Fox News hostess announces that Mueller raped her and the left demands that the Russia investigation be closed by the end of the day.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: They are wedded to their what-if doomsday scenarios, so minor details like facts don’t have to stand in the way of their grand theorizing.
TenguPhule
@Betty Cracker:
At this point, what’s one more among so many?
We’ve been knee deep in them since 1/20/17.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for that. I’ll have a look.
@randy khan: I don’t think Sessions will do it even if he decided he could despite his recusal because he’s in trouble with his Russia connections. Doing so would add obstruction of justice to his charges. You are probably correct that the SG would do it since he’s a wingnut. But maybe not even then. Depends what’s going on behind the scenes.
The other thing is there are other sealed indictments hanging around. They won’t just go away. And, as I said in a previous thread, if the updated Saturday Night Massacre happens, our intelligence community will begin to release things that implicate all sorts of people. And not just ours–our allies have a lot of intelligence as well. It would get very ugly very quickly for those people who are part of this mess or covering for others.
This is not Watergate. This is treason.
schrodingers_cat
@Chyron HR: By the left you mean Bro Brigade lead by General Greenwald, comrade Putinski’s lackey?
Yarrow
@Ridnik Chrome: Yes they have.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
Legally.
Hopefully Mueller and company are taking the appropriate safety precautions.
But anyone who thinks Trump or his minions or the GOP party as a whole won’t do anything illegal to try and save themselves is deluding themselves.
Yarrow
@TenguPhule: I am certain Mueller has put many things in place to keep things going were he to be fired. I also hope he has very good security.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: The Manchurian Candidate was also supposed to have been bad fiction.
I’m not afraid Trump can fire Mueller, I’m afraid of what he’ll try when he CAN’T fire Mueller.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow: As I told Sc, I’m not worried he’ll be able to fire Mueller. I’m worried what he or his minions or the GOP leadership will try to escape the consequences mandated by their treason.
They’re already guilty of high treason and we can only hang them once. They have a lot to lose and no moral compass.
TenguPhule
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Well fuck. So much for the Middle East.
B.B.A.
@Yarrow: And the scary part is, half of America is okay with it. To them anything, even selling the nation out to Russia, was worth it to keep that c*** Hillary out of office.
We outnumber them, but we can’t always outvote them, and they won’t listen to a damn word we say.
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
Theoretically the process plays out until Trump finds a warm body in the Justice Department with the authority necessary to fire Mueller. This is highly unlikely to happen unless someone in the Department is a secret well hidden Trumper who intends to literally throw the rest of their life away in service to the Fuhrer. Possible but highly improbable.
Civil Service Protections means Mueller can’t be actually fired on the spot without cause. He can jam that process for months under the current rules. It also helps Trump shot himself in the foot here by not staffing the Department that handles that process. It would take an Act of Congress to override that protection. Which is definitely not happening.
Reassigning Mueller or placing someone else in charge of the investigation to kneecap it from within is another story. That one I’m not too sure about since they might have a fig leaf to hide behind. But definitely something to protest loudly.
randy khan
@Ridnik Chrome:
Although I generally am not at all sympathetic to Bork, who got increasingly crazy over the years (and was off the edge already by the time he was nominated for the Supreme Court), I have the tiniest smidgen of sympathy for him in that situation. Unlike Richardson and Ruckelshaus, resigning probably would have been a career-ending event for him (at least, the career he wanted – he probably could have had fancy law firm jobs no matter what), and Cox was eventually going to be fired by someone. I hope that in a similar situation I would have realized that the ethical issues outweighed the personal issues and refused to fire Cox, and I do think that’s what Bork should have done, but it was a much harder decision for him than for the other two, who if Wikipedia can be trusted actually had promised Congress they wouldn’t fire Cox.
One interesting question about the Saturday Night Massacre is why Richardson and Ruckelshaus resigned. Given the specifics of the situation, they could have taken the position that Nixon was giving them an unlawful order, which they could have refused to act upon without resigning. Obviously, Nixon still could have fired them, but that would have been an even bigger deal than having them resign.
TenguPhule
@B.B.A.:
Voter Suppression, voting restrictions and long term imprisonment can fix that.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
It doesn’t need to be a Trumper. Bork (granted, in self-justification mode) said that one reason he fired Archibald Cox was a concern that the Justice Department would be left leaderless if people kept refusing and resigning. That’s actually a bigger risk now than it was then, since (a) I think they still haven’t filled all of the leadership slots; and (b) Senate Republicans have said they wouldn’t confirm a replacement for Sessions (YMMV as to whether you believe that or not).
TenguPhule
@Yarrow:
I worry our IC and Five Eyes have more faith in the strength of our institutions and the moral clarity of the average American then they deserve.
All the other releases have been met so far with a general “We don’t care, pissing off liberals is more important!”
They’re endorsing a child molester for the Senate FFS.
Peale
@TenguPhule: Meh. its probably not even in the top 10 of boneheaded US Middle East decisions at the moment. Below starving Yemen, keeping troops in Syria to keep that civil war going even after ISIS is gone, the countries listed on the Travel Ban. When Israel moves its capital to Jerusalem and the US declares that it is pushing Palestinians out of Bethlehem to take back the holy land for Christianity – well, that’s coming eventually. Then I’ll worry about where the embassy is. When the time comes, I know the US congress will fund aid to build the 3rd temple to replace the Dome on the Rock – at which point, I’ll just pack up shop and move to the Argentine desert to wait out the storm.
TenguPhule
@randy khan: If Rosenstein hasn’t explained the situation and the consequences to the rest of the chain of command all the way down the line in Justice, I’ll eat my hat. I highly doubt anyone there wants to become the next Bork.
TenguPhule
@Peale: Problem is that Jerusalem is a massive shatterpoint for three major religions and our presence tends to attract unfriendly fire.
Trump is lighting matches in the fireworks factory.
The Moar You Know
@mai naem mobile: Nothing wrong with a bunch of razor-sharp small pieces of plastic to the eyes.
Seriously, it’s battery (assault is the attempt/threat, battery the action). Don’t do it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
MSNBC chyron: Trump says tax bill we be “perfecto”
He thinks he’s Fonzie
TenguPhule
@mai naem mobile:
Yes.
randy khan
@TenguPhule:
I’m sure he has explained it, but people internalize these things differently, and somebody could have a different take than what he told them.
smintheus
@Betty Cracker: This subpoena is a huge deal, especially because Deutsche Bank is famously corrupt. No coincidence that DB was Trump’s public lender of last resort. So we can probably assumed that an unusually large proportion of Trump’s DB affairs will involve illegal activities.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@TenguPhule:
Well placed bombs can also fix that too. You know this already, but the kind of system that allows millions to be disenfranchised will not survive. This will all come to pass so long as good people fight the Powers that Be.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Peale:
Why the Argentine desert?
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: or our esteemed blog host.
Calouste
@TenguPhule: I would expect most Arab countries to recall their ambassador from Washington if that happens. For starters.
Yarrow
@TenguPhule:
I think a lot more is happening behind the scenes than we know. I have confidence.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Would love to see Trumpov take a few questions on the specifics of the bill, just to see if he knows something – anything – about what’s in it. Then again, why bother, he’ll just lie and tell us that every aspect of it is teh awesomest…
Major Major Major Major
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: If it was good enough for Hitler…
ruemara
I’m waiting for the revolution. The masses Bernie promised would march on Congress. Sarandon’s Squad of newly woke. I mean, Occupy Wall Street had less cause and managed to show the fuck up to protest the duplicitous black guy who wasn’t the negro revolutionary they thought the were voting for, since he’s black right? Where the fuck are they? Amazing how small and quiet things are.
TenguPhule
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
The first rule of the Resistance is that we do not talk about the Resistance.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: I am so old that I remember when he was a big fan of GG. Old habits (of jumping to conclusions and going on rants) die hard.
Kay
Good Christ. The lying-est bunch in history are now opining on credibility. I mean, the NERVE of these people.
How many times has the Trump Administration lied just today? Are we in double digits yet?
Say what you will about Comey or Mueller- they’re not giant LIARS. Low bar, I know, but that’s the measure.
TenguPhule
@Calouste: Ironically, most of them probably won’t since Israel is on their side against Iran. This of course, only applies to the official governments. They’ve been indoctrining their populations with Anti-Israel propaganda for so long that the natives are going to go berserk.
Peale
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: The bombs will be falling on your hemisphere. The fallout will be raining down in your storms. Best to move far away where there isn’t much rain.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Over 3,000 lies told in 11 months if Wapo’s count is accurate.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: I used to needle him about that on threads but somebody told me it was rude.
@Kay: I saw that! Whatever, fuck them. And this whole ‘scandal’ is so laughably stupid–they fired somebody for having anti-trump bias, which proves that anti-trump bias exists. What?
Kay
So if Roy Moore gets elected they not only elected a child molester, they elected a liar.
Moore says he does not know all those accusers. That’s a lie, and he repeats it daily.
Not one word he says from this point forward should be believed. He’s standing there in front of those women and saying he does not KNOW them. I mean, Jesus. Another fucking nut job liar.
Yarrow
@Kay:
TenguPhule
@Kay:
This has been the running theme for weeks now.
If they can’t fire Mueller, they may try to get an inside saboteur into the investigation.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: You know what else used to be rude, questioning Kelly’s actions.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
He’s parsing that to mean he’s never actually succeeded in having sex with them in the Biblical sense.
And that’s what he’s going to stick to under oath.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: No, rude was accusing the commentors in general about hero worshipping him.
Humdog
I read Betty’s link and it appears no Saturday Night Massacre would be needed if Shitstain revokes the special counsel rules which are executive office based. It would be scandalous and Mueller probably has many failsafes to move some investigations to states, but it appears to be possible.
I have no idea what would happen but checking out the preplanned instant protests is kind of exciting and heartening. Surely if Boston can get tens of thousand counter protesters out against neo-Nazis, we will get millions out protesting a revocation of the special counsel. Wonder if seeing millions in the streets will chasten R elected at all or if they are too far gone.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: All I did was I questioned the logic of anointing him as a savior, who would save us from nuclear Armageddon.
The Moar You Know
@Peale: FWIW the southern part I find extremely lovely.
Yarrow
Reince is getting burned.
Ouch. And more of this, please!
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: Well, so far we have’t had nuclear Armageddon so maybe that part is working?
Kay
To put this Moore situation in context, there’s lot of child sexual assault cases in this county. A fair share. Say one every month
out of 20 or so indicted for various things. Some months none but some months more than one.
They say they didn’t do the act or it was misinterpreted. What they don’t say is they don’t KNOW, have never encountered, the children.
He’s rock bottom even for a sex offender. He’s crazytown, even in that group.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Well it is possible, although I have my doubts.
Major Major Major Major
@Humdog: It says he “could order the special-counsel regulations repealed”, whatever that means. Drilling down to the linked WaPo article it looks like said regulations are not in a law. Perhaps there’s likely a process to “ordering a regulation repealed” that the DoJ could gum up for a while. But either way, while it’s fully within his power to somehow fire Mueller, whichever way he goes about it would be very blatant and quite possibly very stupid.
Matt McIrvin
@Yarrow: Devin Nunes is trying to get Justice officials declared in contempt of Congress for not sharing information with his bogus investigation (note, Devin Nunes is himself one of the people of interest to Mueller).
The House of Representatives could order their Sergeant at Arms to toss Mueller in jail.
Major Major Major Major
@Yarrow: Well I don’t see any tigers around, do you?
Yarrow
@Matt McIrvin: LOL Devin Nunes. I really don’t think he wants to do that. Maybe he has no idea what doing that would do to him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow: when I heard people on cable talking about the long sessions with humorless, confident prosecutors and a sphinx-like Meuller coming in and out of the room, the trembling weasel I thought of first was Reince.
I am not a handsome man and try to avoid lookism, but from his adenoidal whine to his shifty, beady eyes to his receding hair- and jawlines, you’d think a wry god had created him for this role. He was born to play the flipping accountant who’s somehow less likable than the mob boss in a B movie about OC
he’ll die a wealthy man, but I take some satisfaction in the fact that his earnings will be severely crimped by legal bills for the next couple of years
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Why not, and I am sure they will get away with it too because IOKYAR. Yes no doom and gloom just gaming how we are losery losers without any recourse. Carry on guys, have fun coming up with 100 ways of how we are going to lose.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
yes
YES!!!
Major Major Major Major
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
…these fuckers just make it so hard.
d58826
We don’t have enough wars in the ME. Now until Der Fuhrer actually says the words it is still speculation but the WH is tamping it down.
By the way has someone taken Der Fuhrer’s phone? havn’t seen a tweet in about 30 hours
https://twitter.com/nasseratta5/status/938106263262695425
tobie
@Humdog:
We need to be prepared for every eventuality, and this is one of them. I remember quaint times when we thought it was impossible to fire the head of the FBI, to ignore properly enacted legislation like the ACA, and to perjure yourself publicly as Sessions has, to self-deal as Trump and his family have, etc. It’s the job of Congress to hold the line and they’ve shown that they’ve got no interest in checking the executive.
TenguPhule
@Humdog:
Do you even have to ask?
Cheryl Rofer
@Yarrow:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Major Major Major Major: heh, they really do
the trumps, at least, give you permission by altering their looks to look more ridiculous
@d58826: Ivanka and Jared must have sat him down after the confession tweet and subsequent bungling about Dowd
Yarrow
@Cheryl Rofer: Oh, wow. Didn’t know that existed.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Suppose Justice Dept appoints a known Trump ratfucker as part of Mueller’s investigation.
Aside from protesting, what do you suggest we could do about it legally?
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer: Its not as funny as the creators obviously intended it to be.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: I don’t have a ready made answer to every doomsday scenario.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
What do you mean possibly?
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: I should have written ‘counterproductive’. Of course it will be stupid, Trump is doing it.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Its not a doomsday scenario, its a legitimate question.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@ruemara: Where are they? As of the other day they were in Pasadena protesting Hillary!
Patricia Kayden
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Protesting Secretary Clinton for what exactly? What idiots Bernie supporters turned out to be.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
Withered on the vine as people stopped paying attention, stopped donating, stopped protesting and forgot about them.
trollhattan
@Yarrow:
Signs indicate yes.
ruemara
@TenguPhule: False. They collect donations and they got attention by being out there. They removed themselves and are doing nothing.
@Uncle Ebeneezer: As usual, shitting in the tent, ass out to the world. Nice work.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
When they replace Mueller with Larry Klayman or Jerome Corsi, the “fight the good fight, only do nonviolent protests” left will be out with giant puppets and drum circles.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
What people don’t realize is how brittle our institutions are without norms. Take the Norma away, and the malevolent actor has an inordinate amount of power and control.
All those “but he’s not a regular politician” comments you heard from the right and left we’re incredibly corrosive.
We NEED those norms, people act like assholes without them.
SiubhanDuinne
My own Representative, Rob Woodall (GA-7), is such a chicken-livered coward that he doesn’t even provide the address of his district office on his official website “contact me” tab. Just the city.
Back when my job entailed liaison with every member of Congress from six Southeastern states — it was something like 80-85 individuals — I never saw this for anyone except Woodall. Does any other Congresscritter fail to indicate the location of their district office?
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You think non-violent protestors (and those who marched with them) like Gandhi, Mandela and King were without courage and politically ineffective?.
Lapassionara
@marcopolo: Great! Thanks. I have been wondering if there was going to be something in St L
kindness
So what comes after protests? I’m serious. Protests won’t faze Trump nor his minions. In fact his supporters love seeing libs get pissed off and it won’t faze them either. So who does the protests work for? I mean I support the use of protests but what I am saying is what comes after protests when it is determined protests aren’t helping us?
opiejeanne
@ruemara: They’re busy protesting outside bookstores where Hillary has a book signing.
Idiots.
Emma
@TenguPhule: You give him crap jobs and keep him out of the loop. Like one does in the real world.
TenguPhule
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I blame lack of mandatory education about the Standford Prison Experiment.
Emma
@kindness: Voting. Throwing all our energies into fighting voter suppression and getting people registered. That’s where I am going to put my little $$ in the coming year.
TenguPhule
@kindness:
You’re not supposed to ask that question because it causes doomsday scenarios which upset other people.
SiubhanDuinne
@Patricia Kayden:
Whoever could possibly have known, right?
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
I saw a tweet (I think) a day or two ago that said that, for the most part, left-leaning women are marching and protesting while left-leaning men are sitting on their asses and whining about how things are going.
Present company excepted, of course, because I know Uncle Ebeneezer is active with his Indivisible group, as are others of the masculine gender here, but overall it sounds about right.
MJS
@kindness: Disagree. The protests immediately after the inauguration pissed Trump and his followers off royally. The counter protests when the Nazis gather do as well. Trump and his followers have incredibly thin skin. Well attended protests are a direct repudiation of what they stand for.
Brachiator
@Peale:
And let’s update the Yemen situation to include the recent killing of the former president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
His son has called for revenge against the Houthi rebels who took his father’s life.
opiejeanne
@d58826: mr opiejeanne says Trump’s attorneys didn’t write any new tweets for him.
marcopolo
@SiubhanDuinne: That’s pretty special. Excuse me while I vomit. Alas for him, Rob held an open house in 2011 with the address listed so here you go:
The District Office of Congressman Rob Woodall
Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center
75 Langley Drive
Lawrenceville, Georgia 30046
ruemara
@Mnemosyne: Sadly, I posted the metrics of the Resistance and yes, it’s largely female. But even then, the women’s march was huge. It was also almost a year ago. seriously? with a rate like that, I’d have achieved voting rights somewhere in 2130.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat:
Points of Order.
Gandhi’s efforts were ineffective against the Nazis.
Mandela resorted to violence.
And King lived in a time when the entire Republican party was not guilty of treason.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
But didn’t stop a single rightwing lunatic from being appointed to the federal courts.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Stop confusing what you write with legitimate analysis of possible futures.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: His antagonists were the British not the Nazis. The British did resort to violence of the most brutal kind against unarmed protestors.
ETA: Your mind is made up. I see no further point in discussing this with you.
TenguPhule
And looks like we may get a government shut down for Christmas!
Irreconcilable differences never sounded so sweet.
Betty Cracker
@MJS: Not to mention the spontaneous protests at the airports in response to the initial Muslim ban, which reassured our fellow Americans and immigrants who are Muslims that we aren’t all ignorant assholes who hate them. That meant a lot to many people. Protests give hope to the despondent, send a message to friends and foes alike and provide a great opportunity to network and take further action.
Miss Bianca
@ruemara: I hear you. And yet strangely I’m STILL dealing with virtue scolds on FB who are taking Democrats to task for, oh, daring to be “distracted” by the Russia investigation while the Republicans are looting the treasury, and saying that while Democrats are criminals just like Republicans, at least the lefty purity ponies thik they can hijack the party. Vive la revolution, bebe!
Now, pardon me while I throw up on my love beads.
@Yarrow: REPUBS IN DISARRAY!
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: The British also still had a moral compass.
marcopolo
@Mnemosyne: In all honesty, and this isn’t to burnish myself or anything, I am the only one in my social circle (about 10-15 folks) who is actively involved in protests, working in nearby special elections, etc… At least since March/April. Most of my friends are just burned out/overwhelmed/worn down by the daily awfulness of life after Nov. 9th. Every Monday or Tuesday I do send out an email to all of them asking them to make calls to our electeds about salient issues. I suspect (hope) a few of them follow through (particularly my friend with a wheelchair bound disabled daughter). I told them at our last get together that I expected all of them to (come with) help me knock doors next year. But as Emma said above, after the protests to get visibility and stoke anger, we have to organize, register, and vote our asses off in 2018.
Mnemosyne
@MJS:
Yep. The best way to make white supremacists slink away with their tails between their legs is to do a counter-protest that’s many times larger than theirs. If you ignore them, they assume that you’re secretly with them and it only emboldens them.
MJS
@TenguPhule: No shit. Trump also didn’t resign after the protests. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t happen. “Hey Martin Luther King, Jr. That first march you led didn’t do squat. Why don’t you hang it up?”
Starfish
There is a planned march for the one year anniversary of the women’s march. There are various smaller protests, and the local Indivisible groups are trying to specialize in things. There is one that specializes in hosting Democratic candidates to speak. there is another that specializes in theatrics like providing red robes to women who protest when Pence comes to town.
A Civil Rights Museum is being opened in Mississippi. John Lewis will be there, and Trump recently announced that he was going to be there too. Some people are trying to organize a protest.
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: Did they? They were brutes in India and elsewhere.
You realize you’re trying to school someone from India, don’t you?
MJS
@Betty Cracker: You said it much better than I could.
Humdog
@marcopolo: Thank you for making many efforts to get those around you involved. Do not despair if you don’t feel you are getting results. Your example is heartening to the discouraged and is surely helping you to avoid your own despair. I hope to follow your example.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Not where the people in the Empire were concerned. Brutality and repression were the name of the game.
There was no due process or the rule of law or freedom of speech or assembly for that matter.
marcopolo
@Miss Bianca: Lucky you. I no longer have any dealings with the one Brogressive Bernite in my group who voted for Trump. Fuck him. The other guy I was aware voted for Trump hasn’t shown his face at any social gatherings since March. Invest your time and energy in being with and acting with people who are positively working for electoral change.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I remember seeing some hand-wringing about how sad it is that these leftists are using massive counter-protests to squash the free speech rights of the Nazis. The free-speech concern trolls (as opposed to free-speech civil libertarians like the ACLU) had shifted from “the counter to bad speech is more speech” to “too much speech! Needs louder Nazis!”
JoeyJoeJoe Junior Shabadoo
@B.B.A.: I’m reminded of the Game of Theones episode (spoiler) where Jon Snow orders Janos Slynt taken and Alliser Thorne grabs his sword but relents and let’s Janos get seized. That’s similar to how most of shithead’s followers would react, I think. Who knows about the really crazy ones
Miss Bianca
@marcopolo: I know, I know, but somehow I can’t help myself sometimes – I feel this need to slap them in the face (virtually speaking) with the smelly dead fish of reality, even tho’ I realize it’s likely a waste of time.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
It’s almost like they secretly agreed with the Nazis all along, isn’t it? ?
Mnemosyne
@MJS:
It’s almost like it took a full 10 years to get from the Montgomery bus boycott to the March on Washington. And that’s not even counting all of the decades of civil rights work that was happening before 1955.
marcopolo
@Brachiator: The thing, aside from the awfulness of life in Yemen right now, that caught my eye about this story is the reporter who said they estimated Saleh had stashed away upwards of $60 billion in assets. That’s a hella lotta looting of something–sounded like he could have taught the billionaire looters in our country a thing or two.
TenguPhule
@opiejeanne:
Yes, they were brutes. I didn’t say they were very good moral compasses. But they eventually left.
Yes, I’m aware of it. The influence it has on her comments is rather obvious.
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: Thank You. Almost everything the Nazis tried (except the gas chambers), the British had tried before on their captive populations.
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: They left because the British Indian army and Navy were in full scale mutiny against them after the second world war. That and the political struggle by the All India Congress was like a pincer movement. They left because they were compelled to do so.
rikyrah
@ruemara:
TELL IT
TenguPhule
@MJS: You’re confusing moral victories with ongoing destruction of the laws of the land.
The court packing is bad. Protesting, however much hope it inspires, will not change GOP minds and is not stopping them.
They’re literally rewriting the rules of engagement here. A second Civil Rights march with the courts and even the damn justice department not on our side does not end as well as the first one.
The Moar You Know
@kindness: Been asking this question since the 1980s and have never gotten a coherent, let alone satisfactory reply.
Annie
@randy khan:
Well, yes, but Mueller is not investigating this all by himself. He’s brought in quite a number of other attorneys to investigate different aspects of Dolt45’s activities. I don’t think all of these people necessarily go away if Mueller is fired. And Yarrow is right — Dolt45 can’t do it, and Sessions is recused, so Rosenstein and then the next in the chain of command would have to do it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Let’s say it again:
He was such a pervert THAT THEY BANNED HIM FROM THE MALL.
He was such a pervert THAT THEY HAD POLICE ASSIGNED TO HIM AT THE LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL GAMES.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: So was it a combination of violence and non-violence that got Britain to leave India?
schrodingers_cat
@TenguPhule: Yes. It was an organized political resistance that got the British to leave India and ensure its stability after independence.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@schrodingers_cat:
Ghandi had a huge population behind him in the postwar period when the UK was truggling to meet basic needs at home and no longer the will to fight – they knew what was coming after the protests.
Mandela’s ANC has a dual approach that also was capable of violence, and the implicit offer from the beginning was that power would be shared, the alternative being one of a repressive communist nationalism.
King was the velvet glove – the alternative was Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.
MJS
@TenguPhule: And you’re confusing a discussion about the efficacy of protests with… I’m not exactly sure. Protests are happening/have happened, an investigation has commenced and is yielding results, but you’re clamoring for some ill-defined immediate solution to the problem. Perhaps if you clearly state the action steps that must occur immediately, and the likely outcome of those steps, we’d have a better idea of how to proceed, instead of wasting time on silly protests and pointless investigations.
TenguPhule
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: And in 2017 we’ve got….not much in terms of a credible cudgel counterweight.
Dave
@TenguPhule: The reason people get tired of doomsday scenarios is because from what I see it goes Trump administration/GOP does bad thing and we are forever screwed because apparently it’s impossible for idiots to screw themselves over or ever lose. Phyrrhic vicotories or the reality that short-term vicitories often contain the seeds of there own defeat are ignored.
The long and short of it is it’s not serious wargaming not what are probable outcomes of X course of action and what actions can be taken to mitigate, respond to, or gain advantage from the actions of these not exact bright actors. It’s the goatee universe version of irrational exuberance. Pretends Trump/GOP do bad thing and never suffer the adverse consequences. That’s why I personally find it tiring.
SiubhanDuinne
@Starfish:
I was pleased to hear on local NPR this morning that Freedom Parkway — which more or less connects the MLK National Historic Site with the Carter Presidential Center and Library — is being renamed. Henceforth, the thoroughfare will be the John Lewis Freedom Parkway.
Naming/renaming streets and buildings and parks and airports after local luminaries is, of course, a fine old custom, and Atlanta has always been right there in the forefront. Nevertheless, it’s a nice tribute to Congressman Lewis and I’m glad it’s happening.
schrodingers_cat
@Dave: Hear hear.
schrodingers_cat
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Gandhi was quite old after WWII and he had passed on the torch to those younger than he was.
ETA: Political organization is key to the success of protests (non-violent or otherwise)
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve been to Ireland and have seen the marks still on the place. By the time we got to London it was difficult not to hiss at people. The history of the Republic is drummed into you if you just walk around Dublin long enough and read the signs on buildings and on monuments. Their revolution is so recent that their grandparents were part of it.
We’re both Irish.
My immigrant ancestor left before 1832 but mr opiejeanne’s left during one of the potato famines.
TenguPhule
@MJS: What had been asked is what are protests accomplishing.
In regards to the government, not much.
Its fine to protest, but that’s a paper tiger and don’t try to claim otherwise. You protest, you meet people, you feel better for a little while, but nothing has actually been changed.
The GOP are still trying to kill us because they don’t feel shame, remorse or guilt.
The investigations are still our best shot at the system handling this legally.
The problem is that so many bad actors are in positions of power in the system that its an ongoing question as to whether the current institutions will be able to handle it.
When the penetration is at all levels, who watches the watchers?
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: And your comments here are influenced by the fact that you are an insufferable ass.
I regret removing the pie filter.
TenguPhule
@Dave:
Point of order, my doomsday scenarios involve all parties losing.
They’re wrecking the whole system. We literally can’t function as a country once they break one straw too many.
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: Well I have both freedom fighters and low level bureaucrats for the Empire in my family, my grandparents’ generation.
TenguPhule
@opiejeanne: I’m sorry, I’m having a depressing day.
SiubhanDuinne
@marcopolo:
He was a freshman in 2011. He didn’t know better ;-)
And yes, I know the address can be found online, but why should his constituents have to dig for it? It should be prominently listed on his official website.
MJS
@TenguPhule: Betty gave a far better defense of protests than I could. Please read it. Then please respond to my question- since protests are useless, and the investigation will prove to be futile, what should be happening? If the answer is “nothing, because we’re all screwed”, then say so.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
We have giant puppets and drum circles, and people in knit caps singing “kumbaya” and “Michael Row the Boat Ashore”, dammit. You act like those won’t strike fear into the hearts of white southerners who live behind walls in gated communities and send their kids to Christian private schools, all as they pay public and private cops to keep them safe from (and to kick the shit out of) n****rs and sp*cs.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule: Like I said upthread, in my experience they don’t accomplish anything. I do have to modify that a bit. They are social gatherings where ugly hippies can occasionally get laid.
That’s it.
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
The British were going to leave,one way or another. Non-violence gave them a way out without losing face.
Dave
@TenguPhule: What are you waiting for to happen? That GOP and Trump suddenly say whoops we are the bad guys FBI should come and arrest us now and those of us that aren’t arrested should just resign?
Protests have value because they show that the populace doesn’t support actions and policies and they can energize voters creating a more engaged population. Of course this doesn’t always work and of course the current government will continue to do things that we don’t like until at least midterms and barring a really unexpected positive turn of events until at least Jan 2021. Though obviously can be mitigated by gaining either the and/or the Senate.
Nobody here is under impression that protests and other actions create immediate results we have set elections not a system where governments can dissolve and elections be held.
And really please for the love of God try to improve your wargaming. Hell a much of a pain as it is look into MDMP or any other method that helps determine courses of action it will improve your thinking if your open to it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@TenguPhule:
If Nixon had this GOP house and this GOP Senate and this Supreme Court, he’d have served as President for Life.
Starfish
This is a link to Facebook, but it shows a bunch of people having a protest in the hallway of Cannon House Office Building.
MisterForkbeard
@TenguPhule: The protests are (among other things) pretty critical for maintaining engagement, enthusiasm and outrage amongst those less likely to vote.
I know quite a few people who were iffy on Trump/Hillary before the election but attended multiple marches afterwards. Keeping those people (mostly women) engaged and feeling like they’re part of a movement is fairly critical to any kind of pushback.
Dave
@TenguPhule: No it’s not a good point of order your doomsday scenarios result in you imagining wonderful violence the excitement drips off it and I don’t believe you if you claim otherwise.
Less personally; yes we can all lose. It’s either we improve things and recognize that there are also trends in our favor or we all lose.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Think of how much weaker unions got when pretty severe legal impediments to honoring someone else’s picket came into play. When strikers kicked the shit out of scabs and threatened the homes and lives of management, things got resolved.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@MisterForkbeard:
They should have been more discerning about all those anti-Hillary Facebook memes.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Mnemosyne: It’s still predominantly women, about 2-to-1 at most of the stuff I do/attend. It’s a bit more gender-balanced in more established circles (police reform, min wage, environment etc.) but for the groups like Indivisible/SwingLeft etc., yeah still mostly women doing the work. Men are very present on Environment and Net Neutrality which I think is not coincidental to the fact that those issues have less Identity Politics cooties.
@marcopolo: Same here. My social circle has a lot of active people but they are mostly people I met because of that fact and friended. Whereas my pre-11/9/16 friends…mostly doing jack shit :(. It’s pretty depressing actually how easy it’s been for most of the people I know to revert right back to the complacency of Whiteness/Maleness etc.
The Moar You Know
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: If the left were interested in effective protests, which they are not, they would have to do what MLK did: go to hostile territory. Having two million people show up in SF to protest the Iraq war is a fucking joke. Everyone agrees with you. Go to Dallas or Oklahoma City. Yeah, you’re ALL going to get the shit kicked out of you and some of you may possibly get killed. But at least the people who do not agree with you will see there’s a lot of people who don’t agree with them.
What that accomplishes in the end is frequently counterproductive, but sometimes minds get changed. Not usually.
Had America not been ready to change how they dealt with black folks anyway, MLK would have accomplished nothing save for getting a lot of black folks arrested and beaten. But he went to the right place to get the footage they so desperately needed. That footage helped a lot. But you could just as easily thank Bull Connor for that – but MLK knew he was there too, and how he’d respond. He picked the venue for a reason.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@MisterForkbeard: We had CA Congresswoman Judy Chu (Dem) speak at our Winter party Sunday and she told us that she knows that protests, calls etc. are absolutely having an effect on Republicans. Some have changed their stances because of them. She’s confident that even something like DACA would be supported by enough Rethugs to pass, if it could get to a vote, but very few are willing to go out on the ledge publicly until that happens. Anyways her point: this stuff absolutely works.
MJS
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Pfft, what does she know? The real experts are blog commenters with violent revolution fetishes.
TenguPhule
@MJS:
I’ve got my hopes in the investigation, thank you very much.
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
America didn’t know it was ready to change until it had to deal with the fact of the protests.
MJS
@TenguPhule: “When the penetration is at all levels, who watches the watchers” qualifies as the worst expression of “hope”, ever.
TenguPhule
@Dave:
Now who’s projecting?
I don’t know what happens if Mueller manages to indict Trump himself or any Congressional GOP leaders. I do want to find out.
blockquote>
Protests have value because they show that the populace doesn’t support actions and policies and they can energize voters creating a more engaged population. Of course this doesn’t always work and of course the current government will continue to do things that we don’t like until at least midterms and barring a really unexpected positive turn of events until at least Jan 2021. Though obviously can be mitigated by gaining either the and/or the Senate.
I have very bitter memories of the Bush Jr Invasion of Iraq and the torture policy. It colors my perception of the usefulness of protests as a tool for changing policy and I freely admit it. That doesn’t make my view wrong though.
So far the pattern has gone:
GOP does something evil.
Protest!
GOP continues to do the evil.
Trump does something evil.
Protest!
Trump continues to do something evil.
I don’t think protests are supposed to be an increasingly normalized social activity. Maybe its just me, but I feel that increasingly the power of protests have been diluted by their frequency and by how the media tends to gloss over them other then as a 60 second mention in the evening news, if that much.
When they’re peaceful, nobody cares. When they’re not so peaceful, they get blamed.
TenguPhule
@MJS: I’m sorry, the correct response we were looking for is a Prachett quote.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
I don’t think seeing thousands of women and folks of color getting beaten up by the police is going to elicit the same reaction from the Republicans this time.
The Moar You Know
@Brachiator: Sorry, my friend, you are flat-out wrong about that. The North and to a lesser extent, the West, had been ready for change for decades.
You did not have separate bathrooms, “Christian Academies” and Jim Crow laws outside of the South.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne:
Way OT, but this needs to happen faster. Last time I was in Atlanta Peachtree was the dominant street name EVERYWHERE.
TenguPhule
@The Moar You Know: My experiences were similar. We protested and almost every time the bastards went ahead and did it anyway.
For every ANWR there was an Iraq, CIA torture and Guantanamo Bay.
The Moar You Know
@TenguPhule:
1965: OMG how embarrassing. We don’t want to be associated with this kind of savagery.
2017: MURICA FUCK YEAH! PLAY THAT ONE PART BACK AGAIN WHERE HE STEPS ON HER NECK AND THE BLOOD COMES OUT
Jim, Foolish Literalist
but there were Catholic schools, restricted neighborhoods, covenants, red-lining, sundown towns, and Jim Crow customs
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@The Moar You Know:
We’re not helpless you know. They think they can get away with shit like that because they think all liberals are weak wimps. It’s time to show them they’re wrong.
MisterForkbeard
@The Moar You Know: I think you’re kind of right here. They’d couch it as finding one woman or black guy (preferably a black person they can call a ‘thug’) fights back physically and they’d glory in it… and use it as an excuse to justify the beating/suppression they see. :(
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
Racism was, and still is, American Apartheid. American. The South was a special place, but the North was not exempt. Malcolm X did not live in the South, nor was he letting white Northern crackers off the hook.
You seem to be profoundly ignorant of the informal racist rules and practices outside the South that made things like the Green Book necessary. Black people traveling throughout the country by car could never be sure when they might be denied service or accommodation outside of a black community.
And again, back to my original point, before the civil rights protests began, no one new that America was ready to change. And even here, change came slowly, even with successful legal challenges to de jure and de facto segregation and racist practices.
But even back in the day, there were a lot of white people who, like you, thought that protests were pointless, even dangerous.
And of course, back then, a good chunk of the public believed that Negroes were being led by commies.
By any reading of history, the idea that the North was magically ready and supportive of the civil rights movement is ludicrous.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@TenguPhule:
WTF Does the damn Nazis have to do with Winston “I invented the Black and Tan” Churchill’s Colonial India?? Jesus Christ guy, get a grip.
TenguPhule
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Gandhi tried to non-violent persuasion on the Nazis to avert WW II.
The point was that in order for peaceful resistance to work by themself, you need an opponent that possesses a moral compass, however small and battered it may be.
Dave
@TenguPhule: Ok this is a bit better. First it’s hyperbole I was engaging in hyperbole not projection. It’s not usually a nice thing to do but it isn’t the same thing as projection.
Let’s take what you quoted me regarding protests. My claim was that they have value not that the putative goals of the protest are always or even often accomplished. See “of course they don’t always work” I personally believe protests are most effective when unusual such as the immediate protests at airports against the immigration ban and others such as the Womans March which was undertaken as a way to demonstrate that we as a society were not behind the vision being put forth by the Trump administration. At no point have I claimed that protests are a sufficient or even the most effective response to events simply that they can have value. Yes it is incredibly frustrating and even disheartening when the immediate goals of the protest aren’t met such as you mentioned regarding the Iraq War. I will go so far as to say that protests rarely succeed at in accomplishing the short term goals of the protesters. I would also recommend that anyone interested in engaging in protest study past movements successful and failures to try to understand why they succeeded or failed. Again because I apparently need to do this let me emphasize I don’t believe that protests themselves are sufficient or even necessarily an important part of civic engagement. I’m just noting that they can have value.
I used hyperbole partly because the oblivious Chicken Little act gets under my skin and partly because if you read your normal comments they often follow a pattern.
-posit negative action (sometimes these are fairly plausible and other times they well they aren’t
-negative action is taken and we are screwed
-other commentators counter that the action is unlikely and that even if it occurs it’s not happening in a vacuum and that it that there are actions that can be taken in response
-you come up with rationalizations why that’s wrong
-it pretty much goes on from there
-this is maddening to people
Trumps election was damned bad. That the GOP has control of Congress is damned bad. That they will shape the courts and have apparently repudiated any sense of governmental responsibility is damned bad. That a hostile foreign power enabled this also damned bad. However things are not anywhere near hopeless if it was we wouldn’t have the Mueller investigation, Trump wouldn’t have 60% plus disapproval etc etc. You are right to be concerned about the state of our civic society but it’s important to remember that it didn’t arrive here overnight and if we want to improve that it won’t happen overnight either.
And finally if you receive significant push-back that your imagined future scenarios aren’t realistic maybe consider that’s because they aren’t. Regardless this rambling and meandering I need to begin writing more get back in the groove you know.
Sab
@Brachiator: I was born in NC a couple of months before Brown v Board was decided. The Catholic bishop of NC told all the parochial schools to follow the law and by September 1954 they were accepting black students.
When we moved back north to Ohio in 1966 my urban junior and senior high school were still pretty much segregated. We had six black students out about 200 in 1972.
18 years and not much change
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As far as Trump goes, quit trying to think for him; he’s a very, very lazy and stupid man. Trump is almost certain to chose the worst possible, most inept choice at the worst possible moment, like say firing the NY State AG after Mueller indites Trump for some crime.
Sab
@Dave: I have a couple of hopeful thoughts about the future.
This collection of new judges are so incompetent and so venal that there is no way they won’t commit impeachable offenses. I have my doubts if they even know where the legal boundaries are.
The post election protests accomplished a lot. Millions of outraged American citizens learned that millions of other citizens shared their shock and outrage. As a consequence, there are a lot of excellent Democratic candidates coming along for next year. In mid-2017 Democratic voters seemed kind of listless. They seem pretty energized now.
J R in WV
@kindness:
I’m thinking a nation wide General strike, closing down freeway exits and entrances, not allowing business to take place at all, anywhere. We haven’t seen that in around 80 or 90 years, but back in the day, when the unions shut the railroads down, shit happened.
I’m not sure the Volunteer Army and today’s National Guard would be willing to shoot organized and peaceful demonstrators in the streets down like commie dogs. It would take real courage to show for a second day of “Shut Down Everything” demonstrations if they did use machine guns and armored vehicles to clear out clogged intersections.
Dave
@Sab: I agree I’m actually fairly hopeful. Hell for once the heighten the contradiction crowd may have even been accidentally correct. It’s not an experiment you can run often or I want to ever run again but it’s very possible we see this through to a better place than we would have if HRC had won as her victory would have done nothing to change the underlying dysfunctions. Still that’s an almost pollyanish take on my part but American politics often seems to move like this. Pressure builds and builds and nothing seems to be happening and then it all happens at once.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Dave:
And then conservatives push back – for decades – because they fear no consequence from people who used nonviolent means to wrest the illusion of some parity from an entrenched white majority.
White Afrikaaners mind their manners nowadays because of potential consequences.
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
Unlike, say, France, it would be extremely difficult to organize a general strike in the US. Our society just isn’t set up to get as many groups and organizations to participate.
Trump would order deadly force in a heartbeat. He would love it. And of course, we have been here before. I don’t know if the Army or National Guard would be willing to shoot, but an accident or deadly reaction would be very possible.
opiejeanne
@TenguPhule: Ok, ok.
Depression sucks. Some of us, possibly you also, are hanging on by our fingernails. Every time something happens we experience outrage and more grief that we are helpless in the face of these things.
TenguPhule
@opiejeanne: As I’ve mentioned earlier, I have extremely bitter memories of the Iraq II protests, the torture protests and all the other things we were mad as hell about the Bush regime for.
I marched, I called, I tried to fight the good fight back then. Converting John Cole to the side of light was one of our few real achievements in those days. The rest of it….not so much. Things didn’t really look up until election night 2008.
Peter H Desmond
rachel maddow’s show is good about showing 30- to 60-second clips of half a dozen or more local protests, on days and at times when popular protest is widespread.
gvg
@TenguPhule: Maybe those protests weren’t as big. You refer to them but I did not see more than a few flakes here. there have been much bigger protests here about Trump actions.
the reason I called the few Iraq protesters here flakes is because their signs seemed more like hippie nostalgia than related to the actual torture/Iraq war issues. there is a small subset who weren’t old enough to have been actually involved in the Vietnam War protests or Civil Rights movement who have always shown up on certain corners and protested everything for the last 25 years that I have lived here. I got the impression from their signs that they really just wanted admiration like they thought the prior real issues protestors got now. Their example made me think protests had become useless in the modern era. The Iraq war protests just weren’t very big around here and the media didn’t show me reason that it was anywhere else too. Only on this blog have I even heard that there were some big ones. Florida is a swing state, not blue. The womens march and some of the others really changed my view, but I know they can’t do all the work. Still I do think they have made Trump and the Congress back down on some things. I judge that they have started to do even worse and backed down several times.
I also think Trump is having less fun than he expected as the rally’s size has dropped and the attempts to keep doing that fun to him thing are dropping plus he can’t get the kind of hero worship from all he thought he would, like he saw Obama getting. I think this might be important depending on how investigations go in getting him to go away. I’d prefer jail but he has to go so him not having fun in the job might be useful in some scenarios that might happen.
We have been having mostly women winning special elections. Women’s march may have inspired and made connections. also organizing is training some people to aim for elections. Most people don’t go on to get good at organizing and get various things done, but a percentage do. Nothing works all the time or produces 100% of new reliable voters or candidates. All tactics yield just a % of these things. Protests haven’t been that bad. Better than doing nothing I judge.