I’ve seen 3 or 4 people start doing these pieces and they are AMAZING.
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From Karen Attiah in WaPo
[quote] If we talked about what is happening in Minneapolis the same way we talk about events in a foreign country, here’s how the Western media would cover it. The quotes and those “quoted” in the piece below are fictional.
In recent years, the international community has sounded the alarm on the deteriorating political and human rights situation in the United States under the regime of Donald Trump. Now, as the country marks 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, the former British colony finds itself in a downward spiral of ethnic violence. The fatigue and paralysis of the international community are evident in its silence, America experts say.
The country has been rocked by several viral videos depicting extrajudicial executions of black ethnic minorities by state security forces. Uprisings erupted in the northern city of Minneapolis after a video circulated online of the killing of a black man, George Floyd, after being attacked by a security force agent. Trump took to Twitter, calling black protesters “THUGS”’ and threatening to send in military force. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts!” he declared.
Full coverage of the George Floyd protests
“Sure, we get it that black people are angry about decades of abuse and impunity,” said G. Scott Fitz, a Minnesotan and member of the white ethnic majority. “But going after a Target crosses the line. Can’t they find a more peaceful way, like kneeling in silence?”
Ethnic violence has plagued the country for generations, and decades ago it captured the attention of the world, but recently the news coverage and concern are waning as there seems to be no end in sight to the oppression. “These are ancient, inexplicable hatreds fueling these ethnic conflicts and inequality," said Andreja Dulic, a foreign correspondent whose knowledge of American English consists of a semester course in college and the occasional session on the Duolingo app. When told the United States is only several hundred years old, he shrugged and said, “In my country, we have structures still from the Roman empire. In their culture, Americans think that a 150-year-old building is ancient history.”[/quote]
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I’m not quite sure what America is anymore. Trump is shocking, on any number of levels, but people still lap it up and think he is good for the country.
The groundwork has been well and truly laid for a stolen election that will make Bush defeating Gore seem like a playground squabble.
Trump has hollowed out so many norms, and the rule of law is all but gone. His rogue behavior is aided by a complicit Senate. Barr is Trump’s lawyer, not the Attorney General in any recognizable way. The Supreme Court nomination may galvanize Trump’s base, including many that don’t actually like the morals of the man, but they will make themselves count because they will see it as a chance to defeat Roe v Wade, which for many Americans, is a sincerely held religious conviction.
In any normal world, Trump loses the election by a large margin.
In the world as is, I think he declares victory on the night, prematurely, and then postal votes will be contested and it all goes to the Supreme Court, which just happens to be stacked in his favor.
If Trump gets another term, the damage to America will be irreparable. It will continue to trundle along, but the American Dream, and any notion of American exceptionalism, will belong to a bygone era.
He will seek a political dynasty for his family, and his wealth will grow exponentially, as he grows more adept at moving the levers of power, and avoiding any accountability.
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It would not be a shock to see a slow movement out of T-bills from international money. No one wants to call a lot of attention to that sort of flow if they are executing it, but the US looks like it has a whole new class of political risk.
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@PeachesEnRegalia @Limiescouse would you please explain what that Twitter means???
The US system is an anachronism. The Electoral College that appoints the President is not just a mathematical model, but actually consists of 538 delegates from the 50 states. Modern convention is that these people are appointed by the State and each give their vote to the candidate who won the popular vote in their state. In many places they are not legally bound to do this though and can vote their personal choice. What this tweet is saying is that Trump is leaning on Governors to appoint loyalists who will cast their vote in the EC for him regardless of the results of the election.
FWIW, while Im sure the story is true and that Trump has aired the idea, the chances of this being the way he tries to steal the election are tiny.
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i remember a tepid effort to have electors reject trump for his unfitness in 2016
the lag with mail-in voting, and trump’s inability to resist egging on his followers, is still the real concern for me. i think we’re going to see street violence and deaths
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I’d like to add that the Atlantic article doesn’t actually contain much in the way of informing that tweet - that said, I’ve contended here for a while that Trump will likely declare victory on election night and send lawyers to anywhere with outstanding votes to contest it.
There is precedent for this kind of thing in 1800s US, but no-one cares about history anymore.
We’re absolutely going to see street violence and deaths - more if Trump “wins”, but I still see some happening if Biden wins, too.
There is precedent from Bush-Gore. The initial perspective becomes the framing for all discussions and decisions that come after. To that point, a lot of the Bush tactics in the days immediately after the election were to solidify the perception that he had won, and then in turn became the perspective of the courts - they were not calling balls and strikes, they were adjudicating on whether they could overturn an election result.
Why do you have it that way around? I would say with pretty high certainty it is the other way around?
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I’m inviting a barrage of nonsense from yourself and Big Noyd here - but generally we’ve seen violent protests from the left and less from the right. There’s discussion to be had over “who started it” and whether right-wing agitators are to blame for flashpoints, but I don’t think it’s out of turn to point to a higher rate of protests and protest violence emanating from left-wing sources.
I do feel like Trump changes that somewhat, and that we will see some violence from the right should Biden win, but I reckon if Trump wins then it’ll be orders of magnitude worse.
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the people on the left protesting police brutality will still be protesting police brutality during a biden presidency
the boomer suburbanites deeply invested in the biden campaign are the people least likely to engage in street violence imo
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Right, but I still think we see more flash points after a Trump win than a Biden win.
The issue isn’t the Biden lovers - it’s the Trump haters. Too many are already at breaking point, and I think it boils over if Trump wins.
Doesn’t the body count say otherwise?
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Hmm. I think if Trump “wins” - and I say that with inverted commas based on the past several months of him stoking conspiracy theories and planting the seed of a rigged election in the minds of his supporters - we’ll most certainly see George Floyd-levels of protests nationwide.
I think if Biden wins, the Qanon folks, the self-styled militias, and the MAGA folks will do the same. I don’t think the incidents will be as widespread, but I think they’ll be far more deadly.
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Yep. There’ll be fewer “flash points” but the flash points that do happen will be very bright, very loud, and very deadly.
There are a lot of extreme right-winger/nationalists/neo-nazis who have been given a voice and validation over the last four years, and they most certainly do NOT want to lose the foothold they’ve gained.
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I’m more speaking to the violent protests in general. I would imagine that more of the deaths are coming from right-wing types. That said, assigning blame here is kinda pointless. Putin is loving every second of this. He’s winning in ways even he could never have imagined.
I think you fail to distinguish the cause of the protest with the cause of the violence. And so the issue is neither Trump haters nor Biden lovers, it is Right Wing militia types and Q nut jobs like Rittenhouse.
If Trump wins there will be first amendment protests of the sort we saw last time, but those will now be met by Boogaloo types who show up for the opportunity to kill some libs, consistent with what we’ve repeatedly seen over the past 12 months or so.
If Biden wins, you will have militias rising in response to a perceived Deep State coup.
In both scenarios, it is the same group who are responsible for the violence. It’s just a matter of whether they are doing it for sport, or to try to save their country.
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This I agree.
The only difference is that even protests by right wing is called out more furiously than violence by left wing by the media. In the past couple of months we have even seen images of journalists casually calling burning buildings as ‘peaceful’, while Dem authorities condoning or at times encouraging violence or autonomous zones (which have shown themselves to be lawless lands).
Trump and Republicans do the same with right wing, but at least they are called out by media.