Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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You might want to sit down, but McConnell has officially come out against the 1/6 commission:
“After careful consideration,” McConnell said from the Senate floor, “I’ve made the decision to oppose the House Democrats’ slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th.”
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Carpet_pissr wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 12:46 pm
malchior wrote: Wed May 19, 2021 11:57 amBack to what is happening now, I think that the Democrats are still up on deck trying to keep sailing the ship to New York when they should be figuring out if the boat is fucking sinking, getting damage control teams together, and frankly getting their shit together.
I agree with this, but unless I completely misunderstood your tone and words, you implied that it's already too late. That the slow burn plan of R's literally taking the country back involved some sinister shit, which has been in place and working for 10 years. With the current (clueless, or powerless, or both) Dems in power, what will a win in 2024 matter? Or even the next presidency? I think we both agree that it will take a lot more than just winning even the Executive branch to really change the trajectory here, if it's not already too late.
Mostly right. Like I said nothing is 100% certain but the Republicans are way, way ahead. If they want authoritarianism they just need to push a bit more. That we had intentionally non-political functions of the government acting as organs of the GOP was a line we never thought we'd cross. But we did. The damage is immense. Many of the experts on authoritarianism have been sounding alarms for years. I haven't seen one say it's too late because that's hard to know. We'll find out in the rear view mirror. I sometimes wonder if we tripped in already in practicality.
To be clear, I myself am not sure it's not too late. I suspect it probably already is, but obviously hoping for the best here.
Exactly.
It's going to take some leadership balls of enormous girth and magnitude to turn it around if it's even possible. But I am not sure it IS possible when so much of the country, with their damned adolescent mindsets, support what we (here) consider to be the darker, authoritarian timeline.
They don't understand what it'll mean. And worse they have been sold a bill of googs about how it'll help them.
Worse, I'm pretty sure most of the non-Crazy in the country has not consciously considered or refuses to admit that the Trump voters and supporters are TOTALLY OK with authoritarianism (and probably a lot of other things) as long as it supports their world view. The Crazy are probably loathe to admit it openly, but they fucking LOVE Putin! Or at least what he represents...a strong, badass leader who takes no shit, and doesn't pussy around when people he doesn't like gets in his way. That's the piece that is so dangerous. It's so seemingly inconceivable (HERE! IN THE USA!!), that it literally boggles the mind of most Americans (the ones that are even vaguely thinking about the consequences and current goings-on), and is just bounced as crazy.
It's more than that. The rich have been picking their pockets and telling them it's the "others" doing it to them. I don't want to say it was planned because that'd be some real 10-dimensional chess but the field was tilted. Things were going well but when the bad impacts of wealth inequality hit home they took advantage and continued to manipulate to make sure that they keep getting their rents.

I'll get wonky here but some political scientists call it the conservative dilemma. As a very incomplete description, essentially inequality leads to political instability and conservative forces have an impulse to preserve that system because they represent it. Capital often gets outsized power. The first time this happened was about a century ago and that was especially true in the United Kingdom and the United States. Essentially Marx was somewhat right about long-term capitalism. What Marx got wrong is there is a solution. The British Tories figured it out first. They presented enough public services to keep people happy. In the US we did a lot of dumb things but eventually we built out our model - essentially the New Deal. It solved the dilemma for some time even though the Conservatives here fought it tooth and nail.

The dilemma has returned and this time the inequality distorted the system in an unexpected way. The world changed. It was easier to manipulate populations. And "capital" used that to rig the system in their favor. And that is what we are seeing the end stages of. The build out of a sustainable authoritarian oligarchy. Just like Russia. Our wealth inequality looks a whole like Russia now than anything else. They didn't need to make the people's lives better. They could keep all that money for themselves. They convinced them government was the enemy and that the "others" were keeping them down.

In the end, the neat trick they may pull off if they succeed is that it'll look just like the United States. We'll still have elections and the courts will churn out decisions. It'll just all be for show though. We'll keep having Republican Presidents and the press will talk about how the Democrats are in the "wilderness" or whatever. Big picture we won't have anyone obviously telling us we aren't free anymore. We won't have obvious restrictions for freedom of speech for instance. We'll still be armed to the teeth which will be odd for an authoritarian country but fits our unique model of it.

Instead people who find themselves running afoul of the state will charged with crimes for whatever they can hang on dissenters. Or they'll be saddled with unwinnable lawsuits. It'll look like legitimate law and order. As an all too real example, say someone has a parody account called Devin Nunes' Cow. Agents of the government may abuse the power to attempt to unmask them for harassment. Just like we just found out actually happened. And lest this be a GOP bash - the Obama administration used the exact same tools to try to unmask anonymous users on Reason.com who made hyperbolic statements about politicians. Other effects is over time the police will become more ruthless and more unaccountable. And the press run by big Corporations will over time talk less and less about our real problems and instead pivot to protecting the regime. We'll be washed over with propaganda. It'll sneak up on us and many might think it didn't happen.

And for many people it won't impact their lives. They'll still get paid, they'll still have investments, and there still will be many features of what we expect from a free society. But it'll all be fixed. And that is what I'm getting at here. Some of this might have already happened. Our politicians in many states pick their voters now. Our most powerful are above the law. The markets are fixed in their favor. They have been rewarded by policy and have permanently redirected north of $2.5T a year in income to the top 1% from the middle of the electorate over the last 40 years. This game might have been lost years ago and we're just figuring it out now.


"There’s really only one way to threaten a democratic system: when one group decides that its values are more important than the system itself and it subverts the religion of democracy with some other, likely less virtuous, religion . . . and political extremism grows. Political extremists, because they are intractable and impossible to bargain with, are, by definition, childish. They’re a bunch of fucking babies. Extremists want the world to be a certain way, and they refuse to acknowledge any interests or values outside their own. They refuse to negotiate. They refuse to appeal to a higher virtue or principle above their own selfish desires...

They are also unabashedly authoritarian because, as children, they are desperate for an all-powerful parent to come and make everything “all right.”40 The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle. A right-wing extremist will claim she desires “freedom” above all else and that she’s willing to make sacrifices for that freedom. But what she really means is that she wants freedom from having to deal with any values that do not map onto her own. She wants freedom from having to deal with change or the marginalization of other people. Therefore, she’s willing to limit and destroy the freedom of others in the name of her own freedom.

"... the maturity of our culture is deteriorating. Throughout the rich and developed world, we are not living through a crisis of wealth or material, but a crisis of character, a crisis of virtue, a crisis of means and ends. The fundamental political schism in the twenty-first century is no longer right versus left, but the impulsive childish values of the right and left versus the compromising adolescent/adult values of both the right and left. It’s no longer a debate of communism versus capitalism or freedom versus equality but, rather, of maturity versus immaturity, of means versus ends."
I think this is *a way*. I don't think its the only way. It might even adequately describe what is going on but I'm skeptical of that last sentence. I think this comes down to capital getting excess power and pressing that advantage until the system breaks (or broke).
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Back to the riot - just like tourists!

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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I don't know... That's how I vacation. :lol:
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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malchior wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 7:24 pm They need a war chief.
Goddamned right.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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That's how I take tours. Interactive tourism the best.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Can't state it more plainly than that:

The January 6th Commission would be bipartisan and tasked solely with seeking and reporting the truth.

Members of Congress who oppose it are engaged in a coverup on the insurrection against our republic.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Let me try my hand at the Trumpublican version of that Tweet:

The January 6th Commission would be concocted by Democrats, liberal-biased, and tasked solely with assigning false blame to score political points. Truth has nothing to do with this.

Members of Congress who oppose it are engaged in a the highest form of sacrificial patriotism for our country.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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175 voted against. Trump ftw
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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So you can see the 35 that supported it. I can only assume they will all be in danger of recall vote tomorrow.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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35 is probably higher than expected and gives them the bipartisan chip. Now it gets killed/speed bumped in the Senate. Again I think the goal is to delay it.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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More of this please.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Don't know how much good it will do (I hope it does do good and a lot but I've been feeling defeated for years), but it feels good.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I love the energy but I laughed out loud at 'beat China'. We aren't going to beat China. They get shit done. The United States doesn't. Heck in NJ they announced they wanted to build a train station in 2004. It is 2021 and they just announced a multi-million dollar contract to get 30% of the design done in the next 18 months. China has built out portion of their high speed rail lines in less than 18 months total. We're not winning anything outside high tech anymore against these guys and that'll begin to slip over time. We're just trying to hold on. And most of the reason why is because people like Tim Ryan need to yell at these guys to live in reality.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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LordMortis wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 7:31 am Don't know how much good it will do (I hope it does do good and a lot but I've been feeling defeated for years), but it feels good.
All bark, no bite. Could be the motto of the modern Democratic Party.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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malchior wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 8:53 am I love the energy but I laughed out loud at 'beat China'. We aren't going to beat China. They get shit done. The United States doesn't. Heck in NJ they announced they wanted to build a train station in 2004. It is 2021 and they just announced a multi-million dollar contract to get 30% of the design done in the next 18 months. China has built out portion of their high speed rail lines in less than 18 months total. We're not winning anything outside high tech anymore against these guys and that'll begin to slip over time. We're just trying to hold on. And most of the reason why is because people like Tim Ryan need to yell at these guys to live in reality.
China is not near the giant that they are made out to be. Among the many issues they face are:

1) A demographic trap due to the one child policy and a rapidly aging population
2) A severe water shortage (and what they have is badly polluted)
3) Severe pollution of air/water/land
4) A tremendously overbuilt housing market that a some point will collapse disastrously (especially given inevitable population decline)

Yes, you can praise their quick development of fast rail lines, but for every eternally delayed NJ train station I can point you to a "ghost" city built for hundreds of thousands of people where few, if any people, actually live.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 9:16 am
LordMortis wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 7:31 am Don't know how much good it will do (I hope it does do good and a lot but I've been feeling defeated for years), but it feels good.
All bark, no bite. Could be the motto of the modern Democratic Party.
Ryan is the Democratic front runner for Portman's Senate seat in Ohio. So you'll hear a lot of bark out of him over the next year and a half.
FTE
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Grifman wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 10:08 am
malchior wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 8:53 am I love the energy but I laughed out loud at 'beat China'. We aren't going to beat China. They get shit done. The United States doesn't. Heck in NJ they announced they wanted to build a train station in 2004. It is 2021 and they just announced a multi-million dollar contract to get 30% of the design done in the next 18 months. China has built out portion of their high speed rail lines in less than 18 months total. We're not winning anything outside high tech anymore against these guys and that'll begin to slip over time. We're just trying to hold on. And most of the reason why is because people like Tim Ryan need to yell at these guys to live in reality.
China is not near the giant that they are made out to be.
They're about to eclipse US GDP and we have to deal with it. They are going to spring past us on AI, digitization, and battery tech. Initiatives driven because of the problems you raised and their ability to have stable political policy making. A capability we have lost.
1) A demographic trap due to the one child policy and a rapidly aging population
Yes they are freaking out a bit but they have the 2nd largest rural population in the world. They're figuring out how to adjust but they have sufficient population living in rural poverty. Even if they start shrinking they are still industrializing. And rapidly aging? Roughly the same median age as the US. Hardly anything like Japan for instance where it is probably their biggest problem.
2) A severe water shortage (and what they have is badly polluted)
Aside from the pollution we have the same problem in big portions of the country and it'll likely get worse.
3) Severe pollution of air/water/land
They don't care all that much and at least for now it hasn't been much of a growth limiter.
4) A tremendously overbuilt housing market that a some point will collapse disastrously (especially given inevitable population decline)
It's seen as a risk and they had a bubble burst in 2011. Which did affect growth. They fell to ... checks the stats...a decade or so low of 7.7% GDP growth YoY. Heck this century China's economy grew 1400% while ours roughly doubled. They are going to catch us this decade probably.
Yes, you can praise their quick development of fast rail lines, but for every eternally delayed NJ train station I can point you to a "ghost" city built for hundreds of thousands of people where few, if any people, actually live.
Sure. There is waste there. But they have capacity. They have capability. I was just pointing out a local example of the inability to do something here but that expands to the region. Multiple Federal agencies have pointed out that the NE corridor train line (which this train station was slated for) is at risk of a catastrophic failure that'd be valued at $400M dollar of lost productivity a day. And for 10 years we've fumbled around not solving that straight forward problem. We need to build a tunnel to supplement the one that was built 120 years ago and badly needs a shutdown and repairs. I would figure we could do something like that in the world's richest country. But national politics have prevented it.

Beyond that you can find dozens of articles about NIMBY-ism stopping business all across America right now. Locally a single gas station has been the subject of over 40 hours of public deliberation during the pandemic for a *variance*. We're bloated, we're fighting with each other, and we are decadent. Bluster about beating China is hilarious to me when we can't pass laws, protect ourselves from rampant cyber crime, and have anything approaching stable domestic and foreign policy. It's time to face facts. They are going to eclipse us. This decade. We're going to lose and we need to start facing the reality of that.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

LawBeefaroni wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 9:16 am
LordMortis wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 7:31 am Don't know how much good it will do (I hope it does do good and a lot but I've been feeling defeated for years), but it feels good.
All bark, no bite. Could be the motto of the modern Democratic Party.
+1
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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"We're going to lose and we need to start facing the reality of that."

"Lose" what, exactly? A race? To....? And to the Congressman..."beat" China...how? I guess I'm being pedantic again, but that loser/winner rhetoric is part of a bigger problem of attitude IMO. When a people feel like they are losing, or lost something in a big way....bad things tend to happen, but I won't go there. I mean, we're already ON that path, so framing things as WE LOST TO CHINA! is only pouring gasoline, especially when (in my mind), that is a weird way to look at things, and is so damn big and nebulous as to be meaningless.

Win/lose a war, sure, but even that is nebulous these days.
Win/lose a space race, i.e. first to moon - easily definable
Even win/lose a culture war maybe.

But "losing" to another (any) country seems too...simplistic? Not sure how to explain. "Beat China"....at?? Olympic Ping pong? World hot dog eating contest?

Related problematic themes and/or phrases:

Leader of the Free World (haaaaaaate)
GDP world leader ((horribly misleading in so many ways, that should be a separate thread)
Healthcare
Education
Environment? Pollution levels, water quality, etc you guys mentioned above
Personal income levels?
Military strength?
Culture score? :D (Civ) I joke, but obviously "culture" export is a HUGE part of the US's soft power, and has been for decades.

I think it depends a lot on who you are talking to, as well. Many, MANY people (way too many IMO) are happy to look at GDP as the only metric that matters, point to those numbers, and say WINNING/LOSING. Maybe that's what he's alluding to here.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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Carpet_pissr wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 11:27 amBut "losing" to another (any) country seems too...simplistic? Not sure how to explain. "Beat China"....at?? Olympic Ping pong? World hot dog eating contest?
In this case it is the ability to dominate policy across the world. As an example, safe seas and international commerce? The UK handed the job of maintaining that to us and we'll probably have that role for a long-time still but China is going to flex in over time. They are already making the moves to do so. What does that mean? We believed in unfettered trade and were able to make it a reality via control of the seas. I won't get into the problems caused by that trade but eventually we won't be the ones protecting the seas and instead over time see more and more commerce subject to their rules instead of ours. Again in that particular case that is a long way off but the idea in general is that 'losing' means we have to take their policy instead of making policy. In some areas that'll be ok, in others it won't be.
I think it depends a lot on who you are talking to, as well. Many, MANY people (way too many IMO) are happy to look at GDP as the only metric that matters, point to those numbers, and say WINNING/LOSING. Maybe that's what he's alluding to here.
No I imagine he is talking about it in the way I do which is national security/long-term outlook on trade/cultural impact/etc. Long-term the world may be a lot less free and more influenced by authoritarian nations than it is now. It is especially relevant when you figure that the influence and model of 'liberal democracies' have been a thing for only about a hundred years and we're starting to see declines across the board. It might never have been a stable model for the world. In any case, the bottom line is the next big player has a strong Confucian outlook. They may very well start talking about the advantage of their system versus ours. We saw a taste this year. The Chinese ambassador dressed down Blinken at length about the deficiencies of our system. They'll be competing for policy and system mindshare in much of the world. If they show that our way is weak they may be able to push their influence farther.

What they saw was that Trump was a paper tiger. They knew it. They know we're weak and disorganized and can't compete. They steal IP and technology from us without any meaningful response. That is part of what I define as losing. And the impact is that 'Freedom' as we define it now may very well be seen as rare in 50 years.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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I haven't done any reading on this, but how can Senate Republicans stop the commission? It seems like the Dems can just vote for it and it happens. What am I missing?
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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stessier wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 1:07 pm I haven't done any reading on this, but how can Senate Republicans stop the commission? It seems like the Dems can just vote for it and it happens. What am I missing?
They need to pass a law to set up the independent commission, including funding, composition, and legal authority. They did this for the 9/11 committee for instance. The alternative will likely be the continuance of committee hearings as is being pursued now. Which has a lot of downsides. It'll appear more political, there are existing committee rules and boundaries that limit its authority, effectiveness, and ability to gather evidence, plus other hurdles that'll make the effort much less successful and impactful. As an example, in a committee hearing each side gets a fixed amount of time to question witnesses and it gets divided up into blocks. They can be shared/combined/etc. but generally people want their time on camera to mug and ask questions. Meanwhile an independent commission would be conducted out of the public eye, have subpoena powers, ability to call witnesses, and can spend there time doing generally useful things.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

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malchior wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 11:59 am
Carpet_pissr wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 11:27 amBut "losing" to another (any) country seems too...simplistic? Not sure how to explain. "Beat China"....at?? Olympic Ping pong? World hot dog eating contest?
In this case it is the ability to dominate policy across the world. As an example, safe seas and international commerce? The UK handed the job of maintaining that to us and we'll probably have that role for a long-time still but China is going to flex in over time. They are already making the moves to do so. What does that mean? We believed in unfettered trade and were able to make it a reality via control of the seas. I won't get into the problems caused by that trade but eventually we won't be the ones protecting the seas and instead over time see more and more commerce subject to their rules instead of ours. Again in that particular case that is a long way off but the idea in general is that 'losing' means we have to take their policy instead of making policy. In some areas that'll be ok, in others it won't be.
I think it depends a lot on who you are talking to, as well. Many, MANY people (way too many IMO) are happy to look at GDP as the only metric that matters, point to those numbers, and say WINNING/LOSING. Maybe that's what he's alluding to here.
No I imagine he is talking about it in the way I do which is national security/long-term outlook on trade/cultural impact/etc. Long-term the world may be a lot less free and more influenced by authoritarian nations than it is now. It is especially relevant when you figure that the influence and model of 'liberal democracies' have been a thing for only about a hundred years and we're starting to see declines across the board. It might never have been a stable model for the world. In any case, the bottom line is the next big player has a strong Confucian outlook. They may very well start talking about the advantage of their system versus ours. We saw a taste this year. The Chinese ambassador dressed down Blinken at length about the deficiencies of our system. They'll be competing for policy and system mindshare in much of the world. If they show that our way is weak they may be able to push their influence farther.

What they saw was that Trump was a paper tiger. They knew it. They know we're weak and disorganized and can't compete. They steal IP and technology from us without any meaningful response. That is part of what I define as losing. And the impact is that 'Freedom' as we define it now may very well be seen as rare in 50 years.
I was about to go off on your odd "Lords of the Seas" part, but I finished reading. I'll let that go (:P) since I get the gist: global influence. Totally agree by the way, I just hate when THAT is boiled down to "winning/losing".

China has for the past 4 years been seriously and intentionally ramping up its influence (read money) in developing countries, seeing an opening from the Trump administration's pretty severe pullback. Massive infrastructure projects that we would normally have helped with/fund, went to China. They've got a long game going, as you mentioned, and we flip-flop every 4 years, or sooner, since we basically are in perma-campaign mode. I remember reading some time ago, some top Chinese official being asked about the differences in the US presidential system vs the Chinese one (other than the obvious government systems) and they very quickly said something to the effect of them having time. Time and consistency and vision for Big Things, due to the longer "leader" cycles if you will. Huge asterisk: this was BEFORE Xi Ping basically declared himself President for life a couple years ago. :P

It's almost like publicly traded companies, so many of which are 110% focused on THIS quarter's earnings, and very little beyond that. When focus and energy is so...concentrated and short-sighted, it's tough to get anything meaningful done. Terrible analogy maybe, but it fits well with our lifestyle/world view, etc as a country I think.

Point is that it's hard to do anything really big and meaningful in basically 2 years, because the second two years of an admin are already "campaign season" and so much stuff seemingly gets put off and postponed.
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

Carpet_pissr wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 5:13 pmI was about to go off on your odd "Lords of the Seas" part, but I finished reading. I'll let that go (:P) since I get the gist: global influence.
Well and I picked 'freedom of navigation' as the policy guys would call it as an example because China is starting on the long road to challenge our hegemony. Which itself is meaningful *and* it is essentially the basis for modern consumerist civilization. It's sort of important.
Totally agree by the way, I just hate when THAT is boiled down to "winning/losing".
I get that but it does have meaning in a national security context. In any case, this will almost certainly be the first time we "lose" as in influence. Long-term the United States is going to be eclipsed. This wasn't a fait accompli by any measure. We might very well have maintained outsized influence had we not become a basketcase shit show. TPP for example was designed to trim China's influence in its own backyard. We cancelled it and Asia instantly capitulated and signed a deal directly with China. They knew we abandoned them to China. In any case we ceded control of the entire sphere of influence but Trump sure showed them. He dropped some self-defeating tariffs on them. They surely learnt a lesson*!

*The lesson being that we are short-sighted idiots.
China has for the past 4 years been seriously and intentionally ramping up its influence (read money) in developing countries, seeing an opening from the Trump administration's pretty severe pullback. Massive infrastructure projects that we would normally have helped with/fund, went to China. They've got a long game going, as you mentioned, and we flip-flop every 4 years, or sooner, since we basically are in perma-campaign mode.
It's worse. We have no long-term policy framework that sticks and our politicians are too busy slap fighting each other to pay attention to what is happening outside. State has been turned into what a friend of mine calls a 'vestigial organ'. The national security types see the writing on the wall there as well.
Point is that it's hard to do anything really big and meaningful in basically 2 years, because the second two years of an admin are already "campaign season" and so much stuff seemingly gets put off and postponed.
There is this but also we just don't have agreement on fundamentals. We used to have some baseline things that were consistent but now GOP policy is mostly witch doctor stuff. Some of the protectionist tariffs against China essentially taxed Americans on consumer goods where we don't even have a domestic competitor. It literally made no sense. But Trump is a fucking idiot. In the end, the Chinese aren't stupid. They know us better than I suspect many Americans do. They know they just have to wait for us to fall apart over time. Meanwhile they'll keep stealing technology from us and reverse engineering our financial system. We're total idiots.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Carpet_pissr »

malchior wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 8:25 pm
Carpet_pissr wrote: Thu May 20, 2021 5:13 pmI was about to go off on your odd "Lords of the Seas" part, but I finished reading. I'll let that go (:P) since I get the gist: global influence.
Well and I picked 'freedom of navigation' as the policy guys would call it as an example because China is starting on the long road to challenge our hegemony. Which itself is meaningful *and* it is essentially the basis for modern consumerist civilization. It's sort of important.
Totally agree by the way, I just hate when THAT is boiled down to "winning/losing".
I get that but it does have meaning in a national security context. In any case, this will almost certainly be the first time we "lose" as in influence. Long-term the United States is going to be eclipsed. This wasn't a fait accompli by any measure. We might very well have maintained outsized influence had we not become a basketcase shit show. TPP for example was designed to trim China's influence in its own backyard. We cancelled it and Asia instantly capitulated and signed a deal directly with China. They knew we abandoned them to China. In any case we ceded control of the entire sphere of influence but Trump sure showed them. He dropped some self-defeating tariffs on them. They surely learnt a lesson*!

*The lesson being that we are short-sighted idiots.
China has for the past 4 years been seriously and intentionally ramping up its influence (read money) in developing countries, seeing an opening from the Trump administration's pretty severe pullback. Massive infrastructure projects that we would normally have helped with/fund, went to China. They've got a long game going, as you mentioned, and we flip-flop every 4 years, or sooner, since we basically are in perma-campaign mode.
It's worse. We have no long-term policy framework that sticks and our politicians are too busy slap fighting each other to pay attention to what is happening outside. State has been turned into what a friend of mine calls a 'vestigial organ'. The national security types see the writing on the wall there as well.
Point is that it's hard to do anything really big and meaningful in basically 2 years, because the second two years of an admin are already "campaign season" and so much stuff seemingly gets put off and postponed.
There is this but also we just don't have agreement on fundamentals. We used to have some baseline things that were consistent but now GOP policy is mostly witch doctor stuff. Some of the protectionist tariffs against China essentially taxed Americans on consumer goods where we don't even have a domestic competitor. It literally made no sense. But Trump is a fucking idiot. In the end, the Chinese aren't stupid. They know us better than I suspect many Americans do. They know they just have to wait for us to fall apart over time. Meanwhile they'll keep stealing technology from us and reverse engineering our financial system. We're total idiots.
Soooo, you're saying there's hope? :P
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Pyperkub
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Good.
Nearly four months after the U.S. Capitol attack, just one of more than 440 people charged has pleaded guilty, a sign of tough conditions set by prosecutors for plea deals and resistance by defense lawyers to their demands....

...Lawyers for more than a dozen defendants said plea talks so far have foundered because prosecutors demanded their clients turn over social media data, cell phones and other evidence, while also pushing for prison sentences they would not accept.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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coopasonic
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by coopasonic »

On the other hand, good luck getting convictions. All it takes is one red hat on the jury,
-Coop
Black Lives Matter
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Unagi
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Unagi »

What community (is it DC?) is tapped to make up the jury on a case like this? (Or is it only heard by a judge?)
malchior
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

That'll be the next fight. DC is highly Democratic so they'll be fighting for friendlier venues.
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Unagi
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Unagi »

Yeah. That was my thought exactly.
May not find a red hat -in DC-
malchior
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

I really thought it'd be delay but apparently Trump is swinging away at the 35 who voted for it in the House. And is making calls to Senators. This country is descending into functional irrelevance as a nation if we can't even investigate this. It's a real test for Manchin and the Democrats. Are they going to stand up for democracy or is it over?
malchior
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

Indeed. Just another worthless coward.

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Smoove_B
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Smoove_B »

Too early????? Too early??? it should have kicked off 2+ months ago. There truly is no bottom for this crowd.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Unagi
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Unagi »

We need to stay on our toes.

I imaging there are about 120 seconds between “too early” and “it’s time to move on”.
malchior
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

Eh not really. That'd imply their ever would be a time.
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Unagi
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Unagi »

For many it’s time to move on, and for some too soon.
Collectively, conveniently, there will indeed never be a time.
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Kraken
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Re: Capitol Riot Investigation Thread

Post by Kraken »

Moving on while the culprits are still at large is definitely too soon.
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