Understanding why Khamenei is a bad guy requires more thought and effort than the blind outrage that the traditional media, social media, and celebrity personalities have instilled in millions of intellectually lazy Americans...
No, actually, "understanding" that Khameni is a "bad guy" requires accepting that received wisdom from nearly anyone in American politics or media. It is not a hard position to have; most Americans already have it without any examination.
The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
No, not that. Basically monopoly power, like with J.P. Morgan.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
The power to create Facebook? You have the power to create a social platform as a private company. Then you can as its owner make decisions regarding the platform you created.
No, not that. Basically monopoly power, like with J.P. Morgan.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
I thought right-wingers respected private property rights? Surely you don't hold contradictory and illogical opinions, because the right also prides itself on "facts" and "logic?" Is this not true?
No, not that. Basically monopoly power, like with J.P. Morgan.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
Yeah, if there was one I would've noticed it. Nothing to click like that, just a login page. Now it loads fine though, I guess I fell into some anti-fraud/DoS system.
Well, do democratic values (and facts, really) matter more than the sweet, sweet engagement metrics and ad revenue Mr Zuckerburg gets from the MAGA crowd?
Sorry if this comes across as bitter. I’m very disappointed at how the large social networks’ have conducted themselves at this point to the point that for a large swathe of the US and the UK, the facts don’t matter any more.
This ban rings hollow. You're 100% correct that Trump has been provoking violence for years now (e.g. "If she [Hillary] gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks...although the Second Amendment people ... maybe there is" / "When the looting starts, the shooting starts").
Zuckerberg just knows now that Democrats will be in power so this is a safe move to appear like he hasn't been perfectly fine helping Trump increase the spread of his violent platform ("Facebook cannot be the arbiter of truth"). It was all about allowing "engagement" that helped Facebook's revenue.
Zuckerberg does not get to change the narrative now.
Those statements you gave as examples weren’t so clear cut.
The first was in the context of talking about court cases that the judges will see. It was probably referencing 2A legal defense and litigator orgs like the NRA and GOA.
The second example capped off a paragraph about curfew measures to prevent daytime protests from being overtaken by nighttime looting. Therefore it could be an empirical statement about tragedies that tend to and have followed looting and is using that to justify his preventive measures. If he meant it normatively and wanted to shoot people he probably wouldn’t have pushed preventative measures.
>The second example capped off a paragraph about curfew measures to prevent daytime protests from being overtaken by nighttime looting. Therefore it could be an empirical statement about tragedies that tend to and have followed looting and is using that to justify his preventive measures. If he meant it normatively and wanted to shoot people he probably wouldn’t have pushed preventative measures.
The second example was a blatantly racist dog whistle[0].
[edited] For some reason I can't delete my own comment that's one minute old. I guess because it already got downvoted and commented. Learn something new every day!
The power of the corporations is only a facade. The real power is of the owners of the money, FED, pharmaceuticals, food, etc, that are a few families.
I don't think that's a good faith take at all. "You're an idiot for saying that" is not the same as "You should have your rights taken away". But go off.
Freedom of speech is the right to speak, it is not the right to be heard. Your audience is effectively walking away from your soapbox. Censorship is when there is interference between a speaker and an audience that would otherwise be captivated.
Nobody here is interested in Trump's lies. Nobody here is interested in hearing his lies being perpetuated. We are not interested and we are not a captivated audience.
And I am not complaining about it being downvoted. If HN doesn't want to hear it, then I am fine with that. Regardless, please check the comments guidelines[1].
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
I'd also point out that you can always enable 'showdead' in the settings.
That will allow you to see all comments (unless creator deleted). As such, they're not really being censored, they're just hidden unless and until you decide you want to see them.
There were lots of legitimate reasons to downvote your GP comment. It was unsubstantive and flamebait, and broke other guidelines as well. You spawned a low-quality mess. This is not the discussion we're looking for here.
Also, using quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not is an internet flamewar trope that we try to avoid here.
Funny how "I should be able to say what I please" and "I should be able to say what I please AND have no-one challenge me or criticise me" are so conflated. Don't dish it if you can't take it.
I'm fully able to take the parent's criticism. However, those who are downvoting me so that my post will be hidden, clearly are not able to accept criticism.
I’m downvoting you because the person said the comments were a swamp, not that they shouldn’t exist. You interpreted it as the letter which is clearly incorrect.
What exactly Trump said to spark this? All information I found is rumors, that he posted a video asking people to respect the police, stop the violence and go home.
Anyone has seen the video and texts in question and can tell me?
EDIT: mass downvoting people, seriously? I didn't even defend Trump (or Biden), I asked a question, I am from Brazil and wanted to know what happened.
He literally called them special and said that he loved them. As in, he used the words "you're special" and "[I] love you". It's not ambiguous or subject to debate.
> He literally called them special and said that he loved them.
> he used the words "you're special" and "[I] love you". It's not ambiguous or subject to debate
Trump did not select those specific people out for praise ("the people invading the Capitol in Camp Auschwitz t-shirts were special and he loves them" - philk10), which was the implication. philk10's comment is ambiguous, which then goes on a derail about what words were used.
He didn’t single out any specific group: it was all-inclusive. As in, including those individuals. This isn’t debatable or ambiguous, and it’s disingenuous bordering on willful misunderstanding of how words and language work to suggest otherwise.
What is wrong with caring for all people? You people are ridiculous. You claim to be "the good guys", yet betray your hatred for your opponents on every turn.
This kind of thing is why you are the enemy and must be fought at all cost. And I don't mean to be put into camps. You can still be cared for, but you must not be given power over other people.
Now you won, enjoy your newfound Utopia. I'm glad I don't live in the US, although I fear this will have bad consequences for the rest of the world as well. RIP freedom.
"""I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side.
But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time.
There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election.
But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."""
The video (if it's yesterday's video you're talking about) started by saying that the election has been stolen, it was a landslide on his favor, yadda yadda, only to end with a variation of "stay peaceful and go home now". it was 20% call to peace and 80% reinforcement of the idea that democracy has been hijacked to get him out.
I've seen the video. It says to go home, but it also says that the election was stolen and that Trump won in a landslide. On balance it says more to encourage the mob than calm them down.
People branding his flags and hats stormed the Capitol walls and Senate floor, as he delayed an eventual reiteration that the elections were rigged, they should be furious, but now they should go home and that he loved them very much and were very special people. There were nooses propped up, people died, and elected officials were bunkered. His close sources also reported that he watched on TV with manic joy at what people were doing in his name. Hence, the ban and mass 11th-hour resignations.
No? I did respond with the President’s response, and his response is called fomenting - the reason for the ban in question.
> an eventual reiteration that the elections were rigged, they should be furious, but now they should go home and that he loved them very much and were very special people
Everyone is replying about the videos online or after the fact. What I believe the large media outlets are referring to when they reference "inciting" is his words at protest rally he held earlier in the day at which suggested that supporters should march over to the capital. This is after weeks of previous remarks trying to delegitimize the election and suggesting someone should stop "them" from stealing the election.
I don't have the exact words in front of me, but his speech prior to the mob occupying Congress exhorted them to march to Congress. Given the context of the sedition that happened afterwards, the speech may have crossed the line set by Brandenburg v Ohio of incitement to "imminent lawless action" [1].
I believe during the same speech, he also criticized the Vice President for following his Constitutional obligations instead of (as the President would prefer) taking unilateral decisions to throw the vote to Trump instead.
[1] To be clear, the test in Brandenburg v Ohio is a test of whether or not the government can make the speech outright illegal to speak. This is necessarily a very high bar, and it is much higher in the US than most countries in the world. The bar for whether or not private individuals and organizations should feel compelled to disassociate from an individual is clearly lower. That one can seriously entertain that the President's speech is surpassing the high bar of outright illegal speech should indicate how reasonable it is for others to consider it beyond the pale.
By "this" do you mean the bans on facebook or twitter? I saw the video he posted on twitter, he said something like
please be peaceful, please respect our police, we had a beautiful landslide victory that was taken from us, it was stolen i know, but you have to go home now, you're special and we love you but you have to go home.
I'm specifically not using quotation marks because I'm recalling it from memory. I'm sure you can find a backup of it somewhere.
If you're asking about what sparked the actual attack, Trump specifically told a crowd at a nearby rally to march on the capitol before the event. He's also been saying the election was stolen for the past two months every time he's gotten in front of a microphone.
"Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete."
At some point Facebook is going to have to take a stand on which one it is. Indefinitely or for the next two weeks.
Imagine the advertising revenue they earn from all the Trump loyalists using their platform. Blocking Trump is always done with an eye to maintaining that revenue in the long term. FB does not want to lose Trump supporters to a rival.
Consider this a specification for a date range defining when his account will be restored. Now we can parse the statement as follows:
1. Indefinitely: The date range has no end.
2. And for at least two weeks: The beginning of the date range is at least two weeks away.
From this, I conclude that Mr. Trump's account will be muted for at least two weeks, and thereafter it could be un-muted at any time, but possibly the heat death of the universe may make the whole thing moot at some point.
Those aren't conflicting positions; indefinitely can mean both "unspecified/undetermined" or "unlimited/forever" amounts of time. So you can interpret that statement as
"we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts for at least the next two weeks, but potentially longer."
The platform clearly wields significant soft power, and that should probably be acknowledged.
They are laying some of their cards bare here, but what I find funny is that if the president doesn't use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook as the dominant way to promote their message, they're not under the thumb of those platforms either.
Just like ordinary people aren't under the influence of social medias manipulation (intentional or not) if they just don't use the platform. We all willingly hand over that power to the platforms.
I cannot believe it took them this long to realize the immense amount of harm Trump has been causing via social media. But I guess "better late than never" applies here.
Now that Trump doesn't serve any value to Twitter or Facebook the bans come. Before they justified his behavior because he brought them viewers. It may be cynical but too convenient to play the morality card now.
I don't care. That's a fair argument for a slave-wage worker making a moral decision that walks the line between them having a job or not having a job. That's not a fair argument for a company like twitter who is trying to improve their 3+ billion dollar revenue.
If you're a multi-millionare choosing dollars over ethics, you are in the wrong. Plain, clear, and simple. And I hope every tech-leader who has profited from this dumpster fire is labeled in history as such.
I'm not sure that's entirely fair - and I'm someone who has no time for facebook OR twitter. I think Twitter has destroyed western journalism and facebook has been at best complicit in the growth of hate groups around the world.
All that being said: Until November of this year, he wasn't "just Donald Trump" - he was the PUSA. There's a very big difference between banning PUSA and banning DJT. Now if you want to argue they should've done this the day that the results were in back in late November - sure. But the previous 4 years? I'm not sure that was a path either company was willing to test and I can't entirely blame them.
Also: Trump serves them no value? Are you crazy? The viewers haven't gone down, and won't go down in any significant manner. For all the bluster from right-wingers of "we're making our own social network" - they all still somehow seem to be participating on both platforms.
I guess if you don't see the distinction between someone who has 4 more years in the office with broad political support from his own party, and someone who has 2 weeks left and appears to be trying to incite a coup on his way out while being almost universally shunned by allies and foes alike, I'm not sure what I can say to change your mind.
If pointing an armed and angry mob at the Capitol itself isn't over the line, nothing is. I don't like Facebook and haven't used it in years but this is the right move. Four people are dead today because they listened to Donald Trump, and FB and Twitter bear some responsibility for handing him that megaphone. Stopping him from calling for further violence is the bare minimum they can do here.
I keep seeing 'armed mob' posted everywhere without any evidence. What were they armed with? I watched the whole thing live from many angles and I saw plenty of people doing dumb shit like breaking windows and such. The majority just waltzed in took a tour and walked out. They even obeyed the velvet ropes in the entryway.
edit: looks like at least one person was inside the capitol with a firearm and four others were arrested in DC for open carrying firearms.
Good photo. I hadn't see that one yet. He's definitely armed.
I was right there with you all summer claiming a group throwing water bottles at police wasn't armed and shouldn't be beaten and shot with rubber bullets.
"Armed" does not necessarily mean gun-carrying. I saw footage of an individual smashing AP camera gear with a baseball bat, for example. They didn't break those windows with their bare hands.
This is what I was looking for thanks. It does not specify that the firearm offenses were on the capitol and I know a few of them were from people marching while open carrying off the capitol grounds which is illegal under DC law.
The molotovs is a tidbit I didn't know about thankfully no one actually used them.
Because they weren't arrested attacking the capitol. I just saw confirmation in this thread that at least one person was arrested with a firearm who had entered the capitol so I corrected my original comment.
I see a cop get pushed over then helped up by someone in a MAGA hat. I also see some scrumming with the police which is assault. I still don't see any weapons or any use of weapons on police. This scene doesn't look all too different than scenes we've been witness to for the last 6 months since June with protestors clashing with police.
It really looks like this guy has a gun holstered on his right hip. But he definitely has a fist full of zip ties and looks prepared for more than a brief tour. Forgive the source, Seth sucks, but the picture is real as far as I know.
> They even obeyed the velvet ropes in the entryway.
They did not. There was video of protestors both moving the ropes, and there is video of protestors on the opposite sides of the ropes. Both at least in NBC's coverage. (Unfortunately, they've made their coverage private on YouTube, so I lack a link presently.)
(Sibling comments cover the "armed" aspect well enough.)
The gallery list includes:
Firearms to include replica guns and ammunition.
Weapons, to include, but not limited to, Black jack, sling shot, sand club, sandbag, knuckles, electric stun guns, knives of any size including razors and box cutters, martial arts weapons or devices.
Explosives and explosive devices to include, but not limited to, Molotov Cocktails, components of a destructive device, and fireworks.
Mace and pepper spray.
Aerosol containers.
Non-Aerosol spray except for prescribed medical needs.
Battery operated electronic devices to include cellular telephones, electronic keys, cameras, video recorders or any type of recording devices. Electronic medical devices are permitted.
Cans, bottles, food, and food containers, including all liquids.
Creams, lotions, and perfume.
Strollers.
Briefcases, backpacks, and suitcases of any size
Why aren’t we blaming anyone that died at CHAZ/CHOP on BLM?
It’s hard not to see the bending-over-backwards academic justifications for why we shouldn’t be suppressing riots last year as anything other than the pretext and lead up to what’s happening now.
I’m not calling legitimate protesting riots - rather the media was fully complicit with ignoring blatant rioting last year. Buildings were burning and government buildings were being swarmed and destroyed.
Riots needs to be suppressed with law and order - full stop. Unfortunately many seem 6 months late to this concept.
The ANTIFA CEO is sitting in his fortified command center underneath the Appalachian Mountains as we speak, cackling and torturing a Trump supporter to death for not calling xir by the proper pronouns. Our joke of a liberal government is doing nothing to eliminate this dangerous threat to our guns and precious, precious strip malls.
This is whataboutism. Trump organized the rally that became the riot, he told them himself to march to the Capitol. He is responsible for what happened after that.
Yeah I live a few blocks away from where where ANTIFA was supposedly terrorizing and burning. The only danger to the public was the tear gas the police indiscriminately used and drifted into apartments and retirement homes. You are full of it.
BLM is a response to (repeated) racist murders from the state and general systemic discriminations.
Yesterday's riots were a response to losing a democratic election.
It's hard not to see why one is legitimate and the other isn't.
> rioting is never justified and must be met with police force
Actually, some governments are so oppressive that sometimes rioting is all the citizens have left.
Isn't it what the second amendment is for anyway?
I'd even support yesterday's "revolution" if it was justified and the election was actually stolen.
But falsely calling an election stolen is dangerous. It's the equivalent of a false rape accusation at a country scale.
And oppressive governments do meet riots with police force. Sometimes they straight up kill the people, yet they keep on rioting because it's the only way they can defend their rights.
I think if you look at any of the cities over the past year, there's example after example of spineless mayors, etc. unwilling to protect their citizens and society generally from chaos and petty thieves.
People powerless while they watch everything they worked for literally go up in flames at the hands of criminals. There's no justification for that, and it's a far cry from "justice."
Disrupting law and order - by definition - turns you into a criminal.
I'm not defending any side of the political spectrum, so it's interesting to see how people interpret this argument.
Manifesting for social change never justifies the type of chaos we saw last year, and if you think otherwise, don't complain about what happened to Congress.
> Disrupting law and order - by definition - turns you into a criminal.
That's only accurate if both the law and the ones who enforce it are reasonable and fair.
People feeling powerless is what fuels riots to begin with. I don't condone the looting and destruction, especially when it hits bystanders. But it didn't start that way. The movement against racism did go through peaceful actions to make itself heard. Their demands were pushed back and the discriminations continued so they had to escalate.
They were cornered into that position.
The protesters who invaded the Capitol were not discriminated against. They just lost an election.
No one would've died if they protested peacefully.
You can't equate these protests, just like you can't equate self-defense and murder. The context is important.
What would you do if you were oppressed by your government?
Some governments even make protesting illegal and rig the elections (if they're even having elections at all).
Desperate times call for desperate measures, unfortunately.
Sorry, I forgot to follow up. I'm quite enjoying this exchange.
> Let’s consider that your perception is fallible and possibly wrong. And hypothetically assume your concept of “the oppressed” is off to some degree.
Obviously I'm not always right. But neither is the rest of the world. Neither is the government.
But then what? Should we just let everyone be?
It's a moral dilemma for sure, and I don't think there's a foolproof way around it.
Similarly, you want to allow people to kill in case of self-defense but don't want to allow murder. Or censoring Nazi speech while keeping as much freedom of expression as possible.
You can't say all killings are bad (or good), and you can't say all speech is good (or bad). There's a moral judgement to be made there.
I'm not saying rioting is without risks or consequences. I'm just saying they tend to happen when people run out of alternatives. Then they're justified, and only if the cause is good.
Because tribal affiliation is completely unassailable by logic.
We are all still tribal, barely evolved monkeys, and our manifold cerebral cortex is merely a tool to invent rationalizations for the tribal emotions that well up from our limbic system.
This is, of course, on both sides.
On HN, the effect is even more pronounced, because "I am smart, therefore my opinions are more valid than average" coincides with "I have concocted this justification for my hypocrisy" to grant even greater surety in personal belief.
The LessWrong folks worked pretty hard to inform people of these sort of biases, but the effort thus far has completely failed.
Please, get a grip. The other side goes up in arms when somebody KNEELS. The outrage at the protests earlier this year were obvious, perhaps you weren't reading the news.
When, exactly, did Joe Biden incite CHAZ/CHOP to take over the Capitol Building in order to overthrow lawful election results in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power?
> the media was fully complicit with ignoring blatant rioting last year
Ignoring? They practically endorsed it as a totally reasonable means of change! The fact that the Trump supporters didn't Riot and very few of them entered the Capitol goes to show the vast majority of those Republicans do believe in law in order!
If the situation was reversed, had Trump won and Biden was challenging the election, you can be assured DC would be completely on fire like it was back in May. The Capital Building would be burning right now.
Facebook is not a platform to have a voice. It’s a platform that harvests thoughts and publicizes the ones FB most agrees with while censoring those it does not.
This is a slippery slope and, quite frankly, it’s the people that lose.
> Either way, they should not be an arbiter of public discourse.
They can be, but they should lose their platform status and be treated as a publisher, ie. take full responsibility for content on their pages. You can't have both.
>They can be, but they should lose their platform status and be treated as a publisher, ie. take full responsibility for content on their pages. You can't have both.
I'm sorry. Would you expand on that? I don't understand what you're advocating. Perhaps this[0] might help you to formulate your response?
Yes, i'm saying that this law/rule (or whatever it's called, I'm not from USA) should be changed.
You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
Currently we have social networks like facebook deciding that one type of -ism is worse than the other tipe of -ism, and letting one stay while removing the other [0]. If you expand this to politics, you can get greater consequences than just a few people being recist (but since it's against whites and men, it's "ok" in the eyes of facebook).
So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
>Yes, i'm saying that this law/rule (or whatever it's called, I'm not from USA) should be changed.
It's a section of a law. Specifically, Section 230[0] of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
>You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
That's an interesting idea. But it's somewhat problematic for several reasons:
47 U.S. Code § 230 (the section of the law in question) applies to all persons/entities in the United States, and to all third-party communications hosted within the United States. How, exactly, would you implement such a rule?
If I decide to set up a github repo, who and how do I inform that I intend to be a "platform" or a "publisher"?
If I'm a member of a mailing list, quote someone else's words and send it to that mailing list, how do I "register" as a platform or a publisher? This isn't an idle question either. This was an actual case[1] that hinged on one particular email to a particular mailing list.
I host several services via my home Internet connection. If I choose (which I have done in the past) to host a Diaspora[2] pod and invite a few friends and family to join, and maybe even federate with other Diaspora pods, how and to whom do I register as a "publisher" or "platform"?
If I "register" as a platform and I have an argument with my sister in-law, and she says some really vulgar/unkind things on my pod. If I remove those comments, am I now in breach of my "registration" as a platform?
>So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
I don't dispute your claim that Facebook/Twitter exert a great deal of influence.
However, Section 230 is not what you seem to think it is. It isn't about censorship, nor is it about freedom of speech.
It is a very specific section of a law that says (paraphrasing):
"I can't sue you for what someone else says." Full stop.
That's it. It's not limited to social networking sites. It's not limited to large corporations. It's not limited to websites (both commercial and non-commercial). It applies everywhere there is third-party content. On a Github repo (think bug reports/feature requests), email mailing lists, IRC channels and any other place where more than one person can share bits.
I'm going to say it again to make sure that it's clear why I say that. Section 230 (c)(1)(this is a direct quote now) says:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
I will now translate that into non-legalese:
"You cannot be sued because of something I (or anyone else) say."
That doesn't mean that you can't be sued for stuff that you say.
Let's say that we take your suggestion and remove Section 230 protections from "publishers" (whatever that is defined to mean). That won't stop people from posting obnoxious/unpleasant/hateful things.
Rather, it will mostly just stop people from maintaining/setting up other sites (like HN) where people can share their thoughts. If HN can be sued for stuff that you or I say (upvote/downvote/flag moderation like we have here would almost certainly force HN to be ...
certainly regular people encouraging violence get censored on facebook and twitter all the time, I've seen it, we see it all the time. It doesn't make the headlines though. Trump makes the headline because he does it and is the president.
AND he has gotten a pass, for years, that regular people don't get.
Who is "the left?" This conversation is about a specific person doing a specific act. Unless you have a specific example of something you disagree please try not to reduce the standard of discourse up in here.
Not on FB, but Pelosi in particular fueled the flame of civil unrest, err... "peaceful protests", more than a few times. There were many others around that time who were fanning the flame, on both sides. But nobody was held accountable then, and certainly nobody was banned, so it's concerning that POTUS is banned across social media for this, and the damages were much less this time. I'm not a fan of censorship like this, regardless of the side. It controls the narrative and stifles free speech through discord.
I never said it was. And I'm not condoning what happened in the slightest (even if I do agree that the government no longer represents the people). But destroying and looting small businesses is not a constitutional right either, but that behavior wasn't denounced en mass like the behavior at the Capitol; rather, the former was encouraged by politicians, the media, celebrities, and even the public. It's a double standard. We should hold all people to the same standard regardless of their political affiliation. I personally think it's a bad precedent to ban POTUS, but alas.
Remember many (although not all) of the BLM protests often evolved into violent riots, although the media has refused to cover them as such. They were all classified as peaceful protests and they were all immune from any negative covid coverage;
I mean you’re definitely misquoting and removing context from what people have said; Kamala Harris only says the BLM protests will keep happening and that they shouldn’t stop. Pelosi in that clip you used was talking about protesting Trump locking up children in cages, not BLM. The reason why your claims are so weak is that you cannot actually provide evidence that isn’t out of context quotes, whereas your side, Trump, has constantly tried to race bait and behave like an arsehole to people. Do I need to provide a list?
Ah yes, either Trump is a cult leader who is threatening the very core of our democracy, or the election was rigged and we're about to get a Chinese style Manchurian candidate in the White House. I'm so glad that the media vigorously looked into these allegations of corruption and fraud, instead of dismissing them for partisan reasons, because then we might have a split, between people who get their information from mainstream outlets believing nearly half the nation are conspiracy nuts or violent bigots, and those who get their news from independent media online believing that half the nation are brain dead sheep or lying sycophants.
The allegations were thrown out by every court they got brought to and by conservative judges as well. It's a farce and you're the sheep getting fleeced.
1. The evidence provided for election fraud was investigated, and no widespread fraud was found.
2. The Trump/Russia stuff was investigated because there were credible reasons to be concerned. The election fraud issue is entirely (and transparently) manufactured, and everyone in power knows it.
- The Trump/Russia situation resulted in the senate agreeing that Russia did collude with members of the Trump campaign in support of Trump. [1]
- Investigations into the voter fraud and election tampering allegations in favor of Biden have resulted in 61 failed lawsuits in state courts on the basis of "no evidence." [2]
- The supreme court has rejected every lawsuit brought to it on the basis of "no evidence." [3]
While the Russia investigation lead to the arrest of nearly every 2016 Trump campaign manager, the allegations of voter fraud across 10 states has led to nothing that could overturn the election.
> Investigations into the voter fraud and election tampering allegations in favor of Biden have resulted in 61 failed lawsuits in state courts on the basis of “no evidence.”
That’s not actually true. While some may have been dismissed based on insufficiency of presented or proffered evidence to support the legal claim, most were either voluntarily dismissed or dismissed for legal threshold issues (failure to state a claim, lack of standing, unreasonable delay in filing [laches]) which come before considering evidence.
Well thats the problem, the suits were dismissed out of hand. Very little evidence presented. Despite something like 1000 people swore affidavits of violations.
They should have taken the cases and heard the evidence.
Foremost, I blame the supreme court, it chickened out from hearing the Texas Lawsuit, which was about the state Governors changing the election rules on unilaterally.
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing .
No, it wasn't the problem, and you are willfully or blindly misinterpreting what happened.
The complete lack of evidence and lack of anything but witness testimony was the first stage - as soon as any witness was interviewed it became immediately clear that there was in fact, no evidence at all.
Repeating this "things were dismissed out of hand" meme is true only in the sense that if a man came into court and said he was king of america he would also be given very little space to waste the courts time.
Pennsylvania had 200,000 more votes than voters. What do you mean no evidence? Still no good explanation.
Since this is probably going to get flagged, like my previous post. This is what was entered into the record, during the objections yesterday in the joint session of congress. I stayed up watching it. So I'm not making this up.
How is the statement from the Pennsylvania Department of State admitting that Rep. Ryan's claim is correct?
The problem is that there's an implicit assumption in Rep. Ryan's claim that the SURE numbers are complete and represent the actual number of voters who actually voted. If a few counties have not completed uploading their vote histories, then that implicit assumption is invalidated, thereby invalidating the rest of the claim.
> And the other explanation is a hypothetical explanation of over or under votes. No proof that this was actually the case here.
The burden of proof is on Rep. Ryan to show that the over- and under-voting in 2020 is nefarious/fraudulent/malicious. Merely saying that over- and under-voting exists is not sufficient to show something is wrong; one also needs to show that such a thing does not happen in "clean" elections. Pennsylvania is merely pointing out the gap in the analysis here.
See sibling reply, your purported evidence just went up in a puff of smoke.
Although I have a feeling you'd rather wave your hand and say "Aah, Snopes, what do they know, and it's not concrete enough!".
The problem with the "1000's of people with sworn affidavits of violations" is, it seems their understanding what a violation is, are based on misinterpreting (deliberately or not) and wishful thinking. I've seen the videos of people commenting "Look at this security camera footage, they're taking boxes, and those boxes have fake ballots!", without even showing how he came to those conclusions. I could just as easily show a footage of a man walking into a building and claim it's a building where voting machines are stored and he's a hacker with a USB stick that will hack all the machines. I hope all the affidavits were looked at carefully before being dismissed, but it seems like the courts would have work until the sun burns out if it wants to look at every theory.
Despite something like 1000 people swore affidavits of violations.
Not sure why the number of affidavits is so important, and how many of these affidavits were from that form people were filling out a form on a website?
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing.
Assuming that "spikes" in a graph are proof of anything wrong at all, if the answer is "That's where a bunch of votes were added to the count." then what is the followup from there that necessitates a hearing of any kind?
You could easily get 1000 Americans to swear that Elvis is alive or they were abducted by aliens or just about anything really. Without corroborating evidence, affidavits are meaningless.
There are something like half a million election workers. They're just regular people. It wouldn't be hard to find 1000 of them who are willing to lie or can't distinguish fantasy from reality.
I'd imagine more than 1000 of them believe the earth is flat and/or was created 10,000 years ago.
> I’m tired of seeing this talking point echoed when pretty much every case was dismissed on process (standing or “Laches”)
The “laches” dismissals were not of fraud claims (frankly, neither were the rest, as the campaign either did not include or voluntarily withdrew fraud claims fairly consistently: fraud is something they liked talking about in forums that couldn’t adjudicate claims, but avoided in ones that could; but this is more stark with the laches dismissals.) Every single laches dismissal was of a claim not of fraud, but of changes to election procedures by state executive or local officials that were alleged to be not properly authorized by the state legislature, and the laches dismissals were because the changes at issue were well-known with plenty of opportunity to file challenges before the election when the remedy, were the procedures improper, could have included reversion of procedures, but the claims were, without good cause, delayed until after the election, preventing any remedy which would not have unreasonably adversely impacted the rights of third parties, specifically, the voters who voted in the election held with the challenged procedures.
I'm getting quite tired of these false equivalencies.
Trump directed a mob yesterday to storm our Capitol and it sounds like you're being sarcastic about him threatening our democracy. What does he need to do? Burn it down and hang the Vice President for not exceeding his ceremonial powers like his mob chanted?
The claims of the election should be dismissed by rational people, which is exactly what happened in legislatures and courts across the country led by people of every political position except those that want to tear down our democracy for a demagogue and lie to their constituents about reality.
Apparently, one of those groups understood the legal opinions[0] around the legal claims made (most of which didn't include fraud at all) and another group believed and promulgated a bunch of lies.
I'm sure that many folks on both sides believed what they were told. However, one group was told something approximating the truth and the other were told bald-faced lies.
Edit: Furthermore, would suspensions and bans ALSO apply to anarchists and revolutionaries? We know the answer is 'no'. It's clear to me Facebook wanted to drop Trump for a long time and did not do so for fear of repercussions. Now that there will be a new administration it is safe for them to do it.
I didn't understand that post when it was written and I don't understand your comment now.
How is this different from saying "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is not a quote you should use if you are opposed to the government granting special benefits and privileges to blacks in preference to whites, because that was an idea that Martin Luther King supported?
Can an idea have any value independently of the cause someone once used it to support?
People use "fire in a crowded theater" as a valid exception for the taking away your 1A rights. "Fire in a crowded theater" was used to as an argument to support government censorship of wartime dissent. Think of what that means. If Trump was planning a war on Iran, you would have no right to speak out against it because you'd be shouting "fire in a crowded theater"
I also can't make sense of the article. The 1A clearly doesn't protect you from prosecution if you deliberately cause a disturbance by shouting "fire" in a crowded theatre. It's an uncontroversial example illustrating that the 1A has limits. The fact that this uncontroversial example was used in support of some controversial arguments ~100 years ago is neither here nor there.
> People use "fire in a crowded theater" as a valid exception for the taking away your 1A rights. "Fire in a crowded theater" was used to as an argument to support government censorship of wartime dissent. Think of what that means.
"fire in a crowded theater" is nothing more than remnants of an old opinion quoted out-of-context and neither precedent nor basis for anything of the First Amendment.
Absolutely, where that occured, and unlike Trump, both Facebook and Twitter has no problem suspending and removing accounts of BLM advocates when they made calls for violence.
i want to add again, this wasn't a coup attempt. You dilute those words and they become meaningless. It hurts the people who have lived through and suffered from real coups.
this is a fair point, the acceptance of BLM calls for violence, rioting, and looting by the media and Democrats makes this a much smaller event than it would have been otherwise.
What happened was a failure of adequate planning and execution by the police to control an unruly crowd.
Personally I always feel that the "fire in a crowded theater" is too specific to convince people.
Why not use more "every day" examples?
* I can't say I earned $0 last year --> tax fraud
* I can't say "fuck you" to a judge --> contempt of court
* I can't say my software will make you pretty --> advertising fraud
* I can't say you robbed me yesterday --> libel
I know this is a very European attitude, and always gets Americans worked up, but to me as a Dutch / French person, it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute. Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
Free speech exists in the public square, not on a W2 (you could claim you earned $0 last year all you want, just not to the IRS). In the cases of fraud/libel, the specifics matter.
> it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute
We agree on this, but disagree on where to draw the line. Limiting free speech is an endorsement of the government limiting what I am legally permitted to see, read, and hear. I am unwilling to let the government make that determination on my behalf.
> Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
Private citizens (presumably including the founding fathers) actually used to own canons before the creation of a permanent, federal army!
Interestingly, muzzle loaded cannons of that era, whether genuine or replica, are still legal to own in the US without a license as they are considered antiques.
American free speech is way more broad than European free speech, they’re different legally. You could have a similar argument between American freedom of religion and French “freedom from religion”. Not an apples to apples comparison.
Christopher Hitchens (a Brit, can we still call them European?) would disagree with you. If you have a few minutes, check the beginning of this talk [1] about free speech. He treats the exact "fire" example at the very start of the talk :-)
Hitchens isn't exactly covering himself with glory here. On multiple occasions he defended David Irving's historical work (and not merely his right to publish it).
>I know this is a very European attitude, and always gets Americans worked up, but to me as a Dutch / French person, it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute. Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
As an American, I know that even in the US, free speech is not absolute, nor has it ever been.
And all the things you mention are, in context, crimes here in the US as well.
One of the big differences in the US (not sure about France/The Netherlands), but in the UK it's much easier to prove libel/defamation than it is here.
I actually could say you robbed me yesterday, but if I didn't file a police report alleging that, it would be difficult for you to successfully sue me over it. Because you would have to prove that I knowingly did so and not only intended to cause injury, I actually did cause injury.
However, if I filed a false police report, I could be prosecuted for that -- and if you suffered some injury because I did (arrest/imprisonment, loss of job, etc.), you could likely win a libel/defamation lawsuit.
If there are people who tell you otherwise, they're either ignorant/uninformed or just lying.
In the world we live in, with the Trump followers that we actually have, significant numbers of them took it as a call to violence. And that was predictable. Trump knew or should have known.
Yep, but the problem with people commenting there is, that thay don't like Trump, and cheer for his removal.... when the turntables are turned, and someone else is cheering, it'll be too late, because the precedent has been set, and we've let them do it.
> because the words of the president directly incited violence
Do you have those words? I never saw them because they were censored apparently.
Edit: lol HN, actually asking, chill out. Apparently asking for sources is just unacceptable. Here it is in text because I think they truth is important that n it’s entirety:
""I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side.
But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time.
There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election.
But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."""
This reasoning means nobody can ever be held responsible, because "What if it's me?" I like to assume the majority of people are good. So even when I support the right thing, I don't have to worry about turned tables.
I remember recently the Iran ayatollah promoted wiping out Israel on Twitter and nothing happened. Jack Dorsey dismissed it as "saber rattling" from a country that routinely helps terrorists attack and kill Israelis. I guess that is not as bad as Trump claiming election fraud...
Another example, Spike Lee tried to dox Zimmerman on Twitter, but ended up posting the address of some entirely unrelated couple who received death threats. Again, nothing happened.
I wonder what the implications are as far as facilitating folks who wish to take undemocratic steps that would seem to bring us closer to far more serious restrictions, imposed by those same folks as far as how a democracy is or isn't allowed to operate.
Is it someone's right to use a platform to push an agenda that leads to impacting other people's rights?
Are you asking whether it's a good idea to restrict a citizen's advocating for their preferred government policy? Shut down think tanks and community organizers? These all push an agenda that leads to impacting other people's rights.
As abhorrent as the actions of Trump are, I still think it's also a massive problem when a few private companies or even single unelected individuals like Zuckerberg who effectively control a defacto monopoly of public forums online between them can regulate speech as they please without any checks and balances whatsoever.
Don't get me wrong, in my opinion Trump is a traitor to the USA and democratic societies as a whole, and did incite a portion of his followers to overthrow the elected government and parliament in an attempt to nullify the democratic election results and install himself as an tyrannic leader (and only backed down and told people to "go home" when he saw this would not succeed in an attempt to cover his ass"), and he should be impeached and convicted and removed from office and receive a jail sentence.
But I shouldn't have the power to be judge, jury and executioner all by myself and put people in jail or even regulate their freedom of speech, and neither should facebook or Zuckerberg or twitter, or Trump for that matter. There is a rule of law and democratically legitimized institutions to enforce it, protected by a system of checks and balances, and it's the place of these institutions to make such decisions in accordance with the law.
This time a lot of people will think the ban hit the right person in Trump. But next time it might be somebody less clearly (to us) deserving of such a ban (like a "traitor" Snowden or a "commie" Sanders). What, for example, if social media had been around in the Jim Crow era and the "rulers" of social media had decided that the civil rights movement was to be silenced? Or that "traditional marriage" is an institution that needs protection from "gay marriage"?
At the same time I recognize the issue of how to handle people's freedoms on a platform... when those freedoms advocate for violence or actions that restrict other people's real world freedoms
Right now, FB are getting to have their cake and eat it - Section 230 gives them almost complete immunity from how they use their "voice" on the supposed basis that it's supposedly their users' speech and not theirs, including getting to decide which political violence to support, but they also get full freedom to decide which not-their-speech gets heard and by whom based on their own whims. Ordinary humans who aren't multi-billion-dollar corporations controlling one of the main methods of communication do not have this level of free speech rights.
So? That's how the society works: its moral values are reflected by the actions of those who participate in it. Most people find the Daily Stormer abhorrent so they refuse to provide services to it. It's actually free speech in action since all those people are expressing their view of DS.
> "That's how the society works: its moral values are reflected by the actions of those who participate in it."
The gaping flaw in the "social norms" argument is that slavery, women as second class citizens, religious intolerance, etc. used to be a social norms as well, so in those eras one has to suspect the parent poster would be arguing in favor of those as well. It is basically a conservative viewpoint saying that what society believes to be moral at the present time will always be moral, so hearing it parroted by people claiming to be aligned with the left is just mind-bending.
So, perhaps, by no longer having access to Facebook, Mr Trump's eccentricities may moderate? Facebook does people a service by cutting them off. I honestly see such disconnections as healthy. If only they would cut people off before they are radicalized.
Conversely, Mr Trump is now a free agent looking for a nest elsewhere. There is probably lots of closed door planning happening: "What do we do if he decides to use our platform for 2024?"
yep, i made the same prediction in another thread. To go further, i bet it will be and livestreaming commentary on inauguration day and probably outperform the actual inauguration in terms of viewership.
I think the opposite will happen. He will be so sad angry that he will retreat into a world which he can completely control. I bet he will spend that time alone inside one of his gold-plated golf resorts.
So while the Capitol is very symbolic, there wasn’t looting, rioting or major vandalism on the part of the protesters (compare to the “Autonomous Zone” and police precinct burning in Seattle.
Does that mean in the future demonstrations and protests that could potentially end up in violence like that be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter? Or can we expect partisanship and see them bless other protests that turn to violence?
Note: I do not condone occupying public buildings like this. That’s unacceptable. But I think that should be applied evenly to all protests and wherever property is destroyed.
I’ve always felt that we all just parrot and recycle the same opinions until someone introduces something creative and new into the conversation for us all to contend with.
This is genuinely new example of the hypocrisy of the left. I wonder how the apologists will contend with this.
I've been looking at several different sources, and I can't find a single mention of Kavanaugh protestors committing any vandalism at all. The result of Kavanaugh protests? 128 people arrested.
You're comparing that with a mob of people who violently clashed with the police outside the Capitol, then stormed inside, broke windows, climbed the walls, sat inside offices with their feet up on desks, walked away with "souvenirs", and planted IEDs. The result of that? 13 arrests.
Can you please explain why your comparison is not disingenuous?
Not symbolic, and also nowhere near the same degree of severity.
At worst, the Kavanaugh protestors committed trespass and pleaded to swing voters; whereas yesterday's mob broke property, assaulted police, looted, and had the intent to overturn the democratic process. While flying confederate and Trump flags and tearing down American flags.
"Demonstrators wore shirts that said "Believe Women" and "Be A Hero" in support of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, who have each accused Kavanaugh of separate incidents of sexual assault. Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegations."
How many offices did they trash? How many people died? How many injured? How many had pipes, clubs or guns? How many had molotov cocktails?
Um, excuse me? They shattered windows, climbed walls, forced open doors and intimidated people — the very things conservatives told us for months were deserving of vicious police crackdowns.
There are pictures of literal Nazis — like, literal literal — holding up nameplates broken off walls [1]. They broke into offices, left threatening messages [2], made it out safely and proudly showed off stolen items [3].
They invaded the capitol with the sole intention of disrupting congress and preventing a constitutionally mandated handover of power to a democratically elected government. This was an attack on the democracy of the United States, not a building. To portray it as anything else is disingenuous.
Did the Kavanaugh protesters break windows, climb walls, steal stuff, and plant explosives? If they did, can you please point me to a source that shows that, because I haven't been able to find one?
Were the people attempting to derail the confirmation armed and committing property damage? Did they have zip ties to confine government officials? Did they assault and overwhelm police officers on the way in? If not then I don't think the two are comparable.
>So while the Capitol is very symbolic, there wasn’t looting, rioting or major vandalism on the part of the protesters (compare to the “Autonomous Zone” and police precinct burning in Seattle.
Five people are dead.
Dozens are injured, several severely.
A number of those taken into custody were found with molotov cocktails, police-style plastic restraints, pipes, clubs and firearms.
What do you think they were going to do with those molotov cocktails? Drink them?
Or the restraints?
Don't minimize what happened or compare it to other bad acts.
I don't know of any public official (except President Trump) who encouraged or condoned violence of any kind.
It's not a slope at all. They pushed it off a cliff.
Though the timing aligning with a new set of committee heads in the Senate is more than suspect. Zuck knows how easy it is for the government to break them up and he's trying to make amends for his original sin of not stopping Trump in 2016.
The argument that "this speech is too dangerous" can be made by anyone about just about anything. This isn't fire in a theater. It's political speech and disagreement. If you accept the outcome here, you or your children will one day regret it when their voices are the ones that are muffled.
You are correct the video all the platforms are using to justify the bans explicitly asked people to go home. Previously he had urged them to be peaceful which they mostly were as evidenced by the fact that no capitol staff or police were in any way injured during the incident.
edit: Leaving my comment intact as there are people who have replied. VBProgrammer pointed out that a portion of my statement is not true. This morning the DC police revealed two officers were hospitalized with injuries and one was described as having serious injuries while 12 others suffered other injuries.
Because the entire attack on Capitol yesterday can be tied directly to the speech he has made just before it. Just because no police/staff were harmed doesn't make it ok - after all, destruction of federal property and buildings carries a potential 10 year imprisonment penalty.
So not only he's encouraging criminal actions, but after these actions occurs he tells these criminals that he loves them. And yes, tells them to go home - great, but that's not a redeeming factor here.
Fact check: Several police officers were harmed/treated for injuries. The crowd used chemical weapons (pepper/bear spray) on officers at several different times during the riot. No less than 2 improvised explosives were recovered from the scene. Please don't give into the "peaceful" narrative.
Some of them were also armed with assault rifles, others with blunt weapons like baseball bats. And they were stupid enough to get filmed on camera and partly even incriminated themselves afterwards by admitting the crime and providing their real names in front of the camera. It's pretty crazy, if you think about it.
His commentary on election fraud is seen as fueling the riot. Paraphrasing, the video comes across as: "you should go home. You're special and I love you. This is a fraudulent, illegitimate election and america is being stolen from you"
It's like people who start sentences with "no offense, but"
Then doubling down on the narrative that drives these people, one that is directly opposed to peaceful transfer of power: the illegitimacy of the election results. That's an incredibly dangerous message from the President of the United States, he's telling them to go home in one sentence and riling them up in the other, that encourages further insurrection around his persona.
Facebook is in the right not to allow that spark when whole situation is a powder keg.
This really reminds me of Antony's "Friends, romans, countrymen..." speech that is ostensibly peaceful and respectful but is actually riling up the crowd.
Only 2 officers required hospitalization. For comparison, there were many hospitalizations every single night of the 90-ish day Antifa seige of the Oregon federal courthouse.
In Oregon, Antifa were blasting officers with fireworks, going after them with hammers, polearms, shields, etc. We didn't see that in DC either. Instead we find the police generally getting along with the overwhelming majority of protesters.
Even 9 guns is nothing worth mentioning statistically. If those people had been interested in causing serious harm, almost all of them could have shown up with AR-15s. Hundreds of thousands of people with AR-15s could easily overpower any troops that could have been sent into the area. The fact that we didn't see this once again plays against the media's claims of a coup attempt.
People are reacting negatively to this comment (and rightly so) because your representation of what was said in the video does not match the tone, or underlying message delivered by said video.
The video was the equivalent of watching a kid, who has been rightly verbally disciplined by a parent, and who has been told they must apologize to their sibling/friend/whatever, so that kid says "Ok ok I'm SORRY", but immediately starts to rationalize/explain away why they were still right.
> explicitly asked people to go home
The words were said, but the sentiment and subsequent message told the viewer the opposite. "Go home" ... "but you're loved/special and I understand you, wink wink". The equivalent of "SORRY" ... "(but I'm really not sorry...)".
Others have already reacted to the comment about "peaceful" behavior and injuries, and those comments reflect my thoughts, so I won't expand on them here.
>peaceful which they mostly were as evidenced by the fact that no capitol staff or police were in any way injured during the incident.
At least one Capitol police officer is dead. Beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.
Many of the folks arrested had cable ties similar to those used by police to "handcuff" people. One insurrectionist was found with materials to make molotov cocktails.
Because he did not actually provide a statement condemning the riot that took place and said several things that are being interpreted (by both his followers and his opposition) as supporting the behavior.
(Please try not to read this in a condescending way): There is a difference between "You need to leave the capital building immediately. You are breaking the law and this will not be tolerated" (an approximation of the message many officials offered). and "Please go home. You are loved and you are special to this movement" (approximation of Trump's statement)
I agree, I'm confused. He's urging against violence, but standing by his claims of fraud. But people are claiming that's not what he's "really" saying. OK.. so I can basically say the same thing about anyone saying anything. Who decides what he "really" means?
Just so I won't be downvoted, I'm not a fan of Trump.
I think the point is that after his supporters broke the law and stormed the capitol, interrupting a constitutionally mandated process for the peaceful transfer of power, he told them:
> "Remember this day forever!"
Thus approving of the actions that already occurred and telling them that the crimes that they committed would be justified by history looking back at what they have done. It in no way deescalates the risk of future conflicts.
That's honestly just an interpretation of it. He could just mean "remember this day of protest against the establishment". Everyone just reads everything he says with their own biases.
I don't think that's inherently wrong, just let's not ban people based on our own biases.
All of the intepretations of the events that happened yesterday could be equally uncharitably interpreted of BLM with the riots, violence, and protests across the country. I mean, they forcefully took over an entire city zone at one point.
Well that is the cleverness of most trump statements, toe the line, give a nod to your side, but also retain deniability. If you don't start interpreting, you get into a trap in which you will be outfoxed by anyone who can toe lines enough to not blatantly incriminate themselves.
As for BLM, personally I was never very sympathetic to the portions of protests/riots that caused violence.
Dog whistles work because they proved the fig leaf of plausible deniability. Trump's presidency has been a series of dog whistles. Why would it have stopped just because he lost an election?
We've had a full two months for election irregularities to be litigated in the courts, and scrutinized in the court of public opinion. The only results that bubbled to the top were the same oft-repeated grand claims, without much of anything backing them up. If there were substantive arguments to be made, Trump's legal team has failed to present them. At this point two months later, the "fraud" narrative is nothing more than a rallying cry. So yes, continuing to push the fake fraud claim is direct incitement of that mob.
Why did they shove police officers and tear down barricades, break windows and smash doors?
Why did they illegally enter government buildings?
The answer to all of these is a mistaken belief that the election was not legitimate, due to President Trump's claims without evidence that there was widespread fraud. Their actions were made believing that the election was being stolen. Their actions were justified by that belief. You cannot reinforce the reasons why they are there with any genuine belief that it will inspire peace and retreat!
> a mistaken belief that the election was not legitimate, due to President Trump's claims without evidence that there was widespread fraud
"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
You're the not only one. He was using simple persuasion to encourage them to go home peacefully.
"I understand why you're unhappy but it's time to return home peacefully" is much more persuasive than "You are flat out wrong and it's time to return home peacefully". It's negotiation 101: validate the other's feelings if you want to persuade, even if you don't agree with those feelings.
FWIW, one "difference" between the two statements is that the former is the kind of thing that makes people more angry and the latter is the kind of thing that might actually make someone feel heard enough to go home; it just isn't somehow as obvious to me--a stark leftist, btw, who is downright socialist--that this is somehow finally the thing Trump said which should be blocked.
What’s genuine about it? It was litigated in nearly a hundred court cases, many of which had conservative political appointee judges. No evidence. No actual claims of fraud because the lawyers want to keep their bar and know the claims are fraudulent.
Trump’s base is upset that they lost the election. Nothing more.
... the way President Trump claimed without evidence the elections were run.
Two bedrocks of democracy are that elections are fair so that every vote is counted, and that the people's freedom of speech outweighs the government's freedom of speech, so that governments cannot pull the kind of manipulation and deception that President Trump has been doing so successfully.
The truth matters. It isn't that their concerns were railroaded or not heard. There were dozens of court cases, the justice department and state authorities investigated. When that turns up nothing, you can't just keep entertaining debunked notions that our democratic system is rigged.
You're trying to change the context here. Trump's supporters weren't expressing their dissatisfaction with the way the elections were run. They were violently seizing the capitol building to prevent the constitutional process of the peaceful transfer of power.
If only those breaking the law were banned that wouldn’t be a problem. What about those who never attended, never spoke about it, and merely expressed dissatisfaction with the election? Why were they banned?
Meaning is transmitted not just by the words you use. For example by being sarcastic you can make the words mean the opposite of what their plain meaning is.
Trump made clear how he felt, and his words did not reflect that.
Watch the video. He spends JUST enough time saying 'go home peacefully' that someone can say he did that. However he spends all the actual time and energy saying the exact opposite - it was stolen, fight for me, etc.
It is the height of disingenuousness to claim it was a call for peace or a thoughtful resolution. It was an emotional call to arms with a fig leaf on it.
These people aren't there because they think it's unimportant. They are convinced the election was stolen and nothing you (or he) says would sway their minds. Insulting would only lead to anger.
You have to acknowledge the feelings of the other individual before they'll listen. They see themselves as good, honorable people, so you address them as such. Once you have their attention in an agreeable manner (instead of an antagonistic manner), you can address the issue at hand.
Trump did precisely this. He empathized with them and their cause. After he had an agreeable mood somewhat established, he then appealed to consequences.
If he hadn't asked them to stop, congress' attempt to reconvene would have no doubt been interrupted as well. The fact that didn't happen goes a long way against the claim that it was a call to violence.
They only reason why they believe the election was stolen in the first place is because Trump has been lying about it for the past two months. He is the root cause. He could end this easily, but he won’t.
> They are convinced the election was stolen and nothing you (or he) says would sway their minds.
That’s not how people work. Imagine for a second that he did come out and say that he was wrong about the fraud claims (“we looked into it and didn’t find anything”) and conceded the election. Do you honestly believe not a single one of his supporters would fall in line? There are a few people who are too far gone, but it’s entirely disingenuous to suggest he has no power over this. Not holding rallies would help a lot too. No, this is all squarely at his feet.
Indeed asking for peace isn't enough if you're going to fan the flames in the same speech. That wasn't the time to reassert the legitimacy of his supporters' motives, he's not any citizen, the President of the United States should have sought to de-escalate the situation created by his mass movement in the US capital first and only.
The time to talk about their struggle was another. And that without going into the legitimacy of him disputing the election results or even the legitimacy of him leading a revolutionary movement at this point.
The mob started at a “Stop the Steal” Trump Rally where DJT personally used mob boss speak about it “not being so nice for some senators” and quickly following up with calls to not be weak.
“Go to the capital and be strong so the legislators can’t steal our victory.”
*several hours later, after they’ve broken into the capital and terrorized the legislation
“Go home, but they did steal the election and you’re special and we love you.”
That was him approving of their actions. That was him saying what they did was what he wanted and he would happily see them go further. Not picking up on this pattern in the past 4 years doesn’t make you crazy, but it does mean you aren’t paying close attention.
What he should have done was strongly condemn the violence and call for the people to go home immediately and peacefully.
And nothing else. With no softening weasel words.
He would be able to keep believing his claims of election fraud uninterrupted. And continue to pursuing them, just after the violent insurrection was diffused, not during it.
It's important to note that the insurrection was any least partially incited by his claims of election fraud, so repeating them in that context was extremely dangerous.
I agree he should have strongly condemned those actions and asked them to leave immediately. But I also don't see any evidence that he incited violence. Alleging election fraud, or encouraging people to protest are not the same as inciting violence. I'm open to evidence of Trump inciting violence, but thus far no one has been able to provide it.
I think you should watch the speeches given at the event immediately prior to the rioters going to the capitol building and violently seizing it, including Trump's.
It's the nature of the things that you can always argue about whether a particular speech rises to the level of incitement. E.g., the words like "stir", "encourage", and "stimulate" from the definition are not black-and-white terms.
However, the actual sequence of events are a pretty strong argument for incitement. There's a simple and easy to follow implication of cause and effect here.
Also, remember, we're talking about his video after the violence broke out. If he didn't understand that his claims of election fraud before the riot would lead the riot, he must certainly have understood it during the riot.
Thanks for the response. For me, that's not strong enough a case to say that Trump's social media posts should be censored or blocked. I simply don't see it as incitement of violence. His claims of fraud are misleading for sure, but if the standard is around "violence" specifically, I feel that blame cannot be laid at his feet in a provable manner - because this is a highly political, highly emotional situation, I am looking for evidence that would almost meet a legal standard, like beyond a reasonable doubt (https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Beyond+a+Reas...).
I also think the actions taken by tech companies here reflects a double-standard. For example, why isn't AOC being blocked for supporting rioting? Why weren't Democrats called out for attacks on federal property in Portland, Seattle, and other cities? Look at https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/07/aocs-comms-director-ask... for an exploration of this.
To me, it just looks like big tech companies picking winners and losers in an ongoing political and cultural war, and are reacting to societal or political pressures in taking action rather than acting in any principled manner.
> "The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable. Activists take that discomfort w/ the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes. Popular support often starts small & grows. To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable… that’s the point."
Where in this statement is there any incitement for rioting or violence?
Now let's take a look at Trump's actions on Wednesday[1]:
> "You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough and we will not take it any more"
> "And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
This is how Trump described the rioters:
> "These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long."
Contrast this with Pence's response:
> "This attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law"
> The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable.
This is a thinly-veiled statement in support of protesters engaging in criminal activity to get their way politically. That is the dictionary definition of terrorism (which the capitol incident also qualifies for). I agree it isn't explicit in stating that. But Trump's statement doesn't explicitly call for criminal activity either.
His statements are not asking for violence but asking to challenge the results and fight for what you want politically. That's what every side does in every political confrontation. You COULD also read it as a thinly-veiled statement pushing for violence. But it is entirely subjective to label one that way but not the other. And therefore, big tech companies should hold BOTH AOC and Trump to the same exact standard, or neither.
All that aside, I agree Pence's statement is better and wish Trump was more forceful in condemning these acts and left the "explanations" out.
> For me, that's not strong enough a case to say that Trump's social media posts should be censored or blocked.
One clarification: Trump's accounts were not blocked for his speech or event before the riot. They were blocked for his response during the riot.
E.g. during the riot he tweeted, "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
So there's a little at the end that is good. But he mostly expresses that the violent insurrection is justified, praises the perpetrators, and suggest that they are the victims. He posted a video with similar sentiments as well. This was while it was still on-going.
Can you explain? I don't think it's constructive to hide behind analogy and cliche when you could come out and tell us the causes and effects that you think are happening here.
I think the video will further instill anger in his supporters and possibly if not probably lead to greater acts of political violence. Hence the claim it violates their terms of service.
"Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th."
If that's an incision of violence, then I'm sure you will apply such interpretations equally to other statements? Any time there's a riot, block the leaders of whatever party they riot on behalf of?
I get that you want to shoehorn in a TOS violation, but it's really not. But I also get that it's important for him to not have a platform right now. I'm just not into this Orwellian twist of rules/words/interpretations to try to justify the fact that we just aren't safe with him broadcasting his lies anymore.
Why do you think it's "hiding"? analogies have a way to explain things to people who don't have context, it's a tool to remove obfuscation, not add more layers.
That only true when it serves to augment the plain English truth. When that's omitted, it's what I dare say is a "Trumpian" method of obscuring reality.
But the plain english truth is the Trump video. The analogy helps explain what people are observing.
When people say "i don't have a problem with what he said, because he said for people to go home" the analogy helps ground the idea that while he may have said go home, he also said things that would rile them up. Hence the taking a log off the fire while adding gasoline analogy. It's not obfuscation. Trump's message was the obfuscation.
So what you observe is that people take a quote out of context, and try to use that to misinform people. Then put the quote in-context to support your position. Don't give different obfuscating garbage.
There's a phrase "Talking out of both sides of your mouth." He said what he believed the urging of politicans, media and oppositional citizens wanted by saying "go home" while continuing to say what his base wanted to hear - "we won in a landslide and it was stolen."
Each side could choose to only hear what they want, or recognize it for the manipulation it is. We know what his followers will do - hear what they want to hear. We know what his opposition will do - hear it for the manipulation it is. Therefore we can conclude that it was not a genuine urging of his followers to actually give up and leave.
The President's attorney also ran a rally 2 hours before the riot calling for "trial by combat". Some speech is way over the line. There's always a wink at the end.
And when politicians call each other Nazis, or when Joe Biden claimed that Mitt Romney wanted to re-enslave black people?
Seems like you're only going to apply your "inciting violence" claim to one side. I watched cities burn over the summer and intense levels of violence... And yet no one on the left trotted out speech bans and "incitement to violence" claims. It's obvious you're selectively targeting enforcement of intentionally vague standards. Federal buildings were being accosted in Portland and Seattle just a few months ago and the mayors supported them. Haven't seen their accounts banned.
Not the same thing. Stop trying to make the two sound the same.
It all started when Mr. Biden, addressing a predominantly African American crowd, quoted Mr. Romney as saying in his first 100 days as president that "he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules -- unchain Wall Street." Then the vice president added with a grin: "They're going to put y'all back in chains!"
> And when politicians call each other Nazis, or when Joe Biden claimed that Mitt Romney wanted to re-enslave black people?
Name calling isn't incitement to violence. Can you point to the specific instances of violence you are talking about and the speech that inspired them?
The issue here is that this isn't theoretical. Trump actually spoke to a real mob, in person, told them to march to the capitol, and then praised him once they had invaded and sacked it during a joint session of congress. Given that, yes, we look at his speech with much less tolerant criteria. He wasn't just spouting off, he is at least a proximate cause of a direct attack on our seat of government.
What a news-bubble you live in. Multiple cities burned over the summer while many politicians, activist, and newspapers encouraged protests. Numerous Trump supporters were assaulted. At least two Trump supporters were shot to death.
The fact that you don’t know and don’t care about this shows in what politically-biased bad faith you’re operating.
We both know the game you’re going to play. I’ll give you the name of the murdered man, the murderer aligned with Antifa, and a long list of times Joe Biden refused to condemn Antifa violence, and language from city mayors calling Trump-supporters unamerican, unwelcome, and threats to their city. I’ll say it clearly condoned violence and you’ll say it didn’t. And that’s exactly my point. You want to use a vague wishy-washy standard that you can use to suppress political opinions you disagree while letting political opinions you like slip by. Stop trying to censor speech. It’s 2021, not the dark ages. Grow up.
The fact that you don’t know which murders I’m taking about already speaks volumes about your myopic news bubble. Or maybe you do know which murders I’m talking about and you just want to continue playing a moving-the-goal post game. Tedious.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler: “I vehemently oppose what the Proud Boys and those associated with them stand for, and I will not tolerate hate speech and the damage it does in our city. White nationalists, particularly those coming to our city armed, threaten the safety of Portlanders and are not welcome here.”
The mayor calls a group of people demonstrating in his city hateful, “not welcome” and “threats to safety”. Not long after, a Patriot Prayer demonstrator Aaron Danielson was the victim of a pre-meditated murder by a man who described himself as “100% Antifa”. Joe Biden was asked on multiple occasions to condemn Antifa, and he refused, instead only generically condemned violence... exactly the same criticism leveled against Trump. I can cry and whine like you that Ted Wheeler and Joe Biden caused murder, but I’m not a baby. I’m not going to make speech illegal because I don’t like its content. Punish actual crimes, not speech you don’t like.
So, get out of your bubble and stop attacking freedom of expression, the most essential of freedoms.
He was intentionally continuing to fan the flames of insurrection using specific lies about the status of the election, while at the same time pretending to ask them to peacefully disperse.
For months Trump has asserted that mail-in voting is intrinsically insecure and fraudulent. He's also been parroting baseless lies and conspiracy theories about the election. Telling his supporters their vote is being suppressed by all the parties that refuse to go along with his insane demands. These parties include: state and federal governments, private companies that build voting machines, poll workers, Republican secretaries of state, state and federal courts, a complicit press, and now even the vice president.
If you believe what Trump says then you must believe that the entire system of democratic representation has broken down. Under this mindset it makes sense to resort to violent action and storm the capitol - what other recourse do you have? That's why rioters left a "WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN" note on Pelosi's desk. And when Trump says the loves and supports the rioters, that's the mindset he's reinforcing and encouraging.
When Trump says everyone should go home - why should we treat that statement as normative? When virtually everything else this man has said agitates and encourages insurrection, why should we glom onto this one positive statement?
> The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
The account bans are not just because of this one video considered in isolation. The bans are happening because of the systematic anti-democratic and seditious behavior of the president and his campaign.
If you think Trump and/or his army treats this as a defeat, think again. Once Biden is in office, social media companies will become rubber stamps for the establishment or be faced with breakup. You wanted one-party rule...you're going to get it.
At risk of feeding the troll, want to bet? You win if, as of January 21, 2029, the Democratic party has retained continuous control of the Presidency, Senate, and House of Representatives and controls the legislatures of at least 2/3 of the states. I win if not. Loser has to admit they were being histrionic and has to preface every public political comment they make for 5 years after that with "I have a tendency to exaggerate, so feel free not to take me seriously"
It depends on which direction we goes. If the elections really weren't stolen, then we will see things even out. If they were ... well you're wrong about Democrats retaining control. It's not Democrats vs Republicans.
It's establishment vs everyone else.
Let me ask you something: Do you ever think we'll see another person not blessed by either the Bush or Clinton family on the Iron Throne of the Whitehouse? Trump was the only on in my lifetime.
From the 1980s until 2008 we always had a Bush or a Clinton in the Whitehouse and until 2012 Clinton was still Secretary of State. Two royal families have ruled America for my entire life until 2016. Obama and Biden are clearly part of House Clinton.
I think you're forgetting how bitter the 2008 Democratic primary was. The Clintons did everything they could to keep Obama from being the nominee (well, as we saw in 2016, not quite everything they could do). Clinton was made secretary of state as an olive branch to keep her end of the party secure.
I think you can comfortably replace "establishment" with "idealogically representative of the inner standard deviation of the american people", with some skewing for party politics, which is pretty much what a representative republic is supposed to do. People also miss that the parties frequently shift to accommodate their candidates, such that any candidate of a major party de facto becomes the establishment for that party (within reason).
Also, Bill Clinton was in no way an establishment candidate in 1992. Nor was Reagan in 1980, nor particularly was Carter in 1976. Skipping their associated unelected presidents (who by nature of being VP were part of the establishment), Kennedy probably also was not particularly establishmenty (but he cheated). Nixon was a solid component of the Republican establishment, Eisenhower had literally run the country's military, and FDR was president for so long it's hard not to think of him as defining the establishment. Before that, my picture of electoral history gets fuzzy.
All that to say, saying things are run by "the establishment" is too ephemeral to be useful.
> America is just a monarchy with term limits.
Yes, that's literally the intent of the executive branch as conceived by the founders. Even the term limits were feature creep.
Yep, very true. I can't disagree with anything you've said. I do remember 2006 very well and the "I landed under sniper fire" from Hillary.
I agree Bill Clinton was outside of it, but he got in and they started their entrenchment. Prescott Bush spent decades preparing for his son to become the president, but it was his long term intention.
Trump started planning this in the 80s and his extended family are also much easier to listen to and less ... squawking. There's a good chance they'll rise despite all of this as another political family like the Kennedys.
Kennedy wasn't corrupt enough, and got taken out by his own people, and somehow to this day over half of the world believe it was just one guy with an axe to grind.
The actual undercarriage of what is going in is deep and complex, held by powerful people who will rip each other, and the peasants, in order to maintain their control and power.
Just look at how people on here are ripping at each other, accusing every Trump supporter as being a Nazi or fascist. I think back to the quote from Wargames about thermonuclear war .. the only way to win, is not to play.
It’s also interesting that you’re so worried by this comment. I found some value in the original comment because it highlighted a software company is doing it. Just relax.
I’m not worried, I’m expressing how ridiculously afraid people are to take a side because hey, it’s kind of a polarizing and controversial topic. Tell us what you think!
In some ways, it’s self-censorship so one doesn’t get downvotes.
I think I find anyone telling someone to relax a bit condescending, but I’m gonna assume good faith that you’re not meaning it.
Sorry if that came across that way. I just found your first reply unnecessary.
I think each take is useful, no matter how opinionated they are. I understand your point though, I also wouldn't want every comment in the thread being neutral. Knowing HN, I think we're doing fine :)
Thinking that you have to Take a Side is IMO a false dichotomy. There is a whole specter of opinions.
Between "I support what facebook did" and "I do not support what facebook did", or "I support Trump" vs "I hate Trump". if I were to take a side right now I would not be able to. Regardless I find it interesting, much of the discussion I've heard in the last 24h is very interesting to me.
I should perhaps expand and sort of agree with you: You don't need to take sides. Just expand more on your stance as neutral than just saying "It's interesting". I expect more from HN comments I guess.
I often find myself responding with "interesting" when I haven't yet formulated an opinion - to me it's an indication that I'll have to get back to you on how I feel about it. I haven't found another synonym to use as a response, and I often catch myself constantly saying "interesting" over and over. It's interesting.
What policies he pushed you are not happy with? Less taxes, no new wars, and leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19 seems pretty center right to me.
1. less taxes I am not happy with
2. immigrant children in cages
3. easing of environmental rules
4. pulling out of climate deal
5. pulling out of iran deal
6. lying about the election being a fraud, and causing insurrection
7. pardoning his criminal cronies
There’s all kinds of less-objectionable potential uses of the cages than the ones to which the Trump Administration has put them. Building them isn’t the problem.
Yes, and doing that for a smaller number of people that are transitionally detained after taking steps to minimize their use by minimizing detaining children in the first place (e.g., a policy of not doing custodial detainment of adults accompanying children whose only apparent offense is illegal crossing so that the court-mandated separate detention of children isn't an issue versus deliberately adopting a policy of maximum family separation with the overt motivation of using the associated suffering as a deterrent and punishment.)
> No, GP means, literally, who put the cage policy in place. It was not the Trump administration.
The policy of deliberately maximizing use of the cages by maximizing family separation and using the induced psychic harm as a deterrent is a policy adopted by the Trump Administration.
The policy of requiring segregated detention of children, when actually detained, which caused the cages to be necessary was a judicially-imposed policy.
The policy of minimizing detention of children so as to minimize the use of the cages, including not detaining adults accompanying children without reason beyond illegal crossing, was a direct response to that judicially-imposed policy by the Obama Administration that was abandoned by the Trump Administration.
So, if one is using “built the cages” with the peculiar meaning you suggest of “adopted the policy for their use that is the subject of the objections”, Trump “built the cages”.
Not just that, people who should've known better kept on using photos of kids in cages that were literally taken under the Obama administration to insist that Trump was uniquely evil, including members of Congress and mainstream publications, even months (maybe years?) after the fact they were from the Obama era was firmly established. Not just that either. For example, the fricking Associated Press ran an investigative piece about immigrant kids being handed over to forced labour traffickers that was 100% open about the fact its purpose was to attack Trump's immigration policies, even though if you looked at the dates every incident it described happened under Obama. That didn't stop everyone on social media interpreting it in the intended fashion.
While I agree that any president of the USA is basically a baddie Trump really blows the scale. Yes we should be talking about the draconian immigration policies under Obama, and we should be talking about Biden’s support for the war on drugs, and we should be talking about drone killings under the Democrats. But that doesn’t mean Trump is not all that and worse.
Yes it is bad that children were arrested under Obama. Obama should absolutely have to answer to those crimes. But so should Trump. In addition Trump also needs to answer for the child separation (not done under Obama). Yes, Obama needs to answer for war crimes and extrajudicial killings, but so should Trump, and in addition Trump needs to answer to toxic rhetoric, inciting racism, inciting racism, inciting people not to follow public health protocols, etc.
Virtually all his tweets have a tendency to disinform. He caused a lot of damage to the country during the pandemic, remember that? Why keep on giving Trump carte blanche? His social messages cause a lot of harm to the US.
I guess he's more welcome to GAB or any other radical social media. His followers will flock to him in a similar way as on Twitter or Facebook. Let him be relevant where people don't question him
Come on man, you can't be serious - the public burden of proof is so massive that it's on you if you want to argue, pointlessly otherwise.
Go and read his Twitter feed from the past few weeks, where he has spewed lies about non-existent fraud in an almost hourly basis, told Mike Pence to overturn the result, and where he called on his supporters to come to DC on the 6th. He has been whipping up his supporters into a frenzy for some time.
Watch the video clips of his speeches he has posted on Twitter, with yet more lies about how the election was "stolen from him", the other side are "evil", and how his supporters must "fight" for democracy by helping him overturn the will of the American people.
Listen to the tapes of him telling state officials to "find more votes", with thinly veiled threats.
Watch the video of his speech shortly before the riot, where Rudi Guliani said the way to win was "trial by combat", and Trump told them all to march on the capital.
Listen even to his video statement where he asks them to stop the violence - where he still refuses to denounce their actions, banging on about fraud and what "great patriots" they are!
He has, to my knowledge, never explicitly said "let's go and stage a violent coup!", because even Trump is just a tad more intelligent than that - but it is abundantly clear that this is what he was asking for and what he wanted, and it's been clear for all to see for some time.
I find it ... 'odd' ... that you can be so well-informed about DNC issues but have "no recollection" (I love that phrase, works so well when people are being hauled in front of Congress) of any specific issue of violence from Trump or the RNC.
In fact, here you go, someone's collated them all, with evidence:
It’s incredible that that’s the best you can do. And Joe Biden calling the election “a battle for the soul of America” is calling for war. Get real. 4 years of pearl clutching and you still can’t stop.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them,”
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“...something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can't have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”
He said that yesterday morning, right before the capitol was sacked by his supporters, at yet another one of his klan-style rallies.
I further consider falsely calling elections stolen, rigged, or fraudulent just because you lost, as incitement to violence. He has been doing this for two months, but he gave a preview before both the 2016 and 2020 elections that he would call any election he lost as rigged. Without elections, what else is there? Admitting and accepting defeat is one of the most central requirements of a functioning democracy.
Democrats spent years calling the 2016 election illegitimate and fraudulent. I guess you considered that an incitement to violence too right? Oh wait, you didn’t? Weird, because that almost seems like blatant hypocrisy.
Hillary Clinton conceded the day after the election. At no time did any Democrat claim she had actually won the election in a landslide, or that it was a stolen, fraudulent election.
Donald Trump still has not conceded. On Wednesday he was spouting lies about a fraudulent election, a stolen election, and to fight. As he has for two months. And this lie is repeated by more than 140 Republicans, 2/3rds of the caucus, in the House of Representatives. Along with 7 Republican Senators. On the record.
These are not the same two things at all. You know that. And yet you choose to replicate a lie and make a ridiculous claim of hypocrisy. And I think it makes you a coward and a person of bad character, and I also think you know that too. The only question is whether it shames you.
Are you an inveterate liar or just that wildly uninformed? Democrats non-stop have called the 2016 election “stolen”, just like they called the 2000 election “stolen”. In 2019, Hillary Clinton called Trump an “illegitimate president” and accused him of stealing the election. Maybe try getting out of your echo chamber and you’d know these things.
Not to mention, do you know how many Democrats objected during the Congressional electoral college and certification session for Donald Trump? No, of course you don’t, because you’re spoonfed biased talking points and aren’t even interested in knowing the whole story. I bet you won’t even look it up because you don’t want to know the truth that Democratic congressional reps also tried to object to Trump’s presidential certification.
Instead, here you are trying use your childish sense of moral superiority to suppress freedom of expression. Maybe if you clutch your pearls even more strongly next time, I’ll feel the “shame” you think I should feel.
Paid for by running up record deficits - which is the opposite of what the right claimed to stand for, and which Trump directly ran on. And those taxes expire for the people, showing who Trump really worked for in this case.
>no new wars,
Yet destabilizing many areas of the world, leaving it in the opinion of some countries in a much less peaceful place. Here's Germany putting Trump as "Greatest Threat to World Peace " [1]. He's destabilized NATO, he's attacked the US and other intelligence forces to where the US is no longer trusted, likely causing other agencies to share less intel with us. Here's how a lot of the first world thinks of Trump [2].
>leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
And his lack of leadership is a central reason the US has 350K_ dead, while other first world countries only have a fraction of the death and economic downturn Trump caused.
Trump also fought states having the right to their own election rules, didn't want states to deal with immigration on their own terms, didn't want states to deal with protests on their own terms, has repeatedly claimed he has absolute authority over state decisions (including COVID related ones where he claimed he could dictate economic policy, which he didn't have), and on and on....
Trump uses "states rights" to score political points only - pretend to respect them when he wants, and attack them when he wants.
When your evaulation uses a fallacy (cherry-picking) you end up ignoring the majority of the eivdence, your assessment ends up incorrect.
>> Trump also fought states having the right to their own election rules.
Its clearly stated in the constitution that if states change their election laws, then they need to go through the legislature in order to do so. GA, WI. MI and PA ALL made changes WITHOUT going through the legislature. Why? Because in each of those states, the legislature was controlled by Republicans.
The fact they changed their laws the way they did is a clear cut violation of the constitution, it's not even debatable.
There's so much wrong in this statement. No state anywhere can change laws without going through the legislature. Only the legislature has the power to write law. The executive branch, which runs elections, always has leeway on how they implement and interpret laws. If someone had a problem with how the laws were interpreted, they could sue in state court - many people did, all the suits were dismissed by the state courts, meaning that the courts did not find any violations of the state constitution. So, "the fact they changed their laws the way they did" -> they did not change their laws. "is a clear-cut violation of the constitution" -> nope, courts determined over and over and over that this is not the case.
In September 2020, the Court rewrote Pennsylvania election law to allow ballots received three days after Election Day, even without a postmark, to be counted. Further, it kicked off the ballot the Green Party candidate, who normally takes away votes from the Democratic candidate. The Court rewrote the clear language of the statute:
Deadline.--Except as provided under 25 Pa.C.S. § 3511[24] (relating to receipt of voted ballot), a completed mail-in ballot must be received in the office of the county board of elections no later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.
This case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the argument that only the Legislature can set the rules for a federal election:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.*
On November 27, 2020, Judge McCullough of the PA Commonwealth Court issued a preliminary injunction to stop certification of the vote pending review because the Pennsylvania statute, Act 77, enacted on October 31, 2019, which provided for "no-excuse" mail- in voting, changed the Pennsylvania constitution. Amending the PA Constitution requires that the Legislature pass the law in two sessions, and then the amendment is voted upon by the voters. This was not followed in enacting Act 77. The case is Mike Kelly, Sean Parnell, et al. v. Commonwealth of Pa, Governor Thomas Wolf, et al.
On Saturday, November 28, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled Judge McCullough. The vote was 7-0, with the two Republicans joining in the decision with the exception that the two Republicans wanted to keep the case open to decide the constitutionality of the statute.
The two Republicans should have dissented to state that the election was held under an unconstitutional and therefore an illegal statute. They should have stated that Gov. Wolf, his Democrat secretary of state, and Democrat attorney general Josh Shapiro allowed the election to proceed under a statute they knew was unconstitutional. All three are sworn to uphold the laws and constitutions of Pennsylvania and the United States.
Senator Kelly filed an emergency appeal to Judge Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court requesting an injunction to bar the certification.
The issues raised by Kelly are as follows:
1. May a legislature violate its state constitution's restrictions on the lawmaking power when enacting legislation for the conduct of federal elections pursuant to Article I, § 4, and Article II, § 1 of the U.S. Constitution?
2. Did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate Petitioners' rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for Petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?
The Court did not hold an evidentiary hearing to question why Wolf allowed the election to proceed pursuant to a statute he knew was unconstitutional.
Further, the Republicans have a majority in the Senate and House of the PA Legislature. Why did the Republicans in the Legislature vote for Act 77 to allow no-excuse mail-in voting?
The votes of voters who voted in person were not treated equally because the no-excuse mail-in voters voted pursuant to an unconstitutional law. This is a denial of equal protection and due process.
As Judge McCullough stated:
[A] mail-in voting process that would exceed the limits of absentee voting prescribed in PA Const. Article VII sec 14 could be construed as violating the "one person one vote." In that event, the sheer magnitude of the number of mail-in ballots would not be a basis to disregard not only this provision of the Pennsylvania Constit...
To point out just one thing: Why do you think it is ok to ignore votes that arrived late but not too late to be counted? Is that not more like a technicality only? These are, even if late, votes by people.
In all of those instances, the "changes" to election laws were made by the respective state legislatures earlier during the year...or...spoiler alert in prior years.
> leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
It's so infuriating that this BS would pass for some sort of Trump accolade. The country is in full-blown crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen in a century. Why should the president do anything? He let the states handle it. What a great leader!
> and leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
Well, you know other than seizing PPE, and then having your son-in-law, a part of your administration, state -on the record-, that you would openly withhold PPE from states that "weren't friendly to the President".
There's many, many more. But you're presenting a rather simplistic (and inaccurate) narrative here.
None of that really matters. I have no doubt he would have won if he didn't say so many stupid things and act like a disrespectful moron.
I think the election was stolen, but stolen by Trump alone and basically handed over to Biden.
If anything, Trump stole the election from his supporters.
They should be pissed he couldn't show restraint and just shut his mouth to take the victory so he could continue with their favored agenda.
Instead, he actively sabotaged himself. His ego prevented him from seeing that unfold. And nobody could reign him in at any point. That's crazy.
Doesn't matter how many good things you get done if you show everyone you are incapable of humility, incapable of listening to advisors and data and fabricating things on the regular.
Trump's as nasty and dishonest as any president. The media does pick and choose who they elevate or denigrate however.
I grew up hearing and thinking JFK was basically like a Bodhisattva, and come to find out years later that, no, he was a sexual predator at times and a huge reason Vietnam was escalated.
> "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones, which are usually times of trouble. [0]
I heard this phrase in Shanghai and never knew it may be a curse - thanks for sharing this - I usually say this every once in a while but maybe shouldn't
“Despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese.[2] The nearest related Chinese expression translates as "Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos." (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人)”
It looks like the symbols for dog (犬) and person (人) are at end of each verse. I can't speak Chinese, but I'd imagine the line rings well hearing the ordering of subject/object/verb like that.
There are more constraints than that - the corresponding words in each phrase are also the same parts of speech, and are often read with a specific cadence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antithetical_couplet
Even more interesting is the blatant support of zuckerburg and facebook here.
Of all places, you'd think HN would support free speech, but yesterday, you got downvote brigaded for mentioning that facebook and tech companies shouldn't be our censors.
The logic was "we must protect democracy by having zuckerburg censor an elected government official".
One moment it's facebook is evil. The next moment, facebook and zuckerburg are the heroes we need to save democracy. Go figure.
> The point of free speech protections are to protect the stuff you don't like
no, its to protect speech you don't like, not "stuff", or it could be abstracted to any number of maxims.
a private business cannot censor its own expressions, only those of others. The issue of censorship only cones up wrt publishing platforms discrimination on who they serve.
Has it not occurred to you that, maybe, we should judge people for their actions? Rather than deciding upon an immutable set of Good People and Bad People, we should judge good and bad deeds?
You can do the right thing every now and then while still being evil. It’s been obvious for a long time how stuffed with lies, hate and abuse the President’s social media account have been.
Since the election results became apparent cable outlets have begun cutting away from the President’s speeches and tech companies have begun censoring the President’s speech.
Absolutely nothing has changed in the President’s speech or behavior since his 1st speech announcing his candidacy 5 years ago.
We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech and disinformation regardless of the consequences. Instead we got media leadership with their thumbs to the wind ignoring their platform policies and hiding behind a “public interest” rationale.
It’s literally what he has sworn to defend at the inauguration.
Instead we got this tweet “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," he tweeted. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
He has sworn duty to not incite the crowd, no matter how much he thinks he has lost. That’s what the courts are for (which he tried and lost) and even many,many recounts (which didn’t move the needle noticeably) and that is what the democratic process is for.
I'd argue that there's actually no difference in his behavior. Trump has been consistently divisive, untruthful and inflammatory since day one. What has happened is that his sustained behavior has radicalized a significant fraction of the population to the point that they are convinced that everyone else is lying to them and there's a massive conspiracy against their god-leader. I don't want to run afoul of Godwin's Law here, but if you ever wonder how people ended up following leaders like Stalin, Franco or Mussolini - it was a process of years. People who called this out as dangerous from day one were ridiculed as alarmists or partisans.
The argument being made, regardless of whether it's true or not, is that at best it's an unfair coin that favors one party over another. Using that coin, the party has taken two branches of government and allegedly will stack the third in its favor and has no check to prevent it from doing so. With all three branches there is little to no possibility of the unfair coin being investigated.
I find it somewhat disappointing that the more compelling allegations were not tested in court. At least there would be public documentation of the argument and reasoned verdict.
I don’t have a list, but historically SCOTUS has ruled that legislatures are responsible for election laws and those cannot be changed by the whim of the state executive branch. Minimally Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (and possible Michigan and Georgia) sent out, received, and counted ballots that were outside the bounds of their respective election laws. Pennsylvania was especially egregious in that they were told to separate ballots received after the cutoff defined by law in case there was a challenge (which there was); they did not, making it impossible to separate late ballots from on time ballots. Some counties in Pennsylvania also contacted voters to cure ballots before Election Day; (again) my understanding of the law is that mailed ballots could not be opened until the polls opened on Election Day so there would have been no way to identify ballots that needed to be cured. This was inconsistent across counties.
Wisconsin’s screw up had to do with who was eligible to receive a mail in ballot. There was a ruling that confirmed that ballots were sent to people ineligible for mail in voting, but that they would have to be argued individually. IIRC there were 200k mail in ballots provided and now separated from the voter. Even if you could identify all ineligible voters, there would be no way to identify their ballots.
I do[0]. And if you review the court records (summarized in the link below), you'll find that the courts (including the Supreme Court) found no merit in the allegations you're repeating.
Is it possible that ~80 judges of all political stripes, in the court systems of six different states as well as the federal courts are all in cahoots with the Democratic Party to steal elections?
Sure, I suppose it's possible. But unlikely in the extreme.
To put a fine point on that: The "issues" you're describing have been litigated, several of them repeatedly, and the claims have been found to be largely without merit.
As such, folks who are claiming this stuff is true are either misinformed or lying.
But don't believe me. Check it out for yourself.
Pretty much all the claims, counterclaims, legal arguments and court rulings are public records. As I mentioned, many of those are detailed (with citations/links) in the link below.
> the matter is now moot, as it is impossible to issue the requested relief.
> do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvania voters
> such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters
> That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised.
> tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised
My impression is that’s the crux of many of the decisions.
⅘ of the states would have needed to flip, so as legal avenues close in states the ROI on pursuing other cases begins to turn negative quickly.
Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that any of the arguments are valid or not, just that they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
Right. And instead of just cherry-picking a sentence here or there from the rulings, compare the "requested remedy" and harms alleged in the claims with the potential impact.
Or you can just have other folks spoon-feed you what you want to hear.
If not, and you do the work, I expect that you'll find that these folks are requesting that the courts throw out hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes based on speculation, issues which could and should (and in some cases, were) have been addressed before the election[0], issues which affect orders of magnitude fewer votes than would be affected or change the result of the election, claims of malfeasance that aren't actually malfeasance and a variety of other mostly spurious claims.
The truth is that while there are always irregularities and even fraud[1] in every election, it wasn't enough to change the outcome in any of the relevant states.
[0] Laches isn't just "too late, you lose!", it's that voters relied on the rules in place and if you change the rules after the fact, you disadvantage/disenfranchise voters who did exactly what the rules required. A good example of this was Kelly v. Pennsylvania. The claim was that PA Act 77 was unconstitutional. Except it was passed in October, 2019. Was this case brought immediately? No. Was it brought before the 2020 primary in Pennsylvania? No. Was it brought before the general election? Nope. The lawsuit was filed after two elections. Millions of voters relied upon Act 77 as the law of Pennsylvania. Should all those folks be disenfranchised after the fact?
Note that the above database has found ~1300 cases of fraud all across the US since 1982. Even if the real numbers were ten times what was found, and all of those were in one state and one election, it might make a difference, but it's all 50 states over almost 40 years.
> I’m agreeing with you while referencing my earlier post.
Gotcha. I was mostly responding to this bit:
>they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
I'd only add (and I should have in my previous reply, mea culpa) that given the known time constraints that any post-election lawsuit carries, election lawyers and campaigns are used to acting quickly.
What's more, in all 3,193 elections (one in each US county) every election day, there are polling/canvassing observers for all candidates on each ballot present.
And almost all states have either paper ballots or voter-verified paper audit trails[0], creating a physical record of each vote.
And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
In order to commit fraud at any scale would require the complicity of thousands of people. And while a bit hyperbolic, as Ben Franklin is purported to have said, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Thousands of people? Not so much.
>What's more, in all 3,193 elections (one in each US county) every election day, there are polling/canvassing observers for all candidates on each ballot present.
>And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
It's too late for me to edit the above, but the number above should be 3,143 not 3,193.
> Even if the US election often seems like a coin flip, the fact that it only lasts 4 or 8 years means that a wrong flip doesn't matter so much.
Except on those occasions when the President, Senate Majority, and House majority are all the same party. (That gives them two years before the House might flip.) In today's we're right and they're wrong -- which is how each side sees it -- one-party rule could get interesting.
What people seem to keep forgetting is that only one Presidential candidate has ever gotten more votes than Trump got in this last election and that was Joe Biden. Both the far right and far left wings need to be reigned in.
>What people seem to keep forgetting is that only one Presidential candidate has ever gotten more votes than Trump got in this last election and that was Joe Biden. Both the far right and far left wings need to be reigned in.
I'd point out that here in the US, the Republican Party is a far-right party, and the Democratic Party is a center-right party.
There is no "far-left" party that has any influence in the US.
> We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech
You mean like 'no justice no peace' or just speech that doesn't align with your political ideology? (To be clear, I'm all in favor of defunding police and the government at large)
How do you feel about certain protestors being called terrorists?
People openly call for violence every day. People vote for it, it's what they want. Just look at the wars in the Middle East. Entire nations are calling for that violence.
Right now, society has the belief that violence by the state against people is sometimes justified, but never the reverse. Unless it's against a 'bad' state, then it's okay. Then they're freedom fighters.
It seems more interesting that a software platform like this would be expected to treat a president of a country different than a normal person. Should the queen of England get even more privileges to break rules on the platform? And the peerage somewhere below that (but still much higher than the common folk)?
And what rules exactly did Trump break? He explicitly did not call for violence.
It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative. That's precisely antithetical to free-speech ideals.
Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated? I don't go crying to Facebook to censor opinions I don't like.
Insults are not actual call to immediate violence.
Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.
Man, I am sympathetic to the free speech argument and I agree that the right has been getting shafted in that department, but this does seem pretty close to the "don't yell fire in a crowded theater" exception. This was not a protest in the democratic sense. It is a shameful day for the country.
This is way beyond "don't yell fire in a crowded theater," which was an action considered to be outside the protection of free speech because it presented a "clear and present danger." That standard was later restricted further, and is now "imminent lawless action." The President's actions appear to blow right past "clear and present danger" and explicitly call for "imminent lawless action."
That was not a protest. It was a planned and coordinated terrorist mob attack on the US Capitol, and successfully breached it. The first such successful attack since 1814.
Trump and allies have been communicating the date and requesting this behavior for weeks. Anybody surprised at the result should be deemed mentally incompetent.
> Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.
"Kill them", "Attack them", "Burn down that building" is a very precise call to violence. "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.
#KillAllMen on the other hand is a very precise call to violence, and yet nobody cares about banning that on social media.
> "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.
It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks. Some of his supporters had been saying for weeks now that they were "standing by" and ready to do "what had to be done" when Trump would call to them. His speech yesterday was predicably heard as the call.
I don't believe for 1 second that he didn't intended for his words to be interpreted that way.
And for the record, #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.
> #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.
Thank you.
> It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks
If something is "very precise" in context, then it is not precise. If we have to interpret words, then we have multiple interpretations and everybody can have their own truth. You can't say something is "a very precise call to violence" because of some people may interpret it their way.
Either he’s serious and just deluded, or he’s acting in bad faith. In both cases you just shake your head and move on because no minds will be changed.
It's a good thing our court system in the US doesn't play these games with semantics and instead tries to understand intent. You can use however many layers of coded language you want, but your intent still exists.
This goes the other way too, with obviously satirical hashtags.
Yeah, what could go wrong with courts analyzing for subtext and divining intent of free speech to see if secret crimes were being committed? I continue to be stunned by how utterly naive and blasé people are about freedom of expression.
My point is that I’m astounded by the non-stop hypocrisy of people who are desperate to censor speech... and the fact that they’re so nakedly biased means that we should not allow them to censor political speech.
There were deadly riots over the summer with billions of dollars in damage. Numerous federal buildings were attacked while the media and politicians spurred them on or gave them cover as “peaceful protestors”. A church across from the White House was burned down and the only reason they didn’t invade the White House is almost certainly because the security was more competent, not because the rioters wouldn’t have done it.
Today we had protestors and mild rioting (broken windows and doors, but no fires, no major damage) and the same media which called the summer riots “peaceful” somehow decided that people taking selfies in Nancy Pelosi’s office were “violent insurrectionists” and that Trump needed to be banned from communicating.
I'm not familiar with #KillAllMen, but it sounds rhetorical, and even if it's not, it doesn't appear to meet the US standard of "imminent lawless action." Speech can only be limited if the speaker intends for it to incite violence, and that the violence is both imminent and likely. You can literally intend to incite violence at some unspecified future time and that speech is protected. You can also just tweet out incitement for violence at a specific time and it's probably protected if you're a random person with no following or influence that is likely to cause the violence to actually happen.
Strength does not mean violence in this case. >99% of the gathering was peaceful. What if we applied the same standards we applied to the Black Lives Matter protests which also included elements of rioting, looting, arson, & even murder, yet were heralded as "mostly peaceful" (by the same people)?
I'm sorry but this is silly (and I'm a "Trump supporter").
> He explicitly did not call for violence.
Effective communication need not be specific. Surely you possess this knowledge, but might it have been in "cold storage" at the time you wrote this comment?
> It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative.
Reality is often not as it seems. Often it is even the exact opposite of how it seems.
> Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated?
"Truthy", but orthogonal. Two wrongs don't make a right (or so "they" say).
Right before he was banned from Twitter, didn't several of his tweets specifically and emphatically urge protesters to avoid violence and respect the police presence?
The fact that very little of his term is left and that everyone, including his former allies, are abandoning him, make the story less surprising in retrospect.
While I don't agree with twitter policies as of the last few months, I don't think that somebody should get a different treatment based on the status/job/role they have in society.
It's a turning point. For the 1st time ever the tech giants asserted that their power in the internet is bigger then the government. It was kinda obvious the last few years, but remained implicit. Today the implicit became explicit. I'm sure it will have a profound impact on American democracy in the long run. Interesting times, indeed.
This is a textbook example of reining someone in for yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater when no fire exists, and inciting imminent harm against others.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ more folks are familiar with my first analogy as it relates to the topic of free speech and imminent lawless acts. Call it laziness, it gets the point across instead of folks giving you blank stares about case law (and I’m happy to cite as I did above when necessary).
> more folks are familiar with my first analogy as it relates to the topic of free speech and imminent lawless acts.
Your first example doesn't relate to imminent lawless acts at all, that's the problem.
While panicked flight is dangerous (hence, its use to illustrate the “clear and present danger” test in Schenk, that has since been replaced), it is not (unlike, e.g., armed insurrection) lawless.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Trump - and his supporters - are the "they". They are the monsters here. They are the ones invading capitols. They are the ones emboldening white supremacists, racists and fascists. They are the one demanding to overturn the legitimate outcome of a democratic election.
It's an insult to the millions and millions who died during WWII to corrupt the message behind this famous poem/statement and insinuate that Trump and his supporters are the victims here. They are not the victims. They are the problem. And they need to be crushed.
I'm pretty sure people in Germany though they were stopping the fascists by supporting the Nazis. You have no idea who the "they" is until it's too late.
That's why the freedom of speech covers everybody. In America, we are not afraid of ideas. My dad survived a civil war, got his degree and immigrated here legally to be a part of that America. It's the America I grew up in, and that America is slowly falling from the grips of rationality and embracing real true fascism.
You think Trump was fascist? Just wait for the next four years. You are about to see freedoms and civil rights disappear like never before.
I’m not going to argue history with you beyond this comment, but I seriously, seriously doubt any serious historians would agree that Germans “thought they’d be defeating fascists” by supporting the Nazis - who were, you know, actual fascists.
Jesus that's insane. No, no they are not. Do you not see the danger we're about to enter into? You're saying 70 million people are "de factor fascists" .. what the fuck does that even mean?!
Have you been out to a farm in Tennessee? Have you ever walked with a group of friends through the blue watering holes of Georgia? Have you broke bread and had dinner with them? I grew up in Tennessee. I will no condemn the views of 70 million people I do not know because the TV tells me they are "fascists," which is pretty much Orwellian DoubleSpeak and means absolutely nothing today.
You do not know these people. If you did, you would not say such things. You are trapped in a bubble where you are scared out of your mind, and that fear will help this republic fall and strip rights away from every human being in America and maybe even the world over the next four years.
Anyone who continues to excuse or support Trump after yesterday's events willfully supports sedition and treason. The Rubicon has been crossed, they no longer get to prevaricate about him being strong on China or jobs or immigration, or being the least worst possible option on the table.
If you're still willing to support Trump or excuse his actions, you're a fascist.
> If you're still willing to support Trump or excuse his actions, you're a fascist
If you think this way, you're deranged. This is how religion starts. This is how wars start. If a war started, the righteous would not prevail. They rarely do. Wars almost always lead to autocracies. America was a rare exception. I guess that time may be coming to an end soon.
The war has already started, and Trump supporters were the ones who declared it. It started when white nationalist militia members in collaboration with the President and his party launched an insurrection to disrupt the government's certification of electoral votes in a futile attempt to invalidate the election of Trump's successor and the will of the people, and install him into power instead.
And it's telling that you're blaming the people upset about that for any possible consequences rather than the Trump supporters who stormed the Capital with pipe bombs, guns, knives and zip-ties for taking hostages, believing in a fictitious conspiracy theory about a stolen election.
Neo-nazis looted the Capital while some asshole dressed like a buffalo took selfies with the police who let them in like guests, and i'm deranged?
> And it's telling that you're blaming the people upset about that for any possible consequences rather than the Trump supporters who stormed the Capital with pipe bombs, guns, knives and zip-ties for taking hostages, believing in a fictitious conspiracy theory about a stolen election
Pipe bombs were in the DNC/RNC headquarters and not done by this group.
They didn't have "guns, knifes and zip-ties" .. I think there were 4 charged with guns? None of them used them. The only person shot and killed was a Capitol Officer shooting blindly into a crowd, hitting a white unarmed woman, nearly hitting another Federal Officer. I wonder if he'll face charges. I wonder if that woman will get memorials in her honor. Did you know she was an Air Force veteran?
There are videos of the people in the capitol taking selfies with capitol police and walking around peacefully. Weird coup.
> Neo-nazis
I saw people who supported Tump. I didn't see any neo nazis. There was one man with a communist tattoo, and some fucking QAnon idiot with a racoon on his head who should go to federal prison.
If you really think this was some kind of insurrection, I feel sorry for you. It was nothing of the sort. It was pittance compared to the burning down of a fucking police station by BLM rioters.
"oh I'm so scared. The peasants in the village have made their way into the royal court and sat at our golden seats and found our candy desk!"
Anyone who broke or stole anything will face federal charges and will go away (and should). But classifying that entire group the way you have is disingenuous. Especially compared to the rioting and looting that's been endorsed and encourages as being good and righteous by the left wing media.
The media has told us setting things on fire by BLM is fine for months and now they're acting like 1/10th of that is the end of democracy.
> “But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
>Pipe bombs were in the DNC/RNC headquarters and not done by this group.
Unless you want to claim it's sheer coincidence, I'm pretty sure those were planted by extremist Trump supporters with the same goals as the group that broke into the Capital. That they were not literally planted by any of those specific people isn't really relevant to the greater point.
Of course, you know that, you're just being pedantic.
>They didn't have "guns, knifes and zip-ties" .. I think there were 4 charged with guns? None of them used them.
So they didn't use them, but they did have them. I guess they just wore them to the insurrection for the cool factor?
And as far as the zip ties go, here's a photo of them[0]. Also Molotov cocktails, forgot to mention those.
>I saw people who supported Tump. I didn't see any neo nazis. There was one man with a communist tattoo, and some fucking QAnon idiot with a racoon on his head who should go to federal prison.
I'm willing to bet the guy parading the Confederate flag through the Capital[1], the guy with the Camp Auschwitz shirt[2] and the 6MWE shirt[3] (it stands for "Six Million (Jews) Weren't Enough", by the way) likely have some neo-nazi sympathies.
And just speaking generally, if you're not aware of the strong white supremacist/antisemitic contingent within the MAGA and QAnon communities, and Trump's populist movement in general, I have to assume you've been living under a rock for the last four years, that maybe you just don't know who the Proud Boys actually are, have never been on any social media where Trump supporters hang out, or something.
>If you really think this was some kind of insurrection, I feel sorry for you. It was nothing of the sort. It was pittance compared to the burning down of a fucking police station by BLM rioters.
Dismiss the right wing, implicate BLM as the greater threat.. if I had to take a shot every time someone did that on HN since yesterday, I would have been dead in two hours.
It was an insurrection. A piss-poor attempt at one, but that's still what it was. The Gunpowder Plot was a failure as well, but no one says Guy Fawkes and his cohort weren't trying to blow up Parliament just because they didn't succeed. Nobody says Richard Reid wasn't a terrorist because he didn't actually manage to set off his shoe bombs.
>"oh I'm so scared. The peasants in the village have made their way into the royal court and sat at our golden seats and found our candy desk!"
I don't even know what this is supposed to be, but it makes you seem infantile.
>Anyone who broke or stole anything will face federal charges and will go away (and should). But classifying that entire group the way you have is disingenuous. Especially compared to the rioting and looting that's been endorsed and encourages as being good and righteous by the left wing media.
BLM again....
>The media has told us setting things on fire by BLM is fine for months and now they're acting like 1/10th of that is the end of democracy.
BLM again, and the media. That's a double shot.
>“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
And wow. You actually have the gall to invoke MLK in defense of a political ideology which has been primarily fueled by xenophobia, racism and intolerance, to use the voice of the oppressed to champion the oppressor?
That degree of callous evil is actually impressive. Slow clap for you.
Sure I do. I know exactly who these people are. Yes, there is a spectrum of Trump support among them, and it's entirely your choice to try to weasel around the point here all you want, but at the end of the day, these people have willing supported (and many are continuing to support) a would-be nationalist, fascist dictator.
There's simply no excuse for that, and I personally will not simply forgive and forget.
"There are a lot of them, they can't all be wrong and evil" is a dumb line of reasoning. The majority of Americans used to support slavery and the majority of Germany used to support Hitler.
And were all of those people evil, terrible people? Seriously?
You need to go back and look at the Stanley Milgram experiments. It's impossible to really know if you or I would murder the person in the other room if the person in authority told us to, but I suspect you probably would.
> I'm pretty sure people in Germany though they were stopping the fascists by supporting the Nazis.
You'd be pretty wrong. At best they thought Hitler would soften greatly after he rose to power, at worst they agreed with everything he said and did.
In '33 German non-Jewish shops started putting up "German Free" stickers. Einstein fled the country in that same year. His photo was widely published in newspapers with "not yet hanged" as the sub-heading. His friend, Theodor Lassing, was shot and killed, an act that was celebrated in Germany.
Hitler had been imprisoned for his actions before his rise to power, and was a largely known entity before the Germans "turned to him". There wasn't a lot of confusion about what he thought, who he hated, or what he wanted to do with them. Mein Kampf was released in 2 parts across 1925 and 1926.
An actual criticism about the time just before Hitler's rise to power, is that every other powerful party took him for a joke. They didn't expect him to be a viable rival. So instead, the Communist party (one of the major parties at the time) spend their squabbling with the Socialdemocrats instead of focusing their attention on the "real enemy".
If you're actually interested in this topic, you should read the book "They thought they were Free". It chronicles how normal people fell to support the fascists - the Nazi party.
1,392 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadThe shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
His decision to use his platform to condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters at the Capitol building has rightly disturbed people in the US and around the world. We removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect -- and likely their intent -- would be to provoke further violence.
Following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.
I mean it reads like something a head of state might say.
Nonetheless, at least they are doing it.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
Facebook has become immensely powerful. It is controlled by Zuckerberg. It's a new domain so it's still unregulated but I'm sure that will eventually change as social media is becoming more and more of a public good or utility.
Sorry if this comes across as bitter. I’m very disappointed at how the large social networks’ have conducted themselves at this point to the point that for a large swathe of the US and the UK, the facts don’t matter any more.
Zuckerberg just knows now that Democrats will be in power so this is a safe move to appear like he hasn't been perfectly fine helping Trump increase the spread of his violent platform ("Facebook cannot be the arbiter of truth"). It was all about allowing "engagement" that helped Facebook's revenue.
Zuckerberg does not get to change the narrative now.
The first was in the context of talking about court cases that the judges will see. It was probably referencing 2A legal defense and litigator orgs like the NRA and GOA.
The second example capped off a paragraph about curfew measures to prevent daytime protests from being overtaken by nighttime looting. Therefore it could be an empirical statement about tragedies that tend to and have followed looting and is using that to justify his preventive measures. If he meant it normatively and wanted to shoot people he probably wouldn’t have pushed preventative measures.
The second example was a blatantly racist dog whistle[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_looting_starts,_the_s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who,_whom%3F
Criticism isn't censorship, criticism is free speech.
Nobody here is interested in Trump's lies. Nobody here is interested in hearing his lies being perpetuated. We are not interested and we are not a captivated audience.
An audience is free to view an opinion and disregard it. I'm not sure if that opinion should be hidden from others.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That will allow you to see all comments (unless creator deleted). As such, they're not really being censored, they're just hidden unless and until you decide you want to see them.
Also, using quotation marks to make it look like you're quoting someone when you're not is an internet flamewar trope that we try to avoid here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Anyone has seen the video and texts in question and can tell me?
EDIT: mass downvoting people, seriously? I didn't even defend Trump (or Biden), I asked a question, I am from Brazil and wanted to know what happened.
I think Biden and so on showed sympathy to BLM rioters as well. What is wrong with trying to understand people's needs and pains?
It's ridiculous how you people twist everything Trump says.
It also shows what your "opponents" can expect under your rule.
I bet you would put "Camp Auschwitz" guy into your own version of Camp Auschwitz in no time, and you wouldn't even feel bad about it.
You don't realize that Socialism is just as murderous, and that is what you people stand for.
> he used the words "you're special" and "[I] love you". It's not ambiguous or subject to debate
Trump did not select those specific people out for praise ("the people invading the Capitol in Camp Auschwitz t-shirts were special and he loves them" - philk10), which was the implication. philk10's comment is ambiguous, which then goes on a derail about what words were used.
"This" meaning the original point, was stated with an ambiguous point, as described.
> it’s disingenuous bordering on willful misunderstanding
I laid out the progression, but you are ignoring it with misplaced hubris. That's fine. Good luck with whatever.
This kind of thing is why you are the enemy and must be fought at all cost. And I don't mean to be put into camps. You can still be cared for, but you must not be given power over other people.
Now you won, enjoy your newfound Utopia. I'm glad I don't live in the US, although I fear this will have bad consequences for the rest of the world as well. RIP freedom.
Here is the video, in all its slurred shame.
"please respect the police"
and then
"you are completely right to be angry, it was stolen. i love you and you're special"
the first comment is def a calming attempt, followed by an immediate call to action.
But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time.
There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election.
But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."""
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25668841
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-07/how-donald-trump-rall...
I don't know if the Facebook posts were the same though.
> What exactly Trump said to spark this?
> an eventual reiteration that the elections were rigged, they should be furious, but now they should go home and that he loved them very much and were very special people
I believe during the same speech, he also criticized the Vice President for following his Constitutional obligations instead of (as the President would prefer) taking unilateral decisions to throw the vote to Trump instead.
[1] To be clear, the test in Brandenburg v Ohio is a test of whether or not the government can make the speech outright illegal to speak. This is necessarily a very high bar, and it is much higher in the US than most countries in the world. The bar for whether or not private individuals and organizations should feel compelled to disassociate from an individual is clearly lower. That one can seriously entertain that the President's speech is surpassing the high bar of outright illegal speech should indicate how reasonable it is for others to consider it beyond the pale.
please be peaceful, please respect our police, we had a beautiful landslide victory that was taken from us, it was stolen i know, but you have to go home now, you're special and we love you but you have to go home.
I'm specifically not using quotation marks because I'm recalling it from memory. I'm sure you can find a backup of it somewhere.
If you're asking about what sparked the actual attack, Trump specifically told a crowd at a nearby rally to march on the capitol before the event. He's also been saying the election was stolen for the past two months every time he's gotten in front of a microphone.
At some point Facebook is going to have to take a stand on which one it is. Indefinitely or for the next two weeks.
(More seriously, they'll wait until the dust has settled; they're hedging against the possibility of the peaceful transition of power not happening)
1. Indefinitely: The date range has no end.
2. And for at least two weeks: The beginning of the date range is at least two weeks away.
From this, I conclude that Mr. Trump's account will be muted for at least two weeks, and thereafter it could be un-muted at any time, but possibly the heat death of the universe may make the whole thing moot at some point.
It does not mean "permanently", though it's often used to imply that without saying it outright.
So in this case they're saying "anything from two weeks and up, with no decided end".
"we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts for at least the next two weeks, but potentially longer."
They are laying some of their cards bare here, but what I find funny is that if the president doesn't use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook as the dominant way to promote their message, they're not under the thumb of those platforms either.
Just like ordinary people aren't under the influence of social medias manipulation (intentional or not) if they just don't use the platform. We all willingly hand over that power to the platforms.
They are in a real sense permanently banning “President Trump”
[1] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...
If you're a multi-millionare choosing dollars over ethics, you are in the wrong. Plain, clear, and simple. And I hope every tech-leader who has profited from this dumpster fire is labeled in history as such.
All that being said: Until November of this year, he wasn't "just Donald Trump" - he was the PUSA. There's a very big difference between banning PUSA and banning DJT. Now if you want to argue they should've done this the day that the results were in back in late November - sure. But the previous 4 years? I'm not sure that was a path either company was willing to test and I can't entirely blame them.
Also: Trump serves them no value? Are you crazy? The viewers haven't gone down, and won't go down in any significant manner. For all the bluster from right-wingers of "we're making our own social network" - they all still somehow seem to be participating on both platforms.
edit: looks like at least one person was inside the capitol with a firearm and four others were arrested in DC for open carrying firearms.
What I heard all summer was anything is a weapon, but this guy has a gun and ties.
https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/protesters-enter-the-se...
I was right there with you all summer claiming a group throwing water bottles at police wasn't armed and shouldn't be beaten and shot with rubber bullets.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/07/ashli-babbit...
The molotovs is a tidbit I didn't know about thankfully no one actually used them.
If you knew this then why did you ask about whether it was an "armed mob" in the first place?
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1346977323086729218
They did not. There was video of protestors both moving the ropes, and there is video of protestors on the opposite sides of the ropes. Both at least in NBC's coverage. (Unfortunately, they've made their coverage private on YouTube, so I lack a link presently.)
(Sibling comments cover the "armed" aspect well enough.)
https://www.uscp.gov/visiting-capitol-hill/regulations-prohi...
The gallery list includes: Firearms to include replica guns and ammunition. Weapons, to include, but not limited to, Black jack, sling shot, sand club, sandbag, knuckles, electric stun guns, knives of any size including razors and box cutters, martial arts weapons or devices. Explosives and explosive devices to include, but not limited to, Molotov Cocktails, components of a destructive device, and fireworks. Mace and pepper spray. Aerosol containers. Non-Aerosol spray except for prescribed medical needs. Battery operated electronic devices to include cellular telephones, electronic keys, cameras, video recorders or any type of recording devices. Electronic medical devices are permitted. Cans, bottles, food, and food containers, including all liquids. Creams, lotions, and perfume. Strollers. Briefcases, backpacks, and suitcases of any size
It’s hard not to see the bending-over-backwards academic justifications for why we shouldn’t be suppressing riots last year as anything other than the pretext and lead up to what’s happening now.
I’m not calling legitimate protesting riots - rather the media was fully complicit with ignoring blatant rioting last year. Buildings were burning and government buildings were being swarmed and destroyed.
Riots needs to be suppressed with law and order - full stop. Unfortunately many seem 6 months late to this concept.
By that logic, BLM led to the destruction of cities and neighborhoods across the country for months on end.
This isn't whataboutism, it's a call to suppress riots and call the activists and their sympathizers from last year to account for their bias.
BLM is a response to (repeated) racist murders from the state and general systemic discriminations. Yesterday's riots were a response to losing a democratic election.
It's hard not to see why one is legitimate and the other isn't.
Do you think rioting occurred last year?
What I'm saying is that insofar as government is concerned and law and order - rioting is never justified and must be met with police force.
Actually, some governments are so oppressive that sometimes rioting is all the citizens have left. Isn't it what the second amendment is for anyway?
I'd even support yesterday's "revolution" if it was justified and the election was actually stolen. But falsely calling an election stolen is dangerous. It's the equivalent of a false rape accusation at a country scale.
And oppressive governments do meet riots with police force. Sometimes they straight up kill the people, yet they keep on rioting because it's the only way they can defend their rights.
People powerless while they watch everything they worked for literally go up in flames at the hands of criminals. There's no justification for that, and it's a far cry from "justice."
Disrupting law and order - by definition - turns you into a criminal.
I'm not defending any side of the political spectrum, so it's interesting to see how people interpret this argument.
Manifesting for social change never justifies the type of chaos we saw last year, and if you think otherwise, don't complain about what happened to Congress.
That's only accurate if both the law and the ones who enforce it are reasonable and fair.
People feeling powerless is what fuels riots to begin with. I don't condone the looting and destruction, especially when it hits bystanders. But it didn't start that way. The movement against racism did go through peaceful actions to make itself heard. Their demands were pushed back and the discriminations continued so they had to escalate.
They were cornered into that position.
The protesters who invaded the Capitol were not discriminated against. They just lost an election. No one would've died if they protested peacefully.
You can't equate these protests, just like you can't equate self-defense and murder. The context is important.
What would you do if you were oppressed by your government? Some governments even make protesting illegal and rig the elections (if they're even having elections at all).
Desperate times call for desperate measures, unfortunately.
You’ve admitted to justifying and even supporting riots on the “left.” And that sets the stage for rioting on the “right.”
Political violence begets political violence and you’re (knowingly or not) supporting the dissolution of civil society.
> Let’s consider that your perception is fallible and possibly wrong. And hypothetically assume your concept of “the oppressed” is off to some degree.
Obviously I'm not always right. But neither is the rest of the world. Neither is the government. But then what? Should we just let everyone be?
It's a moral dilemma for sure, and I don't think there's a foolproof way around it. Similarly, you want to allow people to kill in case of self-defense but don't want to allow murder. Or censoring Nazi speech while keeping as much freedom of expression as possible.
You can't say all killings are bad (or good), and you can't say all speech is good (or bad). There's a moral judgement to be made there.
I'm not saying rioting is without risks or consequences. I'm just saying they tend to happen when people run out of alternatives. Then they're justified, and only if the cause is good.
We are all still tribal, barely evolved monkeys, and our manifold cerebral cortex is merely a tool to invent rationalizations for the tribal emotions that well up from our limbic system.
This is, of course, on both sides.
On HN, the effect is even more pronounced, because "I am smart, therefore my opinions are more valid than average" coincides with "I have concocted this justification for my hypocrisy" to grant even greater surety in personal belief.
The LessWrong folks worked pretty hard to inform people of these sort of biases, but the effort thus far has completely failed.
This was a coup attempt.
Ignoring? They practically endorsed it as a totally reasonable means of change! The fact that the Trump supporters didn't Riot and very few of them entered the Capitol goes to show the vast majority of those Republicans do believe in law in order!
If the situation was reversed, had Trump won and Biden was challenging the election, you can be assured DC would be completely on fire like it was back in May. The Capital Building would be burning right now.
You could only imagine the pearl-clutching if someone made the same image with Biden.
This is a slippery slope and, quite frankly, it’s the people that lose.
Change this to
> publicizes the ones expected to make FB the most money
and I agree with you. Either way, they should not be an arbiter of public discourse.
They can be, but they should lose their platform status and be treated as a publisher, ie. take full responsibility for content on their pages. You can't have both.
I'm sorry. Would you expand on that? I don't understand what you're advocating. Perhaps this[0] might help you to formulate your response?
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
Currently we have social networks like facebook deciding that one type of -ism is worse than the other tipe of -ism, and letting one stay while removing the other [0]. If you expand this to politics, you can get greater consequences than just a few people being recist (but since it's against whites and men, it's "ok" in the eyes of facebook).
So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
[0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/12/03/facebook-ranks...
It's a section of a law. Specifically, Section 230[0] of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
>You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
That's an interesting idea. But it's somewhat problematic for several reasons:
47 U.S. Code § 230 (the section of the law in question) applies to all persons/entities in the United States, and to all third-party communications hosted within the United States. How, exactly, would you implement such a rule?
If I decide to set up a github repo, who and how do I inform that I intend to be a "platform" or a "publisher"?
If I'm a member of a mailing list, quote someone else's words and send it to that mailing list, how do I "register" as a platform or a publisher? This isn't an idle question either. This was an actual case[1] that hinged on one particular email to a particular mailing list.
I host several services via my home Internet connection. If I choose (which I have done in the past) to host a Diaspora[2] pod and invite a few friends and family to join, and maybe even federate with other Diaspora pods, how and to whom do I register as a "publisher" or "platform"?
If I "register" as a platform and I have an argument with my sister in-law, and she says some really vulgar/unkind things on my pod. If I remove those comments, am I now in breach of my "registration" as a platform?
>So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
I don't dispute your claim that Facebook/Twitter exert a great deal of influence.
However, Section 230 is not what you seem to think it is. It isn't about censorship, nor is it about freedom of speech.
It is a very specific section of a law that says (paraphrasing):
"I can't sue you for what someone else says." Full stop.
That's it. It's not limited to social networking sites. It's not limited to large corporations. It's not limited to websites (both commercial and non-commercial). It applies everywhere there is third-party content. On a Github repo (think bug reports/feature requests), email mailing lists, IRC channels and any other place where more than one person can share bits.
I'm going to say it again to make sure that it's clear why I say that. Section 230 (c)(1)(this is a direct quote now) says:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
I will now translate that into non-legalese:
"You cannot be sued because of something I (or anyone else) say."
That doesn't mean that you can't be sued for stuff that you say.
Let's say that we take your suggestion and remove Section 230 protections from "publishers" (whatever that is defined to mean). That won't stop people from posting obnoxious/unpleasant/hateful things.
Rather, it will mostly just stop people from maintaining/setting up other sites (like HN) where people can share their thoughts. If HN can be sued for stuff that you or I say (upvote/downvote/flag moderation like we have here would almost certainly force HN to be ...
AND he has gotten a pass, for years, that regular people don't get.
When did Trump? Can you give examples?
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris: https://youtu.be/5XxLR2r5oPg
Pelosi: https://www.youtube.com/embed/3fsG5tyxRjw?rel=0 [1]
Rep Maxine Waters; https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-dr...
Rep Ayanna Pressly; https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/aug/17/ayanna-pres...
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-in-cages-20... // https://www.logically.ai/factchecks/library/aca6ab76
I think the partisanship is what's really driving people like this. The Trump/Russia stuff was investigated, why not investigate election fraud too?
What do you think they've been doing in the courts for the past month?
Trumps own Justice department wouldn't even pursue it.
- The Trump/Russia situation resulted in the senate agreeing that Russia did collude with members of the Trump campaign in support of Trump. [1]
- Investigations into the voter fraud and election tampering allegations in favor of Biden have resulted in 61 failed lawsuits in state courts on the basis of "no evidence." [2]
- The supreme court has rejected every lawsuit brought to it on the basis of "no evidence." [3]
While the Russia investigation lead to the arrest of nearly every 2016 Trump campaign manager, the allegations of voter fraud across 10 states has led to nothing that could overturn the election.
[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/20...
[3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p86...
That’s not actually true. While some may have been dismissed based on insufficiency of presented or proffered evidence to support the legal claim, most were either voluntarily dismissed or dismissed for legal threshold issues (failure to state a claim, lack of standing, unreasonable delay in filing [laches]) which come before considering evidence.
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing .
Now the people have lost faith in the courts.
The complete lack of evidence and lack of anything but witness testimony was the first stage - as soon as any witness was interviewed it became immediately clear that there was in fact, no evidence at all.
Repeating this "things were dismissed out of hand" meme is true only in the sense that if a man came into court and said he was king of america he would also be given very little space to waste the courts time.
Since this is probably going to get flagged, like my previous post. This is what was entered into the record, during the objections yesterday in the joint session of congress. I stayed up watching it. So I'm not making this up.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pennsylvania-205000-votes/
“a few counties have not completed uploading their vote histories,”
And the other explanation is a hypothetical explanation of over or under votes. No proof that this was actually the case here.
How is the statement from the Pennsylvania Department of State admitting that Rep. Ryan's claim is correct?
The problem is that there's an implicit assumption in Rep. Ryan's claim that the SURE numbers are complete and represent the actual number of voters who actually voted. If a few counties have not completed uploading their vote histories, then that implicit assumption is invalidated, thereby invalidating the rest of the claim.
> And the other explanation is a hypothetical explanation of over or under votes. No proof that this was actually the case here.
The burden of proof is on Rep. Ryan to show that the over- and under-voting in 2020 is nefarious/fraudulent/malicious. Merely saying that over- and under-voting exists is not sufficient to show something is wrong; one also needs to show that such a thing does not happen in "clean" elections. Pennsylvania is merely pointing out the gap in the analysis here.
Edit: Added missing word
Why wouldn't you expect the count of votes entered into a system to be off before everything is entered into the system? Of course it's off.
Hell, why not just launch this claim on Nov 10 and say that the count is off by millions of votes? It's a braindead argument.
Although I have a feeling you'd rather wave your hand and say "Aah, Snopes, what do they know, and it's not concrete enough!".
The problem with the "1000's of people with sworn affidavits of violations" is, it seems their understanding what a violation is, are based on misinterpreting (deliberately or not) and wishful thinking. I've seen the videos of people commenting "Look at this security camera footage, they're taking boxes, and those boxes have fake ballots!", without even showing how he came to those conclusions. I could just as easily show a footage of a man walking into a building and claim it's a building where voting machines are stored and he's a hacker with a USB stick that will hack all the machines. I hope all the affidavits were looked at carefully before being dismissed, but it seems like the courts would have work until the sun burns out if it wants to look at every theory.
Just not true. In fact, there were nearly 7 million votes cast. The total number of registered voters in 2020 was just over 9 million[0].
[0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9887147...
Not sure why the number of affidavits is so important, and how many of these affidavits were from that form people were filling out a form on a website?
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing.
Assuming that "spikes" in a graph are proof of anything wrong at all, if the answer is "That's where a bunch of votes were added to the count." then what is the followup from there that necessitates a hearing of any kind?
If would be more like dismissing UFO evidence from 1000 sworn affidavits from people that work at the Pentagon.
I'd imagine more than 1000 of them believe the earth is flat and/or was created 10,000 years ago.
And don't take my word for it either. Look at the court documents yourself, then make up your own mind.
https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
The “laches” dismissals were not of fraud claims (frankly, neither were the rest, as the campaign either did not include or voluntarily withdrew fraud claims fairly consistently: fraud is something they liked talking about in forums that couldn’t adjudicate claims, but avoided in ones that could; but this is more stark with the laches dismissals.) Every single laches dismissal was of a claim not of fraud, but of changes to election procedures by state executive or local officials that were alleged to be not properly authorized by the state legislature, and the laches dismissals were because the changes at issue were well-known with plenty of opportunity to file challenges before the election when the remedy, were the procedures improper, could have included reversion of procedures, but the claims were, without good cause, delayed until after the election, preventing any remedy which would not have unreasonably adversely impacted the rights of third parties, specifically, the voters who voted in the election held with the challenged procedures.
Trump directed a mob yesterday to storm our Capitol and it sounds like you're being sarcastic about him threatening our democracy. What does he need to do? Burn it down and hang the Vice President for not exceeding his ceremonial powers like his mob chanted?
The claims of the election should be dismissed by rational people, which is exactly what happened in legislatures and courts across the country led by people of every political position except those that want to tear down our democracy for a demagogue and lie to their constituents about reality.
If that's the position you support, then you have quite a lot of work ahead of you.
I'm sure that many folks on both sides believed what they were told. However, one group was told something approximating the truth and the other were told bald-faced lies.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
Edit: Furthermore, would suspensions and bans ALSO apply to anarchists and revolutionaries? We know the answer is 'no'. It's clear to me Facebook wanted to drop Trump for a long time and did not do so for fear of repercussions. Now that there will be a new administration it is safe for them to do it.
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
How is this different from saying "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is not a quote you should use if you are opposed to the government granting special benefits and privileges to blacks in preference to whites, because that was an idea that Martin Luther King supported?
Can an idea have any value independently of the cause someone once used it to support?
I'm thinking, but all I can see is an apparently sincere effort to make the argument that Hitler Ate Sugar ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitlerAteSugar ).
So tell me: what does that mean?
And so if I walk into a bank and demand money, but I don't get any, it's not a bank robbery?
That's an interesting legal angle.
What happened was a failure of adequate planning and execution by the police to control an unruly crowd.
In case anyone was confused about the above (I was), I web searched 'Dirlewanger' and came up with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger
Is this considered Doxxing?
My apologies. It was an (apparently ham-fisted) attempt at humor.
Also, I wasn't referring to your comment when I said that, I was referring to mine.
My apologies for any confusion on that point.
Edit: Clarified my intentions WRT my previous comment.
Why not use more "every day" examples?
* I can't say I earned $0 last year --> tax fraud
* I can't say "fuck you" to a judge --> contempt of court
* I can't say my software will make you pretty --> advertising fraud
* I can't say you robbed me yesterday --> libel
I know this is a very European attitude, and always gets Americans worked up, but to me as a Dutch / French person, it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute. Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
> it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute
We agree on this, but disagree on where to draw the line. Limiting free speech is an endorsement of the government limiting what I am legally permitted to see, read, and hear. I am unwilling to let the government make that determination on my behalf.
> Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
Private citizens (presumably including the founding fathers) actually used to own canons before the creation of a permanent, federal army!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY
As an American, I know that even in the US, free speech is not absolute, nor has it ever been.
And all the things you mention are, in context, crimes here in the US as well.
One of the big differences in the US (not sure about France/The Netherlands), but in the UK it's much easier to prove libel/defamation than it is here.
I actually could say you robbed me yesterday, but if I didn't file a police report alleging that, it would be difficult for you to successfully sue me over it. Because you would have to prove that I knowingly did so and not only intended to cause injury, I actually did cause injury.
However, if I filed a false police report, I could be prosecuted for that -- and if you suffered some injury because I did (arrest/imprisonment, loss of job, etc.), you could likely win a libel/defamation lawsuit.
If there are people who tell you otherwise, they're either ignorant/uninformed or just lying.
The worst Trump did here was say that people should march on Capitol Hill and "cheer on" congresspeople.
I guess people are assuming this was coded language to incite violence, but I'm not buying it
I would hope that if a left-leaning politician did the same that the same precedent would be applied.
Do you have those words? I never saw them because they were censored apparently.
Edit: lol HN, actually asking, chill out. Apparently asking for sources is just unacceptable. Here it is in text because I think they truth is important that n it’s entirety:
""I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."""
FB et al. do not care, as long as they make money and gain important friends.
Another example, Spike Lee tried to dox Zimmerman on Twitter, but ended up posting the address of some entirely unrelated couple who received death threats. Again, nothing happened.
Is it someone's right to use a platform to push an agenda that leads to impacting other people's rights?
Seriously?
I don't know what you mean by that.
Don't get me wrong, in my opinion Trump is a traitor to the USA and democratic societies as a whole, and did incite a portion of his followers to overthrow the elected government and parliament in an attempt to nullify the democratic election results and install himself as an tyrannic leader (and only backed down and told people to "go home" when he saw this would not succeed in an attempt to cover his ass"), and he should be impeached and convicted and removed from office and receive a jail sentence.
But I shouldn't have the power to be judge, jury and executioner all by myself and put people in jail or even regulate their freedom of speech, and neither should facebook or Zuckerberg or twitter, or Trump for that matter. There is a rule of law and democratically legitimized institutions to enforce it, protected by a system of checks and balances, and it's the place of these institutions to make such decisions in accordance with the law.
This time a lot of people will think the ban hit the right person in Trump. But next time it might be somebody less clearly (to us) deserving of such a ban (like a "traitor" Snowden or a "commie" Sanders). What, for example, if social media had been around in the Jim Crow era and the "rulers" of social media had decided that the civil rights movement was to be silenced? Or that "traditional marriage" is an institution that needs protection from "gay marriage"?
I don't like so few entities making such calls.
At the same time I recognize the issue of how to handle people's freedoms on a platform... when those freedoms advocate for violence or actions that restrict other people's real world freedoms
If I come to your house and rant about my favorite subject you shouldn't be able to silence me?
Should Trump (or anyone else) have the right to sully FB in defiance of its management wishes?
FB doesn't have a special responsibility, it's a for-profit business that has an obligation to it's shareholders.not society.
See, free speech works!
The gaping flaw in the "social norms" argument is that slavery, women as second class citizens, religious intolerance, etc. used to be a social norms as well, so in those eras one has to suspect the parent poster would be arguing in favor of those as well. It is basically a conservative viewpoint saying that what society believes to be moral at the present time will always be moral, so hearing it parroted by people claiming to be aligned with the left is just mind-bending.
For the record I am a (old-school) liberal.
Conversely, Mr Trump is now a free agent looking for a nest elsewhere. There is probably lots of closed door planning happening: "What do we do if he decides to use our platform for 2024?"
Does that mean in the future demonstrations and protests that could potentially end up in violence like that be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter? Or can we expect partisanship and see them bless other protests that turn to violence?
Note: I do not condone occupying public buildings like this. That’s unacceptable. But I think that should be applied evenly to all protests and wherever property is destroyed.
Invading the capitol building to stop the electoral count and intimidate congress into overturning the election results is not symbolic.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/408169-police-arrest-128...
This is genuinely new example of the hypocrisy of the left. I wonder how the apologists will contend with this.
You're comparing that with a mob of people who violently clashed with the police outside the Capitol, then stormed inside, broke windows, climbed the walls, sat inside offices with their feet up on desks, walked away with "souvenirs", and planted IEDs. The result of that? 13 arrests.
Can you please explain why your comparison is not disingenuous?
At worst, the Kavanaugh protestors committed trespass and pleaded to swing voters; whereas yesterday's mob broke property, assaulted police, looted, and had the intent to overturn the democratic process. While flying confederate and Trump flags and tearing down American flags.
"Demonstrators wore shirts that said "Believe Women" and "Be A Hero" in support of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, who have each accused Kavanaugh of separate incidents of sexual assault. Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegations."
How many offices did they trash? How many people died? How many injured? How many had pipes, clubs or guns? How many had molotov cocktails?
That'd be zero on all counts.
There are pictures of literal Nazis — like, literal literal — holding up nameplates broken off walls [1]. They broke into offices, left threatening messages [2], made it out safely and proudly showed off stolen items [3].
[1] https://twitter.com/beschlossdc/status/1346971421134741505
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-leave-threa...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ks29bj/the_man_shown_...
Did Twitter et al get all twisted in a bunch about it?
Five people are dead.
Dozens are injured, several severely.
A number of those taken into custody were found with molotov cocktails, police-style plastic restraints, pipes, clubs and firearms.
What do you think they were going to do with those molotov cocktails? Drink them?
Or the restraints?
Don't minimize what happened or compare it to other bad acts.
I don't know of any public official (except President Trump) who encouraged or condoned violence of any kind.
Facts matter.
Though the timing aligning with a new set of committee heads in the Senate is more than suspect. Zuck knows how easy it is for the government to break them up and he's trying to make amends for his original sin of not stopping Trump in 2016.
The argument that "this speech is too dangerous" can be made by anyone about just about anything. This isn't fire in a theater. It's political speech and disagreement. If you accept the outcome here, you or your children will one day regret it when their voices are the ones that are muffled.
From my understanding the video that got banned asked everyone to go home peacefully but then continued to claim election fraud?
edit: Leaving my comment intact as there are people who have replied. VBProgrammer pointed out that a portion of my statement is not true. This morning the DC police revealed two officers were hospitalized with injuries and one was described as having serious injuries while 12 others suffered other injuries.
Why is he banned then?
So not only he's encouraging criminal actions, but after these actions occurs he tells these criminals that he loves them. And yes, tells them to go home - great, but that's not a redeeming factor here.
So......is it still not clear why he's banned?
https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tall...
It's like people who start sentences with "no offense, but"
Facebook is in the right not to allow that spark when whole situation is a powder keg.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/d-c-mayor-issues-order-extending-...
Only 2 officers required hospitalization. For comparison, there were many hospitalizations every single night of the 90-ish day Antifa seige of the Oregon federal courthouse.
In Oregon, Antifa were blasting officers with fireworks, going after them with hammers, polearms, shields, etc. We didn't see that in DC either. Instead we find the police generally getting along with the overwhelming majority of protesters.
Even 9 guns is nothing worth mentioning statistically. If those people had been interested in causing serious harm, almost all of them could have shown up with AR-15s. Hundreds of thousands of people with AR-15s could easily overpower any troops that could have been sent into the area. The fact that we didn't see this once again plays against the media's claims of a coup attempt.
The video was the equivalent of watching a kid, who has been rightly verbally disciplined by a parent, and who has been told they must apologize to their sibling/friend/whatever, so that kid says "Ok ok I'm SORRY", but immediately starts to rationalize/explain away why they were still right.
> explicitly asked people to go home
The words were said, but the sentiment and subsequent message told the viewer the opposite. "Go home" ... "but you're loved/special and I understand you, wink wink". The equivalent of "SORRY" ... "(but I'm really not sorry...)".
Others have already reacted to the comment about "peaceful" behavior and injuries, and those comments reflect my thoughts, so I won't expand on them here.
At least one Capitol police officer is dead. Beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.
Many of the folks arrested had cable ties similar to those used by police to "handcuff" people. One insurrectionist was found with materials to make molotov cocktails.
(Please try not to read this in a condescending way): There is a difference between "You need to leave the capital building immediately. You are breaking the law and this will not be tolerated" (an approximation of the message many officials offered). and "Please go home. You are loved and you are special to this movement" (approximation of Trump's statement)
If I recall watching it, he asked everyone to go home and peacefully.
It seems the real issue is he won’t accept fraud didn’t happen and people are conflating that with calls to violence.
Doesn’t feel genuine or real.
There has to be people reading this thinking WTF too.
Just so I won't be downvoted, I'm not a fan of Trump.
> "Remember this day forever!"
Thus approving of the actions that already occurred and telling them that the crimes that they committed would be justified by history looking back at what they have done. It in no way deescalates the risk of future conflicts.
I don't think that's inherently wrong, just let's not ban people based on our own biases.
All of the intepretations of the events that happened yesterday could be equally uncharitably interpreted of BLM with the riots, violence, and protests across the country. I mean, they forcefully took over an entire city zone at one point.
As for BLM, personally I was never very sympathetic to the portions of protests/riots that caused violence.
Why did they shove police officers and tear down barricades, break windows and smash doors?
Why did they illegally enter government buildings?
The answer to all of these is a mistaken belief that the election was not legitimate, due to President Trump's claims without evidence that there was widespread fraud. Their actions were made believing that the election was being stolen. Their actions were justified by that belief. You cannot reinforce the reasons why they are there with any genuine belief that it will inspire peace and retreat!
"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
"I understand why you're unhappy but it's time to return home peacefully" is much more persuasive than "You are flat out wrong and it's time to return home peacefully". It's negotiation 101: validate the other's feelings if you want to persuade, even if you don't agree with those feelings.
https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/trump-releases-statement-telli...
Someone described this video as taking a log off the fire while simultaneously pouring gasoline which I think is a fair characterization.
- Asking for peace isn’t enough
- And. He really needs to stop believing his claim of fraud?
Wild. Am I crazy or is everyone else right now?
Trump’s base is upset that they lost the election. Nothing more.
... the way President Trump claimed without evidence the elections were run.
Two bedrocks of democracy are that elections are fair so that every vote is counted, and that the people's freedom of speech outweighs the government's freedom of speech, so that governments cannot pull the kind of manipulation and deception that President Trump has been doing so successfully.
Meaning is transmitted not just by the words you use. For example by being sarcastic you can make the words mean the opposite of what their plain meaning is.
Trump made clear how he felt, and his words did not reflect that.
It is the height of disingenuousness to claim it was a call for peace or a thoughtful resolution. It was an emotional call to arms with a fig leaf on it.
You have to acknowledge the feelings of the other individual before they'll listen. They see themselves as good, honorable people, so you address them as such. Once you have their attention in an agreeable manner (instead of an antagonistic manner), you can address the issue at hand.
Trump did precisely this. He empathized with them and their cause. After he had an agreeable mood somewhat established, he then appealed to consequences.
If he hadn't asked them to stop, congress' attempt to reconvene would have no doubt been interrupted as well. The fact that didn't happen goes a long way against the claim that it was a call to violence.
That’s not how people work. Imagine for a second that he did come out and say that he was wrong about the fraud claims (“we looked into it and didn’t find anything”) and conceded the election. Do you honestly believe not a single one of his supporters would fall in line? There are a few people who are too far gone, but it’s entirely disingenuous to suggest he has no power over this. Not holding rallies would help a lot too. No, this is all squarely at his feet.
The time to talk about their struggle was another. And that without going into the legitimacy of him disputing the election results or even the legitimacy of him leading a revolutionary movement at this point.
“Go to the capital and be strong so the legislators can’t steal our victory.”
*several hours later, after they’ve broken into the capital and terrorized the legislation
“Go home, but they did steal the election and you’re special and we love you.”
That was him approving of their actions. That was him saying what they did was what he wanted and he would happily see them go further. Not picking up on this pattern in the past 4 years doesn’t make you crazy, but it does mean you aren’t paying close attention.
At what point should a person stop believing their own claims?
What he should have done was strongly condemn the violence and call for the people to go home immediately and peacefully.
And nothing else. With no softening weasel words.
He would be able to keep believing his claims of election fraud uninterrupted. And continue to pursuing them, just after the violent insurrection was diffused, not during it.
It's important to note that the insurrection was any least partially incited by his claims of election fraud, so repeating them in that context was extremely dangerous.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/inciting to stir, encourage, or urge on; stimulate or prompt to action
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/violence an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws
I agree he should have strongly condemned those actions and asked them to leave immediately. But I also don't see any evidence that he incited violence. Alleging election fraud, or encouraging people to protest are not the same as inciting violence. I'm open to evidence of Trump inciting violence, but thus far no one has been able to provide it.
It's the nature of the things that you can always argue about whether a particular speech rises to the level of incitement. E.g., the words like "stir", "encourage", and "stimulate" from the definition are not black-and-white terms.
However, the actual sequence of events are a pretty strong argument for incitement. There's a simple and easy to follow implication of cause and effect here.
Also, remember, we're talking about his video after the violence broke out. If he didn't understand that his claims of election fraud before the riot would lead the riot, he must certainly have understood it during the riot.
I also think the actions taken by tech companies here reflects a double-standard. For example, why isn't AOC being blocked for supporting rioting? Why weren't Democrats called out for attacks on federal property in Portland, Seattle, and other cities? Look at https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/07/aocs-comms-director-ask... for an exploration of this.
To me, it just looks like big tech companies picking winners and losers in an ongoing political and cultural war, and are reacting to societal or political pressures in taking action rather than acting in any principled manner.
Here's the AOC quote being referenced:
> "The whole point of protesting is to make ppl uncomfortable. Activists take that discomfort w/ the status quo & advocate for concrete policy changes. Popular support often starts small & grows. To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable… that’s the point."
Where in this statement is there any incitement for rioting or violence?
Now let's take a look at Trump's actions on Wednesday[1]:
> "You don't concede when there's theft involved. Our country has had enough and we will not take it any more"
> "And we fight. We fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
This is how Trump described the rioters:
> "These are the things that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long."
Contrast this with Pence's response:
> "This attack on our Capitol will not be tolerated and those involved will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law"
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-trump-in-final-weeks-inc...
This is a thinly-veiled statement in support of protesters engaging in criminal activity to get their way politically. That is the dictionary definition of terrorism (which the capitol incident also qualifies for). I agree it isn't explicit in stating that. But Trump's statement doesn't explicitly call for criminal activity either.
His statements are not asking for violence but asking to challenge the results and fight for what you want politically. That's what every side does in every political confrontation. You COULD also read it as a thinly-veiled statement pushing for violence. But it is entirely subjective to label one that way but not the other. And therefore, big tech companies should hold BOTH AOC and Trump to the same exact standard, or neither.
All that aside, I agree Pence's statement is better and wish Trump was more forceful in condemning these acts and left the "explanations" out.
Well, this is the Internet, not a court of law. So you will not and cannot get what you’re looking for here.
IMO, Trump should face criminal courts of law, though I have little faith it will happen.
One clarification: Trump's accounts were not blocked for his speech or event before the riot. They were blocked for his response during the riot.
E.g. during the riot he tweeted, "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
So there's a little at the end that is good. But he mostly expresses that the violent insurrection is justified, praises the perpetrators, and suggest that they are the victims. He posted a video with similar sentiments as well. This was while it was still on-going.
If that's an incision of violence, then I'm sure you will apply such interpretations equally to other statements? Any time there's a riot, block the leaders of whatever party they riot on behalf of?
I get that you want to shoehorn in a TOS violation, but it's really not. But I also get that it's important for him to not have a platform right now. I'm just not into this Orwellian twist of rules/words/interpretations to try to justify the fact that we just aren't safe with him broadcasting his lies anymore.
When people say "i don't have a problem with what he said, because he said for people to go home" the analogy helps ground the idea that while he may have said go home, he also said things that would rile them up. Hence the taking a log off the fire while adding gasoline analogy. It's not obfuscation. Trump's message was the obfuscation.
Each side could choose to only hear what they want, or recognize it for the manipulation it is. We know what his followers will do - hear what they want to hear. We know what his opposition will do - hear it for the manipulation it is. Therefore we can conclude that it was not a genuine urging of his followers to actually give up and leave.
https://twitter.com/SamuelSokol/status/1347173729458122753
Seems like you're only going to apply your "inciting violence" claim to one side. I watched cities burn over the summer and intense levels of violence... And yet no one on the left trotted out speech bans and "incitement to violence" claims. It's obvious you're selectively targeting enforcement of intentionally vague standards. Federal buildings were being accosted in Portland and Seattle just a few months ago and the mayors supported them. Haven't seen their accounts banned.
It all started when Mr. Biden, addressing a predominantly African American crowd, quoted Mr. Romney as saying in his first 100 days as president that "he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules -- unchain Wall Street." Then the vice president added with a grin: "They're going to put y'all back in chains!"
Name calling isn't incitement to violence. Can you point to the specific instances of violence you are talking about and the speech that inspired them?
The issue here is that this isn't theoretical. Trump actually spoke to a real mob, in person, told them to march to the capitol, and then praised him once they had invaded and sacked it during a joint session of congress. Given that, yes, we look at his speech with much less tolerant criteria. He wasn't just spouting off, he is at least a proximate cause of a direct attack on our seat of government.
The fact that you don’t know and don’t care about this shows in what politically-biased bad faith you’re operating.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler: “I vehemently oppose what the Proud Boys and those associated with them stand for, and I will not tolerate hate speech and the damage it does in our city. White nationalists, particularly those coming to our city armed, threaten the safety of Portlanders and are not welcome here.”
The mayor calls a group of people demonstrating in his city hateful, “not welcome” and “threats to safety”. Not long after, a Patriot Prayer demonstrator Aaron Danielson was the victim of a pre-meditated murder by a man who described himself as “100% Antifa”. Joe Biden was asked on multiple occasions to condemn Antifa, and he refused, instead only generically condemned violence... exactly the same criticism leveled against Trump. I can cry and whine like you that Ted Wheeler and Joe Biden caused murder, but I’m not a baby. I’m not going to make speech illegal because I don’t like its content. Punish actual crimes, not speech you don’t like.
So, get out of your bubble and stop attacking freedom of expression, the most essential of freedoms.
This seems pretty obvious?
If you believe what Trump says then you must believe that the entire system of democratic representation has broken down. Under this mindset it makes sense to resort to violent action and storm the capitol - what other recourse do you have? That's why rioters left a "WE WILL NOT BACK DOWN" note on Pelosi's desk. And when Trump says the loves and supports the rioters, that's the mindset he's reinforcing and encouraging.
When Trump says everyone should go home - why should we treat that statement as normative? When virtually everything else this man has said agitates and encourages insurrection, why should we glom onto this one positive statement?
> The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.
The account bans are not just because of this one video considered in isolation. The bans are happening because of the systematic anti-democratic and seditious behavior of the president and his campaign.
It's establishment vs everyone else.
Let me ask you something: Do you ever think we'll see another person not blessed by either the Bush or Clinton family on the Iron Throne of the Whitehouse? Trump was the only on in my lifetime.
From the 1980s until 2008 we always had a Bush or a Clinton in the Whitehouse and until 2012 Clinton was still Secretary of State. Two royal families have ruled America for my entire life until 2016. Obama and Biden are clearly part of House Clinton.
America is just a monarchy with term limits.
I think you can comfortably replace "establishment" with "idealogically representative of the inner standard deviation of the american people", with some skewing for party politics, which is pretty much what a representative republic is supposed to do. People also miss that the parties frequently shift to accommodate their candidates, such that any candidate of a major party de facto becomes the establishment for that party (within reason).
Also, Bill Clinton was in no way an establishment candidate in 1992. Nor was Reagan in 1980, nor particularly was Carter in 1976. Skipping their associated unelected presidents (who by nature of being VP were part of the establishment), Kennedy probably also was not particularly establishmenty (but he cheated). Nixon was a solid component of the Republican establishment, Eisenhower had literally run the country's military, and FDR was president for so long it's hard not to think of him as defining the establishment. Before that, my picture of electoral history gets fuzzy.
All that to say, saying things are run by "the establishment" is too ephemeral to be useful.
> America is just a monarchy with term limits.
Yes, that's literally the intent of the executive branch as conceived by the founders. Even the term limits were feature creep.
I agree Bill Clinton was outside of it, but he got in and they started their entrenchment. Prescott Bush spent decades preparing for his son to become the president, but it was his long term intention.
Trump started planning this in the 80s and his extended family are also much easier to listen to and less ... squawking. There's a good chance they'll rise despite all of this as another political family like the Kennedys.
Kennedy wasn't corrupt enough, and got taken out by his own people, and somehow to this day over half of the world believe it was just one guy with an axe to grind.
The actual undercarriage of what is going in is deep and complex, held by powerful people who will rip each other, and the peasants, in order to maintain their control and power.
Just look at how people on here are ripping at each other, accusing every Trump supporter as being a Nazi or fascist. I think back to the quote from Wargames about thermonuclear war .. the only way to win, is not to play.
Interesting times.
In some ways, it’s self-censorship so one doesn’t get downvotes.
I think I find anyone telling someone to relax a bit condescending, but I’m gonna assume good faith that you’re not meaning it.
I think each take is useful, no matter how opinionated they are. I understand your point though, I also wouldn't want every comment in the thread being neutral. Knowing HN, I think we're doing fine :)
Between "I support what facebook did" and "I do not support what facebook did", or "I support Trump" vs "I hate Trump". if I were to take a side right now I would not be able to. Regardless I find it interesting, much of the discussion I've heard in the last 24h is very interesting to me.
FWIW I am not American nor do I live in the USA.
It's not surprising at all given his behavior. Being president doesn't excuse it.
Who built the cages? https://lmddgtfy.net/?q=who%20built%20cages%20for%20children
You’re making https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673162 ’s point.
Who cares?
There’s all kinds of less-objectionable potential uses of the cages than the ones to which the Trump Administration has put them. Building them isn’t the problem.
They were built to keep children separate from each other (gender segregated) and from adults: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/26/fac...
People are only cross about this because it's Trump.
The policy of deliberately maximizing use of the cages by maximizing family separation and using the induced psychic harm as a deterrent is a policy adopted by the Trump Administration.
The policy of requiring segregated detention of children, when actually detained, which caused the cages to be necessary was a judicially-imposed policy.
The policy of minimizing detention of children so as to minimize the use of the cages, including not detaining adults accompanying children without reason beyond illegal crossing, was a direct response to that judicially-imposed policy by the Obama Administration that was abandoned by the Trump Administration.
So, if one is using “built the cages” with the peculiar meaning you suggest of “adopted the policy for their use that is the subject of the objections”, Trump “built the cages”.
[0]https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2018/06/18/ap_1816885517410...
Yes it is bad that children were arrested under Obama. Obama should absolutely have to answer to those crimes. But so should Trump. In addition Trump also needs to answer for the child separation (not done under Obama). Yes, Obama needs to answer for war crimes and extrajudicial killings, but so should Trump, and in addition Trump needs to answer to toxic rhetoric, inciting racism, inciting racism, inciting people not to follow public health protocols, etc.
by which you mean in immigration holding cells, after being separated from their apparent guardians, as an anti-trafficking measure.
so what would you do?
I guess he's more welcome to GAB or any other radical social media. His followers will flock to him in a similar way as on Twitter or Facebook. Let him be relevant where people don't question him
I said 'behaviour' and what I meant is that his incitement to violence is beyond the pale.
FB, Twitter and many other people agree. It's obviously a value judgement but not a particularly difficult one.
Go and read his Twitter feed from the past few weeks, where he has spewed lies about non-existent fraud in an almost hourly basis, told Mike Pence to overturn the result, and where he called on his supporters to come to DC on the 6th. He has been whipping up his supporters into a frenzy for some time.
Watch the video clips of his speeches he has posted on Twitter, with yet more lies about how the election was "stolen from him", the other side are "evil", and how his supporters must "fight" for democracy by helping him overturn the will of the American people.
Listen to the tapes of him telling state officials to "find more votes", with thinly veiled threats.
Watch the video of his speech shortly before the riot, where Rudi Guliani said the way to win was "trial by combat", and Trump told them all to march on the capital.
Listen even to his video statement where he asks them to stop the violence - where he still refuses to denounce their actions, banging on about fraud and what "great patriots" they are!
He has, to my knowledge, never explicitly said "let's go and stage a violent coup!", because even Trump is just a tad more intelligent than that - but it is abundantly clear that this is what he was asking for and what he wanted, and it's been clear for all to see for some time.
- http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-tells-crowd-to-knock-th... "Knock the crap out of them" complete with video and offers to pay legal fees
- https://thinkprogress.org/donald-trump-my-fans-were-right-to... - "Maybe he should have been roughed up." on Fox and Friends
- https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-punch-him-in-the-fac... - "He's smiling [a protestor]. I'd like to punch him. Punch him right in the face."
I find it ... 'odd' ... that you can be so well-informed about DNC issues but have "no recollection" (I love that phrase, works so well when people are being hauled in front of Congress) of any specific issue of violence from Trump or the RNC.
In fact, here you go, someone's collated them all, with evidence:
http://mashable.com/2016/03/12/trump-rally-incite-violence/#...
At least nine video captured incidents:
- "I'll beat the crap out of you"
- "Part of the problem... is no-one wants to hurt each other any more."
- "The audience hit back. We need more of that."
and so on. and so on.
The "hilarious" part is I posted this four years ago, and it was a synopsis of less than a year of Trump's public calls for violence.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
“...something is wrong here, something is really wrong, can't have happened and we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”
He said that yesterday morning, right before the capitol was sacked by his supporters, at yet another one of his klan-style rallies.
I further consider falsely calling elections stolen, rigged, or fraudulent just because you lost, as incitement to violence. He has been doing this for two months, but he gave a preview before both the 2016 and 2020 elections that he would call any election he lost as rigged. Without elections, what else is there? Admitting and accepting defeat is one of the most central requirements of a functioning democracy.
Donald Trump still has not conceded. On Wednesday he was spouting lies about a fraudulent election, a stolen election, and to fight. As he has for two months. And this lie is repeated by more than 140 Republicans, 2/3rds of the caucus, in the House of Representatives. Along with 7 Republican Senators. On the record.
These are not the same two things at all. You know that. And yet you choose to replicate a lie and make a ridiculous claim of hypocrisy. And I think it makes you a coward and a person of bad character, and I also think you know that too. The only question is whether it shames you.
Not to mention, do you know how many Democrats objected during the Congressional electoral college and certification session for Donald Trump? No, of course you don’t, because you’re spoonfed biased talking points and aren’t even interested in knowing the whole story. I bet you won’t even look it up because you don’t want to know the truth that Democratic congressional reps also tried to object to Trump’s presidential certification.
Instead, here you are trying use your childish sense of moral superiority to suppress freedom of expression. Maybe if you clutch your pearls even more strongly next time, I’ll feel the “shame” you think I should feel.
Paid for by running up record deficits - which is the opposite of what the right claimed to stand for, and which Trump directly ran on. And those taxes expire for the people, showing who Trump really worked for in this case.
>no new wars,
Yet destabilizing many areas of the world, leaving it in the opinion of some countries in a much less peaceful place. Here's Germany putting Trump as "Greatest Threat to World Peace " [1]. He's destabilized NATO, he's attacked the US and other intelligence forces to where the US is no longer trusted, likely causing other agencies to share less intel with us. Here's how a lot of the first world thinks of Trump [2].
>leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
And his lack of leadership is a central reason the US has 350K_ dead, while other first world countries only have a fraction of the death and economic downturn Trump caused.
Trump also fought states having the right to their own election rules, didn't want states to deal with immigration on their own terms, didn't want states to deal with protests on their own terms, has repeatedly claimed he has absolute authority over state decisions (including COVID related ones where he claimed he could dictate economic policy, which he didn't have), and on and on....
Trump uses "states rights" to score political points only - pretend to respect them when he wants, and attack them when he wants.
When your evaulation uses a fallacy (cherry-picking) you end up ignoring the majority of the eivdence, your assessment ends up incorrect.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-angela-merkel-germans-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plumm...
Its clearly stated in the constitution that if states change their election laws, then they need to go through the legislature in order to do so. GA, WI. MI and PA ALL made changes WITHOUT going through the legislature. Why? Because in each of those states, the legislature was controlled by Republicans.
The fact they changed their laws the way they did is a clear cut violation of the constitution, it's not even debatable.
Deadline.--Except as provided under 25 Pa.C.S. § 3511[24] (relating to receipt of voted ballot), a completed mail-in ballot must be received in the office of the county board of elections no later than eight o'clock P.M. on the day of the primary or election.
This case is on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on the argument that only the Legislature can set the rules for a federal election:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.*
On November 27, 2020, Judge McCullough of the PA Commonwealth Court issued a preliminary injunction to stop certification of the vote pending review because the Pennsylvania statute, Act 77, enacted on October 31, 2019, which provided for "no-excuse" mail- in voting, changed the Pennsylvania constitution. Amending the PA Constitution requires that the Legislature pass the law in two sessions, and then the amendment is voted upon by the voters. This was not followed in enacting Act 77. The case is Mike Kelly, Sean Parnell, et al. v. Commonwealth of Pa, Governor Thomas Wolf, et al.
On Saturday, November 28, 2020, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overruled Judge McCullough. The vote was 7-0, with the two Republicans joining in the decision with the exception that the two Republicans wanted to keep the case open to decide the constitutionality of the statute.
The two Republicans should have dissented to state that the election was held under an unconstitutional and therefore an illegal statute. They should have stated that Gov. Wolf, his Democrat secretary of state, and Democrat attorney general Josh Shapiro allowed the election to proceed under a statute they knew was unconstitutional. All three are sworn to uphold the laws and constitutions of Pennsylvania and the United States.
Senator Kelly filed an emergency appeal to Judge Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court requesting an injunction to bar the certification.
The issues raised by Kelly are as follows:
1. May a legislature violate its state constitution's restrictions on the lawmaking power when enacting legislation for the conduct of federal elections pursuant to Article I, § 4, and Article II, § 1 of the U.S. Constitution?
2. Did the Pennsylvania Supreme Court violate Petitioners' rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by dismissing with prejudice the case below, on the basis of laches, thereby foreclosing any opportunity for Petitioners to seek retrospective and prospective relief for ongoing constitutional violations?
The Court did not hold an evidentiary hearing to question why Wolf allowed the election to proceed pursuant to a statute he knew was unconstitutional.
Further, the Republicans have a majority in the Senate and House of the PA Legislature. Why did the Republicans in the Legislature vote for Act 77 to allow no-excuse mail-in voting?
The votes of voters who voted in person were not treated equally because the no-excuse mail-in voters voted pursuant to an unconstitutional law. This is a denial of equal protection and due process.
As Judge McCullough stated:
[A] mail-in voting process that would exceed the limits of absentee voting prescribed in PA Const. Article VII sec 14 could be construed as violating the "one person one vote." In that event, the sheer magnitude of the number of mail-in ballots would not be a basis to disregard not only this provision of the Pennsylvania Constit...
Because people have been lying to you.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
My taxes went up.
> leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
This one especially.
It's so infuriating that this BS would pass for some sort of Trump accolade. The country is in full-blown crisis, the likes of which we haven't seen in a century. Why should the president do anything? He let the states handle it. What a great leader!
but multiple foreign military "actions"
> and leaving each state making their own decisions for covid-19
Well, you know other than seizing PPE, and then having your son-in-law, a part of your administration, state -on the record-, that you would openly withhold PPE from states that "weren't friendly to the President".
There's many, many more. But you're presenting a rather simplistic (and inaccurate) narrative here.
Some top choices:
Nightmarish treatment of immigrants, both legal and illegal.
Absolute sabotage of any progress on climate change both through manipulation of the relevant departments and through rollbacks of regulation.
Tax cuts that disproportionately affect the rich.
Attempts to completely dismantle Obamacare without any sensible replacement.
Bigoted limitations on transgender people, especially in the military. And continued DoJ support for legal discrimination against gay people.
I think the election was stolen, but stolen by Trump alone and basically handed over to Biden.
If anything, Trump stole the election from his supporters.
They should be pissed he couldn't show restraint and just shut his mouth to take the victory so he could continue with their favored agenda.
Instead, he actively sabotaged himself. His ego prevented him from seeing that unfold. And nobody could reign him in at any point. That's crazy.
Doesn't matter how many good things you get done if you show everyone you are incapable of humility, incapable of listening to advisors and data and fabricating things on the regular.
I grew up hearing and thinking JFK was basically like a Bodhisattva, and come to find out years later that, no, he was a sexual predator at times and a huge reason Vietnam was escalated.
> "May you live in interesting times" is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. While seemingly a blessing, the expression is normally used ironically; life is better in "uninteresting times" of peace and tranquility than in "interesting" ones, which are usually times of trouble. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_ti...
I don't think I'd want to swap places with most dogs, personally.
Of all places, you'd think HN would support free speech, but yesterday, you got downvote brigaded for mentioning that facebook and tech companies shouldn't be our censors.
The logic was "we must protect democracy by having zuckerburg censor an elected government official".
One moment it's facebook is evil. The next moment, facebook and zuckerburg are the heroes we need to save democracy. Go figure.
The point of free speech protections are to protect the stuff you don't like. Don't like a private business censoring? That's free speech.
no, its to protect speech you don't like, not "stuff", or it could be abstracted to any number of maxims.
a private business cannot censor its own expressions, only those of others. The issue of censorship only cones up wrt publishing platforms discrimination on who they serve.
Absolutely nothing has changed in the President’s speech or behavior since his 1st speech announcing his candidacy 5 years ago.
We needed a John Hancock 5 years ago that was willing to draw a line on violent speech and disinformation regardless of the consequences. Instead we got media leadership with their thumbs to the wind ignoring their platform policies and hiding behind a “public interest” rationale.
Too little too late.
What Trump did over the last 5 years pales in comparison to what he is doing now.
The effortless transition of power is the most fundamental and sacrosanct process in a democracy. And everyone has an obligation to defend it.
Instead we got this tweet “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," he tweeted. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
He has sworn duty to not incite the crowd, no matter how much he thinks he has lost. That’s what the courts are for (which he tried and lost) and even many,many recounts (which didn’t move the needle noticeably) and that is what the democratic process is for.
Even if the US election often seems like a coin flip, the fact that it only lasts 4 or 8 years means that a wrong flip doesn't matter so much.
This is probably pretty important, as it's well known that Americans like to exhaust all other options before doing the right thing ;)
I find it somewhat disappointing that the more compelling allegations were not tested in court. At least there would be public documentation of the argument and reasoned verdict.
Wisconsin’s screw up had to do with who was eligible to receive a mail in ballot. There was a ruling that confirmed that ballots were sent to people ineligible for mail in voting, but that they would have to be argued individually. IIRC there were 200k mail in ballots provided and now separated from the voter. Even if you could identify all ineligible voters, there would be no way to identify their ballots.
I do[0]. And if you review the court records (summarized in the link below), you'll find that the courts (including the Supreme Court) found no merit in the allegations you're repeating.
Is it possible that ~80 judges of all political stripes, in the court systems of six different states as well as the federal courts are all in cahoots with the Democratic Party to steal elections?
Sure, I suppose it's possible. But unlikely in the extreme.
To put a fine point on that: The "issues" you're describing have been litigated, several of them repeatedly, and the claims have been found to be largely without merit.
As such, folks who are claiming this stuff is true are either misinformed or lying.
But don't believe me. Check it out for yourself.
Pretty much all the claims, counterclaims, legal arguments and court rulings are public records. As I mentioned, many of those are detailed (with citations/links) in the link below.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
> do not warrant the wholesale disenfranchisement of thousands of Pennsylvania voters
> such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters
> That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised.
> tossing out millions of mail-in ballots would be drastic and unprecedented, disenfranchising a huge swath of the electorate and upsetting all down-ballot races too. That remedy would be grossly disproportionate to the procedural challenges raised
My impression is that’s the crux of many of the decisions.
⅘ of the states would have needed to flip, so as legal avenues close in states the ROI on pursuing other cases begins to turn negative quickly.
Let me be clear: I’m not arguing that any of the arguments are valid or not, just that they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
Or you can just have other folks spoon-feed you what you want to hear.
If not, and you do the work, I expect that you'll find that these folks are requesting that the courts throw out hundreds of thousands or even millions of votes based on speculation, issues which could and should (and in some cases, were) have been addressed before the election[0], issues which affect orders of magnitude fewer votes than would be affected or change the result of the election, claims of malfeasance that aren't actually malfeasance and a variety of other mostly spurious claims.
The truth is that while there are always irregularities and even fraud[1] in every election, it wasn't enough to change the outcome in any of the relevant states.
[0] Laches isn't just "too late, you lose!", it's that voters relied on the rules in place and if you change the rules after the fact, you disadvantage/disenfranchise voters who did exactly what the rules required. A good example of this was Kelly v. Pennsylvania. The claim was that PA Act 77 was unconstitutional. Except it was passed in October, 2019. Was this case brought immediately? No. Was it brought before the 2020 primary in Pennsylvania? No. Was it brought before the general election? Nope. The lawsuit was filed after two elections. Millions of voters relied upon Act 77 as the law of Pennsylvania. Should all those folks be disenfranchised after the fact?
[1] https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
Note that the above database has found ~1300 cases of fraud all across the US since 1982. Even if the real numbers were ten times what was found, and all of those were in one state and one election, it might make a difference, but it's all 50 states over almost 40 years.
Gotcha. I was mostly responding to this bit:
>they weren’t given the time or resources for discovery or developed argument that would provide any type of closure. In many cases the remedy may be worse than the outcome.
I'd only add (and I should have in my previous reply, mea culpa) that given the known time constraints that any post-election lawsuit carries, election lawyers and campaigns are used to acting quickly.
What's more, in all 3,193 elections (one in each US county) every election day, there are polling/canvassing observers for all candidates on each ballot present.
And almost all states have either paper ballots or voter-verified paper audit trails[0], creating a physical record of each vote.
And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
In order to commit fraud at any scale would require the complicity of thousands of people. And while a bit hyperbolic, as Ben Franklin is purported to have said, "three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." Thousands of people? Not so much.
[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...
>And since there are 3,193 separate elections, each with their own administrators, poll workers and polling/canvassing observers, literally tens of thousands of people are involved.
It's too late for me to edit the above, but the number above should be 3,143 not 3,193.
My apologies for the typo and any confusion.
I think that strongly suggests there's no "there" there. If it had any bias, we'd expect it to be towards the Republican candidate.
Except on those occasions when the President, Senate Majority, and House majority are all the same party. (That gives them two years before the House might flip.) In today's we're right and they're wrong -- which is how each side sees it -- one-party rule could get interesting.
What people seem to keep forgetting is that only one Presidential candidate has ever gotten more votes than Trump got in this last election and that was Joe Biden. Both the far right and far left wings need to be reigned in.
I'd point out that here in the US, the Republican Party is a far-right party, and the Democratic Party is a center-right party.
There is no "far-left" party that has any influence in the US.
You mean like 'no justice no peace' or just speech that doesn't align with your political ideology? (To be clear, I'm all in favor of defunding police and the government at large)
Groups can practice boycotts, peaceful protests, civil disobedience, political activism, fundraising, etc. without resorting to violent speech.
People openly call for violence every day. People vote for it, it's what they want. Just look at the wars in the Middle East. Entire nations are calling for that violence.
Right now, society has the belief that violence by the state against people is sometimes justified, but never the reverse. Unless it's against a 'bad' state, then it's okay. Then they're freedom fighters.
It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative. That's precisely antithetical to free-speech ideals.
Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated? I don't go crying to Facebook to censor opinions I don't like.
Calling thousands of supporters to go to the capitol and telling them "you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong." is a very precise call to violence.
Trump and allies have been communicating the date and requesting this behavior for weeks. Anybody surprised at the result should be deemed mentally incompetent.
"Kill them", "Attack them", "Burn down that building" is a very precise call to violence. "You have to be strong" is not. "You have to show strength" is not.
#KillAllMen on the other hand is a very precise call to violence, and yet nobody cares about banning that on social media.
It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks. Some of his supporters had been saying for weeks now that they were "standing by" and ready to do "what had to be done" when Trump would call to them. His speech yesterday was predicably heard as the call.
I don't believe for 1 second that he didn't intended for his words to be interpreted that way.
And for the record, #KillAllWhatever should be banned as well in my book, I'm not defending it.
Thank you.
> It is, in the context of the events from the past few weeks
If something is "very precise" in context, then it is not precise. If we have to interpret words, then we have multiple interpretations and everybody can have their own truth. You can't say something is "a very precise call to violence" because of some people may interpret it their way.
His tweet (https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/13469127807005777...) is very precise. "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence!"
...are you quite serious? Has a single person in the world taken this as an actual call to action?
This goes the other way too, with obviously satirical hashtags.
Sorry, I forgot 18 U.S. Code § 2383 hasn't been declassified yet. [/snark]
It's not clear at all what your point is. Are you a freedom of speech absolutist? Do you not believe in due process?
There were deadly riots over the summer with billions of dollars in damage. Numerous federal buildings were attacked while the media and politicians spurred them on or gave them cover as “peaceful protestors”. A church across from the White House was burned down and the only reason they didn’t invade the White House is almost certainly because the security was more competent, not because the rioters wouldn’t have done it.
Today we had protestors and mild rioting (broken windows and doors, but no fires, no major damage) and the same media which called the summer riots “peaceful” somehow decided that people taking selfies in Nancy Pelosi’s office were “violent insurrectionists” and that Trump needed to be banned from communicating.
> He explicitly did not call for violence.
Effective communication need not be specific. Surely you possess this knowledge, but might it have been in "cold storage" at the time you wrote this comment?
> It seems like you want people silenced if they question the official narrative.
Reality is often not as it seems. Often it is even the exact opposite of how it seems.
> Do you know how often I've seen Republicans called Nazis? Or evil? Or that they need to be eliminated?
"Truthy", but orthogonal. Two wrongs don't make a right (or so "they" say).
These are humans, not robots.
But yes, these are hard to predict times.
Do you know that’s not really making the point you think it is? Do you know that it is legal to yell fire in a crowded theater?
The case so often referenced, was overturned.
Yes, and saying this is a perfect example of speech inciting imminent lawless action is better than making the comparison you actually made upthread.
Your first example doesn't relate to imminent lawless acts at all, that's the problem.
While panicked flight is dangerous (hence, its use to illustrate the “clear and present danger” test in Schenk, that has since been replaced), it is not (unlike, e.g., armed insurrection) lawless.
It's an insult to the millions and millions who died during WWII to corrupt the message behind this famous poem/statement and insinuate that Trump and his supporters are the victims here. They are not the victims. They are the problem. And they need to be crushed.
70 million people. All of them are fascists?
I'm pretty sure people in Germany though they were stopping the fascists by supporting the Nazis. You have no idea who the "they" is until it's too late.
That's why the freedom of speech covers everybody. In America, we are not afraid of ideas. My dad survived a civil war, got his degree and immigrated here legally to be a part of that America. It's the America I grew up in, and that America is slowly falling from the grips of rationality and embracing real true fascism.
You think Trump was fascist? Just wait for the next four years. You are about to see freedoms and civil rights disappear like never before.
Yes. They are de facto fascists.
I’m not going to argue history with you beyond this comment, but I seriously, seriously doubt any serious historians would agree that Germans “thought they’d be defeating fascists” by supporting the Nazis - who were, you know, actual fascists.
Jesus that's insane. No, no they are not. Do you not see the danger we're about to enter into? You're saying 70 million people are "de factor fascists" .. what the fuck does that even mean?!
Have you been out to a farm in Tennessee? Have you ever walked with a group of friends through the blue watering holes of Georgia? Have you broke bread and had dinner with them? I grew up in Tennessee. I will no condemn the views of 70 million people I do not know because the TV tells me they are "fascists," which is pretty much Orwellian DoubleSpeak and means absolutely nothing today.
You do not know these people. If you did, you would not say such things. You are trapped in a bubble where you are scared out of your mind, and that fear will help this republic fall and strip rights away from every human being in America and maybe even the world over the next four years.
If you're still willing to support Trump or excuse his actions, you're a fascist.
If you think this way, you're deranged. This is how religion starts. This is how wars start. If a war started, the righteous would not prevail. They rarely do. Wars almost always lead to autocracies. America was a rare exception. I guess that time may be coming to an end soon.
And it's telling that you're blaming the people upset about that for any possible consequences rather than the Trump supporters who stormed the Capital with pipe bombs, guns, knives and zip-ties for taking hostages, believing in a fictitious conspiracy theory about a stolen election.
Neo-nazis looted the Capital while some asshole dressed like a buffalo took selfies with the police who let them in like guests, and i'm deranged?
Pipe bombs were in the DNC/RNC headquarters and not done by this group.
They didn't have "guns, knifes and zip-ties" .. I think there were 4 charged with guns? None of them used them. The only person shot and killed was a Capitol Officer shooting blindly into a crowd, hitting a white unarmed woman, nearly hitting another Federal Officer. I wonder if he'll face charges. I wonder if that woman will get memorials in her honor. Did you know she was an Air Force veteran?
There are videos of the people in the capitol taking selfies with capitol police and walking around peacefully. Weird coup.
> Neo-nazis
I saw people who supported Tump. I didn't see any neo nazis. There was one man with a communist tattoo, and some fucking QAnon idiot with a racoon on his head who should go to federal prison.
If you really think this was some kind of insurrection, I feel sorry for you. It was nothing of the sort. It was pittance compared to the burning down of a fucking police station by BLM rioters.
"oh I'm so scared. The peasants in the village have made their way into the royal court and sat at our golden seats and found our candy desk!"
Anyone who broke or stole anything will face federal charges and will go away (and should). But classifying that entire group the way you have is disingenuous. Especially compared to the rioting and looting that's been endorsed and encourages as being good and righteous by the left wing media.
The media has told us setting things on fire by BLM is fine for months and now they're acting like 1/10th of that is the end of democracy.
> “But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
Unless you want to claim it's sheer coincidence, I'm pretty sure those were planted by extremist Trump supporters with the same goals as the group that broke into the Capital. That they were not literally planted by any of those specific people isn't really relevant to the greater point.
Of course, you know that, you're just being pedantic.
>They didn't have "guns, knifes and zip-ties" .. I think there were 4 charged with guns? None of them used them.
So they didn't use them, but they did have them. I guess they just wore them to the insurrection for the cool factor?
And as far as the zip ties go, here's a photo of them[0]. Also Molotov cocktails, forgot to mention those.
>I saw people who supported Tump. I didn't see any neo nazis. There was one man with a communist tattoo, and some fucking QAnon idiot with a racoon on his head who should go to federal prison.
I'm willing to bet the guy parading the Confederate flag through the Capital[1], the guy with the Camp Auschwitz shirt[2] and the 6MWE shirt[3] (it stands for "Six Million (Jews) Weren't Enough", by the way) likely have some neo-nazi sympathies.
And just speaking generally, if you're not aware of the strong white supremacist/antisemitic contingent within the MAGA and QAnon communities, and Trump's populist movement in general, I have to assume you've been living under a rock for the last four years, that maybe you just don't know who the Proud Boys actually are, have never been on any social media where Trump supporters hang out, or something.
>If you really think this was some kind of insurrection, I feel sorry for you. It was nothing of the sort. It was pittance compared to the burning down of a fucking police station by BLM rioters.
Dismiss the right wing, implicate BLM as the greater threat.. if I had to take a shot every time someone did that on HN since yesterday, I would have been dead in two hours.
It was an insurrection. A piss-poor attempt at one, but that's still what it was. The Gunpowder Plot was a failure as well, but no one says Guy Fawkes and his cohort weren't trying to blow up Parliament just because they didn't succeed. Nobody says Richard Reid wasn't a terrorist because he didn't actually manage to set off his shoe bombs.
>"oh I'm so scared. The peasants in the village have made their way into the royal court and sat at our golden seats and found our candy desk!"
I don't even know what this is supposed to be, but it makes you seem infantile.
>Anyone who broke or stole anything will face federal charges and will go away (and should). But classifying that entire group the way you have is disingenuous. Especially compared to the rioting and looting that's been endorsed and encourages as being good and righteous by the left wing media.
BLM again....
>The media has told us setting things on fire by BLM is fine for months and now they're acting like 1/10th of that is the end of democracy.
BLM again, and the media. That's a double shot.
>“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
And wow. You actually have the gall to invoke MLK in defense of a political ideology which has been primarily fueled by xenophobia, racism and intolerance, to use the voice of the oppressed to champion the oppressor?
That degree of callous evil is actually impressive. Slow clap for you.
Also I just want to point out that you've i...
Sure I do. I know exactly who these people are. Yes, there is a spectrum of Trump support among them, and it's entirely your choice to try to weasel around the point here all you want, but at the end of the day, these people have willing supported (and many are continuing to support) a would-be nationalist, fascist dictator.
There's simply no excuse for that, and I personally will not simply forgive and forget.
"There are a lot of them, they can't all be wrong and evil" is a dumb line of reasoning. The majority of Americans used to support slavery and the majority of Germany used to support Hitler.
You need to go back and look at the Stanley Milgram experiments. It's impossible to really know if you or I would murder the person in the other room if the person in authority told us to, but I suspect you probably would.
You'd be pretty wrong. At best they thought Hitler would soften greatly after he rose to power, at worst they agreed with everything he said and did.
In '33 German non-Jewish shops started putting up "German Free" stickers. Einstein fled the country in that same year. His photo was widely published in newspapers with "not yet hanged" as the sub-heading. His friend, Theodor Lassing, was shot and killed, an act that was celebrated in Germany.
Hitler had been imprisoned for his actions before his rise to power, and was a largely known entity before the Germans "turned to him". There wasn't a lot of confusion about what he thought, who he hated, or what he wanted to do with them. Mein Kampf was released in 2 parts across 1925 and 1926.
An actual criticism about the time just before Hitler's rise to power, is that every other powerful party took him for a joke. They didn't expect him to be a viable rival. So instead, the Communist party (one of the major parties at the time) spend their squabbling with the Socialdemocrats instead of focusing their attention on the "real enemy".
If you're actually interested in this topic, you should read the book "They thought they were Free". It chronicles how normal people fell to support the fascists - the Nazi party.
It's more like "First they came for the murderers".