GET OUT: US politics November 2020

For at least six months, there won't be nearly enough doses to cover 50%+ of the population here (let alone the entire world) so we don't have to worry about that quite yet

I can't imagine this vaccine catching on among the more reluctant, who already largely ignore the (ubiquitous, easy to get) flu vaccine, not to mention in some cases inoculations for more serious illnesses. What will the percentage be? No idea, but I bet it'll be a low adoption rate. Too much misinformation, too much mistrust, even choice paralysis (I saw someone suggest that having multiple vaccines available might ironically lead some to inaction). I mean, how in the world can you convince someone who refuses to wear a mask or stop having social gatherings to take a vaccine that's been fast-tracked through the system? The/a question is if schools will *require* the vaccine (not sure who else could get away with issuing such a draconian order), but I don't even know how fast a policy like that could be implemented, let alone applied equitably, especially since, yeah, it will take a while before everyone has access to a vaccine.

On the plus side, anti-vaccine people seem to exist on all ends of the political spectrum, so maybe that will be the impetus that finally unites a divided America.

not sure who else could get away with issuing such a draconian order)

I mean, not trying to argue with you Josh, but I could see this fairly easily. I mean, starting in January, my work is going to require weekly testing for all staff and, if I don't keep up with it, they shut off my swipe card access to campus.

xp It could swing the other way too - for schools or workplaces, the local governent or employers demanding that people get vaccinated before they come in. Conservatives might say that there's no more excuse for preventative measures and lockdowns.

Right, jon - I figure many hospitals will require it pretty quickly for staff as well

Either way, the next 6-9 months are going to be absolutely lousy with outraged takes about "oppression", "forced vaccinations", "Gates/Soros/Biden tracking chips", yadda yadda.

not true, it's going to be a lot longer than that

Well, sure, it'll never go away, I just think the next 9 months will be the worst of it.

The tracking chip people posting on instagram on their iphones always confuses the fuck outta me

hoping that conservatives boycott the vote is an anti-democratic stance just FYI

how so?

Yeah, IDGI. Any voter is free to vote or, in lieu of voting, to self-own. It's what makes our country beautiful.

T/S: Stripping voting rights and making it increasingly difficult for your opponents to vote vs hoping the other side doesn't vote because they are whiny babies

hoping someone doesn't vote isn't anti-democratic, stopping them from doing it is

Yeah hoping is just hoping.

otherwise we were all anti-democratic for hoping Trump voters stayed home on 11/3

hoping that conservatives boycott the vote is an anti-democratic stance just FYI

No, it isn't.

Hoping that people who actively vote against your existence are too dumb to vote in people who will legislate in a manner inimical to your survival is not "anti-democratic".

Laughing at people who willfully and intentionally misunderstand the election process is not "anti-democratic".

These people are adults and they claim to be rational and intelligent. They have the ability to look up the information on how the voting process works and who the viable candidates are; no one is preventing them from accessing this or hiding it from them. As intelligent, rational individuals with access to facts, it's their responsibility and choice to use that information as they see fit; if their choice is to throw away their vote on someone who not only isn't running in the election but is in fact ineligible for the position, then they should own that. It is not my responsibility to encourage these people to kill me and fuck you for intimating that it is.

How about hoping all conservatives drop dead?

But what if they drop dead while they're trying to vote?

sorry DJP.

I mean, not trying to argue with you Josh, but I could see this fairly easily. I mean, starting in January, my work is going to require weekly testing for all staff and, if I don't keep up with it, they shut off my swipe card access to campus.

No, I totally get it. Maybe I should have specified schools as public and widespread vs. anyone's private place of work. You don't need proof of (any) vaccine to, for example, fly on an airplane, but schools, summer camps, things involving kids you generally do. But not many other public places, afaict, where they are mandatory. Do you even need actual proof of vaccination to work in a hospital, or is it only assumed?

Thank you, crut. I appreciate that.

xp Yes, as family members can attest, you are regularly checked for vaccinations when you work in hospitals

I should say that my last post was in jest.

However, I keep thinking about something Lauren Berlant said in a lecture last week, about how the right has essentially rejected a meta-cultural USAmerican narrative of Christian Love, instead opting to elevate the racial animus that operated barely beneath the surface for much of the nation's history.

This aligns with some things I've written about how it becomes more and more difficult to embrace those people who refuse to understand and reject the notion that we are all brothers and sisters. If anything, it isn't the state of our politics that sends me into despair, but the fact that there are so many more of these hateful people than I had previously thought, and that such hatred will doom both them and the rest of us to an almost certain abject misery.

xpost Makes sense. Anyway, it will be schools that finally push widespread vaccine adoption over, imo.

I guess my main worry is that if people openly boycott the vote in large enough numbers that may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate. But maybe there aren't enough crazies out there to do that in an organized way.

We have the highest turnout in 100 years and they're claiming it's illegitimate, so...

If a third of the electorate decides that the peaceful, democratic process of government is no longer working for them, they will resort to trying to tear down the state. It’s already happened here once.

xp yeah but there's no weight behind that claim!

So, Republicans are like Master Shake? Explode the TV and then complain that they can't watch it.

Who is Meatwad

Republicans had already been talking about boycotting the January run offs. I think it had been talked about here. So I'm not supposed to just think that is something one ought to encourage? unless that itself is a dissuasion and not going to help them think they're owningthe libs by doing so.
JUst thought wow , shooting yerself in the foot much?
How does one get them to increase that behaviour without letting on

I don't care if people don't vote, that's their business, and especially people with bad and hateful ideas. But if they don't vote because they are increasingly untethered to any kind of reality then that's a problem. The same people talking about not voting are the ones who don't believe in COVID, won't want the vaccine, don't believe in climate change, are terrified by "the Great Reset," follow Q drops, etc etc. In that sense, rejecting elections is one more rejection of tangible, verifiable data in favor of apocalyptic fantasies that can't ever be debunked because every source of reliable information has been thrown out as untrustworthy.

I guess my main worry is that if people openly boycott the vote in large enough numbers that may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate.

How? What is the legal theory supporting the argument "this election is illegitimate because I vociferously declared I wasn't going to participate in it and the candidate I dislike won"?

Explode the TV and then complain that they can't watch it.

Uh, yes. Considering they've already destroyed, burned or otherwise trashed the tennis shoes, coffee makers and fancy coolers they've already paid for, this is exactly what they will do.

xps several million white grandparents

the real problem is we have little control over the wild-card, armed militant wing of the population that irrationally thinks there's a Deep State controlling everything. No amount of fact-checking, discourse, or legal removal of Trump/cronies from office will change that. We remember the dude who killed a few people at Planned Parenthood because of the James O'Keefe video a few weeks earlier, and that was Obama administration. The FBI is going to have its hands full breaking up terror plots.

I hope so! That would give me some comfort, ironically.

I feel like the QAnon/Deep State crowd has several types of followers. Some are your classic wingnuts, who believe in all of the conspiracy theories, get endorphin rushes participating in the "TEAR IT DOWN" rhetoric, but never have any intent of participating in something even as small as a protest, much less any insurrection. I was kind of the left-wing version of this when I was in my 20s.

Then there are the ones who show up at protests, often with arms, but have no intent to actually use them. One I recently conversed with simultaneously said "we're coming with our guns" but also said "but we're not stupid like Antifa we're not going to burn our own cities down". Ok then. These folks are of course dangerous because anybody who is armed in a public setting is dangerous, but also because police side with them and because they kill counter-protesters who aren't armed and claim self-defense (Kyle Rittenhouse).

then of course you have the ones like the guy who planned to kidnap Governor Whitmer, and even as poor as they were at covering their tracks, planned to do fairly horrible things and trained for it for months on training grounds.

All are dangerous in different ways - I'm mostly afraid of people leaving Category 1 and heading towards 2 and 3.

The FBI is going to have its hands full breaking up terror plots distancing themselves from their assets when they bug out and kill people.

All are dangerous in different ways - I'm mostly afraid of people leaving Category 1 and heading towards 2 and 3.

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Tuesday, November 24, 2020 9:42 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

honestly I'm not that much, most people are lazy and the vast majority of Americans won't disrupt their consumer lifestyle for anything (see: Covid), the Michigan guys were essential absolute fuckup from everything I've read, "training" is basically LARPing. These people are all dumb. A real plot or civil war would require sacrifice - do you think these guys are going to be down for revolution over the July 4th weekend or will they go out on their pontoon boat and crush beers? 99% of the assholes talking shit on Parler or wherever....they aren't child rebel soldiers, they go to Costco and buy frozen hamburger patties in bulk. They have jobs on Monday. Blow up the federal reserve? Sorry can't Friday, gotta go watch my kid's junior high football game.

the scary thing to me is the right wing infiltrating the military and police forces which is already well underway for...well...centuries...but in the Q way fairly recently.

that post is actually quite reassuring, so thanks ums

if their work during the ‘Islamic Terror’ era is any guide, my concern re FBI is that they end up spending a lot of time and resources infiltrating these militias only to goad (and finance!) the weaker/ dumber ones into popping off. then swoop in and “save the day”, all in the service of justifying swelling budgets and maintaining public goodwill the Biden era

The not very reassuring thing is that all it takes is one malcontent with a machine gun to do a ton of damage. But those individuals will always be around as long as there are machine guns.

xpost valid concern.

also important to note millions of people legitimately believed Obama was illegally serving as President for 8 years, but most stayed on the internet

Individual mass killings are sadly just part of the fabric of American life.

I'm just saying don't look at these gassed up motherfucking midwest pre-diabetic insurance agents posting about the second revolutionary war in their 2014 gmc denali while they wait for their drive-thru order.

they are just pathetic

...may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate.

How? What is the legal theory supporting the argument "this election is illegitimate...

afaics, the power in making that claim has nothing to do rationality or legality. its power consists solely of it being believed by a sufficient number of people who wish to believe it. in a democracy if really large percentage of people reject the legitimacy of elections, you got trouble.

I guess my main worry is that if people openly boycott the vote in large enough numbers that may give them some leverage to claim the results are illegitimate.

How? What is the legal theory supporting the argument "this election is illegitimate because I vociferously declared I wasn't going to participate in it and the candidate I dislike won"?

i'm just catching up here, but the way i read this, crut isn't saying that MAGA people have a solid legal argument. boycotting the vote isn't about legal theories, though. it's what happens when people believe legal processes have broken down, or if they're just really mad. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but it happens frequently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_boycott

sorry, xposts

Yeah I remeber seeing all the batshit "If commie Obama wins, RIP to this once great nation, I am ready to fight if it comes to that" stuff. Strangely they wimped out and went back to watching Duck Dynasty and complaining in the comments sections at Hot Air and Breitbart and NRO.

....and winning the presidency.