US Politics, November 2019: These people are truly sick.

can i share some naive information age whining, related to how the world sucks?

is anyone else weirded out by how, collectively, we all expect terrible outcomes and anticipate them to the point that we guarantee that the future will be a version of self-fulfilling prophecy?

(when i say "we", i mean people that matter to impeachment decisions. so, rich people, name brand journalists, and a few hundred people voting on impeachment. yes, my assumption is that none of what i, or you, or anyone reading about this thinks about impeachment matters to their decision. yes, this is pessimistic. yes, i'm aware that the current level of support for impeachment (~50%) is very high, historically. no, i don't think it's enough to change the senate vote. yes, if somehow support for impeachment gets above 70-80%, i think it would be enough to peel off some republican votes. no, i don't think that we'll get to 70% support in the public, because the people in this country are so uninformed, misinformed, and disinformed. yes, i'm aware that there is a thread where people answer their own questions. no, i'm not going to admit that i made it)

we've already played out the fight over the senate votes. the senate republicans won't vote for impeachment, no matter what. on the left, we've already gone through the (outdated) kübler-ross stages of grief, with many of us trying to figure out how to accept things as they are (or will be??) and move on (from the future??). by the time the senate actually votes (not guilty!), we will have fully accepted it and moved on. we've already lived through the rage and the disbelief, and we can't live in that state for long without breaking down, so we accept it.

it's amazing how far this infiltrates the population. i heard a podcast this morning with a 3rd grade, talking about impeachment. they asked him what he thought would happen, and he said that he expected the house to vote for it, but not the senate. granted, this boy was precocious as hell.

but the end result is that when it comes down the unthinkable act, the sequel to the merrick garland slow-motion fuckover, the golden boy brett kavanaugh disingenuous pukefest, the sight of several dozen white republican men seeing indisputable evidence that the president is and has been a criminal from day one and voting "not guilty" anyway, we will be exhausted and will have already played out the whole cycle in our head.

we've grown accustomed to using simulations to create models from past events, in order to simulate future outcomes. but now, we're simulating the future, deciding the most likely outcome, socializing that prediction through endless discussions and information sharing, then collectively walking toward the simulated outcome that we think is most likely. it's really fucking weird? we are missing out on the moment of collective SHOCK and RAGE that would come from watching the unthinkable happen in real time.

weirded out? not really, but it is super-annoying.

Booming post.

A lot in there to delve into deeper, though I'm not sure this thread is the best place for that.

optimism is necessary to effect change. cynicism leads to inaction.

I thought the 2018 election was a vital counter to this. It felt so good for the right thing to happen for once, and had the Dems not make that progress last year we wouldn't even be talking about impeachment, and god knows what we *would* be talking about.

the point of impeachment right now isn't to immediately get Trump out of office, it's to stoke rage at the craven amorality of the entire GOP for protecting him, thereby driving turnout and robbing them of the Senate majority and the Presidency in the 2020 election.

which tbh is much more likely than 20 GOP Senators suddenly voting to remove him from office when impeachment support hits 60% in the polls

Yeah the Senate is vital. Court packing a must. I want 33 nominees

if somehow support for impeachment gets above 70-80%, i think it would be enough to peel off some republican votes

While that would be grand, I think it's unlikely these days. Bucking a party-line vote gets more and more impossible. _However_, their kneejerk party loyalty could make them vulnerable at election time, which imo is just as good. As Οὖτις says, flipping the Senate is a pretty desirable prize, perhaps even more important than removing President. (Though of course I'd like both.)

My instinctual pessimism is but a chocolatey outer layer that encloses a delightful nougaty center of optimism

the quite real risk here is that once he does survive trial in the Senate, he is sure to immediately lash out and do something highly provocative and/or even more illegal in an attempt to drive up enthusiasm for his re-election

xp

ultimately the big problem is that politics in this country is just a large scale representation of the "prisoner's dilemma"...if one side is willing to lie & cheat in order to retain power and the other isn't, the dishonest side will always win.

that said impeachment is most certainly worth pursuing, not only because it'll irritate and distract Trump leading up to the election but also because it puts his corruption front and center in the news on a daily basis

The GOP wins elections by keeping its neanderthal base continuously stoked. That's all I've wanted from the impeachment hearings.

optimism is necessary to effect change. cynicism leads to inaction.

yeah, i agree! and i do try to keep that in mind.

but this is something different, more sweeping. (this as in the widespread understanding of the scam that is coming up in the senate). there are precedents, of course. but it's still a uniquely 2010s, information overload kind of thing, where everyone has the information, and the outcome has already been widely discussed months ahead of time.

the dishonest side will always win

this is demonstrably untrue

There is exactly one Republican senator that I would expect to vote to remove him from office if the trial gets that far and that's entirely because her constituency wouldn't punish her for it (Murkowski) and I wouldn't consider that to be a guarantee

The others either agree with what Trump did, agree with the rationale even if they think it was illegal, or are so scared to lose their elections that they will vote to exonerate regardless of the facts.

I think impeachment support getting as high as it already is, is fairly remarkable. I think growth will slow because the general public has been conditioned through the Nixon episode and years of legal procedural television to expect impeachable wrongdoing involves a clear "smoking gun", a solitary piece of evidence that makes the crime obvious like the Nixon tape.

The low info dolts don't really get that it's often not that cut and dry and that we convict civilians in criminal court with far flimsier evidence.

60% might be where it crests.

The United States government is a system which has gone so long without proper upkeep and maintenance and has been fucked with by so many bad actors that I'm not sure why anyone would realistically expect a different outcome at this point. The best we can hope for in the short term is that the dems take the presidency and the entirety of Congress next year, but even if that happens it just feels like a bandaid, like they're just going to do what they can to keep the bloated carcass from spoiling too much more without doing a whole lot to revive it. That doesn't mean that there aren't steadfast forces of good working both within and without that system to keep the human race from devolving into warring tribes of cannibal apes, but...yeah, I'm pretty goddamn cynical wrt the system that's enabled the last several years to happen largely unchecked. It doesn't bode well.

I can envisage Cory Gardner joining Murkowski because he's likely doomed next year, but, yeah, anyone else would shock me

anyway, i'm talking about something different and i don't have anything more to say on it that isn't just rehashing the same old shit. i'll just be over here in the darkness

I think we can expect some dramatic "heightening of the contradictions", as they say, following the trial. Both parties are going to treat it as a referendum on the other, and the rhetoric about how evil the other side is and how the election is the only way to resolve this is going to go into triple-overdrive

xp

The GOP wins elections by keeping its neanderthal base continuously stoked. That's all I've wanted from the impeachment hearings.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, November 14, 2019 12:17 PM bookmarkflaglink

Da fuuuck u say holmes?!!!!?!!!

#NotAllNeanderthals

neanderthal, hop on frequency 112.42 - you have been activated. you must infiltrate the GOP base and get them stoked about better things

I think we can expect some dramatic "heightening of the contradictions", as they say, following the trial. Both parties are going to treat it as a referendum on the other, and the rhetoric about how evil the other side is and how the election is the only way to resolve this is going to go into triple-overdrive

i have consulted my 2020 simulation, and i must say, this is otm

PLANNED
PARENTHOOD
BAD

WAR
ON
CHRISTMAS

general - we've lost agent 112.42 - he infiltrated the base and went rogue within 2 minutes

FWIW, I generally maintain a sense of optimism wrt the human race in general even as the bad faith puppetmasters maintain a distressingly powerful hold on the human race's perspectives/beliefs/actions. Nuke every established hierarchy out of existence, basically.

Marc Theissen finally lights upon the "he can't be evil because he's too much of an idiot" defense.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/incompetence-is-not-an-impeachable-offense/2019/11/13/5c473b40-066c-11ea-ac12-3325d49eacaa_story.html

MOAR PLZ

WaPo is reading my posts

I love this GOP defense that it's not a crime cuz the extortion scheme didn't bear fruit - it's like Sideshow Bob's "attempted murder" defense

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, November 12, 2019 8:32 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/470479-ex-simpsons-writer-accuses-republicans-of-sideshow-bob-defense

this is demonstrably untrue

the GOP have created a system in which they can break their own rules at will to install their preferred Supreme Court Justice. they have used gerrymandering and voter suppression to allow themselves to maintain state control despite being massively unpopular and consistently losing the popular vote. in an 'honest' democracy, the GOP would never have signifcant control of anything

Human beings are amalgams of ambition, prejudices, good and bad impulses. I only expect consistency from evil men.

frogbs I'm aware of all that, but "always" is a very high bar that the GOP do not meet

xps

Collins, Murkowski, and Romney might (MIGHT!) vote to remove

feel like it's either gonna be 25 senators voting to remove or 0

being one of the only GOP senators to vote to remove seems like a really bad place to be

their votes a) largely won't matter and b) will be based entirely on re-election calculus

xp to shady's bribery comment-- there's some pushback against using names of actual criminal law offenses as claims for impeachment, rather than other "non-legal" but accurate terms, such as "self-dealing." like criminal bribery has elements to prove "beyond reasonable doubt." that's not what needs to be done for impeachment obv, but part of the gops shit-cyclone is to make everything too difficult for anyone to change sides.

one element for criminal bribery is proving trumps "corrupt intent." don't know exactly how, but gop wants to try to make that a "required" proved beyond reasonable doubt element for the impeachment. schiff and co did a nice job getting new direct testimony to SHOW THE CORRUPT INTENT, but the gop is already posing ride-or-die on no-corrupt-intent ('it was anti corruption waah') and will never never never admit to believing it was corrupt. until they don't i guess, i dunno, it's absurd.

at the same time showing abuse of power by self-dealing would involve some proof or basis. it's typically used in civil process i think, for breach of duty type shit, which makes me think that it would be more of a "preponderance of evidence" level burden--if that even applied to impeachment and it doesn't. there isn't even a standard of proof known at all for impeachment, but gop will shitstorm NO PROOF OF CORRUPT INTENT NO CORRUPT NO CORRUPT YOURE THE CORRUPT!1! everywhere, and they OWN the jury. they ARE the jury. not allowing gop to argue for higher standards of proof, by not using criminal offense terms, seems ok to me.

ah. thx for the legal perspective

Collins, Murkowski, and Romney might (MIGHT!) vote to remove

let's get real, Collins will say "my goodness, all of this is very troubling indeed" into every microphone in her vicinity and then cheerfully vote to dismiss

she's underwater in her state and facing a well-financed challenger, she might try to shore up her "independent" bonafides, knowing she can't win re-election with just Republican votes.

but yeah I don't have high hopes, exactly

and Romney hates Trump but is a coward

"I mean it's problematic but lol, u guyz are libs i mean" -Mitt

How dare you, I'll have you know Mitt was voted "bravest Mormon in Michigan" 6 years in a row

"Amalgams of Ambition" = my Tool tribute band

let me just go ahead and program this into the simulation/future by slightly revising the old model

COLLINS, January 2020:

"I listened carefully to Christine Blasey Ford’s several dozen credible witnesses' testimony regarding Donald Trump before the Judiciary Committee Impeachment Jury. I found their testimony to be sincere, painful, and compelling. I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life. Trump acted inappropriately and that he should face consequences.

Nevertheless, the four witnesses she named could not corroborate any of the events of that evening gathering where she says the assault occurred. none of the witnesses could produce a recording of Donald Trump saying "I order the military funding for Ukraine to be held up until they deliver dirt on the Bidens for me, along with Zelensky appearing on CNN to make it appear that there was a real investigation going on regarding Biden in Ukraine." Therefore, I vote not guilty"

alt version: an audio recording of trump explicitly saying he wants dirt on biden and won't give ukraine military funding until they deliver it emerges. nu-Collins: "...um. WITCH HUNT!"

it would be a shame if we could find a way to elevate any personal anti-gop beefs that trump has had along the way, but he's such a loyal republican.

i might just make every comment i made to the senate to include his insults to romney lil marco ted mrs. ted etc etc. over and over and over.

Nixon otm

Murkowski will. I don't have confidence in Romney to cross the street. Collins will probably be forced to. As will Gardner. It won't save his seat. https://t.co/6lvEUW5b3M

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) November 13, 2019

Dislodging a few Republican representatives and senators won't make any difference to the passage of a bill of impeachment by the House or the Senate verdict, but politically speaking it would soften the argument that the process was an exercise in pure partisanship. Of course, loyal Trumpsters won't buy the idea that there was substance to the charges, but it will help a bit with the mushy middle who seldom know what to think about such arcana as "high crimes and misdemeanors".