The GTP Unofficial 2020 US Elections Thread

[Samus]

Via Getty, an insurrectionist with a sidearm also wearing a "Punisher" patch on his chest, is holding zipties. Zipties.

You're probably wondering why someone who unlawfully gained entry to the Capitol, which was occupied at the time of the breach, needs zipties and is wearing such iconography. It's also worth pondering whether it has anything to do with the makeshift gallows that Republicans erected outside...

Yes from what I've been reading, these Q folk thought they were going to instigate 'the storm' which would see the "arrest" of the dissenting elite, hold them to a "trial" and then hang them outside for treason. That's what the girl who died referenced in her tweets. Just sad really, it's not hyperbole to say so many millions are brainwashed.

https://www.businessinsider.com/qan...k-belief-precursor-the-storm-2021-1?r=US&IR=T

 

[Liquid]

Obviously I cannot share it, even externally out of good taste, but I have seen a video on Twitter. The cameraman is one of the rioters and they're all tightly packed on one side of a double door that has been barricaded. The door windows are already damaged and people are trying to shoulder barge the door. There are agents on the other side of the door, clear and obvious to see, pointing their loaded guns at those trying to force the door. One person decides that a shoulder barge isn't enough, takes a run and tries to scale the door. He is immediately shot and drops to the floor.

I really do not know what they expected. Whatever the cause, if you're trying to storm a door where someone on the other side is pointing a gun at you, why would you do a running jump into it when someone is pointing a gun at you? Absolute lunacy. It really straddles the border of negative sympathy.

Elsewhere, I saw the comment that the perfect irony now is that many of these cult followers' pictures are being spread all over the right-wing news media that they love, with their own media heroes basically calling them gay communist antifa actors. What a position to find yourself in. All that time and devotion only to be accused of being a fraud by your own idols. Amazing.

Stop the count. Sorry for the typo.

 

[Rossell2]

I would just like to iterate for those that don't know that there are no protestors called Via Getty.

The picture of that one guy in the beenie holding some stand had "Via Getty [Images]" written at the start of the tweet and everyone thought that was his name.

 

[Scaff]

Turns out being openly fascist is actually bad for you: Josh Hawley's book deal with Simon and Shuster is cancelled.

And the baby throws a tantrum.

Not only is he so stupid to fail to understand the 1st, but he's another authoritarian who doesn't understand that Orwell was a lifelong Democratic Socialist, further left than Bernie. He cites Orwell when Orwell literally volunteered to fight to the death people like Hawley and his mob.

 

[Samus]

After everything I will still never understand why Trump. It's not just him specifically either, saw this on a BBC article just now:

It doesn't change my support for Trump. The people that love Trump, that's not going to change no matter if he gets a second term or not. It just means we're going to hold out for 2024 and hope either he runs again or his kids do.

Of all the dynasties to desire, why Trump?

 

[Dotini]

...what the girl who died referenced in her tweets. Just sad really, it's not hyperbole to say so many millions are brainwashed.

Medically or legally, is there a definition of "brainwashing"? How many millions are brainwashed? Is it all 74 million at the end of the day? If so, isn't that something like a zombie apocalypse? How many of those have we seen before?

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. .. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

So begins H G Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds, a book which, perhaps more than any other of his works, created the genre we now call science fiction. When Wells wrote his tale of the invasion of southern England by an expedition of Martians, Great Britain was the most powerful and wealthiest nation on the planet with colonies in India and Africa and elsewhere, its power buttressed by its army and navy, confident in its God-given destiny to rule over other races. In his introduction Wells makes an explicit political point about how this confidence was punctured by the arrival of the Martians:

… we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

 

[Samus]

Medically or legally, is there a definition of "brainwashing"? How many millions are brainwashed? Is it all 74 million at the end of the day? If so, isn't that something like a zombie apocalypse? How many of those have we seen before?

I'm not going to pretend to be a legal or medical expert because I'm not, but I don't believe so. It has been tried in court a few times, usually as a defence, and usually failing because ultimately, these people still exhibited free will (other than cases where someone was literally forced to do something, of course).

In the end whatever term you do or do not use, there is absolutely no doubt that a large portion of the world population is continuously led to believe a huge amount of information that is either flat out false, or unproven, and it has surely increased in the modern online, digital connected era. Some of these people remain harmless, others are not, but it's not a problem that is going to away overnight, or a problem that is easily fixable.

Some point to better education systems which surely will help in some regards, but it's no golden fix. Many of these people you read about, including the woman who died, seem to have been well educated and do/did serve in jobs that require high intelligence. They are smart people, intellectually. But they've still been taken on board by the lies and propaganda.

 

[Touring Mars]

Not only is he so stupid to fail to understand the 1st, but he's another authoritarian who doesn't understand that Orwell was a lifelong Democratic Socialist, further left than Bernie. He cites Orwell when Orwell literally volunteered to fight to the death people like Hawley and his mob.

Quite. What an idiot this guy is. Since when was it a violation of anyone's rights for a private business to refuse to publish someone else's words? Even if the guy had a contract, the publisher is still well within their rights to cancel that contract if the other party is in breach, and I would expect that a major publisher like S&S will have their backs covered legally when it comes to this kind of dispute - oh, and yes, it is 'just a contract dispute' and has nothing at all to do with the First Amendment.

And this guy is a lawyer?! Good grief.

 

[Populuxe]

Not only is he so stupid to fail to understand the 1st, but he's another authoritarian who doesn't understand that Orwell was a lifelong Democratic Socialist, further left than Bernie. He cites Orwell when Orwell literally volunteered to fight to the death people like Hawley and his mob.

It’s hilarious he calls this Orwellian. Orwell got published.

 

[Dotini]

There is a news outlet which shall go nameless here which claims video evidence of police helping the rioters in the Capitol building attack. Another outlet runs a story about the head of the Chicago police union defending those who stormed the Capitol.

https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicag...-capitol/6842fa80-3b83-4396-af05-a5f15f4ac740

Are we to conclude that the police are among the 74 million by whom we are beset?

 

[Moglet]

Of all the dynasties to desire, why Trump?

Because he is seen as the "anti-liberal" and to his supporters that is the only thing that matters. He has done an amazing job at dividing the country into us vs. them.

 

[Scaff]

Are we to conclude that the police are among the 74 million by whom we are beset?

This is news to you?

As RatM said "Some of those that work forces, Are the same that burn crosses"

 

[TenEightyOne]

Are we to conclude that the police are among the 74 million by whom we are beset?

They're citizens, they're no different from anybody else regardless of how much military surplus they strap on to enforce parking tickets. So yes. They're subject to the same laws they swear to uphold and when they feel that their personal views conflict with discharging those sworn duties they should remove themselves from the office or be removed.

 

[Samus]

Because he is seen as the "anti-liberal" and to his supporters that is the only thing that matters. He has done an amazing job at dividing the country into us vs. them.

Sure I get that, but why him and now his family over plenty of others in his ilk? Not that I want them to find it, but surely there must be a better version of Trump to latch onto, rather than hoping the Trump dynasty continues? I don't remember Trump ever being wildly popular generally pre-2015, but I'm not American, so maybe I just didn't see it.

 

[jjaisli]

Quite. What an idiot this guy is. Since when was it a violation of anyone's rights for a private business to refuse to publish someone else's words?

Josh Hawley is many things, and many of the adjectives I could use to describe him would leave me in violation of the AUP. But he isn't stupid. And that makes his post all the more despicable. He's well aware of what he's saying. And well aware of what Simon & Schuster's decision is or isn't in relation to the 1st Amendment. But he's a very clever, political animal. And he's playing to his base. It's like waving a bucket of fresh fish in front of a group of seals at the zoo.

In other news...

I should probably post this in the conspiracy thread as right now it remains a series of loosely connected dots and stories that are starting to form a picture. But I suspect by the weekend we’ll know more and if there really is something to all of this...

Let’s start here:


That off-duty police officers or members of the military took part in right wing protests is not hard to believe. But then there’s this...

https://www.latimes.com/world-natio...riticizes-cooperation-from-pentagon?_amp=true

President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team expressed frustration Friday with the level of cooperation they’re getting from political appointees at the Department of Defense, saying there has been “an abrupt halt in the already limited cooperation there.”

Biden‘s transition team claims they were not getting cooperation from the Pentagon since mid December. And why? Might it have something to do with this?

https://apnews.com/article/election...s-mark-esper-58adf1d272afe333562c54daba541e84

Trump announced the news in a tweet, saying that “effective immediately” Christopher Miller, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will serve as acting secretary, sidestepping the department’s No.2-ranking official, Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist.

Trump’s abrupt move to dump Esper triggers questions about what the president may try to do in the next few months before he leaves office, including adjustments in the presence of troops overseas or other national security changes.

There are some pretty clear allegations in this article that Trump tried to purge people in positions of power at the Pentagon and put his own loyalists in those positions, effectively meaning that certain information would have to go through Trump’s people.

And then we get here...

https://www.businessinsider.com/pen...esponse-to-insurrection-attempt-report-2021-1

The Pentagon blocked the DC National Guard from receiving riot gear or interacting with protesters without explicit approval from Trump's defense secretary

and even here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...b-b2e8-3339e73d9da2_story.html?outputType=amp

Pentagon placed limits on D.C. Guard ahead of pro-Trump protests due to narrow mission

I realize the word coup has been used very liberally in the press over actions Trump has taken. But if we really find out that much of these Q anon conspiracy theories were purposely directed propaganda trying to wind up the masses, there could be a very clear case that what happened in Washington was indeed an attempted coup by the President using his mass of deluded followers with many insiders in the mix. Put together, the series of articles indicate:

- Trump put a series of loyalists in positions of power at the Pentagon shortly after he lost the election and his attempts at overthrowing the election in court weren’t going well.

- those officials, possibly, disrupted the transition team from passing any information over to Biden as to what was going on.

- Those same officials at the Pentagon stopped additional forces coming to aid and from turning away protesters from storming the capital.

What I’m not sure, even if all of this is true, it’s what they were truly hoping to accomplish? Taking members of Congress or the Senate prisoner? Forcing them to count ballots in their favor? How could they ever have hoped to legitimize such an action? So I’m not completely convinced that all of this really is connected. However, as incompetent as Trump is and as half-baked as most of his ideas are, perhaps this really was his plan and his line of reasoning simply stopped there. Perhaps there was more that he was trying to put in place and just couldn't.

That so many in positions of power are now abandoning him like rats from a sinking ship leads me to believe that they themselves are putting this together and realizing just how serious this was.

 

[TheHun99]

Josh Hawley is many things, and many of the adjectives I could use to describe him would leave me in violation of the AUP. But he isn't stupid. And that makes his post all the more despicable. He's well aware of what he's saying. And well aware of what Simon & Schuster's decision is or isn't in relation to the 1st Amendment. But he's a very clever, political animal. And he's playing to his base. It's like waving a bucket of fresh fish in front of a group of seals at the zoo.

In other news...

I should probably post this in the conspiracy thread as right now it remains a series of loosely connected dots and stories that are starting to form a picture. But I suspect by the weekend we’ll know more and if there really is something to all of this...

Let’s start here:


That off-duty police officers or members of the military took part in right wing protests is not hard to believe. But then there’s this...

https://www.latimes.com/world-natio...riticizes-cooperation-from-pentagon?_amp=true



Biden‘s transition team claims they were not getting cooperation from the Pentagon since mid December. And why? Might it have something to do with this?

https://apnews.com/article/election...s-mark-esper-58adf1d272afe333562c54daba541e84



There are some pretty clear allegations in this article that Trump tried to purge people in positions of power at the Pentagon and put his own loyalists in those positions, effectively meaning that certain information would have to go through Trump’s people.

And then we get here...

https://www.businessinsider.com/pen...esponse-to-insurrection-attempt-report-2021-1



and even here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...b-b2e8-3339e73d9da2_story.html?outputType=amp



I realize the word coop has been used very liberally in the press over actions Trump has taken. But if we really find out that much of these Q anon conspiracy theories were purposely directed propaganda trying to wind up the masses, there could be a very clear case that what happened in Washington was indeed an attempted coop by the President using his mass of deluded followers with many insiders in the mix. Put together, the series of articles indicate:

- Trump put a series of loyalists in positions of power at the Pentagon shortly after he lost the election and his attempts at overthrowing the election in court weren’t going well.

- those officials, possibly, disrupted the transition team from passing any information over to Biden as to what was going on.

- Those same officials at the Pentagon stopped additional forces coming to aid and from turning away protesters from storming the capital.

What I’m not sure, even if all of this is true, it’s what they were truly hoping to accomplish? Taking members of Congress or the Senate prisoner? Forcing them to count ballots in their favor? How could they ever have hoped to legitimize such an action? So I’m not completely convinced that all of this really is connected. However, as incompetent as Trump is and as half-baked as most of his ideas are, perhaps this really was his plan and his line of reasoning simply stopped there. Perhaps there was more that he was trying to put in place and just couldn't.

That so many in positions of power are now abandoning him like rats from a sinking ship leads me to believe that they themselves are putting this together and realizing just how serious this was.

I’m not a native English speaker but I think it’s not “coop” but “coup (d’état)”.

 

[Famine]

I’m not a native English speaker but I think it’s not “coop” but “coup (d’état)”.

It's only a coup if it comes from the Coup D'Etat region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling tantrums.

 

[jjaisli]

I’m not a native English speaker but I think it’s not “coop” but “coup (d’état)”.

thank you. And of course. I posted all that on my phone and I'm blaming it on autocorrect.

 

[Samus]

When the chicken uprising happens I suppose that'll be a coop coup.

 

[Blitz24]

When the chicken uprising happens I suppose that'll be a coop coup.

Which is the only location Hawley is fit to be in following his statements. I wonder how long before he is disbarred.

 

[PeterJB]

When the chicken uprising happens I suppose that'll be a coop coup.

If it's against a supermarket chain it'll be a co-op coop coup.

 

[Darla Starch]

Stop egging on these clucking puns.

 

[UKMikey]

When the chicken uprising happens I suppose that'll be a coop coup.

It all depends upon whether or not they can pullet off.

 

[Populuxe]

If it's against a supermarket chain it'll be a co-op coop coup.

If they arrive in a two-door automobile, that will be the co-op coop coup coupé.

 

[Keef]

There is a news outlet which shall go nameless here which claims video evidence of police helping the rioters in the Capitol building attack. Another outlet runs a story about the head of the Chicago police union defending those who stormed the Capitol.

https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicag...-capitol/6842fa80-3b83-4396-af05-a5f15f4ac740

Are we to conclude that the police are among the 74 million by whom we are beset?

Yes.

Sure I get that, but why him and now his family over plenty of others in his ilk?

As far as I'm aware there simply aren't any others like him with such a platform. I know it's hard to believe, and it's taken me a long time to grasp it and have the confidence to exclaim it to any Trump supporter's face, but Trump is truly one of those once-in-a-lifetime (several times in a lifetime?) figures who will find their place in a history book as able to rally masses to do terrible things. Some of the most politically powerful people on planet earth like Mitch McConnell literally gave up the ghost Wednesday night. As crooked and entrenched as he and a few others are, they literally gave up on live TV. I can name a few infamous people who never gave up and Trump appears to be among them.

 

[Rossell2]

 

[TenEightyOne]

If they arrive in a two-door automobile, that will be the co-op coop coup coupé.

It they stop for a brew* they can have a co-op coop coup coupé cuppa.

* Mug of tea

 

[TB]

co-op coop coup coupé cuppa.

 

[TexRex]

 

[PeterJB]

It they stop for a brew* they can have a co-op coop coup coupé cuppa.

* Mug of tea

If they're in to law enforcement it'll be a co-op coop coup coupé cop cuppa.