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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen

IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election, at least as of a few years ago. See that entire looking spectre of Russian Collusion and the probably-wrong dossier. And I expect a similar fraction of whichever side loses this year to think similarly, even though I think it's pretty stupid generally.

IIRC a pretty similar number of Democrats said the same thing about the 2016 election

I'd be very interested if you have a source on this.

  • -11

Thanks, that'll be a useful bit of info in the future. Saved.

Still, there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side. The likely counter would be the Mueller investigation, but it was very different from J6. It's not an ongoing idea that all elections are fake. Harris isn't implying "wait until I win or lose to see if the election is legitimate" like Trump is.

  • -26

There was literally a riot to prevent Trump's inauguration called "DisruptJ20." Even wikipedia has an article about it.

We are planning to shut down the inauguration, that's the short of it ... We're pretty literal about that, we are trying to create citywide paralysis on a level that I don't think has been seen in D.C. before. We're trying to shut down pretty much every ingress into the city as well as every checkpoint around the actual inauguration parade route.

The feds dropped all charges, including of the black-clad leftist terrorist arsonists. Just like they did in 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/government-drops-charges-against-all-inauguration-protesters-n889531

You should ask yourself why you forgot these events happened just because the TV stopped talking about them.

Maybe you should also read the Wikipedia article?

In late November 2017, six people charged with rioting went on trial. Prosecutors alleged that these six people were taking part in DisruptJ20 protests and vandalism. A jury trial found the six defendants not guilty on all counts in December 2017. On January 18, 2018, the U.S. Justice Department dropped charges against 129 people, leaving 59 defendants to face charges related to the DisruptJ20 protest. By early July 2018, federal prosecutors had dropped all charges against all defendants in the case.

The reason the DOJ dropped the charges is because they lost every one they brought to trial.

  • -14

Jury trials based out of DC?

I don't wonder why.

Yes, as a general matter people have to be tried in the jurisdiction where the alleged crime they committed occurred. What should the DOJ have done? Wasted a bunch of money prosecuting another 200 cases it wasn't going to win?

  • -14

What should the DOJ have done? Wasted a bunch of money prosecuting another 200 cases it wasn't going to win?

Yes. Unironically, unabashedly, yes. There would be far less perception of a bureaucratic-driven double standard if the Jan 6 treatment had been done to equivalent rioters years before. That would be worth far more than the money saved.

The question of the thread is how to get an opposition party to buy into the legitimacy of the government of the victorious party. The value of a federal prosecution for state legitimacy in this context doesn't come from securing a conviction, it comes from showing the commitment of the government to seek to bring people to court on the basis of what they did, rather than on the basis of who they protested against. Appearing to turn a blind eye to one's own partisan faction and what they do against their political opponents is about the worst thing you can do for the legitimacy of a legal institution.

If the Justice Department sits on and does nothing with 200 cases against the opposition party, the opposition narrative has 200 examples of the other team- the winning team, in this case- not being prosecuted on the basis of acts conducted. When prosecution isn't being pursued for acts not in dispute, 'we wouldn't secure a conviction' is a poor shield to charges that the real reason is 'we didn't want to.' Especially when there would be plenty of people publicly acknowledging partisan sympathies from within the government, and especially if the opposition would be charged for equivalent acts later.

On the other hand, if the Justice Department brings up the evidence and prosecutes 200 cases and the DC jury fails to convict a single one, the opposition who lost will still be citing 200 cases of the Justice Department being on their side and insisting on the propriety of the Justice Department. This insistence will not only negate years of hostile accusations as to why the government didn't even attempt the case, but has all the usual psychological effects of challenging and/or undermining people who would later go from lauding the Justice Department's willingness to challenge bad actors to (when those were the other side) to accusing the Justice Department of uneven handling (when it was the oppsition side).

That DC juries would jury nullify is a separate issue, and a far better problem to have from the perspective of government legitimacy. If DC juries intend to consistently demonstrated partisan animosity, there are ways the government (Federal or the Congress under the majority party) can respond to that, much as how jury reforms were imposed on the civil rights south to ensure fairness. What is more important is that if DC juries are the problem, opposition party ire will be focused on them, and not the federal government itself.

The legitimacy of the government is considerably better off if a lack of justice is seen as the fault of the jury pool that voted 90% Democratic than if the government simply accepted it. One is a scandal for the Democratic Party, and one is a scandal for the state.

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