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Notes -
Trump just tweeted "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
I know that Belisarius thinks I'm a far-leftist (lol), but I think that a fair reading my post history will show that I am what I present myself as, more or less a classical liberal who hates both the left and the right.
I've spent a lot of time and energy both online and offline defending Trump and Trumpism from the often hysterically-phrased accusation that it is fascist, a huge threat, etc. I feel a bit like an idiot now, to be frank. I still hate the woke and am somewhat glad that Trumpism rose up to halt the woke's authoritarian tendencies... but lord, more and more I wish that it had been almost anything other than Trumpism doing it. The argument that Trumpism is fundamentally a classical liberal force is becoming more and more absurd almost by the hour, in my opinion.
Accelerationists (the three or four actual ones for whom it's not just a funny pretense) must be rubbing their hands raw with glee right now. Things are moving very fast.
As much as I appreciate some of what Trumpism is doing to upend stale norms and wokism, at this point I, and probably many other centrists are starting to think "shit, maybe the hysterical libs had a point about these people". And if politics is making me start to side even slightly with literal Redditors, you know that things are bad and crazy.
My biggest mistake, I think, was to extremely overestimate libs and the left. I really thought they would manage to blunt Trumpism's worst impulses and there would be a sort of stalemate like there was during Trump's first term. But libs and the left seem to be missing. Turns out that there is no deep state waiting with sharp fangs and CIA assassins to stop the orange man as soon as he tries to actually do anything that hurts the Blob. Instead, there are only old tired bureaucrats and the occasional protester wearing a pussy hat.
Whoops. Well, so much for that. I was wrong. And this shit is starting to be a bit genuinely alarming. I think I am, actually, getting tired of "winning". I wanted the woke to be defeated by classical liberals, not by a rage-filled vengeful gaggle of right-wing revolutionaries.
Jesus Christ. So unless the spooks succeed they don't exist, even if the last year has just been incident after incident proving they exist. Even if we now have plenty of evidence of the deep state and espionage shenanigans, the media said this is different so let's get scared for America again! Progressive politics just let a large swathe of California burn to the ground and the media told us blaming politicians was the height of rudeness, but Trump said something typically hyperbolic, that is both appealing to red tribe sensibilities and and agitating to blue tribe sensibilities so let's all lose our minds like msnbc suggests! Bel is right, you can call yourself a centrist, but the only answer you will accept is the progressive status quo.
Edit: fixed a link
I just assume that if the deep state actually set up a shooting to assassinate Trump, they would probably succeed at killing him. It's hard for me to believe that they would manage to get a shooter within fairly easy range of him, yet the shooter would miss. The lone wolf theory seems way more plausible to me. In any case, if the deep state has had 10 years in which to kill Trump and they haven't done it, then they are fairly irrelevant as a political force, which is part of my original point.
As for the progressive status quo, I don't know where you are getting that from. I disagree with progressives on a range of issues, including HBD, policing, and the economic consequences of socialism. The average progressive would certainly not classify me as a fellow progressive if exposed to my unfiltered political ideas.
If Trump didn't turn his head at the exact second he did, he'd be dead now. Call it luck, call it coincidence, call it providence, it wasn't incompetence that saved Trump that day. You can, if you are naive or lying, claim incompetence put him in that position, which is exactly why pretending to be retarded has been such an integral strategy for the deep state. And it is also why the lead 'counter sniper' in Trump's SS detail was two years into his career, wasn't on counter sniper detail, and forgot his radio. And why that chubby cutie was playing hot potato with her gun. And why they blamed the local police. And every other insane detail from that fiasco.
As for the progressive status quo, it's because you keep buying into this ridiculous hysteria despite a decade of fake news declaring every saucy tweet Trump fires off the end of America and democracy. And never mind that the people we supposedly put in charge of promoting America and democracy abroad were primarily lining their own pockets but also helping fund groups that literally fucking hate America and democracy. And you don't mind it, because the media, which you inexplicably still trust, tells you it's just defunding trans operas and aids cures and you probably can't fix it anyway. You have to recognise by now that you are being manipulated. I mean how can you read the motte, read posts by people like @WhiningCoil and @jeroboam and me and not realise that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." is a blatant appeal to red tribe values, in the same category as 'The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time' and '1776 WILL COMMENCE AGAIN'?
Edit: edited out a cheap shot
About the assassination attempt: look, it's just clear to me that there is nothing necessarily surprising or conspiratorial about the Secret Service fucking up after successfully protecting one of the most hated figures in US history, who also constantly does outdoor rallies, for 10 years. It would be surprising if they didn't eventually fuck up.
As for your second paragraph, I think that you profoundly misunderstand where I am coming from. I have spent years regularly arguing against people who engage in anti-Trump hysteria. As recently as a few months ago, I was telling lib friends that their horror of Trump was overblown and misguided. I'm not some kind of crypto leftist who is here to convince people to hate Trump, for fuck's sake. I am telling you the truth, which is that until recently I thought Trump was part good and part bad but I felt he would be effectively contained by checks and balances, but I am now worried because I am beginning to see the checks and balances waver. You may agree with me, you may disagree with me, but the reality is that I am not making a bad faith argument. I am literally just telling you about the evolution of my political thought. A few months ago I really thought that Trump's second term would be a nothingburger, both because Trump's first term was a nothingburger and because I assumed that libs and leftists would put up more resistance than they actually are.
The idea that I "inexplicably trust" the media is absurd to me. I have spent years criticizing the media to anyone who will listen. If you assume that I am some slavish devotee of the media, you are just plain wrong. I hate and distrust the mainstream media, but that doesn't mean that I have to like Trumpism.
"Eventually"?
Where are all the other assassination attempts that they caught? If some guy showing up with a rifle at all those rallies were some sort of regular occurrence, and this one retarded dude lucked out and slipped through, what you say would make sense -- but this is not the case.
They have one job, and the first chance they had to do it, they fucked it up. OR -- they've been doing their job OK, then one day they didn't.
I do not believe you.
There was the second attempt two months later where the Secret Service caught that guy on the golf course.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Donald_Trump_in_Florida
And this list of other stories I don't remember even hearing half of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_incidents_involving_Donald_Trump
11 incidents in 9 years.
Mostly unarmed crazy people with no ability to do actual harm -- you can't brush this off as 'oh bad luck, bound to happen eventually what with so much public speaking and so many attempts on his life' when the very first guy who came to a speech with a gun was able to get multiple shots in the near vicinity of Trump's brainstem.
They didn't eventually fuck up -- they fucked up on the first try.
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I agree with you on the assassination attempt side: along with the various procedural faults and failures to analyze or punish the source of those procedural faults, the post-incident review has not gone well.
On the other...
June 8, 2023:
October 11th, 2024:
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