All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Mister Mets]

When the media don't know what the facts are, they become impatient. They start to speculate on what happened or what might happen. And if enough of them and enough of us believe one specific speculation, that becomes the conventional wisdom. However, we should not mistake conventional wisdom based on speculation for actual facts.

It's a fair point that there's more at play than groupthink and bias. But there were strong factual claims about how likely or not it is that the virus could have emerged from a lab.

Chait's New York magazine piece looked at the times the media failed to make this distinction.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021...ton-trump.html

The New York Times had a headline "Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/b...ton-china.html

The Washington Post had a headline "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...us-conspiracy/

An NPR summary started "Virus researchers say there is virtually no chance that the new coronavirus was released as result of a laboratory accident in China or anywhere else."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...s-lab-accident

Vox wrote about how "a dangerous conspiracy theory about the origin of the health crisis won’t die."

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/4/2115660...hina-wuhan-lab

Is pretty much a larger indictment that a moderator here is suggesting that the media is less responsible than the republican party or conservative thinking.

You're wrong on several counts. I'm not a moderator, and I haven't been one for a year.

You're also reading stuff into my comments that I haven't said. Personally, I think the average reporter does their job better than Donald Trump did, and I don't believe I've ever suggested otherwise.

In response the the back-and-forth on the last page, would it have killed the news cycle to maybe look exclusively at sources independent of the GOP to make sure the "lab leak" wasn't all hot air? Or was there the tribalistic assumption that ANY source - reputable or no - who found some kind of credible lead on it was "in bed with the GOP/Trump"?

The Seattle Times has a good take on what people knew and when.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-...came-credible/

Denmark and NSA were spying on Germany's Angela Merkel

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57302806

Why are governments still doing this to close allies? Probably because they can.

Spying does make sense as governments want to know about decisions that will affect them (IE- What is Germany planning to do about an international trade treaty? What's going on behind the scenes?) But it feels surprising to see it from Denmark.

One possible truth does not vindicate a thousand lies.

Republicans play the victim regardless of facts. Cry wolf enough times, and there might be one.

The media has a responsibility to not inflame the situation too. As sensationalist as the media is, the last thing we want is them taking the word of known liars.

There's a reason why reporters are required to say 'alleged murderer', regardless of the evidence against the accused.

With over a thousand lies to his credit, Trump and those who support him have only themselves to blame.

The Nazis were against animal cruelty and smoking. The Soviet Union outlawed lobotomies. But there's a reason why they are not regarded as human rights organizations.

First, can we all agree that Trump supporters are no where near as bad as Nazis or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin?

The focus on Trump seems to be an example of whataboutism. Trump's flaws don't matter in an analysis of the media.

[worstblogever]

First, can we all agree that Trump supporters are no where near as bad as Nazis or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin?

The focus on Trump seems to be an example of whataboutism. Trump's flaws don't matter in an analysis of the media.

Did you unironically intend to use a sentence that's an example of whataboutism to argue why Trump is somehow an example of it on your party? Because Jesus, man. Undermining yourself.

Also, own your party's s***. They're all meeting with Trump, and the stories of sitting members of Congress STILL cavorting around with Qanon loons and insurrection participants when its leadership isn't headed to Mar-a-Lago to bend and scrape and Dear Leader's feet...

It's his party. And they're a bunch of conspiracy theorists, liars, fascists and political nihilists. This is your party now, Mets. Multiple people on this forum have spent the past six years saying this is what it would end up becoming if nobody within it could muster the courage to stand against Trump, and have others stand with them. And... well, not more than a spine at a time could be found. So this is them.

The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting you have one, so find enough spine to call out those without one, rather than pretend that this isn't clearly what's happened.

[Mister Mets]

This is relevant. You don't get to act like we're declaring places 'racist shitholes generations later', as if it was so very long ago that black people in the south were mauled by police dogs marching for their civil rights. There are people alive with direct connections to people who were born slaves. To act as if it was so long ago and people have moved past is to fail to understand just how recent this history is, and just how recent Jim Crow being struck down is. History matters, and the point of pre-clearance was to take into the account of the history of voter suppression in these states, whom promptly *returned* to the antics of voter suppression immediately afterwards, thus proving the point that pre-clearance was still needed. The thousands of closed polling places and drop off of minority representation in those states says so.

John Roberts, of course, knew this, but also knew that removing pre-clearance could be hidden behind 'lol we elected a black guy so obviously racism is over and this is SO unfair to target these states when these problems were just so OLD and no longer RELEVANT'. .

Of course, reality bore out the opposite: naked voter suppression has been engaged in, now, in an effort to further entrench hard-right minority rule.

The general understanding when the Civil Rights Act was passed was that the decision about what locations deserve a higher level of scrutiny is a temporary one. The people who were in charge then are not in charge now. The party that dominated then isn't dominant any longer. While it would be wrong to blame people there for the sins of their parents, it is also worth noting that many of the people who are in the South moved there or are the children of those who did. A focus on history also neglects new abuses, since new regions would not have to worry about preclearance.

Regarding the new policies, it stands to reason that if a barrier to policies is removed, people will take advantage of it. The bottleneck is gone, so things that would have happened a decade ago would happen now. There is also the question of whether the decisions are a continuation of the pre-Civil Rights era, or a new problem. If it's the latter, we should have regulations against that, instead of relying on a law meant to solve a separate problem.

It is an unpleasant argument to make that the Southern Republicans of the present should be held to a higher level of scrutiny because of the actions of Southern Democrats generations ago, but it should be made clearly and unambiguously. Democrats weren't making it.

As a side note, the argument about the past not being so distant has a conservative valence, as they'll argue that abuses in living memory (LBJ stealing his first statewide election, Jimmy Carter getting elected to state legislature after demonstrating that his primary opponent benefited from widespread fraud) justify strict Voter ID laws and restrictions.

Of course Mets would like to think so. Remind me again how many polling places have been closed and where they are predominantly located and how long black people have to stand in line to vote. Mets needs to a better job investigating the disparate impacts of voter suppression laws rather than turning a blind eye to it and pretending the threat is 'exaggerated', especially in the face of his party's overt authoritarian turn. It's weird how Republicans can pass laws that they have nakedly admitted think will benefit them but Mets reserves his tut-tuts for democrats wanting to make DC a state or people getting angry about it being made more difficult for people to vote.

And that you still trot out 'but the primary!' as a reason for federal eletions to not be a holiday remains effing hilarious, Mets. If it was easier to vote on election day, maybe some of these elections wouldn't be so easily decided within the party instead of outside of it. Why, parties might actually have to do a better job actually competing for votes instead of just making it harder to do so in a representative democracy.

Also, Republicans could always compete for the votes of the people living in DC and Puerto Rico. They might even have a shot there if they wanted to bother trying.

We may have a major difference in what we think the effects of policies are, if you're thinking that current levels of voter suppression so significant that it will make the typical general election more relevant than the primary. My understanding of it is that policies considered to be voter suppression has more of an effect on the margins (it can change the result of a close election, but it wouldn't swing Iowa or Ohio to Biden.) It's not going to make rural Kentucky, or Harlem suddenly be competitive, and any implication otherwise shows either bad faith, or a poor understanding of American politics.

2020 had record-high turnout, which complicates the discussion a bit. Is the 33% who didn't vote so overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning?
https://www.census.gov/library/stori...-election.html

At this point, it's pretty easy to vote, so there are other barriers, which are going to remain no matter what. Most of the people who don't vote don't want to, and don't know much about the candidates.

I do think Democrats and Republicans are going for laws that benefit them. Democrats are partially beneficiaries of some policies that aren't random (IE- they're overrepresented in areas with high population density, which makes certain voter drive efforts advantageous.) I do believe that many are going to claim to have integrity, but it's largely pretext. They just want what helps them win. One good example of how a lot of the claims to a higher principle from the left are just pretext is the way Virginia Democrats had a different opinion of gerrymandering when their party controlled the state than they did when there was divided control.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/u...stricting.html

I think we can agree that the House of Delegates of Virginia is generally representative of the Democratic party. It's not unusually noble, or corrupt compared to other gatherings of elected officials in the Democratic party. In this case, there were some decent Democrats (9 of 55) who stayed consistent in their views, and helped an independent commission bill pass. But it showed that for the rest, it was not about integrity.

[godisawesome]

Seeing a lot of folks saying this. Including Walter Shaub, several generals, former Secretaries of Defense....

Flynn getting activated just to be open-and-shut court-martialed and bankrupted when he's stripped of his benefits and jailed via military tribunal would be some poetic justice.

Viewing this in a pragmatic political light... Biden wouldn’t want to do this himself, or have anyone in his political sphere involved with it. What you’d want is an active military superior of Flynn, preferably someone who’s known to not be a Democrat, give Flynn a warning, then when he oversteps, activate and court martial him.

The risk with such a maneuver will remain Flynn leaning into the idea he’s a “martyr.” He got serious cache among Trump supporters because he clashed with and blamed Obama for his removal from his highest post. He would also still be unlikely to be truly bankrupted - even if you blunted his ability to appeal as a martyr to the center and to the lest crazy right, the hard right doesn’t even need it to see him as a martyr, and it’s likely any bad actors, foreign or domestic, would use him as a tool.

[Mister Mets]

Did you unironically intend to use a sentence that's an example of whataboutism to argue why Trump is somehow an example of it on your party? Because Jesus, man. Undermining yourself.

Also, own your party's s***. They're all meeting with Trump, and the stories of sitting members of Congress STILL cavorting around with Qanon loons and insurrection participants when its leadership isn't headed to Mar-a-Lago to bend and scrape and Dear Leader's feet...

It's his party. And they're a bunch of conspiracy theorists, liars, fascists and political nihilists. This is your party now, Mets. Multiple people on this forum have spent the past six years saying this is what it would end up becoming if nobody within it could muster the courage to stand against Trump, and have others stand with them. And... well, not more than a spine at a time could be found. So this is them.

The first step to dealing with a problem is admitting you have one, so find enough spine to call out those without one, rather than pretend that this isn't clearly what's happened.

Typically with whataboutism, the person responding brings up the comparison.

If you complain about Michael Flynn, and I say "What about X?" that would be whataboutism.

It is not whataboutism to respond to a post about how the way we discuss Nazis and the Soviet Union may be relevant to how we discuss Trump supporters. The comparison was already there. I just wanted to make sure that we're all in agreement that Trump supporters are nowhere near as bad as Nazis or Stalin's apparatchiks.

Again, bleeding-heart Warren supporter lefty nutjob but I agree wholeheartedly with Mets here. The media isn't and should never be a soldier in the fight for Democratic values vs Republican values. That this is even debatable gives legitimacy to every right-wing complaint about media bias over the decades and crystallized in Trump's dumbed-down "Fake News" slogan. If they can't at least try to tamp down their biases and report the facts then they are just left-wing propaganda, as the Limbaughs and the Trumps of the world have said all along. You can't eliminate all bias, and while I'm obviously biased I believe facts and reality tend to be biased against Trump and his kind anyway, but it should be the goal you're aiming for.

If you want to take a Trump down you do it by reporting on the horrible things he's done and repeating it until it gets through, not talking about the new crazy tweet he put out. That might get ratings and eyeballs but not serve the purpose of getting information useful to the voter out there. I get hatred for Trump and his kind, I think most of us here do, but undermining our values and sinking to the lowest levels we can to try to combat him is likely what they want. They're better at those fights. And if you undermine journalism (more than it already has been) it encourages the conspiracy nuts and Q-Anoners to look to alternative sources. Usually crazier and more dangerous ones, that they'll trust because they like what they hear. Easier to make that choice when you can point at mainstream media and legitimately say, "Well it's all propaganda anyway" and objectivity and facts take a backseat to an agenda (even if it's an agenda I agree with).

If we want to editorialize and add context that's fine when it's pointing out the differences between countries that had coordinated federal responses to Covid and what their death rates were compared to ours, and how much of that is Trump's fault. Or the fact that he openly mocked POWs because one insulted him (still boggles my mind he suffered no consequences for that, usually so much of a no-no that it doesn't need to be said because nobody sane would consider doing it), or how often he cheated small businesses and then sued them into oblivion when they tried to collect on what they were owed. There are hundreds (thousands?) of ways to legitimately report on (and if desired, "attack") Trump or his kind. You don't have to make things up, or suppress things, or dismiss things out of hand because they might be beneficial or even just suggested by "the enemy".



We all do it. We do it to allies, enemies, corporations, institutions, etc. They do it to us. Probably always have/always will.

On voter suppression: This is like smoking being bad for you, when the tobacco companies always had research that said it wasn't and that cancer claims were unproven. The Republicans have already admitted, on camera, multiple times, that these laws are about suppressing the vote on the Democratic side to gain advantage. They make noises about integrity and rule of law, but they know and we know what it's really about. Is it meant to be racist, or is that a side effect because minorities tend to vote Democratic so these policies end up disproportionately impacting them, or is it a "win-win" for them because suppressing minority votes makes a good portion of their base happy on top of the fact that it helps them win elections? Don't know. But I think it's beyond disputing that the main goal isn't election integrity but rather the opposite.

If they truly cared about every vote being counted they'd work to pay for photo IDs for every citizen, sending folk out like the census to get confirmation, pre-register all voters in their district and making it easier to confirm change of residency to allow them to vote when it changes close to an election, and designing a way for citizens to check that their vote was counted and correctly in a short enough time to avoid mistakes, adding rather than subtracting polling places, making Election Day a National Holiday, and doing everything they can to make sure every vote is counted and counted accurately so nobody is disenfranchised and no fraud occurs. They could do this if they made these changes federally and had oversight over each state's handling of it, down to the local precinct. They're not interested in that though. That doesn't help them. In fact, it's pretty established that the more people who vote the worse it is for Republicans.

Thanks for the good word. I'm not sure how long it's going to last.

I think there is an undercurrent of debates that haven't settled underneath the questions of which party benefits. One example was Chris Hayes arguing that the electoral college would be unconstitutional if it weren't in the constitution, which has led to a counter-response that it shows a poor understanding of the constitution to suggest that it could have just changed so much without clear laws or amendments.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...e-constitution

The country has evolved from one in which the only people allowed to vote were white male landowners over 21 to one in which most adults can vote. There are still some unsettled questions, and Democrats seem to view some of their assumptions as settled when it's not the case, and even if a contentious conclusion were accepted, there are further nuances (How much flexibility should someone who can make a claim to residence in multiple locations have to determine where they vote? Should a legislature be tilted to reflect the larger percentage of the electorate, or should we assume that wins 62% of the vote will have more than 62% of seats?)

Viewing this in a pragmatic political light... Biden wouldn’t want to do this himself, or have anyone in his political sphere involved with it. What you’d want is an active military superior of Flynn, preferably someone who’s known to not be a Democrat, give Flynn a warning, then when he oversteps, activate and court martial him.

The risk with such a maneuver will remain Flynn leaning into the idea he’s a “martyr.” He got serious cache among Trump supporters because he clashed with and blamed Obama for his removal from his highest post. He would also still be unlikely to be truly bankrupted - even if you blunted his ability to appeal as a martyr to the center and to the lest crazy right, the hard right doesn’t even need it to see him as a martyr, and it’s likely any bad actors, foreign or domestic, would use him as a tool.

What Flynn said stupid but protected by the first amendment. I agree it would be really if Biden encouraged anyone to go after him. The people who'd like to see it wouldn't want President DeSantis to try it four years later.

Ken White, a commentator on the All the President's lawyers podcast, noted existing law on the matter.

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1399350951836676099

Yes, General Flynn’s call for a military coup is protected by the First Amendment, as it is not intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action. Arguments that the overthrow of the government is warranted, morally or politically justified, or desirable are protected.

An update to this observation: not every law still on the books is constitutional or enforceable. Lots of people are citing the Smith Act for the proposition that merely advocating a coup can be punished as a crime.

But Yates (1957) directly and explicitly limited the Smith Act, and Brandenburg (1969) limited the application of all advocacy/incitement statutes. There are tons of laws on the books widely understood to be unconstitutional and unenforceable as written.

[worstblogever]

Typically with whataboutism, the person responding brings up the comparison.

I presented an argument that wasn't "whatabout" so much as "you're not paying attention to these examples that invalidate the exact argument you're making." You wanted to know why people are treating the conspiracy theory about a Wuhan lab coming from Republicans like a Conspiracy Theory. It's because they are conspiracy theorists, or are actively associating with them publicly while pretending that it's not happening (a contagious trait within the GQP, it seems).

What you presented was a "rubber/glue" reaction, while showing no ability to confront the truth about what his party has obviously become, and not bothering to search for any spine among anyone in that GQP party.

Predictable, really. Par for the course of the past six years of ignoring all the warnings. And you'll probably wonder why people think they're somehow worse after its all ignored more.

[mathew101281]

What would we do in the event of an attempted military coup? I see a lot of public shaming, but not a lot of talk about what we are going to do if these crazies try this?

[worstblogever]

What would we do in the event of an attempted military coup? I see a lot of public shaming, but not a lot of talk about what we are going to do if these crazies try this?

Probably the same thing I did when Trump came to pardon Arpaio... head to to be a medic for the protesters, and hope the armed police (or military) didn't target me as one. Like they tend to do now.

That would be the protest where the crowd was tear-gassed without warning after a few cops tossed water bottles at their own fellow officers from their vantage point on a parking garage as the excuse to "disperse an unruly crowd". Lawsuit still pending. A large portion of the protesters were on the grounds of a church, stop me if you've heard of someone gassing people protesting Trump on church grounds before.

[Wildling]

I presented an argument that wasn't "whatabout" so much as "you're not paying attention to these examples that invalidate the exact argument you're making." You wanted to know why people are treating the conspiracy theory about a Wuhan lab coming from Republicans like a Conspiracy Theory. It's because they are conspiracy theorists, or are actively associating with them publicly while pretending that it's not happening (a contagious trait within the GQP, it seems).

What you presented was a "rubber/glue" reaction, while showing no ability to confront the truth about what his party has obviously become, and not bothering to search for any spine among anyone in that GQP party.

Predictable, really. Par for the course of the past six years of ignoring all the warnings. And you'll probably wonder why people think they're somehow worse after its all ignored more.

Republicans are the party of hoarding their inconvenient truths, maybe to the grave. Down to the F word, the way things are going.

[shooshoomanjoe]

What would we do in the event of an attempted military coup? I see a lot of public shaming, but not a lot of talk about what we are going to do if these crazies try this?

Flynn isn't in the military anymore. I don't see the US military doing a coup.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Typically with whataboutism, the person responding brings up the comparison.

If you complain about Michael Flynn, and I say "What about X?" that would be whataboutism.

It is not whataboutism to respond to a post about how the way we discuss Nazis and the Soviet Union may be relevant to how we discuss Trump supporters. The comparison was already there. I just wanted to make sure that we're all in agreement that Trump supporters are nowhere near as bad as Nazis or Stalin's apparatchiks.


Thanks for the good word. I'm not sure how long it's going to last.

I think there is an undercurrent of debates that haven't settled underneath the questions of which party benefits. One example was Chris Hayes arguing that the electoral college would be unconstitutional if it weren't in the constitution, which has led to a counter-response that it shows a poor understanding of the constitution to suggest that it could have just changed so much without clear laws or amendments.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...e-constitution

The country has evolved from one in which the only people allowed to vote were white male landowners over 21 to one in which most adults can vote. There are still some unsettled questions, and Democrats seem to view some of their assumptions as settled when it's not the case, and even if a contentious conclusion were accepted, there are further nuances (How much flexibility should someone who can make a claim to residence in multiple locations have to determine where they vote? Should a legislature be tilted to reflect the larger percentage of the electorate, or should we assume that wins 62% of the vote will have more than 62% of seats?)



What Flynn said stupid but protected by the first amendment. I agree it would be really if Biden encouraged anyone to go after him. The people who'd like to see it wouldn't want President DeSantis to try it four years later.

Ken White, a commentator on the All the President's lawyers podcast, noted existing law on the matter.

https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1399350951836676099

Inciting an insurrection is against the law. If Flynn actually rallied the GOP into an insurrection it wouldn't be protected speech; which is why I'm guessing the GOP are against a Jan 6th investigation.

[Tami]

The various dishonesties in Rand Paul’s cocaine-quail presentation

No one can ever claim that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) doesn’t know how to attract media attention.

Of late, Paul has centered that effort on challenging scientific orthodoxy on the coronavirus pandemic. He’s gotten into repeated public arguments with the government’s top infectious-disease expert, the National Institutes of Health’s Anthony S. Fauci. He’s vocally rejected the coronavirus vaccine in favor of the natural immunity he got when he contracted the virus last year. In short, he’s become an anchor of pandemic skepticism in the Senate.

On Thursday evening, though, he intertwined that approach to government science with his long-standing opposition to government spending. In a speech from the Senate floor, he drew attention to taxpayer-funded research that he presented as unnecessary and superfluous.

So, for example,” he continued, “if you want to study cocaine and you want to study Japanese quail using cocaine and you want to know if they’re more sexually promiscuous, you want to know how you get approval for funding? You call up your other buddies that study cocaine in animals and you say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great new study, would you guys like to join in it and be my peer review committee?’ So it’s actually — the ridiculous studies that we discover, they’re being voted on by people who are selected by people doing the studies.”

He even had a hard-to-miss visual, depicting a quail with its head buried in a pile of white powder, Scarface-like.

On the graphic Paul used on Tuesday, the amount was listed as $874,503. In the one he used on Thursday night, it was $356,933.140. That’s a big shift: from less than $1 million to about $357 million — or so it may seem.

In reality, that shift is only a function of the weird way in which the Thursday night figure was shown. You’ll notice that Paul and I, in the paragraph above, wrote the 14 cents as “. 140” — making it look like the figure was in the millions. It wasn’t. In fact, the $874,000 figure was correct and, as I’ll show in a second, I’m not convinced that the way in which Paul wrote it was intentionally misleading (though it was clearly misleading).

Why? Because of the long, long history of this claim.

As it turns out, that $357,000 graphic has appeared on the Senate floor before: Rand Paul used it during a presentation in 2018.

Your first response, then, should be to wonder why the amount hasn’t increased. We spent $357,000 in 2018 and then again/still in 2021? What gives?

The answer is that, yes, the government spent the same amount on this research in 2018 as it did in 2021. That value was zero. Zero dollars spent on the cocaine-quail research.

[The Cool Thatguy]

First, can we all agree that Trump supporters are no where near as bad as Nazis or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin?

The focus on Trump seems to be an example of whataboutism. Trump's flaws don't matter in an analysis of the media.

In what regard?

Because I remember some people Trump described as 'very fine people' marching and chanting 'The Jews will not replace us'.

I mean, the original Nazis could at least claim ignorance with regards to how bad Nazis are. These 'very fine people', not so much.

[Tami]

Russia's foreign minister said Capitol rioters are being 'persecuted,' setting the stage for a tense summit between Putin and Biden

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that rioters who took part in the January 6 attack on the Capitol are being "persecuted" by the US government.

Lavrov made the remarks at a press conference on Monday in Moscow, in which he discussed the planned summit between President Joe Biden and Russia's President Vladimir Putin later this month in Geneva.

Ahead of the meeting, Biden has said he will challenge Putin on Russia's human-rights record.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

First, can we all agree that Trump supporters are no where near as bad as Nazis or the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin?

No we can't.

Do we wait for Trump supporters to construct a dictatorship and orchestrate death squads and junta, or do we use the comparisons to signal the danger now and behave accordingly?

As a reader of Volker Ullrich's magnificent two-part biography of Hitler, the fact that shines clearly is that he benefitted from the unravelling of norms and a culture of leniency and impunity by the state which tolerated and licensed Hitler's actions including the Munich Beer Hall Putsch (aka the January 6 of the 1920s Weimar years) when they left him off with a slap of the wrist.

So the question is do we take action in Trump while he's in the stage of Munich or do we wait for the post-war Detrumpification trials to take a stand against him?

Because let's be clear, Donald Trump is a fascist. He wants to destroy democracy in America. That much is clear with Trump and his acolytes. If you cannot recognize that there's simply no point in continuing any discussion with you.