Yes. No. No. Yes, with presumably any other swing states with Democratic governors and/or state legislators being a close second, if there are any of those.
Last week or in recent months Trump may have had a path to an honest-to-God overt coup. Details could have varied but wouldn't have mattered too much. But on Inauguration Day, particularly if we're talking about state-level terrorism "armed protests", I don't see any way it doesn't backfire on the terrorists. At least in the short term. In the long term, as a recruitment tool, eh, there are lots of contingencies. But in the short term they're either going to jail or making themselves look bad in the process, even to current "conservatives", and in many cases both. If state governments aren't totally sure about prosecuting the terrorists, and the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, a lot of them have already committed federal crimes or will soon.
It's distressing that McConnell coming out (if deniably) against Trump didn't open up space for more legislators to do so. At least not a significant chunk - the Washington Post just listed five representatives who will vote yes on impeachment, Cheney, Upton, Kinzinger, Herrera Beutler, and Katko, and said another five are saying censure.
If on the removal vote we end up with a similar disproportion between Senate Republicans and House Republicans as we did for election certification, I may have to rethink my position on abolishing the Senate. Not to accept its antidemocracy, but to keep the aspect of fewer representatives representing more people for longer terms.
I guess we'll have right wing demonstrations. Inasmuch as right-wingers got a trifecta, they'll be protesting Biden rather than our state government. Which is not unlike the womens march we had in Helena 4 years ago. What I wonder about, though, is whether the right winger demonstrators will keep amping themselves up out beyond where the legislature is. There's a bill today to ban trans high school kids from playing sports on teams organized by gender, unless it's their birth gender. It'll pass the house surely, although there's some hope (how much it's hard to say) of killing it in the senate, and some thought that maybe the governor will want it killed. The bill to allow people to bring guns to college dorms, and to the annual Cat/Griz football game -- long a venue for the odd drunken brawl or two -- is another. The universities are scared to death that this'll kill out-of-state recruitment, which has real financial implications.
Guess we'll see.
I wonder about the financial implications too. Because it's pretty clear there aren't enough people worried about death and stuff to form a winning political coalition. Central Pennsylvania can talk about coal and manufacturing and real America, but it's paying a lot of its bills with tourist dollars.
And much of the rest of it with government subsidies.
Would someone reassure me that troops and NG in DC won't just state the coup themselves? When I see all these armed people in DC, that's all I can think of.
It's distressing that McConnell coming out (if deniably) against Trump didn't open up space for more legislators to do so. At least not a significant chunk - the Washington Post just listed five representatives who will vote yes on impeachment, Cheney, Upton, Kinzinger, Herrera Beutler, and Katko, and said another five are saying censure.
I'm still highly skeptical there will be many if any (other than Romney) GOP aye votes in the Senate, but I didn't really expect anything out of the House and I'm not sure we should read much into it. My understanding is that the combination of gerrymandering, primarying and general GOP losses means that the House GOP is way more hardline/Trumpist than the Senate, certainly as a proportion of the overall caucus.
7: The Joint Chiefs have come out against a coup. That's, uh, reassuring?
Regarding Mitch and the Republicans, I can't escape the feeling that we're playing with house money. If, two days ago, you had expressed concern that Mitch McConnell wouldn't push his caucus to support impeachment, I just would have stared at your blankly.
In a theoretical sense, I understand the disappointment, but good god, the fact that this is even a part of the discussion is astonishing to me. Do I have excessively low expectations of the Republicans? Is that even possible?
10: I skipped quickly between subjects, but in the first sentence I was thinking more about no new senators coming out for impeachment. (I suppose it was always more likely for senators to slip than representatives, but I didn't think it was likely for senators either.)
Biggest electoral concern for me in PA at the moment is the move to elect judge's by districts which will be well-gerrymandered. The Rs are trying to get in on the primary ballot rather than the general. Normally I would think they were right that that would favor them but not so sure now.
I see a lot of spadework being done to restrict voting (PA and elsewhere) before 2022 and '24. Mail-in voting will be a big target, however, in non-Covid years it was not necessarily a something that overwhelmingly helped Republicans. The gerrymandering will be a sight to behold as well. That SC decision is right up there with Shelby County as a voting right atrocity. I am not sure the analyses are complete but Wasserman is pretty sure that if Virginia, PA , and North Carolina had not had judicially-mandated un-gerrymandering that the House would have swung R last year. Sobering.
Not to downplay the ongoing dead-ender insurrection.
I think there is less chance for something like what happened on the 6th--a big mixed crowd ranging from semi-tourists and other supporters of Trump mixed in with (and giving cover) for hard extremists (and urged on in person by important elected officials). I'm thinking more along the lines of small violent groups and the pipe bomb/molotov cocktails as the main event rather than sidelights (were they intended as diversions?)
I think there will be a long. long tail with increased risks of violence against politicians, and other government officials. Sadly,
Domestic terrorism was always going to be the new normal in the Biden administration. I may be inappropriately optimistic here, but the early signs are that the FBI is prepared to take this stuff seriously.
I do hope the media is still pulling on the various exposed strings that have been exposed. (They've done a pretty good job up until now, even if I decry the sometimes passive, normalizing way they have presented it.)The horse-raceness of Impeachment is a shiny bauble, however.
America used to have to import most terrorists, but after four years of Trump, not only is most terrorist produced right here, we are exporting.
19; Yes. And people love to talk about blowback such as Afghan militia trained by CIA against the Soviets came back to haunt us. So in part has our volunteer military partaking in endless military adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan. (As individuals not as units at least ...
... so far.)
On Monday, Michigan's Capital Commission banned open carry inside the capital building once they got support from Mike Shirkey, the State Senate Majority Leader. Dana Nessel, the State Attorney General recently issued an opinion stating that the commission does have the authority to ban guns.
Opposition in the legislature seems to be led by House Speaker-elect Jason Wentworth, R-Clare, who said the commission "does not have the authority to set policy in the Capitol." He said in a news release that he will be "looking at options for handling that moving forward." But he said that Michigan State Police will immediately begin enforcing the new policy and he asked the public to follow the new policy "to ensure there is no confusion in the Capitol."
Will this help? Who knows.
I wonder if Airbnb cancelling all DC bookings isn't increasing the chances of things happening in the state capitals? Not that I don't think it's a good idea.
Heebie-- back to your initial questions. I actually think Arizona has some potential, too. Their Republican governor did the right thing during the election, but they are one of the states whose votes are contested. Paul Gosar was actually involved in planning events on the 6th. He is insane and his family has been trying to warn everyone for ages. I know I fussed about Boebert but I see her more as one of the sheep-- albeit a particularly noisy one.
I should state clearly that I know less than nothing about Arizona-- I just don't want it to be Michigan.
I wouldn't focus on the states. There probably will be violence there, but DC is where the action is. Trump is going to pull out all the stops then since he will see it as his last chance.
Unrest in Arizona is a possibility. Everyone's favorite QAnon Shaman first popped up in the day-after-election mob outside the Maricopa County recorder's office, and there's more where he came from. Governor Ducey has been pretty clearly for the rule of law, but both state legislature houses have narrow R majorities and have been doing things like insisting on kooky voting machine investigations, trying to censor Cindy McCain for not being Trumpy enough (you should check out the scary series of "Whereas" in there). Some of them staged a farcical alternate elector ceremony to cast votes for Trump. I can only imagine what kind of messages are playing on local media right now.
Pfft. They aren't even going to disinter the senator. They don't care about Trump deeply enough.
He's buried at the Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis. If it were in Phoenix, they would have dug him up by now and blamed it on javelinas.
We had a Four Seasons Total Landscaping situation here when the insurrectionists scheduled their Alaska event on the 17th for a mall in Anchorage rather than the Capitol in Juneau. The mall is closing for the day just to be safe, and they seem to think they were deliberately targeted because Anchorage is an easier location to gather a lot of people than Juneau (definitely true), but there is a legislative building in Anchorage that is nowhere near the mall so it looks like this probably was a real mistake. I've seen speculation that they mixed up the Dimond Courthouse in Juneau, which is across the street from the Capitol, with the Dimond Mall in Anchorage.
Huh. Every major state institution should have a similarly named decoy property a few counties away to deter insurrectionists with poor reading comprehension or who aren't careful with the GPS directions.
I think Juneau also got an assist from the Favorite Channel.
Hey Alaska extremists! Wouldn't you rather be orbiting Jupiter?
https://twitter.com/dave_brown24/status/1349395835688284160?s=19
just in case anyone was inclined to relax ...
But only for obvious, very public crimes.
34: Zoom in and you'll see an SF patch on his shoulder. He's just a law enforcement guy wearing a pro law enforcement patch.
https://www.goang.com/careers/law-enforcement-and-security/security-forces.html
I don't know if it's just me, but it seems to me as though the Trump Twitter ban has really changed the public climate. Without rallies and Twitter, Trump withers.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the thin blue line thing has been co-opted by fascists. And it's worse that cops themselves don't seem to object to that. And I'm not a big fan of the original message attached to the concept. But it's really not the same thing as the Confederate flag. As gswift says, I think there's a benign "pro law enforcement" interpretation available here.
I feel like it would take up just as much oxygen if he had a microblog whipped up on whitehouse.gov - everyone would copy his words onto Twitter as newsworthy. Fortunately there's not enough time for someone to realize this, or to implement it if they did.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that the thin blue line thing has been co-opted by fascists.
"The line which keeps society from descending into violent chaos"? Popularized by an LAPD chief in the 50's? I don't think it had very far to fall.
I'm hoping Twitter was someone uniquely able to fuel Trump in a way that can't be replicated. I think a lot of the appeal for Trump's followers is the "cry, liberal, cry" element. That might make a Parler 2.0 with only assholes less engaging. What's the point of threatening to kill people who aren't there to read it?
Trump did put out an appropriately anti-violence statement -- well he read someone else's words -- so maybe the impeachment will have the desired effect.
If he wasn't a totally defeated loser, he'd be calling for an immediate trial and vote. I don't think there are 67 votes, and he has a real shot at a second acquittal. Instead he's going to be Liz Cheney's bitch, and just let the clock run out.
(I mean that in the least misogynist possible way.)
Best way to avoid misogyny is to call him Liz Cheney's Neb.
I'm sure some idiots are now saying "It's okay, because now if he does something worse in the last week, he knows we'll immediately reconvene the Senate and convict." The question is if those idiots go all the way up to McConnell or not.
||
Barbara Boxer did what? I missed this!
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I guess that means I shouldn't use "Hickvision" for my production company either.
Anyway, I'm glad Biden made the rejections clear.
This is one of these actions where I immediately wonder about the balance of intended and unintended consequences:
The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a ban on imports of cotton and tomatoes from the Xinjiang area of China, as well as all products made with those materials, citing human rights violations and the widespread use of forced labor in the region. . . . The ban allows customs officials to stop imports that they suspect are made with raw materials from Xinjiang, regardless of whether they travel into the United States directly from China or through another country.
Despite growing concerns over Chinese practices in the region, exports from Xinjiang to the United States and Europe grew significantly from 2019 to 2020, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But trade experts say the new measures will raise questions about whether customs officials are equipped to fully enforce such a wide ban, which will require tracing Xinjiang materials through supply chains around the world. A report published in October by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that customs suffered from staff shortages and other issues despite a new division and resources devoted to blocking goods made with forced labor.
Is Xinjiang where China grows most of its tomatoes and cotton? Otherwise, you know, fungible.
46 Hasn't it always been perfectly clear that this was McConnell's most likely play? If something happens that creates 67 votes to remove, McConnell convenes. If not, he just lets it ride, and leaves it for Schumer to deal with.
Whether there are ever going to be 67 votes after Jan 20 is going to depend on just how bad the record is.
Arguments about words like coup or sedition or rebellion are OK. I was talking with my mom about this and one concern I've been thinking about is that talking about punishing the seditionists could precipitate more violence. The thing is we are just out of room to retreat at this point. If we didn't punish them we'd be green lighting right wing mobs hunting Democratic Congresspersons for sport now and in the future.
37: It's a fascist, white supremacist icon and you know it.
Hasn't it always been perfectly clear that this was McConnell's most likely play?
I don't know that all that much has been predictable recently. It makes some sense in retrospect, I suppose.
In the next soap-opera installment, Trump is no longer paying Giuliani.
55: From what I've seen the hundreds of thousands of minority cops in this country didn't get the memo. Look at all these racists!
https://www.instagram.com/p/CFSaHA1FgPy/?igshid=kb87hxoo5q0r
https://www.instagram.com/p/CEsDrdcloXS/?igshid=x4bkip1crtvf
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBec5_pFp0D/?igshid=1qa7pixwyaas
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8kaosTF0x5/?igshid=1k4126qxkh2sx
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8kZ9RaFmOw/?igshid=y2xzis0dog4v
57: Among the most annoying features of being anywhere near an argument with you is the way you, when presented with a few points of dispute, pick the most convenient one to pretend to refute and hammer it into the ground to the exclusion of anything else.
Even if we were to grant that it's not entirely white supremacist, or even if we were going to pretend that we don't understand how people of color can function as agents of white supremacy, because we're not fucking twelve, it would still be fascist. But we're not, because it's both. The police's primary function is to maintain white supremacy, full stop.
The thin blue line between civilization and chaos? Fuck me sideway, how many current working police are we up to being fingered as participating in the insurrection? Over two dozen to my knowledge.
56.last: Apparently, Giuliani was getting $20,000 a day. That's like $5,000 per seasons of the landscaping.
Even if you say it in Private Eye ("I get $20,000 a day plus expenses") it sounds too stupid to say aloud.
Giuliani seemed to think he was getting $20,000 a day, but I bet he never got anything in writing, because why would a lawyer care about that?
Giuliani works for oligarchs, right? He's probably used to lucrative verbal agreements that fall apart half the time.
If Giuliani had done nothing else after 9/11, he could have had a really comfortable life giving speeches about being America's mayor with lessons on leadership. But, no, and the goodwill he got for his performance on 9/11 is trashed.
XUAR ~80% of PRC cotton; it couldn't be disentangled even if everyone tried in good faith. The effect is essentially to ban PRC textiles. Which I seriously doubt this administration thought through, but is cool with me.
And impeachment might be getting covered as a shiny bauble, but would have enormous real value simply in banning Trump from office. I think it's well worth trying to find a sufficiency of Senate Republicans who don't want to watch this movie again in 2023. And right now is the right time to do it, before replacement internet channels are spun up for him.
56:
"Trump has instructed aides not to pay Giuliani's legal fees, two officials said, and has demanded that he personally approve any reimbursements for the expenses Giuliani incurred while traveling on the president's behalf to challenge election results in key states. They said Trump has privately expressed concern with some of Giuliani's moves and did not appreciate a demand from Giuliani for $20,000 a day in fees for his work attempting to overturn the election."
And by the logic of the ban, the issue is not the cotton but the slavery, and the slavery isn't confined to XUAR: we know job lots are being shipped to factories in the east and held in locked dormitories. So if followed through, it would be really a ban on all PRC goods. Which, see 64 last.
Also, for extras, a goodly chunk of that cotton is, and is to be, grown with water diverted from the Ili upstream of Kazakhstan, thus promising both to compete directly with the Kazakh cotton crop and to finish off Lake Balkash. Win win!
'Let us do violence or we will do violence' isn't a threat. It is an indication that bug spray is needed, maybe.
~ 1/3 of bitcoin miners worldwide are in Xinjiang, discounted coal-fired electricity there. Next boycott?
65: My general rule is that when something is both important and obviously the correct thing morally, it needs to be done. So I favor impeachment and conviction pretty much regardless of the consequences.
But from a purely consequentialist point of view, I do think it's possible that Trump has become such a liability to the Republicans that weakening him could be damaging. Certainly Stacey Abrams et al mattered a lot in Georgia, but Trump handed the Dems an opportunity there. (This argument is dumb in the way that all "heightening the contradictions" arguments are dumb. You never want to support bad things in the hopes of getting something good later on, and Trump's influence in the Republican Party is a Bad Thing. But still ...)
Good piece at TPM exploring why no warning from DHS about 1/6.
Summary of same from Emptywheel:
Why didn't DHS warn? Because DHS had stopped tracking right wing terrorists, leaving it to FBI.
Why didn't FBI warn? Bc FBI spent 4 years hunting down anyone in the Bureau that might investigate Trump associates.
So, the thin blue line conversation is topical. I just taught class. One student is sitting so that his camera shows the wall behind him, and a full-sized thin blue line flag (ie made out of cloth) is hanging behind him.
It's very uncomfortable for me, for all the obvious reasons. But I also am not sure there's a conversation to be had there with the student. If I had to guess, he's at his parent's house, his parents are full-throated MAGA, and he leans that way. But it could also be something like his dad is a cop and and they don't see it as an overt symbol of white supremacy. And if anything, the events of Jan 6th put some distance between genuinely supporting the cops and being a MAGA wingnut.
That said, putting your camera so that it's visible behind you is either deliberate or naive. And it's impossible to know which. This class is about half white, half POC.
(Furthermore, I've had this student before, and he was sitting somewhere else in his house last semester.)
Death threats are bad. And to the extent that some R members were truly deterred* by them (or the threat of the threat) that is a bad thing. However, as Ilhan pointed, people like her and AOC get many of them every day.
In 72 I meant to add that they put these out with some frequency. For instance there was on before Charlottesville.
Sometimes I feel like I'm trapped in an experiment to see how much contempt I can experience for a group. The violence to others, only when the others are clearly weaker, plus the bed wetting at the thought of criticism. The absurd combinations of Christianity with clear idolatry and patriotism with blatant disrespect toward nearly all those people and institutions who have actually advanced the country. The reflexive "what about-ism'. The total unwillingness to consider they might have been going in the wrong direction. It's not like this is a problem just because of liberalism. By the mostly conservative standards I was raised with, these are not people worthy of respect.
76: All of this, yes, and also: the toxic drip of reflexive bad-faith arguments obviates even having a debate with them on anything ever.
|| You're probably wondering, what is the US Supreme Court doing. Well, first opinion in a case this year came out today. It's a bankruptcy case: when a debtor files a ch 13 petition, does a city which impounded their vehicle because of overdue fines automatically have to give it back? Answer: No, but they can get it back through a process. Justice Sotomayor, concurring, hits it on the head again: 'C'mon, they need their cars to get to work to make the payments under the bankruptcy plan. It should be easier and faster to get them back.' Let's don't pack the court, let's just fire 8 of them. |>
I am back on Facebook after a monthlong ban for insulting my Hoog Blokland ancestors. No joke. While I was in jail I got in the habit of surfing more widely and lurked here quite a bit
The total unwillingness to consider they might have been going in the wrong direction.
This one struck a nerve with me.
Emerson! Turns out you were right about Harry Potter.
84: That's great. It really speaks to the epistemic issue at the root of so many disagreements we have with the Trumpists. And the Trumpists are less reluctant to talk about this than people might think.
On the OP: one of my local groups reports that people are photographing houses with Biden/rainbow/BLM flags near the Utah capitol building. Also rumors that the National Guard has been activated through the inauguration.
Jordan Klepper is great. I really enjoy his schtick.
||
I would have put this in the "Books we read this year" thread, but I think we skipped it this year, what with being distracted by the whole implosion of the country/end of the world thing going on.
I just finished Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz, who I had never heard of until a month ago. I can highly recommend it if you want a break from current events, and a cocaine snorting version of Dorothy Parker in early 70s Southern California sounds like your sort of thing.
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No, no, I need post ideas. Let's do that tomorrow.
My favorite Columbo episodes are set there.
64/67: That's basically what I was thinking, but with my usual gloomy optics: obviously the PRC has non-economic reasons to want to maintain its forced labor regimes, as well as economic ones. If the economic cost of this targeted arrangement proves too high, along whatever timeframe, what's plan B for repression and control? Will it be as susceptible to this kind of economic pressure?
For those interested in keeping up with who is available for self-gratification purposes: Siegfried has joined Roy on the other side, and so has that weird doctor who pronounced Trump the healthiest president ever. Respective causes: pancreatic cancer, Covid and (speculatively) getting wedged too far up Trump's ass.
It's been a tough year for the tiger adjacent gay man.
Well, I used this compilation to get as many dates of birth for arrested rioters (or whatever we're calling them) as possible, and of those, I found 7 Boomers, 15 X-ers, and 10 Millennials. Median age 41.5.
98: Any info on how many were tiger adjacent gay men?
I now think there should be a hyphen after tiger.
Did anyone already post this Post story from the police perspective? https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/14/dc-police-capitol-riot/?arc404=true
What a thing.
From the article linked above:
Acting D.C. police chief Robert J. Contee III has said D.C. officers "saved democracy" by coming to the rescue of Capitol Police personnel overwhelmed by the crowd.
This is probably true. The assassination of a few members of Congress in the present situation would probably spell the end of democracy in the short to medium term.
We'd survive the death of McConnell. Pelosi not so much.
Seriously, though, those guys went through something there.
Yes. People need to go to prison for a long time over this.
102: D.C. officers, from a majority black police department. Something to think about when Frowner whips out a "cops and Klan go hand in hand " or gensym with a "the police's primary function is to maintain white supremacy, full stop."
76: My both of my grandfathers were Republican but of different stripes. My Dad's father was not supportive of "welfare" or anything that discouraged work, so he would complain about how much his social security benefits went down, because he continued to work. But when he moved out to Arizona, he was struck by how anti-immigrant the Republicans were. As far as he was concerned, as long as you were willing to work, you were welcome.
Since, I learn, it's totally possible to impeach people after they leave office, why not go for broke? Impeach Nixon. Impeach Reagan and Bush for Iran-Contra. Impeach whoever it was that let Reconstruction fall apart.
106: Let's call it even.
(Messed up the first post.)
Trump was impeached while in office. The trial won't be finished some he's in office.
111: Apparently there are precedents where impeachment started after.
Peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations got fervent opposition from police, but was anybody surprised that there were cops participating in the Capitol insurrection? Surely we can all agree that the cops have a fascism problem, even as we acknowledge that Frowner and gensym are sometimes given to a bit of hyperbole.
Speaking personally, I am more sympathetic to hyperbole than fascism, but de gustibus.
I am very interested to know if last week's events are reverberating in police departments and causing them to have an identity crisis and polarize and distinguish between MAGA cops and non-MAGA cops.
I just happened across a bit of nostalgia. Eric Levitz writes in New York Magazine on Nov. 5 about how the Democrats' failure to take the Senate means progressives are screwed forever.
They announced Trump's schedule for the 20th - he'll leave the White House early without meeting Biden, and have some sort of "farewell event" at Andrews AFB. Fine by me.
You know he is doing that just so he can show off his crowd size . . .
Initially I'd heard that he wanted to hold it at the White House. The AFB is 14 miles away which is an improvement but I wish he'd just hold a celebration in Florida when he gets there. Lower expense for the taxpayers too.
The FBI should definitely be at the farewell rally to arrest Capitol Rioters that they haven't yet been able to find. As they file out, after Trump has flown away.
The fact that one of the insurrectionists was a realtor reminding you that she can send your house in-between coup-supporting moments is really great for confirming my bias against both realtors and terrorists.
I guess there is no possibility of this happening, but it occurred to me that if we wanted to ensure the safety of our Congresspeople going forward we would only allow black cops in DC.
Probably easier and more effective to just fire the ones with "Kill Pence" in their Facebook profile.
I'm for that, as long as we limit it to cops or I'm given time to change my profile.
The standards are evolving swiftly.
Can we at least wait until The MyPillow Guy and Rudy-Can-Fail get their coup attempt moving? Each week, twice as long as the last.
For fuck's sake, 128 is a real thing.
Usually, I feel it is important to support recovery, but I sure hope he's back to smoking crack.
The death toll for Covid is going to hit 400,000 and it is page 3 news.
I still haven't seen good numbers for the 6th, but any way that you want to look at it, there were a lot of would be revolutionaries travelling cross country without mask, closely packed in vans and buses . . .
It isn't the (outdoor) protest that gets you-- it's the carpooling.
And the pillows that come pre-drooled on.
In the end democracy was the assholes giving you Covid while you were huddled in the safe room.
+ the real
+ you met along the way
Haberman says there isn't going to be a Pillow Rebellion.
106 is, as the kids say, very pure. I think being a cop is a very hard job. I think being a good cop is one of the most important jobs out there. And despite the fact that your job pretty clearly ate your soul--based on what we see here, at least, which I recognize might just be you trying to serve as a counterweight to what you think are over-the-top, acab arguments--I bet you're a good cop. Assuming I'm right, I'm grateful to you for doing a very hard job very well. But holy shit, man, just shut the ever-loving fuck up already! Your in-group, circle-jerk, thin-blue-line bullshit is so far beyond tedious at this point that reading your comments makes me like cops less rather than more! Maybe that's your point? Maybe you're actually a firefighter running a false-flag operation? Maybe you work at a troll-farm in Minsk, and you and your colleagues are paid out of a firefighter's pension fund? Whatever.
You know, somebody had a coblogger who wrote a book about the Boxer Rebellion which I read and liked, as I used to do before stress and constant internet connections ruined my ability to concentrate. Anyway, my thoughts at the time were "that's got to be a uniquely fucked up set of tactical assumptions to start a rebellion with." But, no, it's not. In retrospect, it doesn't even seem inventively fucked up.
For example, Gouda and Irish whiskey go great together.
I should probably go to sleep before I decide to troll Facebook with threats barely disguised as well wishing. Also, I need to figure out how to buy a car without getting covid or something stupid.
I hope you get the rest you deserve.
Multiculturalism has many fruits.
Stop trying to make Coke with durian happen.