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Dec 6th, 2017
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| by pdx rick |
| pdx rick |
via Washington PostOn the campaign trail, many Republicans talk of violence[The] argument has been dramatized in ads that, for instance, show one armed candidate appearing to charge into the home of a political enemy, and another warning of “the mob” that threatens ordinary Americans. In many cases the candidates are brandishing firearms while threatening harm to liberals or other enemies.
In central Florida, U.S. Army veteran Cory Mills has run ads about his company selling tear gas that was used to quell riots in 2020. “You may have seen some of our work,” he says, introducing a montage of what are labeled “antifa,” “radical left” and “Black Lives Matter” protesters running from the gas.
In northwest Ohio, a campaign video for Republican congressional nominee J.R. Majewski shows him walking through a dilapidated factory, holding a semiautomatic weapon, warning that Democrats will “destroy our economy” with purposefully bad policies.
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In Missouri, Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens has issued two ads this summer in which he holds or fires weapons, vowing to go “RINO hunting” — for “Republicans in name only” — in one ad and targeting the “political establishment” in the second. The arrests of hundreds of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has frequently been cited by Republican candidates as proof of a government war on its people.
In early July, at a town hall meeting in southwest Washington state, Republican congressional hopeful Joe Kent told his audience that the “phony riot” on Jan. 6 was being “weaponized against anybody who dissents against what the government is telling us,” from parents angry about public school education to people who had questioned the outcome of the 2020 election. |
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| by pdx rick |
| pdx rick |
Intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance told Salon.com the "attack on the Capitol was really a template for the right-wing to do it correctly next time." Nance is right. Trump is encouraging his supporters to be at the ready should he call for violence again. I'll go with the intelligence analyst on this one. 
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| by pdx rick |
| pdx rick |
...from the Salon link above: The assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by thousands of Trump's armed followers, including right-wing paramilitaries, was a key part of the coup plot. Trump's mob was not "random" or "hapless" or "unarmed" or "uncoordinated" as too many observers in the mainstream news media and elsewhere have long insisted. Some were armed with lethal weapons including pistols and assault rifles. Their goals were clear: Keep Donald Trump in power at any cost, in defiance of the will of the American people. Their methods were obvious: Use any means necessary, up to and including lethal violence, to stop the certification of the 2020 election. |
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| by pdx rick |
| pdx rick |
Oh Jeff! Rwingers are good and decent people - just because they think differently from you? Why are you bringing hate to Reader Rant?  /snark Your example simply shows that mental illness is rampant in the United States. Their paranoia is simply the most obvious sign.
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| by pdx rick |
| pdx rick |
...They don't think differently from you...they vote differently.... They vote differently, because they think differently. They think differently because they're paranoid and believe in imaginary alternate reality which have no basis in verity at all. Those two facts are indicative of mental illness. Voting for a narcissistic, lying, con man because of what he'll do to their perceived enemies (black Americans, immigrants, gay people, non religious people) is not emotionally healthy or sane - it's just not. Sorry - just calling balls and strikes.
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| by NW Ponderer |
| NW Ponderer |
There are a couple of military concepts that help explain what is really going on around us. First is "Battlespace" and second is "shaping" that battlespace. The battlespace is the entire field of where a battle is occurring. " Battlespace or battle-space is a term used to signify a unified military strategy to integrate and combine armed forces for the military theatre of operations, including air, information, land, sea, cyber and outer space to achieve military goals. It includes the environment, factors, and conditions that must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes enemy and friendly armed forces, infrastructure, weather, terrain, and the electromagnetic spectrum within the operational areas and areas of interest." We used to refer to the "battlefield", but this term recognizes that there are other "spaces" that affect the conduct of battle, and not all of them are right in front of us. In the political sphere, there are geographic considerations, too, but many more issues that affect results. Instead of "air, information, land, sea, cyber" it becomes "air waves, information (and misinformation), land, sea, cyber and other media". And in that battlespace, "shaping" is occurring - "Battle-space shaping is a concept involved in the practice of maneuver warfare that are used for shaping a situation on the battlefield, gaining the military advantage for the commander. It forecasts the elimination of the enemy's capability by fighting in a coherent manner before deploying determine-sized forces." An example in battlespace shaping is "gaining air superiority", or "a strategic withdrawal" that might lure an aggressive foe to overcommit and fall into a trap. Similarly, there are efforts -often crude, but still effective - to "shape" the political battlespace. Strategic leaks, propaganda, electioneering, PAC funding, think tanks, and "riling up the base" are all examples of how the politispace is shaped, and we can recognize the maneuvers currently in operation. And, putting willing surrogates in place through elections or appointments feed into that. Trump is no master planner, but he is a useful tool for the GOP, which has been engaged in this endeavor for decades. The Civil War rhetoric is mostly a diversionary tactic, although fear of it does affect the polity. But, make no mistake, there are those that consider what is going on a Civil War by other means.
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| by NW Ponderer |
| NW Ponderer |
Just partisan idiots being partisan idiots. And yet, one of those partisan idiots stormed an FBI field office, and another threatened to do so. How may examples are necessary for one to see the danger, my friend? The rhetoric is there. They are electing representatives in local and State elections that might make the effort pay off. Jan 6 was just the beginning. How long did slavery brew before the Civil War? All it took was one election to set it off. Those conditions are being reconstituted. You may live to see it blossom.
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| by Greger |
| Greger |
What this shows is half of Democrats and half of Republicans think at some time in the near future the other party’s election officials will overthrow legitimate election results to make their party win. I trust it because I know how it works. It's broken into so many tiny elections that it's impossible to hijack. It's overseen by locals under strict sets of rules. No matter which party is in charge they will most likely do their best to run clean elections. They would never cheat! But they always think their opponents are doing it. Records over the years have shown that election malfeasance mostly exists in the minds of partisans. Both propaganda arms have cast doubt on the integrity of our election system. Dems believe that Reeps are systematically reducing Democratic(Black) voters access to the polls...that they are purging voters from the rolls and cheating every chance they get... Reeps believe there was massive voter fraud in the last election and probably massive voter fraud in any election they ever lost in the past or will ever lose in the future blah blah blah... So yeah, both sides cast doubt on the security of the electoral system and it shows up in Pero's numbers just as you might imagine it would. I'm just not the paranoid type and believe our election system is generally in good hands.
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