Return of Trump? - US-Wahlkampf 2024

Zitat von Hohli

Der gute, alte Dick Cheney wählt Kamala Harris und nicht Trump. Ich weiß wirklich nicht, was ich mit dieser Info anfangen soll

The Worst Crime of the 21st Century

The United States’ destruction of Iraq remains the worst international crime of our time. Its perpetrators remain free and its horrors are buried. (Nathan J. Robinson & Noam Chomsky - Current Affairs, 12.05.2023)

Schönes Stück von Freddie DeBoer über "BlueMAGA", die Fraktion der radikalen-FundamentalistInnen und KonspiratistInnen unter den Anhängern der Democrats.:

You Have to Be an Absolute Lunatic to Believe That the Trump Assassination Attempt Was an "Op"

I find the rise of BlueMAGA very disturbing, and I’m surprised more people don’t.

Zitat von Freddie DeBoer - 10.09.24

Or perhaps I’m not surprised; within progressive circles there can be a strong social prohibition against speaking frankly about this tendency, for fear of giving support to the enemy. Just mentioning this cadre of deranged obsessives, who frequently express violent sentiment towards Donald Trump, his family, and Republicans in general, reliably gets me shouts of “FALSE EQUIVALENCE! BOTH SIDES-ISM!” and similar. I suspect that this mostly stems from progressives deliberately looking away from the pro-Dem online cesspool that’s developed in the past decade, or barring that, from thinking that team blue needs an abusive and psychotic online cult of its own. One way or another, they’re out there, in great numbers, and they exhibit all of the ugly elements of online extremism that we’ve grown accustomed to. Yes, yes, I’m sure regular MAGA is worse. That doesn’t erase the problem, and you should want better than that. [...]

Please, think.

• At the time of the assassination attempt Trump had a comfortable lead over Joe Biden, whose campaign appeared to be collapsing. You’re going to throw an enormously risky Hail Mary like this when every national and swing state poll shows that you’re in a commanding position in the race? Why?
• The complexity of pulling off such a thing in front of a crowd of thousands, all of them armed with cameras capable of taking stills and video, would be enormous. You’re going to need a) a shooter with a long gun that is, at least, set up to produce realistic gun shot noises and which has the recoil you’d expect b) some sort of mechanism for shooting a non-lethal projectile close to or hitting Trump, similar to the one clearly visible in multiple videos of the incident c) a squib or blood pack of some sort that is discreet and realistic enough to appear genuine to any of those in the large crowd and survive close and skeptical examination by the public and press. Or you’re planning to shoot an active round that passes inches from the head of your leader in a chaotic open space, all as part of a plan designed to help him electorally.
• The FBI and Secret Service have both confirmed the conventional narrative of events. The FBI and Secret Service are two organizations that I trust a little less than I do the Weekly World News, but why would they participate in a brazen and illegal Trump campaign operation? While the Democrats control the executive branch? For what purpose? Why would the Secret Service consent to take part in an operation that made them look so remarkably incompetent? How would the Secret Service control the actions of the local police? Were the local police in on it, too?
• This event produced two bodies; both of those killed were, incontrovertibly, real people who had real verified lives that are easily confirmed by the documentary record, by their online presence, and by the testimonials of those who knew them. There is video of both, alive, at the event. So these actual living people became ex-people during the event. Were they in on it? If so, that means they signed up for a literal suicide mission. Why? Why would Corey Comperatore, an all around mundane person who worked at a plastics company and served as a volunteer firefighter, sacrifice his life in that way? Or perhaps he was just collateral damage - they needed to fire into the crowd to make the fake attack credible. Again, firing a live round past the very politician you’re trying to support seems like a bad idea. Beyond that, you’d have to have at least several dozen people involved in this conspiracy willing to say, “yeah, I’m onboard with being an accessory to murder of one of our candidate’s supporters if and when we hit one after firing an assault rifle into a crowd of people.”
• To reiterate, the shooter is a real person, and we know that from documentary evidence, from testimonials by people who knew him, from video evidence, and from his online presence. We know where he went to school and when. He’s not some Manchurian Candidate-style automaton or a secret CIA asset or whatever. So… what’s the deal? We have a very young young man, two years past his high school reunion, with no military or espionage experience and (evidently) very limited ability to use his rifle. Why was he chosen for this job? Why would he agree to take part in a suicide mission? Was he really so fanatically loyal to the Trump reelection effort that he’d sacrifice his life at 20? Or perhaps you think he’s a patsy, that he didn’t really understand what he was getting himself into. How big of an idiot was he, then? He’s lying on a roof, exposed to fire, surrounded by armed law enforcement agents and thousands of witnesses. He can’t have been so stupid as to think he was leaving there alive. So, like… how did all of this work? Did they contact some school shooter outreach program and find a willing participant?

None of it makes any sense, at all. It’s a classic case of a conspiracy theory that combines a) vague motives and questionable gain b) the conspirators taking on huge risks for that questionable gain c) a requirement of absolutely loyalty and total silence from a large mass of people and d) an absurd level of faith that the con would survive an immense amount of scrutiny with a huge amount of documentary evidence, in an era when everyone walks around with a high-quality photo and video camera in their pocket. [...]

The most widespread BlueMAGA behavior, currently, is an absolutely rabid dedication to the idea that any polling that does not show a decisive lead for Harris is the product of Russian disinformation or the evil of Nate Silver or the machinations of The New York Times, which is alleged to be a dedicated anti-Kamala publication despite publishing five pieces a day with headlines like “How a Kamala Harris Victory Could Create a Time Loop That Would Prevent the Assassination of Medgar Evers.” There are so many people right now who dismiss any poll that doesn’t show Kamala dominance, it’s remarkably - especially because Democrats have spent several election cycles mocking Republicans for their belief in “skewed polls”! It seems like the desire for Harris to win is so enormous that people just can’t allow themselves to admit that this election is currently a total tossup. New York magazine can’t stop running essays about how Kamala is guaranteed to win because of THE POWER OF LOVE or whatever. But winning requires thinking, thinking clearly.

This whole thing creeps me out. If you’re the party that’s opposed to tribalism and misinformation and conspiracy theory, maybe do a little policing of your own coalition in that regard? Yes, Trump is worse. But so what?