Fear of "backlash" is no reason to let Donald Trump make an illegal run for president
Fear of "backlash" is no reason to let Donald Trump make an illegal run for president
Don't negotiate with MAGA terrorism
So let's say we let him run to avoid a violent backlash.
What happens if he loses? We let him overturn the election to avoid another violent backlash?
All we're doing is proving to the fascists that we will kowtow to them if they are angry and violent enough. If we want to remain a free-ish country we're going to have to piss them off at some point by doing the right thing, and we'll need to deal with the fallout.
I also "fear backlash" if he runs and loses the election. He won't hesitate to get his followers to commit acts of violence. According to the logic of the "for fear of backlash we should allow him to run" people, we should just annoint Trump President for Life. After all, we can't do anything that might cause MAGA to become violent, right? /s
We just need to rip the band-aid off and do it now before the election while we still have somebody semi-sensible in the Whitehouse, rather than wait for things to play out during the election. It's already going to be a chaotic time then, with everything being up in the air. Just push it now so we know what to expect walking into that shit. Otherwise we're going to be sleepwalking into that election potentially on the cusp of turning into a dictatorship virtually overnight.
No insurrectionists in any elected office. Makes perfect sense one would wish to have this key point in one's constitution, heck, even from the beginning. What about insurrectionists who were appointed by insurrectionist(s)? Seems pretty dubious. We need to either remove the insurrectionist appointees, or expand the SCOTUS to water down the insurrectionists in government. Putin must be chortling in his cocoa puffs.
It boils down to this: You don't stop MAGA violence by giving in, but the opposite. You stop it by fighting back and holding people accountable. Removing Trump from the ballot, as the law requires, is a first step. It sends a strong message to MAGA: This is what happens when you use violence to get your way. By not taking his name off the ballot, states are signaling that they will accede to violent threats. We should not be surprised if rewarding MAGA violence means we see more of it.
Yeuup
Awful lot of extra words for "terrorists".
Because that's exactly what they are threatening, doxing, death threat, shooting up clubs hell even tried to attack the FBi and of course the attempt to overthrow the government..... Literally the most successful terrorist there ever was and we still won't call it at face value for what the maga group is....
https://apnews.com/article/fbi-cincinnati-armed-man-b4701596a0eb9770e3b29e95328f5704
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/blame-abc-news-finds-17-cases-invoking-trump/story?id=58912889
I don't think it's entirely about "fear of backlash". I think the real fear people are expressing is the fear of the election appearing rigged, Ahmadinejad-style. If the Republicans nominate Trump, and he goes unconsidered with "unknown numbers" of write-in votes in enough states to affect the election, he would obviously argue that he actually won on votes and might even be convincing to non-Republicans.
When the Colorado Supreme Court decided against Trump, it was a split decision by an all-Democrat panel that questioned what "due process" should be on the matter. There's so many ways that this can be spun nationally or internationally by the modern equivalent of the way the South created sympathy through propaganda after the Civil War that survives today. Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world will likely question the legitimacy of the president or US elections after this matter no matter who wins or how chips fall.
BUT, there's also no right answer, and none of the above reasons are sufficient to just put Trump back on the ballot and hope. It should never have gotten to this. Someone that is publicly believed by a significant percent of America to not be eligible should not have party support in the first place. And if it did, Congress should have stepped in before now.
Ultimately, the Republicans are again objectively hurting America for their own agenda.
I fear allowing the ignorant and uneducated to be part of the conversation.
Donald Trump is not qualified to be considered a decent human being let alone president.
It becomes a reason if it were to work... - hence why they keep trotting it out I suppose, just to see what sticks.
If the only backlash there is to fear is death, then I have nothing to lose.
fear of backlash
negotiating with terrorists
corporate wants you to find the difference between these this picture and this picture
I honestly believe taking Trump off would hurt Biden. I feel there's a reasonable number who are looking at voting for him because he's not Trump.
i do not fear anyone who supported Trump.. they are all cowards and morons, and they pose no threat to Americans..
I mean...
I think this country is fucked. If not in a few months then in a few years.
But we have consistently demonstrated that there will be no consequences. Because the moment the fascists get into power because "Well, Biden has bad foreign policy and isn't protecting brown people so let's vote for the nazis", there will be mass retaliatory actions for those who stood against them and pardons for those who stood with them.
Similarly, it is clear that anyone who gets involved is becoming a public figure. Even if there are legal "repercussions".
So... I am not going to really hold it against a judge or a bureaucrat or even a politician for not wanting that smoke. Because they are doing the right thing and upholding the law and the constitution. And... best case scenario their family will be horrifically harassed and they'll have to eventually go into hiding. And if they actually accomplish anything? They get the AOC treatment where she better be ready to flee the country the moment the votes are tallied because things won't end well for her.
And a lot of this comes from having had a lot of friends in the video game industry (dev and media side). And "Gamergate" (largely the dry run for the alt-right) already demonstrated all of this. I have friends who literally had to leave the country because of the harassment, death/rape threats, and home invasions. Because that cop loves to play Call of Duty and told their buddies about the asshole who gave them a heads up about potential "swattings". So I am not going to get too angry when outlets choose not to comment on things like terf-wizards and the like.
Like, this has been going on for decades. Civil Rights activists have to weigh the safety of their family against their convictions. Because hate knows no bounds. I can't find the accompanying podcast right now (it would have been when they were still at Waypoint and roughly around when Keffals made some in-roads against kiwi farms) but Patrick Klepek spoke about WHY people don't take a stand on shit like this. For those not aware, Patrick has basically been one of "the SJW bogeymen" for almost his entire adult life because he... gives a shit in games media. Over the years, he has alluded to more than a few incidents he and his partner have experienced from angry "gamers" (particularly from "Gamergate" which was more or less the dry run for the trump era alt-right). And he wrote an INCREDIBLY heartbreaking article about the murder of Near. And to hear him, on the podcast, acknowledge that he is genuinely afraid to even report on a lot of the hatred and bigotry from outlets like kiwi farms speaks volumes. Because (paraphrasing): Nobody is going to protect his family. Maybe we get an article or an expose that "makes people think" but... nothing is going to happen aside from making him even more of a target and increasing the odds that he comes home to an armed gunman or an online group make it their life's work to make him end his.
The "backlash" will be that the people that take him off the ballot may end up being murdered. Or their family might be killed. Or both. Sure, maybe it's the duty of the secretary of state in each state to remove him from the ballot. But would you be willing to do that if it was likely someone would try to murder you? And consider for a moment that it's likely that a significant number of cops that you might expect would protect you probably sympathize with political violence in favor of Trump.
Those are the stakes for the people that need to remove him from the ballot.
Are you ready and willing to fight? Because you might have to.
EDIT: People seem to think that my comment about getting ready to fight is in support of Trump. It's not. If you believe in this 250-year experiment in Democracy, you might have to be willing to fight--as in, with guns and bullets--to preserve it, and that means fighting against the Trump followers that want to end democracy for a totalitarian gov't. It happened in Germany in the 20s and 30s; don't think that it can't happen here.