Combined with billionaires willing to litigate over the slightest negative press
Carole Cadwalladr was sued. Jane Mayer had her reputation trashed. Rachel Maddow was sued for saying OAN is Russian. John Oliver sued for saying Murray Energy is a polluter. Kelcy Warren sued Beto O'Rourke. Peter Thiel bankrupted Gawker.
@Teri_Kanefield antifa collectively saying "they have something planned, stay the fuck away on Jan 6" was probably the single smartest group decision of that period
@Teri_Kanefield The "bloodless coup" was to say there was no electoral majority, which would send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. There are more states with a GOP majority so Trump/Pence would win.
@Teri_Kanefield General Mark Milley told the January 6 Committee that "everyone knew" that J6 would be violent and the Trump Cabal wanted a coup. USSS chief James Murray did nothing and stepped down after. Federalist Society member FBI Director Wray did nada with the intel, wasn't a larget of the J6 Cmte and is still on the job. DHS did nothing. No accountability. The corporate upper class wanted to nail traitor Trump, while preserving their own corrupt power Establishment
@Teri_Kanefield the immediate coup may have failed, but wouldn’t you say the longer term coup is ongoing? By casting doubt on the election, Trump aided GOP state legislatures in passing draconian voter suppression laws, whose effect was likely outcome determinative in 2022, and may well be in 2024. They may have learned from their mistakes and do a proper electoral certification objection in the Nov 2024 through Jan 2025 period.
No. Military officers are prohibited from obeying illegal orders. There was some uncertainty about that for a while, but they started to make it clear, as I noted in this tweet I posted June 9, 2020.
@i_understand
hehe
was an MP in the 80s
the hash over 'unlawful orders' (illegal wasn't really in our lexicon) was great grist for the mill when having a black out drinking binge with comrades in JAG.
Mil folks do not get to pick & choose which orders to follow.
If one believes an order is unlawful,violates the ucmj, etc, one can expect to be apprehended, and answer at court martial.
the court may decide in your favor,
or it may not.
@cpm@i_understand@Melody@garbageman@Teri_Kanefield
On the flip side, the Nuremberg trials established that "just following orders" was not sufficient excuse for an officer to avoid punishment for crimes committed. So it behooves an officer to understand the difference between legal and illegal orders. Hence Milley's caution to troops below.
Yes, since Nuremberg is still in living memory, it is our best beg.
but the excuse of 'just following orders' as been rebuked over & over throughout history as we know it.
For all of our (the USA's) faults,which are legion, we were/are chartered as rule by law.
@Teri_Kanefield My strongest first impression after reading the document is about how many Republican office-holders refused to what the Defendant wanted, choosing to protect the Republic over doing the bidding of the Defendant.
@Teri_Kanefield Oh, it’d have worked. It takes far fewer soldiers to occupy a country when roughly half of it actually welcomes it.
The modern armed State will almost always win. Chiefly because the most potent response one thinks of is peaceful protests. We saw what 800 almost totally peaceful protests in the summer of 2020 accomplished with respect to laws about police brutality.
I do agree that we massively discounted the true violence that was being contemplated after J6.
@Teri_Kanefield
I remember expectations that there would be antifa v. MAGA related violence on the 6th and Trump would declare martial law at which point the so called militias present would stand in for the military. But anti-protesters stayed home and there was no battle except against police.
Trump is everything American christofascists have been preparing for +25 years: War on Americans from the White House, the Supreme Court, Congress & State Capitols.
they love Putin because they want everything Putin has and they got it with Trump:
DICTATORSHIP-OF-LAW
we called that Jim Crow. they want it back and all across America.
@Teri_Kanefield I'm figuring there would have been a reasonable chance the WH would have ended up surrounded by tanks with the barrels pointing at it. Yeah, Trump could have escaped to the bunker. Too many levels of command between Trump's lackeys and the grunts. All of them would have to blindly follow obviously illegal orders.
@Teri_Kanefield Whether it was a serious plan or just loose talk by some not-very-bright apparatchiks, it appears Gen. Milley and the JOC got wind of it early -- thus his speech at the Army Museum on Nov. 12 saying, basically, "Screw you, Mr. President, our oath is to the Constitution."
But, of course, they went ahead with their deranged plotting anyway...
@Teri_Kanefield This is why it matters so much that the attack was intended to be fast. Imagine how Jan 6 would have played out had the mob invaded the Capitol within 1/2 hour, as they first expected. Chaos, confusion, simultaneous bomb threats in DC, unclear who is invading (the Proud Boys were unmarked and Trump's delayed speech meant his audience was not yet there). And a compliant Sec. of Defense installed in November 2 days the election was called for Biden.
@Teri_Kanefield Yeah, described at the time by conspiracy-mongers like me as 'a fake insurrection hiding a real insurrection'. I still want to hear from then-Acting SecDef Miller about his 04Jan memo disarming the DC National Guard.
@Teri_Kanefield I think one lesson is: despite all the enablers, enough people ultimately told the toddler “no” and enforced consequences and apparently the world didn’t implode. He left office and there no major consequences to telling him “no.”
Certain dictators need to be managed in this manner. We spent a lot of the 20th century learning the wrong way to handle this type of person.
But we see how from the way things played out that that absolutely didn’t happen, so if it was the plan ever, it was never the plan in any substantial way.
@Teri_Kanefield What amazes me about Trump is not that he planned to do big, illegal things, but that he's so inept at accomplishing big things and he attracts a cadre of suckups who are even less competent at accomplishing big things.
Not only does he sell the sizzle and not the steak, when he tries to prepare a steak he burns himself and can't get the beef on the plate.
@Teri_Kanefield if true and presented publicly - that there was a plan to use the military to stay in power ... this is a LOT clearer definition of coup than the procedural coup we all saw attempted. THAT may finally break through to the knuckleheads that "yes", they were part of something much much darker from a "patriotism" perspective.
@Teri_Kanefield i constantly wonder why people never talk about the way trump turned the white house into a huge barricaded monstrosity.
antifa? yeah, no. im thinking he was planning on staying there, forever or as long as he possibly could and he thought that would stop people trying to get to him.
@Teri_Kanefield This should be alarming to everyone -- including those on the Right. Trump is a dictator wannabe and he should never be President again (and shouldn't have been in the first place). He represents an outsized threat to our democracy.
@Teri_Kanefield the plan was to throw American people under the bus?! Even if people never stopped, it would not put Trump in power, it would put Trump in danger to possibly being killed. There was still that one real terrorists and maybe more. The plan is the dumbest thing I ever heard.
@Teri_Kanefield They desperately needed "antifa" to show up. This is the best indicator of the strategic part of the plan provocateurs play. They needed us to oppose by violence. Our side stayed away, and their violence alone was on display. Thank you antifa, whoever you are, by refusing the poisoned bait, you kept us all from Martial Law.
@Teri_Kanefield
The indictment timeline reads like a classic Russian operation. Create a situation that you can convince people only martial law can resolve. Then never stop oppressing everyone who opposes you.
What I could never understand and still can't, is why around 50% of US voters love Trump. The man is comprehensively obviously and transparently an absolute 100% cast iron fückin asshole. It's obvious!
So someone explain to me why such a huge number of Americans support such a totally useless prick?
What does he represent to the mindless Trump supporter that they find so admirable?
@staidwinnow@JonChevreau@Teri_Kanefield you’ve clearly had NO experience with the military. Not only was Milley dead set against helping Trump, but we’re talking about a military that is majority nonwhite and whose members had been dissed and spat on by Trump and treated as if they were his personal possession. He cut funding to vets and said that prisoners of war were unworthy of respect because they were losers for getting caught. And that those killed in combat were unworthy of remembrance because they were stupid enough to be killed. Also, comparing STDs to Vietnam. The military may trend conservative, but they are not going to break the constitution (which they get drilled on) for a man who habitually disrespected them like that. And given the Republican bashing of the institution lately, they may yet succeed in turning it liberal given that only liberals are interested in giving the military what it needs to fulfill its function.
@JonChevreau@staidwinnow@Teri_Kanefield I would say I’m about 90% sure. Attempts to tinker with the institution might blow it to hell. But even then, each soldier has a duty to disobey an unlawful order. “I was following orders” is not considered an excuse and they get that drilled into them. The average soldier has more knowledge of the constitution than the average American. (One of the reasons why my ex was none too popular in the NYPD because he kept objecting when his colleagues did something unconstitutional.) A soldier is much less likely to devolve into thuggery than your average cop because they get ethics drilled into them daily. (What is or is not a war crime? What situation calls for shooting in self-defense? This is stuff cops don’t get in their training.) So even if they manage to stack the top brass, it doesn’t mean that the rank and file will meekly go along with it.
@CassandraZeroCovid@JonChevreau@staidwinnow@Teri_Kanefield if history is our guide, we’ll pull out of this mess, but barely. We still outnumber the authoritarians. This is not the first time our democracy has been under serious threat from fascists. And the DOJ at that time completely failed to hold anyone accountable, unlike today. In the end, every politician that was involved in the plot was drummed out of office by the voters. Fascism is a political problem that can only be fixed at the ballot box. It’s important to remember that.
My military experience is I was born on an Army base, but I am dang certain they’d not have followed DONALD TRUMP in particular.
They’d more likely have arrested Trump and turned control over to the Vice President, than have followed Trump according to some tendentiously ‘literal’ reading of the law.
(Indeed, my understanding is that, in effect, the VP WAS given partial control on that day.)
In other matters, isn’t that a photo of Steve Hudgins?
@staidwinnow@JonChevreau@Teri_Kanefield Interesting. Not as interesting, though, as if it had indeed been Ski Mask. (A rather more obscure actor and character.)
@staidwinnow Steve Hudgins is a cheap indy horror film maker. So no pretense of stardom. Just fun and games! Though he got Joe Estevez in one of his films once. That's star adjacency, given Joe is the brother and uncle of stars. :)
@Teri_Kanefield Hm, interesting. The indictment focused on the fake electors' scheme, which was probably only one of the things he had going. Sow enough confusion to cause chaos, profit from the chaos. Sociopathy 101, probably. I remember being very concerned on Jan 6 that it would succeed and I would have to figure out where to go to fight against him and his fascist buddies.
Remember when Trump made all those sketchy personnel moves at the Department of Defense towards the end of his term? I was so alarmed I called my Congressman's office and the guy who took my call said something to the effect of "yes, we're concerned too. Tell all your friends and family to contact their Congressional reps." It totally freaked me out. I hope those plotters are rounded up too. Looking at you, Kash Patel.
@Teri_Kanefield
While I think it's fair to ascribe the intentions of Trump's henchmen to Trump (it was his plan), I didn't see allegations that Trump himself considered the military option.
@BonehouseWasps@Teri_Kanefield It sounded to me that the riots they were expecting would be people protesting Trump’s coup. That’s why he’d invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the troops.
@Teri_Kanefield@bodhipaksa@BonehouseWasps also, it seemed to me that the planners were counting on an Antifa counter-protest at the Capitol on January 6, which would have caused fighting in the streets of Washington and created ideal conditions to call the military. But the Antifa very cleverly stayed home.
@tend2wobble@timo21@Teri_Kanefield@Alexandrad1@BonehouseWasps I don’t think Musk or his fans want to destroy Twitter. They just want to purge it of liberals and turn it into a right-wing haven. That probably will end up destroying it, but that’s not the intent.
@Teri_Kanefield@jamesrylandmiller@jawarajabbi@bodhipaksa@tend2wobble@timo21@Alexandrad1@BonehouseWasps just had a bruising fight with such a sealion. He kept insisting that it wasn’t morally wrong to say that slaves got some benefit from slavery and that we were wrong for refusing to engage fascists in “reasonable debate.” I had a first assumed ignorance and then realized after three days that I was being trolled. “Just asking questions.”
@Teri_Kanefield because the president has control over nuclear weapons and has "the biscuit" there is a plan for dealing with this scenario. Trump's control of nuclear weapons was terminated as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, end of story. I'm not sure what would happen if the oath of office was prevented , but Trump's codes expired and would not work after January 20th 2020. Or so I understand.
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