The Tipping Point

[hobbsyoyo]

Things are getting a bit dodgy in America

 

[Commodore]

You'd have to be very careful in selecting recruits though. Gotta keep the crazy ones out.

Of course. There would be a lengthy screening process as well as regular "reassessment" interviews every 6 months to help cut down on extremist infiltration.

The issue is less about direct physical intimidation at the polls as it is about laws written specifically to disenfranchise as many people who lean Democrat as possible. I'm not clear on what you're wanting militias to do here

There is an American tradition of refusing to follow or comply with unjust laws. The purpose of the militia would be to allow people to defy these unjust voter suppression laws and actually have some teeth to back up that defiance. Sure, the law may say that the staff of a particular polling station has to turn away a voter based on some arbitrary criteria, but is the average polling station volunteer really going to enforce those rules when they know there's a militia outside who will be very upset if they actually hold to those rules?

It may sound like an extreme solution, but if the government won't protect the people's right to vote, then the people need to protect that right themselves.

but if non-conservatives begin forming militias, then the whole country will be split between armed camps who hate each other and see each other as an existential threat.

That's why political integration would be the key to the success of these militias. The militias would have to be made up of people from all a across the political spectrum who all just agree on a common goal that everyone should be able to exercise their right to vote.

 

[Phrossack]

Of course. There would be a lengthy screening process as well as regular "reassessment" interviews every 6 months to help cut down on extremist infiltration.



There is an American tradition of refusing to follow or comply with unjust laws. The purpose of the militia would be to allow people to defy these unjust voter suppression laws and actually have some teeth to back up that defiance. Sure, the law may say that the staff of a particular polling station has to turn away a voter based on some arbitrary criteria, but is the average polling station volunteer really going to enforce those rules when they know there's a militia outside who will be very upset if they actually hold to those rules?

It may sound like an extreme solution, but if the government won't protect the people's right to vote, then the people need to protect that right themselves.



That's why political integration would be the key to the success of these militias. The militias would have to be made up of people from all a across the political spectrum who all just agree on a common goal that everyone should be able to exercise their right to vote.

What are the weapons of a militia supposed to do at a polling station, exactly? Are they for shooting poll workers who don't let some people vote?

If people of all parties could somehow put aside their differences to organize and defend the integrity of elections like that, then couldn't they just resolve the disenfranchisement issue with a special interest group rather than a paramilitary force?

 

[Patine]

That's why I said we should form new militias. I'm envisioning a militia that has maybe a squad-sized element posted at polling stations in districts known for voter suppression. They would have a little station set up where people could come and let them know that they were turned away without voting and at that point a few of the militia guys could go in and have a chat with the polling station staff and see if a solution can't be hashed out.

And who knows, if the idea of polling station militias catches on, they could expand their role to include negotiating with employers to actually give their employees time off to vote, which seems to be another problem with our elections.

See now you got my brain working on this idea to the point where I'm starting to work out details as to how this could possibly work.

The issue is less about direct physical intimidation at the polls as it is about laws written specifically to disenfranchise as many people who lean Democrat as possible. I'm not clear on what you're wanting militias to do here--but if non-conservatives begin forming militias, then the whole country will be split between armed camps who hate each other and see each other as an existential threat. That's a recipe for civil war.

We're at the point where there are a few main possibilities:

1. Aggressive voter disenfranchisement, conspiracy theories pushed from the highest offices, gerrymandering, and rigging the courts results in a permanent Republican majority, which creates a vicious cycle of more power, more suppression, more power. Non-Republicans simply lose hope and give up.

2. The same, but instead of giving up, some people resort to violence because peaceful change has been made impossible.

3. Dems win some power but refuse/don't bother to/can't undo the voter suppression or gerrymandering. The Republican Party leadership spreads conspiracy theories that the election was rigged, refuse to acknowledge the Democratic wins, and threaten or carry out violent attacks.

Simply put, Republicans do not see Democrats as legitimate and lawful, and have been whipped into such a frenzy that they are very close to violence as a whole.

I don't see how America can realistically avoid civil war at this point other than Democats just giving up.

Let's not turn our polling stations into Bagdhad circa 2005. We should not militarize polling stations and instead enact laws that cuts these activities. The Voting Rights Act was a powerful tool for this until the Supreme Court invalidated it after 40 successful years.

Just like Hitler's Brownshirts versus Thalman's Redshirts. A self-fulfilling evil and cycle of violence.

 

[Commodore]

What are the weapons of a militia supposed to do at a polling station, exactly? Are they for shooting poll workers who don't let some people vote?

Defense against law enforcement that might attempt to stop the militia from defending the people's right to vote. They would undoubtedly show up with guns whether this militia were armed or not, so I don't see it as entirely unreasonable that the militia be allowed to show up with guns too.

Also, an armed militia dedicated to protecting people's right to vote would serve as a deterrent and defense against any of the aforementioned militias that would seek to further suppress voters.

If people of all parties could somehow put aside their differences to organize and defend the integrity of elections like that, then couldn't they just resolve the disenfranchisement issue with a special interest group rather than a paramilitary force?

Not necessarily. A special interest group is easily ignored. Plus, special interest groups tend to pursue the route of gradual change. Which is fine, but in the meantime someone is going to have to be out there making sure people can vote until the laws actually do change.

Let's not turn our polling stations into Bagdhad circa 2005. We should not militarize polling stations and instead enact laws that cuts these activities. The Voting Rights Act was a powerful tool for this until the Supreme Court invalidated it after 40 successful years.

Funny you should mention Baghdad because my time in Iraq showed me that this idea does at least have the potential to work. My unit worked alongside the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to guard polling stations and I can say that having an armed presence there definitely kept everyone honest and on their best behavior.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Funny you should mention Baghdad because my time in Iraq showed me that this idea does at least have the potential to work. My unit worked alongside the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police to guard polling stations and I can say that having an armed presence there definitely kept everyone honest and on their best behavior.

And just look how well that has all worked out!

Oh.

Wait.

 

[Commodore]

And just look how well that has all worked out!

Hey, it worked fine while we were there. It's only when people stopped paying attention that things fell apart.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Hey, it worked fine while we were there. It's only when people stopped paying attention that things fell apart.

It worked fine as long as there was an occupying army enforcing a police state. So did the Mongol Empire. That's not exactly a boast-worthy accomplishment, eh?

 

[Commodore]

That's not exactly a boast-worthy accomplishment, eh?

We thought the Iraqis were ready to run their country without our oversight. Clearly we miscalculated. They really seemed to be doing so well in the final years of our occupation and then when we left it's like they just forgot everything we tried to teach them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

We thought the Iraqis were ready to run their country without our oversight. Clearly we miscalculated. They really seemed to be doing so well in the final years of our occupation and then when we left it's like they just forgot everything we tried to teach them.

No, they just took the opportunity to rebel against the government that we had imposed on them through occupation by military force as soon as that military force was removed. That was hardly unexpected, or at least shouldn't have been unexpected.

 

[FriendlyFire]

We thought the Iraqis were ready to run their country without our oversight. Clearly we miscalculated. They really seemed to be doing so well in the final years of our occupation and then when we left it's like they just forgot everything we tried to teach them.

Didnt they (Iraq) just elect Sadar as President ?
The US did just elect Trump. like father like son then ?

 

[Patine]

We thought the Iraqis were ready to run their country without our oversight. Clearly we miscalculated. They really seemed to be doing so well in the final years of our occupation and then when we left it's like they just forgot everything we tried to teach them.

You sound like the writers of the Treaty of Versailles speaking about the "Mandate" system of colonies and portions of the former Central Powers "not yet ready" for Wilsonian national determination - an attitude that, itself, was a direct extension of "the White Man's Burden" of the height of the Imperial Age. I'm amazed such paternalistic, condescending thinking still is taken seriously. And especially from a nation that just elected a vapid, vitriolic, bombastic, loudmouth as their own President with a hollow, empty platform, no idea where he was headed, a lot of big planks that were highly unrealistic and uninformed, and who hoodwinked the nation on uneducated nostalgia, attacking his political opponents on the level of junior high schoolyard insults, overtly lying and making up fact, and his reality-show celebrity showmanship. Not really a nation currently in a position to talk down and preach to others from a high horse about failed electoral practices...

 

[HoloDoc]

That's why I said we should form new militias. I'm envisioning a militia that has maybe a squad-sized element posted at polling stations in districts known for voter suppression. They would have a little station set up where people could come and let them know that they were turned away without voting and at that point a few of the militia guys could go in and have a chat with the polling station staff and see if a solution can't be hashed out.

And who knows, if the idea of polling station militias catches on, they could expand their role to include negotiating with employers to actually give their employees time off to vote, which seems to be another problem with our elections.

See now you got my brain working on this idea to the point where I'm starting to work out details as to how this could possibly work.

I don't think the idea of arms groups at polling stations is likely to end well. Their very presence is intimidatory, and paramilitary groups tend to lead to oppositional paramilitary groups.

The issue is less about direct physical intimidation at the polls as it is about laws written specifically to disenfranchise as many people who lean Democrat as possible. I'm not clear on what you're wanting militias to do here--but if non-conservatives begin forming militias, then the whole country will be split between armed camps who hate each other and see each other as an existential threat. That's a recipe for civil war.

We're at the point where there are a few main possibilities:

1. Aggressive voter disenfranchisement, conspiracy theories pushed from the highest offices, gerrymandering, and rigging the courts results in a permanent Republican majority, which creates a vicious cycle of more power, more suppression, more power. Non-Republicans simply lose hope and give up.

2. The same, but instead of giving up, some people resort to violence because peaceful change has been made impossible.

3. Dems win some power but refuse/don't bother to/can't undo the voter suppression or gerrymandering. The Republican Party leadership spreads conspiracy theories that the election was rigged, refuse to acknowledge the Democratic wins, and threaten or carry out violent attacks.

Simply put, Republicans do not see Democrats as legitimate and lawful, and have been whipped into such a frenzy that they are very close to violence as a whole.

I don't see how America can realistically avoid civil war at this point other than Democats just giving up.

The choice is between allowing the Republicans to launch a coup, or a civil war to prevent it. A preventative civil war which will probably fail, because the Republicans have the support of the police and a majority of the military.

You sound like the writers of the Treaty of Versailles speaking about the "Mandate" system of colonies and portions of the former Central Powers "not yet ready" for Wilsonian national determination - an attitude that, itself, was a direct extension of "the White Man's Burden" of the height of the Imperial Age. I'm amazed such paternalistic, condescending thinking still is taken seriously. And especially from a nation that just elected a vapid, vitriolic, bombastic, loudmouth as their own President with a hollow, empty platform, no idea where he was headed, a lot of big planks that were highly unrealistic and uninformed, and who hoodwinked the nation on uneducated nostalgia, attacking his political opponents on the level of junior high schoolyard insults, overtly lying and making up fact, and his reality-show celebrity showmanship. Not really a nation currently in a position to talk down and preach to others from a high horse about failed electoral practices...

I distinctly remember a video clip that was played repeatedly on the news here during W.'s term of office. He was at a meeting of world leaders, maybe the G20, and he publicly chastised Putin - always a smart move - and told him he should democratise Russia. Putin responded by saying; "Russia doesn't need the kind of democracy you gave Iraq."

There is also a quote from my university textbook that I still remember the gist of all these years later. "When dealing with other countries, Americans believe their citizens want what Americans would want, and if they for some reason don't, it's best to give it to them anyway."

 

[Commodore]

Didnt they (Iraq) just elect Sadar as President ?

You know of all the militia/insurgent leaders and groups in Iraq during our occupation, Sadr and his JAM were actually the least crazy and most reasonable of the bunch. At the very least, they showed a willingness to stop shooting at us and even work with us from time to time when it benefited them.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You know of all the militia/insurgent leaders and groups in Iraq during our occupation, Sadr and his JAM were actually the least crazy and most reasonable of the bunch. At the very least, they showed a willingness to stop shooting at us and even work with us from time to time when it benefited them.

Its not exactly a good sign that they just elected a religious cleric into power, but at least Iraq is still having elections. Probably a good thing that ISIS conviently turned up and annexed part of Iraq providing a common enemy. Plus the US got toflex its military muscle always a useful reminder for the countries of the Middle East.

 

[HoloDoc]

You know of all the militia/insurgent leaders and groups in Iraq during our occupation, Sadr and his JAM were actually the least crazy and most reasonable of the bunch. At the very least, they showed a willingness to stop shooting at us and even work with us from time to time when it benefited them.

This is because Sadr is the smartest of their political power brokers. He's also a brutal militant fundamentalist thug, but he's an intelligent brutal militant fundamentalist thug.

 

[Cutlass]

The solution here requires Democrats to be in complete control of the government for long enough to put people who are not utterly corrupt anti-constitutionalists on the Supreme Court. Laws don't matter so long as Republicans are packing the Court with Republican political activists.

Then what you do is enact a "No Taxation Without Representation Law". What you do, if anyone turns up to vote, and is not allowed to, then that polling place (which is the city or county, not the state or country) has to refund the person 3 times the total local, state, and federal taxes that person has paid, and do so for 5 years. And write it in such a way that there's no weasel room to get out of it.

Punish the traitors that won't let Americans vote. And punish them hard.

 

[Hrothbern]

The solution here requires Democrats to be in complete control of the government for long enough to put people who are not utterly corrupt anti-constitutionalists on the Supreme Court. Laws don't matter so long as Republicans are packing the Court with Republican political activists.

Then what you do is enact a "No Taxation Without Representation Law". What you do, if anyone turns up to vote, and is not allowed to, then that polling place (which is the city or county, not the state or country) has to refund the person 3 times the total local, state, and federal taxes that person has paid, and do so for 5 years. And write it in such a way that there's no weasel room to get out of it.

Punish the traitors that won't let Americans vote. And punish them hard.

Who would have thought that in modern western democracies the voting process would be so vulnerable. Isn't that something for weirdo far from our bed countries.
When Orban, Hungary gerymandered the elections to get far more seats than the popular vote, my first reaction was: why press on the the violations of free press, code of law, etc... why not first arrange and control that new members have their election process satisfying the standards of democracy as adhered to by the bulk of the EU.
Yet... our modern western democracies, where "everybody"" can vote, are only a century old and needed approx another century to go from voting rights of the happy few to voting right for "everybody".

If the Republican extremists get their way, I see a further regression as belonging to the possibilities.
With the argument: "why would people that do not contribute, do not pay taxes, have the right to determine our nation, have the right to vote"

 

[Cutlass]

If the Republican extremists get their way, I see a further regression as belonging to the possibilities.
With the argument: "why would people that do not contribute, do not pay taxes, have the right to determine our nation, have the right to vote"

That's already out there. There's a constant stream of people making statements about "only taxpayers should be able to vote" and similar things. This is called 'moving the Overton Window'. It's about making a formerly radical opinion move towards the mainstream through constant repetition. Just have more and more people say it, and have people with bigger and bigger audiences say it, and have people closer and closer to the seats of power say it, and then have people in power say it.

Democracy is the enemy of oligarchs. And that's of oligarchs of all sorts, from the hereditary nobles of Europe to the kleptocrats of Russia. And to the wannabe nobles and kleptocrats of the United States. The idols of the modern American conservative aren't Washington and Jefferson, they are Peron and Puttin. The Bourbons and the Romanovs.

Those with everything always think they are entitled to having more.

 

[Traitorfish]

I hate this kind of fearmongering. I hated it when Republicans would post the same kind of crap about Obama instituting martial law and and rounding up all the conservatives and putting them in FEMA camps. This kind of stuff doesn't help and only serves to further polarize the population no matter who is saying it.

Both Republicans and Democrats accuse the other of undermining American democracy. But the fact that both parties make the accusation does not, in itself, imply that both sides are making equally valid claims; that if one is wrong, the other cannot be right. Just because they share a framing does not mean that the anxieties they express are equally well-founded.

Just like Hitler's Brownshirts versus Thalman's Redshirts. A self-fulfilling evil and cycle of violence.

I'd be wary about drawing too close an analogy to the Weimar Republic. The militarisation of Weimar politics in the late 1920s is too tied up in its own history, in the German Revolution and Counter-Revolution, in the Ruhr Red Army and the Friekorps, to provide any straightforward comparisons. There are too many built-in assumptions.

A better analogy would probably be to Ireland before the First World War, where you see the emergence of two mass-membership paramilitary groups, the Irish Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteers. Each represented the two major blocs of Irish political life, the Nationalists and Unionists, rather than two fringe movements, were headed up by influential mainstream politicians, rather than radical demagogues, and made demands that were, in themselves, entirely reasonable and moderate, whether or not Ireland should be self-governing. That's a debate that can be had without anyone needing to shoot each other; Australia and Canada had managed as much, and Scotland would later do so. What lead to militarisation of Irish political life was not the demands being made, but their incompatibility, and the unwillingness of either party to accept compromise. Neither side claimed to be revolutionaries, and indeed both insisted that they were upholding the proper constitutional order. That's much more similar to the sort of scenario you'd see in the States if we followed the, uh, bold proposal to just give everyone guns and hope it sorts itself out.

Also, small pedantic correction, the Communist paramilitaries weren't called the "redshirts". The coloured shirt thing was a specifically ring-wing phenomenon; left-wing paramilitaries just wore whatever combination of work clothes and military surplus a local organisation had access to do.