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Originally posted by Elok
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No, I'm concerned about something more like (just one possible path):
1. Biden wins, and both houses of congress go blue
2. It's hammering time, and everybody's in a "end of Return of the Jedi" type mood, so somebody takes Defund the Police seriously and starts moving to aggressively demilitarize the police
3. This entails firing a lot of cops, nationwide, at once
4. This dumps a lot of unemployed cops on the market at a time when the economy as a whole isn't doing so hot
5. Cops have few job skills relevant for being not-cops, have a militaristic mindset, and are used to making a decent amount of pay for modestly-educated men. Also, most of them have guns, are feeling pissed and embattled already, and Trump just lost.
6. Gigantic upsurge in domestic terrorism
7. Everything unravels from there.
8. Composition of courts becomes largely irrelevant.
Again, just one possible path. As I say: Trump is incredibly crappy but also impotent, and represents a more or less stable equilibrium; he is unlikely to do anything decisive because he's a bloated posturing pissant without an ounce of courage in his body, and he's so good as a lightning rod that he occupies the opposition just by blithering. If he is removed from the picture, the toxic atmosphere that produced him is free to produce something worse. We'll have to let go of the tiger's tail eventually, but I don't want that to happen now. And yes, if not now, when, etc. But I do wish you'd abandon this notion that getting rid of Trump will solve the problem. I really don't think it will.
(The DiAngelo crowd are most worrisome to me in that they're a further destabilizing/escalating element in America's ongoing battle between opposing camps of internet lunatics shouting over the sane people. I don't think they're going to become a Red Guard, or anything of that nature. I was attempting to clarify what I thought Dinner was getting at. Sorry for not making that clear.)
1. Biden wins, and both houses of congress go blue
2. It's hammering time, and everybody's in a "end of Return of the Jedi" type mood, so somebody takes Defund the Police seriously and starts moving to aggressively demilitarize the police
3. This entails firing a lot of cops, nationwide, at once
4. This dumps a lot of unemployed cops on the market at a time when the economy as a whole isn't doing so hot
5. Cops have few job skills relevant for being not-cops, have a militaristic mindset, and are used to making a decent amount of pay for modestly-educated men. Also, most of them have guns, are feeling pissed and embattled already, and Trump just lost.
6. Gigantic upsurge in domestic terrorism
7. Everything unravels from there.
8. Composition of courts becomes largely irrelevant.
Again, just one possible path. As I say: Trump is incredibly crappy but also impotent, and represents a more or less stable equilibrium; he is unlikely to do anything decisive because he's a bloated posturing pissant without an ounce of courage in his body, and he's so good as a lightning rod that he occupies the opposition just by blithering. If he is removed from the picture, the toxic atmosphere that produced him is free to produce something worse. We'll have to let go of the tiger's tail eventually, but I don't want that to happen now. And yes, if not now, when, etc. But I do wish you'd abandon this notion that getting rid of Trump will solve the problem. I really don't think it will.
(The DiAngelo crowd are most worrisome to me in that they're a further destabilizing/escalating element in America's ongoing battle between opposing camps of internet lunatics shouting over the sane people. I don't think they're going to become a Red Guard, or anything of that nature. I was attempting to clarify what I thought Dinner was getting at. Sorry for not making that clear.)
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