State of the art progressive thought re: Trump refusing to leave office
-
Really, to me the scenario I (indirectly) laid out with those questions seems so plausible I can't imagine(1) anyone disagreeing with it being a legitimate concern.
I even thought that no one would be able to point to a specific step in the process and tell me 'No, that would never(2) happen, Jon, because ....'.
So far from 'reframing' it as a gotcha I was disappointed you ignored it and instead opted for the straw man interpretation.
(1) I don't mean that literally in the sense that I can't close my eyes and picture the words on the screen. I mean I couldn't imagine reasonable people communicating that view in good faith.
(2) I mean that in the colloquial sense, like if you were to say 'Maybe Trump will dump Pence and invite Michelle Obama on a national unity ticket' and I say 'that could never happen', I don't mean it would violate any laws, either of physics or the state
-
@jon-nyc said in State of the art progressive thought re: Trump refusing to leave office:
Really, to me the scenario I (indirectly) laid out with those questions seems so plausible I can't imagine(1) anyone disagreeing with it being a legitimate concern.
I even thought that no one would be able to point to a specific step in the process and tell me 'No, that would never(2) happen, Jon, because ....'.
So far from 'reframing' it as a gotcha I was disappointed you ignored it and instead opted for the straw man interpretation.
(1) I don't mean that literally in the sense that I can't close my eyes and picture the words on the screen. I mean I couldn't imagine reasonable people communicating that view in good faith.
(2) I mean that in the colloquial sense, like if you were to say 'Maybe Trump will dump Pence and invite Michelle Obama on a national unity ticket' and I say 'that could never happen', I don't mean it would violate any laws, either of physics or the state
No, the sane among us see you simply as playing silly booger...
-
@jon-nyc :
Or do you think there's nothing he or his supporters could do to marshall a competing set of electors from GOP-led swing states? Or to just invalidate whole classes of votes?
I am sure there is something he could do. Gosh jon, do you think I think the laws of physics would be violated by that? What's with these straw men?
I don't consider that stuff a "legitimate concern".
-
Personally, I think this discussion both sucks and blows simultaneously, hence violating the very laws of physics you two appear to know so much about.
-
@Jolly said in State of the art progressive thought re: Trump refusing to leave office:
No, the sane among us see you simply as playing silly booger...
Which part of that scenario do you see as implausible?
-
Maybe you could take us step by plausible step through the process by which this happens? It would help identify our differences between what is or is not a legitimate concern, or maybe it will bring people to your side, as they understand the plausibility of the process.
-
That's what I was doing. Waiting for someone to tell me what step they find implausible.
-
I am asking so I can understand more about the logistics of this:
Or do you think there's nothing he or his supporters could do to marshall a competing set of electors from GOP-led swing states? Or to just invalidate whole classes of votes?
I am presuming that you think the door to doing these sorts of things has always been legally open but that prior presidents have chosen not to do them because they are decent people.
-
Well it would be state actors, not the president, but it happened in 1876. Different circumstances of course.
-
You provided exactly zero description of the logistics of doing this. As you are the one claiming this unprecedented thing is a legitimate concern, I think the burden would be on you to establish the plausible steps in some amount of detail beyond "invalidate a bunch of votes". Which I am temped to straw-man as "just invent your own vote totals". But that would totally be a straw man and you definitely did not say that.
-
But if your response is 'This part won't happen, Jon, the state institutions are secure and well defined enough to prevent it. Secretaries of State don't have much leeway in vote validation and no one would bother organizing a competing slate of electors", then that's an answer.
-
Right but if something like this happened, his supporters wouldn't say 'He's illegally usurping the presidency but I'm ok with it'. They would say 'thank god these patriots have undone yet another attempted coup by the democrat party'.
-
I back my contention that the concern is not legitimate not on any notion that he would lack any support from his base, but on the notion that he would have the weight of law enforcement and the military to contend with should he usurp the presidency.
-
@jon-nyc said in State of the art progressive thought re: Trump refusing to leave office:
@Jolly said in State of the art progressive thought re: Trump refusing to leave office:
No, the sane among us see you simply as playing silly booger...
Which part of that scenario do you see as implausible?
What percent likelihood matches your definition of plausibility?
-
9.237
-
The rhetoric of "legitimate concern" requires only that the audience being appealed to has sufficient hatred for the source of the concern to nod accordingly at the grave, er, legitimate, concern. It does not do to try to quantify such rhetoric. But neither can anybody question the legitimacy, without providing a rigorous risk assessment of the unspecified details of the threat.