What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Jacob]

Speaking of leaving matters to the police - the police in Charlottesville did not provide any protection to a local synagogue even after it was requested. They failed to provide an observer as promised.

The synagogue hired private security. Outside, armed men in fatigues "observed" the synagogue for an extended period of time, and the white nationalists marched by chanting anti-semitic slogans.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/charlottesville-cops-refused-to-protect-synagogue/

[The Brain]

Good edit.

[viper37]

Well I for one won't support such a "necessary" exception. It's not that hard to draw that line. On one side, Nazis. On the other side, everyone else.

If it was easy, there would be no violent protests by the left in democratic societies.  Leftist authoritarian regime would make great fiction, like dragons.

Nazis because:

1) They have a history of violence and oppression. They have exterminated millions of people based on their ideology.

So have commies.  And they still organize violent protests.  Many of them are against free trade and immigration too.  Extremes tend to share ideas on many subjects, I see it everyday on my FB with the pro-union crowd.

2) They actively use violence and intimidation against marginal groups as part of their current political program.

So have the leftist.  And they still do it.  People who broke rang, are, at best, shunned by their group, at group, victim of vandalism, threats and insults.

3) Their clearly stated ideological goals include the subjugation and murder of groups they consider inferior.

During Occupy Wall Street, CBC proudly showed us protesters who said bankers should be guillotined and anyone with a house over 100k$ should be deported.

4) Their methods and goals include the infiltration and subversion of our institutions and the destruction of democracy.

That's exactly what the hard left, a group you routinely support does.

As for Communists, should we find ourselves in a situation where Communist gangs routinely intimidate and attack "class enemies" or some such and the state fails to intervene, I would be sympathetic to anyone who punched them.

Didn't you vote for the NDP?
And you excuse their behaviour anytime it comes because there are worst then them.  Just a few posts above, you were willing to see nazis punched, because they,re worst than the commies right now.

Imho, it's not that different than Derspiess' position.  You vote for people who support the hard left, just like he votes for people who support the hard right.  When violence and vandalism happens, you're more than willing to excuse the thuggish behavior of your side and minize it.  You said that scabs are the lowest of the lowest of scums, and you're willingly blindfolded to excuse the union organized violence these people may suffer.  After all, if someone is a among the lowest of scums, why should we care what happens to them? They're almost as worst as nazis.

[viper37]

Speaking of leaving matters to the police - the police in Charlottesville did not provide any protection to a local synagogue even after it was requested. They failed to provide an observer as promised.

To provide police protection, the police needs a credible and immediate threat.

And if there parade of white nationalists was already watched by cops, I fail to see what more they could do, in the absence of an immediate threat.  We don't send cops to churches for fear of radical atheist militants, unless the church receives a threat.

I feel there is more to this story than the sensationalist reporting.

[Oexmelin]

These sorts of discussions seem to me counterproductive, or futile, absent of context. If Nazis are already marginalized, and powerless, the state institutions healthy and dynamic, the civil society strongly committed to democratic principles, it becomes much easier to stick to strict, uncompromising principles of free speech for Nazis, even to the point of having the luxury, as Arendt said, of being an apathetic "bystander".

But diagnoses of institutional health, government commitment to democratic principles and norms of justice are judgments which are politically messy. There is no simple equation that would clearly signal to all the moment when the defense of democratic and just societies is threatened by institutional rot, and when Nazism as a marginal movement to be ridiculed, has become a marginal movement to fight actively. For when Nazism is a mainstream movement, it may very well be too late. I am pretty sure, especially on Languish, that people who would hold similar views on pacifism would be strongly criticized. If the Weimar Republic has shown anything, more than a simple equation of "vigilantism = path to Nazism", it is that institutions, both in government and in the civil society, as well as citizens, need to have a clarity of purpose, and a clear sense of themselves.

So, in the meantime, I would suggest that context is key. Bands of armed thugs roaming the streets at night, actively hunting for people to beat up or murder, is not the same as the equivalent of a bar fight. Five guys kicking someone on the ground is not the same as throwing a cream pie in someone's face. Driving a car into a crowd with intent to kill in a political rally is not the same as shaming on social media. People showing up to a demonstration wielding semiautomatic weaponry capable, and indeed, succeeding, in intimidating common citizens, and even State-sanctioned forces, is not the same as people sitting down in front of a police line, announcing loudly that they are practicing civil disobedience. Police forces pointing sniper riffles at demonstrators is not the same as police forces protecting demonstrators. People making speeches in protected venues endowed with the prestige of an institution is not the same as someone shouting in a megaphone on a street corner.

[Syt]

Trump picks up ball, goes home. Shouts, "No, *you* are fired."

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/business/trumps-council-ceos.html?_r=0

Trump Ends C.E.O. Advisory Councils as Main Group Acts to Disband

President Trump's main council of top corporate leaders disbanded on Wednesday following the president's controversial remarks in which he equated white nationalist hate groups with the protesters opposing them. Soon after, the president announced on Twitter that he would end his executive councils, "rather than put pressure" on executives.

The quick sequence began late Wednesday morning when Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chief executive of the Blackstone Group and one of Mr. Trump's closest confidants in the business community, organized a conference call for members of the president's Strategic and Policy Forum.

On the call, the chief executives of some of the largest companies in the country debated how to proceed.

After a discussion among a dozen prominent C.E.O.s, the decision was made to abandon the group altogether, said people with knowledge of details of the call.

The council included Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock, Ginni Rometty of IBM, Rich Lesser of the Boston Consulting Group and Toby Cosgrove of the Cleveland Clinic, among others.

Before the president's decision to dissolve the two councils, executive from his manufacturing council were expected to have a similar call Wednesday afternoon. The manufacturing panel has seen a wave of defections since Monday, as business chiefs who had agreed to advise the president determined that his remarks left them with no choice but to walk away.

Two additional chief executives — Denise Morrison of Campbell Soup and Inge Thulin of 3M — had announced Wednesday morning they would resign from the manufacturing council.

The defections left Mr. Trump all but isolated from the business leaders whose approval he covets.

Members of the advisory group had stood with the president in recent months even as he advanced policies they vehemently opposed, including tough immigration policies and withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord.

But the president's equivocating in the wake of the outburst of white nationalist violence in Charlottesville was too much for the C.E.O.s to bear.

"He had put them in a very difficult position," said Anat R. Admati, a professor of finance and economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "This has ruined his relationships with some of them."

On Monday, after Mr. Trump's initial response to the violence, Kenneth C. Frazier, the chief executive of drugmaker Merck, resigned from the manufacturing council. For much of the day Mr. Frazier was alone in his opposition, but that night, two more C.E.O.s, from Under Armour and Intel, left the same group.

Then on Tuesday, three leaders of labor and nonprofit business groups left the council. And in a rebuke to the president, the chief executive of Walmart made public a letter to employees in which is explicitly criticized Mr. Trump's leadership.

Presidential advisory councils are largely ceremonial, meant to give the business community a line in with the White House. But in the Trump administration, the councils have become politically charged entities, as the executives in the groups have routinely been asked to defend the president's unpopular opinions and policies.

Moreover, the panels have not been seen to be particularly effective. After a few high profile events for the groups early in the Mr. Trump's presidency, there have been few meetings since, and none more are planned.

"So far they haven't done much," Ms. Admati said. "They had a few meetings with a bunch of fan fare, but it was more symbolic than anything else."

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
7:14 PM - Aug 16, 2017

[viper37]

People showing up to a demonstration wielding semiautomatic weaponry capable, and indeed, succeeding, in intimidating common citizens, and even State-sanctioned forces, is not the same as people sitting down in front of a police line, announcing loudly that they are practicing civil disobedience.

carrying semiautomatic weaponry is legal in Virginia.  I find it stupid, and you probably do too, but that's beside the subject: these people came with what the law allowed them too.

It is not different then a bunch of union thugs showing on a construction site armed with baseball bats trying to intimidate workers, and even intimidating the police asked to evacuate the workers (wich were allowed to work since the strike was non binding).  If guns were legal in Quebec, you can bet the FTQ goons would wear them in public.

It is not different than anti-police violence protestors who bring everything they can to throw at cops, who arrived with gaz masks and all the kit needed to attack the police.

Making threats about killing Blacks or Jews is no different than making threats about bankers and rich people that you want to kill.  You find a diffuse group, hardly identifiable, and you make them responsible for all of your country's failure.

The big difference, is, before Trump, I have never seen a politician openly defending that behavior for the rightwingers.  It sucks when it happens, doesn't it?  The leftist parties do it all the time.  How often did we hear PQ, QS and NDP policiticans cheering for Chavez or Maduro?  How often did they defended the Carrés Rouges, the OWS crowd and the various leftist protesters always committing violence under the guise of "civil disobedience"?

Look at what just happened in Gaspé, with a group of radical leftists vandalizing Junex' properties.  A big bad oil company.  Partly owned by our government.  What was their crime?  Drilling for oil.

Did the PQ condemn the acts?  Did QS? Did the NDP talked about this not being the way to achieve the objective of a Canada without oil?  'Cause I sure didn't hear it.  These people, they feel galvanized by the political reaction, just like the neo nazis in the US right now.

And yeah, it sucks when it happens.

[Oexmelin]

carrying semiautomatic weaponry is legal in Virginia.  I find it stupid, and you probably do too, but that's beside the subject: these people came with what the law allowed them too.

That's not besides the point. Invocation of legality do not erase the political effects it has. You are right that an organized group carrying baseball bats would also have strong political effects of intimidation, but on the continuum of effects, such a group would be much less liable to intimidate the police forces of a big American city, much more liable to intimidate the police forces of a small village, or indeed a construction site. Context gives perspective. Something which your usual Quebec-leftism comparison consistently lack - so I suggest if you want to repost it once again, you use the Canada thread.

[celedhring]

Yesterday:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!
5:21 PM - Aug 15, 2017

Today:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
7:14 PM - Aug 16, 2017

[The Minsky Moment]

carrying semiautomatic weaponry is legal in Virginia. 

Doesn't matter what the VA gun laws are.  If a gang of people uses their legal rights in an illegal way - to harass, threaten, or incite to riot - they are subject to sanction.

If the demonstration had been by radical Islamists chanting pro-ISIS rhetoric (the anti-Semitism anti-gay rhetoric would presumably be the same), we wouldn't be having this conversation.  And Trump would have given a very different speech.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yesterday:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
For every CEO that drops out of the Manufacturing Council, I have many to take their place. Grandstanders should not have gone on. JOBS!
5:21 PM - Aug 15, 2017

Today:

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!
7:14 PM - Aug 16, 2017

Turns out there are only a few Third Reich novelty cake businesses.  Ed's dietary issues have really hit the industry hard.

[Jacob]

Coincidentally and probably not related: the Trump administration has been defunding the tools used to control White Supremacist radicals and terrorists:

Donald Trump freezes funding to groups fighting right-wing terror and white supremacism
Grants had been approved by former President Barack Obama to target far-right hate groups and Islamist radicals at community level

Lucy Pasha-Robinson @lucypasha Wednesday 3 May 2017 12:12 BST

Donald Trump has reportedly frozen $10 million (£7.7m) of grants destined to counter violent extremism in the US.

More than 30 organisations were pegged by former President Barack Obama's office to receive funding, although the White House has since put the grants on hold pending review.

Among those approved were local governments, city police departments, universities and non-profit organisations fighting all forms of violent extremism in the US.

Former white supremacist Chuck Leek, who has since become a volunteer with Life After Hate - one of the organisations that was due to receive government funding - said the white supremacy movement was becoming more active.

"The white supremacist movement is far more active in the last six months than I have seen it in 10 or 12 years," he told CBS.

He believes that if these organisations can help change even one person's mind "it might be worth it, if that one person had been Dylann Roof or the Oklahoma City bomber."

Nebraska Emergency Management Agency assistant director Bryan Tuma was also due to receive a grant to train mental health workers to recognise the signs of violent behaviour.

"We are told right now that those programmes are being reviewed," he said.

"Our goal is to focus in on what are the barriers preventing people from reporting this kind of behaviour."

The Trump administration was reportedly pushing to erase neo-Nazis and white supremacists from the US government's counter-extremism programme in February by moving it to focus exclusively on Islamist terrorism.

American officials briefed on the proposed changes told Reuters the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiative could be renamed "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism".

The reclassification would remove its work combatting far-right attacks and mass shootings, such as the massacre of black churchgoers in Charleston, which are rarely classified as terrorism by American authorities.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-counter-violent-domestic-extremism-white-supremacism-cve-funding-freeze-10-million-a7715101.html

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/14/16144598/trump-white-terrorism

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/katharine-gorka-life-after-hate_us_59921356e4b09096429943b6

[Jacob]

Meanwhile, Daily Stormer has moved to a .ru domain.

[The Minsky Moment]

Meanwhile, Daily Stormer has moved to a .ru domain.

And the Axis of shitbags is complete.

[The Brain]

Why did they move? They think Trump is on the way out?