What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[garbon]

I stood with a group of interfaith clergy and other people of faith in a nonviolent direct action meant to keep the white nationalists from entering the park to their hate rally. We had far fewer people holding the line than we had hoped for, and frankly, it wasn't enough. No police officers in sight (that I could see from where I stood), and we were prepared to be beaten to a bloody pulp to show that while the state permitted white nationalists to rally in hate, in the many names of God, we did not. But we didn't have to because the anarchists and anti-fascists got to them before they could get to us. I've never felt more grateful and more ashamed at the same time. The antifa were like angels to me in that moment.

But see, this is the police's fault. If there is a demonstration by extremists who are known to be violent, there should be riot police ready to stomp their guts out if they start something. If the Hungarian police can manage to send riot police to keep high school and university students in check, surely the American one can deal with some neo-Nazis?

If the police failed to prevent violence, then this must be investigated and public pressure put on them to actually do their job, and stop turning a blind eye just because their ranks are full of nazis as well.

But the correct response of society is NOT to have vigilante militias take over from the police.

Well considering that one of the founding issues for BLM was problems with the police, probably shouldn't hold our breath.

By the by, the fault is really with the neo-nazis.

[Tamas]

Obviously. But once you take the nazis attacking people as a given, then it is the police's fault for not intervening.

[jimmy olsen]

Obviously. But once you take the nazis attacking people as a given, then it is the police's fault for not intervening.

If the police habitually aren't able or willing to protect counter protesters, then you can't blame them from protecting themselves.



Also. Lol

[Tamas]

Well yes however, the proper response to this problem is to reform the police, not to form militias.

[The Brain]

I am not convinced that the idea that extremists with harmful and toxic views shouldn't get to march in the streets is a great one for a society.

[Eddie Teach]

And the police aren't stopping them because it's unconstitutional, not because the cops are racist too.

[Tamas]

And the police aren't stopping them because it's unconstitutional, not because the cops are racist too.

Don't tell me it is unconstitutional to disperse a mob when they are attacking people. Or a mob of people fighting each other, if you intend to keep with the both-at-fault narrative.

[garbon]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is suggesting that the nazis can't march.

[Syt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/politics/trump-lawyer-email-race-charlottesville.html

Trump Lawyer Forwards Email Echoing Secessionist Rhetoric

WASHINGTON — President Trump's personal lawyer on Wednesday forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that echoed secessionist Civil War propaganda and declared that the group Black Lives Matter "has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups."

The email forwarded by John Dowd, who is leading the president's legal team, painted the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in glowing terms and equated the South's rebellion to that of the American Revolution against England. Its subject line — "The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville" — was a reference to comments Mr. Trump made earlier this week in the aftermath of protests in the Virginia college town.

"You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington," the email reads, "there literally is no difference between the two men."

The contents of the email are at the heart of a roiling controversy over race and history that turned deadly last weekend in Charlottesville, where white nationalist groups clashed with protesters over the planned removal of a statue of Lee. An Ohio man with ties to white nationalist groups drove his car through a crowd, killing one woman and injuring many others, authorities say.

In a fiery news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Trump blamed "both sides" for that violence. He said many of those who opposed the statue's removal were good people protesting the loss of their culture, and he questioned whether taking down statues of Lee could lead to monuments of Washington also being removed.

His words were widely criticized in Washington but were praised by white supremacists, including a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Mr. Dowd received the email on Tuesday night and forwarded it on Wednesday morning to more than two dozen recipients, including a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and journalists at Fox News and The Washington Times. There is no evidence that any of the journalists used the contents of the email in their coverage. One of the recipients provided a copy to The New York Times.



"You're sticking your nose in my personal email?" Mr. Dowd told The Times in a brief telephone interview. "People send me things. I forward them." He then hung up.

The email's author, Jerome Almon, runs several websites alleging government conspiracies and arguing that the F.B.I. has been infiltrated by Islamic terrorists. He once unsuccessfully sued the State Department for $900 million over claims of discrimination.

Mr. Almon's email said that Black Lives Matter, a group that formed to protest the use of force by police against African-Americans, is being directed by terrorists. Mr. Almon blamed the group for deadly violence against police last year in Texas and Louisiana.

The email's comparison of secessionists to the nation's Founding Fathers echoes an early Confederate rallying cry, said Judith Giesberg, a Villanova University historian and editor of The Journal of the Civil War Era. Washington's face appeared on Confederate money, she said, and secessionists were eager to place their rebellion in the context of the American Revolution.

"The first states to secede drew a straight line back to the Revolution," she said in a telephone interview. "They said they were the inheritors of this revolutionary tradition that traces back to Washington."

Mr. Almon listed several reasons Lee is no different from Washington. "Both rebelled against the ruling government," the email reads, adding, "Both saved America."

Mr. Almon, who is black, said in his email to Mr. Dowd that the protesters should "go back to the ghettos and do raise their children and rebuild places like Detroit."

In a telephone interview, Mr. Almon said he sent the email to follow up on a phone call he had last week with Mr. Dowd. He said he had called to offer damaging information about James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and to provide other information about the Justice Department's ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign.

Mr. Almon said he hoped Mr. Dowd would circulate his email.

"I was hoping it would get in the hands of President Trump — I quite frankly hope he would review it right now because his presidency is on the line," Mr. Almon said in the interview. "I don't believe the president is getting the correct advice or proper information. Someone reading what I sent to Dowd will view Robert E. Lee differently."

There is no evidence that Mr. Dowd sent the email to Mr. Trump. Other recipients include Washington lawyers and members of Mr. Dowd's family.

Mr. Dowd circulated the email hours after the White House issued its own talking points to Republicans defending the president.

"The president was entirely correct — both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility," the White House said. Those talking points, circulated on Tuesday night, did not address Mr. Trump's comments about Lee and Washington.

The email that Mr. Dowd forwarded, however, issues a full-throated endorsement of those comments. It declared that Lee "saved America" by opting to surrender rather than launch guerrilla attacks in the final days of the Civil War.

Professor Giesberg said it is true that Lee rejected such tactics, but his decision did not save America.

"It's like a history I don't even recognize," she said.

In an interview, Mr. Almon said he is not a Republican and that he does not reflexively support Mr. Trump.

"I'm against racism," he said.

Mr. Almon said that he had also provided information about the F.B.I. to the office of Representative Devin Nunes of California, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

An email Mr. Almon provided to The Times showed that he had been in communication in March with Mr. Nunes's office. There is no evidence that Mr. Nunes circulated that email.

[Eddie Teach]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is suggesting that the nazis can't march.

Tim's cartoonist was. "Our racist police aren't doing anything about literal Nazis marching in the streets."

[garbon]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is suggesting that the nazis can't march.

Tim's cartoonist was. "Our racist police aren't doing anything about literal Nazis marching in the streets."

Ah. After what happened earlier this week, I skip Tim's cartoons unless they are a single panel (and given the single panel one here, I'm also going to put that policy under review).

I think Tim also had edited his post to add that additional cartoon, so it wasn't there when I'd originally read his post.

[Solmyr]

I would like to point out that these far right scum march and intimidate with exactly the same moral reasoning as Jacob and Solmyr would: to protect decent citizens from the cancerous, unacceptable vile that is taking over society.

The "moral reasoning" may be the same, but the political purpose is quite different. I remain puzzled as to why this should not matter.
Not only that, but this specific demonstration was intended as a show of strength against the removal of a statue, not to protect fellow racists from armed thugs. When Jacob and Solmyr and their friends start advocating the purchase of semi-automatic weapons, and organizing expeditions to walk down the streets of Redneck Central, your point will be stronger.

So are you saying that it is ok to have civilians physically attack these people? Instead of relying on the police for this?

At what point would you say it is acceptable for civilians to tespond to Nazi violence with violence of their own? Self-defence? Or is that still bad according to you?

[Solmyr]

BTW its interesting to see how the populists' radicalisation of politics is working out.

Here on this forum we have garbon being even more bitchy than usual every time what he considers canon is being referred to disrespectfully, and we have Jacob and Solmyr howling for nazi blood, ready to turn streets into battlefields because of a couple of hundred losers posering in a country of more than 300 million.

You went too far the other way.  The issue is not with the couple of hundred of losers.  The issue is with the tens of millions of closeted fascists that are getting emboldened.  Sometimes you need a particular moment to serve as a catalyst for such realization.

Am I a closeted fascist?

It's complicated.  You're haven't been closeted for quite some time, but you haven't yet come out either.  You keep saying things in a way that always leave some barely plausible deniability.  Cowardly, maybe?

Derspiess is exactly the type of guy who'd go to a white supremacist march and then whine and complain about being named and shamed.

[The Brain]

Yeah, I don't think anyone is suggesting that the nazis can't march.

It's in a cartoon Tim posted two posts above mine. You can download the images if you want.

Edit: Oh OK already discussed. Nm.

[The Brain]

There's insane and there's retarded. Then there's monumentally stupid, like here. Your boy Lee lost, moran.