Colorado supreme court ruled that they can take Trump off the ballot, now it looks like California is trying to do that as well. Meanwhile, republican states are threatening to retaliate in kind.
This seems unprecedented for US, does anybody know what happens in this scenario?
You don’t need to be convicted of a federal crime to be precluded. Aiding and abetting an armed insurrection WHEN the person is a sworn office holder is all that is needed. The crime isn’t that he committed a crime, it was that he violated a clause in the US constitution written to prevent Confederate leaders from holding office after the Civil War.
The 14 amendment 3rd clause (14.3) has 2 main components: 1: An office holder or military personelle who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution 2: participates in Rebellion or insurrection against said Constition or gives considerable aid to those who due. When both conditions are fulfilled in order, a person is ineligible to serve in federal office again.
The 14.3 wasnt just to ban all Confederates, but those Confederates who had essentially broken their oaths. It requires an act of congress to allow such a person to serve again.
Now insurrection against the Constitution isn’t a crime to my knowledge at any level. And it’s sort of clever that the writers of the amendment side step any criminal charges. Criminal charges require trials and convictions.
Are you really defending Trump? You think this is a massive witch-hunt?
As I said, I don’t like the guy- I don’t give two shits what happens to the guy, or to US “democracy.” But yeah, anyone who thinks that the capitol “attack” was an insurrection, is a sucker who hasn’t seen real insurrection (successful or not) like that which the west has instigated across countless other countries, and who watches far too much CNN. Real talk here- you lot (those who fall for this) distrust western establishment media about China, about Russia/Ukraine, about all sorts of foreign issues- but then you fall hook, line, and sinker for a blatant set-up in domestic politics, as long as it’s “the other guy” (because that is what it is- you may have progressed past liberalism and pop leftism, yet the mentality of the “other guy” remains) IMO.
Yeah, it’s a witch hunt. The “witches” being hunted are a bunch of chuds who generally deserve it, but almost entirely not for the reasons being tossed at them- hell, mostly they’re legally in the clear. Hilariously enough, the far more powerful and active forces of fascism in the US are the ones massively ramping up the powers of the state, directing precedent in dangerous new territory, and blatantly engaging in political suppression and violating the alleged rights of their citizenry on paper, all while claiming to be “defending their democracy” and “preventing the rise of fascism.”
Fascism in the US and much of the west is coming in blazing through the metaphorical backdoor- the establishment, ie. the “left” (center, center-right, faux-progressives) and the establishment center/mainstream “right,” and you somehow can’t see it?
It was an insurrection though. The rioters were threatening to shoot, hold hostage and stamp over the political power in this country. Just because not all of them had guns doesn’t mean it wasn’t an insurrection.
I think saying Trump is not complicit in the Jan 6th event is foolishness and accomplishes nothing. What are you trying to prove? If someone commits a crime with little competence they are still guilty by definition. Of course, in an outrage driven political environment, people will blow it out of proportion for their own ends, but this doesn’t change that Trump routinely attempts to rile up his base into committing acts of violence, including sedition, which is a crime.
I’m simply stating facts as I see it. What am I trying to prove? Nothing much really, stating my opinion based on facts as I’ve seen them. As said, I don’t care for Trump and his crowd, and I care even less for American “democracy” so frankly I’m just enjoying the beautiful sights of the empire’s decline and keeping myself informed both out of personal interest, and out of a desire to insulate myself from whatever the future holds.
They’ll have to pin that on him first. Once again, stating facts as I see them- they can’t, not without further mutilations of the justice system as it exists, and a further collapse of their ability to manufacture consent with large portions of the population- not just Trump’s followers, but anyone with enough sense to see the writing on the wall IMO.
Indeed.
The imperial narrative is discursive and inherently contested. It is not simply created and enforced by conscious state agents, but is also an inherent part of the social relations and characteristics of the public. It is a result of contradictions and relations, not mere top down hegemony. However, the divide doesn’t necessarily inhibit imperial hegemony nor does it necessarily signal a decline, only development, which may actually end up invigorating imperial power.
There have always been massive contradictions in the American system and now is not even close to as dire as past struggles have been. In fact when internal contradictions really got hairy for the US leading up to the Civil War, it eventually allowed for massive expansion at the cost of breaking the enslaver plantation class. There was no intial intention to pay such a price but they did it anyway and it got them a continent once the dust settled. The US is not as rigid as many believe.
Like all the people that know Trump tried to incite a coup, even if it was carried out by incompetent people that have no clue about anything at all? The idea that prosecuting Trump will choke the US seems to be a massive stretch. If anything it will bring it more cohesion and make it easier to achieve the consent you are concerned about.
The question is how will it actually play out? Has Trump played his role already? Is he necessary for legitimizing the already popular democracy vs tyranny narrative or is Putin/Xi enough? Is he still needed to solidify the Democratic Party and the Republican Party? Maybe they decide he is better to keep around so they can inflate fears over project 2025 or maybe he is booted off more ballets anyway and they roll with it. I don’t see a bad option. Even a Trump win has imperial benifits discursivley and materially.
Clearly we don’t exist in the same universe in regards to this topic. It’s the facts as you see them here as well.
The difference between the slaving, plantation owning class of yesteryear, and the petit bourgeois and working classes’ discontent today, is that one side happens to be overwhelmingly representing US industry and production- agriculture, domestic industry, etc… and the other side is the financier/managerial class which has been starving out the former, or exporting it overseas for its own profit. In the US civil war, the Union represented American industry- that same industry has been gutted into a shadow of what it once was, and its bitter remnants are coalescing with all the other demographics who have been left at the wayside of the globalized economy. And- for all the “blue state, red state” divisions- both sides’ spread across the country know no borders; the comparison of the “slave state, free state” does not exist.
I ain’t concerned about the “cohesion/consent.” Frankly, if every American citizen decided tomorrow that the US was an illegal government, and the country balkanized into thousands of microstates, I would be very happy. I don’t care about your country, actually I see it as the epicenter of all modern evil and what’s wrong with the world, I’d go so far as to describe it as the likely “great filter” humanity must overcome, lest we face extinction.
If you think this is going to lead to more “cohesion” though… really? What are you smoking? Unless by “cohesion” you mean jackboots on the ground, not beyond the official borders of the empire, but within the continental USA…
Why wouldn’t it lead to more cohesion? The discourse becomes more entrenched and settler nightmares become easier to wield making action easier to mobilize or imagine. The future becomes more and more certain. This is how American history has always worked and it’s how American politics has developed. I wish more people understood this place before speaking on it.
In other words, things aren’t really that dire for the empire, like I said. (Although if you look at oil backed attempts to dictate how shadow banks invest you will find some striking geographic, class divisions brewing even if they are not like the mid 19th century) Furthermore, the slave-free question was not about the merrits of slavery, it was about unified expansion. Your fixation on industry in the Civil War misses the point that the Civil War marks the most rapid expansionary period in US history all despite the turmoil of speculation driven depression and political polarity.
You flatter me
This is an exhausting narrative that is rarely wielded correctly. I’ll just say one thing to blow it up. Oil.
As for the apparent victims of “globalization,” none of this is new to US history. We blow up our economic systems pretty routinely. There are dead mines and ghost towns dating back nearly 200 years yet it hasn’t truly harmed the empire yet and it’s not clear that the overplayed narrative about the rust belt, or rural communities, will be anything more than more of the same. It’s not like those regions are not being actively gentrified as we speak anyway.
Further, the tensions of the civil war are not the only tense moment in US history that led to massive expansion. So was the great depression. Gee now how did that turn out? Roll the war footage, Jerry.
Its not that simple. We literally mined all the best iron already. The steel industry died of natural causes and that shit isn’t coming back regardless of how nefarious finance is or isn’t. Golden ages don’t last forever, especially when they are inherently extractive and imperial, this is something the US “working class” doesn’t seem to understand and it’s partially because this false bourgeoisie narrative that coddles industrialists can only breed reaction. US prosperity cannot and never will be legitimate and looking to the past is meant to breed nostalgia for a reset, which is exactly the cohesion the US seeks and it’s exactly where we are headed.
This has already been the case for literally centuries.
Yet, unsurprisingly, it’s structure and history has evaded you.