An ominous American future imagined | Hacker News Reader

An ominous American future imagined

theweek.com

18 pointscronjobber14 comments

The implication behind this article is that any sort of unrest would be completely Donald Trump's fault. But what people seem to forget is that Donald Trump has a reason for waiting to cede the presidency. Gore lost the election even though he got the popular vote. There were massive irregularities in the Democratic primaries, and the media has been biased and partisan, mostly in favor of Hillary Clinton, since the beginning.

I understand why some people are afraid of his hesitance. I hope they at least understand the reason he's doing so.

In the 2000, Bush v Gore election the result was contested afterwards when there was some doubt over who carried Florida and it came down to some hundreds of votes.

Trump is claiming in advance that he will "have to see" whether he will accept the result or not. I think that's quite different.

With the Bush v Gore election, nothing like it had happened before. Of course he wouldn't contest it beforehand. Now there has been a history of it happening. It definitely makes more sense to hesitate now.

> There were massive irregularities in the Democratic primaries

[ Citation needed ]

I'm a politically aware Democrat, I supported Bernie Sanders (see https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/02/this-blog-is-voting-for-b...), and I saw no compelling evidence to believe that the primaries were "stolen" from him in any meaningful sense.

He had an uphill climb in that the establishment party organs were aligned with Hillary, but that's been true for every insurgent candidate in every election ever. In the end he did better than anyone who supported him (including the man himself, I suspect) would have expected when he launched his campaign.

You're right to ask for citation. Put simply, there is no definitive proof that the primary was rigged per se, but there were consistent differences between the exit polling & the voting results. Almost all of the differences were in Secretary Clinton's favor, and these discrepancies were not found in the Republican primaries, nor were they found in the '08 primaries.

http://www.snopes.com/stanford-study-proves-election-fraud-t...

This kind of hyperbole is ridiculous and very dangerous. Demonizing Trump's followers plays into his rhetoric and further inflames political division. People were saying the same stuff during Cheney et al. and none of it came to pass.

> police unions had become more and more explicit in aligning themselves with Trump and the militias.

Perhaps others have different perspectives on this, but my vision of a martial law future bills the police as supportive of the existing regime, from whence they draw their tax-funded salary, not a challenger whose installation would likely interrupt the same.

Usually so, but America is crazy exceptional in this regard.

If cops in America believe that by supporting the government they are supporting an evil government (which makes them be like SS) then they will not support the government this way.

The present situation (or the projected situation by the author) is even more exceptional in this regard because of clashing base of Hillary. Hillary is pro-BLM, which puts her at odds with the Police unions.

Trump has gained the endorsement of largest Police Union in America. However he lags in support from Armed forces in comparison of other Republican Presidential candidates (however he beats Hillary hands down despite of that [1]).

1. http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/election/2016/05...

See https://www.quora.com/Are-most-cops-in-the-U-S-Democratic-or.... The majority of comments suggest that police tend to lean towards the conservative side.

"...sporadic left-wing violence..." I think that was a typo. It should have read "never ending left-wing violence"

If this is our depressing future I prefer the one in Idiocracy.

This is from July

July 2019

The article was posted October 18, 2016.

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