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So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why they get taken more seriously. Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US.
Too often, you can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. This time, we saw it in time. I commend these companies for taking a stand, despite the obvious backlash they'll suffer as a result.
Apple and Amazon absolutely have the legal right to not do business with anyone, for any reason; and they have the ethical obligation to not do business with anyone openly proposing violence.
Your right though -- you often can't see the rise of authoritarianism until its too late. Sometimes it comes from the place you least expect.
The USA isn't really a democracy. For it to be democratic it would have to use more democratic voting systems than FPTP and the electoral college.
It's an oligarchy, but by the ruling class, which includes the big tech companies.
> Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US.
Unless it's one where they are in charge.
It's self-evidently impossible for Trump and the red tribe to overthrow the US system of government, they simply don't have control of enough of the levers of power.
It would be a lot easier for Biden/Harris and the blue tribe to do so, as they control a lot more of the levers of power (e.g. academia, journalism, big tech).
We have the closest thing to a democracy that any country has. I'm not going to split hairs about what a "real" democracy is. The fact is, our democracy is good enough that we, the people, (barely) stopped a fascist leader from maintaining power for the indefinite future, despite his very sincere desire to hold on to that power.
Your overall point is reasonable, but this is a reach there are many countries now that are at least as democratic as the US by any reasonable definition, and some pretty supportable arguments that some of them are meaningfully more democratic.
It's not that interesting to argue about I think though, because the differences are pretty small, and there is a huge gulf between all of the democratic countries and the non-democratic ones.
Is there any historical precedent for such a weakly armed group of people[1] overthrowing a heavily armed government?
Seems like hyperbole suggest they almost succeeded in overthrowing the most heavily armed government in the world.
But its naive to think the most heavily armed and powerful government in the world was nearly overthrown by a mob of people armed with fire extinguishers, zip ties, pepper spray, and little to no guns.[1]
No they didn't. Ransacking a building isn't overthrowing a government.
> We have the closest thing to a democracy that any country has.
Ha ha ha -- good joke, I could do with a laugh
> I'm not going to split hairs about what a "real" democracy is.
It's one where the government does what the people want.
> we, the people, (barely) stopped a fascist leader
Trump isn't a fascist. To be a fascist he would have to be more intelligent and have more coherent beliefs.
> despite his very sincere desire to hold on to that power
Nor does Trump want power. He wants attention -- narcissistic supply.
Trump's actually to lazy to exercise power (as well as being too stupid); that's why he refuses to read memos more than a page long.
Then it becomes martial law time, with Trump retaining power.
How close is that?
What in the hell do you think would have happened if they had caught up to any member of Congress? Seriously. Even if you foolishly assume the most charitable and peaceful of intentions, the size of the mob and physical violence on display going through the halls of the Capitol should make it painfully obvious that any Democratic member of Congress they happened upon would have ended up seriously injured. The mob beat a cop to death.
There's simply no way a rational person could come to the conclusion that the mob wouldn't have injured or killed Congresspeople. If you can't see the mob's intent you're either being willfully obtuse or disastrously ignorant. There's not a charitable middle ground as these people documented themselves during the riot and months leading up to it.
Do you believe that BLM rioters who chanted at politicians and cops and had various weapons intended to murder them? BLM rioters broke through barricades and smashed windows as well. Some BLM rioters killed multiple cops as well.
If I saw a BLM riot break into a building with politicians I would hold the same view I hold with these people. They may do violence, but we don't know for sure.
When people broke into the Wisconsin capital years ago over act 10 I didn't assume they were going to murder people.
I don't like to assume entire groups are going to do violence. When some individuals do violence in a group I don't assume the entire group wants to do violence.
I mean after you beat numerous police officers and murder one.
One person killing a cop doesn't mean the whole group was going to use violence.
And they weren’t stopping their co-“protestors” from beating cops, there were more assaulted.
And we know who planted the bombs, they already arrested multiple individuals who were armed, had pipe bombs or Molotov cocktails and who were photographed at the building.
I agree that people who attacked cops and watched it happen were willing to do violence. They should be in jail. They appear to be a minority of the rioters. That is all I was trying to say.
There was a van that had some molotov cocktails and bombs. These appear to belong to the rioters. I am talking about the bombs placed at the capital and at the RNC headquarters. Just because someone has a bomb doesn't mean they planted bombs nearby. I don't like assuming things like that.
Those people dressed like Huck Finn Braveheart had as much chance of overthrowing the US government as memelords did kidnapping an alien and bringing intergalactic peace.
This feels like 9/11 all over again. You got the worst legislation in US history as a result of 9/11. (the Patriotic Act)
What's going to be the Patriotic Act for the internet now everyone is convinced we are being attacked? We know they want to get rid of Section 230. How bad is the law going to be that replaces it?
When I read other comments expounding on how close we came to a coup, I can't help but roll my eyes as memories of being stuck in Egypt at the beginning of 2011 surface again. It's tough to not go on a rant about the order of magnitude of violence, uncertainty, fear, etc. between what happened with the violent nuts at the capital and a coup.
Not to say that the safety and/or lives of some political leaders weren't at risk, but once you've huddled in a dark apartment while a true overthrow is in play, you'll have no problem distinguishing between the two.
Then there's the whole topic of Boebert and her obsession with carrying a gun around Congress in the days leading up to the event then tweeting their locations live during the incident. It looks like telegraphing in hindsight; like she knew what was going down.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-...
> House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) mentioned that looters had found their way to his unmarked, third floor office and stole his iPad. He questioned how they could locate that office but not his clearly marked ceremonial office in Statuary Hall.
Bizarrely, the FBI even concluded Scalise's shooting wasn't politically motivated because the assailant was a wife-beater whose wife had got fed up with him and left him, and everyone in the press went along with it - even though if we applied this principle to domestic terrorists in general, the US probably wouldn't have anyone who counted as a domestic terrorist.
We are, literally, being attacked by fascists, anarchists, and neo-Nazis.
As I said, it's hard to see these things until it's too late. What happened on Wednesday was nearly the end. If you still don't see it, you're wearing blinders.
Like I'm saying powerful people want to convince America we are being attacked. The best way to do that is to make it look like a real threat. They basically left the front door open, where BLM protesters got tear gas immediately. Do you disagree that the response to the two groups of protesters was a little uneven?
The only difference in our opinions is that I think the response was on purpose. Huck Finn Braveheart is not a criminal mastermind. The number of protesters were miniscule compared to the BLM protesters. If the secret service and police actually wanted to stop them it would have been very easy.
We don't need to crack down on the mob, but we do need to address the situation which led to it's rise.
The electoral college is an outdated piece of government 'software' that has been repeatedly exploited in recent years. Through 2016, there were 58 presidential elections. In 5 of these, the popular vote didn't match the electoral vote. About 8.6% historically.
But for the last couple of decades, excluding this last election which is apparently still being argued, that percentage has been 40% instead of the 6.8% historically.
If Trump's re-election argument fails, that life number will likely drop to 33.3% in my recent subjective experience compared to 8.5% historically, or rise to 50% in recent experience compared to 10.2% historically.
Either way, these numbers mean something's wrong. "That's just a statistical variation you see in any set of data when giving it enough numbers" is not likely with 58 and 59 datapoints. Particularly with the inclusion of other data.
If you check the history logs, you'll see a technological explosion the last couple of decades that coincides with these electoral results that suggest exploitation of the system. Technology allowing fine grained microtargeting is only getting better, and it's being used to exploit the electoral system.
This time with disinformation campaigns and fine grained behavioral tracking and analysis (eg, Cambridge Analytica).
"Yes, we say we're a democracy but technically we're a republic so that means everything is fine and we don't need the numbers to always match up with the voting majority." I mean, I guess. Sure. Until we decide to push exploitation further, beyond the boundaries of the game we've set up.
This time it looks like the actors in the system missed the margin of exploitability within the game and went searching for new exploits. Instead of acknowledging the loss, they spammed every court they could find with useless lawsuits.
Like a malware bot checking every port to try to fingerprint services and check for vulnerable versions. And they turned the disinformation dial up to 11, inciting their base to keep their political machine operational since it's got a 4 year reboot cycle and it'd take time for their port scanning to finish.
This tactic led to a mob rioting. And it's unfortunate, but the mob were ultimately a system mechanic that got out of control. They were the tools or were 'acted upon' in a systems thinking perspective, rather than actors in the system. The actors were wielding them as a tool, and like any tool, irresponsible handling resulted in injury.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-takes-do...