Notes on Trump 61 Splodey Heads Splode

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I don’t have time to write an analysis.

This official explanation from twitter speaks for itself and needs no comment.

Overview

On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted:

“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks. After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service.

Assessment

We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

This determination is based on a number of factors, including:

President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate and is seen as him disavowing his previous claim made via two Tweets (1, 2) by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, that there would be an “orderly transition” on January 20th.

The second Tweet may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a “safe” target, as he will not be attending.

The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.

The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” and instead that he plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election.

Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.

As such, our determination is that the two Tweets above are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, and that there are multiple indicators that they are being received and understood as encouragement to do so.

@Twitter
Twitter Inc.

‎@Twitter‎ verified

Your official source for what’s happening.

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html

If that had been written as a parody it would have been unconvincing.

But its real.

Of course Trump announced that his own platform will be rolled out shortly.

But Google took a more serious step. It won’t distribute apps for other platforms unless they meet its requirements for enforcing “better moderation”. (In Australia they would have said “safety”).

Since they have a near monopoly with semi-locked phones it could actually take a few days of email forwarding for most people who care to learn how to download and install apps from other sources such as those listed here:

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/known-repositories/721

The next logical step would be to suppress access to material that “glorifies violence” by preventing normal URLs from working through the normal DNS.

That could take weeks rather than days for people to learn how to configure access to alternate DNS services for the “dark web”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_DNS_root

It would be more significant by assisting NSA et al to keep closer tab on that smaller subset of people using the “dark web”.

Further escalation would involve actually shutting down server access at high bandwidth colocation sites.

So far they have not even been able to shutdown “Library Genesis” and “Sci-Hub” on the public DNS:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832410/#

The resilience of the networks behind those sites was massively hardened during the explosion of scientific collaboration bypassing commercial publishers resulting from covid-19.

Now of course Google, NSA et al are thoroughly aware of and indeed contributors to all of that.

It would certainly be possible to shut everything down in an emergency. What’s missing is the ability to just make peoople disappear. That is far simpler, quicker and more effective. No actual fascist regime tries to impose such breathtaking levels of censorship as that being announced without being able to rely on just locking people up.

Meanwhile the main effect is just to drive people into narrower circles that can be more easily monitored – eg if they end up imagining that the Tor encrypted networks funded by the US Navy are some sort of way to avoid US government surveillance.

But the side effect is far more important.

Raising the general level of paranoia is certainly “likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021”.

Suppressing that is likely to inspire some actual “domestic terrorism”.

Is that the aim?

Possibly for some. But my guess is the corporate liberals have just lost the plot.

Some Republicans really are stupid enough to imagine they could survive the primaries in two years by prohibiting Trump from running for public office.

If just 17 GOP Senators join the Democrats in impeaching Trump in order to impose that penalty, we would be in quite an extraordinary situation. Not worth analysing unless it actually happens. I have no way to guess whether there are that many who are that desperate and stupid.

But it is certainly plausible that there will be enough Democrats to start the impeachment process. They already did “the Russia thing” and they already impeached Trump once. What harm would they see in helping to intensify the fight that Trump has already unleashed in the opposing party?

So everything possible is being done to increase the relevance, support and enthusiasm of a large mass based right wing party with both a substantial Congressional representation and a militant extra-Parliamentary wing.

Moreover the complete desertion of basic democratic principles by Trump’s opponents forces others to unite with Trumpists on the simple issue of whether we want to be told what we are allowed to think and say by corproate liberals (who Trump calls the “radical socialist, Marxist left”).

I honestly cannot guess what the people at Twitter who signed themselves “Your official source for what’s happening” think will now happen.

My guess is it will be a lot easier to get along with the Trumpists in a united front than with that lot.

See also my comments of January 4 and 9:
https://c21stleft.com/2020/12/18/notes-on-trump-59-biden-joins-the-trump-campaign/#comment-4322
https://c21stleft.com/2020/12/18/notes-on-trump-59-biden-joins-the-trump-campaign/#comment-4332

108 thoughts on “Notes on Trump 61 Splodey Heads Splode”

    • Interesting data. Have not analysed carefully but what I did notice strongly confirmed my prejudice that Trump would have won if he had not performed abysmally over covid-19 (or more precisely if there had not been covid-19 since there was no real likelihood of him not performing abysmally in an emergency).

      That underlines the seriousness of the situation in which a large mass based right wing party will be confronting a weak, corrupt and incompetent administration. They will do far better in opposition than in government.

      Also strongly confirmed that the liberal media hysteria pushing identity politics etc backfired as badly as I described in the Notes on Trump series. Trump did slightly better among blacks and a lot better among hispanics than before.

      The big shift was that the Democrats who did not turn out to vote for Clinton did turn out to vote against Trump (ie were not dissuaded by being unimpressed with Biden as much as they were by Clinton and were more hostile to Trump after experiencing 4 years in office including covid-19 than when he was just an outsider).

      Re election stolen, the data confirmed the main elements of what I think most Republicans find persuasive:

      1. “Mysteriously” Republicans got an increased vote in the Flipped States but Trump lost.
      Trumpists consider that “mysterious” because they like Trump more than they like the GOP.
      Obvious explanation, others dislike Trump more than they dislike Democrats.

      2. “Mysteriously” Biden did better and Trump worse in the flipped States than elsewhere.
      That was actually cited as a “statistical” argument that there must have been electoral fraud.
      Obvious explanation. The flipped States are where the battleground was and Trump lost the battle.

      Data sheds no light on third issue that I think convinced a lot of Republican voters.

      3. “Mysterious” swing towards Democrats after counting had stopped.
      Obvious explanation “blue shift” expected as Democrats mobilized to vote by mail (especially with covid-19) and Trump denounced postal voting as assisting fraud (and downplayed covid-19 so Republicans more likely to not use postal votes).

      The main issues still to be resolved by court cases is whether that large swing to postal votes was done unlawfully and whether such unlawful changes to the rules both enabled easier fraud and actually resulted in enough votes being counted with observers intentionally excluded to have been able to swing the results.

      No polling can shed light on that. Either way that very large party that would most likely have won if there had been no pandemic will remain convinced the election was stolen while efforts are made to treat advocacy of that view as “incitement to armed insurrection”. That absurdity is more typical of banana republics.

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  2. Trumps pollsters told him in December that he had lost the election and why but he continued with the lies about it being stolen. What a schmuck what an unbelievable schmuck. I feel sorry for the chumps that took the election theft story seriously what a schmuck.

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  3. Yes I agree with you that it was covid that did him in, in the sense that covid exposed him as totally incompetent and untrustworthy and thats what the polls found a swing against him due to his management of covid and his untrustworthiness. Maybe if there was no covid people wouldnt have realised exactly what type of stable genius he is.
    The vote by mail objections will go nowhere because one very few fraudulent votes have been found and voting is completely in the hands of the states. Both red and blue states have vote by mail. The time to object to its expansion during a pandemic was before the election. Not after like a poor loser.
    Trump supporters should ask themselves why did previously pro Trump republicans support expansion of vote by mail? Why didnt the Republican party object? Why did the Trump appointed guy in charge of security of the election pronounce it clean? Why didnt the Trump appointed AG’s investigation into electoral fraud find anything? Why do the electronic records and the paper votes tally? Why did the repeated recounts come out with the same result and now why do the exit polls reflect the election results?
    But then again maybe it was stolen, maybe the vaccine has a chip in it that will allow the DOD to control you, maybe Trump is fighting a cabal of pedophiles that are run out of a pizza shop directed by Hilary Clinton.
    It remains to be seen how the Republican party and Trump will handle the Qanon woman elected to congress. Will anyone want to stand by this woman who chased a Parkland survivor demanding that he admit that he was a actor and that the massacre was faked. Oh yeah banana republic on so many levels.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-mocked-parkland-survivor-unearthed-video-idiot-who-n1256516

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  5. Arthur Im going to lay the blame at your feet. When I first got into ultra left politics you were saying study political economy. I took you seriously I enrolled in night school economics courses both trad and political economy I buddied up to a CPAML friend who wrote a political economy thesis for his doctorate. I read everything that I could get my hands on so its basically your fault. Now you say that Musk is a fraud and I can only go to this guy again.

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    • So, now that you know it’s over within a week there might be some point responding to your breathless dribbling over the past week:

      “Look I think that there is a left in America but its just not the left that you want. It stretches from a Billionaire like Charlie Munger who argues for higher taxation of the rich and universal single payer health care to Elizabeth Warren who argues for regulation of the finance sector to Bernie, AOC and Paul Krugman. And yes these people are just the reformist left but they do have a mass base and you must meet people where they are. If you try to meet them where you are well you just end up talking to me and I think that we can both agree thats going no where.”

      The broad milieu in which a genuine left can function includes a reformist left which merely seeks to improve conditions for oppressed people while reinforcing the oppressive system not working to develop the fight for reforms into actual taking power from the oppressors.

      It does not include the “Bourgeois socialists” or do gooders who engaged in charitable activities to lecture the oppressed against such social evils as gangs, gambling, drunkeness and drug addition despite the fact that such advice and reforms are initended to and could benefit the oppressed.

      Actual advocacy of lumpen gangsterism, gambling, get rich quick schemes, drugs etc has always been promoted against the alternative of joining a movement to fight oppression. Nobody needs to explain why that isn’t part of the left. It is blindingly obvious to anyone with a clue about anything.

      There is nothing remotely capable of being mistaken as “left” about anybody getting enthusiastic about a “pump and dump” scheme in which people are incited to heroically fight Wall Street by buying and holding stocks at ridiculous prices while the promotors of the excitement sell those stocks to the suckers.

      I have not noticed anyone trying to pretend such activity is leftist before.

      I guess it doesn’t happen much because the interval between becoming attracted to such delusions and the delusion exploding in your face is so short.

      But the fact of somebody being attracted to this stuff at all, even for the briefest period, tells all that one needs to know about how seriously they should be taken about anything at all that they claim to have studied and thought about.

      The level of delusional thinking among liberals is truly spectacular.

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  7. Wow did I say that the people on Redit were part of the left? If I did I was clearly wrong. As to bourgeois socialists “…who engaged in charitable activities to lecture the oppressed against such social evils as gangs, gambling, drunkeness and drug addition..” I guess you mean Charlie Munger well I dont know if he lectures the oppressed on drunkeness but I do know that he publicly advocates higher taxation of the rich and moving to universal health coverage seem like pretty reformist left stock and trade.
    Who was advocating a get rich scheme? I linked to Mr Van Der Kolk because I think as I said he explains stuff really well. No more no less.
    Any way pretend what you want.

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    • You promote and (largely echo) what I call “left populism” with deranged promotion of a Wall Street get rich quick scam as “revolution” against Wall Street.

      That isn’t even reformism. It is deranged.

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  8. When I called the Wall Street short squeeze a revolution I was joking. I was taking a shot at Anthony Scaramucci’s comment that this was the French revolution of finance. I never endorsed the reddit crowds take down of the hedge fund other than to say that it was hilarious. The references to 140% of the stock being in play might not be naked short selling it might mean that I dont understand what they were talking about and still dont.
    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/we-are-witnessing-the-french-revolution-of-finance-says-scaramucci/vi-BB1d9Ee6

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  9. Apparently the 140% figure is a flaw in the way they calculate.

    “Short positions currently make up an impossible 140% of GameStop’s float, which is the result of a flaw in how short interest is calculated, a flaw that’s getting greatly magnified in the case of GameStop, according to Dusaniwsky.”

    This Dusaniwsky guy is apparently a guy who knows how it works.
    Is naked shorting happening well maybe but maybe those making this claim are just sharing my confusion.

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    • Of course it was reality that done him in. It certainly wasn’t the liberal media. By ranting endlessly they would have managed to get him elected again if there had not been a pandemic. They are now doing everythig they can to entrench a mass based right wing party as the main opposition to their utterly bizarre ravings. This now goes “all the way” by ludicrously pathetic pretences at suppressing the inevitable hostility to their posturing as being “domestic terrorism” and “armed insurrection to overthrow the government”.

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  13. Defence brief of 78 pages was hopeless.
    Reports described their oral presentation as worse.
    They improved greatly by using only 3 hours of the 16 allowed.
    This 10′ video clip was all that anyone needs to understand the basics.

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  14. https://beckernews.com/3-read-the-former-capitol-police-chiefs-damning-resignation-letter-to-speaker-pelosi-36549/
    Link to the full text of the letter by the former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to Nancy Pelosi. Main points (1) Intelligence services did not anticipate a violent attack (2) the police chief’s request for National Guard before the day was denied due to bad “optics”. (3) the police chief’s urgent request for National Guard on the day was held up for approval for 4.5 hours.

    Such levels of “incompetence” are impossible to believe.

    Ted Cruz wanted to question Nancy Pelosi about her knowledge of the abovehttps://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1360627725694869514
    but Democrats decided not to continue with witnesses in the impeachment process.

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    • Interesting! Claims that there were “thousands” of “armed” “insurrectionists” wildly exaggerated but confirms there was a significant number (scores to hundreds) prepared in advance for coordinated attack to break through external permiter. Some of the video indicates that they were surprised to be able to also get into the building.

      If I understood correctly the Capitol Police chief is clearly pointing the finger at House Sergeant at Arms (who works with Pelosi) for blocking National Guard. Also at FBI and Home Security not passing on intelligence of open planning for the breakin.

      If so then that will certainly get lots of traction eventually.

      BTW meanwhile Trump’s lawyers filed Feb 9 supplemental brief for WI election SCOTUS case saying it is not moot because he is likely to be again running as President and again faced with same problems.
      https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/20-883.html

      WI and PA Trump cases both could be scheduled (or denied as moot) at SCOTUS conference Feb 19.

      So far I have only seen “Kraken” cases re MI and GA. Not sure whether Trump has abandoned.

      Time magazine article also very interesting. Boasting about success of efforts previously reported in Atlantic (and at least one book) that I referred to in Notes 48 and 49 and comments to those well before the election.

      https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

      Will try to write another “quarter baked” post soon. Lots still up in air but some landed eg McConnell statement.

      https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/13/mcconnell-condemns-trump-acquitted-469002

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  15. Interesting 2019 book by Matt Taibbi available link below at Library Genesis:

    http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=BF91D19B8F5D456CEA8CE9CC5251B7E1

    Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another

    “In this characteristically turbocharged new book, celebrated Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi provides an insider’s guide to the variety of ways today’s mainstream media tells us lies. Part tirade, part confessional, it reveals that what most people think of as “the news” is, in fact, a twisted wing of the entertainment business.

    In the Internet age, the press have mastered the art of monetizing anger, paranoia, and distrust. Taibbi, who has spent much of his career covering elections in which this kind of manipulative activity is most egregious, provides a rich taxonomic survey of American political journalism’s dirty tricks.

    Heading into a 2020 election season that promises to be a Great Giza Pyramid Complex of invective and digital ugliness, Hate Inc. will be an invaluable antidote to the hidden poisons dished up by those we rely on to tell us what is happening in the world.”

    Useful insider description of how. Not finished yet but I doubt that its explanations of why are inadequate. Actually looks back to the good old days of agreed facts from three networks despite also being aware that they were “manufacturing consent” within tight permitted boundaries.

    I agree with his account of why a pro wrestling celebrity entertainer was able to attract mass support against the “fake news”.

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  16. Arthur wrote “Charges are essentially disorderly conduct, obstructing police, disrupting Congress.

    No pretence in the charge that this was an “insurrection”. Nor that speaking in support of it and actively participating in it was even riot, let alone insurrection.”

    The charges are not “…essentially disorderly conduct…” the charges are “More than 350 were charged with entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and more than 35 were charged with entering the Capitol with a dangerous or deadly weapon, the spokesperson said.

    The government said in a March court filing that while most cases brought so far were against individuals, prosecutors are also investigating conspiratorial activity that occurred before and during the attack. So far, about 30 have been charged with conspiracy, a charge that alleges they coordinated with others to commit an offense, the Justice Department said.

    More than 25 defendants have been charged under a destruction of government property statute. During proceedings for three of those defendants, the government said their crimes amounted to “terrorism” — an allegation that is not itself a charge but could influence prison sentences if they are found guilty.”

    So much for Arthur and “disorderly conduct” as the government charges are about deadly weapons, conspiracy and terrorism.
    I guess if it had been about disorderly conduct then none would be in jail. Poor deluded fools.

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    • Any body want to revisit the idea that the charges are “disorderly conduct”? No? I didn’t think so.

      A Florida man who enthusiastically attacked police at the US Capitol on January 6 with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole was sentenced to more than five years in prison on Friday, the longest sentence for a Capitol rioter thus far.

      Robert Scott Palmer is the first person to be sentenced for the felony of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon. His 63-month sentence could set a benchmark for the more than 140 others who face the same charge.

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