Potential disaster #1: nuclear war with China
Last night, Rachael Maddow did a segment on her show about a book that will be released for sale next week. Two things jumped right out as extraordinarily big deals, not little deals. The first was how much fear there was about Lyin’ Donny’s (the ex-president) mental state. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley was deeply concerned that China was in a state of panic at the site of the 1/6 coup attempt. The Chinese government was afraid that Lyin’ Donny was preparing to start a war against China as a pretext to stay in power. The Chinese viewed the ex-president as a mentally unhinged loose cannon who just might attack China. It turns out that Gen. Milley viewed Lyin’ Donny about the same way as the Chinese. That is why he called his counterpart in the Chinese Liberation Army to calm him down and reassure him that the bizarre chaos of the 1/6 coup attempt was just democracy being “sloppy” and everything was under rock solid control in the US. Milley himself was actually unsure of how bad the situation was. In a phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she repeatedly referred to the ex-president as crazy, a label that Milley explicitly agreed with. Pelosi and Milley discussed ways to stop the crazy ex-president from launching nuclear weapons in the event his poor mental condition led him to want to start a nuclear war.
In short, the situation in the federal government on 1/6 was highly chaotic and uncertain. It was so bad that a top US general was unsure of what our insane president might try to do. So, he (i) called the Chinese army to reassure them an attack on China was not imminent and everything was under control, and (ii) discussed the possibility of nuclear war with the Speaker of the House.
The book claims Milley even discussed the possibility of the coup with his deputies.
“They may try, but they're not going to f------ succeed,” Milley told his deputies while discussing the possibility of a coup, according to the book. “You can't do this without the military. You can't do this without the CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns.”
Potential disaster #2: the prospect of Pence blocking certification of the 2020 election
Another possible disaster was that Vice President Mike Pence was actually looking for ways to keep the ex-president in power. Pence’s search for a way to block or subvert the election came directly from the constant pressure that Lyin’ Donny was putting on him. The ex-president wanted Pence to commit election fraud on a massive, nationwide scale and Pence was craven, autocratic, stupid and corrupt enough to actually look for a way to do it and even discuss an electoral coup with at least one other person.
Clearly, Pence was trying to find a way to block or subvert the 2020 election so that the ex-president could stay in power. Pence called former Vice President Dan Quayle for advice about how he could subvert the election. Quayle warned him off of the idea of blocking or subverting the election. He told Pence to not even think about it because the idea was insane and dangerous. It was also blatantly illegal. Pence complained to Quayle about the pressure the ex-president was putting on him.
A reminder of how far this anti-democratic, anti-election poison has spread
In the California recall election yesterday, the state’s fascist Republican Party (FRP) was blown out of the water. The governor was not recalled and it was not close. FiveThirtyEight writes:
Our colleagues at the ABC News Decision Desk projected that the recall would fail at 11:37 p.m. Eastern, barely half an hour after polls closed. As of this writing, 67 percent of voters voted against the recall, and 33 percent voted for it. That margin will almost certainly narrow as more votes are counted (the numbers we have right now are mostly mail ballots, which lean very Democratic), but it’s still likely that Newsom will survive by a large margin, perhaps even comparable to his 24-point win in 2018.
But even before the polls closed in California, the lead FRP candidate alleged widespread vote fraud. That candidate, Larry Elder (~43% compared to ~10% for another leading candidate) is a fascist conspiracy theory crackpot and long-time radical right talk show host in Los Angeles. Elder believes the 2020 election was stolen. He may contest the recall election. As usual for FRP losers, Elder did not produce one shred of credible evidence of vote fraud.
Elder’s alleged evidence of vote fraud was an alleged statistical analysis, Benford’s Law, of the votes used to detect vote fraud. The problem with that is that the statistical analysis cannot be done before an election. The votes have to be analyzed after an election. Despite that idiotic and fatal flaw, Elder was so enthusiastic about his vote fraud lie that he launched an anti-voter fraud website the day before the election, saying at that time that Newsome had won the election.
Clearly, the FRP’s election fraud poison has spread to states where FRP candidates lose. In states where FRP candidates win, there is no reason to allege fraud. The point is winning, not holding honest elections. That is fascism, or at least anti-democratic authoritarianism.
Questions:
1. What or who is the most alarmist and hyperbolic, (A) the FRP with its intense, nationwide attacks on non-existent fraudulent elections and constant resort to crackpot conspiracy theories about illegitimate elections, or (B) people who see and oppose the Republican Party and its attacks on elections as, among other bad things, anti-democratic and authoritarian or fascist? Or, is that a false dilemma logic fallacy, and if so, how is this issue better posited?
2. How close to nuclear Armageddon did the 1/6 coup attempt get us?
3. How close were we to a subverted 2020 election from the pressure the ex-president put on the craven idiot Pence to subvert it?
4. Are people who do not see deadly threat from the FRP asleep at the switch, deluded by FRP propaganda and disinformation, or something else?
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