median savings for people 55-64 is $15,000. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That must be excluding illiquid assets like home equity, right?

It's hard to imagine Biden raising taxes while the economy is tanking.

You say you want a revolution well, you know...

My gut tells me they’re going to stick with Trump to the bitter end (that is to say, when his voters lose interest or are no longer voting for him in numbers they need). The fact that he got 75 million after 4 years is terrifying, but I look at it as them giving it all they had. Biden was also an exceedingly poor candidate, but unlike Hillary was endearing to many and, importantly, not a woman. I don’t see the Trump brand growing by the numbers they need in the future, but who knows. Look at the Latino vote in southern Florida.

In the end, his followers are so deep in the cult that there’s no reasoning with them. We just have to be thankful we have the numbers - for now.

From the earliest days of the 2016 presidential race, [Trump's] rallies crackled with tension and anger -- a testament to his skill in finding the fault lines on issues of class and race and exploiting them to draw in followers who felt marginalized and wronged by their leaders. His supporters had hungered for a charismatic leader like him who would empower the "silent majority" and serve as a voice for their grievances. He thrilled them as he blasted through societal norms and the guardrails of democracy, while offering safe harbor to White supremacists, conspiracy theorists, anti-government renegades, racists and anti-Semitic activists who fell in line behind a political figure who would channel their rage in exchange for their fealty.

As he lurched from one shocking maneuver to the next, Trump commanded the constant attention of the press, broadening his universe of followers as he used Twitter as his megaphone. By threatening to punish his critics and by firing civil servants who tried to check his thirst for power, he cowed members of the Republican Party and his own aides, who became complicit in his unraveling of democracy. Meanwhile, much of America grew numb to his circus act, shrugging off the magnetic power of Trumpism as though it was a passing fad.

That all changed Wednesday...

The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is.

And just for the record, again, the Wikipedia definition of 'demagogue':

A demagogue /ˈdɛməɡɒɡ/ (from Greek δημαγωγός, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from δῆμος, people, populace, the commons + ἀγωγός leading, leader or rabble-rouser) is a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, especially through oratory that whips up the passions of crowds, appealing to emotion by scapegoating out-groups, exaggerating dangers to stoke fears, lying for emotional effect, or other rhetoric that tends to drown out reasoned deliberation and encourage fanatical popularity. Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.

....

My gut tells me they’re going to stick with Trump to the bitter end — Xtrix

The bitter end might not be far off. Granted, it might not be possible to bring articles of impeachment to a floor vote within the ten days remaining of Trump's misrule, but if it prosecuted and he is found guilty - and a number of Republicans are signalling they will vote in favour this time around - then he will be barred for life from standing for public office. If the Republicans really want to rid themselves of him for once and for all, this would be a very efficient way to do it.

Those celebrating the censorship of the right - the mass shut-down of social media accounts and the restricted access to to entire social media platforms like Parler - need to be very, very, careful what they wish for. The dopamine hit of schadenfreude has been good fun and it's enjoyment was well worth it (that stupid fucking person who got trampled to death while flying a 'don't t tread on me flag???), but not only is this censorship unaccountable - undertaken by tech companies who operate not on principle but on pure commercial interest - it's also already paving the way for a new domestic 'war on terror' with all the dismantling of (more) civil liberties that is entailed. You can't go from calling for the defunding of the police to wishing for more and better police, which is exactly what this incident is being used to promote - by the same piece of shit, it's well worth recalling, who wrote the patriot act - Joe Biden.

Cait Johnstone:

Google has ratcheted things up even further by removing Parler from its app store, and Apple will likely soon follow. This push to marginalize even the already fringey social media sites is making the libertarian/shitlib argument of "If you don't like censorship just go to another platform" look pretty ridiculous. This is all happening just in time for the Biden administration, about which critics had already been voicing grave concerns regarding the future of internet censorship.

The censorship of a political faction at the hands of a few liberal Silicon Valley billionaires will do the exact opposite of eliminating right-wing paranoia and conspiracy theories, and everyone knows it. You're not trying to make things better, you're trying to make them worse. You're not trying to restore peace and order, you're trying to force a confrontation so your political enemies can be crushed. You're accelerationist.... Supporting the censorship of online speech is to support the authority of monopolistic tech oligarchs to exert more and more global control over human communication. Regardless of your attitude toward whoever happens to be getting deplatformed today, supporting this is suicidal.

Glenn Greenwald:

The complete reversal in mentality from just a few months ago is dizzying. Those who spent the summer demanding the police be defunded are furious that the police response at the Capitol was insufficiently robust, violent and aggressive. Those who urged the abolition of prisons are demanding Trump supporters be imprisoned for years. Those who, under the banner of “anti-fascism,” demanded the firing of a top New York Times editor for publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) advocating the deployment of the U.S. military to quell riots — a view deemed not just wrong but unspeakable in decent society — are today furious that the National Guard was not deployed at the Capitol to quash pro-Trump supporters. Antifa advocates are working to expose the names of Capitol protesters to empower the FBI to arrest them on terrorism charges.

...There is a huge difference between, on the one hand, thousands of people shooting their way into the Capitol after a long-planned, coordinated plot with the goal of seizing permanent power, and, on the other, an impulsive and grievance-driven crowd more or less waltzing into the Capitol as the result of strength in numbers and then leaving a few hours later. That the only person shot was a protester killed by an armed agent of the state by itself makes clear how irresponsible these terms are. There are more adjectives besides “fascist treason” and “harmless protest,” enormous space between those two poles. One need not be forced to choose between the two.

..But as was true of the Cold War and the War on Terror and so many other crisis-spurred reactions, the other side of the ledger — the draconian state powers clearly being planned and urged and prepared in the name of stopping them — carries its own extremely formidable dangers. Refusing to consider those dangers for fear of standing accused of downplaying the threat is the most common tactic authoritarian advocates of state power use. Less than twenty-four hours after the Capitol breach, one sees this tactic being wielded with great flamboyance and potency, and it is sure to continue long after January 20.

Don't let your political convictions sway with whatever change in the wind there is.

The voice of tolerance.

I pointed out a woman died. So, no. She happened to be a Trump supporter. You and NOS think you've achieved something. That's who you are. Live with it. — Baden

I wouldn't mind dogpiling on the motherfucker. — hypericin

All those Cunts needed mowing down, including their ringleader — The Opposite

You're like, a bit dull aren't you? — StreetlightX

You're a traitor to this country. There's nothing left to say about you. Disgusting, and utterly pathetic. You can't die off quickly enough. — Xtrix

Can you explain that?
— Brett

I could, but I won't — Maw

What a shocker. Please drop dead. — Xtrix

I heard antifa fucked your girlfriend
— Maw — Xtrix

Which makes you even more of a cancer. — Xtrix

With the number of racists and fascists on the site atm, I'm worried you think I was being serious.
— Kenosha Kid — Baden

I'm getting tired of your selective sensitivity. It wasn't there when it was black people doing much less worse stuff than killing police officers. Don't pretend to be rational when you're stinking of bias. — Baden

Just nice to know you’re not fooling anyone with this act, probably not even your self. Your hypocrisy and pro-Trump bias is obvious. — Xtrix

Go rest your head Brett. — Xtrix

Drop the act of being objective or truly interested in any way. Just jump right to the complete rationalization of what happened yesterday. Spare yourself the mental gymnastics.
— Xtrix — Brett

Still don't understand the rationale of having a user on this site who repeatedly cites and parrots nefarious lies of radical rightwing publications, and then acts like he never believed in it to begin with when he's called out on it, or just ignores it entirely and moves on to the next fabrication to waste everyone's time with. — Maw

No you fuck, you don't get to make shit up and ask to be proven wrong. — StreetlightX

Really, don't worry your pretty head about it. If you really can't figure it out, I don't want your brain to fry from over-exertion. — StreetlightX

A point people like you also conveniently ignore in favor of licking the asses of your corporate masters. — Xtrix

No one needs to respond to your made-up bullshit with actual figures other than to point out the fact that you're making shit up. — StreetlightX

People like Brett really think this is character creation in D&D or something. 10 points to charisma! -4 to humility! Fucking larping rubbish. — StreetlightX

But that's neither here nor there, given that making shit up based on lazy preconceptions is a shit way to argue. — StreetlightX

It's not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing its the fact that you fabricated shit out of thin air and expect anyone to put in any effort to take that shit seriously. — StreetlightX

No, I'm not engaging with shit you pulled out of your arse other than to call it out for having been pulled out of your arse. — StreetlightX

Antifa did fuck his girlfiend

And you did make up bullshit numbers which you pulled out your ass.

Articulated rather well, I think. Extra points for accuracy.

“Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.”
(Nyt)

This, and the underlying economic consequences of neoliberal policies, are in my view the two biggest factors explaining Trumpism.

Trump was simply able to gather it around Himself, riding the wave of Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and Obama’s utter betrayal of the working class. We’re lucky if his term ends with only a few deaths and the sack of the Capitol building, in a way.

With Trump banned from Twitter and Facebook, shall we invite him to TPF? — tim wood

I thought maybe he was already here, under the moniker of NOS4A2. Oh, sorry about the insult NOS.

You (and NOS) expressed support for a terrorist attack on your own country's centre of government, an attack in which five people were killed. You can expect some pushback for that. I mean, what do you want, a pat on the back?

Intolerance is me not explaining something to Brett

One more for good measure.

Yes, politicians should get right behind destroying any
semblance of democracy while worms like you sit on the sidelines smiling about it. — Baden

I think this articulates really well what I feel about the Trump Twitter ban - minus the coup language:

As I said before - anyone ought to be free to express their opinions, but what if a medium is used solely for the propogation of lies? Are lies protected by 'freedom of expression'?

Conservatives ought to be able to make any argument they like for 'small government' or 'balancing the budget' or whatever, and the progressives theirs. But that is not what is at issue in this case.

The Trump Presidency has been built on lies from its very inception. His first gambit in politics was the birther conspiracy lie. His lies have been fact-checked and documented for four years, reaching such a pitch in the last half of 2020 that the team of fact-checkers had to be expanded to keep pace. He literally lies every time he opens his mouth, and practically every time he tweets. It is not feasible to argue that Trump doesn't lie, or that this is just misreporting by 'the mainstream media'. To say that Trump doesn't lie is itself a lie. To say that 'all politicians lie' is just whataboutism, which is one of the techniques Trump uses to get away with lying.

So does lying deserve to be protected speech? I say not.

It feels more vindictive than cautionary to me, and a really bad idea considering how beat Trump was and the potential backfire.

Parler has been banned from Amazon Web Services, which is their hosting service. If they can’t find another they’ll be effectively offline.

Excerpt from the letter advising their CIO of the ban:

AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we continue to respect Parler's right to determine for itself what content it will allow on its site. However, we cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler's account. — Amazon

Elsewhere, it was reported that Parler deleted several posts by Lin Wood, who could be described as a MAGA fanatic, saying that Pence ought to be hung for treason. However, I imagine, given the clientele that Parler atttracts, deleting such sentiments would require a large team of mole whackers.

Trump was is a horrible individual, but encouraging the institutionalization of an unaccountable system of silencing - which, it just so happens, has taken out one of its market competitors to further ensure market monopolization - is, I think, a far deeper, far more structural change that will not be clawed back from easily. These people had the chance to shut Trump down long ago - there's nothing at all principled about this from their end. We cannot expect anything principled from them any further down the track. Handing the keys to the public space of discourse - which is what social media is, whether we like it or not - to corporate whims is not a light price to pay for risks and even harms of letting these people speak.

Like a lot of deep social problems, it seems like the only true solution to this one requires somehow convincing people in general to change.

There's nothing in principle wrong with someone hosting a private medium of discussion.

There's nothing in principle wrong with them deciding how to filter content on it.

But there's definitely something wrong with the effective public square of society being on such privately controlled media, of course.

Yet that privately controlled media became the effective public square because a bunch of people chose to use it.

Yes, because of advertising, and network effects, etc, but there's still an element of choice there. I don't use (and never have used) anything like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc, myself, and there's nothing at all that I feel like I'm missing in my life because of it, so it's clearly possible to choose not to.

There are still plenty of not-corporate-controlled platforms to communicate through. The old, decentralized internet is still there, behind all the corporate bullshit. It's just that people choose not to use it.

I don't know how to begin to convince people en masse that it would be better to use that than corporate media like Twitter, Facebook, etc.

As I said before - anyone ought to be free to express their opinions, but what if a medium is used solely for the propogation of lies? Are lies protected by 'freedom of expression'? — Wayfarer

Good point. Trump became a more trustworthy source of news for his base than anything else. Trump demonstrated how weak the controls are on the president but ideally, the government should be segmented enough that when one part steps out of line, the others collapse on it and bring it back. Trump's war on truth really demonstrated how a leader can use their status as leader with just media/social media. I'm not exactly sure what should be done but the "allowing him to hang himself with misinformation" approach didn't appear to be working seeing as how many people believed him over the truth.

Maybe it didn't work with Trump in terms of usurping democracy but I don't think anyone else should be allowed a second try. Demonstrably incorrect information coming from a president needs to be addressed more forcefully.

What a stupid comment. — Xtrix

Why stupid? How can a persons Utopia be stupid?
That is also a very rude thing to post.

Europeans really ape all things that happen in the US. — ssu

And vice versa. Those guys in Washington were aping the gillets jaunes.

To say that 'all politicians lie' is just whataboutism, which is one of the techniques Trump uses to get away with lying. — Wayfarer

It's indisputably true that Trump is a compulsive liar, we all seem to agree on that, so we should be able to move on from this obvious point.

What's also true is that "all politicians lie" is not that unreasonable of a claim. Not perfectly true in every instance, but true enough often enough that it can't just be swept off the table. Loss of trust in presidential claims began in the sixties during the Johnson administration, and then was further amplified by Nixon. And it didn't stop there. Reagan lied. Clinton lied. Bush Jr. lied. And, the beloved Kennedy lied too, hiding his dangerous extra-marital affairs from the public.

The appeal of Trump to Trump voters is that Trump lies more openly than the others. His lies are so blatant, so obvious, so loud and persistent, that he is perceived as an honest liar, that is, a president not trying too hard to hide his lying. Trump has just taken the American presidency to it's logical conclusion. That's politically brilliant, and accurately seen as such by his supporters.

YES, it's despicable too! It's despicable, despicable, despicable, despicable. Do we really need to fill another 500 pages with this point of agreement?? It's possible for something to be both despicable AND brilliant, right?

Trump got elected because great numbers of American voters have lost faith in traditional politicians for some pretty good reasons, a consistent pattern of lies and more sophisticated deceptions going back decades, my entire life.

Trump is not the problem. Trump is a symptom of the problem. Thus, getting rid of Trump will not solve the problem. Thus, endless discussion of Trump is not a suitable job for philosophers.

Desperate problems call for desperate remedies.

As I said before - anyone ought to be free to express their opinions, but what if a medium is used solely for the propogation of lies? Are lies protected by 'freedom of expression'? — Wayfarer

But even if we all agree that they're not, it certainly deserves to be pointed out that e.g. Twitter only started caring about the lies when it looked like it wouldn't hurt their business, and only took drastic action when they were sure it would be more damaging not to do it.

Republicans aren't a political party anymore. They're just a faction intent on destroying the country.

Twitter only started caring about the lies when it looked like it wouldn't hurt their business, and only took drastic action when they were sure it would be more damaging not to do it. — Echarmion

I don't buy that. Some of the mob were armed, there were vehicles found with bombs and high-powered rifles in them. There are recordings of people trying to hunt down the Vice President and Speaker of the house, presumably to assassinate them. It was a watershed event. I had thought Twitter would suspend Trump's account on Jan 21 but he forced their hand. They had no choice.

Incidentally, I think Trump is likely to be impeached AND convicted before his term ends. Why? Because the Republican Party will know that if he's convicted, he can't run again. He won't be able to breathe down their necks for the next four years, and he can't bully them via Twitter any more. Carpe diem.

France has a long tradition of demonsrating in the streets, since their much beloved revolution. The US hasn't had that tradition for a long time, yet I think, unfortunately, it will be the new normal for you now.

I just remember from my childhood how festive and cheerful US elections were when I lived in Seattle. There wasn't the somber mood as in Europe. Now that I think has changed.