You do, I suspect, have an inkling of what violent revolution in the USA would mean to global stability, let alone the cost in lives and welfares here. If we collapse (an amazingly not inconceivable event right now) I cannot imagine the rest of the world heaves a sigh of relief, least of all the democracies. There are no truly “independent” states anymore, and this particular one would leave a damn big hole if it fell.
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If I may quote the person to whom you’re speaking:
Quite frequently, people react to this by accusing me of promoting violence. Which is, to be honest, rather frustrating. I have never called for the use of aggressive violence, and I consistently promote methods of non-violent resistance.
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We have armed people on the right calling for violence right now. There is no calling for revolution that won’t entail violence under these conditions.
We’ll be lucky to minimize it going forward.
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If we reject democratic electoral methods of governmental change, there is not much else left. As I see it, (note emphasis) we build it up or we burn it down. I am on the side of voting in more progressive governments, which will be a stepwise process of necessity. Burning it down would hurt the people we most want to help, and would probably, depending on level of destruction, not impact the 0.0001% much at all.
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This all said - this thread is about the 2020 Pres candidates and the election. Discussing revolution or not supporting the electoral process is perhaps best continued in another thread.
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I hate those assholes.
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Violence isn’t the only form of collective resistance. There are non-violent direct actions that can also disrupt effectively, such as labor strikes. Violence isn’t the only form of mass disruption.
Ah, an implicit “shut up” again.
I thought we were discussing what Americans could do if Trump gets installed in what would amount to a fascist coup.
Anyway, Americans are so atomized that the kinds of effective non-violent revolutionary action that might actually work seem impossible now.
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Saying this is the wrong thread is not saying shut up. Nor is saying that actions have consequences.
I have no power to compel any speech or lack thereof.
Entering a conversation about an election seeking to undermine the election because you don’t support the electoral process is certainly seeking to silence a whole lot of voters.
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I grew up in WV. Labor strikes are not non-violent by nature. Matewan and Blair Mountain come to mind. And we have (as @KathyPartdeux points out) no shortage of those who would jump to armed responses in a heartbeat. I am all for resistance to the current fascist regime, but we need to keep in mind that just because we call for it to be nonviolent does not mean it will be. Hell, current BLM protests bring that out very clearly.
But yes, I guess this in not the thread for this discussion.
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That is a really misleading and inaccurate headline and lead line. From what I can find, the troops are being dispatched to government buildings, as was done for the BLM protests.
A quote from the Tx national guard spokesperson, from the San Antonio Express:
“We’re going to guard buildings just like we did during the George Floyd protests earlier this year. We are not going anywhere near polling locations. That has not been requested.”
That was from the article Raw Story cites.
Though the spokesperson of course goes om to say objectives could change. Even then- 1k troops? For Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin? Travis county alone has 363 polling locations. Harris county has over 800. If the guard and Abbott get stupid, they’d be stretched mighty thin. And since in Harris and Travis a voter can go to any polling location in the county, setting the troops up at problematic locations wouldn’t be terribly effective. Though it would look bad, very bad.
I could totally see Paxton or Patrick telling troopers to go to polling places. But I don’t think Abbott would. Much as I dislike him.
If one is going to propose the general strike as a tactic then it’s dangerously naive to assume that the capitalist establishment and its allies in the far right won’t respond with savage violence, with things escalating from there.
If someone outside the U.S. wants to see this, I’d suggest they first offer up their own country as a test case to see what happens.
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i provided a long explanation of why i think that third party voting within the u.s. system is misguided at best. i also explain that i don’t blame third party voters, with the possible exception of the 2000 presidential election, with the actual results of any other election.
is it because i don’t waste my time pointing to third parties for the outcome of 2016 that you have not commented on my critique of the u.s. electoral system?
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The reason is that Green and other Third party proselytizing on twitter and elsewhere is focused almost entirely on switching politically active voters to vote third party instead. They don’t recruit off of non-voters (let alone try and flip opposing party members) and typically have no positive policy message, but instead focus with negative attacks on parties they are politically adjacent to, with the net effect of transferring votes to themselves and to the Didn’t vote bloc. Meanwhile Dem (and to a lesser extent GOP, because GOP are much more anti-vote) have to fight a two front war on pulling in non-voters (who are typically, though not always, more politically apathetic) while trying to retain their existing vote.
The issue is not with the people who individually vote third party, the issue is with third party activism that exploits their ostensibly “we’re on your side, really” status to concern troll within progressive spaces and undermine movement solidarity. Note that this critique also applies to certain strands of neoliberal entryism.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if it crashes lower over the week.
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if it weren’t for reality, trump would be just great for the economy!
( i’d /s… but if i understand it right that’s his actual argument for re-election. 
)
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Does anyone know how early voting affects the on-going polls? Do polls include people who have already voted or do they exclude them? If they exclude them does this mean that if the early voters are tilted towards Biden and the day-of voters are tilted towards Trump, that we would expect the polls to tilt more towards Trump as we get closer to the election?
If early voters are counted in the polls, do they weight them differently with regard to being a likely voter? Isn’t including these early voters a bit like publishing exit polls before the close of election? Is it legal?
This seems like its a thorny issue and I haven’t found anyone actually saying anything about it.
You should call the cops, man.
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None of those concerns are real. Polls are independent of whether someone has voted, unless they are exit polls. This year, exit polls will be pretty pointless.
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Nate Silver and the team at Fivethirtyeight discussed that a bit:
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