Originally published at: Watch: Every year since 2017, Trump has led his CPAC crowd in chanting "lock her up" | Boing Boing
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I’m chanting “Lock him up!” right now.
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I prefer “Lock them up!”
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This is one of the huge problems that he has caused.
It is not cool to lock up people who run against you or political opponents. This is one of the lines where a country falls into dictatorship. (Hi, Putin!)
But here’s the problem: there is all kinds of evidence that Trump has committed criminal acts. There is a strong possibility that he deserves jail time. And he has a shit ton of followers who believe he is the literal second coming of Christ Jesus; and innocent of everything.
And I don’t know how we can hold him responsible for his acts without the Republicans using it as an excuse to jail political opponents.
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How on earth does anyone justify to themselves still chanting that? It’s like it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, and is just a shorthand for “Hurt the people we don’t like, use the apparatus of state against our political opponents.” Huh, it’s almost as if that’s what it always meant.
I had those kinds of fears before Trump took office - I don’t anymore. Because it’s become clear the Republicans no longer need excuses. They’ll do the terrible thing they want to do, and use projection/conspiracy theories to justify it. It doesn’t matter what Democrats actually do.
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If they could do it, they would already be doing it. The judicial system has been holding them off so far, even judges that they hand-picked.
So I would not hold off prosecution of actual crimes for fear of retribution against non-crimes. If the judicial branch can’t contain that pressure, that’s a sign things have already gone critical.
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If conservatives had new ideas, they wouldn’t be conservatives.
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I think there is a huge difference between locking up political opponents, and jailing politicians for crimes.
Of course any judicial system can be corrupted and used as a weapon.But I don’t think currently Trump will see a day of jail. Period. Unless he really fucks up in the near future.
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Is there a group of people more deserving of the term “sheeple” (among other terms)?
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Ironically, they’d be the first people to use that term to describe anyone who doesn’t believe what they do.
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What a loser.
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Why even pretend it’s political. Just a bunch of shallow, self-absorbed nihilists looking for a cheap endorphin rush.
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I think it’s an insult to sheep at this point.
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Two cents from a (former) music teacher –
The content of the chant is not the point. The point of chanting is what it does to your brain as you’re participating. To the primal part of your brain, it absolutely doesn’t matter what the words are; it could be (especially in elementary music class) complete non-sense and still be effective at uniting and energizing a group.
What I don’t get, is why aren’t democrats chanting more? Not everything has to be a thoughtful, nuanced position statement.
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Republicans won’t bother with excuses when they start anyway.
There is nothing a non republican can do that republicans won’t spin as unfair or wrong.
Sure dems are shit, but they generally have the ability to recognize a positive attribute in an opponent.
To a republican anything but slathering loyalty to trump is either betrayal or weakness.
We shouldn’t care even slightly how republicans will react when decent people do anything. Republican opinions are meaningless and don’t really matter anyway. They’re in the minority by a few million.
The dems should be spending all their time right now cracking down on and dismantling all GOP operations through all legal means.
Because when the republicans (likely will) win in 2022 and 2024, they sure as SHIT won’t be fighting for democracy, be at all interested in governing, or show any mercy at all to decent people.
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It is worth noting that this year is special, because even if you assume Clinton committed all of the email related crimes she’s accused of, this year is the first CPAC where there is no legal basis to imprison her for them. As a non-capital federal crime the statute of limitations runs out after five years. Even if every email was classified, used for a bunch of fraudulent purposes, and they conspired with Loretta Lynch to cover it up, it still wouldn’t be fair game. There can be no claim, however tenuous that they are making a call for appropriate legal process. This is now undeniably only a call for imprisoning political enemies without even the figleaf of pretending a crime happened.
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As if republicans care about the law. Or governance. Or human wellbeing.
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They will still be chanting ‘Lock her up’ at the 2087 CPAC where they will long have forgotten who ‘her’ was. In fact there may be people in the crowd this year who have forgotten. /s
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Watched a documentary on Mussolini last night, and it is amazing how it parallels Trump’s rise to power. Right down to “make Italy great again”. Worth a look, and remember Hitler learned everything from Il Duce. Ep. 3 - Benito Mussolini | TVO.org
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