American Politics III: New President, Same Old Country

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

You laugh but where do you draw the line when it comes to restricting freedoms? Installing cameras in homes would reduce domestic violence as well. Do you want to be constantly watched if it reduces crime rate? You might say, 'I have nothing to fear as I have nothing to hide' until one day you are punished for playing classical music or reading the classical literature.

Yes...
Because making sure a virus does not spread rapidly and protecting your own citizens in a democratic country suddenly mean INGSOC has taken oven and you are now part of Airstrip one /s

It doesn't, but when political BS starts masquerading (literally) as protection, then we have issues.

[Agarntrop]

You might say, 'I have nothing to fear as I have nothing to hide' until one day you are punished for playing classical music or reading the classical literature.

Lol why would that ever be a thing? What a really weird example that you chose. Really weird.

Bizzare even

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

no you don't understand they're literally communazi dictatorships destroying freedom and liberty and this is exactly what adolf stalin would do!!11

/s

You laugh but where do you draw the line when it comes to restricting freedoms? Installing cameras in homes would reduce domestic violence as well. Do you want to be constantly watched if it reduces crime rate? You might say, 'I have nothing to fear as I have nothing to hide' until one day you are punished for playing classical music or reading the classical literature.

Seriously, dude. Stop. Strawmanning.

It's disappointing to have relatives doing any sort of police/military work, but this dude deserved it.

Why? Defending the nation is not a disappointing career path.

Cordel thinks being a soldier makes you a ultranationalist fascist or something. He's one of those anarcho-types.

[Nejii]

Capitol rioter arrested after sending a selfie to his girlfriend's brother- who just happened to be a federal agent

Okay, so these rioters

-made no effort to conceal their faces (their predecessors wore hoods for a reason)
-brought tracking devices with them
-took and posed for pictures
-tried to besiege congress in a building that's designed to be escaped from
-wouldn't achieve much by stopping Congress as certification is ceremonial
-pointlessly wandered around the capitol for hours until state forces arrived

...and this was premeditated. All those people and not one brain cell between them.

Very pathetic...

“Break into federal property, pose for pictures with face exposed!”

[Cordel One]

Okay, so these rioters

-made no effort to conceal their faces (their predecessors wore hoods for a reason)
-brought tracking devices with them
-took and posed for pictures
-tried to besiege congress in a building that's designed to be escaped from
-wouldn't achieve much by stopping Congress as certification is ceremonial
-pointlessly wandered around the capitol for hours until state forces arrived

...and this was premeditated. All those people and not one brain cell between them.

They probably assumed they would get off scratch-free like many of the blm rioters did

Black Lives Matter got teargassed and shot with rubber bullets before the riots ever happened, these people wandered into the capitol of the United States and the cops did almost nothing.

[Repubblica Fascista Sociale Italiana]

They probably assumed they would get off scratch-free like many of the blm rioters did

Is this a joke

Not sure what you’re trying to prove by linking the huffington post article, because rioters caught on video looting and burning were let go in multiple cities

[Comerciante]

no you don't understand they're literally communazi dictatorships destroying freedom and liberty and this is exactly what adolf stalin would do!!11

/s

You laugh but where do you draw the line when it comes to restricting freedoms? Installing cameras in homes would reduce domestic violence as well. Do you want to be constantly watched if it reduces the crime rate? You might say, 'I have nothing to fear as I have nothing to hide' until one day you are punished for playing classical music or reading classical literature.

At this rate telling people to wash their hands is a pathway to Tyranny. Asking people to come dressed for work is a pathway to tyranny. Telling people not to piss in the pool is a pathway to Tyranny.

If you keep lowering the bar for what passes for Tyranny all you do is miss the point when actual Tyranny is taking place.

[Celritannia]

Yes...
Because making sure a virus does not spread rapidly and protecting your own citizens in a democratic country suddenly mean INGSOC has taken oven and you are now part of Airstrip one /s

It doesn't, but when political BS starts masquerading (literally) as protection, then we have issues.

It's not masquerading.

[Agarntrop]

You laugh but where do you draw the line when it comes to restricting freedoms? Installing cameras in homes would reduce domestic violence as well. Do you want to be constantly watched if it reduces crime rate? You might say, 'I have nothing to fear as I have nothing to hide' until one day you are punished for playing classical music or reading the classical literature.

Seriously, dude. Stop. Strawmanning.

Why? Defending the nation is not a disappointing career path.

Cordel thinks being a soldier makes you a ultranationalist fascist or something. He's one of those anarcho-types.

Wow so edgy /s

[Freiheit Reich]

COVID-19 Is Not A Legitimate Excuse To Erase Human Rights And Turn Free Countries Into Tyrannies

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/15/co ... tyrannies/

COVID-19 Is Not A Legitimate Excuse To Erase Human Rights And Turn Free Countries Into Tyrannies
What we’re witnessing is the dangerous normalization of a dystopian concept of “freedom” in which government dominates your life “for your own good.”
Carina Benton
By Carina Benton
JANUARY 15, 2021
When the Australian state of Victoria issued a 48-hour warning on New Year’s Eve that its border with the neighboring state of New South Wales would be indefinitely closed, it likely secured the award for the most egregious measure by a western government to curb COVID-19.

The state government instructed residents to return home by 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 1. Those who did not arrive at the border by the midnight curfew were turned away by police. Thousands were separated from work, family, and even children, and told they wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon.

After almost two weeks of this madness, the Victorian State Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Monday that border restrictions would be “softened,” allowing Victorians stuck in low-risk areas of NSW to apply for a permit to return home. Everyone else is still waiting.

The dramatic border closure, and the devastating consequences for affected residents, betrays a steady, unnerving trend of human rights violations corrupting western nations. Freedom of movement and free speech, freedom to earn a living and provide for one’s family, all hallmarks of a thriving democracy, are now dismissed as superfluous. Efforts to safeguard them are decried as divisive, destructive, and dangerous. “Health and safety” have taken precedence over liberty, a horrifying trend that that has caught too many off guard and is spiraling out of control.

The context for Victoria’s border closure is breathtaking. As recently as Dec. 26, Victoria had recorded zero new community transmission cases for 57 consecutive days, and zero deaths. Less than a week later, a small cluster of new positive cases, along with a similarly small outbreak of ten cases in NSW, prompted Victoria’s acting Premier Jacinta Allan, at the peak of Australia’s busy summer vacation period, to give residents holidaying outside of the state a measly 48 hours to return before the border closure went into force.

On Jan. 1, hours-long queues of vehicles formed at the border as more than 60,000 panicked Victorians rushed to reach the established checkpoints before midnight. Those who couldn’t get back in time were simply shut out.

On Saturday, it was reported that Victoria recorded a whopping zero new locally acquired cases for three consecutive days, and 40 active cases in the entire state. In NSW, only one of the 109 current cases is serious enough to even require hospitalization. Nevertheless, the Victorian government is defending its grossly disproportionate response and refusing to fully reopen the border anytime soon.

Contrary to the prevailing narrative, Australia has implemented a mixed-bag response to the pandemic. Except for a border closure to international visitors, and a required two-week hotel quarantine for returning Australians, decisions on how to manage the spread of the virus have been left to individual states.

Hence, life for residents of NSW had largely returned to normal by June, while the experience in Victoria was vastly different. Victoria accounted for 90 percent of the nationwide 900-plus death toll. Local media attributed the disproportionately high share of cases to the state government’s scandalous mismanagement of a hotel quarantine scheme.

Whatever the reason, Victorians were inflicted with 100 days of the harshest lockdown in the western world, ending last October. A night-time curfew was imposed, along with a one-hour limit on outdoor exercise, a ban on leaving home except for essential reasons, and from traveling more than three miles from home for any reason.

Last July, when daily cases in the state peaked at around 700, there were reports of an outbreak in nine low-income housing projects. The 3,000 residents were prohibited from leaving their apartments for any reason for five days, with police patrolling the entrances to the residences. A pregnant woman who created an event on Facebook to protest the draconian lockdowns was arrested in her home in front of her two children.

Border closures and lockdowns have had appalling consequences elsewhere in the country too. When a newborn baby was transported north across the NSW border for emergency medical treatment in the state of Queensland, his NSW-based mother was refused entry into the state to visit her baby without first completing a 14-day hotel quarantine.

Perhaps most disturbing was the COVID omnibus bill, introduced into the Victorian Parliament in September, that would have granted an assortment of unqualified, untrained individuals extraordinary powers to detain their fellow citizens. “Authorized officers” designated by senior bureaucrats would have been allowed to detain people perceived to be high-risk (COVID positive individuals or a close contact) and who refused — or were deemed likely to refuse — to comply with health directions.

A group of 18 retired judges and senior lawyers signed a letter calling on the Victorian Parliament to reject the bill, which they described as “unprecedented, excessive and open to abuse.” In the end, the most egregious provisions had to be scrapped for the bill to get passed. Still, the warning signs are ominous.

What might be the inspiration for this kind of chilling legislation and the broader erosion of fundamental human rights witnessed in jurisdictions like Victoria? A recent article in the New York Times provides a possible clue.

Author Li Yuan draws devious comparisons with the COVID-19 situation in western countries and the enviable position of China, which she claims “has become one of the safest places in the world,” boasting “China resembles what ‘normal’ was like in the pre-pandemic world,” and cynically suggests that while Chinese citizens do not have “freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear … they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life,” a basic freedom which “in a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy.”

In other words, self-indulgent westerners should stop harping on about their silly freedoms and submit to CCP-inspired government control of their existence so that they too can enjoy a state of COVID-free, reimagined liberty. According to Yuan’s reasoning, those who question the fluctuating and arbitrary public health edicts are noxious naysayers.

Presumably, the thousands of Victorians who remain stranded in NSW while authorities process exemption applications and return permits should stop whining, embrace their “new normal,” and be thankful that the state is looking after them. The distressing truth is this: Australia’s untenable border situation reveals a creeping conditioning to government control spreading throughout the western world.

All who hope their children and grandchildren will enjoy the same freedom they held growing up must heed the warning signs. What we’re witnessing, in real-time, is the dangerous normalization of a dystopian concept of “freedom” in which government dominates your life “for your own good.” Those who not only succumb to but laud such government restrictions for the mythical “greater good” betray those who sacrificed to preserve our God-given freedoms and worsen the odds that future generations can right the ship.

Carina Benton is a native Australian living in Washington state. She is a practicing Catholic and has taught for many years in Catholic and Christian schools. She is a mother of two young children.

The guy who fantasises about cosplaying Henrich Himmler moans about tyranny

You're not a libertarian, you're a paleoconservative fascist who has absolutely no clue what libertarianism even is beyond "liberals bad covid restrictions bad conservatism good guns good"

I said many times I am not 100% libertarian and disagree with them about immigration.

When did I compliment the Nazis and Himmler?

[Cannot think of a name]

Capitol rioter arrested after sending a selfie to his girlfriend's brother- who just happened to be a federal agent

Okay, so these rioters

-made no effort to conceal their faces (their predecessors wore hoods for a reason)
-brought tracking devices with them
-took and posed for pictures
-tried to besiege congress in a building that's designed to be escaped from
-wouldn't achieve much by stopping Congress as certification is ceremonial
-pointlessly wandered around the capitol for hours until state forces arrived

...and this was premeditated. All those people and not one brain cell between them.

They spent the summer driving their cars into civil rights protests and had legislators do what they could to make these acts of attempted murder legal.

When they would succeed at murdering people at the protests the President of the United States would make excuses for them.

When they shot protesters the shooter was turned into a folk hero.

When they stormed and surrounded the Michigan capitol armed to the teeth, they were celebrated and egged on by the President of the United States.

Their militias aimed guns at federal agents to prevent a rancher from having to pay grazing fees or suffer the consequences of not paying those fees and it worked.

Consequences are for minorities and liberals. There was never a thought in their head about being 'caught'. As far as they were concerned, they had permission.

[Western Fardelshufflestein]

They probably assumed they would get off scratch-free like many of the blm rioters did

Black Lives Matter got teargassed and shot with rubber bullets before the riots ever happened, these people wandered into the capitol of the United States and the cops did almost nothing.

Uh...they were overwhelmed by the people STORMING THE CAPITOL. Not saying that they did everything we could, but that's not a good reason to get rid of law enforcement.

[Cordel One]

Why? Defending the nation is not a disappointing career path.

Cordel thinks being a soldier makes you a ultranationalist fascist or something. He's one of those anarcho-types.

More of a Paris Communist than an anarcho-type these days, but still very against the United States.

[Agarntrop]

The guy who fantasises about cosplaying Henrich Himmler moans about tyranny

You're not a libertarian, you're a paleoconservative fascist who has absolutely no clue what libertarianism even is beyond "liberals bad covid restrictions bad conservatism good guns good"

I said many times I am not 100% libertarian and disagree with them about immigration.

When did I compliment the Nazis and Himmler?

You want to run nazi-inspired, authoritarian labour camps.

Your beliefs in every sphere align with paleoconservatism as opposed to libertarianism

[Gravlen]

Capitol rioter arrested after sending a selfie to his girlfriend's brother- who just happened to be a federal agent

Okay, so these rioters

-made no effort to conceal their faces (their predecessors wore hoods for a reason)
-brought tracking devices with them
-took and posed for pictures
-tried to besiege congress in a building that's designed to be escaped from
-wouldn't achieve much by stopping Congress as certification is ceremonial
-pointlessly wandered around the capitol for hours until state forces arrived

...and this was premeditated. All those people and not one brain cell between them.

Keep in mind that these were members of the Special forces of the 101st Keyboard Brigade. I'm sure several of them have written strategic fan fiction, envisioning how it would all play out if they just got through the doors to the Capitol, and thought they would be greeted as liberators, and a grateful nation would hail them as Heroes after Pence decided to declare the election overturned.

[Repubblica Fascista Sociale Italiana]

They probably assumed they would get off scratch-free like many of the blm rioters did

Black Lives Matter got teargassed and shot with rubber bullets before the riots ever happened, these people wandered into the capitol of the United States and the cops did almost nothing.

Most likely because it was planned beforehand, a seditious coup. The bottom line is we need to do far more to stop violence in the country before it destroys itself

[Agarntrop]

Cordel thinks being a soldier makes you a ultranationalist fascist or something. He's one of those anarcho-types.

More of a Paris Communist than an anarcho-type these days, but still very against the United States.

[Cordel One]

Black Lives Matter got teargassed and shot with rubber bullets before the riots ever happened, these people wandered into the capitol of the United States and the cops did almost nothing.

Uh...they were overwhelmed by the people STORMING THE CAPITOL. Not saying that they did everything we could, but that's not a good reason to get rid of law enforcement.

And no rubber bullets were fired, only 5 people died in total, almost no tear gas was used, and there were a whole lot less of them than there were during BLM protests that summer.

[Cordel One]

More of a Paris Communist than an anarcho-type these days, but still very against the United States.

I try my best uwu

[Freiheit Reich]

The PRC has an excellent high-speed rail system, a low official murder rate, low drug addiction, many museums there are free or very cheap, good bus and subway systems in many large cities, political unity, a high literacy rate, and excellent access to very cheap shared bikes in most large and medium-sized cities. It also has been doing well in regards to the pandemic.

Does this make the PRC a top notch place to live? You can do well in many areas and still not be a great place to live. Look at how many Chinese people want to move to the USA and have babies born in the USA (so the babies can be US citizens). These women also tend NOT to be poor meaning they are wealthy in China and STILL unhappy.

Just because Australia and NZ have few cases doesn't change the fact they behaved like tyrannical nations with extremely strict laws. Tyranny gets results but it is still tyranny.

Let's see.
Australia and New Zealand are Constitutional Monarchies and Representative Democracies in which their legislatures are elected.

The Weimar Republic also had elections and look what happened in 1933. Don't feel so secure because you elect representatives. I am sure many Germans in the 1920's also didn't think they would live under a fascist dictatorship within a few years.

https://www.history.com/topics/germany/weimar-republic

[Repubblica Fascista Sociale Italiana]

COVID-19 Is Not A Legitimate Excuse To Erase Human Rights And Turn Free Countries Into Tyrannies

https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/15/co ... tyrannies/

COVID-19 Is Not A Legitimate Excuse To Erase Human Rights And Turn Free Countries Into Tyrannies
What we’re witnessing is the dangerous normalization of a dystopian concept of “freedom” in which government dominates your life “for your own good.”
Carina Benton
By Carina Benton
JANUARY 15, 2021
When the Australian state of Victoria issued a 48-hour warning on New Year’s Eve that its border with the neighboring state of New South Wales would be indefinitely closed, it likely secured the award for the most egregious measure by a western government to curb COVID-19.

The state government instructed residents to return home by 11:59 p.m. on Jan. 1. Those who did not arrive at the border by the midnight curfew were turned away by police. Thousands were separated from work, family, and even children, and told they wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon.

After almost two weeks of this madness, the Victorian State Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Monday that border restrictions would be “softened,” allowing Victorians stuck in low-risk areas of NSW to apply for a permit to return home. Everyone else is still waiting.

The dramatic border closure, and the devastating consequences for affected residents, betrays a steady, unnerving trend of human rights violations corrupting western nations. Freedom of movement and free speech, freedom to earn a living and provide for one’s family, all hallmarks of a thriving democracy, are now dismissed as superfluous. Efforts to safeguard them are decried as divisive, destructive, and dangerous. “Health and safety” have taken precedence over liberty, a horrifying trend that that has caught too many off guard and is spiraling out of control.

The context for Victoria’s border closure is breathtaking. As recently as Dec. 26, Victoria had recorded zero new community transmission cases for 57 consecutive days, and zero deaths. Less than a week later, a small cluster of new positive cases, along with a similarly small outbreak of ten cases in NSW, prompted Victoria’s acting Premier Jacinta Allan, at the peak of Australia’s busy summer vacation period, to give residents holidaying outside of the state a measly 48 hours to return before the border closure went into force.

On Jan. 1, hours-long queues of vehicles formed at the border as more than 60,000 panicked Victorians rushed to reach the established checkpoints before midnight. Those who couldn’t get back in time were simply shut out.

On Saturday, it was reported that Victoria recorded a whopping zero new locally acquired cases for three consecutive days, and 40 active cases in the entire state. In NSW, only one of the 109 current cases is serious enough to even require hospitalization. Nevertheless, the Victorian government is defending its grossly disproportionate response and refusing to fully reopen the border anytime soon.

Contrary to the prevailing narrative, Australia has implemented a mixed-bag response to the pandemic. Except for a border closure to international visitors, and a required two-week hotel quarantine for returning Australians, decisions on how to manage the spread of the virus have been left to individual states.

Hence, life for residents of NSW had largely returned to normal by June, while the experience in Victoria was vastly different. Victoria accounted for 90 percent of the nationwide 900-plus death toll. Local media attributed the disproportionately high share of cases to the state government’s scandalous mismanagement of a hotel quarantine scheme.

Whatever the reason, Victorians were inflicted with 100 days of the harshest lockdown in the western world, ending last October. A night-time curfew was imposed, along with a one-hour limit on outdoor exercise, a ban on leaving home except for essential reasons, and from traveling more than three miles from home for any reason.

Last July, when daily cases in the state peaked at around 700, there were reports of an outbreak in nine low-income housing projects. The 3,000 residents were prohibited from leaving their apartments for any reason for five days, with police patrolling the entrances to the residences. A pregnant woman who created an event on Facebook to protest the draconian lockdowns was arrested in her home in front of her two children.

Border closures and lockdowns have had appalling consequences elsewhere in the country too. When a newborn baby was transported north across the NSW border for emergency medical treatment in the state of Queensland, his NSW-based mother was refused entry into the state to visit her baby without first completing a 14-day hotel quarantine.

Perhaps most disturbing was the COVID omnibus bill, introduced into the Victorian Parliament in September, that would have granted an assortment of unqualified, untrained individuals extraordinary powers to detain their fellow citizens. “Authorized officers” designated by senior bureaucrats would have been allowed to detain people perceived to be high-risk (COVID positive individuals or a close contact) and who refused — or were deemed likely to refuse — to comply with health directions.

A group of 18 retired judges and senior lawyers signed a letter calling on the Victorian Parliament to reject the bill, which they described as “unprecedented, excessive and open to abuse.” In the end, the most egregious provisions had to be scrapped for the bill to get passed. Still, the warning signs are ominous.

What might be the inspiration for this kind of chilling legislation and the broader erosion of fundamental human rights witnessed in jurisdictions like Victoria? A recent article in the New York Times provides a possible clue.

Author Li Yuan draws devious comparisons with the COVID-19 situation in western countries and the enviable position of China, which she claims “has become one of the safest places in the world,” boasting “China resembles what ‘normal’ was like in the pre-pandemic world,” and cynically suggests that while Chinese citizens do not have “freedom of speech, freedom of worship or freedom from fear … they have the freedom to move around and lead a normal day-to-day life,” a basic freedom which “in a pandemic year, many of the world’s people would envy.”

In other words, self-indulgent westerners should stop harping on about their silly freedoms and submit to CCP-inspired government control of their existence so that they too can enjoy a state of COVID-free, reimagined liberty. According to Yuan’s reasoning, those who question the fluctuating and arbitrary public health edicts are noxious naysayers.

Presumably, the thousands of Victorians who remain stranded in NSW while authorities process exemption applications and return permits should stop whining, embrace their “new normal,” and be thankful that the state is looking after them. The distressing truth is this: Australia’s untenable border situation reveals a creeping conditioning to government control spreading throughout the western world.

All who hope their children and grandchildren will enjoy the same freedom they held growing up must heed the warning signs. What we’re witnessing, in real-time, is the dangerous normalization of a dystopian concept of “freedom” in which government dominates your life “for your own good.” Those who not only succumb to but laud such government restrictions for the mythical “greater good” betray those who sacrificed to preserve our God-given freedoms and worsen the odds that future generations can right the ship.

Carina Benton is a native Australian living in Washington state. She is a practicing Catholic and has taught for many years in Catholic and Christian schools. She is a mother of two young children.

The guy who fantasises about cosplaying Henrich Himmler moans about tyranny

You're not a libertarian, you're a paleoconservative fascist who has absolutely no clue what libertarianism even is beyond "liberals bad covid restrictions bad conservatism good guns good"

>Paleoconservative fascist

You know how you feel when boomers call Biden a communist? Yeah...

[Agarntrop]

Uh...they were overwhelmed by the people STORMING THE CAPITOL. Not saying that they did everything we could, but that's not a good reason to get rid of law enforcement.

And no rubber bullets were fired, only 5 people died in total, almost no tear gas was used, and there were a whole lot less of them than there were during BLM protests that summer.

That's because they were deliberately understaffed.

[Bombadil]

Okay, so these rioters

-made no effort to conceal their faces (their predecessors wore hoods for a reason)
-brought tracking devices with them
-took and posed for pictures
-tried to besiege congress in a building that's designed to be escaped from
-wouldn't achieve much by stopping Congress as certification is ceremonial
-pointlessly wandered around the capitol for hours until state forces arrived

...and this was premeditated. All those people and not one brain cell between them.

Keep in mind that these were members of the Special forces of the 101st Keyboard Brigade. I'm sure several of them have written strategic fan fiction, envisioning how it would all play out if they just got through the doors to the Capitol, and thought they would be greeted as liberators, and a grateful nation would hail them as Heroes after Pence decided to declare the election overturned.

There was a serious faction that came planning to do some serious shit, then there were a bunch of revellers who got caught up in the excitement. Typically we talk about the latter but shouldn't forget the former.

[Celritannia]

Let's see.
Australia and New Zealand are Constitutional Monarchies and Representative Democracies in which their legislatures are elected.

The Weimar Republic also had elections and look what happened in 1933. Don't feel so secure because you elect representatives. I am sure many Germans in the 1920's also didn't think they would live under a fascist dictatorship within a few years.

https://www.history.com/topics/germany/weimar-republic

Hello Mr. Scarecrow.
Are you offering me some straw?

[Agarntrop]

The guy who fantasises about cosplaying Henrich Himmler moans about tyranny

You're not a libertarian, you're a paleoconservative fascist who has absolutely no clue what libertarianism even is beyond "liberals bad covid restrictions bad conservatism good guns good"

>Paleoconservative fascist

You know how you feel when boomers call Biden a communist? Yeah...

A lot of paleoconservative ideas are pretty fascistic, just toned down.

Especially when coming from someone like Freiheit