Chris Aldrich | Chris Aldrich

Insurrection aftermath: Don’t absolve yourself

After watching many Republicans on the Sunday morning shows and hearing a few on the radio this morning, I notice that they’re actively preferring only one or two of the three solutions after Wednesday’s insurrectionist coup attempt.

Three options

The three broad options that everyone is talking about:

Trump resigns
25th Amendment removal of Trump
Impeachment in the House possibly followed by conviction in the Senate

Generally Republicans are looking more closely at options one and two (in that order) and then they’re immediately shifting the discussion to the appalling nature of the events themselves.

The important question we need to ask ourselves is why are they preferring resignation or the 25th amendment? The answer comes down to who is actively receiving the blame and who has to actively do the work to make the system function properly.

In option 1, Trump and Trump alone takes the blame and initiates the action. This lets all his Republican supporters off the hook for allowing him the bullying free reign he’s had for more than four years now.

Presently the chance that Trump resigns is hovering around zero because he is so loathe to smear his own reputation or take responsibility for anything. Resignation is too closely associated with the idea of being a “loser” which Trump cannot admit himself to be at any cost.

In option 2, Trump still takes the blame and only a small handful of primarily un-elected leaders needs to take the action.

As we’ve already seen this past week, cabinet members are either still too loyal to Trump, or have chosen to jump ship to save themselves rather than take the necessary proactive action against him.

In option 3, Trump takes the blame, but a large number of people need to take action. While almost all Democrats and a handful of Republicans can easily take this route, some Republicans are loathe to want this option.

In particular, most Republicans won’t want to take this route because it also means that they must take some of the blame for so actively supporting Donald John Trump’s lies and views for so long.

Responsibility

Not a single Republican I’ve seen was willing to take even an iota of responsibility for supporting Trump, his outright lies, racist policies, or insanity for the past four+ years much less the last two months. Two months in which they either actively supported his lies that the election was stolen or supported it with their acquiescence by silence. They’re still abjectly holding to the belief that the emperor is fully dressed, while only trying to admit that he’s taken off one glove. They may not want to say it but they know better.

We need to be able to admit that the Emperor is naked and that far too many of us are only half dressed at best. We need to ardently press for all three solutions to happen. We also need to advocate for a fourth option that requires sanctions of the members of congress who voted to continue to support the lie even after the insurrection.

To be the Americans we say we are or want to be, we need to hold power to account. We can’t leave the message that a future leader can do the same thing and get away with it. We need to admit our complicity in allowing Trump to pretend to lead us. We cannot absolve ourselves of responsibility.

We can’t absolve ourselves without true penance

If you’re still unsure of why we cannot absolve ourselves (and honestly even if you aren’t), then I highly recommend reading a short Twitter thread/essay from earlier this week by Lili Saintcrow. It’s a highly illustrative parable about what has been going on in America and why it continues.

Her thread starts here:

Let me explain something to those of you who didn’t grow up around violently abusive white supremacists.

*They absolutely do not believe their own bullshit*, but it’s useful for them to pretend they do.

— Lili Saintcrow (@lilithsaintcrow) January 7, 2021

And for those who don’t click through, I’ll excerpt two tweets in the thread which are very important to her searing point:

Domestic abusers, white supremacists, and religious bigots all operate off the same thin but very useful playbook that exploits other people’s politeness and (I’ve got to say it) “civility.”

“Obama was born in Kenya.” “She provoked me, I had to hit her.” “Biden’s followers stormed the Capitol.” “It was Antifa.” “I thought that black child was going to shoot me.” These are all the same species of lie, and they serve the same purpose–to absolve the speaker.

Republicans (and let’s be honest, really all of us) are going to have to individually and collectively do some very hard work here, take responsibility, and stop attempting to absolve ourselves.

Without it, we’re just repeating the mistakes of ending Reconstruction after the Civil War which ushered in the despicable Jim Crow laws and have kept our nation mired in racist ideas and racist policies. If we’re not careful we’ll be heading back to an actual and far more costly Civil War. Let’s take this opportunity to admit our mistakes and actually move forward.

We all deserve better. We all need better. We all require better.

We should all demand better.

Read Import from TiddlyWiki 5 to Obsidian (Obsidian Forum)

How to Export from TiddlyWiki to Obsidian Note: I am on Mac, so all the steps are specially for that OS. I followed the steps by @kepano and just tweaked/clarified the things that didn’t work for me initially. So this is very much his work. @pikacho, I hope this is helpful for you and others. Step 1: Set up TiddlyWiki in Node.js Download and install Node.js Open “Terminal”, run npm install -g tiddlywiki If an error occurs, run sudo chown -R $USER /usr/local/lib/node_modules (that gives you a...

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@pfrazee (threadreaderapp.com)

Yo, decentralizers. If our projects are ONLY about censorship resistance and NOT about better algorithms for elevating truth, and NOT about creating constrained but real powers of moderation, then we're making things worse. 1/n

It kills me, absolutely kills me, that after years of decentralization advocacy it's a moment like this when all the dweb projects pop up on HN and social media. The interest popped -- not when truth became inconvenient for corporate power, but when lies did.

Charitably, people may be reflecting on the kind of power imbalance being revealed and reflecting on how it could be abused.

https://twitter.com/pwang/status/1348335710303096833

Uncharitably? Do I need to even say it.

For anybody still unsure:

We have to find a way to square our ideals and our fears about monopoly control with the realities of how our technology is working. It's not enough to defend an ideal. We need to be effective.

We've all done our spiderman homework. What comes with great power?

If we really believe that free speech is important -- as I do -- and we want to protect it, then we need to work hard to make sure that free speech provides value to people. Otherwise they're going to shrug and let it drift away, "a nice idea, but impractical, really"

The question isn't "how do we make moderation impossible?" The question is, how do we make moderation trustworthy.

That, it turns out, is much harder than p2p tweets

It's also about *checking* power, not just distributing it. Like code-forking: FOSS doesn't always mean "anybody can contribute," but it definitely means that the users can fork if the core devs abuse their position. How can we get that kind of check on power here?

It's nuanced. It's harder to sell than "censorship resistance." Maybe we need a new framework for discussing this, a new set of words. I don't know what to tell you, but the reward is equal to the challenge. n/n

Three options

Responsibility

We can’t absolve ourselves without true penance

Where is the digital pale?