Mega Thread:

I am so fed up with right wing hardliners on impeachment. I need to go on a rant. The more I interact with these people on here the more I'm pushed away from their position. On 1/6 I was adamant about Trump being at fault. He did not handle that day well IMO 1/

by that weekend, however, I'd started to reflect upon what he'd said and the events and begun to move away from the absolute position that it was all his fault. There were many reasons for this. One was that his rally happened while the break-ins were occurring, 2/
another was that so few people relative to his total followers showed up. Another was the fact that most of his followers I know were similarly outraged and disapproving. Another was that he explicitly said peaceful in all his remarks. And another was that 3/
upon reflection, I realized nothing he said was an escalation in his normal rhetoric, which had never caused any violence beforehand. But now, weeks later, I'm being radicalized in my aforementioned position by the right-wing hardliners who cannot discuss 1/6 4/
without resorting to the most melodramatic hyperbole imaginable. You simply will not gaslight me into viewing a small riot at the Capital as somehow orders of magnitude more grave and dangerous than months of left-wing rioting, or a left-wing insurrection 5/
Sure, the conditions for them aren't the same (but he's the President! they whine), but make no mistake, both are acts of political violence ostensibly sparked by the rhetoric of politicians. One can't be an honest broker and think one urgently needs 6/
punishment where the others are sufficiently addressed by randos condemning them on Twitter. The two go hand-in-hand as symptoms of the political culture in this country currently. And the outsized focus on Trump, plus the melodrama and hyperbole about 1/6 7/
being like the worst thing that's ever happened to the country, the gravest threat to Democracy ever! leads me to assume that Trump is less culpable than portrayed. If he were so clearly at fault, there's no need to hyperbolize that day to the degree impeachment freaks are 8/
Lastly, while impeachment is not a legal process, but a political one, underlying the arguments made for impeachment is that Trump's rhetoric had a predictable outcome. After all, if it was a surprise outcome, then how could Trump be to blame? In law 9/
"foreseeable consequences" are used to derive guilt or lack thereof. To make the argument that the riots were the foreseeable outcome of Trump's rhetoric (as people are) you need to ignore the fact that the people who showed up weren't average MAGA, or the fact that 10/
as a % of his total supporters, the amount who showed up was a rounding error. If half his supporters descended on the Capital on 1/6 you could argue the riots were a foreseeable outcome of his rhetoric, but no one showed up and most of his supporters objected strongly 11/
I keep repeating this last point and it's continually ignored but it really is the only point that matters. A foreseeable consequence of bad rhetoric is not 500 Boogaloo Bois showing up out of 75 million trump supporters. 12/
Based on everything I've just outlined, Trump shares some blame for contributing further to an environment rife with political emotion but he is not impeachment worthy and the more you insist he is, the more I think he's a victim in this. Now whine in my mentions. 13/13

More from Trump

Long thread: Because I couldn’t find anything comprehensive, I’m just going to post everything I’ve seen in the news/Twitter about Trump’s activities related to the Jan 6th insurrection. I think the timing & context of his actions/inactions will matter a lot for a senate trial.

12/12: The earlier DC protest over the electoral college vote during clearly inspired Jan 6th. On Dec 12th, he tweeted: “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA.”


12/19: Trump announces the Jan. 6th event by tweeting, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Immediately, insurrectionists begin to discuss the “Wild Protest.” Just 2 days later, this UK political analyst predicts the violence


12/26-27: Trump announces his participation on Twitter. On Dec. 29, the FBI sends out a nationwide bulletin warning legislatures about attacks https://t.co/Lgl4yk5aO1


1/1: Trump tweets the time of his protest. Then he retweets “The calvary is coming” on Jan. 6!” Sounds like a war? About this time, the FBI begins visiting right wing extremists to tell them not to go--does the FBI tell the president? https://t.co/3OxnB2AHdr
OK, #Squidigation fans, I think we need to talk about the new Wisconsin suit Donald Trump filed - personally - in Federal Court last night. The suit is (as usual) meritless. But it's meritless in new and disturbing ways. This thread will be


Not, I hope, Seth Abramson long. But will see.

I apologize in advance to my wife, who would very much prefer I be billing time (today's a light day, though) and to my assistant, to whom I owe some administrative stuff this will likely keep me from 😃

First, some background. Trump's suit essentially tries to Federalize the Wisconsin Supreme Court complaint his campaign filed, which we discussed here.


If you haven't already, go read that thread. I'm not going to be re-doing the same analysis, and I'm not going to be cross-linking to that discussion as we go. (Sorry, I like you guys, and I see this as public service, but there are limits)

Also, @5DollarFeminist has a good stand-alone thread analyzing the new Federal complaint - it's worth reading as well, though some of the analysis will overlap.

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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".


The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.


Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)


There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.


At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?