I expect a mostly peaceful result to the 2020 election
Like everyone else, I’m wondering two things right now:
• Who will win the election?
• When does the civil war start?
My guess is that Biden wins. He wins by taking a larger share of the 65 and over vote in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. In 2016, Trump carried this group by 10%. This year it looks like Trump’s polling even with or behind Biden among seniors. I’m guessing that’s the group most threatened by covid reacting to his botched covid response.
My other guess is that there won’t be a civil war, because white supremacy is overhyped. There aren’t nearly as many violent white supremacists as you might think. I think a Biden win would be mostly peaceful.
But, this is 2020, and language keeps changing.
‘Mostly peaceful’ now includes cars and buildings on fire:
Destructive protests are peaceful, but silence is violence:
And the definition of “white supremacy” keeps changing.
When I hear that term, I think of the KKK. I think of white mobs lynching black men. I think of segregated schools and stores and buses.
But, those things don’t really happen anymore. Lynching haven’t been an issue for a few generations:
White supremacy is now used to describe inequality.
Banks are white supremacist, because white people take out more loans.
I mean, it’s not like the banks just give white people free money, like in the old Eddie Murphy skit. It’s more like, if you have certain qualifications for mortgages (income and credit scores), and one group is poorer, then that group will get less loans. It’s unfortunate. And it’s hard to fix. We could mandate loans equally to buyers with a low credit score. I recall we had some sort of big crisis the last time we tried subprime lending. Maybe that’s out of everyone’s memory already.
Another headline reads, “Dismantling White Supremacy Includes Ending Racist Tests like the SAT and ACT”. White kids get higher scores than black kids on college admissions tests, so the tests are white supremacy, and we must get rid of it.
If you dig into the literature further, you’ll find people arguing that math itself is a tool of white supremacy. From Seattle public schools:
Where does Power and Oppression show up in our math experiences?
● Who holds power in a mathematical classroom?
● Is there a place for power and authority in the math classroom?
● Who gets to say if an answer is right?
● What is the process for verifying the truth?
● Who is Smart? Who is not Smart?
● Can you recognize and name oppressive mathematical
practices in your experience?
● Why/how does data-driven processes prevent liberation?
Even the New York Times worries that “white supremacy” has lost its meaning. One op-ed writer notes:
When so much is described as white supremacy, when the Ku Klux Klan and a museum art collection take the same descriptor … the power of the phrase is lost.
Maybe the term gets used because other words have also lost their meaning.
Articles on medium inform us that all white people are racist. All white people are a part of a system of oppression, so they are all racist. I’ve been called a racist a dozen times this year, mostly for opposing riots. I don’t really care anymore.
When people are used to being called racist, you need a stronger insult. And “white supremacist” fits the bill nicely.
We’ve also had a panic about “white supremacist” right wing militias.
Back in May, I thought that the United States was full of armed extremists. We have both antifa and the KKK. I was afraid that either could cause violence. I was afraid what would happen if these groups clashed.
The death of George Floyd kicked off a summer of left wing protests across America.
And, in response from the right, we… haven’t seen a lot.
We’ve had a lot of scary headlines, for sure. There were nooses found as threats. A nascar driver found a noose in his garage. Except that, the “noose” was actually just a small loop at the end of the pull cord used to close his garage door. Every garage had a rope, this one had been tied in a loop for at least 6 months before he used the garage:
“Nooses” in Oakland turned out to be exercise equipment:
A “noose” in New York City turned out to be a rope used for lifting construction equipment:
A “noose” in southern California looks like a random loop of rope in a tree:
NPR wrote a headline about right wing extremists running over crowds:
People tracked down the picture that NPR used, and found the video of what happened. The driver was being assaulted and then drove away:
After people complained about the bad reporting, NPR replaced the photo with an image from 2017, when someone was killed by a driver at the Charlottesville rally.
So… of all 50 “attacks”, maybe NPR can’t actually find a single incident from this year that was actually a right wing extremist intentionally hitting protestors? That story was from June. Crowds have continued to surround and assault drivers. We’re probably in the hundreds, by now.
There were a few shootings. Surprisingly few, actually. One think tank says that 2020 had less terrorist shootings than 2019.
A 17 year old kid in Kenosha shot 3 other white men in what looks clearly like self defense.
A white man in New Mexico shot another white man. Also looks like self defense, one pulled a knife on him. The shooter might have shoved a protestor, earlier.
In June, a man drove towards a crowd in Seattle and shot one black protestor.
White supremacist? The guy turned out to be Hispanic:
And far from trying to mass murder, he immediately turned himself in to the police. It isn’t clear he was even trying to run anyone over — a moment before the shooting, he braked hard to avoid hitting a pedestrian. The crowd chased him down the road for a block and a half before trying to drag him out of the car. The man he shot was the one reaching into the car.
We saw some armed protests in Michigan. Seattle representative Pramila Jayapal gave a speech condemning the protestors, describing them as nazis carrying swastikas and confederate flags.
Reviewing pictures of the protests, I saw only US flags and “don’t tread on me” Gadsden flags. There were no confederates and the only swastika I can find is one woman, who is calling governor Whitmer a nazi, because of the lockdowns:
Yeah, she misspelled Whitmer. The swastika is backwards. Anyone forming big crowds during a pandemic is stupid, in my book. These protestors aren’t smart people. But they aren’t nazis.
I’m starting to wonder how many white supremacists we even have, in America. If these dangerous people are everywhere, why aren’t they out in the streets, in big numbers? Why does the news struggle to find them?
The news says that Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy.
Except that he has, several times. One speech went like this:
Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans
We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our creator. We are equal under the law. And we are equal under our Constitution.
Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America. Two days ago, a young American woman, Heather Heyer, was tragically killed. Her death fills us with grief and we send her family our thoughts, our prayers and our love.
He did make some remark about there being some very fine people among the protestors in Charlottesville.
That sounds divisive. But it’s actually a pretty standard political speech. Biden once spoke about the “many fine people” who fly the confederate flag:
The definition of white supremacy also keeps changing. So, what exactly do we want the president to denounce?
Trump has specifically denounced the KKK.
Should he denounce the police? College admission tests? Banking? Math?
I’m not a big fan of Trump. I’d like a more predictable leader, whether Democrat or Republican. But, people said he would literally be Hitler. And, they were basically all wrong. Trump deported less people than Obama. His “border wall” was about 200 miles of extra fencing on a 2,000 mile border that already has a 700 mile long fence. Trump didn’t start any new wars. He made no major changes to healthcare.
And, today, people are convinced that if he’s elected again, he’ll literally be Hitler. For real, this time.
These are all just campaign slurs. Trump is a mediocre president that tweets too much. He’s not a fascist dictator or a white supremacist.
And I don’t think he’s going to trigger a revolution.
Trump gave a weird and evasive answer about the proud boys, during a debate: “Stand back and stand by”.
Suppose that really was some kind of dog-whistle, summoning up his militias for a revolution.
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks right-wing groups. They think there are about 6,000 members of the proud boys and somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 in the KKK. There are maybe 10,000 Aryan brotherhood members, but that’s mostly just a prison gang, with little role outside of the jails.
Fighting against hate groups is the SPLC’s purpose, so they need hate groups to exist. If anything, they’re likely to overestimate the size.
Add everything up, maybe we’re talking about 20,000 white supremacists in the US. These aren’t organized armies, exactly. It’s a bunch of small groups of armed white men, some Facebook groups, and not much central leadership.
Suppose every last one of them got out in the streets.
There are 700,000 police officers in America.
There are 350,000 members in the national guard.
And if that’s not enough, the army has another half a million soldiers.
We’ll be fine. Unless the national guard is itself full of white supremacists.
I don’t know. Maybe someone taught them math.
There’s a strong demand to see white supremacist violence everywhere, when it’s actually rare. Why does that happen?
The simplest explanation is that most news is biased. But that’s not entirely it.
If there are a lot of articles about white supremacy, there must be demand for them.
The news stokes our fears. The demand comes from fear of our neighbors. As in, “those rural white people look different than me, they vote different from me, they have guns. Maybe they’re white supremacists”
When you define your world view in opposition to an enemy, you need that enemy to exist.
If your identity is a Trump resisting progressive, you need the world to be as scary as possible, to maintain that identity. So you read endless articles about Trump’s fascist America.
If you’re an antifascist protestor, you need the government to be fascist. So, you get 4 months of riots against the “fascist” police in Portland, which actually has one of the most liberal governments in America.
If your view is that the world is full of bad cops and violent white racists, you desperately need white supremacists to exist, to fight against. Your worldview might collapse if you noted that the police only shoot 10 unarmed black men in any given year, most of whom are assaulting an officer at the time.
Your view might collapse if you noticed that almost every violent protest this summer has been led by BLM or antifa, not right wing groups. It might collapse if you realized that most protested police departments are in liberal cities. They’re appointed by local governments, not by Trump.
So, you need to look for white supremacy somewhere, to fight. You see it in the white house. You see it in every loop of rope. You see it in every assaulted driver that drove off towards safety. You see it in every Republican who owns a gun.
That fear can ultimately lead to violence.
A caravan of Trump supporters drove through Portland, in August. One antifa member, Michael Reinoehl, executed a Trump supporter, Jay Danielson:
And Portland protestors celebrated the murder, that night:
They got one. They found a “real nazi” and they killed him. That gives their protest meaning. Without that nazi enemy, they would just be bored kids fighting their own police force.
To get deadly political violence, we first need to dehumanize each other. We need to label each other as nazis or terrorists.
That seems like a dangerous game, to me. When you call every white person a supremacist, anyone becomes a valid target.
So, finally, the election.
Biden is pretty far ahead in the polls. Most have him winning by 10 percent nationally and 6 percent in swing states. He wins with women. He seems to have made progress with the oldest voters. He’s losing ground with a few groups. It looks like Trump will actually get more black and hispanic voters than last time.
My best guess is that Biden will win the election and Trump will just concede. What else can he do? He can complain about the unfair media. He can complain about voter fraud. He can try to challenge it in the courts.
In the 2000 election, the initial count was 1,784 votes in Bush’s favor. After 6 weeks of fighting and recounting, the final count was a Bush win by 537 votes.
It needs to be close, for a recount to matter. The election could hinge on a legal battle in one state, and that would be chaos. But the odds are low.
Ultimately, he’ll just have to leave. And I don’t think right wing militias will do much of anything about it. The Dailystormer writes:
If Trump is overthrown, we’ll figure out a new plan.
Yeah, not much of an ominous threat.
It’s possible the polls are wrong, of course. They were wrong last time. I know Trump voters who won’t admit it, because they don’t want to be called racists. Maybe there are enough secret Trump supporters. Maybe too many people vote for Kanye.
I’m more worried by the outcome where Trump legitimately wins.
It looks like Trump could easily take Florida and North Carolina. Then, it comes down to only a few states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Arizona.
Trump only needs 1 or 2 of those states to win. He could be 10% behind in the popular vote and still win. I don’t think that liberals would react peacefully.
People have been primed to think that Trump is a fascist. That the election is fraudulent because Trump has manipulated the post office. They’ve been told that protests are important. Even violent protests are acceptable. Michael Moore praised the destruction of a police station. We know you can get away with a few days of rioting before the national guard shows up.
If Trump wins by a small margin, I think we get Portland style riots in big cities across the country.
And, at that point, I don’t know what happens. Trump can let things burn, it’ll only be blue cities that have the problem. Governors can choose to dispatch the national guard or not, it’s a local decision.
People could protest for months, if they want to. One medium article suggests a civil uprising to unseat the government.
Trump wouldn’t care. This is the guy who praised China’s response to Tiananmen square. He’s not stepping down because people protest.
I think the worst case is a narrow Trump victory, followed by months of left-wing protests. Like in Kenosha, militia types might eventually show up, if local governments don’t stop the violence, and that’s when people actually start shooting each other.
But I’m sure the news will still call those protests “mostly peaceful”:
“America descended into a fiery, but mostly civil war”
