r/PanicHistory • u/government_shill • Apr 19 '20
3/17/20 r/politics: "No, Trump can't cancel or postpone the November general election over coronavirus" [+11.6k] ... but just about every commenter thinks otherwise
/r/politics/comments/fkax2h/no_trump_cant_cancel_or_postpone_the_november/10
u/HerpthouaDerp Apr 19 '20
Anand they'll probably be in here in about a day to express that, too, if last post is any indication.
Truly, they are becoming part of history.
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u/TotesMessenger Apr 20 '20
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
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[r/drama] WORDSWORDSWORDS as sub dedicated to tracking panic goes into hysterics discussing the usual culprit
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u/auandi Apr 20 '20
"He can't do that, that's illegal."
What happened to this place? Not all panic and worry is equally unfounded, probable or worth contemplating.
I don't know how you can witness the past 3 years and still think confidently that "Trump would never do that, even though it would benefit him personally and the Republican Party generally, the law says he can't and so he will respect the law at personal sacrifice."
He broke laws to get elected in the first place, he has broken constitutional restrictions for years, and he's already broken both the law and constitution in his attempt to be re-elected. He has called into question the legitimacy of the election he won, both before and after. There are no laws, constitutional restrictions or democratic norms he has been adhering to over the last several years. And at every step, Republicans have followed him. There is no line he can cross that they will not cross with him. Keep in mind, dozens of states have already delayed elections, and SCOTUS has already come in to the nakedly partisan defence of Republicans with regard to how elections are to be conducted in a period of pandemic.
Say it is October, we have a second wave of this pandemic, and Trump announces that in this state of emergency elections must be delayed like they were last spring. Who would stop him? The Senate that just acquitted him? The SCOTUS that just tried to create an unfair election in Wisconsin? Can you think of a thing Trump has pushed for that Republicans haven't backed him up during?
This isn't Jade Helm panic, this isn't thinking that passing a gun background check law will lead to a hot civil war, this is seeing the last three years and having even a passing knowledge of how political systems work. Democracy can not be assumed, even in America. Because for anyone not white, it has a shorter democratic history than western Germany. If Trump were in charge of Peru and not the United States, no one anywhere in the world would have difficulty saying he is eroding the country's democratic systems. But somehow to worry about America's elections, even as people point out in detail where and why cracks are forming, it's panic akin to FEMA death camps.
We used to mock people who talk like Alex Jones, except now we have a President who does and suddenly it's panic to think he's going to act like it.
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u/government_shill Apr 20 '20 edited Apr 20 '20
"Trump would never do that, even though it would benefit him personally and the Republican Party generally, the law says he can't and so he will respect the law at personal sacrifice."
What is it with you panickers and quoting things nobody actually said? For my part at least, this has nothing to do with faith in Trump obeying the law. I'm sure he would love to declare himself Grand Bigly President-For-Life. Fortunately his chances of actually pulling that off are slim to none.
Who would stop him? ... The SCOTUS that just tried to create an unfair election in Wisconsin?
Yes. It's an immense leap to go from them ruling that election procedures can't be changed last minute to thinking they'll decide that the President can unilaterally cancel elections. It's not like there's a lot of ambiguity here: elections are run by the states, not by the federal executive branch. Congress can set rules, but the House obviously isn't going to help him. Even if for whatever reason Trump's term ended without a new president-elect, the 20th Amendment is unambiguous that his term still ends. Then the speaker of the House becomes President, or the president pro tempore of the Senate if we assume no house elections were held.
Can you think of a thing Trump has pushed for that Republicans haven't backed him up during?
Something about a wall? It's kind of Trump's big thing, but Republicans in Congress just weren't all that into it.
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u/auandi Apr 20 '20 edited Apr 20 '20
And yet he is building the wall by robbing other agencies, and no Republican is stopping him. Proving my point.
If Trump said October 15th that the November elections must be delayed due to the coronavirus, you think a free and fair election will take place November 4th? In the blue states probably, but nationwide? And if the election is not nationwide and is not free and fair, elections have been successfully canceled.
Democracy is a very unstable form of government, because all sides must agree that the other side is entitled to power and that it is better to lose fairly than win unfairly. It goes against a lot of natural human impulses and the only way it has lasted this long in America is that it hasn't, that's just a lie we tell ourselves. Democracy in America only worked when all sides agreed to exclude non-white voices from power, and since we became a full democracy after 1965 our democracy has become increasingly unstable with each passing cycle and closer to the brink of collapse. Thankfully, Nixon came about when the Congress was still functional. Unluckly it is no longer so now that we have an anti-democratic president again.
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u/TitaniumDragon Apr 20 '20
The federal government doesn't have control over the elections.
It's not "he can't do that, it's illegal". It's that he literally lacks the power to do that.
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u/auandi Apr 20 '20 edited Apr 20 '20
Tell Wisconsin about how the federal government can't intervene in the managing of state elections. This also assumes that if he states his intention to delay it, Republicans would oppose it.
Which also forgets the possibility of calling for an election boycott to delegitimize the result.
My argument is not that this is the most probable course, but it is a real concern. There are articles from the 1920s and even early into his reign in British and American papers that Hitler wasn't really going to do all the things he said he would do. All these hyperbolic people warning of Jewish genocide or an eventual world war were being overly panicked.
It's not ridiculous to consider it a possibility when Trump repeatedly and over years says (1) that he should be President for Life, (2) that there shouldn't be allowed to be an election and (3) that any negative news or results for him are fake. You get a real possibility that he could do something crazy like call for the election to be postponed. And if he called for it, it would happen. We can not have a national, free and fair election without all parties agreeing to the process. It's why democracy so frequently fails and why it's such an exception to history rather than a normal order.
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May 12 '20
What happened to this place?
Why are you asking when you’re literally part of the problem?
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u/auandi May 13 '20
Then we are talking about two different problems.
Because the "problem" I'm talking about is a weird assurance in this sub that it's equally likely that Obama would undermine elections as it is that Trump would (again). That all "disaster" predictions are worthy of laughter just because past predictions of disasters failed.
Like take the sidebar as an example.
r/PanicHistory is a collection of Reddit threads from the past and present that predict some kind of disaster, whether it's the implementation of martial law, a fascist takeover of America or a looming US invasion of Iran. We're a skeptic subreddit that brings attention to the fact that sensationalist headlines and predictions of doom never really change.
It assumes a kind of homeostasis to the world that simply isn't real. Saying "sensationalist headlines and predictions of doom never really change" treats all predictions of doom as equally unlikely and disreputable. A concern about concentration camps from Alex Jones types can be laughed off. When Elie Wiesel, the Anne Frank House, and the Auschwitz museum warn that we are heading on that path, maybe you shouldn't laugh it off. Because the two accusations are not equally backed up by evidence and history.
Everyone takes the moral of The Boy who Cried Wolf to be you shouldn't make false warnings of danger. And yes, that is a moral. But eventually there was actually a wolf, and the townspeople ignored it despite getting warnings. This sub's problem is that they think that because there hasn't been a wolf before there can't be a wolf now, and that's neither true nor helpful.
"The fact that sensationalist headlines and predictions of doom never really change"
Maybe I should have seen it from the beginning, but I guess I had just hoped actually watching the last few years would have made people realize that not all predictions of doom should be equally ignored.
But I am curious what exactly you think the problem is that I'm contributing to.
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Apr 21 '20
>words words words
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u/auandi Apr 21 '20
Wow, you sure showed me. How dare I take more than a line or two to explain a point.
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Apr 20 '20
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u/ABaadPun Apr 20 '20
I vividly recall Rush spreading rumors that obama was going to use fema to create his own private army and become a dictator after his term was up
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u/auandi Apr 20 '20 edited Apr 20 '20
No. You thinking that because some yahoos say it every 4 years but now experts in the field are saying it, it's all the same. Like how panic about Ebola in 2014 and panic about COVID now are not equally unfounded panic.
Trump has repeatedly said he should be President for life and that we "shouldn't be allowed" to have elections because of how good he is.
Show me another president that acted like that and then I'll call it routine.
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u/noradosmith Apr 20 '20
Actually, based on the way he's politicised the virus, this is entirely possible considering the other incredible shit he's gotten away with.
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Apr 19 '20
I love scrolling through Panic History’s history just to laugh at all the shit you previously thought people were panicking about that has now become our reality. I guess we’ll have to do a r/panichistoryhistory sub.
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u/government_shill Apr 19 '20
Someone beat you to it by about 8 years.
Now if you can just find these threads that have supposedly come true, that sub will finally have some content!
The question is just how much you'll have to shift the goalposts to make something fit.
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u/LottoThrowAwayToday Apr 20 '20
all the shit you previously thought people were panicking about that has now become our reality.
Such as?
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u/SongForPenny Apr 20 '20
!remindme November 3
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u/RemindMeBot Apr 20 '20 edited Apr 20 '20
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u/HerpthouaDerp Apr 19 '20
Better yet, you can call things not panic in the comments and get your own flair, forever marking you as sensible in the face of jerking.
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u/N0ahface Apr 20 '20
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/2atjf/what_will_you_do_when_the_gop_cancels_the_2008