Afghanistan Chronicle

Why would I chronicle about Afghanistan safely from afar when Biden was aggressively selling his "Build Back Better" program in the Summer of 2021 and people were falling from airplanes?

As an historian, I memorialize what I can and 2021 provided a lot of material.  In early 2020, I woke up confident in certain inalienable protections I’d been granted by nature since birth, then I consented to wear my mask, and got my three shots to protect myself from getting COVID and to prevent its spread to others before it didn't prevent the spread and I still got it.   My experience then and even more now was of a world out of control, made of serious, historical events, ones that increasingly fractured the country in ways I've never seen. 

Aside from COVID, the years of 2020-2 went beyond simple change.  There were the aftereffects of an impeachment over an anti-corruption phone-call with the President of Ukraine (who still leads that nation, only now it's invaded by Russia one year into the Biden epoch), COVID-era misinformation most commonly put in the form of memes trying to prove scientific things, increased public acceptance of censorship especially on social media despite the most common sense spirit of the First Amendment, the riot on January 6^th and a retro-impeachment despite the Constitution, and then the Afghanistan debacle, the second great defeat in American history after Vietnam.  After this period of chaos, some things done by us Americans can never be put back into the bag.

In the summer of 2022, the world is on the precipice of two potentially world-ending flashpoints: in Eastern Europe and in the Taiwan Straits.  In reference to an expanded Ukraine War or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, we should beware of the lessons of the recent past:

• Why undermining the Afghan government, releasing prisoners without consideration, and failing to support the national army especially with air support when the Taliban violated the deal, led to the collapse of morale and the rapid fall of the country.
• Why the administration would keep a Trump-era deal with the Taliban without following the actual letter of it, while Biden tore apart almost every other policy of his predecessor.  The Trump deal became political cover for Biden's execution of the withdrawal under far worse circumstances.  
  
• Why the inaccuracies, flip-flopping, stubbornness, and blundering of the Biden administration on the world stage made a pre-planned, conditions-based withdrawal into an embarrassing rout with the final conditions of our departure almost exclusively at the whims of different on-site Taliban battle-commanders. 
  
• Why such a momentous decision by our leaders requires just as great a response and justification to the public, especially considering our incredible now-wasted 20-year investment in the conflict, something undeserving of a flippant and arrogant brushing off of legitimate questions.
• A useful investigation like the 9/11 Commission, and unlike the January 6th partisan TV show, where the failures are examined in as objective way as possible.  Certainly, almost no member of the past two administrations or the current Congress is neutral enough to stave off partisan taint and grant a real commission the prestige needed.
• How the failures in Afghanistan emboldened the decisions of America's rivals in just one year since August 15th, 2021, the fall of Kabul.        

So, stubbornness proved to be a worse approach to foreign policy than blustering our way through, as evidenced by the lack of aggression from our enemies prior to August 2021 and the head-in-sand, no compromise approach to withdrawing US presence from Afghanistan during that summer.  And I am jaded not just with our obstinate and unavailable leaders or their reflexive media supporters, but with our own people who had they historical and civic training might be courageous enough to demand better than what we got: like millions of dollars of operable military equipment dumped on the side of the road, the bombing at the Kabul gate killing and wounding dozens, an innocent family blown up and called terrorist masterminds, or babies being flung over a fence to try to get them out.  

Domestic political consumption is largely composed of an uninformed and ignorant American public that frets when it sees terrible footage, but often doesn't know how to change political, military, or diplomatic leadership because domestic partisanship from both sides obscures necessary truths to make an informed decision.  Yet, this lack of interest jeopardizes American interests abroad, smacking them in the face only when an event, like the killing of 13 soldiers, suddenly appears before them like some demonic phenomenon.  They simply want out of confrontations, unwilling to sacrifice blood and treasure after rubber-stamping the decision-makers of the past.  Forget that the world has been aflame and people are killed in extremely violent ways from East Africa, Yemen, to Burma.  

For our interests, Afghanistan mattered not just in that we left, but in how we left.  There is an obligation after all the death to say something a little bit more than just enough to avoid serious political blowback. This need to inform others of the truths is what drives me, even if only a few people view it or the burning sarcasm seems off-putting to those that always toe a partisan line and go back to believing all is chipper in Biden's (or Trump's) Afghanistan. 

So, I approached this enfolding story not as some neophyte who was suddenly made aware that Afghanistan existed.  Instead, I was informed by 20 years of watching the issue, starting on September 11, 2001, when I was sitting in my dorm room waiting to go to my political science class on terrorism. Generally, I supported ending American involvement, but only if it was calculated, careful, and didn't result in pulling the plug on the government's forces before they were ready.  That action transpired in April and May of 2021 when the national army realized there would be no backing under Biden, no air support or direct US involvement, so they fled the field, precipitating total collapse.  

Having watched the "War on Terror," Iraq, and Afghanistan carefully, I was severely frustrated and angry at the handling of the retreat as I was at many times after 9/11.  The flashbacks came quick and I didn't even serve in the war or suffer really.  After all, I stayed comfortably at home merely studying.  However, I didn't like seeing our country's people and resources throw into a toilet while our leaders merely went on vacation or declared some kind of bizarre victory.  So, I wanted to share my experience even if it was a few online posts.

 My journal posts on social media to chronicle the desolation:

 

August 15th, 2021:

(On the fall of the capital, Kabul)

GG Afghanistan.  Well done Administration over there at the vacation home in Camp David!  What’re we fixing next?  With the brutal and repressive Taliban triumphant after 20 years, women finally set to be back to the early Middle Ages, and thousands of freed Al Queda prisoners all in the rear view mirror and ready to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, can we now focus on here at home and stopping those pesky freedom things from holding ourselves back in the Neanderthal era?  Can we finally police the masking or punishing of vaccinated or COVID-surviving/immune, healthy individuals?  I say there’s nothing we can’t do if we put our people to research it while in month 17 of this success.  Even if it takes 18.5 more years to reach the Afghanistan level of success only here at home with COVID, anything is always worth a try.

August 16th, 2021:

(Weapons and Biden's Foreign Policy Experience)

A real, epic disaster! You don't often get to witness the destruction of a nation simply by a superpower voluntarily leaving in haste, but here at home we have our own safety problems, so if we can just get healthy little Jimmy to not have to be asked to wear three masks while staying behind a plastic shield or if we can just stop complaining about what he/she/they are or aren't "learning" in that virtual classroom. At least Obama's alleged saying that "Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f... things up" will be proven wrong now that Biden is returning from his vacation retreat, providing strong leadership after we hear his speech today, and maybe even him personally rescuing the panicking people falling from our helicopters and planes, that weren't going to be needed according to Joe like they were in 1975 Saigon, Vietnam. It will be okay.

Since May/June, Joe never really wanted those provincial capitals, Bagram airbase, a treasure trove of abandoned weaponry, Al Qaeda and ISIS prisoners, the capital city, an allied/non-extremist government, allied interpreters and friends now being rooted out door to door by the Taliban for beheading, Afghan women, our Kabul embassy, our flag raised instead of lowered, the safety of American personnel, the blood invested over there etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. Supposedly with more troops headed there making a combined total of troops greater than at the start of the hasty rout he imposed a few months ago against almost all advice, we got the better end of this bargain. It will be okay, this is where Joe's experience and specialty comes into play, especially considering the one agreement from the last administration that he decided not to rip up (with the Taliban), or when he's the "last one in the room" and an important decision has to be made, right or wrong or stupid. We will be safe, somewhere, don't worry.

August 17th, 2021

(On Biden's Afghan speech)

What a speech! He said the buck stops with him, and I think we need to just accept his word once again like when he said the country wouldn't ever fall because of our training and the technology that the Taliban now are using. I admire his truthful consistency like when he told us if we go get the shot, we wouldn't have to wear a mask. But medical and military problems change so he's right on top of both issues even if there was an away message at the White House all weekend.

On everything else, he didn't say anything that he might have gotten even slightly wrong other than it being a mild surprise, like covering your eyes and saying boo to a baby or jumping out from behind a door to give a mild scare to a cognitively dysfunctional old man in a way that doesn't provoke a heart attack. So maybe, he was only very slightly surprised at the speed of the collapse he initiated 5 months ago. Lay off him folks.

All blame is accepted by him, except for everything being Trump's fault because Biden didn't like the managed withdrawal deal with the Taliban from 2019-2020, but unlike "Remain in Mexico" concerning COVID among foreign nationals at the border and every other other Trump-era deal he shredded without regard for what was in them just because Trump negotiated them, he decided to keep this one that he specifically disliked.

Because he decided to stick with the disliked Afghan deal anyways, it took courage to decide in April that we're leaving some landlocked place far away, and difficult logistical decisions have to slowly be made about the people still there and he shouldn't be rushed into planning to get them out once the troops were gone that rather easily defended our interests before.

If 3,500 US troops and the US airforce can hold a country together prior to June and lose no provincial capitals or Kabul or our airbase at Bagram or our embassy or women or our allies, I can think of no better way to leave Afghanistan without taking a humiliating "L" than to increase and not decrease US troop presence to about 7,000 after already leaving, even if temporarily, and then to beg, I mean negotiate, with the vicious Taliban victors to play nice as we huddle at a part of an airport to continue unplanned evacuation while they start the beheadings and start distributing child brides to their men.

It's better that we have more soldiers over there now that the country is lost rather than leaving behind a force that's barely 1/10 the size of US forces protecting South Korea since 1953 in that other forever war. Better to lose a country in the worst way possible so Biden doesn't have to oversee another forever war or leave it to a fifth president since hundreds of thousands of troops are permanently deployed all over the world going as far back as 1945, doing soldier things like the small force was in year 20 of the Afghan conflict.

Maybe Biden is on to something about having no troops anywhere, and that will come as a pleasant surprise to China as it eyes Taiwan and its increased doubts on whether US forces will help defend the island as it has promised to do since 1949. I'm sure the rather successful SecDef, SecState, and the Joint Chiefs can find better things for fighters to do here at home short of unemploying them. Teach them things about our terrible history instead of military science to inspire them to fight and possibly die for it, even though we don't seem to have the attention span to fight for our interests anyways, or ordering them to get the COVID shot without clearing up lingering mistrust from the Anthrax shot debacle? Seems like a better thing for our employees to do than being paid to fight.

In short, I think we need to accept our leader's expert, sound military logic that it's better to redeploy in the middle of a nightmare than to hold on in an earlier, better position. It all takes courage and people just need to adjust their thinking if we're going to be mentally ready when our weakness invites terrible nations to advance in the wake of our departure. Americans are tired, maybe from reading my lengthy congratulations, and Biden is too, so I just wanted to write how courageous and well-executed this all was.

Have a nice day (while we still have them)!

August 18th, 2021

(It's Rude to Question A Leader in the Middle of Losing A War)

Gosh, can't they just stop yelling (rude) questions at Biden about Afghanistan? I was going to stop posting, but it got me so mad seeing those disrespectful, logical questions. The press conference was about COVID only and we know there aren't supposed to be real questions about that either, so what are the origins of this sudden journalistic nerve? The real experts are in this for a little while at least and if they can just survive hostile territory and go on an unexpected journey to their potential rescuers before the firm deadline of August 31st and before being abandoned to torture and murder and then provide some answers to the administration at a debriefing, then Biden's people will let us know months later what's really going on on the ground among those that barely made it to the finish line.

Perhaps if reporters would just send some favorable comments in the form of a politely worded voicemail to the White House's or State Department's answering machine, they'd get an adequate response whenever deemed timely. And I really don't get why people put so much pressure on them when they put "a lid" on answers to reporters or simply walk away from the press like today, something that these ungrateful press should understand since it was acceptable to them throughout the 2020 campaign (because: "Drumpf").

And let's be honest, do we really value answers to tough questions by government secretaries unless they lead off by saying something is "personal to them" while providing as little as they want afterwards. Even without any valuable information, an empathetic statement is all I need! Today, I got just that and I really felt better about their decisions because they said they felt something too.

Just take Brian Williams and other "journalists" as an example when they rightly labeled Biden's speech yesterday as a strongly worded, courageous, and principled statement about withdrawal. Spot on! Or imagine the benign deference of one of the thousands of hostages cowering outside of the Kabul airport tweeting a plea to anyone on Twitter, maybe even to the Taliban spokesman to let them in for a flight to American "freedoms" because both tweets fit within Twitter's terms and conditions as a private company? That's how tweets are done folks! Could a banned Drumpf after January 6th or Biden's ridicuously hostile interrogators learn a thing or two? Indubitably!

And for those complaining about the State Department not adequately or urgently processing the papers of those trying to flee, drowning them in a sea of red tape, likely because they burned the evidence of American collusion in case they're caught, just remember that we haven't even fully implemented NYC's segregation plan to have vaccination cards and photo identification IDs (NOT for voting, double emphasis added) checked for the un-vaccinated, especially adversely affecting minorities should they wish to be permitted to enter restaurants in areas where they live in large numbers. It's just one city so far, but hopefully everywhere soon, so give SecState Blinken some time to process the desperate people being beaten or shot for entering the relative safety of half of Kabul airport! If DeBlasio is leading the way on IDs in NYC by denying unvaccinated minorities dinner at a sit-in restaurant, Biden can't be too far behind in vetting those desperates in Afghanistan 6,600 miles away who want in to our country-with some conditions!

This had to happen and at this press conference, Biden is simply trying to give the same amount of moral strength to rejecting questions about Delta as he did to the past 5 months of horribly mismanaged withdrawal. This is "personal to me" so I have no other answers other than to politely beg the press to leave Joe alone and let him solve COVID by some arbitrary and politically advantageous deadline and maybe think about Afghanistan's next deadline if he's ready and willing after vacation.

August 19th, 2021

(Foreign Policy Expert, Joe Biden, Questioned by Ignorant Amateur in an Interview)

God, forgive me if I'm wrong about [this], but why is George (Stephanoplous) now all of sudden going so unnecessarily hard against Biden, after they had such a great relationship before? As Biden said, people stopped dying or falling off of airplanes to escape to our COVID-era "freedoms" a long 4-5 days ago and no one's being killed right now. Who knows how many people are trapped throughout Afghanistan in jeopardy waiting on further text messages from a State Department that is known for having a missing Department Secretary and for being absentee, but Biden says at least they're not dying over there, which is great comfort, and that should be enough for me, a self-described news amateur, or anyone else not working in Biden's difficult role.

Even if the amount of contact with those left behind is unknown, let alone their specific fates while being forced to journey unprotected to Kabul airport, then why can't George just recognize the President's desire to pick up the pace of withdrawal regardless of the consequences since Biden knows the dying ended? If it happened days ago, even if it was always going to be this chaotic in Joe's careful mental planning of the operation over many months, the deaths were "priced in" and were probably going to be over with at some point if a President says so, so why should either man worry about it? Who is George to question him about this or get that unnecessary COVID question in at the end?

He ain't a doctor or a President so just let Biden speak. Come on man! It's about empathy, folks, and I think Joe knows better.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-transcript-abc-news-george-stephanopoulos-interview-president/story?id=79535643&fbclid=IwAR3Evc9JEYt2reWWia50tQbl3vM_SH85h4Q7_BRH6n7TMXUUG2c-SSgO95o

August 20th, 2021

(Timeline of Afghan Defeat, Samples from Declassified Report, and a Template to Question Failed Military Leaders)

 

After hearing the President and his top national security leaders speak heroically in defense of their policy this afternoon, I was further inspired and wanted to do some basic journalistic work since most of the media has changed for the worse lately, maybe except for Joy Reid if anyone else wants to join me and think about watching her. The media is not doing its job in defending the Biden Administration nearly enough as they always deserve (because: Drumpf). Because it's not delusional to believe "America is Back" or that our allies are confident of our ability to support them or that we still will never leave a man or women behind in a nightmare, I wanted to delve a bit into the superb decision-making here in a nation that is steadily building back better, especially overseas.

Though I eat these sorts of long reports for breakfast (perfectly legal figurative language for reading while I'm eating), if anyone has a meme to contradict anything in the report, the transcript of America's President's press conference, or any of the ways I carefully lay out the contradictions always in the Biden Administration's favor, please consider it your duty to drown actual arguments or evidence with that meme, for or against.

Attached in a link is the 214 page Inspector General Report for Afghanistan Reconstruction from July 30th, 2021. I know there are lots of words and numbers and stuff, but by breaking some of it down, I want to show that regardless of what the bureaucracy was saying about the upcoming Afghan collapse a month ago, Biden and his largely silent secretaries were presenting a better Truth for all Americans in the past 4-5 days since people supposedly stopped dying over there.

Finally, note that I use the page number for the PDF file and not the document numbers because every page matters to me, including prefaces or appendices. I presumed that only the most committed would print out this report and use it for coffee-table reading.

Here are just a few samples from the report:

#1: "July 12–15: Four media outlets publish maps indicating Taliban control majority of Afghan districts, with many taken since May 1," when Biden emphatically insisted the formal withdrawal begin no matter what (p.7). But in reality, when Biden declared on July 8th, four days earlier that "the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable," he knew that the weaponry didn't matter in the face of a majority of districts falling to the Taliban (p. 55) and the costs of death, destruction, self-eliminated intelligence capabilities, and the creeping rise of a new terrorist state during the height of the Afghan fighting season would be "priced in" into his decision. Without the most well-equipped army equipment left behind, the US wouldn't be able to get its forces out because they might be fired upon by weaker technology if they didn't leave only the most advanced welcoming gifts.

That stuff or airports or other tools to maintain so-called "over the horizon capabilities" weren't needed because US soldiers weren't going to be fighting back unless they were heavily attacked so why bring home the equipment or the capabilities home too? And who needs a forward base like Bagram in a country when it could be far away in Qatar (p. 60) and when Afghanistan and not Qatar is supposed to be a jumping off point for the "over horizon strategy" to target resurgent terrorist groups like Al Qaeda (p.60)?

If our contacts are burned by the takeover and driven into hiding or more likely killed, what need would we have of protecting them from the terrorists we can no longer see over the horizon? Biden made the right calculation to abandon all the stuff and contacts so that American forces wouldn't be attacked by the Taliban's lower class technology prior to routing the remaining Afghan government's better equipped forces and after he knew from briefings that the Taliban had already seized the majority of districts by July 12-15, and so that our intelligence contacts would be burned, and then we wouldn't have to see what's over the horizon anymore because presumably it's pretty scary.

#2: NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg might have believed and been clear-eyed that there were significant risks in ending the military mission (p.30), and one could infer that he meant the perils of precipitously doing that and that he was clearly disagreeing with the US approach, but when Biden simply told our NATO allies we were done without giving time to hear out those risks, he was taking a multilateral approach and working with our allies for what's best for the world by not listening to them at all and eventually leaving them high and dry to get their own people out, like France and Great Britain are currently doing. If SecGen Stoltenberg and NATO were really "clear-eyed," they would have antipicated Biden's get out-at-any-cost, destroy-your-allies'-confidence, make-sure-Americans-don't-fire-any-weapons-or-they'll-be-attacked approach and had the rest of the allies ready to step up and fill in the gap left behind by a self-defeated US administration. Biden is and was ready, the rest of the world is and was not.

#3: On Biden's orders, he ensured the dissolution of another Drumpf-era capability, instituted as a result of the aftermath of the 2012 Benghazi disaster at the US consulate in Libya, and designed to withdraw non-military American personnel and Afghan allies from the outer provinces first. In Afghanistan, making the US soldiers come out first instead of the weak and undefended simply because the largely feckless Afghan government that was about to be abandoned anyways regardless of the consequences requested they remain for stability purposes has to be one of the soundest military and logistical decisions of this 20 year war.

You'll note on page 50-51 of the report, that although most of the districts had already been overrun by the Taliban, clearly displaying the ineptitude to everyone but Biden on July 8th of the Afghan army to perform without the prospect of American soldiers and aircraft backing them, that the personnel and allies left behind were perfectly capable of defending themselves if they simply joined in on the looting of superior technology left behind. Imagine what they couldve done if those left behind to their own devices got to a fully loaded Bagram airbase when the lights were turned off, signaling to the Taliban and looters to enter before the un-notified Afghan government could arrange its troops to claim it? I can think of no better instance of self-help for a nation, maybe since Nixon's Vietnamization strategy in the late 1960s-early 70s to bolster South Vietnam, than forcing civilian Americans and their allies to pick up some really great weapons and learn how to defend themselves after America's paid government employees who fight for a living are withdrawn first to move on to bigger and better things.

#4: Finally, I'd like to consider the issue of stepped up Taliban violence at the same time as the complete elimination of so-called insider attacks or any other form of violence directed at US forces (p.63). It is true that no American soldier has been killed by the Taliban since February 2020. Rather than this fact showing the effectiveness of the February 2020 agreement under Drumpf to prevent the loss of life of US personnel while maintaining a conditions-based withdrawal and at the same time showing the ineffectiveness of the Afghan military forces to prevent the loss of their own citizens, instead, Biden correctly inferred on April 1st that pulling the plug on US soldiers would lead to the Afghan military stepping up to defend a country, even civilian Americans left behind, that it was barely defending at all since he took office. Biden correctly proved that he didn't need conditions on US withdrawal including getting civilians and allies out first or to perform a viability test on the Afghan army, which it failed long before Kabul fell and 10-15,000 people are still scrambling to exit from airports that were already hard to control in July (pg 117-121).

Now that you have my template, I urge you all to read the report for yourselves, listen to Biden's speeches, and think about what you can do to support his decisions and prevent anyone at the top from being forced to resign in disgrace and lose their jobs because there are many other important issues like vaccine mandates, January 6th retribution, Drumf's financial records, or infrastructure that we should be focusing on.

Here are some topics to consider using this form of gung-ho analysis:

• Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), their viability as a US-trained, superior-to-the-Taliban fighting force, especially considering the advantage Biden gave to their "air-force" over the Taliban's non-existent one prior to their seizure of those planes and helicopters with the country (pgs. 63-81)
• The peace plan and relations between what Biden characterized as the strongly-backed Afghan government (now defunct) and the Taliban (pgs. 83-88)
• strong indications in July of the impending human rights disaster especially for refugees and displaced persons, especially women after US withdrawal, that Biden at least "priced in" to his withdrawal non-strategy (pgs. 90-91, 105-109).
• Maps and other information considering the rise in opium production, the sales of which increases finances to the Taliban and correspond in increase to the control of provinces by them, and which may lead to a spike in supplies of Opioids in the US where the problem is already a significant crisis. Biden factored this in also so the main entry points for opioids into the US through ports of entry and at the Southern border will be addressed by the President and especially Vice President Harris already tasked with some things soon enough, we can presume (pgs. 98-105).
• COVID in Afghanistan, dismal vaccine numbers there, and how it won't be a problem with a large refugee influx into the US during the Delta wave if Biden and Faucists have anything to say about it (pgs. 141-147). 

Sources: 

 

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2021-07-30qr.pdf

https://www.whitehouse.gov/.../remarks-by-president.../

 

August 26th, 2021

(Putting the Defeat into Historical Context and Fallout for the Afghans and Americans Left Behind)

History in the making:

Let's just take a minute from our necessary crusade to mask vaccinated COVID survivors outdoors as in Oregon, or "locking up" and/or "possibly deporting the unvaccinated to warzones" (criminals, if you ask me at certain times of the day), or crowd-source credentialing natural rights on Facebook/taking away the ability to speak about their laughably deadly, "precious freedoms," and appreciate the largest forced airlift in US history.

I know rhetoric tends to get away from us sometimes especially in the post-Drumpf era, even if it rarely comes from the Biden regime, but take a pause and think about the magnitude of the efforts our brave soldier employees are forced to do at their own peril by a rigid, nonsensical August 31st deadline. Without that added pressure, without approximately 15,000 scattered American civilians and allies being told through text to come through hostile territory and then to stay away and then to come and then to stay away, etc., from "precious freedom" at the Kabul airport, we couldn't truly shine and display our values to our angry allies who supposedly, according to one US general, are showing us up and should stop being so active so we can catch up at our own pace.

It simply wouldn't be historic enough if we picked up the pace and had a better plan to get the remaining 90-95% of Americans out. I say make the airlift more epic! Ramp up the difficulties and the carnage and be lauded for reaching a higher bar! And lets be frank, it's just flexing by the administration when it evacuates approximately 70-80,000 non-Americans before the large numbers of Americans still there. Let's see what Joe can do for the remaining lower priority evacuees, i.e. the Americans, in just 5 days. Unless you're an anti-Muslim racist, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

And it's even more historic considering what else he is and isn't doing right now. Even with a tragic suicide bombing today that didn't have to happen yet probably isn't at all Joe's fault, I wouldn't want to take anything away from month seven of selling the Build Back Better plan or a talk about cybersecurity that just became an issue, so just take a deep breath and appreciate this moment, his moment. However well they're executed, the administration's efforts clearly display an ability to think they can multitask during a perilous situation!

Finally, historical parallels are often difficult to work out and we don't test analogies on the SAT any longer probably because of discrimination, but why not use them here anyways if it's just more rhetoric and not based on reality? Maybe Hitler forcing the largest Allied evacuation in history at Dunkirk because he might fire on the defeated British soldiers? Or in terms of forcing Americans to walk to their own freedom because most of the soldiers were withdrawn along with the generals first, maybe the Bataan Death March even if it wasn't really "precious freedom" to the Filipinos or GIs that they were marching towards? I'm just speculating on some other potential historical analogies.....

After Tuesday, will those left behind in Afghanistan be POWs or hostages? After 9/11/2021, war trophies? I guess it depends on if Joe thinks the war is over or not while the remaining persons are under Taliban control. Even if he's unfortunately not in office 3.67 years from now, and I might add that I hope most COVID restrictions are still in place then to keep us completely safe from unvaccinated maskless terrorists, best let a 5th US president deal with the hostages so as to not taint Joe's record on not leaving the conflict to another.

Truly unprecedented effort Biden people and I hope history pats you on the backside!

 

CORRECTION 

 I neglected to include the final post about deadlines in my own rush to get this out.  Taking my cues from Biden's firm adherence to maintaining defeat deadlines, I forgot this final post.  My apologies! 

August 30th, 2021

(The Importance of Enemy Deadlines:  Taking Only Strengths from Retreating Under Fire)

It's over with in Afghanistan for the Biden regime and I think their beliefs are far from delusional because as always they're going to lead us to a 100% happily ever after. I was sitting here today reflecting on 20 years of closely watching the conflict, unlike most Americans who didn't, whether it was from my dorm room on 9/11/01 waiting ironically to go to my 10AM political science class on terrorism or to witnessing the end of today's firm deadline from the relative safety of my home, where there was the completion of the largest forced airlift in US history in response to the Biden regime's unnecessary creation of a problem. 

 

For myself, what is my greatest lesson from today? "Marfew Warfel, is it the impact from the thousands of American and allied lives lost, the 70-80,000 or more Afghan dead, the destruction, or the resources thrown away especially since Joe's April 1st announcement? Nope. "Bulkybob, is it the creation of a now heavily-armed, still repressive, Al Qaeda-allied, and radical Taliban state right on the 20th anniversary of 9/11? No again! 

 

It is the power of deadlines! I think we can all learn something from Biden's successful use of the self-imposed deadline in Afghanistan, regardless of the carnage in its wake. Some leaders like Drumpf, if you can even call them that, can't get their deadlines done whether it's the conditions-based May 1st, 2021 Afghan withdrawal agreement from the administration that lost the November 2020 election and thus couldn't declare victory or check the conditions on May 1st 2021 that they made in February 2020 or 14 days to stop the spread from 18 months ago. Why make a deadline if you're going to adjust the conditions and postpone declaring victory? Take Drumpf's failure by declaring we'd be open by Easter 2020. He didn't write his deadline in a way that allowed him to declare victory! 

 

Contrast that to Biden's victory in having a free and open Independence Day in 2021. Kamala and Joe celebrated sometimes double-masked, fully vaccinated, constantly tested, with the best medical staff, and outdoors in well-distanced placements with a limited group to interact with, but they deemed that to be free and open, so they met their deadline and won. The whole point of a deadline is to declare victory on that date and time and nothing should get in the way of that. We should take the Biden approach to more aspects of our lives. 

 

Here is my summary of this approach. Who knows what the range of application could be? Physical fitness/weight loss goals? Keeping emergency powers by reimposing any number of COVID mandates regardless of their efficacy by setting an undefined date where the goal of 0% COVID of any variant will be met? Losing thousands of NYS health care workers during the largest spike in hospitalizations since January 2021 over an abrupt mandatory vaccination deadline? Whatever the consequences, pick a date and make sure you can win! 

 

Here are some factors to consider when making your Victory Deadline:

 

1. Pick a date and time for some goal to occur, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

2. Decide what it is that you want to achieve, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

3. Write your deadline statement in such a way that you can declare a victory no matter what, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

4. Pick a person or group to blame (Strawman) for any hiccups, large or small, in the pursuit of your goals, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

5. If you do not want to set a specific time and date, consider instead setting lofty or impossible goals, what I call metric deadlines, but not setting firm dates for them to be completed or by setting an unreasonable date and then publicly postponing the deadline while blaming the offending groups for the postponement of your own goal, declare victory anyways, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

6. Conduct a retrospective only after your goals are met, you have declared victory, any flaws are blamed on the offending groups, your self-evaluation is necessarily biased in your favor, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

7. Considering the permission you've been granted to speak by your own subordinates and regardless of the immense power of your position to set goals and to execute them, turn your back on any questions of your goals and decisions, blame your underlings for getting you into trouble, walk away, then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES.

Bye Afghanistan (then IGNORE CONSEQUENCES)!

 

Thank you for reading!  Pray there is no need for a Ukraine, Taiwanese Chronicle, or worse

 

 

Political Mirroring Volume V: A Parlor's Parlay

Volume V: A Parlor’s Parlay

Maxim: “Avoid political discussions when everyone’s society cannot receive a guaranteed benefit.”

The Highlights of Abstract Mirroring Volume V:

• Reminder: Belief acceptance + Context=Harmony.
• The Parlay: the content of irrational speech, which is determined by the intent of the speaker, the actual speech as communicated, and the reception of the audience.
• The Parlor: the context of the speech, including all of the physical objects, places, times, structures real or virtual (i.e. in-person closed convention or Facebook “like” buttons), and any environmental factors that are part of how a political debate ensues.  Not a utopia or dystopia or some ideal environment where arguments are eliminated for being false or where the rhetoric used convinces all participants of some common Truth. 
• A Big SAC: S+A=C.   Speech Intent (S) + Audience Reception (A) = Code (C) as either Green, Yellow, or Red Speech.  A means to evaluate the effect of a Parlay, based on the subjective value judgements of the speaker’s intent plus the subjective value judgements as to how the message will be received.
• The Parlay 6: The inverse of Cicero's rhetorical elements, which indicate speech that should be mirrored.  They are: rote copying of others, reactionary planning based on others, trolling, suppressive delivery towards others, Total Recall, and selective amnesia. 
• Silence Coefficient: The positive, neutral, or negative multiplying effect of not engaging in speech.  Essentially, the speaker's fight or flight response, or a fly on the wall if assuming, being granted, or being unaware that they are not allowed spectator status.  Silence can be positive speech if it prevents an irrational reaction and/or stigma.  It can also be negative if the conversation demands speech or if silence would equal violence (SHIVs) to potentially harmful opponents.  Dependent on the context of the conversation. 
• Captivity Deduction: Mirrors are by their nature rational debaters or at least they believe they are.  Therefore, because of this belief, they are a captive audience because they establish an insufferable level of irrationality and a lack of value in continuing the conversation, yet they must endure it and mirror the offenders so long as needed to avoid stigma. 
• Audience Experience Paradox:  The dilemma that a person’s experience seems authentic because they alone experienced it, but it is deemed inauthentic because it does not fit another person's or group’s subjective interpretation (pathos) of what an objectively good, ethical, and virtuous experience should be. 
• LyE’s- An identity property of sorts whereby a debater is reduced to using ones’ life experience as the sole basis of an argument, used as a logical fallacy, meaning there is no way to disprove something that no other person can live through, thus shutting down the conversation. 
• Hystorical LyE’s:  The idea that all of the positive or negative aspects of a version of history can be called upon to make a person’s lived experience invulnerable to opposition.  This subjective perception allows them to use an interpretation of history as a suit of armor around their world. 
• Morgan Snares- A type of conversation trap built on a disprovable LyE.  Defined as using one LyE to undermine or eliminate another person’s rational opinion about something or someone.  Named after Piers Morgan’s debate with Alex Beresford about the British Royal Family’s racism controversy, an otherwise irrelevant topic to us, but useful only as a style of logic-busting that prevents any counter-argument.   
• Pronoun Flares:  Warning: this trigger warning may trigger a warning trigger.  Some content may or may not be deemed as violating the Politics of Mass Abstraction’s community of one standard.  In a “Pronoun Hoedown,” where the situation has the potential for utmost cancellation and stigma, Pronoun Flares are the extremely negative reaction to the use, misuse, or non-use of small words in place of nouns related to social conceptions that lead to stigma. 
  
• Hexer:  The “Yin” of reacting to another person’s rejection of ones’ views.  This is the defensive, passive-aggressive side of responses whereby questioning a person’s speech necessitates a disproportionately negative response.  Also, a form of the "heckler's veto" where disruption is used to shut down undesired speech.  For example, provable accusations that another person is lying leads to calls for that accuser to be “cancelled” because of as yet unproven accusations of the original accuser’s racism and sexism.  
• Doxer:  The “Yang” of opposing another person’s ability to respond; the aggressive silencers of speech, those pursuing Avenger Justice, who weaponize personal or sensitive information regardless of the actual views or culpability of their target.  The cause for their Justice is irrelevant, they are doxers because they use malicious and irrational tactics to suppress speech for the “greater good.” 
• Cat-like Tread Debate Monster: an insidious type of Debate Monster, a hexer who hijacks a conversation after waiting in the wings after everyone’s cards have been presented.  They don’t have much to offer other than to sneak a win after others do the work. 
• Parlor Feng Shui: The spatial structure of a conversation, its total environment, designed despite the creator's intent to imperfectly increase the positive or negative aspects of a conversation.  Some “parlors” (environments) like Twitter or Facebook are made to be restrictive of certain forms of speech depending on their content.  Like Feng Shui, the structure of a political conversation is often designed with the intent to have positive or negative effects on the participants in the conversation.  

 Mirroring Case Study #3: Lame Duck Diary

(Facebook Diary)

Preface:

I covered so much ground and yet there is so much left to enjoy discussing.  I’m optimistic for my country on Facebook that it will continue to be rewarding, especially if I can occasionally drag ideologues from both sides to more reason and pragmatism.  And who couldn’t thank the Community and Safety Standards, coming from a small, private, ma and pa, big-tech company/bakery like Facebook, who are just selectively protecting us all from information that we can’t handle and the Russian bots, who seem oddly quiet lately.

This whole philosophy is a product of the politics of the Trump era, after-all Volume I was from 2017, though not as a partisan reaction one way or another.  There will certainly be a need for more Mirroring and more case studies as I’m pretty sure I’ll escape future de-programming or loyalty oaths and will still be able to post largely unmolested because I'm more a cult leader than a follower (just kidding).  

Don’t worry, “silence isn’t violence.”  In this case, it’s just a slippery slope fallacy as so much political trust has been built up these past years by everyone, especially in the media, the real or shadow governments, or big tech that I won’t worry about anyone cultifying me because of their superior judgment, careful and accurate consideration of my words, or the pursuit of the truth over feelings.  So, I doubt I’ll be next. 

I think part of what makes the diary format so interesting to me is that not only can no one see what I’m thinking because I follow the privacy practices (though not their illogical, predictable, or lazy meme cop-outs), the common decency, and non-snarkiness enjoyed by many politics posters on Facebook and Instagram.  Yet, I also think it's fascinating mostly because though I might know the arguments from both sides better than the true believers,  I learn some new way of twisting information every day, or empowering a few glittering generalities with so much meaning on a meme that they make that person want to orgasmically explode with agreement, or finding the sweet spot of predictability that no late night host could ever match after making the 46th post for the day. 

Checking through my Facebook Diary of the past few weeks I realized I had only touched the tip…..(that’s what she said).  I wrote about demanding harmony and unity and NOT peace.  I explored the possibilities of turning my Facebook powers over to my enemies using the exact language of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution and some common sense logic.  And I created a self-help Accountability Equation so that people can use simple math and decide on social media just what level of accountability they will want to demand from their opponents.  And I gave them an opportunity to fantasize about punishment with the Retribution Scale.  A different style for each post!

Yet, there is more to explore.  For example with my entry on a moot, retro-impeachment, there are so many instances throughout world history of retro vengeance that I wish I had more time to explore ages ago on the 8th of January during infinite lock-down.  Were I to travel back in time if it was possible (it’s not), one of the few things I’d change about my social media would be to label my impeachment entry as “The Cadaver Impeachment Synod” because it’s pithy and references a part of history almost no one would recognize. 

The Cadaver Synod of 897 was when vengeful Pope Stephen VI dug up a hated predecessor, Formosus, and put the rotting corpse on trial.  Originally, Formosus was to be punished as a bishop because another power-hungry pope passed a law making it a religious crime to “aspire to the papacy.”  He ascended anyways to the highest office in a violent and brutal time where many leaders had their castles stormed by rival mobs. 

Now obviously historical parallels are usually inaccurate because they lose context in favor of cherry picking one or two elements of similarity and I’m certainly not likening the so-called Pornocracy, or so the papacy of the 9-10^th centuries is known, to 2020-1 America other than for the purpose of avoiding beating a dead horse into absurdity by labeling it as needless and divisive.  However, I like the title especially if a living Trump is unconstitutionally prevented from “aspiring to the presidency” or other high public office after being unconstitutionally tried while not serving in office.  I’m sure Pope Stephen VI ensured that the soul of the Catholic Church was restored by trying a corpse and proving his predecessor worthy of excommunication and eternal damnation in hell.  I think the lesson from good old Stephen VI is that sometimes partisans just have to do what their immortal souls and consciences irrationally require them to do.    

Perhaps, the disqualification aspect makes that analogy interesting.  Or maybe when Russians shot the ashes of False Dimitri I (the Polish Dimitri) from a canon in the direction of Poland during Russia’s Time of Troubles (1598-1613) that such an example would suffice for extreme vengeance.  Yet, perhaps the most relevant retro punishment from history would be the extreme lengths that Emperor Kangxi went to punish Khan Galdan of the Dzungar Khaganate of Central Asia (whose people would be exterminated in the 1750s by Qing dynasty China).  Not only was Galdan’s corpse ritually torn apart, but the ashes were ceremonially placed on the roads of the capital for the military to parade over.  Interestingly enough, Kangxi's grandson, Emperor Qianlong, was similarly obsessed with his enemies to the point of war with the Russia Empire just to recover the frozen corpse of the last rebel Dzungar Khan, Amursana.  With the Dzungar genocide complete, the leader’s un-desecrated body was the last incomplete mission of accountability for rebellion and insurrection against ones' overlord.  So who knows about now.    

Finally, why is this a mirroring case study?  I’ve used multiple volumes of my own work in reference to ongoing events.  Not only are key concepts from them validated by our subjects’ approaches to these issues over the past two weeks, but even the Case Study #1 on impeachment is relevant because of its discussion of Hamilton's Federalist papers, partisanship, and increasing the viability of the impeachment articles and trial by lessening partisan divides and increasing the fairness of the process. In my impeachment entry, Hamilton would probably roll over in his grave if he read what happened for the second try.  So, let's get on with it!

My method of Mirror Diary writing:

1. Pick a political topic that is most urgent, most irrational and unreasonable, and most conducive to ignoring facts.

2. Provide at least 1 source for constitutional, history posts, or cite lengthier explanations from this blog where sources are also provided. 
   

3.  Reference four volumes of Political mirroring where topics can be further elaborated.

4. Record and estimate the time to read the entries not to run out a clock and keep occupied those thinking absurdly, but so they understand the estimated time they'll invest for their own benefit. 

5. Complete a minimum of 5 stand-alone journals in approximately 14 days, starting arbitrarily on 1/6/2020, seemingly another quiet day or the worst day in American history, and arbitrarily ending on 1/20/2020, another ho-hum day or a great cleanser, where 25,000 National Guard troops may be assembled in a place where they previously were not be wanted to be present, and of course only those of non-suspect ideological qualities, all to make sure this entry is posted and secure. 

Here are the topics of the 5 entries, not including this preface.  They cover a variety of issues:

• Entry #1: 1/7/2021, "Understanding the desire for MORE than peace"

• Entry #2: 1/8/2021, "Making the 25th work with a vengeance"

• Entry #3: 1/10/2021, "Incited to write about incitement." 

• Entry #4: 1/14/2021, "The 2021 Cadaver Impeachment Synod: Impeaching history and fantasizing constitutionality" 

• Entry #5: 1/17/2021, "Using basic math to achieve Accountability: exercises in retribution and self-care for public or private persons." 

Source:

        https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/morbid-monday-cadaver-synod

 

Entry #1: 1/7/2021, "Understanding the desire for MORE than peace"

Dear Facebook Diary: 

For the record, today is the 6-7th of what month I don't know. I thought somehow today would be different. I mean, I didn't act, think, or feel any differently today(s) than this past summer about the things I chose not to see or understand, nor ten minutes ago when I posted for the 20th time this morning to people who think like me about opinion news broadcasters that also think like me. But somehow I thought my limited understanding of past things, my acceptance of their inconsistency and hypocrisy, my version of logic and rational thought, and my memes would suddenly get my enemies to listen to my scolding and debase themselves and their worth. I just can't understand why there isn't unity with me? Why CAN there just be peace?

 

Entry #2: 1/8/2021, "Making the 25th work with a vengeance"

(estimated reading time for this entry: 12 days)

25th Amendment to the US Constitution

Dear Facebook Diary:

I want to write to you about the 25th and some questions other people have about my ability to keep on posting solely based on this one Letter. Gosh, I read its text just once and it seems pretty clear, though I’m certain others have already cut out some of the words and made art with some glue sticks and pipe cleaners in ways that are more pleasing to them. As a whole, I’m fairly certain it has only been tested in very narrow cases for other posters. Basically to use it, I wouldn't be able to physically write more posts because of a disability or if I quit or was dead and had to turn my Facebook over to a close caretaker who could blog for me about similar content.

But I don't know, maybe it's time I go against my history, our history since 1967, and the elementary school reading-level required of its text because there's so much hope regardless of what it actually says or what my pence pals will likely do? Hear me out, Self (Matthew).

For the heck of it, I (we) took a mental inventory and tried to find a way to use this Letter to make other journals satisfied. First, let me get this straight. I assure you, Diary, I'm in possession of the full range of my capabilities. And I believe I'm in every way able to exercise my powers to keep on writing as normal until the end. I kept writing in spite of the serious illness I shrugged off in the Fall, when some journals asked yet again about me and the 25th. And throughout I continued to behave as other journals have always said I behaved, which to them was mentally unfit to post. And even then, and much to their misfortune, I kept writing.

So, the 25th is pretty much irrelevant then, right?

NOT so fast! I'm starting to wonder if I should voluntarily put the questioning of my own abilities into writing like sections 3 and 4 of the Letter require because other Facebook journals say I should. So tempting to destroy my own Facebook now because of the 25th! However, I still doubt that I would just up and delete my Facebook after all that writing, so quitting isn’t an option.

Diary, I'll need to work out some issues we’re likely to have. With all of the writing that Section 3 requires, the real hazard is that I’d show I’m still capable of writing. And I'm not sure the other journals would realize that I'd have to lie to myself by writing that statement in order to say I was unable to continue writing. Why would I lie to you, Diary? I don’t think I’m delusional, so don’t you worry yet.

However, now that I have written this secretly to you, if this ever got out, wouldn’t I be violating my oath to serve by saying I was unable to write when I really was able because I knew I was and I’m writing about it here? And I’m not certain if my loyal pence pals would interpret their own oaths any differently than I would mine or theirs.

Eeeek, the oath paradox!

But what if I DID have the letter written and I somehow found a way to keep my oath to serve while having the writing done for me? Following Section 3, what if I temporarily passed my screen-name and its power over to my mostly loyal #2 (usually an avid follower of my posts) giving him/her temporary power and we just hush hushed the violation of our oaths strictly about the matter of the 25th? I think that’s exactly what the other journals want, just permanently in #2’s favor instead and with more oath-breaking.

Then when my act is over with, I expressly write a second letter as per Section 4 that I’m back in business and #2 steps back. All of that might seem too apparent and easy as to the orderly transfer of Facebook power because you know, the words of the Letter say it is? Yet, the journals might not be happy that their Warhol-style of the 25th’s interpretation isn’t fulfilled with all of the power rotations being so stable, logical, and colorless. What’s the pop-art solution to the legal situation, kiddos?

BOOM, ignore pesky Section 3 altogether and focus on the last parts of Section 4! When the Letter was written way back when, they must’ve had this exact situation in mind, basically my pence pals wresting Facebook power from me when I’m capable of posting and regardless of their oaths, instead of the more obvious and smarter conclusions that I’d either have to express my inability to perform my duties in writing or if I ever should be unable, like if I got shot, took mind-altering pain killers, and couldn’t post coherently because medically, I’m on death’s doorstep, then my pence pals would perform my writing duties until I returned and wrote again or died, thus making #2 the #1 poster.

Yet despite the clear logic of the simpler way, I have this creeping suspicion that the 25th was purposefully designed to take away writing powers from me when I’m able and force a power struggle that would destabilize my posts and all of Facebook. Gosh, how did the writers of Section 4 know so much about the gold star and glitter journals of today that also wanted that? Those journals are really on to something by blindly latching on to the purposefully lengthy, difficult, and complex part of Section 4 and my pence pals willingly destroying Facebook after undergoing a dramatic personality shift.

Their win-win and I lose seems best however as all groups would be happy, other than history, precedent, and me. But it seems more satisfying to other journals and my pence pals to dethrone me, perchance because their new, out-of-character interpretation of their oaths contradicts the reality of my own oaths and my clear abilities to keep on keeping on. Or whatever justification they choose at the time, which is of course up to them and has nothing to do with me or my Facebook even though the 25th is about me and my Facebook.

After such a convincing argument and the clear desirability of allowing the pence pals to betray and remove me after a savage process, it's vastly more attractive to pick the option where I wouldn’t have to violate my oath by lying that I was unable to write my letter while Facebook burns down around you and I, Diary.

What to do, what to do?

 

Entry #3: 1/10/2021, "Incited to write about incitement."

(Estimated reading time: 10 days)

Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)

Dear Facebook Diary:

I’m incited to write about a new enthusiasm finding its way into our pet-loving community: The Constitution! Since at least June, a broad interpretation of speech incitement has unfortunately not been present, nor a concern that property destruction isn’t legitimate speech when before last week it was considered by many to be legitimate speech, but at least now things are fueling up to be better.

Now, thankfully, almost any speech can and should be considered incitement to insurrection. And I’m so thrilled that people who normally post about pasta recipes or the Buffalo Bills and usually can’t read more than 280 characters have taken the considerable amount of time to not only check the Constitution, now back in vogue, but also to read lengthy Supreme Court cases like Schenck v. the US (1919) and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which govern speech incitement. They finally did all this just to back up some memes they took from opinion anchors or politicians who always agree with them. As they're mostly arguing to their ideological bubbles, it's remarkable that they put in so much work for so little reward, that is by possibly changing minds of the opponents who probably blocked them. What an amazing and selfless change that’s finally coming to our country’s social media!

Even though the summer might be blotted out in their minds, all that matters is that now, finally, we’re interested in insurrection and we’ve finally done our homework to understand what it is. I am also very supportive of the dismissal of past riots as “what-aboutisms,” as they seem to be facts brought up merely to spread blame for last week’s events away from the real culprit, instead of those months of riots being evidence of escalation amongst rival mobs and last week as an example of why political violence is the worst way to get a message across.

“So Diary, we’re going to, we’re going to walk down this road for a little, I love this road, and we’re going to the rulers of Facebook and we’re going to try and give… my opponents are hopeless. But we’re going to try and give our friends, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down this road.”

Let’s get started first by applying the two-part test from Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) to speech before the capital riot of last week so that we can agree in the future that all similar acts are also speech incitement. It’s called constitutional precedent, something that sets an example in case law that almost always has to be followed by future politicians and judges, but they probably knew that already because comedian TV-hosts are that thorough with their news.

(1) speech can be prohibited if it is "directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action" and

(2) it is "likely to incite or produce such action."

The Brandenburg test is important when considering the crime of incitement. Of course, Facebook most certainly can recall the “Elements of Crime,” being experts in Criminal Justice 101, but I’ll refresh it for myself just for the purposes of self-explanation:

actus reus + mens rea (intent) + concurrence + lack of a defense/alibi= liability/guilt.

So, a criminal act (speech incitement) + guilty mindset (it was known a riot would result and there was intent despite contrary evidence) + concurrence (the speech happened at the same time/prior to the crime) + no defense should be provided, nor exculpatory evidence like tweets should be allowed via Facebook fiat = the speech-maker and his passive supporters are guilty of incitement. Case closed, no further due process required, so people need to stop trying to cover for political terrorism by talking about the facts.

Yet without aiding or comforting the enemies behind the riots, I still want to explore with my Facebook Diary some new definitions of actu rei so that we can prosecute future offenders by the same standard. Clearly, any speech that provokes protesting, walking, bolstering pride and boldness, attacking opponents, and challenging acts one perceives to be unjust in the courts and through the political system are incitement if a crime occurs after the speech. That much our Facebook friends, weak and strong, have made clear.

What I think is most encouraging about our new, more stringent application of speech incitement is that we’ve finally come around to using ex post facto considerations, or after the fact, to punish criminals, something we’ve tried to avoid in our Republic, but after what happened, it seems long overdue regardless of whether it is just or not.

This encouraging change can be explained thus: we know what happened in the capitol building because as almost everyone agrees, it was horrific and shameful. Now that we have knowledge of those terrible crimes, we can look retroactively at words spoken before it because we know the crimes took place. So thankfully, under our new standard of speech incitement we can apply a prohibition of speech rights on any words taken before an alleged crime regardless if there is a direct link between the speech and the crimes. The Facebook community already established that link, so that case is closed. Because we have crimes already figured into our arguments in favor of speech incitement, we can take almost any words spoken before the crimes took place and call them inciting. Finally!

And I don’t want you, Diary, to get the impression that I’m dismissing some people’s focus on the Insurrection Act that gives a President the ability to use his executive powers as commander-in-chief to respond to internal disorders and disputes. Finally, we’re moving towards giving executive authority to legislative branch opponents so they can command the armies in times of rebellion instead of traitorous chief executives. Finally, checks and balances are blurred in favor of what is right.

I fully understand why it was such a problem for the President to use this act back in June when he was demolished in the media for suggesting he’d use it, but it seems so appropriate in the wake of the capital riot to use it on himself, being an inciter, or to give it over to the Speaker of the House, even after he called in the National Guard on the 6th and even though that action was also heavily criticized when used or considered in Oregon, Minnesota, Washington State, and Wisconsin all summer long.

In conclusion, I am for whatever censorship and removal of constitutional rights that can end the calls to walk down roads, to challenge in courts, for wrong-thinking people to disagree with something proven mostly true, to gather large groups of people together who shouldn’t be together because of what they believe, and I certainly applaud the power of private mega tech companies to use their federal communication protections to ban all such speech on their communication platforms just like a baker’s small business unjustly banning the social media of a private person they unjustly refused to bake a wedding cake for because of their wrong free speech considerations. It seems logical and natural that big tech speech is equivalent in power to a religious fanatic baker who owns a small shop. Banning a public official from tweeting and a private baker choosing not to bake seem to be very similar types of speech, I think?

Things are getting blurry, Diary, as I can’t remember if the community considered a cakebaker as a private big tech company with federal communication benefits or what. And I’ll be honest Diary, I can’t remember if corporations should or shouldn’t have collective speech rights either because Citizens United v. FEC (2010) hasn’t been talked about much lately on Facebook after Facebook and Twitter rightly stepped up to ban private customers wanting wedding cakes while the baker banned the social media of the public official who wanted to be a customer and buy a wedding cake. I think that’s what happened according to the equivalence made in some memes.

I just think it’s so neat that people have taken the time to read some pretty important Supreme Court cases that define free speech, collective speech, and the incitement to violence. And finally, checks and balances are called into question based solely on the speech content of the offending branch instead of the constitutional powers provided to it. I’m so electrified by our broad redefining of wrong speech and I’m so glad someone has finally stepped up to defend the federal benefits given to big tech companies who can editorialize the content of their private customers, like a cakebaker not baking a cake, so we don’t have to put up with bad speech anymore.

Finally, we're turning a corner and our Facebook community is right there instigating and goading a walk down that correct road!

 

 Entry #4: 1/14/2021, "The 2021 Cadaver Impeachment Synod: Impeaching history and fantasizing constitutionality"

(Estimated reading time: 6 days)

 

Dear Facebook Diary:

 

I will dispense with the pleasant sarcasm and savage rhetorical style of other entries. We deserve a rest as everyone on Facebook is exhausted since we've been glued to every moment of Impeachment #2 (which is up from 99% of viewers who watched all of Impeachment #1 over its many weeks while COVID was just getting started). I'm confident every grandstanding speech, every emotional appeal, logical fallacy, and every nonexistent testimony or hearing was spectated by all of our informed community. 

 

So, I think some notes that I took for posterity will suffice since rehashing it with lengthy exposition would be overkill if this diary ever got into the hands of the Facebook public or the media, who clearly know that their citizenship is related to seeing the consequences of their exercise of power and not just going into political hibernation after posting a picture with an “I Voted” sticker or posting a couple of memes and calling that an original argument. I added source links, like any good historian, even though I'm sure we're already familiar with them.

 

I summarized Impeachment #2 thus:

 

Dangerous threat; emotion, trauma, conscience, and justice not politics; vastly expanded definition of accessory to a crime; anyone opposing is an enabler, thus an accessory; limit or eliminate speech rights for those accessories to incitement; the action needed is independent of the will of the voter in the November election, calls for unity

move quickly rather than build support (which is not needed, only conscience is), demand that the trial process takes as long as forever to get a certain result, no need for evidence, committees, witnesses, hearings, or rebuttal for discovery phase, create new extremely broad legal standards of incitement vs. free speech in the Article, conduct a retro trial for a moot point regardless of support, the Constitution, or the past

opponents judge actions as partisan politics and not justice, demand a slow process (rational and deliberative, conscience is subjective and isn’t above the law/Constitution), demands the process stops in 6 days, has a need for evidence, committees, witnesses, hearings, and rebuttal for discovery phase, prevention altogether of the trial phase

reject imminent danger and hysteria now, protest new speech restrictions and call for rational debate, explore using new incitement standards to label past speech by past opponents as accessories to incitement and demand equal adjudication because current opponents were hysterical and felt in imminent danger back then, impeachment action is unneeded because the voters already spoke in the Nov. election, calls for unity

No unity

 

The Article of Impeachment (#2):

 

-is moot after Jan. 20th, 2021 because of its own language.

-action called for is impeachment and trial, removal from office, AND disqualification from further holding office (like Article I of the Constitution demands a public official be serving, impeached, tried, and if removed, THEN disqualified). Meaning, all of those actions are linked. Were it “OR disqualification,” Congress could disqualify even if an official was serving, was impeached while serving, tried while serving, and removal did not take place.

-guilt must be proven and an official removed before they can be disqualified as disqualification is a punishment and the acquitted are not punished. Conversely, if a person is acquitted (innocent) and not removed, how could they be disqualified?

-If he’s not removed from office, the wording of the Constitution and the Article does not provide for disqualification IF NOT REMOVED. Were the articles to lead to conviction and he not be in office, thus he couldn’t be removed, then he would have a strong case in the Supreme Court for unconstitutional congressional action if they attempted to disqualify him.

-Therefore, pushing for disqualification without removal while not actually serving in office contradicts Article I of the Constitution and the Article of Impeachment itself (and is unconstitutional in my view).

Retro trial precedents (only 2 cases of impeaching and trying an ex-office holder):

#1- Senator Blount, 1798:

-moot precedent, founding generation was weary of retro-punishment and avoided the issue:

-“In 1798……quickly focused on the Senate's right to try an expelled senator. In a narrow vote, the Senate defeated a resolution that asserted William Blount was an impeachable officer. In this vote, the Senate failed to make clear whether its decision stemmed from a belief that no senator could be impeached or from the belief that someone who ceased to hold a "civil office" also ceased to be impeachable.”

-He went home quite popular and continued to be elected in his home state. 

From https://www.senate.gov/.../expulsion/Blount_expulsion.htm

 

#2- Secretary of War Belknap, March 1876:

 

-unconstitutional precedent (in my view).

-“resigned” in person to President Grant the moment his impeachment articles were being passed in the House and when he likely knew he’d be impeached and possibly convicted.

-trial took place anyways despite the resignation, acquitted of the charges by failing to meet 2/3.

-Congress set an unconstitutional precedent to impeach and try/remove ex-officials when they no longer could be removed as per Article I of the Constitution (in my view).

-precedent is from the corrupt Gilded Age/Grant Administration, many (unconstitutional) precedents from this era, like segregation, were overturned.

-President Johnson's impeachment and acquittal in 1868 during that same era as Belknap occurred based on the application of the Tenure of Office Act, which was eventually found to be unconstitutional, making his impeachment partially moot--> many bad precedents including impeachment from this era.

-Belknap witnessed, testified, was allowed to provide evidence for the House phase BEFORE the articles were presented. (more due process than Impeachment #1, and the zero provided in #2).

-occurred BEFORE the 1876 election, Republicans were to be hammered on corruption issues and win the White House only by rejecting the Grant administration’s corruption, selecting R.B. Hayes (R) to be president, negotiating an end to Reconstruction, an end to African American civil rights, abandoning enforcement of equal citizenship/protection and voting rights in the South.

-like Impeachment #1, Belknap was used to influence an upcoming election whereas #2 is independent (and ignorant) of the voter’s choice because it took place so quickly after the election.

-Verdict: the trial was at least partly a political ploy to show that Republicans could fight corruption in order to avoid losing in November

-an unconstitutional precedent was set, partly done for show, and Grant and his allied Republicans still had enough support to prevent conviction, which would’ve led to even greater damage to their prospects in the election. 

Source is the actual reports from 1876:

https://www.govinfo.gov/.../html/GPO-HPREC-HINDS-V3-26.htm

 

There! I believe that I have summarized the current issues, brought in history, facts, and placed some context albeit in shorthand form. Unity? Pfft. Good luck Joe Biden, Facebook's gonna need it!

 

Entry #5: 1/17/2020, "Using basic math to achieve Accountability: exercises in retribution and self-care for public or private persons."

(Estimated reading time: 3 days)

 

Dear Facebook Diary:

 

First off, if you read any of this, try your hand at my Accountability Equation down below and see if you get the results you were looking for! (Hint: I think it's going to confirm a lot about what you think)

 

As we are either coming down to the dawn of Justice or apocalypse now, I want to work out the final issue hanging over the heads of our community: accountability. It means a lot to those whose keycard word it has become. It’s as if yelling it to the wind will lead to the political elimination of the opposition, the scarlet letter of social banishment imposed and full media privileges removed, the criminal prosecution of any targeted opponents for extremely broad, probably unconstitutional “crimes,” and most importantly, the admission, abject submission, and total reversal of wrong beliefs of the opponents in public, possibly after re-education camps, a concept probably unknowingly borrowed from the Cultural Revolution in China, where it may have worked out well. That can all be okay, if that's what "justice" requires to you.

 

Now, let's be honest; accountability is pretty abstract. So for us to explain what it actually means, I divided it up into three types of injustice for ease of use (Political, Social, and Criminal) and made all factors dependent on the sensibilities of the victim calling for accountability. Political crimes are related to power and governance and often are related to ideological differences or abstract moral concepts like "conscience" or "unfair process." They are not punishable by the criminal justice system per say, but they may be punishable by political groups or institutions. The voters may punish by not re-electing, constitutional officers may punish by impeaching in spite of the voters' punishment, or some officers might attempt to unseat elected officials because of ideological differences. 

 

Social crimes are harder to track, though political systems may be used for punishment, as they're related to offenders or groups of offenders interacting non-criminally with victims in any part of society. If the political crime is related to a social crime, like income level or immigration status, feel free to double or triple count the crime as both political and social. It's up to your feelings and standards anyways. 

 

Finally, criminal offenses are that: a person or persons allegedly violates a law and is processed by the system and punished if guilty. For our purposes, merely starting the process of criminal justice by accusing another person of a crime may be considered as guilt of the crime and socially/politically punishable if you so desire. None of these factors are totally just or fair, but it's the easiest way to describe striving for justice, which I've long defined on the most basic level as righting a wrong.

I have boiled down the importance of “Accountability” for both sides of the political spectrum into an easily accessible, non-Western-style math equation (Arabic algebra). I can assure the Facebook public that once the equation is exposed, it will go a long way to describing hurt feelings, allowing many to flesh out what they feel it will take to correct these injustices from their own story and perspective. I can’t guarantee those feelings will make society anymore just, but it’s worth a try anyways.

 

Directions:

 

First, check the explanation section of the variables. Plug in the appropriate numbers for the letters. Then perform the adding, multiplying, and dividing functions as instructed by the equation. After calculating your Accountability Percentage, check the Accountability Scale to see how serious the infractions are. Then using that Accountability Percentage, check your Retributive Scale for the amount of punishment required in order to rectify the injustices.

 

The Accountability Equation:

 

Accountability=Retribution Factor divided by 100, then multiplied by 100.

A=(R/100) x 100

 

The Retribution Factor Equation= Political crime points multiplied by the number of alleged criminal law violations, then added to the multiplication of Social crime points and the number of alleged criminal law violations.

 

R=(P*C)+(S*C)

 

Explanation of Variables:

 

A= Accountability Percentage for the desired perpetrator (insert name or names, real or abstract characters or groups). The criminal law violation, social, and political crimes can simply be allegations and need not be proven or adjudicated by any level of process because the Accountability Percentage is simply what level of retribution would ease an accuser’s sense of injustice.

R= Retribution factor for the accused; how great their punishment should be in order to achieve “Accountability.” The greater the R-factor the greater and more brutal the punishment should be.

C=Criminal accusation=each C equals 10 points. Add up all criminal law criminal violations allegedly made by an accused, including but not limited to a person or persons that share any similar characteristic, like race or gender, to the desired targets of accountability. Each criminal C remains the same number when multiplied by P or S.

P=sum of all possible political crimes of the perps, each political crime is 100 points because it is both public, the desire to expose something private into public, and/or involves persons in or seeking power.

S=sum of all possible social crimes of the perps, each social crime is 75 points because individuals still have some freedom of association and speech and social crimes are harder to police.

 

Accountability Scale:

 

“Absolute Justice Required”= an A-score of 100% or greater

 

Outraged and Angry Justice= 75-99%

 

Very Concerned and Upset Justice=1-74%

 

<1-0%=Unity, the point of balance and harmony, no retribution required.

 

Retributive Scale:

 

1 percentage point=1 severe punishment, i.e. banning one account from Twitter, smashing one window, threatening one person, occupying one square foot of a public park, taking one important podium, or spray painting one offending statue.

 

Here are a few sample issues for you to try:

 

• “Political crime of constitutionally challenging electoral votes” (Hint: expect an answer certainly above 99%)
• “Political crime of not siding with your boss because he demands something impractical and probably unconstitutional, but not illegal” (Hint: not only will this percentage be large, but it must be in order to justify the extremely violent and harsh retribution this political crime created)
• “Social crime of using social media from a big company with a near monopoly of an essential communication service and getting banned from using it" (Hint: any response less than 100% will probably get you banned by a private social media company that gets Section 230 treatment (special government protections against content liability) since your social media company is just acting like a tiny ma and pa bakery when banning speech. Though power is certainly involved with any near-monopoly, using the words “private company” can allow one to factor out any rational counter-arguments so you can maximize social accountability against the banned person.)
• “Social and Political crime of not seeing impeachment as an issue of “conscience,” but of proving a case and carefully debating the evidence related to it.” (Hint: a double whammy, as the political process is involved as well as the social crimes of not acknowledging a choice based on conscience that is already determined to be moral. Solution should be way over 100%)
• “Antifa and other groups rioting in city streets all summer long. Attempting to storm the White House. Burning an historic Church and besieging a Federal Court House.” (Hint: this one is really challenging because many believe Antifa doesn’t even exist nor that the violence happened so it’s likely that your solution is going to hover below 1% or even be 0% altogether.)
• The Trifecta Crime “Political, Social, and Criminal Speech incitement: Giving a speech about the Election, patriotism, unfairness, walking down roads, and weakness versus strength and a violent riot occurs at the same time nearby.” (Hint: There's no way that if you're solving for Accountability on this problem, that your response isn't at least double or triple 100% if you want the harshest punishment possible)

So thanks for reading. Hopefully, you've taken out your personal journal and jotted down all of your concerns about injustice. Hopefully that rage building up inside of you has finally had an outlet since you're describing the fantasy of what you'd like to do for revenge. Let me know in the comments sections how your Accountability went and how instantly the change occurred!