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David Frum
@davidfrum 5 years, 7 months ago 840 views

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You're hearing a lot of talk about "irregularities" in the election of 1876 that led to a "disputed" outcome. What is being referred to in this hazy terms?

Across the state of South Carolina, white conservatives had used terror and massacre to deter former slaves from voting in 1876. Here's the story of an attack upon the small town of Hamburg in July https://t.co/W47UQ5QVuc

Hundreds of black South Carolinians were killed by white conservative militias. Blacks fought back in many places, but they were out-gunned.

The killings were not spontaneous outbursts. They were part of planned campaign of anti-black voter suppression.

https://t.co/92OLBuQij3

Some of the elements of the conservative plan to suppress black votes in South Carolina in 1876 sound queasily familiar in our own time, adjusting for the antique language and technology.

But back of it all was terror and violence, more violence than could be contained by the limited federal forces in the area - who were anyway constrained by the white conservative Democratic House majority elected in 1874.

The terror and violence worked. States where large black populations had formerly cast ballots were "redeemed" for the conservative cause - and for the presidential nominee of the racial conservatives, the Democrat, Samuel Tilden.

In the face of this campaign of terrorism, the two national parties struck a deal. The Republicans would accept the validity of white conservative voter suppression at the state level - if they could retain the presidency and its patronage. The bargain was made.

When modern senators propose to repeat 1876, they are not endorsing some Solomonic compromise. They are endorsing a negotiated concession to violent conservative minorities.

Over the next half century, the states "redeemed" by white conservatives shriveled into tight oligarchies. I described the process in my book Trumpocracy, p. 141

Democracy in the United States has a contested history. It's being contested again right now. The foundational idea of democracy is that each person counts. Let's commit to proving that theory true in the dangerous week ahead. END.

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I got overnight via email a query from @briansflood at Fox News, the principal part of which I reproduce below. I answered by email too. I'll append that reply in the next threaded tweet:

Hunter Biden's dubious business activities have been reported for years. Here for example is @TheAtlantic in September 2019, year *before* @nypost https://t.co/qZBTpyuysM

That emails attributed to Hunter Biden were circulating was also known well before the NYPost story in October. Here's TIME magazine https://t.co/JvpEKdG0U4

What @NYPost added to the work earlier done by others was a new *origin* story for the materials that circulated in Ukraine in 2019. When other media organizations attempted to corroborate that story, hijinx ensued. https://t.co/ZJGZWq7etU @thedailybeast account

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In February 1981, pro-Franco army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament hoping to halt Spain's evolution toward democracy and liberalism. 1/x

The coup was soon suppressed, in large part because of a miscalculation by the dying Franco regime. In 1975, the regime had restored the old Spanish monarchy, hoping to glamorize authoritarianism. Instead, King Juan Carlos opposed the coup - and most of the army obeyed. 2/x

Here's where the story gets interesting for our current purposes ...

The coup launched to thwart Spain's shift to democracy instead consolidated Spanish democracy. The next year, 1982, social democrats won the biggest landslide in Spanish electoral history. 3/x

The elected social democrats formed a government without a single minister connected to the old regime. State support of the Catholic church ended. Family law was modernized, minority language rights were protected. If Franco had opposed it - the new Spain wanted it. 4/x

The process was not instant. Not until 2019 would the state remove Franco's remains from the lavish tomb he built to himself. But the process was inexorable. The pro-Franco attempted coup guaranteed the total doom of Francoism in Spain. 5/x

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On October 16 2020, a secondary school teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded with a meat cleaver in the street of a small town 20 miles down the Seine from Paris. 1/x

Paty's murderer, a young Chechen refugee, had never met the teacher. The killer was incited to the crime by a multi-day campaign of defamation and disinformation on French social media. 2/x

For 5 years, Paty had taught his classes a unit on free speech and its limits in a democratic society. As part of the discussion, he showed his students some of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons - after inviting those who might be offended to leave and then rejoin the class. 3/x

One parent of one student - not the student herself - then set in motion a campaign of denunciation against Paty. And the result was a crime that shocked France and pulled tens of thousands to vigils and protests. 4/x

France has suffered terrible crimes in the name of religion before the Paty killing. We're only 5 years from the horrifying nightclub attacks that killed 130 in November 2015. But past attacks caught France by surprise. This murder announced itself in advance. 5/x

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Trump tweets about his health remind me of a story my late father-in-law Peter Worthington told about covering the Six Day War in 1967 ... 1/x

Pete was in Cairo on the day the war started. He was awoken early by air raid sirens. He turned on Radio Cairo to listen for news. Time passed until an announcer delivered a bulletin. "The Zionists attacked at dawn. We shot down six of their planes and suffered no losses." 2/x

Pete shaved and prepared to go visit the air ministry for himself. The announcer returned to the air. "Update: we shot down TWELVE Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

He understood the Egyptians had suffered a bad defeat. 3/x

He finished dressing, knotted his tie, and the announcer was back.

"Update again. We shot down FIFTY Zionist planes and suffered no losses ourselves."

That's when he realized that the entire Egyptian air force had been wiped out.

4/x

(NB I may have the figures wrong in the anecdote, I'm telling the story from memory, but you get the idea.)

5/x

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1/ His entire family is part of this. Melania is a fucking crook. Ivanka is a fucking crook. Junior and Gums are fucking crooks. They will all die in prison, except for Kushner, who, if he really *did* trade US intel for money, should be executed for espionage.

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As usual is maddening how easy this is to understand and how much everyone refuses to understand it. There are two things happening here, and they aren't super hard to understand. There's the asshole administration and the asshole reporter.

The court said asshole administration revoked asshole Jim Acosta's press pass without due process. WH deemed him press, gave him a press pass, then they kicked him out without even being able to say who made the decision or on what grounds.

We want hostile, combative reporters. We **want** that. **You** want that. We want that because the press secretary of every single administration is a liar. Even the ones you like. Lying is their job. They show up to avoid answering, but give the appearance of being answerable.

It shouldn't be easy for government to just refuse to be answerable. It should be hard to dodge. Hard to kick people out. Hard to control the narrative. That shouldn't be easy for the gov't. Not even your most favoritest president.

You, the American citizen, want the truth. Reporters should be there to get it. That means asking questions doggedly, demanding answers. This is not an obscure idea. It should be obvious to anyone who's experienced having a president you didn't vote for. Super rare right?

POJU OYEMADE
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1. (On politics) I was once in a conversation with an elderly friend of mine who is American. He is deeply involved in politics in the States and I asked about what he had learnt. He said, "our movement pushed and mobilised and we got (.........) into the white house."

2. "However, we saw that our interests were not executed by him then we realised in a democratic setting sometimes its the people that surround the president or anyone in executive positions that really matter. Those he speaks to first and last.
We therefore changed our strategy"

3. We do support but now with the intent of placing people around the elected officers.
There is a lot of space for influence in positions that are non elective. Every executive leader leans on people to help in developing ideas and in executing them.

4. The young folks should be looking here. Elective positions like Governorship etc can be very expensive. Legitimate costs will run into hundreds of millions but there are positions for assistants, tech advisers, etc that wield alot of influence in shaping policy and direction.

5. If you want to change things you must get your foot into the room and have a seat at the table. The least position there will wield more power than being an critic on the outside. In positions like this skill, loyalty and confidentiality are the requirements and not money.

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1/Zach has the history right (again). I doubt the current political leadership read the book where Summers et al explained what they did, unless they look at borrowed copies. Here it is: https://t.co/4gyFiagaj3

2/ But the summary is that Summers, Geithner, Orszag, Emanuel agreed on telling Obama and Biden in December 2008 that about $800b was an adequate stimulus. Would lower unemployment just below 8% by late 2010. Romer thought $2.1T or $1.7T was needed to achieve full employment.

3/ They wouldn't let her make the case in writing for $1.2T because her number could leak. The reasons for $800b were: they wanted the bill passed by February, so they could move on to health care reform and cap and trade; they had no ways to spend more;

4/ spending more might kick off inflation or cause markets to fall for fear of inflation; that might lead to more bank runs; more bank runs might require a second TARP so they couldn't ask Congress for too much for recovery; Pelosi would give them whatever they asked

5/ for but they didn't think they could get the needed 1 or 2 R Senators quickly if they asked for more; they wanted 60 but had only 58 D Senators; popular "moonshots" or signature items in the package would take too long (Biden asked for that);

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