The conservative chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court told the new liberal majority in a scathing email that they had staged a “coup” when they voted recently to weaken her powers and hire a new director of state courts.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The whole point of things like this is to dilute the impact of the words being used. This way, when they get caught doing the exact same thing, it won’t seem “bad” in the eyes of their constituents.

    It’s one of the reasons the GOP are pushing so hard to impeach Biden. So when people say that Trump was impeached twice, the MAGA crowd can just say “Yeah, so was Biden. So was Clinton. Presidents get impeached all the time. They never get removed. It’s all for political show anyway, it’s no big deal. The next guy will probably get impeached too.”

    It’s why GOP politicians are trying to frame even minor incidents of protest as “insurrections” or “coups”. They know it sounds ridiculous. That’s the whole point. If you water down words like “insurrection”, “coup”, “sedition”, and “treason”, then the MAGA crowd can just say “January 6th wasn’t an insurrection. The country is still here. Quit calling every protest an insurrection. We’re not in the 1780s any more.”

    Same thing with the RICO charges. Why do you think Miller and MTG were tweeting “RICO?”. Charge everybody with RICO charges and Trump being charged no longer seems like a big deal.

    It’s a long term strategy. Make the idea of being charged with crimes just a normal part of the political process, and make everybody think it’s not that bad. That way, when they’re caught engaging in the corrupt acts they routinely accuse others of engaging in, it’ll be considered “normal” and “no big deal”, and make it almost impossible to remove them.

    • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.social
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      1 year ago

      It’s a very insidious way to make the country more like Russia, where there’s so much propaganda there is no objective truth, words have no meaning, and rule of law of even more nebulous.

    • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I offer as proof of your claim how Nunes kept calling things “drug deals” during the first impeachment because there was testimony that John Bolton and his moustache said he wasn’t going to be a part of the “drug deal” being cooked up in Ukraine (referring to the scheme to blackmail Zelenskyy).

    • AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Boil the frog.

      Just like we did with crony capitalist economy. It’s ok because it’s just the norm for those with capital to fuck over those without. No pitchforks required.