Protect your evil pals. Send in the troops. Kill anyone who gets in your way. The Homestead Strike.
quote from "The Proud Tower" by Barbara Tuchman

The modern Republicans are reaching back to their REAL roots.

In June, 1892, in Homestead, Pennsylvania, the steelworkers union struck in protest against a reduction of wages by the Carnegie Steel Company. The company had ordered the wage cut in a deliberate effort to crush the union, and in expectation of battle, set about erecting a military stockade topped with barbed wire behind which in planned to operate the mills with three hundred strikebreakers recruited by the Pinkerton Agency. Having become a philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie discreetly retreated for the summer to a salmon river in Scotland, leaving his manager, Henry Clay Frick, to do battle with organized labor.

On July 5 the strikebreakers recruited by Frick were to be brought in to operate the plant. When they were ferried in armored barges across the Monongahela and were about to land, the strikers attacked with homemade cannon, rifles, dynamite and burning oil. The day of furious battle ended with ten killed, seventy wounded, and the Pinkertons thrown back from the plant by the bleeding but triumphant workers. The Governor of Pennsylvania sent in eight thousand militia, the country was electrified and Frick in the midst of smoke, death, and uproar, issued an ultimatum declaring his refusal to deal with the union and his intention to operate with nonunion labor and to discharge and evict from their homes any workers who refused to return to their jobs.

So, you're saying that Trumper Republicans are going to do what now?

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rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future

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rjmacs
So, you're saying that Trumper Republicans are going to do what now?

He's already sent troops into cities. Do you have any doubts he'll repeat it. Just look at how berserk he's gone in the past 2 weeks alone.

The Republicans WILL back him 100%



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2020 04:22PM by Steve G..

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Steve G.

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rjmacs
So, you're saying that Trumper Republicans are going to do what now?

He's already sent troops into cities. Do you have any doubts he'll repeat it. Just look at how berserk he's gone in the past 2 weeks alone.

The Republicans WILL back him 100%

I think it's extremely unlikely that Trump will try that, but it was interesting to read how the struggle between capital and labor played itself out during the Gilded Age in that particular instance. I think we are in a sort of Second Gilded Age, but there are significant social and economic differences. Never-the-less, those violent battles of union organizers laid the foundation for a stronger middle class through the 20th Century and more people alive now who benefit from their struggles should have a sense of this history.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2020 04:32PM by Ted King.

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Steve G.

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rjmacs
So, you're saying that Trumper Republicans are going to do what now?

He's already sent troops into cities. Do you have any doubts he'll repeat it. Just look at how berserk he's gone in the past 2 weeks alone.

The Republicans WILL back him 100%

I'm with Ted. This sounds like hysteria to me - where is he going to send troops? How many cities? What will they be doing? What's the goal?

The Homestead Strike bears almost no resemblance to where we are right now, and it was the governor, not the president, who sent in troops. It was a limited (if atrocious) action, with particular objectives. It wasn't a lunatic desperate to hold onto power throwing violence at the public as a form of tantrum.

Sorry, I really just don't see the parallels.

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rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future

Quote
Steve G.
The modern Republicans are reaching back to their REAL roots.

...The Governor of Pennsylvania sent in eight thousand militia...

uhhh - Governor Pattison was a Democrat...
"Pattison was the only Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania between the Civil War and the start of the Great Depression"

Democrat Frank Murphy was governor of Michigan when the union organizers staged a sit-down strike against General Motors. He also called in the National Guard, except he ordered them to protect the strikers. He also refused a court order to expel the strikers.

So it isn't the party but the man.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.”
-- François de La Rochefoucauld

Growing older is mandatory. Growing up is optional.

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Steve G.
He's already sent troops into cities.

Not accurate. He sent in federal agents, although those federal agents were staffed primarily by mercenaries. But they were not actual military troops because the military refused to participate.

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The PA gov sent in militia (nation guard) troops.

The example I chose was not for a one-to-one match, but for the disregard of rights and using armed force to side with the powers that be.

I don't believe this is far-fetched because if your front man, Rudy Giuliani, is identifying Soros, Hugo Chavez, Shadow governments and Democratic conspirators as the enemy and Trump does not say a thing, or endorses it, it's the equivalent situation.

Plus, Trump has already tried this tactic a few times. I'm sure he has no compunctions about trying again. He feels he has nothing to lose at this point.


When Trump declares that the new world order with leftist, socialist money led by dead Venezuelan dictators are in imminent danger of overthrowing the U.S., he'll dispatch troops, National Guard, loyal police and sherrifs, Boogaloo Bois and whoever agrees with him (like Chad Wolfe, for instance) in an instant.

I believe you are underestimating what a dangerous psycho. For evidence, I point to the past 3 weeks, if not the past 4 years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2020 06:42PM by Steve G..

He’s basically a coward. He won’t do anything but whine and pout once he gets even the least little pushback.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

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Speedy
He’s basically a coward. He won’t do anything but whine and pout once he gets even the least little pushback.

He's more desperate and crazier than ever. Nothing is beyond him at this point. And his followers and Republican Party officials will back him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2020 06:53PM by Steve G..

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Steve G.

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Speedy
He’s basically a coward. He won’t do anything but whine and pout once he gets even the least little pushback.

He's more desperate and crazier than ever. Nothing is beyond him at this point. And his followers and Republican Party officials will back him.

Any Republican who doesn’t back him will be mentioned in a tweet, and their lives threatened by his minions.

His followers will absolutely back him, but perhaps the irony here is that our now militarized police departments around the country train for exactly this sort of scenario, and I don't believe they will let it get to that point. Of course, if federal agents are the provocateurs, all bets are off.

How many cities, Steve G.? Which ones? How long will the occupation last? Will he invoke the Insurrection Act?

Sounds like hysteria to me. I agree that he's unstable and desperate, but that doesn't mean he can force the military to occupy American territory for the duration. He has broken a lot of norms, but there are ones he hasn't, too. If you think he's going to order U.S. soldiers to start shooting nonviolent American protesters, I beg to disagree.

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rj
AKA
Vreemac, Moth of the Future

Quote
Speedy
He’s basically a coward. He won’t do anything but whine and pout once he gets even the least little pushback.

For evidence of that you need look no further than the barricades he's had erected around the White House. Things like that have a tendency to become permanent. Once in office it would be fitting for Biden to make a public display of their removal.

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SDGuy

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Steve G.
The modern Republicans are reaching back to their REAL roots.

...The Governor of Pennsylvania sent in eight thousand militia...

uhhh - Governor Pattison was a Democrat...
"Pattison was the only Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania between the Civil War and the start of the Great Depression"

To me, the real roots of the modern Republican party are the Democrats of the 19th-to-early-20th century. Racist, xenophobic, populist hucksters, which the R’s have gleefully embraced since Nixon’s days.