John Eastman Comes Clean: Hell Yes We Were Trying to Overthrow the Government
John Eastman Comes Clean: Hell Yes We Were Trying to Overthrow the Government
I want to return to this revelatory interview with co-conspirator John Eastman,...
It's so crazy to me that the right wing thinks the left has completely subverted the will of the people, and the best things they can come up with as examples are that people dressed differently than traditional gender norms can read to kids, and that worker safety laws require chair legs to have five spokes to resist tipping when someone is on the job.
Meanwhile they see nothing wrong in dictating who can marry whom, erasing parts of history that make them uncomfortable, preventing doctors and parents from providing the best advised medical care, etc. Which side is subverting the will of the people?
You've perfectly articulated what drives me absolutely bonkers about Conservatives. Sometimes I feel like I'm on Punk'd. How do they not see how what they're saying is often, sometimes verbatim, the very opposite of what they're doing? E.g. they complain about "woke cancel culture!" yet they ban books because it features two fathers, they tell "freedom!", yet they dictate, over doctors, which care women and trans kids may receive, "Curb spending!" vs "trillion dollar tax cuts for disproven trickle down economics", "small government!" vs "let's regulate what people can and can't wear". It's projection 101 and it's maddening.
How do they not see
They see it. They don't care. Don't fall into the trap of believing that modern American conservatives want whats best for America and just disagree with the rest of us on what that is or how to do it. This is a naked power grab on multiple fronts, from rigging the supreme court to trying to give state legislatures the right to ignore the results of an election all the way to committing acts of terrorism in trying to deny Joe Biden the presidency. They want a white supremacist religious autocracy. They want to establish a ruling class that they are members of, and a ruled class that they can freely abuse under color of law. Everything they say that sounds reasonable, like "save the children" or "states rights" or "small government" is a smokescreen, so that complacent cishet white liberals can justify not getting involved because they don't think that the terrorists will come for them personally. At CPAC they gathered under a banner that said "We Are All Domestic Terrorists". When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
Exactly, it's the level of hypocrisy that makes my blood boil. It used to be that the main hypocrisy we'd see was that they'd all tout family values and then get caught cheating on their spouse or whatever. But that stuff is mild compared to today, with them advocating for small government to get rid of any law they don't like while also wanting a government that enforces their personal religious views on everyone else.
More and more, the only difference between Christian conservatives and the Taliban is the name on the book they cite, and that's not hyperbole.
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Wait, are they actually upset about fucking chair safety? Seriously? Jesus fucking christ on a pancake.
Eastman complained that he wasn't allowed to have whatever kind of chair he wanted in his home office. Of course, like a lot of things, it's bullshit because OSHA has stated that they don't inspect home offices or hold employers liable for them.
The approach is clear: if this one regulation (or at least the most egregious interpretation of it) seems overreaching, then we better roll back every single worker protection law in existence. Can't have companies' profits reduced by making them ensure their workers aren't
killedexploitedexposed to stupid chair rules!
Yeah, but it's different when it's my will.
Our Founders lay this case out. There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Declaration of Independence is not part of our Constitution, which prohibits attempts to overthrow the government.
The Declaration of Independence is a document that explains the political decision to break from England. That's it.
So, Eastman and the Declaration of Independence and the linked article are on the same page as far as this: There is no "prohibit." A lot of the world runs on prison rules; more so than may be immediately apparent if you live in a well-ordered first world society. You can try to overthrow the government if you want, because that's just the reality: You have hands and feet, maybe you have weapons; it's not like an AI safety mechanism will kick in "FORBIDDEN, I MUST NOT." You can roll yourself down the road and do whatever you want to do.
But, don't get all surprised if the government reacts in a certain way.
In other words, yes, you have a revolutionary right to overthrow the government if you really think its abuses have gotten that intractable and grave. But the government has an equal right to stop you, to defend itself or, as we see today, put you on trial if you fail. The American revolutionaries of 1776 knew full well that they were committing treason against the British monarchy. If they lost they would all hang. They accepted that. They didn’t claim that George III had no choice but to let them go.
This is a certain mindset that people can get themselves into when they take for granted systems of justice that protect them: They are allowed to trample all over the system and the rights of other people because of some logic they concocted. But the instant someone starts doing something to them, they forget all about how it's prison rules, and start screaming about how what the other person is doing is not allowed. Hanging Mike Pence is fine. Shooting Ashleigh Babbitt was a shocking breach of these civilized rules you are supposed to be following. Et cetera. It's like those people who fight with the police and then get super loud about how their handcuffs are too tight and they need a drink of water. Like, dude, you were the one that opted out.
Yes, John Eastman should get due process. The handcuffs should be a reasonable tightness; that's an important part of our system even when the suspect tried to run over a state trooper five minutes ago. But also, we should remember everything he had to say about prison rules, if at some point in the future he has something to say about how unfair it all is.
And even if we grant his argument, what "abuses" is he claiming are intolerable?
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That if a person with a penis wants to be called a woman, or a person with a vagina wants to be called a man, or a person with either set of genitals wants to be called neither, they should be allowed to?
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That everyone in this country deserves to be treated fairly?
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That your choice of religious belief doesn't give you the right to refuse service to others, or grant you some higher station?
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That in the time of the greatest wealth disparity in the history of the world, maybe the wealthy shouldn't have that much money?
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That nobody asked to be born, therefore nobody should have to earn their living?
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That if the other political party has more votes than you, you don't get to have control of the government?
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That if making it easier to vote means your party gets fewer votes, your party shouldn't exist?
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That in the time of the highest worker productivity in US history, people should have more leisure time?
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That all education ought to be government funded, because the ROI for an educated populace is incalculable compared to bankrupting entire generations?
So tell us John, what was so "intolerable" you decided to commit sedition?
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I don't see that he actually said that. At most, the article quotes him as asking if revolution is necessary:
“So that’s the question,” he tells Klingenstein. “Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?”
“There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable,” he said. “At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.”
(From the interview)
As an explanation for his Jan 6 related activities, 'it was our duty to alter or abolish the existing government' is pretty close to 'hell yes'
I like how they say they're "suffering abuses" while trying to force religion on people, force LGBTQ back into the closet, while they resist police reform because it protects them and oppresses minorities, while taking away women's body autonomy, while they protect white supremacists and literal Nazis, while they support the big businesses killing us all with capitalism.
Their way of thinking is literally just DARVO on a national scale.
Do we have a c/lone of r/persecutionfetish yet? Because this Eastman statement belongs on that sub, what an asshole.
He also says
Our Founders lay this case out. There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable. At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government.
But he's not just asking a philosophical question. He's one of the people at the core of the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in power.
Here, he's providing his ideological underpinnings that he believes gave him the right to alter or abolish the existing government.
Sure, here he's just asking the question if revolution is necessary - but he already answered it in deed when he tried to keep Trump in power against the expressed wish of the electorate.
I don’t see that he actually said that. At most, the article quotes him as asking if revolution is necessary:
Then you should pay greater attention to the context in which he said it.
Edit: corrected the omitted word "attention"
He was being asked about Jan6 and he brought up the language of the Deceleration that justified overthrowing British rule while describing Joe Biden's election as an existential threat.
If somebody is accused of murder, and when asked about the murder, they explain the legal and historical context of justified homicide, it'd be pretty obtuse to observe that they didn't explicitly admit they killed the person.
I know the answer would be ridiculous if we ever even got one, but I would love to hear about these intolerable abuses or threats of abuses these people were (and presumably still are since, you know, they weren’t successful) facing. That’s not to say there aren’t people in this country dealing with some pretty intolerable things, but I just don’t seem to see them (or hear about their issues) at Trump rallies.
"the intolerable abuse of not letting me be a fascist dictator!"
This guy was a professor. Imagine if you spent a small fortune to get a degree in Law and this is your professor. I'd be pissed.
He was at pepperdine, right?
If you go to pepperdine you ought to know what you're getting into.
Give this dude a rainbow flag, a BLM pin, green hair and make him Spanish.
I bet even with only one of those, he'd be swarmed with federal agents.
Fat rich entitled white chucklefuck: ah yes, the very picture of the Oppressed Revolutionary.
What a weird little mind.
Fuck this guy and all, but hoooooly shit this article is poorly written. D- please see me after class
fuck John Eastman he's a fucking fascist
As an outsider, I was wondering what kind of abuse he was talking about? Trump clearly lied about the stolen election.
is this guy going of an insanity plea?
I forget the the steps in the GOP playbook. Is this step three, four or five?
"On Tyranny" lists four basic steps:
- A movement arises, ready for violence to "defend" itself from "enemies" by seizing power
- It clashes with the preexisting systems of power (police and government)
- It overcomes and mingles with those structures of power; violence, to enforce its will and punish its enemies, is no longer punished
- Unconstrained, and with the power of the state behind it, it brings horrors to life
We've been at step 2 for a while, I think.
Seems like we're in the middle of step 3 to me.