Mrs. Alito, 2020 Election Truther?

d4m10n said:
I meant "prior to this month" as in sources of evidence from before the new meme which got trendy when the Alito household flag belatedly made news. NYT made no mention of this phenomenon (upside-down flag as #StopTheSteal symbolism) previously and the best example I've found anywhere is some random Reddit post. Haven't checked Guterl & Newhouse scholarly pages yet, maybe they pointed out this connection earlier.
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What were your search terms?

This is from this month:
A photo obtained and published by the newspaper shows the flag flying on Jan. 17, 2021, days after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Dozens of the rioters were carrying similarly inverted flags and chanting slogans like "Stop the Steal."Justice Alito's home flew flag upside down after Trump's 'Stop the Steal' claims, report says (BayNews9/AP, May 16, 2024)
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But there are earlier examples:
This was a question recently asked by a poster on Reddit Fort Worth who snapped a photo of an upside down flag flying below a blue MAGA banner.
Is displaying an upside down U.S. flag legal in Texas? (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Feb 12, 2024)
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Did you read more than the headline of the People article?
I assume you don't think that Alito is a progressive activist protesting against "the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade"...
Since June 2022, progressive activists have begun flying their flags upside down, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade.
Months later — amid fury over the FBI's search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence on Aug. 8, 2022 — it became a symbol used by the former president's most loyal allies.
That same day, controversial Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted an upside-down American flag with no words, sandwiched by posts comparing the "rogue" United States to a communist country and calling to "DEFUND THE FBI!"
Greene's use of the upside-down flag is one of a string of instances in which pro-Trump Republicans have described the country in decidedly un-American terms.
How Flying the American Flag Upside Down Became a Bipartisan Act of Rebellion (March 22, 2024)
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No mention of Alito in the article!

Years arlier:
https://www.distractify.com/p/what-does-an-upside-down-flag-mean
https://www.carrot-top.com/blog/the-meaning-of-an-upside-down-american-flag
 
Orphia Nay said:
Can’t read NYT articles.



I’ve heard of people flying flags upside down to indicate the country is in distress.

So I agree that maybe Mr and/or Mrs Alito just thought it was a bad day for America.
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As I posted earlier, the flag being flown upside down wasn't on Jan. 6, it was later in response to a neighbor's anti-Trump sign.

A photo obtained and published by the newspaper on Thursday shows the flag flying on Jan. 17, 2021, days after the Republican’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to prevent certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory. Dozens of the pro-Trump rioters were carrying similarly inverted flags and chanting slogans like “Stop the Steal.”
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“It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs,” Alito said in an emailed statement to the newspaper.
Martha-Ann Alito had been in a dispute with another family in the neighborhood over an anti-Trump sign on their lawn, and neighbors also interpreted the flag as a political statement, the Times reported. It’s unclear how long the flag was flying.
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https://apnews.com/article/supreme-...-alito-trump-9a32d658f5c5baa2bacba25bce7c48cd

I doubt the neighbor waited 11 days before taking the photo.
 
d4m10n said:
I meant "prior to this month" as in sources of evidence from before the new meme which got trendy when the Alito household flag belatedly made news. NYT made no mention of this phenomenon (upside-down flag as #StopTheSteal symbolism) previously and the best example I've found anywhere is some random Reddit post. Haven't checked Guterl & Newhouse scholarly pages yet, maybe they pointed out this connection earlier.
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Here are two photos taken on Jan. 6.



 
Hercules56 said:
I have never heard of trump people flying their flag upside down on January 6th as a protest to the government crackdown or whatever.

Maybe Alito thought it was simply a bad day for America, because of the violence and insurrection.
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If alito truly thought "I am flying the flag upside down because the Jan 6 terrorist attack was a bad day", then why didn't he come out and say that? Seems like you are making excuses that Alito is not willing to give himself.

Plus, as others have said, the upside-down flag incident seemed to have happened days after the initial attack, so the time frame does not make sense either.
 
If you are morning for something, you fly the flag at half-mast.
Upside down is, by definition, anti-government.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Pics on some (most?) phones are auto saved on Google photos. If I take a pic on my phone, within a few minutes I can find it on Google. It's automatic, I don't have to do anything.
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I wasn't aware of that, thought you had to manually upload to a cloud account or something. Are you saying any pic anyone ever privately took is permanently available? That seems like a crazy amount of storage somewhere.
 
Thermal said:
I wasn't aware of that, thought you had to manually upload to a cloud account or something. Are you saying any pic anyone ever privately took is permanently available? That seems like a crazy amount of storage somewhere.
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If you use an android or iphone both will attempt to store your photos on the cloud.
 
yeah it automatically backs up your photos until it’s full then starts asking for money for more space. of course you can probably delete or change settings and so forth
 
Darat said:
If you use an android or iphone both will attempt to store your photos on the cloud.
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Could you clarify "attempt"? I'm not concerned with what they ask me for because I always say no. I'm way more concerned about some pics I've taken that are within certain statutes of limitations.
 
dann said:
But there are earlier examples
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The article leans pretty heavily on u/bitchyber1985 but at least it is a sighting of MAGA in conjunction with the distressed U.S. flag. The header image is also suggestive, but it looks to be the same flag seen here in 2018, which suggests it wasn't created to signal the theft of an election in 2020.

dann said:
Did you read more than the headline of the People article?
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Yes, thanks for asking. Did you happen to notice the line about "fury over the FBI's search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence" which is at odds with the claim that Jan 6th was the precipitating event which made inverted flags into a MAGA meme?

dann said:
No mention of Alito in the article!
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If we agree with the article that the inverted flag is "a symbol used by the former president's most loyal allies" that still doesn't back up the assumption that it is meant to protest the 2020 election in any particular instance.
 
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Stacyhs said:
Here are two photos taken on Jan. 6.
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Seems like flag inversion was a marginal practice even on the day itself, judging by all the other flags in frame. We know that protestors will invert the flag to demonstrate their discontent with the government, here are several examples. The specific claim that I'm questioning right now is that "the upside-down flag became more firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory" in 2020. Most of the evidence I'm seeing for that claim is from 2022 or later.
 
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Can't help but notice our British contingent is pretty tolerant of their flag being flown inverted.
 
Thermal said:
I wasn't aware of that, thought you had to manually upload to a cloud account or something. Are you saying any pic anyone ever privately took is permanently available? That seems like a crazy amount of storage somewhere.
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I can only speak for my phone. Maybe my son set it up, I'll ask him. But I don't have to do anything.
 
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Fascinating account by a PhD former Moonie who was deprogrammed and now has a lot of expertise in the field. He met Ginni and Clarence Thomas at a cult meeting.



Cult expert, Dr. Steven Hassan joins Coalition Of The Sane to talk about what it was like meeting Ginni Thomas at a cult member support group back in the nineteen eighties. Denver Riggleman then reveals what it was like to discover that the same Ginni Thomas had been secretly helping the illegal cause of an even more dangerous cult in 2020.

Dr. Hassan is the author of The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control
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It was very educational and not crazy at all.
 
d4m10n said:
Seems like flag inversion was a marginal practice even on the day itself, judging by all the other flags in frame. We know that protestors will invert the flag to demonstrate their discontent with the government, here are several examples. The specific claim that I'm questioning right now is that "the upside-down flag became more firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory" in 2020. Most of the evidence I'm seeing for that claim is from 2022 or later.
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I don't recall anyone claiming the inverted flag was created by MAGA-Stop the Steal, just adopted by them. As you said, most of the flags at the Jan.6 riot were not inverted but also became more widely used afterward as in "the upside-down flag became more firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020."

Ginni Thomas knew exactly what she was doing and what that inverted flag meant to her fellow MAGA cultists. Let's not pretend she and her husband didn't.
 
again, the basically far right and openly corrupt sc justice offers the alternative explanation, which is that they did it to somehow bother their hostile neighbor. so, what to believe?
 
dirtywick said:
again, the basically far right and openly corrupt sc justice offers the alternative explanation, which is that they did it to somehow bother their hostile neighbor. so, what to believe?
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Both: they did it to show their support of Trump to the neighbor whose signs were anti-Trump.
 
Here's another podcast worth listening to:



INTERVIEW: Brian interviews Congressman Daniel Goldman about why Trump is so desperate to have Republican lawmakers violate the gag order on his behalf, whether he’s worried about a sleeper Trump supporter on the jury, and what to do about the corruption on this Supreme Court.
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They touch on several of the Trump cases, again well worth listening to.
 
Stacyhs said:
I don't recall anyone claiming the inverted flag was created by MAGA-Stop the Steal, just adopted by them.
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Okay, but if we're going to allege that Mrs. Alito was flying that flag as a signal that the election was stolen from the rightful winners, we'd need to be able to say that most instances of flag inversion (from the right) are signaling that message—rather than more general feelings of national distress—in order to reach the lowest evidential standard we use in the courts, that is, preponderance of evidence.

Stacyhs said:
As you said, most of the flags at the Jan.6 riot were not inverted but also became more widely used afterward as in "the upside-down flag became more firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory in 2020."
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More firmly established by data or by vibes?

Stacyhs said:
Ginni Thomas knew exactly what she was doing and what that inverted flag meant to her fellow MAGA cultists.
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The bad people just must've done the worst thing is a vibes-based argument, not an evidence-based argument; it's basically just guilt by association plus horns effectWP.
 
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d4m10n said:
Okay, but if we're going to allege that Mrs. Alito was flying that flag as a signal that the election was stolen from the rightful winners, we'd need to be able to say that most instances of flag inversion (from the right) are signaling that message...
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Not necessarily to assume "most" cases of inverted flags were from "stop the steal" terrorists....

You just have to establish whether 1) it was reasonable to believe Alito's wife was at least familiar with the idea, and 2) whether Alito has a reasonable alternative explanation for doing so. (And that is where the "it was a dispute with the neighbors" fails for a lot of people, because it was not really a good explanation.)
—rather than more general feelings of national distress
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Even if she flew the flag upside down to express "national distress", that may not necessarily absolve her.

Distress over what? That there was a terrorist attack on the Capitol? (Not even Alito is claiming that as the explanation.) That the republicans were no longer in charge? (just as bad as directly supporting the terrorists, in my opinion, if you are a judge that is supposed to be apolitical.)
—in order to reach the lowest evidential standard we use in the courts, that is, preponderance of evidence.
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You can't really compare this with the evidentiary standards you expect in courts, because unlike a legal proceeding, you do not have rules of evidence, a discovery process, legal punishments for perjury, etc.

Yeah, we are condemning Alito for a situation where we wouldn't have enough evidence t find him guilty in criminal trial (or even liable in a civil trial). But unless we're going to start a full-blown legal investigation, we have to deal with a different level of evidence.
 
yeah maybe he was lying about why it was upside down because he was just nebulously generally distressed about the nation and had nothing to do with a specific thing he was up to his elbows in. yeah, that's it.
 
Segnosaur said:
Distress over what?
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"That the republicans were no longer in charge," as you suggest. Alternatively, distress over the way Americans actually voted to make that specific regime change come about. Both of these are the sort of grievances I'd expect rich conservative women to be going on about.

Segnosaur said:
Yeah, we are condemning Alito for a situation where we wouldn't have enough evidence t find him guilty in criminal trial (or even liable in a civil trial). But unless we're going to start a full-blown legal investigation, we have to deal with a different level of evidence.
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Less than 50% probability seems too low even to find him guilty in the court of public opinion.

Segnosaur said:
You just have to establish whether 1) it was reasonable to believe Alito's wife was at least familiar with the idea, and 2) whether Alito has a reasonable alternative explanation for doing so.
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You've loaded the dice pretty heavily here by starting with a default explanation and then shifting the burden to Mrs. Alito to disprove it. I could do the same by saying the default explanation is what almost all these flag bearers have in common, that is, discontent with American policies or outcomes.
 
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dirtywick said:
yeah maybe he was lying about why it was upside down because he was just nebulously generally distressed about the nation and had nothing to do with a specific thing he was up to his elbows in.
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Where are you getting this?

I don't recall Alito even dipping his fingertips into the "stop the steal" nonsense.
 
d4m10n said:
Okay, but if we're going to allege that Mrs. Alito was flying that flag as a signal that the election was stolen from the rightful winners, we'd need to be able to say that most instances of flag inversion (from the right) are signaling that message—rather than more general feelings of national distress—in order to reach the lowest evidential standard we use in the courts, that is, preponderance of evidence.

More firmly established by data or by vibes?

The bad people just must've done the worst thing is a vibes-based argument, not an evidence-based argument; it's basically just guilt by association plus horns effectWP.
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I think you're desperately trying to find some benign explanation for flying an inverted flag at the home of a Supreme Court justice.

Did the Alitos fly an inverted flag after Obama was elected in 2008 or in 2012 to express their disappointment that Republicans McCain and Mitt Romney lost ? Not that's ever been reported. Why do so within days of the Jan. 6 insurrection when it had been adopted by the MAGA crowd as a Stop the Steal sign? It's extremely naive to think the Alitos did not know what it meant and there is no excuse for it.
 
Stacyhs said:
I think you're desperately trying to find some benign explanation for flying an inverted flag at the home of a Supreme Court justice.
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I think you're desperately trying to attribute the worst possible explanation for flying an inverted flag at the home of a Supreme Court justice when much less awful explanations are on offer, such as what the inverted flag meant back in 2019. Is there any evidence based way to say which explanation is more likely without resorting to Bulverism as we have here?

Stacyhs said:
Why do so within days of the Jan. 6 insurrection when it had been adopted by the MAGA crowd as a Stop the Steal sign?
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Possibly because the symbolism of inverted-flag-as-protest hadn't been fully captured by the election deniers yet. Some of us still us the "OK" hand sign as well and for roughly the same reasons: sucks to see a useful symbol relegated to its worst known use.
 
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d4m10n said:
I think you're desperately trying to attribute the worst possible explanation for flying an inverted flag at the home of a Supreme Court justice when much less awful explanations are on offer, such as what the inverted flag meant back in 2019. Is there any evidence based way to say which explanation is more likely without resorting to Bulverism as we have here?

Possibly because the symbolism of inverted-flag-as-protest hadn't been fully captured by the election deniers yet; some of us still us the "OK" hand symbol as well.
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Ah. I didn't know you're an election denier. Now I understand your comments and why. :solved1

Never mind.....................................:scarper:

eta: I see you added ": sucks to see a useful symbol relegated to its worst known use." That indicates you may not be an election denier. Are you?
 
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Stacyhs said:
That indicates you may not be an election denier. Are you?
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Do you believe that my status as an election believer or denier has any bearing whatsoever on Mrs. Alito's own status? Do you suspect, for example, that I might be her alt account? In the absence of such a belief, you are just going to the man rather than to the point and would be better off sticking to the topic.
 
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