Trump Thread

[Montmorency]

Maybe this is what Monty is saying (in a more precise and technical language than me) but here is my HOT TAKE.

Seamus,

The Office of the President of the United States is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership than it is an administrative job, so said FDR (can't find the source of this quote however).

If for no other reason, presidents must be held accountable in the court of law so that the American people may examine for themselves in excruciating detail the character of the men who represent the soul of America 4 years at a time.
We cannot say that we know a candidate by the time he enters office, just as we cannot say we know our co-workers after their job interviews.

If we insist on a presidential wall that codifies "I will do what I can, and let the fallout judge me once I am gone." Then we insist on an American soul of expediency and might makes right. No Republic will survive long with such a tainted culture.

We may be reluctant to allow the potential abuse of the legal system in order that we may pick out the repugnant along with the politically weak...but I think the exercise of the rule of law regardless of the intent of its players is preferable to the creation of a bubble in which law is non-existent.

That's parallel, but I was focusing on the implications at the grassroots. So here's this big, vague (for most), all-consuming story of Trump and his connections to all sorts of shadiness and criminality. It gets so bad that he finishes his first term in disgrace. Maybe he is impeached. Maybe he resigns. Maybe he loses the 2020 election by a significant margin. But then... nothing happens. The mainstream forgets the story, only digging it up when Trump gets back in the news for some shenanigans or rowdy rallies. He was right, Trump rages, that the system was rigged against him, that the deep state had nothing on him, the globalists and coastal elites just wanted to get him out of the way before he could MAGA.

And his supporters would wonder, if Trump did wrong, why wasn't he tried for it in a court of law?

And his detractors would wonder, if Trump did wrong, why wasn't he tried for it in a court of law?

Shouldn't heinous allegations receive their due process? Isn't this a profound corruption of the system, that the palm greasers can find no palm they are unwilling to grease if it unburdens themselves of accountability and scrutiny?

And they would all of them be right. What kind of country puts itself through a crisis and aggressively blockades its mind against learning from it, for the sake of cossetting establishment pretense?

There are more people in the United States who fervently support or oppose Donald Trump than there are people who are apathetic, fence sitters, or materially unaffected regardless of who occupies the office or the seats of power. Polite society wants to sit back and hope we let it go? Because they feel more comfortable that way? Do they hope most of us will have our spirits crushed and sink back into apathy rather than civic engagement? Navel gazing. There needs to be resolution, or the trauma remains open, an undrained hematoma in the body politic. Don't roll the dice on thrombosis, treat the injury.

@Montmorency

I agree that Trump's administration is disastrous, that he abuses his power and that his officials are engaged in wholesale widespread corruption. I am also of the opinion that his predecessors Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton all contributed to the current problems in the country. Going even further back, I feel that the massive expansion of the military, corrupt campaign finance laws (or lack thereof) and aggregation of power to the executive branch have resulted in an unrepresentative government which acts purely for specific interests. This precedes Trump's presidency, but he has contributed to it as well. He is responsible for his part, but not responsible for everything. To me he is more of a symptom than the root problem.

That's all I have to say. That's my hot take however shitty you think it is.

I am agreeable to everything you wrote. I've said as much to you and with others for a while now. This was never the object of controversy.

Let me apologize for any hard feelings lately. Please read the following analogy without any insinuation: A lot of Arabs deny the Holocaust. I'm not saying you do, but that many do. Why do they do it? One commonly cited reason is that they see it wielded in defense of the state of Israel and its policies, like a 'get-out-of-jail-free card'. Basically, these individuals are so angered by the behavior of Israel or of "Zionism" that they defensively reject what they consider to be one of Zionism's most potent propaganda tools. And it's obvious isn't it, that if the Holocaust were a hoax, that would make the defense of Israel much more tenuous and much more perverse? So in a sense it's understandable that anti-Israel Arabs would be internally and socially motivated to deny the Holocaust, to deprive their opponents of that authority and leverage.

The problem is two-fold. Concretely, the existence of the Holocaust is an indisputable historical fact and its denial reflects poorly on the denier. Abstractly, facts should not be twisted or disregarded on the basis of ideology or motivation. It is possible to believe that one thing is true without excusing or encouraging another tangentially associated. You can oppose Israeli policies without denying the Holocaust, and in fact properly contextualizing the Holocaust may even strengthen one's position with respect to Israel. As some Israeli once said, "Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews."

The lesson here is not that denying something of the Russia or Trump allegations is as bad as denying the Holocaust - after all the Holocaust is better-documented and witnessed than even the moon landings - but that the impulse comes from a similar place of mistrust and animosity. It's a misguided and unhelpful impulse. If one has faith in their worldview, it should be able to robustly incorporate new information, even if that may superficially or temporarily bolster 'the other side'.


As a palate cleanser, here is some stuff about Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who has worked himself into a close second place for winning the Michigan Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Abdul is a Muslim, a medical doctor, an assistant professor, a successful public health administrator, and a vocal progressive. His experience has enabled him to develop a detailed manifesto for launching universal healthcare in Michigan, among other progressive priorities. Of course the central party is against him.

The primary is on August 7.


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