pigeonburger
2d ago
But Trump HAS found a prosecutor willing to go ahead with the prosecution for him. In the future, it might just mean that the Red Tribe might have to look to outsiders, sometimes at the cost of not being able to rely on the person with the most inside/institutional knowledge. I don't think you've quite reached the point where the Red Tribe is unable to find anyone loyal to it.
pigeonburger
2d ago
I think few voters have illusions that their politicians have more loyalty to them than they have class loyalty to one another. The amount of knives buried in Trump's back attests to that.
pigeonburger
2d ago
My wife swears by drinking a shot glass of olive oil for this. I can't speak as to whether or not it helps much, but it's a simple enough thing to try.
Do I need to do something more drastic and mechanical like an enema?
Have you tried a bidet seat? Even the cheap ones with no electronics at all that just shoot cold water up there are a game changer. Angling yourself just right it serves as a poor man's enema (now I wonder if enemas are a rich man's thing), and the mechanical action it provides in there helps a lot!
pigeonburger
2d ago
Yeah, but by asking them to be the instrument to teach this lesson, you're asking a lot personally from Republican-aligned prosecutors, you're asking them to make themselves a named, direct target for the next cycle. You're asking them to stand up to draw enemy fire. James probably felt safe because she thought that Trump would not come back and that the next Republican administration will want to distance themselves from Trump and so they wouldn't retaliate on his behalf. But I don't think any Republican-aligned prosecutor can feel quite so confident that the Democrats are not going to get back into power before this fades from memory, and that they will not be in a revanchist mood.
pigeonburger
3d ago
I'd suggest a possible alternative reason for why prosecutors might want to avoid prosecuting James regardless of the merit of the case: the standard that it establishes exposes them. James is a prosecutor. You're a prosecutor. James did politically motivated prosecutions of your boss. Your boss asks you to prosecute her in retaliation. What's gonna happen to you in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings? You've just walked directly in front of the crosshairs. In contrast, you know your boss' reputation, if you refuse he'll fire you, he might badmouth you a bit, but if you lay low and shut your mouth afterwards, he's not gonna come after you.
pigeonburger
3d ago
Something that always gave me pause in A New Hope in the officer meeting where Vader chokes the guy while saying "I find your lack of faith disturbing", is the way the Empire got rid of the last vestiges of the old republic. According to Tarkin, regional governors are taking over for the republic bureaucracy.
If we ignore the big villain energy he adds with the whole "fear" line, the change sounds... positive to me? In my mind an evil empire would be centralizing power, not decentralizing it. Bureaucracy is at the very best a necessary evil, usually closer to evil than to necessary.
Ultimately, the way things shake out in the prequel trilogy, I find myself rooting against the republic. Fighting separatists? Separatists are people who don't WANT to be in your republic, crushing them puts you on the side of meddling interventionist empires, not freedom fighters.
I mean, I don't literally root against the republic, because since it's work of fiction, it's written so all the cool people are that side, and all the kitten stranglers are on the other. But if you were describe to me in neutral terms with no loaded language and no villain speech about fear the political systems in the Star Wars universe, I don't think I would identify the good guys and the bad guys the way Lucas and Disney seem to think I would.
pigeonburger
4d ago
TFA didn't feel offensive on release, because it smelled enough like Star Wars at first glance. It took hindsight to see it has no substance, no nutrients in it. I literally don't remember what happens in it at all.
pigeonburger
4d ago
TFA wasn't cooked, it was reheated moldy original trilogy. TLJ was cooked, but it felt like a joke meal, like a kid put toothpaste and jellybeans in a steak dinner. And yeah, TRS was essentially doomed, the only thing that could have saved it was starting with Rey waking up in her bed "Whew, what a weird nightmare that was! Thankfully, it was all a dream!"
To be charitable to their position, they percieved Trump as breaking all sorts of norms. Mostly to do with decorum, as he offends what their aesthetic preference for what a president should be like, and they didn't feel like they would be to blame for breaking another norm in retaliation (the one against engaging in lawfare against the outgoing administration, which Trump upheld in his first term despite rhetoric to the contrary during the campaign).
pigeonburger
4d ago
With regards to your secondary question. The Democrats don't percieve their lawfare as unprovoked, at least not the rank-and-file and the voters. I remember during Trump's first term, there was a very strong sense in their mind that Trump is a criminal, that he was "getting away" with crime. First, he's wealthy; wealthy people are by default sinful, everyone knows that you can't get rich without stepping on poor people, probably with crime, and can only really get absolution by supporting Democrat pet causes. Apart from that, Trump was extra criminal, probably this was because they hadn't had to deal with a really adversarial presidency in a while, but from hearing Democrats talk it felt like them losing was somehow against the rules. That senate refused to go along with the impeachments really cemented that he was getting away with crime. And Jan 6 made them lose their mind in that regard; there must be some crime in there, look what they did! So even if they lacked anything specific to point at, going on fishing expeditions was justified in their mind.
The case against her existed before Trump wanted to prosecute it. The FBI simply declined to pursue it. Is ignoring the political shield that protects a politician from prosecution that actually anyone else would be subject to the same as lawfare?
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