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Notes -
President Biden has "pre-emptively" pardoned
Or at least, he has made a statement to that effect; compare the Hunter pardon, which was fairly detailed, complete with dates. The "pre-emptive" pardon announcement has no details. What are they pardoned for? During what time periods? This appears to be a blanket memo to the future: "these people are immune from prosecution, for whatever, because fuck you that's why." It's not quite at the gobsmackingly presumptuous level of inventing fake Constitutional Amendments, but it seems like yet another example of the Biden administration (and its propaganda arm, the mainstream press) being everything it ever accused Trump of potentially being someday.
I admit: I do not have high hopes for the Trump administration. Mostly I'm hoping that Justices Alito and Thomas have the good sense to step down from SCOTUS before the Democrats are able to take back the Senate. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised? But the outgoing administration is acting like it has been dipping into the till and never expected it might actually be held accountable for that. In particular, the possibility that the January 6th riots were fomented by justice department lackeys, whether as a conspiracy or a prospiracy, is something the Biden administration absolutely does not want anyone looking into.
Biden insists:
Historically unprecedented, although the Hunter Biden pardon definitely moved things in this direction. Malicious prosecution of political enemies has long been a standard play for Democratic politicians and bureaucrats--the failed prosecution of Trump himself, of course, but also the well known IRS prosecution of conservatives, throwing the book at local conservative officials who defy federal law while winking at local progressive officials who defy federal law, et cetera.
Of course, the famous MAGA "lock her up" chant should not be forgotten, and Trump has indeed suggested on many occasions that certain people should probably be investigated for wrongdoing. But the presumptions on display--"Trump (who has never actually carried through on these threats) is just doing this illegitimately for political gain, but Democrats doing the same thing (and actually doing it) to their political enemies are just rooting out corruption, which is totally legitimate"--seem clear. I don't doubt that corruption is fairly rampant in DC, on both sides of the aisle. Politicians in general make my skin crawl. But I feel like the Democratic Party's catchphrase has very thoroughly become: "It's Different When We Do It."
If Trump doesn't blanket pardon everyone convicted of an offense on January 6, 2021, I will be disappointed in him. And if he does, the propagandists in the news media will cry bloody murder about it. I wish I was in a position to extract shame or embarrassment from them for this, because I feel like the world would be a better place if more journalists paid a heavier price for pretending to be "neutral" when they are actually functioning as shills.
This is not a charitable framing. The President is empowered to pardon people unilaterally and we elected Joe Biden to that office. It's not because "fuck you", it's by the power we chose to vest in him.
I think the urge to revenge or shame is understandable, but unproductive.
What's more, compared to 2016 there are now scores more independent journalists that have far more integrity. Building is harder than tearing down, but it's also more durable.
Please explain why, because that feels like a thought terminating cliche to me. A journalist who can't be shamed is a short story writer.
The consequences of anger are graver than their causes.
In particular, I think the only viable long term strategy is to create a dependable and trustworthy media ecosystem. That can't be done purely out of anger or spite for the existing media. Otherwise they'll just continue lying.
Even today, the partial emergence of a real press is forcing legacy media into admitting more of the truth.
I think anger needs to be carefully directed to be useful, but my real issue is the addition of shame there. That's the part that accrues it the label thought terminating cliche in my eyes. All cliches are thought terminating in a way - they are like stereotypes, a useful heuristic that applies most of the time, so you can reference it and go about your day instead of having to constantly interrogate your thoughts and feelings on the subject. So if you had just said the old version of this - revenge is unproductive - I would have agreed with you, revenge is just gratification and should never be a goal - maybe a nice side benefit, at best.
But shame is a very useful tool for social cohesion - it promotes following the law without involving the law, it strengthens group identity and harmony, it encourages empathy by allowing for a wider range of expressed emotions and most importantly it fosters accountability - so if you are going to say it's unproductive you need a good reason. Just adding it alongside revenge skips right past the reasoning.
Eta: I agree constructing a media ecosystem out of spite would not go well, but I also agree with dag - the old media is being replaced by the new media, and without any form of accountability they are not going to be any better than the old media (Tucker Carlson excepted of course).
Can you explain how shame encourages empathy and a wider range of emotions?
So I think of the love is God cult, the "everyone be nice, love is everything" mindset as pretty much working like the way we used to think an antidepressant worked. We all have a range of emotions going from high to low, but the cult of niceness restricts the height and depth to a comfortable middle range. This is not noticeably different to how it always was for a lot of people, and indeed they mostly only notice that they aren't sinking to the depths they had previously, but they also can't reach the heights they used to.
I still don't understand how shame equals more emotions. Shame is generally fear of judgment of others - that tends to lead to far less emotional expression. We may be using the term differently.
I agree that blind positivity tends to deny emotions as well - by shaming anyone who isn't happy and "loving" all the time.
Oh sorry man, I was typical minding. I've had a piercing headache now for two days, it's destroying my concentration. I'm talking about shame as a verb though, the expression of displeasure when someone fails to live up to their values.
Society is better off imo when as many emotions as possible can be expressed. We need guardrails of course, so anything that escalates to violence is no good, but anything short of that is good, because it allows others to empathically model their behaviour better, which everyone does all the time without thinking. Without that we drift apart, because we can't connect as well as we might, and like Mr Plinkett used to say we might not notice that but our brain does.
To be fair it was probably the weakest of my points lol.
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I don't think this is true. I think the old media will be outcompeted by new independent media, and there will be a rotation. This is already happening in large part.
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