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Notes -
Is presidential corruption still culture war?
You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.
As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:
Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!
ETA:
ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removable at-will by the President.
MAGA is the most corrupt political movement in my lifetime in the US. It might be the most corrupt movement in US history, though I'm not sure how it would compare to some of the stuff in the Gilded Age. Republicans deflect the open corruption of Trump by presuming (mostly without evidence) that "all politicians do it, Trump is just honest about it!!!" Then they go off on something like Hunter Biden or Congressional stock trades, which involve like 1/100th of the value of what Trump is doing.
And Dems don't care that much either, as they'd rather focus on hallucinations like Trump raping children with Epstein. The corruption might appear in the laundry lists of grievances they throw out against Trump, but it's hardly a motivating factor for most.
This might actually be true about MAGA.
Now imagine how insufferable the opposing party’s candidate and campaign would have to be for nearly 80 million people to overlook the flaws of a corrupt, narcissistic, petty billionaire.
You're not wrong. I also think wokists are vile.
The only solution is to keep demanding each side do better without regard to what the other side is doing, even though each side would really prefer to use their outgroup's sins as a blank check to be as terrible as they want.
This has been my personal hobby horse since November 2016 when Trump's victory caught me square in the jaw. As someone who firmly believed that diversity was our strength, it seemed to me that obviously the right thing to do was to seek to understand those who thought so differently like me and my ilk that they were willing to vote for someone like him, but it's been depressing to see that most of my side are firmly in the camp of "their sins justify ours; in fact, when you think about it, our sins are actually virtues, because they're directed at the Bad Guys." I enjoy beating the meat as much as any other guy, but I think I'm fatigued of beating a dead horse at this point.
Well put! It really sucks to see both sides engaged in an arms race to see who can be worse. At least have a little bit of introspection and be willing to say "that thing our side is doing is bad, and although I don't support the outgroup, we still shouldn't do that".
Selective rigor is not a marginal problem that you have the luxury of ignoring.
This is a war. How do you expect a war to operate?
[EDIT] - My estimation of your reasonableness and sincerity has been trending upward of late, so let me put a little more effort into this.
If you offer people a choice between "laws are enforced against you, laws will not be enforced against your enemies" and "laws will not be enforced at all", some people will choose the former and some will choose the later. The people who choose the former will die out, and you will be left with only the people who choose the latter. When this happens, the problem is not that people aren't upholding the law, the problem is that there is no law to uphold. A lot of people, myself included, believe this is the situation we find ourselves in. Appealing to the majesty of the law is not going to shift us, because we do not observe majesty of the law, but rather fractal deceit. You can think such an assessment is foolish in the extreme, but at some point you should probably consider explaining why it is foolish. Just for starters, I note that Trump does not appear to have used the FBI to censor conversation of and cover up evidence of his alleged corrupt activities, as we now know the previous administration absolutely did. In your view, does the Trump administration get points for not engaging in this particular "arms race to see who can be worse?"
Thank you for this, not just for the compliment but the longer post as well that makes for a far better discussion point.
My overall philosophical retort is this post.
To this point specifically, I'm not appealing to the "majesty of the law". I agree that if one side is selectively enforcing rules against you while exempting themselves, then unilaterally disarming is suicidal. I essentially said that in the hypocrisy post, that some hypocrisy is justified when refusing to reciprocate leaves you permanently disadvantaged.
But the point where I disagree is the jump from "the outgroup abused power" to "there is not law to uphold" or "our side now gets a blank check and none of our sins count" as I've been effectively hearing from MAGA apologists on this site and on others. Most of Trump's corruption doesn't directly advantage MAGA as a movement, and in fact does some amount of harm. MAGA as something other than just a Trumpist personality cult would be stronger if everything else was the same, except that Trump didn't sell off pardons. There would be some momentary discomfort as the right had to undergo self-criticism, but it would emerge stronger for it. The fact that it mostly refuses to do so is a cancer that eats it from the inside.
My position isn't "never fight back", it's that people should be very clear about what counts as fighting back, and not trying to launder every act of corruption as defensive necessity. If the claim is "the law is already dead", then the burden is on you to explain why a specific escalation improves the situation rather than just helping to bury it.
Yes! Or rather I'd frame it as Trump not losing points in this instance while Biden would have.
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