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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   38168 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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Back in the days before it was fashionable to prosecute Trump and anyone related to Trump, when the possible charges were against Hillary, it was a grave and serious thing to prosecute politicians, especially when they had possible elections in front of them. "That's the stuff of banana republics!" they said. "That's, like, what Putin does!" they said. It was "deeply dangerous for democracy". Whether or not our democracy was legitimate was supposedly hanging in the balance, depending upon whether their preferred candidate was charged with a crime. You don't hear that anymore.

Do you have any theories for why this changed? Were there any chants at political rallies or something agitating for this shift in norms?

Ah yes, the gotcha. It's the right's fault, so your observation is invalid. Sorry, but I can acknowledge that the right certainly played a significant part in chipping away at the norm... while also acknowledging that the observation remains true. In the before days, one could at least sit back and say, "There are some crazy righties chanting 'lock her up', but we're a serious democracy which doesn't prosecute politicians on questionable charges, and there are serious people who will ensure that we stay that way." I am on record as one of those people, prior to Trump's election, prior to the reality become clear to everyone that he didn't try to force through some charges. (As an aside, has there ever been a single piece of reporting along the lines of, "We're giving an exclusive account of the breathtaking meetings in which Donald Trump applied consistent pressure to produce a prosecution, but was rebuffed by so-and-so"?)

At the same time, one can also sit back and say, "It turns out that many people who said they were serious people who would ensure that we're a serious democracy which doesn't prosecute politicians on questionable charges... are now cheering on efforts to prosecute politicians on questionable charges, so long as they're the politicians they don't like."

I agree that the public statements are a problem, even in the absence of substantial actions. One possible world we could have ended up in is a world where dems chant "lock him up" at rallies, but then dem politicians still refrain from pushing questionable charges once in office. It might have been a weird state of affairs; maybe the chants would continue to be tit-for-tat, but serious people would ensure that reality stays serious alongside it. In that world, do the chants eventually go away? Do they persist, like how in many other domains, the public chants and pushes both sides' politicians for things that those politicians continually reject actually doing? Man, I don't know. I wouldn't like it, but I don't know how it would go. Regardless, we are no longer in that possible timeline. We're in a different one.

I'm not denying your observation, I actually think it's probably true though there are too many variables to control for conclusively. I also agree with you that at least some of the current charges against Trump are questionable (Stormy Daniels hush-money payment is the prime example).

Regardless, I was curious about the progeny of this apparent shift that you describe. Would it be fair to characterize the "lock her up" and "because you'd be in jail" comments as just bloviating on Trump's part? The fact that there's no evidence that Trump tried to push for any prosecution against Clinton while he was in office supports this. Even so, the fact this bloviating was such irresistible ambrosia for his base indicates it was tapping on some deep-seated desire among at least some Americans to prosecute and jail politicians from the other side. Would you agree?

At that point it's an interesting question how much we can blame this on a sort of "lab leak", a meme that went unintentionally viral.

I already said that the right started the chanting. Please speak plainly.

Sorry, I don't know which part is confusing. You described a shift in norms about how seriously the prospect of prosecuting politicians used to be treated. I was asking about what you thought contributed to this shift, including asking what you thought the popularity of the "lock her up" chant indicated (e.g. did it contribute towards causing the shift or is it the symptom of something else? etc). Let me know if that makes sense.

I supported Trump and argued for others to do so in 2015. One of my core arguments was that we needed to break the taboo on prosecuting politicians for their misdeeds, because too many politicians had gotten away with serious misconduct for too long. I explicitly argued that Trump getting impeached or prosecuted was a fairly likely outcome of him winning the election, and that this would be an entirely acceptable outcome due to the long-term damage it would do to our current regime, not because the regime would actually start holding people accountable, but purely from heightening of the contradictions, making their hypocrisy evident.

So yes, I absolutely think Trump arguing for prosecution of Clinton has had a direct impact on making his prosecution more likely.

Do you think that the contradictions are, in fact, heightened? That his prosecution is not the predetermined outcome of an impartial process, but very clearly "manipulation of procedural outcomes"?

No offense, but did you really do so in 2015? Can you link to a post arguing that position at that point?

I'm fully prepared to believe that you did. With most other posters I'd doubt. It just sounds like the kind of claims people make with hindsight.

I was wrong, it was 2016, but pre-election. Here's an example:

Generally, he’s a giant roll of the dice. I see the trends over the last twenty years as pretty clearly negative, and while I’m not sure if we’re really in the whole yet, we’re getting there. this seems like the best time to take risks hoping for a major change in course toward something better. If the worst happens and he turns out to be legitimately, unambiguously crazy and/or evil, I have a lot of faith in the ability of a hostile political establishment to mulch him in short order. This too would be good for us, I think, in the sense that it would break the longstanding, idiotic norm in Washington of refusing to punish misbehavior and overreach by the Executive. We are long, long overdue for an actual impeachment, and if that’s the only way Trump ends up serving us, I’d still call it a win.

Nice.

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