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Notes -
Trump indicted with 4 counts over 2020 election
Why not?
Trump is perhaps the most hated man in America. He spent four years operating at the pinnacle of global power, an environment strewn with what are purported to be impartial legal tripwires placed to hinder abuses of power. He's incompetent and sloppy, arrogant, astonishingly vain, and defined by his contempt for anything that blocks his personal ambitions.
The people now indicting him achieved office through a population dozens of millions strong that uniformly believes that he's Satan incarnate, a criminal, a dangerous megalomaniac, a giant retarded toddler armed with a machine gun. They believe that his election was manifest evidence that our political system is deeply, perhaps irreparably broken. They see his Presidency as a disaster that needs to be cleaned up and then prevented from ever recurring. And again, he spent four years being, at the absolute best, sloppy and incompetent in an environment that purportedly is supposed to demand precision on pain of serious legal consequences.
Why not indict him, and jail him too while they're at it? How could doing so possibly be a bad idea? We're a nation of laws, right? He at least plausibly broke them, right? This is what the system does, these are the rules we all agreed to, what possible room could there be for complaint? And sure, there are some people, maybe even a lot of people who are too mind-killed to accept reality, and they're going to complain anyway. But what are they going to do about it?
Nothing, right?
The people doing this have the all the cards. They won the election, the bureaucracy is on-side, half the nation's voters have been screaming for this for four years. This is what power is for, to get good things done even when they're hard, even when bad people stand in the way! How could they not do exactly this, exactly now? If the bad people can't get it through their heads that they've fucking lost, then it becomes necessary to hammer the point, repeatedly and with vigor, until it finally sinks in. If they aren't getting it, then that means you aren't hammering hard enough. At some point in the escalation curve, they'll have to cave, won't they? That's how it works, isn't it? What possible reason could be imagined for doing anything else?
And if such a reason can't be imagined, why would you expect anything other than exactly this?
Also: What, should the entire apparatus of the civil state stand there, limp dick in hand, watching norm after law after precedent get dynamited?
The apparatus demands lubrication, and the only substance at hand is blood. It is good and necessary that blood should flow to feed the state. That is what the state is, that is what the state is for. The state is the threat of violence perpetrated against all by consent of all for the benefit of all.
There has been a defector; why should the government even exist if it can't punish one idiot failson of a fallen business empire?
Well, given that almost every rule in question has long since been broken by the ruling class, my question is why is this guy so bad? Hillary had an entire private unsecured email server outside the government firewall. We didn’t care about norms then. If you want corruption, how is it that a person can go directly from public office to a very lucrative job lobbying for industries that they sought to (not really) regulate months earlier? Or how they always manage to sell their stocks just before us plebs get bad economic news? Hunter Biden had been peddling influence in Russia for decades. We didn’t care about any of those things until Trump did them.
And there’s the ball game — this decidedly is not about laws, norms, or precedents. It’s about making an example of a man who violated the hidden social contract of having good decorum and toeing the social norms an$ keeping quiet about the grift. It’s completely about who he is and what he represents— he’s an outsider, and worse one that won’t play along. He was about the common man.
And to be honest here, I think he’s probably the only politician in memory that could have actually gotten a mob to do anything. Rubin or Cruz or Pence might draw a crowd, but not one willing to fight for their cause. I live in a red state, and I talk to MAGAs. I have never seen a group so enthusiastic about a political leader. For them, this is the first time in memory that a political figure has actually been on their side. The first time in memory that they feel listened to. They don’t trust other people as they’ve been stung too many times by promises that the government “would be there for them”.
I think he’s wrong on policy, but I will point out that the entire thing is absolutely about destroying him and him personally. Others have quietly done what he did.
Cruz could get a crowd to fight for his cause. He happens to be smart enough not to do what Trump did, but if he asked for supporters to riot he would have supporters rioting.
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One of the issues is no one knows who runs the regime. I’m reminded of Obama saying something akin to he thought when he was POTUS it would all be magic and pixy dusts and the good Potus would fix everything.
Yet there appears to be a regime since a lot of unelected people keep making similar decisions. Who at the fbi gave the order to declare Hunters laptop misinformation. Who told Kristen Anderson to get rid of the lab leak (he wasn’t even tenured then). It feels as though a puppet master exists but I’ve yet to be able to identify who that is. In California I could point to an interconnected ruling clan but for the US I don’t have the slightest idea who or what that is. Even though it seems they are moving as if directed by one.
You can win elections but the regime remains pulling the strings.
I made an account just to ask about this. Would you mind explaining a bit? Or at least point me some direction, I'm super curious.
First google search.
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2019/01/gavin-newsoms-keeping-it-all-in-the-family/
Getty-Newsome-Pelosi all have family ties known each other multiple generations.
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What I don’t understand is why. Maga correctly hated the lockdowns. Yet they now support Trump over DeSantis? The latter was there for them in a real way; the former couldn’t even fire Fauci.
Once upon a time it was probably because Trump promised to do things for them (bring back factories, build the wall). Now they're behind him because he's under attack (for, they reckon, daring to stand up for them).
Funny thing is DeSantis is also under attack (albeit not legal attack though Gavin has floated the idea).
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The indictments completely killed any momentum Desantis had to build a policy versus showman debate in the primary.
This caused a rally to Trump movement like any movement needs to do when under attack. Like any army you can’t allow your lines to be broken then it’s chaos getting picked off one by one. And the GOP defending themselves against lawfare is a big deal. Maybe Desantis somehow wins but without a United front he would just fall to the next wave of lawfare.
Plus starting to buy that a lot of people like the entertainment and the policy and donor class of the GOP backing Desantis can’t win that.
Exactly. The 'vote for DeSantis not Trump' urgings from outside really were intended to split the vote, because I don't think many of the people saying Republican voters should do that want DeSantis as a strong candidate likely to win the primary and maybe even the election. What they want is the hardline vote split, some weaksauce compromise candidate selected that nobody particularly likes or wants, and then the Democrat nominee to cruise home in the final election.
So if they had been content to quash their impulses to try and punish Trump, they might have got their way. But between the True Believers who have been screaming themselves hoarse for four years about COUP! TREASON! DEMOCRACY!!!! and the urge to punish the impudence of the guy who beat It's Her Turn, they couldn't help themselves. Now they've rallied people behind Trump who may not like or want the guy, but like or want even less vindictive lawfare to be established as a precedent.
That, they won't get. It's going to be Trump or De Santis; there isn't a third candidate in a position to take advantage of a split. If one arises (very unlikely) they will have to be a strong candidate, not a weak one. So what the DNC is trying for is to get Trump as the primary candidate, and then beat him (by hook or by crook, mostly the latter) in the general.
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But you also want Patton; not general Burnside. DeSantis is practically the only Republican candidate capable of actually fighting back as opposed to merely crying about it.
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One thing they shouldn't do is start throwing more dynamite in the flaming pile.
If you want to preserve institutions, constant escalation is not the way to do it. And that of course goes for both sides.
Not that any of this could have been avoided of course. Power can't abide competition so Trump has to be benign or be destroyed. And he wasn't benign.
On the contrary, that is exactly what they should do. Doubly so considering the top-down nature of the affair. The imperative is to send a message that you can play the game or you can sit out, but you cannot try to flip the table. If you can call for an insurrection and then call a mulligan when it fails, there's no reason not to do so every time you lose.
You are literally arguing for Pompey and Cicero's policy against Caesar.
If trying to contest election results inevitably gets repressed as such, there is no reason not to foment an actual insurrection if you think you might lose.
Trump was free to bring his objections in court (which he did, to universal failure) and his allies in Congress were free to raise objections (which they did, though their colleague found them unpersuasive). He was even free to hold a rally in which he whined about how he'd been cheated.
Any claim to merely "contesting" the election evaporated when he sent a mob to attack Congress. It would be irresponsible to let him go unpunished and irresponsible to let the threat of further treason from his followers be a deterrent.
Partisan/inflammatory without evidence. Arguably consensus-building, too. Don't post like this.
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Woah, when did this happen? I've been a keen observer of politics and kept up to date on the Trump presidency for a long while, but I somehow completely missed the point where he sent a mob to attack Congress. In fact if I look back over the records I can't find any instance where Trump asked people to break in and physically attack Congress - can you please be a bit more specific?
When leftists come into a Congress to protest (happened many times), it's the celebration of democracy. When leftists set cities on fire and destroy property, because they didn't like election results - it's regrettable, but understandable expression of understandable frustration about the democracy being subverted by fascists. When deplorables come into a Congress to protest (happened only once, as I remember?) - it's a fascist treasonous coup, which requires the harshest suppression measures to send them a message. When deplorables set cities on fire and destroy property, because they didn't like election results - well, I don't know, that never actually happened. There never was and never will be any equal treatment in these matters.
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Right, so you're free to protest but only in ways that are ineffective, and if you start doing anything similar to what we do we'll treat it like you're assassinating politicians.
So why exactly should Trumpists not start assassinating politicians given the incentives you're giving them?
You're not answering that question at all and just restating your conviction that self righteous partisanship is sound policy and not the boneheaded foolishness history show it to be at every turn.
I'm sure am glad you weren't in charge of nuclear policy during the cold war.
They were only ineffective because the claim was not meritorious.
One of the Trumpists' most consistent mistakes is that they believe their actions are symmetrical to their rivals.
Because their belief that they are being unfairly punished is mistaken. Doing normal democratic politics has a higher payoff than trying to flip the table when they lose. It's clearly not that they can't win elections, considering they just did.
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Could you please speak more clearly? This reads like you're talking about Hunter rather than Donald.
I'm talking about Trump, although what I said could apply to either really, and speaking clearly takes all the fun out of it!
Not enough effort--for which you have been warned and banned before. Seven days off this time.
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Not really, the Trump failson would be Don Jr or Eric. There are all sorts of negative things you can say about Trump, but failson isn't really an accurate insult.
I suppose Trump was long considered a failson by Trump Sr, although it’s hard to say any father would be disappointed in a son who ultimately became president.
If "was elected to the highest office of the most powerful nation in the world" isn't enough to stop someone from being a failson the insult is meaningless and applies to all living men.
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Trump had four careers: as a GC in his father's real estate empire (where his success was recognised by Trump Sr who gave him early access to his inheritance), as a real estate developer in his own right (where he was a failure, but made money anyway due to the big run-up in NYC property prices), as a reality TV star, and as a politician. He was brilliantly successful in three of them, but I can see why his father might care most about the one he failed in.
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