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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26653 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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I saw the following exchange between Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, and it made me angry. So instead of getting over it and going and doing normal things like a well adjusted adult, I decided to complain about it on the internet.

MEGYN KELLY: This is one of the reasons why I said if this judge [Chutkan] in DC… because we assume Trump's gonna get convicted in that case, I mean, the smart bet would be this DC jury convicts him because they hate them politically. 92% voted for Joe Biden. And she hates him. If she puts him in jail, pending appeal before the election, the country's going to burn. And then all this blowback, ‘Oh my god. She's calling for violence.’ I'm not calling for violence. But there is no way that Trump base is not going to be beside itself with anger at that level of deprivation of being able to simply vote for the candidate of choice. That's what's being taken away here.

TUCKER CARLSON: Speaking of violence, that's what you're gonna get. And speaking as someone who detests violence… If you leave people no alternative, then what do you think is going to happen? The whole point of electoral democracy is that it's a pressure relief valve that takes people who are very frustrated with the way things are going and gives them a way to express themselves, have their desires heard, and ultimately, their will done to be represented in a peaceful way. And if you take that away, if you have staged an unfair election, which 2020 was, if you suppress information that voters need to make an informed decision, you're rigging the election, and they did that.

So if you keep doing that, and people are like, ‘Wait, I have no economic power, you've devalued my currency, so it's like $11 for a dozen eggs, and my vote doesn't matter anymore. Well, then what do I have? Like what power do I have?’ And you're gonna get violence if you keep the shit up. And that's just the truth. And I am very upset about that, I don't want that to happen, I think the counter violence will be much more extreme than the violence. But any rational person can see what's coming. So they have to stop this.

The charges against Trump are not real. They're not even for serious crimes. I was told Trump was like a murderer and had killed a bunch of people in New Jersey or something. He didn't even cheat on his taxes. And they're treating him like a felon at the same time. Like they protect Epstein until they have to murder him in his cell. It's insane and it's all on public display. Everybody knows what's going on. So I do think the people in charge the people were pulling the strings on Tanya Chutkan in or whatever these ridiculous front people they hire. Those people need to really think this through a little bit. You're about to wreck the country. Don't do this, please.

First of all, I'm at least glad to see that reality is starting to set in. Trump is going to get his nonsense "absolute immunity" claim promptly rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court. He's going to go on trial on March 4, he's going to get convicted, and he's going to go to prison. This has all been obvious for some time, and people do need to come to grips with it instead of telling themselves "it can't happen, so it won't".

But there is a stark mismatch here between the acceptance on one hand that the jury will convict Trump but the insistence on the other hand that "the charges aren't real". DC is an overwhelmingly democratic voting jurisdiction, but you would need to be cynical indeed to think there is no chance that even one Democrat juror would refuse to imprison a political opponent on obviously baseless charges. But of course, the charges are not nearly so baseless as Carlson suggests.

No, the reason that Kelly and Carlson know that Trump is going down is not because they think there is not one honest soul to be found in DC. They can have confidence Trump will lose this case because both his conduct and the law have little mystery about them. On the facts, there's little if any dispute about the actions that Trump took. On the law we have seen similar charges applied to many January 6 defendants, and it has not gone well for them. If Trump is to get similar treatment for similar conduct, he must be convicted.

Carlson and Kelly know that he's guilty and yet they pretend otherwise. Carlson rants about how outrageous it is to render people's votes meaningless, and yet when Trump is charged for conspiring to do exactly that he flatly states it's "not even a real crime". I emphasize that his contention here isn't even that Trump didn't do the awful thing he's accused of - he's saying that the things he's accused of aren't awful. This lays bare how empty and fake Carlson's feigned defence of democracy is. You can believe that it's outrageous to deprive people of their democratic rights or you can believe that conspiring to deprive people of their democratic rights isn't a "real crime", but it's incoherent to claim both.

But worst of all is the "warning" of violence. Carlson tells us that the man who incited a riot must not be punished or else we'll get more riots. This is the logic of terrorism. Give us what we want or there will be blood. Sure, he phrases it as a prediction rather than a threat and says he detests violence... but he knows full well that many of the people who might actually commit it could well be listening to him, and he knows he is fanning the flames of their resentment and putting the thought of violence in their heads. This would be irresponsible even if Carlson were sincere, but the fact that he's obviously being cynical makes it worse. This is a man who passionately hates Trump and couldn't wait for him to get kicked out of the White House - and yet here he is inventing excuses for him, pre-emptively trying to discredit the verdict he knows is coming, sanewashing Trump's "rigged election" claims, stoking anger, and telling people that violence is the inevitable response if Trump gets locked up. All, one presumes, so he can maintain his position in the GOP media ecosystem. What a worm.

Smith and Chuktan will obviously not allow themselves to be swayed by threats of violence, so we will unfortunately get to see if the dark talk turns into action. I for one hope Trump's most volatile supporters will at least recognize the truth that Carlson acknowledges - it will go extremely badly for anyone who takes it upon themselves to shed blood.

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Prosecuting Caesar always struck me as a bad idea. Perhaps an ideal, extremely robust democracy could get away with it. At present, I don't think the US is it.

Let’s assume he is guilty, and let’s also assume that 30-40% of the country doesn’t believe he is (apparently 85% of republicans don’t think he should be prosecuted). Shouldn’t a hypothetical, nationally representative jury, nullify the charges?

I too am annoyed by loose threats of terrorism, such as ‘if you don’t give young men sex/poor people money/if you police black people/etc, they will rise up’, but Carlson’s prediction of violence is justified here. If the ballot box and the jury box fail (edit: I forgot, perhaps the most egregious of all, also denied the soapbox when democrats cheered when he was kicked off twitter), what box do they have left? They are, ultimately, a large faction of armed men (like the democrats). Their power to inflict violence should be respected (and democracy, at heart, very much respects it). Their opponents do not have to accede to their every demand, but they should definitely refrain from putting their leader in prison. It constitutes a direct challenge to the war-making potential on which their political power rests, and as such invites the battle democracy is supposed to avoid.

I agree with this. It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.

It’s both a strategic mistake and a grave political failure to use the courts to target Trump now.

Unless it works. If it's crazy and it works, it's not crazy.

How can it work? It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot, so electorally it wouldn’t work, and any loss from being arrested and being unable to campaign would likely be made up by the zealotry of his supporters and any number of GOP politicians (including the VP pick) being invited to campaign on his behalf.

It’s clear a conviction wouldn’t remove him from the ballot

How is that clear? The recently rejected suits were about a pre-conviction determination.

I’m going by the New York Times from last month:

The Constitution sets very few eligibility requirements for presidents. They must be at least 35 years old, be “natural born” citizens and have lived in the United States for at least 14 years.

There are no limitations based on character or criminal record. While some states prohibit felons from running for state and local office, these laws do not apply to federal offices.

The Republican and Democratic Parties have guaranteed spots on general-election ballots in every state, and the parties tell election officials whose name to put in their spot. States could, in theory, try to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot by passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record, but this would be on legally shaky ground.

“We let states set the time, place and manner” of elections, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School who specializes in election law, “but I think the best reading of our Constitution is you don’t let the state add new substantive requirements.”

Is the New York Times wrong?

Is the New York Times wrong?

Ah, yes: the newspaper that had its baby journalists twittering about being in an unsafe space for BIPOC people because of an opinion piece published by the paper.

They considered that piece a "call for state violence", so I guess the same attitudes are behind "January 6th was an insurrection".

The Republican and Democratic Parties have guaranteed spots on general-election ballots in every state, and the parties tell election officials whose name to put in their spot.

And one or more states doesn't bother "passing legislation requiring a clean criminal record… on legally shaky ground," but just says "Trump's been convicted, so we're not putting him on the ballot; the Republican party can either submit a different name to go in their 'guaranteed spot' or else we leave it blank"? Sure, a court will probably rule that this is illegal and unconstitutional… eventually.(And who enforces that ruling, anyway?) But if you time it right, you can probably have that decision only come after the election, and then what? (Or, failing that, come well after ballots are printed and too close to election day to print new ones.)

The electors can elect whomever they want though, right -- so just throw a placeholder in there, mobilize the base (have rallys with him & Trump, etc to make the situation clear) and then the (Republican) electors throw their votes to Trump.

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I'm not sure. The rule that states may not add additional qualifiers for federal office has some loopholes but some well-established precedent.

However, there's also been serious sets of legal challenges and a well-promoted campaign to argue that the 14th Amendment automatically disqualifies from the ballot anyone who 'participated in insurrection', by a vague and broad definition that includes whatever they think Trump has done.

I'd argue that they're wrong to do so, but I'm not sure what I think matters.

The 14th Amendment is rather quiet about how it's insurrection rule is to be enforced: it's not clear who actually gets the power to decide "insurrection" occurred. The federal courts? The states? Local officials setting up ballots?

Some of those options are better than others, but if you choose poorly I think you'll find "was overruled once by SCOTUS" to be grounds for finding "insurrection against the Constitution" in any case where unfriendly partisan officials are empowered to so decide. Obviously Obama's fake "recess appointments" in Noel Canning were a deliberate attempt (from a famed Constitutional Scholar!) to subvert the Constitution if you let Ken Paxton decide.

To be fair, it's not clear how the Constitution's eligibility rules would be enforced generally if someone nominated, say, a child who was obviously under 35. Birtherism runs a bit more into the Full Faith and Credit Clause, though.

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No, but that is a different set of criteria than who will appear on the ballot. For example, there's nothing in those requirements about having to get a certain number of verified signatures of support, which is a near-universal ballot access requirement. The suspicion is that a conviction will be used to prevent Trump from being on the ballot in at least some states despite him being eligible to be President if he was elected anyways.

Sure, but if those states are California, New York, Vermont, and hawaii, that disqualification is irrelevant.

Is the New York Times wrong?

Dismayingly frequently.

Not about this, I believe, but since the history of the NYT being bafflingly brazenly wrong about things extends from over 90 years ago to under 2 days ago, it still feels weird to cite them as an authoritative source.

Of course, I certainly didn’t mean to imply they’re always right. But they don’t seem to be wrong about this.

It was a while ago, but there literally was a guy who ran for president from prison.

Debbs against Wilson.

Yup, keep trying to remember him by his convict number, and keep falling flat on my face.

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