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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 18, 2023

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Genuinely, it is hard to come up with anything to say that isn't already immediately obvious to any casual observer. My main reaction is that after all the sturm und drung about our sacred democracy, the people that want this are doing everything in their power to destroy the remaining legitimacy of Our Democracy. Of course, this thinking is about on par with the elephant in StoneToss.

Second is that I can barely contain my contempt for the legal profession and all of its fake pseudo-philosophizing. Hundreds of pages. They wrote hundreds of pages on this. Does anyone believe that hundreds of pages were necessary to arrive at this conclusion? Whether you think January 6 was an "insurrection" that disqualifies Trump or not, it's pretty obvious that you view isn't going to be based on careful line-item reading of endless history and text. In writing so extensively on the topic, the justices clarify that they're just liars concocting elaborate explanations for doing what they want to do anyway.

Finally, I would predict increased potential for violence, and it sure does seem like the people in charge are pushing the envelope, but after 2020 and its fallout, it's hard to imagine the American right doing much other than the elephant from StoneToss routine.

In what way does the observed evidence differ from what we would see in a world where these officials genuinely care about and want to preserve democracy, and genuinely believe that the Constitution has been violated and that this is the appropriate legal remedy?

It feels like your bottom line is 'My opponents will lie and cheat to beat Trump' and therefore it doesn't matter what actually happens in reality, if it's something that hurts Trump then the explanation must be lying and cheating.

That's the type of totalizing philosophy that can't actually learn from new evidence or predict things with a causal model. It should be avoided wherever possible.

In what way does the observed evidence differ from what we would see in a world where these officials genuinely care about and want to preserve democracy, and genuinely believe that the Constitution has been violated and that this is the appropriate legal remedy?

In that world, this isn't an unprecedented step, and many people are regularly kept off the ballot, and members of both parties are vigorously prosecuted when they are found to have broken the law.

Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in, so I don't think there's anything principled at work here.

In that world, this isn't an unprecedented step, and many people are regularly kept off the ballot, and members of both parties are vigorously prosecuted when they are found to have broken the law.

So it's not the case that committing any crime at all makes you ineligible for the ballot. A convicted felon can run for and be elected as President, nothing in the Constitution against that.

The statute being cited in this case is specifically about officers of the state committing insurrection.

Are there past presidential candidates who arguably committed insurrection while officers of the state who you think should have been prosecuted in this way? Who are they, and what did they do?

You can say that Jan 6th wasn't actually a big deal, or wasn't Trump's fault, those are both reasonable positions. But the Senate being evacuated in the middle of certifying electors because a mob has stormed the building and is roaming the halls clashing with security and stealing things from Senator's offices is actually a really unusual thing that hasn't happened a bunch of times before.

Whether or not you think it rises to the level of insurrection, the argument 'if people were being fair we would have seen tons of prosecutions like this before' doesn't actually hold water, because things like this haven't happened tons of times before.

Are there past presidential candidates who arguably committed insurrection while officers of the state who you think should have been prosecuted in this way? Who are they, and what did they do?

Yes - Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who arranged for the surveillance of the President Elect and ginned up a fake scandal involving Russia in an attempt to take back the Presidency despite losing the election. There's a much clearer and easier case to be made for those two being directly involved than there is Trump with January 6.

Are you saying these actions (which I disagree about, but that's not important at this step) amount to insurrection?

Is your claim that they planned to use these charges to stop him from taking office in 2016, and somehow maneuver that to themselves staying in office instead?

That claim doesn't make any sense to me, even if they somehow succeeded in getting the Congress to impeach over that, Pence would have become president. There's no clear path from any of that to an overthrow of the entire order of succession.

Or are you saying they did that in an attempt to make him lose the next election so they could win it instead?

Because, that may be scummy and improper, but it's not insurrection. Lying and doing unethical things to win an election is very bad, but it's also very common, and the most it could amount to is election fraud. If you are legitimately winning an election, it's not insurrection.

Are you saying these actions (which I disagree about, but that's not important at this step) amount to insurrection?

No, but I am saying that they are actually closer to insurrection than anything Trump did. At no point did Trump deceive a court in order to acquire a fraudulent warrant, for instance.

Is your claim that they planned to use these charges to stop him from taking office in 2016, and somehow maneuver that to themselves staying in office instead?

Their plan was to sink the Trump presidency. Ideally they would have been able to get Pence down too and the entire election nullified, but they didn't actually succeed. Instead, they settled for simply sabotaging his term through the Mueller investigation, which we now know was completely fraudulent from the beginning.

Also, just to be clear, I don't think that this amounts to insurrection. But it is far, far closer to insurrection than anything Trump did during his time in office.

So, there's a difference between 'You think these actions were closer to insurrection than anything Trump did, therefore you find it unjust that only Trump was punished for insurrection' vs 'The prosecutors in question thought that those actions are closer to insurrection than anything Trump did, therefore their choice to only punish Trump for insurrection is intentional malice.'

Can you grant that, even if it's motivated reasoning or driven by propaganda and disdain, many of your opponents really and truly believe that Trump committed insurrection?

Because if so, that's sufficient to say that they are being honest (even if not fair/just) in prosecuting Trump for things they believe to be insurrection, but not prosecuting others for things that we all agree are not.

So, there's a difference between

What difference does it make? I never said I thought it was unjust - it transparently is, but that wasn't part of any argument I was making.

Can you grant that, even if it's motivated reasoning or driven by propaganda and disdain, many of your opponents really and truly believe that Trump committed insurrection?

Anybody who does actually believe that is mis/underinformed to such a degree that they don't have anything of consequence to say about the political situation involved. If someone says that Satan planted dinosaur bones in the Earth to test the faith of True Christians, I don't think it's worth listening to their opinions on the fossilisation process because I know that it is going to be garbage already. If someone genuinely believes that what Trump did falls into the category of insurrection, either they're just not thinking seriously or they're grossly misinformed - and their opinion isn't worth listening to either way.

But furthermore, the people who are actively prosecuting Trump (and who I was talking about) cannot really and truly believe that Trump committed insurrection, or they would not have acted in the way that they did (i.e. they would have prosecuted him immediately rather than timing the prosecution and important court dates specifically to interfere with his election campaign). There is a possible world where those people genuinely believed their claims, but that is observably not the world that we live in.

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