United States Politics Thread 46

[bradrn]

Who, and I mean this as a sincere question, who the hell is still holding out for a criminal punishment of 45? Nothing can stop his presidency, because it already happened and it's complete. And we've hopefully all figured out by now that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a pathogen, a single bubo on a self-inflicted plague victim. We made him. He happened. Let's focus on not doing this to ourselves again, instead of pretending that the problem was one old shouty man from Queens who needs to be individually stopped.

Of course this is true. But there is also the argument that someone who does something wrong should be punished, both as a signal of intolerance and as a deterrent for future lawbreakers — and especially if they have great power and influence over a whole country.

(This is not a new argument, I should note: … and you shall burn the evil out from your midst, so that others will hear and be afraid, and such evil things will not again be done in your midst — Deuteronomy 19:19–20.)

[Moose-tache]

...there is also the argument that someone who does something wrong should be punished, both as a signal of intolerance and as a deterrent for future lawbreakers — and especially if they have great power and influence over a whole country.

I would argue that this concept has been dead for a long time. Not that we shouldn't hold lawbreakers accountable, but that using ordinary criminal proceedings against heads of state is not an effective way to do so. Note that, from a strictly legal point of view, the evidence against Trump is not that different from the evidence against Clinton in 99. That is, dead-to-rights proof of obstruction of justice, and weaker evidence of other possible crimes. Senate Democrats, the media, liberal and moderate politicians, and the population in general, all agreed that acting against Clinton over these charges was political assassination, not justice. After February 9, 1999, I think the idea of presidents getting put in trouble for any not-directly-lethal crime has been pure fantasy.

But it's not like we don't have a way to prevent this stuff from happening. Remember, every single thing that Trump did, he promised to do. He looked us right in the eyes, said "I will suck," and 62 million people said "Yes. I want the one that will suck. Give me that one." It's not like we were duped, and need impeachment to save us from some terrible deception. We elected a punch in the face, and now our face hurts. It's not complicated.

[bradrn]

...there is also the argument that someone who does something wrong should be punished, both as a signal of intolerance and as a deterrent for future lawbreakers — and especially if they have great power and influence over a whole country.

I would argue that this concept has been dead for a long time. Not that we shouldn't hold lawbreakers accountable, but that using ordinary criminal proceedings against heads of state is not an effective way to do so. Note that, from a strictly legal point of view, the evidence against Trump is not that different from the evidence against Clinton in 99. That is, dead-to-rights proof of obstruction of justice, and weaker evidence of other possible crimes. Senate Democrats, the media, liberal and moderate politicians, and the population in general, all agreed that acting against Clinton over these charges was political assassination, not justice. After February 9, 1999, I think the idea of presidents getting put in trouble for any not-directly-lethal crime has been pure fantasy.

I think this is confusing ‘what was’ with ‘what ought to be’. Just because Clinton didn’t get in trouble, that doesn’t mean current and future presidents shouldn’t get in trouble for as bad or worse behaviour.

(Not that I know anything about Clinton, mind you. I’m just speaking in general terms.)

But it's not like we don't have a way to prevent this stuff from happening. Remember, every single thing that Trump did, he promised to do. He looked us right in the eyes, said "I will suck," and 62 million people said "Yes. I want the one that will suck. Give me that one." It's not like we were duped, and need impeachment to save us from some terrible deception. We elected a punch in the face, and now our face hurts. It's not complicated.

That doesn’t change the fact that throwing the punch was morally wrong — and legally wrong too, we can only hope.

[Moose-tache]

And I, with all due respect, think you are confusing "what ought to be" with "what is." I'm not suggesting that anything goes, just that the rules of political accountability are not the same as the rule of accountability in any other situation. By the same token, the president cannot go to prison for calling an air strike on a Yemeni wedding. You might think he should go to prison for calling an air strike on a Yemeni wedding, but insisting that that's how it ought to be is a tremendous waste of time. It's especially wasteful when you have other options available (in this example, the alternative being voting for people who promise not to bomb Yemen).

Dragging the incumbent into court is something politicians have been promising since Charles Foster Kane ran for governor. I can see why it's appealing. But that's not the tool we have in hand.

Besides, all this talk about Trump misses the point: we did this to ourselves. Not a single pussy gets ungrabbed when we put the man we (as a society) created and encouraged for seventy years behind bars. We could replace him with a new psychopath in a heartbeat, then put that one behind bars, and so on forever. The problem was never one of individuals escaping punishment. The whole system has turned punishable acts into lauded ones. Unless we're about to put ourselves (again, as a society) in prison, individual justice isn't going to do anything here. The solution will come when promising to make the world worse loses you votes instead of gaining them.

[bradrn]

I'm not suggesting that anything goes, just that the rules of political accountability are not the same as the rule of accountability in any other situation. By the same token, the president cannot go to prison for calling an air strike on a Yemeni wedding. You might think he should go to prison for calling an air strike on a Yemeni wedding, but insisting that that's how it ought to be is a tremendous waste of time. It's especially wasteful when you have other options available (in this example, the alternative being voting for people who promise not to bomb Yemen).

OK, I can agree with this. I’d say Trump should be held accountable for what happened in this case, but that’s perhaps a different argument.

[Vardelm]

Who, and I mean this as a sincere question, who the hell is still holding out for a criminal punishment of 45?

I absolutely am. That is, unless by "holding out" you mean that I think there's a near 100% chance of Trump being convicted. At this point, I think there is a good chance of it happening and that it definitely should happen. Not even attempting to prosecute sends the signal that you won't even face headwinds for insurrection.

Nothing can stop his presidency, because it already happened and it's complete. And we've hopefully all figured out by now that Donald Trump was a symptom, not a pathogen, a single bubo on a self-inflicted plague victim. We made him. He happened. Let's focus on not doing this to ourselves again, instead of pretending that the problem was one old shouty man from Queens who needs to be individually stopped.

I very much agree with this, but prosecuting Trump doesn't negate this point.

Note that, from a strictly legal point of view, the evidence against Trump is not that different from the evidence against Clinton in 99. That is, dead-to-rights proof of obstruction of justice, and weaker evidence of other possible crimes.

This comparison is a stretch. Obstruction of justice for un underlying sex act is on a completely different level from an insurrection to prevent a duly elected government from taking power. It goes right to the very heart of our system of government and the president's job to defend that system.

After February 9, 1999, I think the idea of presidents getting put in trouble for any not-directly-lethal crime has been pure fantasy.

How about an indirectly lethal crime like manslaughter?

[alynnidalar]

To be clear, this is why I mentioned the witness tampering thing. I agree that it is unlikely that he will ever be convicted for anything that occurred while he was president. But the witness tampering happened, like, last week. He's not president anymore, he's a private citizen.

Do I think it's likely that he will actually get convicted for it? I dunno, and even if he did there's no way he'd go to prison for it, but it would still be pleasing. Ditto if they get him on tax fraud or whatever New York keeps trying to take him to court for.

[MacAnDàil]

...there is also the argument that someone who does something wrong should be punished, both as a signal of intolerance and as a deterrent for future lawbreakers — and especially if they have great power and influence over a whole country.

I would argue that this concept has been dead for a long time. Not that we shouldn't hold lawbreakers accountable, but that using ordinary criminal proceedings against heads of state is not an effective way to do so. Note that, from a strictly legal point of view, the evidence against Trump is not that different from the evidence against Clinton in 99. That is, dead-to-rights proof of obstruction of justice, and weaker evidence of other possible crimes. Senate Democrats, the media, liberal and moderate politicians, and the population in general, all agreed that acting against Clinton over these charges was political assassination, not justice. After February 9, 1999, I think the idea of presidents getting put in trouble for any not-directly-lethal crime has been pure fantasy.

But it's not like we don't have a way to prevent this stuff from happening. Remember, every single thing that Trump did, he promised to do. He looked us right in the eyes, said "I will suck," and 62 million people said "Yes. I want the one that will suck. Give me that one." It's not like we were duped, and need impeachment to save us from some terrible deception. We elected a punch in the face, and now our face hurts. It's not complicated.

Sure, Trump and Clinton both Lied as American President but there is a massive differente between lying once about a blowjob and lying thousands of times about everything from the greatest threat to our planet which we need to survive to an attempt at a Coup d'etat.

[Travis B.]

To attempt to compare Clinton and Trump is to attempt to establish what is known as a false equivalence.

[Linguoboy]

To attempt to compare Clinton and Trump is to attempt to establish what is known as a false equivalence.

To quote a popular meme "Simone Biles and I can both jump".

[Moose-tache]

I would love to see y'all's "precident isn't real because cases are not identical" defense in court.

Using Clinton's impeachment trial as a historical example is not the same as saying "Trump=Clinton." Pointing at everything that makes you sad and calling it a false equivalence is falacious. There are legal similarities between the two cases. In both cases, a sitting president was very obviously guilty of the same crime. In both cases, their party stuck by them because it was seen as a political assassination attempt rather than an urgent criminal matter. The pattern is that obstruction of justice is not enough to get a president's own party to turn against them, a crucial ingredient in removing them from office. Pointing that out doesn't mean that I like Trump or that I think Clinton and Trump are the same person (I mean, I will be glad when some of the patina of infallibility starts to chip and flake off of that overrated good ol' boy, but that's another tale). It's really frustrating that even on the Left, we've all agreed to evaluate truth claims based on whether or not it makes us happy. Leave that rightwing shit where it belongs.

[Travis B.]

I would love to see y'all's "precident isn't real because cases are not identical" defense in court.

Using Clinton's impeachment trial as a historical example is not the same as saying "Trump=Clinton." Pointing at everything that makes you sad and calling it a false equivalence is falacious. There are legal similarities between the two cases. In both cases, a sitting president was very obviously guilty of the same crime. In both cases, their party stuck by them because it was seen as a political assassination attempt rather than an urgent criminal matter. The pattern is that obstruction of justice is not enough to get a president's own party to turn against them, a crucial ingredient in removing them from office. Pointing that out doesn't mean that I like Trump or that I think Clinton and Trump are the same person (I mean, I will be glad when some of the patina of infallibility starts to chip and flake off of that overrated good ol' boy, but that's another tale). It's really frustrating that even on the Left, we've all agreed to evaluate truth claims based on whether or not it makes us happy. Leave that rightwing shit where it belongs.

The key thing is that Clinton's obstruction of justice in the form of lying about a blowjob and everything involved with Trump's coup-mongering and attempts to manipulate a foreign government into investigating a political enemy on trumped-up charges are not comparable in any reasonable fashion. They have as much in common as negligently rear-ending someone's car and deliberately plowing one's car into a crowd.

[zompist]

I would love to see y'all's "precident isn't real because cases are not identical" defense in court.

It's hard not to be snarky about this... a coup is not a blowjob; law is not a machine where a single black-and-white answer pops out that everyone accepts; lawyers are constantly arguing that a particular law does not apply in a particular case; politics is not law.

The pattern is that obstruction of justice is not enough to get a president's own party to turn against them

Sure, that's absolutely true except where it's false.

The GOP did turn against Trump. Barr refused to support his coup attempt; Mike Pence refused to support his coup attempt; no state in the Union and no court accepted his attempts to miscount votes, prosecute made-up voter fraud, and ignore the election results; the Supreme Court did not magically reinstate Trump. The 1/6 committee testimony has made it clear that plenty of Trump's inner circle (not all) refused to go along with his plan.

The majority of the party didn't turn against him as it turned against Nixon, nor do any of these things mean that we're safe in 2024.

[masako]

To be clear, this is why I mentioned the witness tampering thing. I agree that it is unlikely that he will ever be convicted for anything that occurred while he was president. But the witness tampering happened, like, last week. He's not president anymore, he's a private citizen.

That seems to be the thing about him and his family...they both crave attention, and the ability to shirk any liability or culpability, those things often contradict, especially given that much of what his immediate family seems to have been doing while he was in office - and since - would be laughed at if the claim of "executive privilege" was even mentioned.

I think you're probably right, of course, that if he (or his family) is to suffer any consequences, it'll likely be the crimes they are committing in an effort to hide the crimes we still know they had a hand in.

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else dislike the term "people of color"? I feel like it glosses over vast differences between different populations and attempts to treat them as the same based solely on the color of their skin. Take for instance Indian-American versus African-American people - they are lumped together by "people of color", even though the former is overall quite privileged (e.g. the highest-earning ethnic group in the US) in reality while the latter is anything but. As a software engineer this has been very much my own experience - I have worked with very many Indian-Americans in both software engineer and management roles, while I have worked with very few Black people in such roles.

The term also seems like a way of avoiding saying Black or Latine when people really mean one of those, in a way actually negating those categories in an effort to seem more generic. I have heard of cases where people have implicitly used "people of color" to really mean "non-White and underprivileged" rather than just "non-White", e.g. insisting that more privileged East Asians are not "people of color", while avoiding actually stating what they mean. If you mean to say Black or Latine just say Black or Latine - then it won't seem as if you want to dance around those categories.

[Raphael]

Nah. It's true that there are all kinds of differences between the different groups covered by the term, but it's also true that there are some things all people with a different skin color than white living in white-dominated societies and a still mostly white-dominated world have in common.

[Raphael]

Second post in a row, because it's a different topic: from following certain aspects of US politics, I've got the impression that if you work for the US federal government in an office job, you're basically always already with one foot in jail, because all kinds of actions that are normal standard procedures in most of the world's office workplace environments are illegal when US government employees do them. Is that true?

[Ares Land]

I have not much of an opinion on what word to use. (I'm linguistically incompetent: the French equivalent of 'people of color' is so excruciatingly racist I'll never get used to it, even in English )

I have heard of cases where people have implicitly used "people of color" to really mean "non-White and underprivileged" rather than just "non-White", e.g. insisting that more privileged East Asians are not "people of color", while avoiding actually stating what they mean.

On that point... Eh, that's stupid activist infighting you can and should ignore. I mean, some people just want to bicker in the stupidest way possible.
One thing I noticed is that when I hear about some incredibly stupid thing some activist said... It has always been relayed by a right-winger.

(I swear right-wingers on social media keep a constant watch over stupid things leftist said, and of course share widely the choiciest bits.)

[Raphael]

(I swear right-wingers on social media keep a constant watch over stupid things leftist said, and of course share widely the choiciest bits.)

Then again, to be fairer to them than they probably deserve, left-wingers do the same things in reverse - there's even websites dedicated to that.

[Travis B.]

I have not much of an opinion on what word to use. (I'm linguistically incompetent: the French equivalent of 'people of color' is so excruciatingly racist I'll never get used to it, even in English )

I have heard of cases where people have implicitly used "people of color" to really mean "non-White and underprivileged" rather than just "non-White", e.g. insisting that more privileged East Asians are not "people of color", while avoiding actually stating what they mean.

On that point... Eh, that's stupid activist infighting you can and should ignore. I mean, some people just want to bicker in the stupidest way possible.
One thing I noticed is that when I hear about some incredibly stupid thing some activist said... It has always been relayed by a right-winger.

(I swear right-wingers on social media keep a constant watch over stupid things leftist said, and of course share widely the choiciest bits.)

I understand why people are attracted to "people of color", in that it has been used to provide a basis for coalitions between a wide range of groups, but imagine if people said "People of Color's Lives Matter" rather than "Black Lives Matter" - it would dilute the fact that "Black Lives Matter" is in particular about the treatment of Black people and not, say, Chinese-American people, who have not had the same experiences in America. "Black Lives Matter" in particular avoids the trap of avoiding saying "Black".