I tried, I really did, to keep politics out of my blog draft. But I failed.
So now I do the second best: sandbox it and warn readers.
Vice leaves few good choice to virtue
Dispatch family quarrels aren’t like normal family quarrels. In a normal family quarrel, a conservative dad might bellow about witch hunts and politicized justice while his liberal daughter pounds the table, insisting that no one is above the law.
In a Dispatch family quarrel, one side demands that Donald Trump be prosecuted for all of the crimes while the other demands that he be prosecuted for merely some of the crimes.
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The Justice Department … declined to pursue Trump aggressively for more than a year and a half after January 6 and only named Jack Smith special counsel after Trump had formally announced his 2024 candidacy … So ask yourself, and be honest: Would any of these cases have been brought if Trump had chosen to live out his days playing golf at Mar-a-Lago instead of insisting on one last grudge match with American democracy?
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I’m so invested in deterrence that I’d be willing to trade the forms we’re currently pursuing for forms that don’t involve prosecution. If the Senate had convicted and disqualified Trump at his second impeachment trial, as it should have, that in itself would have taught a powerful lesson to future autocrats about the steep cost of power grabs. You may or may not lose your liberty if you try it but you’ll certainly lose your career in politics and whatever stature you had as a public figure.
And so we return to Marco Rubio and the cowards in the Senate GOP caucus. As I see it, they all but forced the criminal justice system to try to hold Trump accountable when they refused to do so themselves.
Now here they are, whining about it.
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Prosecutors looked at that, it seems, and concluded that if the political system can’t hold Trump accountable because of Republican cultism, the justice system had to step in—especially when he’s running for president semi-explicitly on gaining power in order to evade all forms of accountability, legal and otherwise. They let politics influence their decisions to charge him, I think, and law enforcement making decisions based on politics is corrupt. Yet an authoritarian earning legal impunity from the perks of his office and the slavishness of his lackeys in the legislature is also corrupt.
Both are slippery slopes. But I’d rather have a flawed system of accountability than none at all.
Nick Cattogio, P01135809
Cattogio’s overall point — damned-if-you do, damned-if-you-don’t — can be viewed as an elaboration of David French’s observation:
A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable.
Trump’s tactical mistake?
Trump is done persuading people to like him.
One of the (female) participants in the radio Atlantic podcast for 8/25/23.
That decision may, God willing, be fatal to his candidacy, assuming that some have turned against him for January 6 and that they’ll take some wooing to get them back.
On the other hand, Biden’s negatives are really high and those who detest Kamala Harris might doubly hesitate to vote for him. Could this turn into a reprise of the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial race between Edwin Ewards, crook, and David Duke, KKK Wizard? There famously emerged a bumper sticker for the ages: “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”
Debate highlights
- The fact is that no one is telling the American people the truth. The truth is that Biden didn’t do this to us. Our Republicans did this to us, too. Donald Trump added $8 trillion to our debt. Our kids are never going to forgive us for this. Look at the 2024 budget: Republicans asked for $7.4 billion in earmarks. Democrats asked for $2.8 billion. So you tell me, who are the big spenders? I think it’s time for an accountant in the White House.
- Let’s find consensus. Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available? And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?
Nikki Haley in the Wednesday GOP Presidential “debate.” Her stock is rising in my estimation. (Source).
Surprise support for Big Orange
Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon had some very supportive comments about Voldemort, a/k/a Big Orange:
Trump’s accomplishments were … vast on behalf of the working class. To ask people to not vote for a man who immeasurably improved their lives, who made this country feel like it cared about them for the first time in generations, who put money in their bank accounts, and for the first time made the American dream feel like something they could start dreaming about again—to ask them not to vote for him is not just ridiculous. None of those people onstage are able to quite understand the complexity. These people are not voting for Trump because they think he’s moral. They’re voting for him because it is undeniable what he accomplished and because he represented their future.
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The GOP base is the working class, and the working class is not hardcore … There is a huge divide in the GOP between what the donor class wants, which is the fight against wokeness, and what the voter base wants, which is an economy that works for the hardest-working Americans.
Weekend Listening: The First GOP Debate and the Elephant Not in the Room
Agree or disagree, it’s wise to listen to the other side’s best case(s).
We are in the grip of a grim, despairing rebellion against reality that imagines itself to be the engine of moral progress.
The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world.
You can read most of my more impromptu stuff here (cathartic venting) and here (the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real). Both should work in your RSS aggregator, like Feedly or Reeder, should you want to make a habit of it.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 