June 03, 2024
Knee-Deep in the Rubicon
Well, this is one of those posts that I've tried to type several times but it just gets me depressed and afraid.
I've noted before my misgivings about Trump. However, if one wants to beat him, one needs to make the case, to the American people.
Given Trumps manifest flaws, that ought not to be hard.
Simply ask"Are you better off now than you were....."
Oh.
I guess it IS hard. Golly!
Well, one still needs to make the case.
That's not what the Democrats are doing.
They are trying to take out the front-runner in the current election by lawfare in the manner of a Banana Republic.
This is particularly galling as, despite the chants of "Lock her UP!" Hillary was shown considerable magnanimity, despite claiming for 4 years that her election was stolen by Russia and in spite of the fact that the charges against her credible, easy to understand, already proven, and were quite clearly done with malice aforethought.
Trumps charges on the other hand seem to be pretty much Bullshit.
Yet he is going to be sentenced Next Month, quite possibly to prison. greatly handicapping his ability to run for office. I noted this in my Myriad Misgivings About Trump post noted above, but I had assumed that they'd find something legitimate, not have a Judge instruct a jury that they need not agree on a crime, and scream at a witness who brought exculpatory evidence.
The full horror of this verdict and the bizarre, Frankinsinian nature of the case is pointed out eloquently in this post by a PHD in Statistical Genetics who is not a Trump fan but is horrified by the potential death of the Republic.
"Such drama!"
"Death of the republic" sounds absurd to people who have lived in the firstiest of first world countries all their lives, and never seen what happens when a nation's politics becomes a blood sport. Surly it would have seemed absurd to the citizens of Rome, who had been franchised members of a republic in its 482nd year that the splashes in a small estuary on the west coat if Italy could bring that Institution to an end.
Caesars crossing of the Rubicon came about in part because politics in Rome had devolved into lawfare. Caesar (and Sulla before him) were caught in legal traps by their political opponents that had the potential to invoke financial ruin or death. Both men decided to take control rather than turn themselves in. These two fiascoes destroyed the institutions that held the Republic together. It could only be run by force after that.
What we have seen with Trump in New York has the potential to become precedent and that precedent plays out every day in many of the less fortunate countries around the world, where the loss of power is likely to come with legal troubles, imprisonment and/or death. Such an arrangement is not conducive to anything other than dystopia.
So:
What do we do?
I have no idea.
I have a degree in history. Countries that go down this path go to dark places. Those that have done so and been consequential enough to have major international rivals tend to exist only in history books.
There's more on the specifics of the situation as it stands now from a former Hillary voter who has been both Red and Black Pilled. He doesn't offer any solutions other than "Give money to Trump and pray" But, it's a very good overview from someone far to the left of me politically.
Newt Gingrich...(who is not looking well) has some thoughts. Some thoughts are funny, some are terrifying, but he does give a good presentation on what needs to be done, (less on HOW to do it)
We are on the brink of something REALLY bad.
We've been so comfortable for so long that most cannot conceive of it.
We don't HAVE TO tread down that path.
But we have to know we're on the path; that we might leave it before we no longer can.
UPDATE: More thoughts on the larger matter from one of the most impressive women of our age. This piece dovetails more closely with this recent post, but says everything that post did, better.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
09:30 PM
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1
The die was cast in this way, pretty far back, actually.
January 12th, 2021, is the date on a certain letter by heads of law schools. Paul Caron, the nominal Republican lawyer who had blogged for so many years about Obama's tax scandals, signed it, and was proud of having done so. At best, it is a case of faculty bureaucrats so specialized, that they were unable to take a step back, put on their generalist hat, think about what they were implying to the public, and say nothing.
It is perhaps reasonable, in a novel situation, to be unable to find a formula addressing it in some textbook.
But that no more than around 1/4 of those bureaucrats said 'that is interesting', and found some boffin professor to tell them 'you should say nothing instead of making that statement' says some terrible things about the quality of hiring and training.
Which of course implies enough very badly trained lawyers and judges that you would find some idiots who would screw up on persuading the public instead of abandoning a given effort to 'win' by playing manipulative word games.
Yes, seeing it proven is another thing.
Arguably the universities have been failed for years, the Republicans are seemingly still in denial about fixing them, and we will have the risk of being unable to sustain or achieve peace so long as we have enough commies around.
Yet, I can see hope in the things I do not know. We have an additional visible issue, that does not require some long complicated explanation that I screw up some of the time.
Conservatives may want a serious remedy, that will put a stop to this crud, and restore peace quickly. But, they will also deliberately listen to moderate proposals, including ones that they previously did not have time for.
Our choices to act in ways that the left cannot foresee are advantages. The opposition also have profoundly unreal models of human behavior deep in their fastest and most certain intuitions.
January 12th, 2021, is the date on a certain letter by heads of law schools. Paul Caron, the nominal Republican lawyer who had blogged for so many years about Obama's tax scandals, signed it, and was proud of having done so. At best, it is a case of faculty bureaucrats so specialized, that they were unable to take a step back, put on their generalist hat, think about what they were implying to the public, and say nothing.
It is perhaps reasonable, in a novel situation, to be unable to find a formula addressing it in some textbook.
But that no more than around 1/4 of those bureaucrats said 'that is interesting', and found some boffin professor to tell them 'you should say nothing instead of making that statement' says some terrible things about the quality of hiring and training.
Which of course implies enough very badly trained lawyers and judges that you would find some idiots who would screw up on persuading the public instead of abandoning a given effort to 'win' by playing manipulative word games.
Yes, seeing it proven is another thing.
Arguably the universities have been failed for years, the Republicans are seemingly still in denial about fixing them, and we will have the risk of being unable to sustain or achieve peace so long as we have enough commies around.
Yet, I can see hope in the things I do not know. We have an additional visible issue, that does not require some long complicated explanation that I screw up some of the time.
Conservatives may want a serious remedy, that will put a stop to this crud, and restore peace quickly. But, they will also deliberately listen to moderate proposals, including ones that they previously did not have time for.
Our choices to act in ways that the left cannot foresee are advantages. The opposition also have profoundly unreal models of human behavior deep in their fastest and most certain intuitions.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Wed Jun 5 20:43:37 2024 (rcPLc)
2
Looks like the YT link is just to YT, no video as part of the URL.
Posted by: Rick C at Thu Jun 6 01:44:25 2024 (BMUHC)
3
I can't even get YouTube to open in Firefox at the moment, so they might be having issues at their end.
Posted by: Siergen at Thu Jun 6 09:21:42 2024 (MsSHC)
4
Thank guys. I'd missed it. I think I was looking at some cache artifact.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thu Jun 6 12:38:34 2024 (3NtfN)
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