I'm totally down for mueller testifying first, for reasons mentioned earlier, sound bytes that are literally just word for word quotes from the report will be damning
Barr just aint that guy. He's the Iran-Contra guy. I don't see any other way to compel people to do anything other than with the weight of impeachment.
Ive said it before but it truly is bewildering that some people treat the GOP sticking doggedly to Trump no matter the crime as a failure state for the Dems.
What do you mean by this?
It's not the Democrats fault that the GOP will stick doggedly with Trump. But it is a fact that you need to accept and work around.
Multiple people have claimed that Trump getting "exonerated" makes it too dangerous, or other similar arguments, which discounts the incredible value of forcing the GOP to go to bat for that clown's specific crimes during an election season.
Its just political defeatism. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
It's not defeatism, it's admitting that there are other potential outcomes to this action that should be taken into account.
We're fully aware of them, theyre just not serious.
Sure they are. Just because you think they are wrong doesn't make them not serious. There are very real potential downsides here and the pros and cons of the potential actions in question can be weighted and debated.
I dont see that there's a discussion to be had when one side makes a positive argument for an action and the other side just says "yes but also there are cons" and barely engsges past that point so Im out.
But people have enumerated those potential. That you refuse to engage with them is your choice but it doesn't make their argument any less serious.
There's many sides here. Impeachment is a net good, impeachment is the only option, impeachment is a moral imperative, impeachment may or may not be the best idea. I actually think the only argument I haven't seen is people just flat out against the idea altogether. But all of these positions are perfectly serious arguments that can be made.
Barr just aint that guy. He's the Iran-Contra guy. I don't see any other way to compel people to do anything other than with the weight of impeachment.
They will still refuse to release during that process as well. They are already refusing subpoenas. There's no legal weight you can throw at them because they are the legal system. They are the lawyers that would need to elect to prosecute them.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
These kinds of ridiculous strawman arguments are becoming an unfortunate proportion of this thread, which makes it difficult to have a reasonable discussion.
Please knock it off, y'all.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I'm totally down for mueller testifying first, for reasons mentioned earlier, sound bytes that are literally just word for word quotes from the report will be damnit
Aye. There seems no reason to make a decision yet, given there's plenty to do in just the near future to build the case and test the waters here.
I think the biggest thing going on right now is actually a bunch of people (not here, but generally) are building up a narrative that there is only 2 choices: impeach or do nothing. That it's either impeachment or a complete abdication of responsibility. That no impeachment means no oversight. That not impeaching is a betrayal of the highest order. I think this is potentially a bad idea by setting up the Democratic base for disappointment. Both from impeachment potentially not happening and from impeachment failing in the Senate since it strikes me that a ton of the messaging you see on this has imo the inbuilt assumption that impeachment will accomplish something. I think people should be careful to not set up false dichotomies or false expectations here.
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
Don't need to impeach to do oversight. The second is happening literally right now without the first.
Impeachment is a political process. It's not a moral act nor is it morally mandated.
"I only have a moral duty to act if I will know Ill succeed" is a hell of a moral framework.
There is no moral obligation to engage in a specific political action as laid out by the constitution.
Trying to use the constitution as a moral framework is ridiculous. We're talking about a document that allowed slavery ffs. Literally the same people that designed the impeachment process also supported or at least allowed that black people were subhuman property.
If you think there is a moral obligation to stop Trump or to remove him from office or whatnot, then you should be looking at how you would accomplish that. Which does not necessarily mean impeachment.
You believe in a moral duty to fullfill the oath of office same as me.
I do? Since when?
And I don't see how the oath of office mandates impeachment anyway.
If you dont believe in a moral duty to the oath of office its little wonder you see no need for impeachment, as it makes Trump's crimes substantially less.
No it doesn't. Trump's crimes are not related to his oath of office.
I wasn't making a strawman argument and literally clarified that a few posts later - that if we can't stand on moral grounds for pragmatic ones, that has other, more dire implications
But I'm obviously on the wrong side in this thread so I'm out
I wasn't making a strawman argument and literally clarified that a few posts later - that if we can't stand on moral grounds for pragmatic ones, that has other, more dire implications
But I'm obviously on the wrong side in this thread so I'm out
I'm vegetarian, but not vegan. I think it would be morally better to be vegan, but I don't do it because of my own comfort.
That doesn't mean that I might as well be killing puppies for fun, or have any actual dire implications; we make significant moral trade-offs _every single day_.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
I'm totally down for mueller testifying first, for reasons mentioned earlier, sound bytes that are literally just word for word quotes from the report will be damnit
Aye. There seems no reason to make a decision yet, given there's plenty to do in just the near future to build the case and test the waters here.
I think the biggest thing going on right now is actually a bunch of people (not here, but generally) are building up a narrative that there is only 2 choices: impeach or do nothing. That it's either impeachment or a complete abdication of responsibility. That no impeachment means no oversight. That not impeaching is a betrayal of the highest order. I think this is potentially a bad idea by setting up the Democratic base for disappointment. Both from impeachment potentially not happening and from impeachment failing in the Senate since it strikes me that a ton of the messaging you see on this has imo the inbuilt assumption that impeachment will accomplish something. I think people should be careful to not set up false dichotomies or false expectations here.
Impeachment is different from oversight the way indicting a murderer is different from holding a press conference to yell at him, and that remains true even if you believe the killer has already bought off the judge and jury. Yes, the system has a failure point, but if you avoid doing the part that you can do correctly, then you've made that failure point you. If a killer gets off because he bribed the judge, the public sees that the judge is corrupt and has the opportunity to correct that. If the killer gets away with it because you assume he bribed the judge and so you just don't arrest him in the first place, the most visible problem is not the corruption but your fear, and the public will get mad at the police for not arresting the guy. Morally, the appropriate thing to do in a broken system, if you are unable to fix the problem, is to perform your function to the best of your ability in accordance with your duty. Otherwise one malfunction crashes everyone.
Impeachment is also different from oversight politically, not only because many of the Democratic voters understand it to be and hold expectations accordingly, but also because the media will react differently to impeachment than to non-impeachment oversight. Impeachment is the loudest possible message the Democrats can send, and in a media environment where Democrats struggle to break through the noise, that makes it an important tool. Foregone conclusion or not, many people will tune into an impeachment process to see if the President is going to stay the President or not who would never watch an ordinary committee hearing even if it was substantively the same. Many media organizations will cover impeachment differently than they would similar non-impeachment hearings. That's just the way it is.
Dude some of the better tv ratings this past year were for congressional committee hearings. I work in a co working space, literally every company I walked past had someone watching the cohen testimony live at fuckin work regardless of the business sector.
Folks are paying attention to this shit and it is fairly omni present in all news reporting.
I think there is a disconnect here about priorities, and it makes it difficult to understand where people are coming from.
It's natural and very common for people to have very narrow moral/political priorities for society at large. So called single issue voters. What I care about most is X. All decisions I make are mostly to support X. I have opinions on other things, I can want them to go one way or another, but when it comes to making a decision about what to do, I will be making that decision based on around what is best for X.
If X for you is say transgender rights, or immigration, or one of the other million things Trump shat all over completely legally you are going to approach this discussion very different than someone who believes X is "rule of law." Which isn't to say one person's priorities are right and another's are wrong. But let me come back to that.
First let me say that I do believe that "rule of law" is a very high priority for me, and I hope it is for others. We can discuss this more, but to be brief I feel like achieving homogeneity in your experience in society depends on "rule of law" being true. That is to say, in an anarchy it's very unlikely I can travel outside of my small group of known people/places and expect to experience the same sets of morality. For example, take transgender rights. If everyone can decide for themselves what rights Transgender folks should have, there is going to be less places where Transgenders are treated equally/fairly than if it is the "rule of law" (and enforced as such) for all of america.
To bring this back around, because I prioritize "rule of law" very highly, if I look at Trump and impeachment, it makes sense to say that even though the outcome is unknown, it is very important to make a stand because to not do so severely harms that priority (partisanship and ignoring political crimes becomes more expected and less reviled). If I prioritize Transgender rights far more than "rule of law", then I look at Trump and impeachment and I think "he wont get impeached and any political nonsense outside of that is very unlikely to further Transgender rights. The best thing you could do is ignore trump and focus on getting someone else elected." Which is 100% true, but also means you favor marginal gains in the goal of Transgender rights over massive losses in "rule of law."
It's hard to argue that my priorities are definitely better than someone elses priorities. It's especially difficult to tell someone the thing they care about the most should take a back seat to whatever the current issue is. But I think it's important to remember that saying I don't prioritize X very highly is not the same as saying I don't want X to happen.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
And impeachment, as stated multiple times throughout the thread, is only one mechanism by which they can “uphold their duty” in oversight and “checking the president”.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here with the absolutism that is being peddled here.
Congressional "oversight" is meaningless without enforcement. It's not a check on the President if they hold a million hearings that change no policy while he keeps on Presidenting for another 18 months.
Congress's ultimate power IS impeachment and if you believe his crimes are high enough to meet the Constitutional bar but Congress fails to act, they haven't handled their duty.
This seems like a fine sentiment, but it also comes back on the Republicans. The notion that Congress would hold the President accountable seems great to me (as a non-American, who learned most of US civics from the Daily Show and these fine forums), but with the current situation there's the reality that even if Trump was caught on film committing horrific acts of violence against people, it'd be called fake news and McConnell would swiftly move onto another topic of conversation.
The electorate should hold those politicians accountable for their failure to act, but if they don't, then how does one fix a system where it being broken is seen as A Feature, Not A Bug?
It's a problem at both the micro and macro levels, neither of which seem to have good answers, as this thread has gone over. What we'd like them to do, what is politically smart to do (in ways that might allow those who would hold him accountable the power to do more about his alleged crimes), and what they realistically can do (both with and without 'damn the consequences') all seem to be at odds.
Even as an outsider watching from afar, I'm not blind to the realities of the US system as it currently exists. I want things to get better, and every time I see something that I think "whew, hopefully THIS will finally be a bridge too far...", I'm wrong.
So, without doom and gloom'ing, I will instead state that I find it difficult to be optimistic. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" is running face first into a brick wall made of politicians who will deny that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West if it's politically convenient for them to do so. Perhaps rewording the saying as “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary (and/or political power) depends on his not understanding it.”
What do we do when the watchmen don't seem to give a fuck, and the voters don't give a fuck either?
To be clear, this isn't a rebuttal, merely building on the topic and getting some things down that I've been mulling over for a while now.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
This is a complete, backwards nonsequitor in the impeachment conversation, unless you’re arguing that the laws Trump has broken are unjust or that impeachment is an unjust response
Of course the law is not 100% equivalent to morality, but upholding the law is still generally a moral good because the standardization of laws and the universality of justice are important underpinnings of a functioning society
Ive said it before but it truly is bewildering that some people treat the GOP sticking doggedly to Trump no matter the crime as a failure state for the Dems.
What do you mean by this?
It's not the Democrats fault that the GOP will stick doggedly with Trump. But it is a fact that you need to accept and work around.
Multiple people have claimed that Trump getting "exonerated" makes it too dangerous, or other similar arguments, which discounts the incredible value of forcing the GOP to go to bat for that clown's specific crimes during an election season.
Its just political defeatism. "We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas"
That's the part I take the most issue with. Dems spent 2016 pointing out again and again how Trump is horrible, and too damn many people did not care. By far my biggest concern with impeachment is that we'll do the whole thing and it won't move the needle with dems or liberals or independents or basically any non-GOP voters. I don't want to stare down the barrel of 4 more years of Trump, regretting that we did not stick to the strategy that won the house in 2018, "Here is what us Democrats will do for you".
I'm not saying that's what is going to happen, or even that it is likely. I don't know! It might still be better to do impeachment, even given that risk. I'm not arguing against impeachment. I'm just voicing concerns.
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
Believing in the "rule of law" doesn't mean you believe laws can't be changed. There are absolutely good laws and bad laws. But it does mean that there is a right way to go about changing them and a wrong way. Because if you believe the right thing to do is to simply break laws that are bad, then you don't really believe in laws. You believe in a certain moral code and you uphold it regardless of any societal frameworks that exist. Which is going to be a difficult place to live because lots of people have moral codes that are different from yours and it seems to me the right thing for them to do is ignore whatever you want and follow their moral code.
edit: To expand on this a little bit, rules exist to mediate the differences that people have. When you stop buying into that framework you default back to whoever has the most power wins and can enforce whatever they want on those with less power. Which is not a world I want to live in.
Jebus314 on
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Not to confuse the issue too much, but I think there is also a question of precedence. I suppose it is possible to believe that upholding checks and balances should be a high priority but that impeaching trump is not necessary for that. To essentially believe that Trump hasn't committeed obvious enough crimes to require congress to act (as opposed to Nixon who made tapes of admissions).
But I believe that because the impeachment process is so vague and unclear about when it needs to be used, every case where it is used or ignored sets more precedent going forward about how it should be used. It is essentially citizens united all over again, in that ignoring trump now implies that the level of evidence necessary for impeachment is almost impossibly high. It's not enough that crimes seem to be happening there must be literal bags of money exchanged with a note about it's intended criminal purpose. Or literal recordings of the perpetrators explaining how what they are doing is illegal but they are going to do it anyway.
"The world is a mess, and I just need to rule it" - Dr Horrible
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
This is a complete, backwards nonsequitor in the impeachment conversation, unless you’re arguing that the laws Trump has broken are unjust or that impeachment is an unjust response
Of course the law is not 100% equivalent to morality, but upholding the law is still generally a moral good because the standardization of laws and the universality of justice are important underpinnings of a functioning society
Upholding the law isnt even a moral good in general. Upholding the law is only a moral good if it will lead to morally defensible ends.
Justice is an outright lie that I think the past 2 to 3 decades should soundly lay to rest. It's a myth folks tell each other about. Our society which has been functioning for almost two and a half centuries has been very thin on anything looking like universal justice from the moment we built it on the ashes of genocide and backs of slaves.
Justice is a bullshit narrative built by the folks the justice system actually works to defend, the rich and powerful.
Laws haven't been enforced equally literally fuckin ever, and it seems we've either been living in functioning societies without that or that society has never been functional.
Not to confuse the issue too much, but I think there is also a question of precedence. I suppose it is possible to believe that upholding checks and balances should be a high priority but that impeaching trump is not necessary for that. To essentially believe that Trump hasn't committeed obvious enough crimes to require congress to act (as opposed to Nixon who made tapes of admissions).
But I believe that because the impeachment process is so vague and unclear about when it needs to be used, every case where it is used or ignored sets more precedent going forward about how it should be used. It is essentially citizens united all over again, in that ignoring trump now implies that the level of evidence necessary for impeachment is almost impossibly high. It's not enough that crimes seem to be happening there must be literal bags of money exchanged with a note about it's intended criminal purpose. Or literal recordings of the perpetrators explaining how what they are doing is illegal but they are going to do it anyway.
In a just world we would impeach the president in the house and the senate would follow suit and remove him and anyone that's worked along side him quickly because we already have enough evidence they should gut this administration.
Like this is the major problem. I don't think anyone disagrees these folks are all quite obviously criminal enough they shouldn't be in charge of a fuckin bake sale let alone a country. Unfortunately they run the parts of the system that can be leveraged to remove them.
They have already destroyed any chance of "justice" in this instance. The morally justifiable ends of removing them from office is currently only accomplishable via elections. Everything that diverts us from those morally defensible ends is not moral regardless of how legal it is.
Sleep on
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
This is a complete, backwards nonsequitor in the impeachment conversation, unless you’re arguing that the laws Trump has broken are unjust or that impeachment is an unjust response
Of course the law is not 100% equivalent to morality, but upholding the law is still generally a moral good because the standardization of laws and the universality of justice are important underpinnings of a functioning society
Upholding the law isnt even a moral good in general. Upholding the law is only a moral good if it will lead to morally defensible ends.
Justice is an outright lie that I think the past 2 to 3 decades should soundly lay to rest. It's a myth folks tell each other about. Our society which has been functioning for almost two and a half centuries has been very thin on anything looking like universal justice from the moment we built it on the ashes of genocide and backs of slaves.
Justice is a bullshit narrative built by the folks the justice system actually works to defend, the rich and powerful.
Laws haven't been enforced equally literally fuckin ever, and it seems we've either been living in functioning societies without that or that society has never been functional.
The logical extension of your argument as it applies to the thread topic is that it doesn’t matter if we try to enact justice against an obvious criminal because justice doesn’t exist (and justice doesn’t exist because there are too many times when people have chosen not to enact it)
How does this nihilistic viewpoint not apply to every other instance of criminal misconduct? “I know it’s my sworn duty as a police officer to arrest people who have broken the law, and I know I just witnessed someone committing a murder, but on the other hand justice is a fake idea so I’m going to let the killer go.”
Our justice system is flawed but that doesn’t mean that the people whose job it is to work within that system should stop doing their jobs and stop trying to improve the system
Rule of law should never be mistaken for morality.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
This is a complete, backwards nonsequitor in the impeachment conversation, unless you’re arguing that the laws Trump has broken are unjust or that impeachment is an unjust response
Of course the law is not 100% equivalent to morality, but upholding the law is still generally a moral good because the standardization of laws and the universality of justice are important underpinnings of a functioning society
Upholding the law isnt even a moral good in general. Upholding the law is only a moral good if it will lead to morally defensible ends.
Justice is an outright lie that I think the past 2 to 3 decades should soundly lay to rest. It's a myth folks tell each other about. Our society which has been functioning for almost two and a half centuries has been very thin on anything looking like universal justice from the moment we built it on the ashes of genocide and backs of slaves.
Justice is a bullshit narrative built by the folks the justice system actually works to defend, the rich and powerful.
Laws haven't been enforced equally literally fuckin ever, and it seems we've either been living in functioning societies without that or that society has never been functional.
The logical extension of your argument as it applies to the thread topic is that it doesn’t matter if we try to enact justice against an obvious criminal because justice doesn’t exist (and justice doesn’t exist because there are too many times when people have chosen not to enact it)
How does this nihilistic viewpoint not apply to every other instance of criminal misconduct? “I know it’s my sworn duty as a police officer to arrest people who have broken the law, and I know I just witnessed someone committing a murder, but on the other hand justice is a fake idea so I’m going to let the killer go.”
Our justice system is flawed but that doesn’t mean that the people whose job it is to work within that system should stop doing their jobs and stop trying to improve the system
That’s just nonsense
Hey that guy's selling cigarettes from his pack, that's a crime, we should definitely detain them with whatever force we deem necessary as we escalate the situation.
"oh well fuck it, justice is a lie anyway" probably needs to be workshopped a little more if we're gonna use it as a party slogan in 2020
It's not a good political slogan, but it's the world we have always lived in.
Laws have never been, and likely will never be, universally or equally enforced. Insisting that a thing that's never happened underpins all functioning societies is a bit silly.
We have plenty of symbolic rebukes of his presidency to note in the history books.
You wanna actually stop all of this.
Vote democrat in the general elections. Sorry that's our only plausible option for actually stopping all this shit.
instructions unclear; read thread, gave up on the future, voted green party because both sides are bad
And thus McConnell retains his rulership of the country and we're all fucked. Well played.
If you're trying to make this about achieving actual moral ends, throwing your hands up and doing something known to be inconsequential to knowingly try and wash your hands of responsibility isn't really the best way.
We got the ability to start impeachment proceedings. They cant fix anything but theyre barely even putting on the political show they could be. All leadership seems interested in is getting some sound bites from circus hearings.
If we're in a fight for the Republic you couldnt tell from the choices the opposition is making.
We just did "vote blue no matter who" to get Pelosi back in power largely on rage against the current administration and yet here we are.
I don't believe that in general the reason for the blue wave in 2018 was because we all agreed that if Nancy Pelosi became the Majority Leader in the House she would take down the President, and that she is now betraying our grim bargain.
I think that the blue wave was a response to the reality of unified Republican government being horrible and people voting for Democratic candidates because they represented an opportunity to not have that government keep hurting us. If our system was at all functional, the Senate would also have been flipped.
On the topic, I think I've mostly turned around on Impeachment? I feel like having hearings might be as useful a framework for continuing to unearth the varied crimes the president has committed/is committing/will commit.
I think the party-line plus like Joe Manchin vote clearing him in the Senate would be used to argue that he's clearly innocent and this was all a witch hunt... but I feel like they'd probably do the same thing with "they didn't even impeach!"
"oh well fuck it, justice is a lie anyway" probably needs to be workshopped a little more if we're gonna use it as a party slogan in 2020
It's not a good political slogan, but it's the world we have always lived in.
Laws have never been, and likely will never be, universally or equally enforced. Insisting that a thing that's never happened underpins all functioning societies is a bit silly.
You want to get super cynical? fine
Universal justice is indeed a lie
But what I said was "the goal of universal justice" is one of the underpinnings of functional society
the rule of law is fiat currency, it only works if we all believe in it
The idea that there is some possibility of fairness in the system keeps society from collapsing
Justice is a useful lie because if everyone truly believed that a fair and just system was not the goal, was not what the system was trying to do, was not achievable, was not true in the slightest, then they would riot or turn to vigilantism or start mafias and never stop
We need at least the pretense of justice in order to get most people in society to keep going to work and buying things and all the other normal society stuff that keeps things running
If I'm not mistaken you're not advocating revolution, you're advocating people vote Trump out of office--but what if I told you our elections weren't secure and our campaign finance laws are not enforced and there are no consequences for cheating with foreign powers? Do you believe our electoral process is universally fair? Or is that just the lie you prefer?
Astaereth on
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
We just did "vote blue no matter who" to get Pelosi back in power largely on rage against the current administration and yet here we are.
I don't believe that in general the reason for the blue wave in 2018 was because we all agreed that if Nancy Pelosi became the Majority Leader in the House she would take down the President, and that she is now betraying our grim bargain.
I think that the blue wave was a response to the reality of unified Republican government being horrible and people voting for Democratic candidates because they represented an opportunity to not have that government keep hurting us. If our system was at all functional, the Senate would also have been flipped.
On the topic, I think I've mostly turned around on Impeachment? I feel like having hearings might be as useful a framework for continuing to unearth the varied crimes the president has committed/is committing/will commit.
I think the party-line plus like Joe Manchin vote clearing him in the Senate would be used to argue that he's clearly innocent and this was all a witch hunt... but I feel like they'd probably do the same thing with "they didn't even impeach!"
It’s also important to remember that during a presidential election year turnout is higher than mid terms, which generally favors Dems, and we need millennials and minority’s to show up, that’s going to determine an excellent 2021 or a terrible 2021. Those two groups.
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
And impeachment, as stated multiple times throughout the thread, is only one mechanism by which they can “uphold their duty” in oversight and “checking the president”.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here with the absolutism that is being peddled here.
Its the strongest one. Which is warranted. Nothing precludes continuing their committee dog and pony shows.
Absolutism.
Only one solution is acceptable?
Have fun on the sidelines then.
One solution is better. This is a weird thing to say.
I mean, the opposing opinion seems to be that the only right thing to do is to not impeach, so I find the “absolutism” accusation fairly puzzling
Flat out straw man.
There are plenty of things to do before deciding to impeach. Many (most?) folks here are advocating for having Mueller testify before making this decision at a minimum. But no, that makes the Dems spineless wimps who don’t listen to their (not really their) “base”.
Mueller already delivered nearly five hundred pages of testimony. What exactly do you think he is going to say that will sway the calculus?
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MonwynApathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.A little bit of everything, all of the time.Registered Userregular
I think there is a disconnect here about priorities, and it makes it difficult to understand where people are coming from.
It's natural and very common for people to have very narrow moral/political priorities for society at large. So called single issue voters. What I care about most is X. All decisions I make are mostly to support X. I have opinions on other things, I can want them to go one way or another, but when it comes to making a decision about what to do, I will be making that decision based on around what is best for X.
If X for you is say transgender rights, or immigration, or one of the other million things Trump shat all over completely legally you are going to approach this discussion very different than someone who believes X is "rule of law." Which isn't to say one person's priorities are right and another's are wrong. But let me come back to that.
Without the rule of law everything else is literally meaningless and will be flatly ignored or rolled back at the earliest opportunity.
My priorities are better because they enable your priorities to be more than a transitory dream.
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
And impeachment, as stated multiple times throughout the thread, is only one mechanism by which they can “uphold their duty” in oversight and “checking the president”.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here with the absolutism that is being peddled here.
Its the strongest one. Which is warranted. Nothing precludes continuing their committee dog and pony shows.
Absolutism.
Only one solution is acceptable?
Have fun on the sidelines then.
One solution is better. This is a weird thing to say.
I mean, the opposing opinion seems to be that the only right thing to do is to not impeach, so I find the “absolutism” accusation fairly puzzling
Flat out straw man.
There are plenty of things to do before deciding to impeach. Many (most?) folks here are advocating for having Mueller testify before making this decision at a minimum. But no, that makes the Dems spineless wimps who don’t listen to their (not really their) “base”.
Mueller already delivered nearly five hundred pages of testimony. What exactly do you think he is going to say that will sway the calculus?
He’s a famously tight-lipped guy. He’s not going to take it upon himself to tell the world what was in the redacted parts of the report. That would be going outside the chain of command and possibly even illegal.
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
And impeachment, as stated multiple times throughout the thread, is only one mechanism by which they can “uphold their duty” in oversight and “checking the president”.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here with the absolutism that is being peddled here.
Its the strongest one. Which is warranted. Nothing precludes continuing their committee dog and pony shows.
Absolutism.
Only one solution is acceptable?
Have fun on the sidelines then.
One solution is better. This is a weird thing to say.
I mean, the opposing opinion seems to be that the only right thing to do is to not impeach, so I find the “absolutism” accusation fairly puzzling
Flat out straw man.
There are plenty of things to do before deciding to impeach. Many (most?) folks here are advocating for having Mueller testify before making this decision at a minimum. But no, that makes the Dems spineless wimps who don’t listen to their (not really their) “base”.
Mueller already delivered nearly five hundred pages of testimony. What exactly do you think he is going to say that will sway the calculus?
If he’s willing to answer the question of “would you have indicted Donald Trump if he wasn’t the President”...and if that answer is “yes”. I think it would swing things pretty strongly.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
The Dems are focused on 2020 to the point of not carrying out their moral obligations. And if they are focused on the 2020 elections to the exclusion of their moral obligations, why shouldn't they do as the Republicans have and go all in on the immoral ways to win the election?
Failing to bring about articles of impeachment that are destined to fail is not a failure of moral obligations on the order of conspiring with a foreign government to steal an election.
Yeah good point
We should stop advocating for racial and gender equality while we're at it since we're not going to get those things this election cycle and it's unclear if being opposed to racists will win us the election
We should do some opinion polls on if it's okay to be a party that allows transfolk in it while we're at it, since we're such steely eyed, results driven pragmatists these days
Trying to put "show trial of Trump" and "racial equality" on the same level is ridiculous. And it's basically the core of the problem with all these arguments. Whether to impeach or not is not a moral question. There is no moral mandate to impeach.
You may not believe there is a moral mandate to execute the duties of your office, but many of us do.
Impeachment is not a duty of the office, it's merely an option. I'm not seeing why an oath of office counts as a moral system either.
Theres a moral mandate to take constitutionally proscribed actions against a corrupt president, yes.
Based on what? The potential action the constitution allows is silly and nonfunctional and the constitution has no moral weight anyway.
Inpeachment isnt a duty. Oversight and checking the President is and impeachment is how its done here.
They have a moral responsibility to uphold their duty.
And impeachment, as stated multiple times throughout the thread, is only one mechanism by which they can “uphold their duty” in oversight and “checking the president”.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here with the absolutism that is being peddled here.
Its the strongest one. Which is warranted. Nothing precludes continuing their committee dog and pony shows.
Absolutism.
Only one solution is acceptable?
Have fun on the sidelines then.
One solution is better. This is a weird thing to say.
I mean, the opposing opinion seems to be that the only right thing to do is to not impeach, so I find the “absolutism” accusation fairly puzzling
Flat out straw man.
There are plenty of things to do before deciding to impeach. Many (most?) folks here are advocating for having Mueller testify before making this decision at a minimum. But no, that makes the Dems spineless wimps who don’t listen to their (not really their) “base”.
Mueller already delivered nearly five hundred pages of testimony. What exactly do you think he is going to say that will sway the calculus?
If he’s willing to answer the question of “would you have indicted Donald Trump if he wasn’t the President”...and of that answer is “yes”. I think it would swing things pretty strongly.
He will give a couched answer. He’ll just keep dancing. If your expecting some direct master we got him stroke, it’s just not going to happen.
"oh well fuck it, justice is a lie anyway" probably needs to be workshopped a little more if we're gonna use it as a party slogan in 2020
It's not a good political slogan, but it's the world we have always lived in.
Laws have never been, and likely will never be, universally or equally enforced. Insisting that a thing that's never happened underpins all functioning societies is a bit silly.
You want to get super cynical? fine
Universal justice is indeed a lie
But what I said was "the goal of universal justice" is one of the underpinnings of functional society
the rule of law is fiat currency, it only works if we all believe in it
The idea that there is some possibility of fairness in the system keeps society from collapsing
Justice is a useful lie because if everyone truly believed that a fair and just system was not the goal, was not what the system was trying to do, was not achievable, was not true in the slightest, then they would riot or turn to vigilantism or start mafias and never stop
We need at least the pretense of justice in order to get most people in society to keep going to work and buying things and all the other normal society stuff that keeps things running
If I'm not mistaken you're not advocating revolution, you're advocating people vote Trump out of office--but what if I told you our elections weren't secure and our campaign finance laws are not enforced and there are no consequences for cheating with foreign powers? Do you believe our electoral process is universally fair? Or is that just the lie you prefer?
Im suggesting that outside revolution, a thing we are not allowed to discuss here, that is the only option left to us.
In this place we stick to a conversation predicated on the idea that violence is to be abhored at all times and that talk of revolution is unacceptable. Given those strictures we must work under the assumption that the voting system is not compromised and that our votes are in fact counted in some way and that election day isn't just a big meaningless show in front of a pre determined outcome. Cause if we're working with the idea that the voting system is actually compromised... well we can't talk about that here.
I don't think the voting system is fair, the fact we've taken the vote from large swaths of minorities via an unjust legal system illustrates it isn't fair. It is however our only actual recourse.
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But people have enumerated those potential. That you refuse to engage with them is your choice but it doesn't make their argument any less serious.
There's many sides here. Impeachment is a net good, impeachment is the only option, impeachment is a moral imperative, impeachment may or may not be the best idea. I actually think the only argument I haven't seen is people just flat out against the idea altogether. But all of these positions are perfectly serious arguments that can be made.
They will still refuse to release during that process as well. They are already refusing subpoenas. There's no legal weight you can throw at them because they are the legal system. They are the lawyers that would need to elect to prosecute them.
These kinds of ridiculous strawman arguments are becoming an unfortunate proportion of this thread, which makes it difficult to have a reasonable discussion.
Please knock it off, y'all.
Aye. There seems no reason to make a decision yet, given there's plenty to do in just the near future to build the case and test the waters here.
I think the biggest thing going on right now is actually a bunch of people (not here, but generally) are building up a narrative that there is only 2 choices: impeach or do nothing. That it's either impeachment or a complete abdication of responsibility. That no impeachment means no oversight. That not impeaching is a betrayal of the highest order. I think this is potentially a bad idea by setting up the Democratic base for disappointment. Both from impeachment potentially not happening and from impeachment failing in the Senate since it strikes me that a ton of the messaging you see on this has imo the inbuilt assumption that impeachment will accomplish something. I think people should be careful to not set up false dichotomies or false expectations here.
No it doesn't. Trump's crimes are not related to his oath of office.
But I'm obviously on the wrong side in this thread so I'm out
I'm vegetarian, but not vegan. I think it would be morally better to be vegan, but I don't do it because of my own comfort.
That doesn't mean that I might as well be killing puppies for fun, or have any actual dire implications; we make significant moral trade-offs _every single day_.
Impeachment is different from oversight the way indicting a murderer is different from holding a press conference to yell at him, and that remains true even if you believe the killer has already bought off the judge and jury. Yes, the system has a failure point, but if you avoid doing the part that you can do correctly, then you've made that failure point you. If a killer gets off because he bribed the judge, the public sees that the judge is corrupt and has the opportunity to correct that. If the killer gets away with it because you assume he bribed the judge and so you just don't arrest him in the first place, the most visible problem is not the corruption but your fear, and the public will get mad at the police for not arresting the guy. Morally, the appropriate thing to do in a broken system, if you are unable to fix the problem, is to perform your function to the best of your ability in accordance with your duty. Otherwise one malfunction crashes everyone.
Impeachment is also different from oversight politically, not only because many of the Democratic voters understand it to be and hold expectations accordingly, but also because the media will react differently to impeachment than to non-impeachment oversight. Impeachment is the loudest possible message the Democrats can send, and in a media environment where Democrats struggle to break through the noise, that makes it an important tool. Foregone conclusion or not, many people will tune into an impeachment process to see if the President is going to stay the President or not who would never watch an ordinary committee hearing even if it was substantively the same. Many media organizations will cover impeachment differently than they would similar non-impeachment hearings. That's just the way it is.
Folks are paying attention to this shit and it is fairly omni present in all news reporting.
It's natural and very common for people to have very narrow moral/political priorities for society at large. So called single issue voters. What I care about most is X. All decisions I make are mostly to support X. I have opinions on other things, I can want them to go one way or another, but when it comes to making a decision about what to do, I will be making that decision based on around what is best for X.
If X for you is say transgender rights, or immigration, or one of the other million things Trump shat all over completely legally you are going to approach this discussion very different than someone who believes X is "rule of law." Which isn't to say one person's priorities are right and another's are wrong. But let me come back to that.
First let me say that I do believe that "rule of law" is a very high priority for me, and I hope it is for others. We can discuss this more, but to be brief I feel like achieving homogeneity in your experience in society depends on "rule of law" being true. That is to say, in an anarchy it's very unlikely I can travel outside of my small group of known people/places and expect to experience the same sets of morality. For example, take transgender rights. If everyone can decide for themselves what rights Transgender folks should have, there is going to be less places where Transgenders are treated equally/fairly than if it is the "rule of law" (and enforced as such) for all of america.
To bring this back around, because I prioritize "rule of law" very highly, if I look at Trump and impeachment, it makes sense to say that even though the outcome is unknown, it is very important to make a stand because to not do so severely harms that priority (partisanship and ignoring political crimes becomes more expected and less reviled). If I prioritize Transgender rights far more than "rule of law", then I look at Trump and impeachment and I think "he wont get impeached and any political nonsense outside of that is very unlikely to further Transgender rights. The best thing you could do is ignore trump and focus on getting someone else elected." Which is 100% true, but also means you favor marginal gains in the goal of Transgender rights over massive losses in "rule of law."
It's hard to argue that my priorities are definitely better than someone elses priorities. It's especially difficult to tell someone the thing they care about the most should take a back seat to whatever the current issue is. But I think it's important to remember that saying I don't prioritize X very highly is not the same as saying I don't want X to happen.
Keeping slaves slaves was the rule of law. I think everyone saying fuck that and breaking the law and getting them out of slavery was far more moral than those saying "awww shucks gotta follow the law, get that guy back to his owner"
The rule of law is a cheap and lazy morality prone to abuse.
The legal implications of an action while a good place to start consideration of a future action should not be considered a sound or complete consideration of the action.
This seems like a fine sentiment, but it also comes back on the Republicans. The notion that Congress would hold the President accountable seems great to me (as a non-American, who learned most of US civics from the Daily Show and these fine forums), but with the current situation there's the reality that even if Trump was caught on film committing horrific acts of violence against people, it'd be called fake news and McConnell would swiftly move onto another topic of conversation.
The electorate should hold those politicians accountable for their failure to act, but if they don't, then how does one fix a system where it being broken is seen as A Feature, Not A Bug?
It's a problem at both the micro and macro levels, neither of which seem to have good answers, as this thread has gone over. What we'd like them to do, what is politically smart to do (in ways that might allow those who would hold him accountable the power to do more about his alleged crimes), and what they realistically can do (both with and without 'damn the consequences') all seem to be at odds.
Even as an outsider watching from afar, I'm not blind to the realities of the US system as it currently exists. I want things to get better, and every time I see something that I think "whew, hopefully THIS will finally be a bridge too far...", I'm wrong.
So, without doom and gloom'ing, I will instead state that I find it difficult to be optimistic. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" is running face first into a brick wall made of politicians who will deny that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West if it's politically convenient for them to do so. Perhaps rewording the saying as “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary (and/or political power) depends on his not understanding it.”
What do we do when the watchmen don't seem to give a fuck, and the voters don't give a fuck either?
To be clear, this isn't a rebuttal, merely building on the topic and getting some things down that I've been mulling over for a while now.
This is a complete, backwards nonsequitor in the impeachment conversation, unless you’re arguing that the laws Trump has broken are unjust or that impeachment is an unjust response
Of course the law is not 100% equivalent to morality, but upholding the law is still generally a moral good because the standardization of laws and the universality of justice are important underpinnings of a functioning society
That's the part I take the most issue with. Dems spent 2016 pointing out again and again how Trump is horrible, and too damn many people did not care. By far my biggest concern with impeachment is that we'll do the whole thing and it won't move the needle with dems or liberals or independents or basically any non-GOP voters. I don't want to stare down the barrel of 4 more years of Trump, regretting that we did not stick to the strategy that won the house in 2018, "Here is what us Democrats will do for you".
I'm not saying that's what is going to happen, or even that it is likely. I don't know! It might still be better to do impeachment, even given that risk. I'm not arguing against impeachment. I'm just voicing concerns.
Believing in the "rule of law" doesn't mean you believe laws can't be changed. There are absolutely good laws and bad laws. But it does mean that there is a right way to go about changing them and a wrong way. Because if you believe the right thing to do is to simply break laws that are bad, then you don't really believe in laws. You believe in a certain moral code and you uphold it regardless of any societal frameworks that exist. Which is going to be a difficult place to live because lots of people have moral codes that are different from yours and it seems to me the right thing for them to do is ignore whatever you want and follow their moral code.
edit: To expand on this a little bit, rules exist to mediate the differences that people have. When you stop buying into that framework you default back to whoever has the most power wins and can enforce whatever they want on those with less power. Which is not a world I want to live in.
But I believe that because the impeachment process is so vague and unclear about when it needs to be used, every case where it is used or ignored sets more precedent going forward about how it should be used. It is essentially citizens united all over again, in that ignoring trump now implies that the level of evidence necessary for impeachment is almost impossibly high. It's not enough that crimes seem to be happening there must be literal bags of money exchanged with a note about it's intended criminal purpose. Or literal recordings of the perpetrators explaining how what they are doing is illegal but they are going to do it anyway.
Upholding the law isnt even a moral good in general. Upholding the law is only a moral good if it will lead to morally defensible ends.
Justice is an outright lie that I think the past 2 to 3 decades should soundly lay to rest. It's a myth folks tell each other about. Our society which has been functioning for almost two and a half centuries has been very thin on anything looking like universal justice from the moment we built it on the ashes of genocide and backs of slaves.
Justice is a bullshit narrative built by the folks the justice system actually works to defend, the rich and powerful.
Laws haven't been enforced equally literally fuckin ever, and it seems we've either been living in functioning societies without that or that society has never been functional.
In a just world we would impeach the president in the house and the senate would follow suit and remove him and anyone that's worked along side him quickly because we already have enough evidence they should gut this administration.
Like this is the major problem. I don't think anyone disagrees these folks are all quite obviously criminal enough they shouldn't be in charge of a fuckin bake sale let alone a country. Unfortunately they run the parts of the system that can be leveraged to remove them.
They have already destroyed any chance of "justice" in this instance. The morally justifiable ends of removing them from office is currently only accomplishable via elections. Everything that diverts us from those morally defensible ends is not moral regardless of how legal it is.
The logical extension of your argument as it applies to the thread topic is that it doesn’t matter if we try to enact justice against an obvious criminal because justice doesn’t exist (and justice doesn’t exist because there are too many times when people have chosen not to enact it)
How does this nihilistic viewpoint not apply to every other instance of criminal misconduct? “I know it’s my sworn duty as a police officer to arrest people who have broken the law, and I know I just witnessed someone committing a murder, but on the other hand justice is a fake idea so I’m going to let the killer go.”
Our justice system is flawed but that doesn’t mean that the people whose job it is to work within that system should stop doing their jobs and stop trying to improve the system
That’s just nonsense
Hey that guy's selling cigarettes from his pack, that's a crime, we should definitely detain them with whatever force we deem necessary as we escalate the situation.
Enforcing laws is not inherently just.
It's not a good political slogan, but it's the world we have always lived in.
Laws have never been, and likely will never be, universally or equally enforced. Insisting that a thing that's never happened underpins all functioning societies is a bit silly.
but i think maybe we can say there's a moral component to wanting to symbolically rebuke a deranged, incompetent criminal wannabe autocrat
i'm sorry if that's not cool
We're already symbolically rebuking the president in that almost everything he does is very solidly challenged in the courts.
Unfortunately we also fucked up and gave them large swaths of control there as well, and thus none of those challenges are permanent.
We have plenty of symbolic rebukes of his presidency to note in the history books.
You wanna actually stop all of this.
Vote democrat in the general elections. Sorry that's our only plausible option for actually stopping all this shit.
And thus McConnell retains his rulership of the country and we're all fucked. Well played.
If you're trying to make this about achieving actual moral ends, throwing your hands up and doing something known to be inconsequential to knowingly try and wash your hands of responsibility isn't really the best way.
We didn't get enough of the government back to actually fuckin fix anything. We got literally the weakest fuckin branch.
We got enough to throw breaks on shitty legislation, but that's about it.
Winning one battle doesn't mean you've won the war.
If we're in a fight for the Republic you couldnt tell from the choices the opposition is making.
I don't believe that in general the reason for the blue wave in 2018 was because we all agreed that if Nancy Pelosi became the Majority Leader in the House she would take down the President, and that she is now betraying our grim bargain.
I think that the blue wave was a response to the reality of unified Republican government being horrible and people voting for Democratic candidates because they represented an opportunity to not have that government keep hurting us. If our system was at all functional, the Senate would also have been flipped.
On the topic, I think I've mostly turned around on Impeachment? I feel like having hearings might be as useful a framework for continuing to unearth the varied crimes the president has committed/is committing/will commit.
I think the party-line plus like Joe Manchin vote clearing him in the Senate would be used to argue that he's clearly innocent and this was all a witch hunt... but I feel like they'd probably do the same thing with "they didn't even impeach!"
You want to get super cynical? fine
Universal justice is indeed a lie
But what I said was "the goal of universal justice" is one of the underpinnings of functional society
the rule of law is fiat currency, it only works if we all believe in it
The idea that there is some possibility of fairness in the system keeps society from collapsing
Justice is a useful lie because if everyone truly believed that a fair and just system was not the goal, was not what the system was trying to do, was not achievable, was not true in the slightest, then they would riot or turn to vigilantism or start mafias and never stop
We need at least the pretense of justice in order to get most people in society to keep going to work and buying things and all the other normal society stuff that keeps things running
If I'm not mistaken you're not advocating revolution, you're advocating people vote Trump out of office--but what if I told you our elections weren't secure and our campaign finance laws are not enforced and there are no consequences for cheating with foreign powers? Do you believe our electoral process is universally fair? Or is that just the lie you prefer?
Mueller already delivered nearly five hundred pages of testimony. What exactly do you think he is going to say that will sway the calculus?
Without the rule of law everything else is literally meaningless and will be flatly ignored or rolled back at the earliest opportunity.
My priorities are better because they enable your priorities to be more than a transitory dream.
He’s a famously tight-lipped guy. He’s not going to take it upon himself to tell the world what was in the redacted parts of the report. That would be going outside the chain of command and possibly even illegal.
If he’s willing to answer the question of “would you have indicted Donald Trump if he wasn’t the President”...and if that answer is “yes”. I think it would swing things pretty strongly.
Im suggesting that outside revolution, a thing we are not allowed to discuss here, that is the only option left to us.
In this place we stick to a conversation predicated on the idea that violence is to be abhored at all times and that talk of revolution is unacceptable. Given those strictures we must work under the assumption that the voting system is not compromised and that our votes are in fact counted in some way and that election day isn't just a big meaningless show in front of a pre determined outcome. Cause if we're working with the idea that the voting system is actually compromised... well we can't talk about that here.
I don't think the voting system is fair, the fact we've taken the vote from large swaths of minorities via an unjust legal system illustrates it isn't fair. It is however our only actual recourse.