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Notes -
...what?
I was nodding along as I read, until I got to this bit:
To the extent that there was rioting on January 6th, that was bad. At least as bad, however, was the way that rioting was prosecuted. I'm 100% on board with criticizing Trump when it is warranted, but that doesn't actually appear to be Yglesias' argument; his real argument appears to be "do not allow Trump to pardon anyone convicted of offenses committed during this very specific event." And while I am not an expert on these cases, I've seen a lot of concerning videos that suggest to me that this is probably a good use of the presidential pardon power: putting January 6th to bed.
Yglesias seems to be reasonably consistent on the question of pardons being bad, so I can appreciate the article to that extent. But he's ultimately just... wrong. As long as so-called "prosecutorial discretion" exists, the pardon power is pretty important, and should if anything probably be used more liberally.
Huh, I pulled up short on the very first line:
No, there were a lot of already-Trump-skeptical (not to mention all-out NeverTrumper) American conservatives who agreed with that. A rather larger group that weren't happy with rioting, but this specific claim isn't about the rioting: it's about Donald Trump's behavior. Which was barely even well-characterized on January 7; we still had wild stories of Trump trying to physically take control of his official car. And of the three examples he himself gives, one clearly does not condemn Trump's behavior at all, Steve Schwarzman's statement.
The only mention of the Trump is that his remarks preceded the "insurrection", as Schwarzman terms it.
As for the core of the claim:
This is just Yglesias's headcanon. It has no real probative value; you shouldn't update on it unless you blindly trust Yglesias.
Indeed. The whole argument is based on MattY's and his fellow DC residents' anxiety about Trumpists and Jan 6 being an objective evaluation about society. No one else thinks so. Some Republicans at the time were swept up in the anxiety and have subsequently came back to reality. Others like Liz Cheney have not.
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Substitute whatever criticisms you think are warranted; Yglesias's observation of doublethink isn't dependent on people not making a specific criticism, it's that refusal to criticize someone for their history of at least failing to avoid the appearance of authoritarian or corrupt behavior can be a tacit admission of fear that the person is, in fact, authoritarian or corrupt. The question I asked is the bounds of when we should make that inference.
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