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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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I'm not making any assertion that other acts of violence wouldn't qualify (again, assuming the authors are right on all this).

Nor am I claiming that it wouldn't be politically motivated, or inconsistently applied.

The difference is that now they can claim to be doing it because of law, and it will have to go through courts instead of being shot down right away.

I'm not making any assertion that other acts of violence wouldn't qualify (again, assuming the authors are right on all this).

Then we have already identified the issue, which is that no one in contemporary American politics who would be responsible for de-listing Trump has held that standard. Thus, a lack of sincere belief in the standard, and instead nakedly partisan motivation.

Nor am I claiming that it wouldn't be politically motivated, or inconsistently applied.

Then this wouldn't be based in Originalist principles or Conservative legal thinking, which emphasize consistency and continuity, and we're back to skinsuit theory of argument by smuggled insinuation.

The difference is that now they can claim to be doing it because of law, and it will have to go through courts instead of being shot down right away.

Things that get shot down 'right away' have already had to go through the courts, where they take varying degrees of time depending on how sympathetic the initial judge filed with. This is not a change- this is how lawfare works, and has been working vis-a-vis Trump for some time. There is no shortage of politically reliable judges who have signed off on things that 'inevitably' get shot down on sufficient higher appeal, but whose initial support is claimed as legal validation.

As no one has established why this claimed theory would credibly pass constitutional muster at higher legal levels, beyond the appeal to Federalist credentialism, this is no different than any of the other anti-Trump lawfare theories that could reliably get lowest-level support and use that for political maneuvering efforts.

It is similar to Jack Smith. He invented a novel legal theory that will only be used against Trump (even though it could be used against many prominent DC politicians) which proves the theory is bullshit.

How does selective use of a theory prove that the theory is bad rather than merely that the people using the theory are bad?

Novel theory that will only be used once against hated political figure smells of contouring to try to get a particular person. Once you are trying to get a person it means your arguments likely aren’t as strong.