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Stalin and Mao are definitely the wrong examples. However he's not acting like a normal democratic leader. Openly launching multiple criminal trials against a political opponent leading up to an election is something even Putin hasn't done.
Normal parties don't renominate corrupt, criminal losers who tried a coup.
Like, the Right had this same argument about Brett Kavanaugh - "see, you'll try to take out any Republican nominee with lies and false allegations.'
Except it didn't happen with Neil Gorsuch, who had much the same background and views. Sure, people attacked his judicial views, but in the way both sides do. There were no allegations of him being a rapist or even some lesser crime, because he hadn't possibly done criminal things.
Don't nominate the corrupt former New York real estate guy who tried to overturn an election and you'll be all clear. Yes, we'll say mean things about him if you nominate say, Greg Abbott, but for what I know, he's done no crimes. He's allied with somebody even conservative Republicans think has done cirmes (Ken Paxton), but Abbott himself is just a right-winger.
Gorsuch was replacing Scalia, and while they were salty about the Republican Senate with Garland, it was merely a missed opportunity. And frankly, they could read that they had lost that battle enough already that throwing a further fit was likely to be counterproductive with a new president and Republican Senate. Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was replacing Kennedy, which represented a real threat to liberal wins on abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights (two of the three have come to pass), among other issues where the right found Kennedy to be "too squishy". They threw out all the stops for the real threat.
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I’ve got to ask you to be more specific. Make your case politely and firmly. If you skip to the conclusion, you’re just booing your outgroup.
Don't have the time, so I'll delete the comment.
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God, I wish Trump was as vile as you imagine him to be.
Why? What more vileness do you want from him?
I don't know about that guy, but I'm still salty that I was promised Right Wing Death Squads, and they never materialized.
I mean, if Trump was going to be the harbinger of death, he's been the shittiest one possible. He just whines about being disrespected, blusters about how he totally is on top of things, and acts as a bugzapper for progs to sperg out and suicide straight into with increasingly unhinged takes. Trump cant even get a proper militia running to shake down a library of degenerate trannies, much less round up every BLM activist and lynch them like they've been screaming about. The only faction in the last thirty that walked the talk of being a bunch of brutal bastards who wrecked shit has been ISIS and the Cartels. Putin hasn't nuked London, Kim hasn't invaded Seoul, Meloni hasn't sunk the migrant boats, Bibi hasn't initiated Nakba 2 and Trump hasn't killed a single fucking prog.
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Well, it is now looking like Trump may have been right. We know Wisconsin election was illegally ran in a way that probably tilt the balance from Trump to a Biden. The recent Georgia inquiry likewise shows different shenanigans in favor of Biden.
Add to it the hunter Biden false prebunking annd the interesting J6 revelations …are we sure Trump wasn’t the legit winner and Bisen is the one who ended democracy?
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How close was he?
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I mean, technically I'm not sure he's done multiple against a single opponent, but since convicted criminals can't run for President in Russia, and Putin has tight control of the courts, he only needs the one. And this is, in fact, his primary method of preventing election losses; IIRC he's done it to several candidates that looked like they were gaining steam.
Of course, the fact that Putin does, in fact, abuse disqualification is no defence of the tactic.
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What should a 'normal democratic leader' do if a political opponent appears to to have committed multiple crimes leading up to an election?
Well, the answer is he hasn’t.
The NY case (that appears to again be coordinated with the WH) is a joke. First, it is very unclear whether Trump committed the book keeping record violation. Second, it is pretty clear that Trump did not as a matter of law commit the predicate crime (Campaign Finance law violation) that enables the SOL to run. The prosecution would need to argue that Trump was mistaken about campaign finance law and thought notwithstanding the actual law the law was different. That is a tough hill to climb. Next the prosecution needs to prove that Trump made the book keeping error (which might not be an error) to cover up the non crime Trump thought was a crime despite Trump likely not even being involved with classifying the small claim on the books (ie he wouldn’t be looking at the books item by item). Then, there is a question of whether the NY law can even use federal law as the predicate crime. Andy McCarthy wrote about this. Finally, the prosecution is based entirely on the word of serial perjurer Michael Cohen. In a fair trial with a fair jury pool, this case is never brought because it’s absurd. The prosecution is relying on a politically motivated judge and jury pool. Keep in mind Manhattan went about 90% for Biden. With a good jury selection there were probably no Trump voters on this jury.
The documents case is legit (albeit some of the info coming out suggests the government may have been trying to set Trump up and he fell for it). But Biden then has to answer “why Trump and not Biden” since Biden has his own documents violation. There is also the Clinton precedent (remember she unilaterally deleted evidence under subpoena).
The Jan 6 case was a case of protected speech. Trump didn’t do anything that was illegal. Moreover, there is an arguable double jeopardy question. Finally, it seems likely that some of the indictments will be mooted by the SCoTUS (not on immunity claim but in a collateral challenge by J6 defendants). Again here the prosecution is primarily relying on judge and jury pool (DC went 95% for Biden; Haley won the Republican primary).
The Georgia case is an absolute mess. If you read the entire context of the call, it is clear that Trump believes there was massive fraud (which given what is happening in Fulton inquiry looks more likely by the day) and wasn’t asking to manufacture fake voters; instead, he was making the point the margin of victory was so small and the fraudulent votes (in his mind) was so many that it wouldn’t take much to flip the state. That again is protected speech and isn’t illegal. Turning that into a RICO is just insane. Add in Fani’s unprofessional behavior where she has committed forensic misconduct and appears to have engaged in a kick back scheme also calls into question the soundness of the prosecution.
I say none of this as a Trump guy. I wish RDS had won.
Again, because Biden, Pence, and other politicians when informed immediately returned some documents. The problem isn't having the documents. It's an expectation that in a world where there are 9 trillion documents, some classifield ones will get moved, not out of malice or illegal acts.
If Trump had done what Biden, Pence, and others did, there would be no case.
But, when you refuse to work with the agency tasked to get these records, show said records to other people and talk about how they're classifield, and more, yeah, that's worse.
It's the difference between accidentally forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket and running out with a shopping cart full of electronics.
You're lying through your teeth here. Nothing Trump did comes remotely close to the seriousness of HRC's breach of confidential document rules and if he had done what she did there would be nowhere on Earth free from triumphant news broadcasts talking about his perfidy.
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Again, the sheer magnitude and location of Biden’s document location suggest a lot of “forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket.” Some of those documents were documents you were supposed to only review in a clean room. Kind of hard to analogize that as “forgetting you put a candy bar in your pocket.”
Also this ignores Hillary who pretty clearly had the server to avoid FOIA and then destroyed the evidence under subpoena.
Finally, there seems to be some evidence that NARA and DOJ was trying to entrap Trump.
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On 1. Can a lawyer answer for me how that case has gone forward. It feels as though there are serious questions on the law in the case versus proving whether he did the acts in question.
Interpreting the law seems like a question for judges not juries. I guess my question is did Bragg provided the SOL run to the current judge and he agreed it’s a correct interpretation. Now the jury is deciding if he did the actual acts? If he’s convicted then does Trump challenge Bragg’s interpretation of the law to try and get the conviction thrown out. To me it would make more sense to challenge the legal interpretation of the law first (does SOL apply). Then do the jury trial.
Even if Trump is convicted now I feel like there are years of appeals. Potentially all the way to the SC to litigate whether SOL applies. Obviously not a lawyer but I would have thought he could have done a lot of challenges before the trial on the SOL issues. There is no reason to have a jury trial on whether he’s guilty if the underlying act he’s accused of either isn’t a crime or is protected by SOL.
The New York courts get to decide the law. They're not impartial. Any appeals would have to go all the way through the New York system (with Trump potentially imprisoned the whole time) before reaching the Supreme Court. Which would most probably simply reject any appeal on the grounds that there is no substantial Federal question.
I think Arizona V. US logic and preemption could be in play.
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I'm 100% with you except for the massive fraud stuff. This political witch hunt is setting up banana republic style precedents where if you want to stay out of jail after your time in power you must remain in power forever... It is terrible for the country. The US election process is pretty safe and accurate though and the stolen election stuff is just wrong.
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Judging by precedent, studiously ignoring them seems to be a popular option.
Yes. Multiple times in our history, our politics has chosen the openness of the electoral system over strict adherence to the law.
This kind of prosecutorial discretion used to be considered 'wisdom', the kind of compromise that keeps the system going at the expense of absolute legalism.
I always deeply resented the sort of "wisdom" you're describing, and that hasn't really changed. I resent the fact that our political establishment has insulated itself from any form of legal accountability, and one of the reasons I continue to support Trump is because I want the contrast as stark as possible. Prior to Trump, one could claim that the insulation from legal consequences was at least impartial, because both sides enjoyed it. Now we see that both sides enjoyed it because they were part of the establishment, not because the system was actually impartial. The common knowledge is useful for coordinating defiance to that establishment.
This wisdom is why the South is currently the most patriotic part of the country instead of a hotbed of political terrorism and separatist ideology.
I'm legitimately not sure whether you're being sarcastic or not. The argument would make sense either way.
I'm serious. The light hand used against the ex-rebels after the Civil War -- Reconstruction but not imprisonment or execution -- played an important role in reconciling the South to once-again membership in the Union.
No argument there. But Reconstruction didn't actually work like it was supposed to, resulting in Jim Crow, and that sowed the seeds for lots of problems we're still dealing with. There's an argument that letting things slide helps keep the peace, but if people start noticing that one cohesive group has its wrongdoings ignored, and another group has even non-wrongdoings hammered mercilessly, that builds resentment.
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Repression of dissidents is a feature of every political regime. No exceptions.
What is true here is that the US establishment has become a lot less subtle in its repression, and is now forced to employ overt tactics. Since they are foxes who thrive on good optics, this is a show of weakness.
The motte: To the degree that this is true, it is so vague that it is useless. It is like saying "every animal can survive outside water", implying (a) for some non-zero time span (b) in microgravity (c) with the correct air pressure.
The bailey: To the degree that it is non-vague, falsifiable it hints at 'repression is a key element in any regime', or 'the amount of repression is similar between regimes' this is false.
If someone asked you 'I want to have a system with minimal political repression, should I pick Stalin's Russia or Obama's US?' and you reply 'Repression is universal, so it does not matter', that is akin to answering 'what would make a good pet for my terrarium, a hamster or a gold fish?' with 'every animal can survive outside the water, so it does not matter'.
How much repression a political regime commits is a function of its weakness rather than its ideological character or theoretical 'system'. Stalin's communist party committed mass political repression because it was the only way for the regime to survive. The US regime under Obama's presidency committed very little political repression because its headwinds were weak; the moment it ran into a slight uptick in resistance in the mid-2010s, this was revealed to be from lack of need rather than a principled tolerance built into its constitution.
Repression in the USA now seems comparable to the more muted level of the USSR between Khrushchev and Glasnost. Its methods are different. But, as an individual, it is impossible to question the ruling ideology of the US without reprisals that eject one from any decision-making or managerial role in any important organization. Groups, meanwhile, will be harassed with impunity by mobs and lawfared into submission or irrelevance, as you can see with VDARE.
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Both have torture and executions. If you are a true opponent of either establishment your fate is almost exactly the same. Misery and death for you and your loved ones.
The answer to this question depends on your own beliefs and how tolerable they are to a a given regime, not how tolerant a regime is, because there is no such thing as a tolerant regime except in the sense that it is secure and unchallenged. Power suffers no competitors. If you are dangerous to the establishment you will be robbed, killed, tortured. No exceptions.
What you're doing here is simply denying moral community to terrorists and other enemies of yourself, a (to a degree) supporter of the establishment. You're fine with some people getting tortured and executed. Because they're not human in the sense you care about.
This is fine. It's nothing special. But if we want to have any sort of reasonable debate about the nature of politics, you have to remove yourself from this ideological frame and consider things from the outside.
I'll gladly embrace the bailey: repression is a key element of every single political regime that has ever existed, including the one you live under right now, and no regime could even exist without it. As for the quantity of the repression, it's a function of how secure the regime is and essentially nothing else.
I am a utilitarian, numbers matter to me. The main difference between gitmo and the gulags are the scale. Now, I thought gitmo was an abomination when it was first established by GWB and I think the same to that day.
We have two options to compare these systems. One is to count every act of state violence against members of the population. Of course, this puts us in morally ultra-relativist territory: "Some states have the death penalty for murder, rape, gay sex, criticizing the party, theft, not bowing deep enough, apostasy, listening to enemy radio stations, arson. All of these serve to keep the regime in power, therefore all of the acts forbidden are morally equal as forms of political dissent." Or we could claim that some of these acts are intrinsically more political than others. States not (at least in principle) punishing murders leads to a bad equilibrium (feuds), so almost all states at least notionally have laws against murder on the book.
But even if you count the whole US prison industrial system as pure repression, by the numbers I would gladly pick the US over the 1940s USSR even through a veil of ignorance where I materialize as a random citizen. And that is before we even go to the indirect advantages of having less repression, like
The version I could agree on is 'every system of government has a minimum of repression it requires to stay in power'.
Some governments deal out too little repression and are overthrown, like the Weimar Republic.
But a common feature of the more repressive governments is that they overdo repression. Almost no organization ever declares that its mission is accomplished and disbands itself. The secret police is no exception. There will always be someone who is the first to stop applauding after Comrade Stalin gives a speech, some intellectual who is the least aligned with the party line.
And some ideologies are more accepting of repression than others. A communist who declared that the class struggle is over, all the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries are defeated would have to answer uncomfortable questions about when exactly the communist utopia will become reality, while in a liberal democracy a lack of life-or-death conflict should be the default state.
One's moral position is entirely irrelevant to descriptive analysis.
You're playing the Botero to my Machiavelli here. The idea that the USSR is better or worse than the USA is less than useless to predict the behavior of either power. I won't have the Prince submit to God's higher power as a prerequisite of our discussion, because I'm interested in how politics actually works, not how it ought to.
This is a widely believed myth that does not understand that Hindenburg's maneuver to the right was precisely meant to repress the communists in a way he thought he could better control. He couldn't of course. But Weimar had much stronger repression than people think.
You are directionally right however in that it is his own scruples that led to him being circulated away. A common feature of the fall of elites is that they grasp for hard power at the last minute but do not possess the resolve to use it when it is actually necessary.
This I think is our real disagreement. You (and you are in numerous company there) believe that ideology is the precursor to political action, that people think of things to do and then do them, and therefore that various ideologies can justify themselves into doing various levels of things.
I disagree. I think ideology comes after political action, and is merely a justification mechanism. I think any group who has large enough an interest to do something will find a way to justify it within any ideological framework, to degrees that look absurd from the outside.
And I can engage to my side the countless points in history in which politicians have acted seemingly against their declared principles. They are almost too numerous to count. Was Reagan collaborating with Iran really coherent? Was Mao declaring himself "right wing" at the end of the cultural revolution coherent?
It was not, but coherence is a luxury you build on top of power. Not the other way around.
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There can be different scales of repression though. A regime that can securely survive a larger range of human behaviors will restrict its populous to a wider range of behaviors than a less secure regime.
Its true that all regimes have boundary conditions of what they will accept, and that outside of those conditions they will suppress to whatever degree is required to be effective.
But different regimes have different ranges they permit and different means for being flexible and changing those domains.
You're just flattening everything to one question- "does a boundary exist" without considering the relevance of the properties of that boundary.
This is true, but it is also not a function of ideology. Merely of how secure a regime is.
It's the insecurity that allows the state to grow total, not ideology that prevents it from doing so.
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This comment is unhinged. I'm reminded of the quote (paraphrasing) "You condemn a black-and-white morality as having only two colors; but you replace it with grey, which is only one."
To my knowledge, the Obama administration only sought the torture and execution of one US citizen on political grounds (Snowden). I'm quite happy to deny "moral community" to the nation's enemies, which is why I drew the line at US citizens.
Putin's Russia is wildly different. Take for instance Trump's election while Obama was in power. How does that fit into "Power suffers no competitors"?
What about Abdulrahman al-Awlaki? I suppose being the family of a political enemy is "political grounds" but then that decays into agreeing with me.
Unlike you, I'm not convinced that the ceremonial power structure of the US maps onto its real power structure. In a presidential election, who the ruling class is is almost never on the ballot. And when it is is precisely when the historic assassinations start to happen.
I admit I had not heard of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki before.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121103143344/http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-airstrike-that-killed-american-teen-in-yemen-raises-legal-ethical-questions/2011/10/20/gIQAdvUY7L_story.html
Is that actually the best example you can come up with? I think it proves my point.
I mean we are talking about civilian US citizen casualties of the Obama administration specifically. That's a narrow category that people only really care about because citizenship is supposed to entitle you to some protection from the US government on paper (but does not because power comes first and constitutional decorum second).
We can talk more broadly about how the US treats its enemy populations if you want. People seem to have forgotten about Abu Grahib. I have not.
Fair enough. But you're the one who brought up the Obama administration by specifically claiming it used "torture and executions" (plural) as methods of political repression. To me "political" implies intra-country, not extra-national, but maybe you meant a more expansive definition of that word?
You talk abstractly about vague notions of 'political repression', but I have no idea who, concretely, you're talking about.
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The twisting to come to this conclusion is almost head spinning. I hear what you're saying from a 10,000 foot level, but the boots on the ground reality does not match with your assessment of this hypothetical. Some regimes and societies are better to live in than others. That is just a fact. If you would rather live under Stalin than Obama then I don't think anyone can have a real conversation with you unless you're a hard core USSR stan.
For who? For whom? If I were a bolshevik and all else were equal, it would be the rational choice.
Besides, I'm not seeing a counter argument.
How about a more extreme example then rather than just the revealed preference as shown by the Berlin wall needing to be put up. Just about anyone in the world would rather live in the USA than Bangladesh. One country and society is obviously better by any reasonable metric I can personally think of. Just because both governments may do something you don't like doesn't make them the same.
Who said I don't like it? That's never been in contention here. It doesn't matter if I like it or not, nor if you do, it's how things are.
In practice I do think our predicament is a bit tragic, would be nice if Isildur could hold the ring and be just fine, but I'm still waiting for you to engage the point instead of some imagined position.
Being a "True Opponent" of either Putin (and establishment in Russia) or Obama (and establishment in US) does not have the same result. So by "True Opponent", what do you mean exactly?
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Help help I'm being 'repressed! https://youtube.com/watch?v=l8ukak8P2vY
What I've always found interesting about this sketch is that in a way, Dennis and Arthur believe the same thing: that if you tell a nice story about who should have power and why, that somehow magically makes you legitimate. The difference only being that Arthur thinks powerful mythical imagery is the way to go, whilst Dennis favors verbose tirades about procedural specificity and mandates from the people.
A familiar opposition to anyone familiar with the XXth century. But both are ultimately wrong (and ridiculous), which is my whole point.
It is Mao, Rand, Marx and Hoppe who are right: power comes from violence.
The reason Arthur is king and Dennis is a peasant has nothing to do with how cool either's absurd story is. It's all down to the fact that the former holds the sword and would normally lob the latter's head instead of ineffectually kicking him into being quiet. Which is why, if you remove that essential part of the process it becomes absurd.
Incidentally, if you reverse who holds the sword, you get another funny sketch about someone who thinks in mythical imagery trying to ineffectually invoke that to deal with an entirely procedural democratic system. Which is to say:
So to circle back to @quiet_NaN's point. It is much better to be a an actor playing a peasant in a Monty Python sketch than to be an actual peasant in 6th century Britain. Things are actually quite a bit better now.
As NaN so eloquently states. Repression is not a blanket catch all, nor an equally applied device. There are gradients and subtilties. To compare the USA currently to Nazi Germany or Russia or the Stasi in East Germany is farcical.
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On the other hand, it’s iirc a tactic kagame has used to remain in power, and Orbán, erdogan, etc could very plausibly do something similar.
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To be fair, Putin doesn't need multiple trials. Just one is enough. And sometimes a trial isn't even needed.
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What? He literally had his political opponent thrown in the gulag where he died. What are you on about?
Somehow 5 downvotes...For something 100% factually correct. Along with Ditto blocking me, amazing stuff really.
What makes it a gulag instead of a prison? How are American jails different?
If they locked up Trump, would you refer to American prisons as "gulag"?
Because "maximum security labor camp in the Russian Arctic" is literally the actual definition of a gulag.
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Missing the forest for the trees here don't you think? I'm using the term gulag because that is what the Russian prison system and work camps were called in western media for decades, no need for quotes. If you mix in some forced labor and politically motivated charges then you've got yourself a gulag. So if they had Trump breaking rocks and cutting lumber and he got sick from being outside in the winter then yeah it would be an American gulag. The term is still used as a mildly derogatory nod towards Russian notions of justice. The gulag is bad, but not as bad as suffering from the one of the rash of defenestrations that seem to come for you if you badmouth the boss man.
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