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Trump’s Non-Crimes and Civil War
Even if Trump had done everything they say, particularly in this ridiculous Fulton County indictment, there would still be no crime. Even (“even!”) Trump did not prosecute Hillary for her obvious and numerous prison-worthy failures and crimes. I recall that this was largely due to a combination of advice he was given, from “You really don’t want to do this,” to “… and you can’t anyway.” We had averted President HRC, and I think most of us were happy enough to leave it at that, given the miserable spectacle of a President targeting a political rival via the DOJ. D’oh!
OVERTURNING
This term “overturn” is packed to the gills with manure. Until Congress certifies slates of electors and so forth, the election is not over. It takes a staggering ignorance to think that exit polls and preliminary counts make anything official. Even if Trump had gone door to door in Congress begging for a friendly ear to challenge slates, he would still be within the Constitution.
The term “overturn” strongly implies that (and may be meaningless unless) the election was over at the time of Trump’s actions. It wasn’t. Rand Paul was wrong when he said on January 6th that Congress had no license to interfere. Clearly Congress has such a license, or the path to certification would not pass through their hands. If they have reason to believe they are being handed fishy results, their duty — not privilege — is to push back. Then-VP Mike “Thirty” Pence said that he had no such power. Now he has changed his tune. Of course.
CIVIL WAR
We are on the cusp of guaranteeing a Civil War. No, it won’t look like the previous one. It will look much more like “The Troubles” of Ireland or any number of drawn-out guerilla campaigns. The deep state is criminalizing the political process. When criminal justice determines who wins elections, that is literally, with no hyperventilating, a police state. That will not go over well here.
Rand Paul spoke about the vice and virtue of compromise on his first speech in the Senate. He gave a longer, much better version of that speech to CATO. Compromise is not in itself a virtue, but can come in awfully handy in a pinch. Henry Clay (whose desk Rand now occupies, and who figured prominently in the speech) worked to deliver the compromise, which may have averted civil war in the short term, and may have made a much more brutal war inevitable down the road. Some things are beyond compromise, because some things are worth fighting for. Or against.
WELP
I don’t know who’s going to win the primary (on either side!), and I certainly don’t know about the general. I do know that Trump is not doing us or himself any favors with his cantankerous and erratic behavior. I know that DeSantis has been a slam-bang governor, and would make a good President. Missing some of Trump’s charm — making up for it in numerous ways. So I’m divided and quiet about the primary process.
I’ll vote R in the general, unless the Gripping Hand comes down before then. But I’m really leaning back toward Trump support despite all the you-know-what from him, because no party, no candidate, no population deserves what is happening to them, to him, to us. It seems that we just can not quote Gulag Archipelago or 1984 fast enough to keep up with current events: Show Trials. A Culture of Denunciation. Zampoliti. Decadence/depravity/debasement. Debt, taxes, and inflation. Bread and circuses. Atomization of the family, alienation of children, and their seduction by the state.
All of this has happened before. Just not here.
THE GRIPPING HAND
If the GOP can not resist siding with Democrats to imprison our candidate, there will be Hell to pay, and no Republican will be elected for a generation, if ever. That party will die. That is not what I want. I’m happy enough with the HFC/McCarthy deal, happy enough with generating wins where we can, happy enough with the appropriate level of carping and elbowing to get these dudes working for us at least some of the time. Why am I not more uproarious? Because I do not think that any replacement party would be more effective. As soon as it finds its way around DC, it would simply join the blob. There’s no winning that fight. Trump-1 was the closest we’ve come, and (in the words of Christopher Walken’s mob enforcer in True Romance) it won’t ever get that good again.
Georgia has a panel that can dismiss any “rogue prosecutor,” as DeSantis just did in Florida. So perhaps Georgia Governor Kemp will give the Fulton County DA her walking papers for this ridiculous prosecution? Maybe not. Let me open your eyes to something that a member here linked in another thread:
Former House Speaker, Republican John Boehner (far left), and current Georgia Republican Governor, Brian Kemp (far right), attend a Stop Trump political strategy session in Sea Island, Georgia, May 2023. The strategy session was how to align with Democrats to destroy the MAGA insurgency.
— Sundance, Conservative Treehouse (CTH)
That’s right. The fix may be in. More from that article by Sundance at CTH:
Brian Kemp and his Republican party crew support corrupt district attorney Fani Willis, just like former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supported U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in the targeting of the Tea Party (2011, 2012). The alignments are exactly identical.
There are states where the professional [GOPe] republican grip is tight, and there are states where the MAGA insurgency has gained strength loosening that corporate club grip. Georgia is a state where the party apparatus is gripping the reins tight and not willing to let the populist movement impede their professional political stranglehold.
This is the sort of thing that will get me to not vote R at all in the general. I mean, why on Earth should I, or anybody? So I’ll give this time to ripen. It’s a single source so far from one of our more conservative outlets. That doesn’t make him wrong — that means that the situation bears watching.
But why not vote for the lesser of two evils, and save us another four years of whomever they slide in after Biden? Our individual election wins, while celebrated and productive of good things, are not sufficient to interrupt the general, accelerating trend. One election at a time, we are losing this country. Trump is not the cure to anything, but allowing this runaway government to gobble up our rights and our liberties is unacceptable. I haven’t been excited about Trump this time around, but I am increasingly ill-at-ease about what is happening all around us. Perhaps you’ll pardon an old quote at length:
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
War, if it comes, will not be Republican vs. Democrat, nor rich vs. poor, nor black vs. white. It will be what Angelo Codevilla identified as Ruling Class vs. Country Class. The bureaucracy and its jackboots vs. the rest of us.
There’s more to say, but that’s enough for now.
Published in General
Reserved.
Minor edits — found Rand Paul’s speech!
We’ll see what happens when Mr. Trump goes to jail. Or God forbid anything worse.
Well done.
I’m so glad we got good ol’ Scranton Joe in there so we could restore all the norms.
The total lack of outcry by most of the GOP shows the fix is in.
Some more minor edits. Not like the point changed.
Trump was doing his duty. Too bad nobody else was. Perhaps Ted Cruz was attempting to do so before the Democrats let the false flag agents and the gullible mob into the capitol. Most of the rest of government was just letting it happen. Nobody would have had to die that day if somewhere along the line someone had said “Wait a minute. Maybe we should check this out.” It was a most disappointing time when courts and legislatures across the land reneged on their duty to defend the Constitution of the United States.
Wow. It wasn’t the Democrats who authored the destruction of Donald Trump and his friends and associates. It was Republicans.
There is only one answer at this point. Trump needs to start a brand-new party. He could do it overnight using the Internet.
The rest of the current Republican candidates can have the old party. Have fun, guys! Enjoy the wine coolers.
This is where I am. I really want to vote for DeSantis, but I am thisclose to throwing all my support to Trump just out of spite. I hate what our government has become, and I don’t know if the broken trust between citizen and government can ever be repaired. I do think the only way such repair can begin is if there’s a serious reckoning for all the evils our government has visited on our citizens and the world, and many, many elected officials and bureaucrats go to prison. Until that happens, our government will continue to be seen as untrustworthy. We cannot just sweep it all under the rug and carry on.
Me too
I echo your thoughts, Drew. This last indictment was the final blow. I’m not fully convinced, but if events unfold as they have, I may decide I don’t have a choice. Sigh.
That’s quite a photograph.
My husband was one of those millions of American Democrats who heard Carter’s malaise speech and changed his registration to Republican the very next day.
That photograph may have the same effect on Republicans.
Only this time, people will just drop out of politics completely.
This is exactly right. The cowardly legislature outsourced their duty to the courts, but the courts are not the right place to deal with election fraud or any political question. Legislatures have to do the right thing. If they believe there is fraud they have to either not certify electors or have their own inquiries into the vote. They can’t rely on courts which are too slow to actually allow the problem to be found and addressed. Much as I admire Rand Paul I agree he was wrong. I do think Pence was right in that he had no unilateral power to do anything about the election, but the senate and house had a roll to play.
Unfortunately, the media being what they are today, most people will probably never see it. It’s not like it was a Presidential speech covered by the major networks to the exclusion of most other programming.
I can’t go today, but I will go Monday to change my affiliation to unenrolled. I would never treat people the way the Democrats and Never Trumpers have treated the J6 protesters and Donald Trump.
I don’t want to be associated with them in any way anymore.
I fear something worse. In that incompetent clown show called Fulton County, I fear a Jack Ruby will emerge. You better order your My Patriot emergency food kits now because you might need them. Honestly, I believe that would be just fine with most Democrats.
That would be true if we were comparing him to our fellow church members, but we should not, it just isn’t fair. Instead, we should all ask how we would act if our government ran an 8-year attack on us, lying about our actions, depriving us of our job, raiding our homes, attacking family members, draining our wealth defending ourselves, and finally trying to make us spend the rest of our lives rotting in jail.
I dare say none of us would have handled it as well as Trump has. We don’t need to speculate for long. Sooner or later they will come for us, too.
Stipulated. It’s just not productive.
The ur-Orange Man Bad. He looks less orange in that picture.
Hmmm, but, who would this new Jack Ruby target?
(The original killed Oswald, not Kennedy.)
I’m not even sure what’s productive anymore. At least, what’s productive with voters. The only things that seem to motivate the ruling class are power and money.
Though I know that modern protest songs like that Rich Men North of Richmond strike a chord with the proles. That seems productive.
That clean-handed paper-pusher?
/sarc
Yeah, that was a weird exchange.
True but Ruby basically shot Oswald at the courthouse surrounded by police, Fulton County seems capable of that level of incompetence. Good news is Trump still has his Secret Service protective detail.
I must have missed it, which exchange?
Unless it were suddenly to become bad news.
If it has gone so far that the Secret Service is complicit in an assassination of a protectee from the party out of power then we are already in a civil war.
Well, as mentioned there were police all around Oswald, but they didn’t stop HIM from being killed. They don’t necessarily need to be outright complicit, just… negligent.
Is 6 month supply enough?
Depends on where you live. Red county, red state probably. Red county, blue state possibly. Blue county, Red state not likely. Blue county, blue state doesn’t matter because it will just be stolen in the looting.