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Good information. That criminal belongs in prison. He isn't a real judge and needs to be arrested.
So you think that instead, Saddam Hussein should have been made a federal judge, perhaps? (I mean, Hussein was none of our business, he was the business of the people of Iraq, but when people like Hussein attain power here, it *is* our business.)
Think about it. What are our alternatives? Let people who commit crimes against humanity run the country, or *stop them*. Poindexter proves that if they aren't imprisoned or executed or at least forced to flee the country, they just keep coming back to commit more crimes against humanity.
Obviously, I'd love to get them out of power at the ballot box and using the rule of law. But if they're stealing elections and planting fake judges in the courts, and still being wildly destructive and incompetent -- what do you suggest people do, just roll over and let them run things? Seriously? Even if you think people should do that, and there's an argument for it, people won't.
The North of the US got fed up with this sort of minority rule in 1860, and elected a President who was going to make it stop. It still could have gone peacefully, but the slavers *refused* to leave power peacefully and started a war by attacking Fort Sumter.
France got fed up with incompetent minority rule in 1789. It still could have gone peacefully, but the King secretly conspired with foreign armies to invade France.
Russia got fed up with incompetent minority rule in 1909. It still could have gone peacefully, but by 1917 it was apparent that the Tsar was going to reject all attempts to introduce even the most mild form of democratic checks and balances on his idiocy, and sure enough, he raised an army to attack the democratically elected government. (And then the Bolsheviks ran a coup against the democratically elected government, which is one of the major dangers.)
I want to make sure we get these traitors out of power peacefully before it comes to any of those scenarios. And it looks like we still have a chance, provided they will actually leave power when they lose elections.
Perhaps the correct role model is AMLO (Lopez Obrador) in Mexico. When (in his opinion) the Presidential election was stolen from him, he announced that it was stolen and that he was the legitimate President, and ran huge rallies... but he demanded recounts and so forth, bided his time and kept everyone peaceful for another election cycle. Same thing happened at the next election. The election after that, the people in power knew that stealing the election would be *dangerous* -- the vote was a landslide -- and they allowed the election to go through honestly, and Lopez Obrador is now President of Mexico.
Acting like election theft is legitimate is *not* helpful. Because the people aren't going to agree with you about that. And here's the real danger: if the elite act like election theft is legitimate, people will reject the entire system and start supporting much more dangerous idea, like fascism and Bolshevism. If we loudly call out the election thieves and fake judges, point out that they are aberrations, not part of the real system, then people will retain respect for real elections and real judges. But if all the VIPs are seen to accept fake judges and election theft, then people are much more inclined to "throw the baby out with the bathwater", abandon democracy entirely, and support Bolsheviks or fascists. This is what history shows. It's extremely dangerous. It's happened *recently* in several countries.
For peace, it is *critical* that the mass of people believe that they *can* resolve their problems with the government by getting majority support and then voting. When getting a majority and voting isn't sufficient because of election theft, people look to other, more dangerous options. Democracy is the guarantor of peace.
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EVNow
Well-Known Member
Do you think people who cause massive harm (say a million people killed) should be held accountable? All I ask for is a criminal tribunal at The Hague.
Is that dangerous talk?
Is chanting “lock her up” same as calling for protection for Mueller investigation ? Both sides are not equal - one side is fascist, the other is not.
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
Being an ole operations type, I spend most of my time thinking about the root of a problem and how to go about solving the problem.
A good friend of mine has told me Americans do not want to solve problems and thus my thinking is likely obsolete.
One thing has become more apparent to me and it is disappointing.
My theory is there are two things that bind us as Americans (two things that we should all agree on despite our political differences). They are On voice One vote and Rule of Law.
It is becoming clear to me that one side is working very hard to stave off the inevitable (becoming a minority) by using voter suppression cloaking the effort under the umbrella of voter fraud. Those that vote for this side are not outraged by this and thus One Voice One Vote does not appear to be a shared value.
It is also clear that one side as adopted a leader who has little respect for the Rule of Law and, like women, sees the law is something to be purchased. Those that vote and support that leader are not outraged by this.
My conclusion is that life has gotten too easy, we are cruising on the wave of work done by those that came before us and we no longer have core shared values. I too believe there is a reckoning coming. Things to not continue working well out of shear dumb luck; they require constant attention. Our attention is elsewhere and results are predictable.
Oh, and about the latest SCOTUS addition, it was a job interview, the interviewee failed miserably by his own performance and yet he was hired anyway. Like our politicians, we are no longer hiring on competence and quality of person. That is really no surprise. If voters do not take the time to hire competent representation why should the representation we hire turn around and hire competent judges?
A good friend of mine has told me Americans do not want to solve problems and thus my thinking is likely obsolete.
One thing has become more apparent to me and it is disappointing.
My theory is there are two things that bind us as Americans (two things that we should all agree on despite our political differences). They are On voice One vote and Rule of Law.
It is becoming clear to me that one side is working very hard to stave off the inevitable (becoming a minority) by using voter suppression cloaking the effort under the umbrella of voter fraud. Those that vote for this side are not outraged by this and thus One Voice One Vote does not appear to be a shared value.
It is also clear that one side as adopted a leader who has little respect for the Rule of Law and, like women, sees the law is something to be purchased. Those that vote and support that leader are not outraged by this.
My conclusion is that life has gotten too easy, we are cruising on the wave of work done by those that came before us and we no longer have core shared values. I too believe there is a reckoning coming. Things to not continue working well out of shear dumb luck; they require constant attention. Our attention is elsewhere and results are predictable.
Oh, and about the latest SCOTUS addition, it was a job interview, the interviewee failed miserably by his own performance and yet he was hired anyway. Like our politicians, we are no longer hiring on competence and quality of person. That is really no surprise. If voters do not take the time to hire competent representation why should the representation we hire turn around and hire competent judges?
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I agree, but that seems to be in conflict with some of your previous statements that there is little difference between the sides:
No. Donald Trump isn't really a Republican. He's a wanna be dictator. 3rd world countries have had many of them and a few first world countries had them to. The one who did the most damage was Adolf Hitler who is the only dictator to seize control of a first rate industrial power with a professional military tradition. Mussolini is runner up as Italy was industrialized, but did not have the industrial base of Germany, nor the cultural discipline to become as powerful a fascist power.
But there have been others like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Franco, etc. The upside for us is Hitler was able to take advantage of a highly chaotic economy (inflation was like Venezuela today through most of the 20s) and Germany had very little experience as a constitutional democracy. The entire adult population had grown up under an absolute monarch. The US economy is in decent shape with low inflation (it could be better, but it's not a disaster yet) and the US is the oldest existing nation with a constitutional form of government. The rule of law is currently holding, but it's fraying.
The fact that he is president of the world's largest or second largest (depending on how you measure it) economy and the country with an absolutely staggering military scares me to the core. The Democrats have their problems, but they do recognize mentally ill politicians and try to limit their power. Most electted Republicans just enable Trump at every turn.
Trump does not have any ideology. He is a Malignant Narcissist, the worst form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Do you remember the movie Gremlins and there was that thing about not feeding them after midnight? If you did, very bad things happened. With a Malignant Narcissist, the worst thing anyone can do is give them even the slightest bit of power. All Trump cares about is feeding his ego (and money which is an extension of his ego). Nothing else matters. He would end the world in a heartbeat if he thought it would feed his ego. There is absolutely no limit to what he will not do to feed his ego.
Normal human beings can feel shame and guilt. That limits most people's behavior. He can't even understand what they are. He lacks the imagination to even try. The limit of his decency are canned responses he's learned he's supposed to say at certain times. He likes creating conflict because that feeds his ego too. People are fighting about him. He wants people fighting and upset because it feeds his ego. He is essentially a sociopath.
In a family, if one family member has some serious problem like mental illness, it sucks all the energy out of everything else. People have problems, but they get eclipsed by the person with the problem. That's what has happened in American politics. There are real problems the country needs to deal with, but those can't be addressed until the crazy person at the top is dealt with. That is issue #1 this election.
The Republicans have demonstrated that when they are in charge of Congress, all they do is try to please Donny. The Democrats don't have the numbers to put much in the way of any serious checks on his power. That's why we need the Democrats to control Congress at least until the nut job is gone because they are the only adults who have any will to do anything about him.
In the US there is a strong, well established rule of law tradition. History tells us that no matter what the society and their rules/laws/traditions they all eventually end. How will this end? Ruin for the US and quite possibly the entire planet? Or will the US reform and come out of this with all the loopholes in the rule of law patched and better than ever? Or something else we can't even fathom?
One thing I am sure of is the US is at a crossroads. There are many ways this could end very badly. And not just for the US.
Not to mention Castro and Mao, who out-murdered them all!
I suspect these omissions were intentional, however, and not due to forgetfulness. Liberals often have a soft spot for Communist butchers. They also like to pretend Hitler was not a Socialist, so as to evade association with his crimes.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
BS.
Ideology isn't one dimensional. If you look at two dimensions - a social and an economic one, you will understand better. Its important to note than Gandhi & Hitler didn't have the same ideology, after all.
The problem is the fascist/authoritarian ideology. Irrespective of whether they are right wing (like Pinochet) or left (like Stalin) or centrist (like Hitler).
As you can see most US politicians are actually right of center in economics and more authoritarian than libertarian. Trump was actually some what to the left of Hillary on economics (like trade issues) - though has now embraced mainstream Republican economic agenda otherwise, but much more authoritarian. Sanders is closer to Gandhi/the Dalai Lama than Stalin, and is closer to Social Democrats of Europe.
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EVNow
Well-Known Member
The question is - in what sense.
Ofcourse he is not a Republican in the sense of Weekly Standard - Reagan/Thatcher. But he is actually much more Republican than other primary contenders (Jeb !) in the sense of how closely he matched the ideology of the base. The reality is that most of the Republican base is socially conservative, economically centrist. Most Republicans voters couldn't care less about corporate tax rate or "free trade". That is something Trump cleverly exploited or happened to exploit because it fit his own ideology quite well.
Republican politicians have exploited social issues for decades - while when in power mostly pushing the right wing economic agenda (the so called dog whistle politics). Trump just uses the bull horn instead of the dog whistle. He made the sub-text, the text. He says out loud what some Republicans earlier whispered. This does make him less of a typical Republican politician for sure - but I don't think he is outside the mainstream Republican voter. People like Jeff Flake, who one might consider "real Republican", have to retire because they'll lose the primary. This tells all we need to know about who is a real Republican.
lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
You keep wanting to debate the relative merits of one side verses the other. Feel free to do so but if "your" side "wins" we still have ever increasing debt and the moral decadence of things like Bill and Hillary's destruction of women's lives who dare speak of Bill's indiscretions or Hillary's intentional avoidance of compliance with preservation of communication by using a private email server. Neither is illegal but I find both disqualifying for public service (along with Kavanaugh's behavior and lack of truthfulness).
If it would help, your side seems to be a little less bad then the other side along with being a little less competent (as in, they are not as good at being bad).
I stand by my position that, until we all decide that nothing that is going on is acceptable, nothing will change.
Your position can be simplified to the following, with absolutely no change whatsoever in meaning:
"Nothing will change."
And you're largely correct.
Your graphs are needlessly confusing/confused. Better is a simple two-axis chart graphing the degree of government control (from complete individual freedom all the way to totalitarian government control) over two dimensions of human activity: economic and social. The four quadrants can then simply and more-or-less accurately represent libertarians, totalitarians, American conservatives and American liberals.
But that's all pretty much irrelevant to my point above in the present discussion. For that, you would just need to add a third axis for murderousness!
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Those are not "my" graphs. This is from politicalcompass.org. I suggest you take their test to figure out where you actually fall in ideology.
BTW, there are a number of multi-dimensional models (Political spectrum - Wikipedia). Pick whichever you like and then let us plot typical Dems & Republicans and see where they fall - and how close or far away they are from Castro or Hitler.
It is very relevant to what you wrote - because liberals are the opposite of communists and have no softspot for communist butchers. Do you have a softspot for Pinochet ? If not, why are you not mentioning him ?
Fascism is "murderousness".
ps : I don't consider myself a "liberal", I'm a "progressive" or a Social Democrat in the political science terms.
I did not say you created the graphs, just meant you conveyed them. I should have thought that was obvious. I am a libertarian, and have no need of testing to figure that out. You should have been able to guess that already
American liberals are not opposite of communists - they tend to differ on degree of social regulation, but align much more closely on economic freedom (i.e., they are both against it!)
You are objectively wrong about libs having a soft spot for Communism. They do. Period. End of story. If you can't see that, I will never convince you, even as you wear your Che Guevara t-shirt.
As a libertarian, I have no use for Pinochet, but I will say I would rather live under his rule than that of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or, for that matter, Allende. You?
I did not mention communist leaders because communism comes from a different place than nationalism. In the end the behaviors are very similar. Absolute power tends to corrupt the same way.
His party affiliation has changed a lot over the years. He was a Democrat before 1987 and from 2001-2009, Reform party 1999-2001, and Independent 2011-2012. In campaign contributions, he has given more money to Democrats than Republicans because most of his businesses were in blue states and he wanted to be in good with the local politicians.
He doesn't actually have any real ideology except himself. His one and only talent is as a certain type of con-man/salesman. He's the sort of guy who works at one of those cheap used car lots that advertises their financing packages for people with bad credit.
His political "genius" was seeing the conclusion of what Fox News was selling when nobody else did. For the last 20 years Fox has been peddling fear to the segment of the population who watches their channel. The US, more than just about any other country, has always had a lunatic wing. I believe it's because the US became Europe's dumping ground for their crazy cults and their descendants have been here talking to one another ever since. Fox News tapped into that population by validating it. They would pick up on blog posts or anything else on the internet that was politically convenient for the message they wanted to push and they would start talking about it as "others are saying" and it would become a mainstream news story.
When Obama ran for president, they threw every conspiracy they could think of against the wall to delegitimize him. Few things stuck, but racism and the extension he wasn't really American is what stuck, even though the story backing the claim he wasn't really American can't hold together factually. It's what their audience ate up.
These people have been around, but had no voice until Trump. I saw the peripheries of this in the 1990s. I sometimes listened to Art Bell. It was live late night and was sometimes interesting. But he would have people like Jerome Corsi and Alex Jones on there for time to time. I also listened to the phone calls. I gave up listening a long time ago, but I remember some of the nutters on there.
I also worked with a guy who was kind of a militia movement guy during the Clinton years. Other than his political beliefs he was actually a nice guy and we were friendly. I've lost track of him, but his political views are not that different from Trump's followers today.
In the Democrats there is a slogan "kick the hippies" which is pander to the extreme left to get nominated, throw them an occasional bone to keep them happy, but otherwise ignore them. The Republicans have done the same with this fringe element on the right for many decades. The Koch family fueled them by getting these people to join their astroturf movements to hurt Democratic administrations starting in 1960.
Trump knows how to talk to these people and he rode their enthusiasm to the White House. But Trump is only about Trump. These people are just marks like his Trump University or Trump Steaks marks. He got them to buy what he was selling and he keeps them coming back for more. He has the rest of the Republican Party hostage because the Republican coalition has shrunk enough that any Republican politician needs these people to get nominated for another term, so they pander to them too.
If Trump could sell as effectively to eco-hippy socialists, he would be a leftist Democrat. It's all about who will buy whatever he's selling. Trump's apparent ideology is conservative because that's what it needs to be for this con. The only thing he believes in is himself.
Fascism (including Nazism) and Communism come from two very different ideologies. Fascism is very nationalistic, but is OK with private ownership, corporation, etc. Communism, at it's ideological core, is collectivist like a hippy commune. They do not believe in private ownership of anything. Communism is also an international ideology. They believe in spreading the ideology more like a religion than a political system.
In practice fascism and communism don't differ much. It varies from country to country, but the typical pattern has been one strongman at the top and everybody falls in line or gets severely punished. That's because of human nature rather than anything political. Any political system that leaves an opening for someone with the authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump to rise to the top will get someone like that at the top.
Lenin, in his final days, bemoaned that the Russian revolution failed because he saw Stalin had corrupted the revolution for his own ends and there was nothing he could do about it.
From the start of e-mail through Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State, all Secretaries used their own e-mail because the State Department's e-mail system was so badly designed. Colin Powell had a commercial domain email account. Hillary Clinton's was the most secure any Secretary had up to that point. There is no evidence her private email server was hacked after multiple investigations.
Hillary Clinton did mix private and State Department business on one email because she's a technophobe and the best they could do was get her using one email address on one device (a Blackberry). She would freeze up using anything else.
While Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State Congress passed a law requiring the Secretary to only use government email servers for government business.
Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs do not win him husband of the year, but all the proven instances were consensual. He was accused of non-consensual instances, but those cases were never proven. Instances like his thing with Monica Lewinsky was very inappropriate because he was her boss as well as cheating on his wife, but it was consensual.
There is a very strong case that Trump's people have had a private server that was not very secure used as a back channel with Russia and other countries. Trump regularly uses an insecure cell phone and it's come out the Chinese and Russians listen to everything. The GW Bush administration regularly did government business through RNC email to avoid the Presidential Records Act, which was clearly illegal at the time.
And as far as sexual impropriety goes, Donald Trump has a long list of inappropriate sexual allegations going back decades. Little has been proven yet, but the claims of inappropriate and non-consensual sexual behavior on the part of Trump are significantly more than were ever thrown at Bill Clinton.
This is an example of false equivalency. The Clintons are not saints and have done some things wrong. Everything they have done has been investigated thoroughly by special prosecutors, Congress, the FBI, as well as the media. The only hard evidence any of these investigations has turned up has not once risen to the level of a crime beyond the possibility that Bill Clinton lied about the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky under oath. And there the judge had ruled on the definition of "sexual relations" and what Clinton did with Lewinsky did not meet that criteria.
In a little over 2 years of investigation Robert Mueller has already gotten a number of people to plead to crimes committed for Donald Trump's benefit and one indirectly named Trump as a co-conspirator in his plea.
Here is a list of federal politicians convicted of crimes by administration:
List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes - Wikipedia
Look at people convicted in the Executive Branch by administration. Democrats have had a few here and there, but Republicans have had significantly more Executive Branch people convicted of crimes than Democrats. The last Republican administration to have zero Executive Branch convictions was Dwight Eisenhower. Since then John F Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Jimmy Carter had none.Bill Clinton had 2 and Barack Obama 1 (David Petraeus).
Democrats in Congress have been found guilty of crimes. The corruption is not one sided. However when the Executive Branch is being run by Democrats, there does appear to be less corruption. This despite Kenneth Starr investigating everything Clinton for most of his term in office and the Benghazi Committee in the House investigating Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration in general for years.
In any case, while the money in politics is a problem for us and it corrupts Democrats and Republicans, the lunacy in the White House is a far more serious problem. Up until 2017 the problem was draining the swamp. The swamp is currently on fire and we need to put out the fire before draining the swamp. One party is trying to fight the fire, the other is either standing by and watching it burn, or they are actively pumping in petrochemicals to feed the fire.
If the fire isn't put out soon, money in politics won't matter because the constitutional government will be irreparably broken.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
When it comes to the ability to lead the country in a better direction the email server is simply a non issue, and Bill's indiscretions are likewise immaterial. Bill may have been a crappy husband but he was a pretty good president. I don't expect perfection from people, I will weigh the importance of their flaws. I also don't see any of that as somehow being widespread across the whole Democratic party as you seem to be implying and don't see "ever increasing debt and the moral decadence...".
Perfection is the enemy of good. I see your position as paralysis in pursuit of perfection. That certainly guarantees that nothing will change.
My SO has pointed out for years that Bill Clinton is far from husband of the year, but it's between him and his family. Despite his personal flaws and strong political headwinds, he did a pretty decent job.
Something I have often told perfectionists.
The Democrats have their problems, but their problems are much more the types of problems politicians and political have in every established democracy in the world. The Republicans have a very serious fascism problem. An order of magnitude worse. The fascists are banking on the perfectionists having too many issues with the Democrats to join forces with them.
Churchill was an alcoholic with disastrous personal finances and Roosevelt was a womanizer with too much of an infatuation with communism. Stalin was a sociapathic dictator of the first order. Together they teamed up to lead their nations to defeating a collection of worse evil.
I rank both you and neroden as much better than I at history—any history; Nonetheless I take issue with Roosevelt being infatuated with communism, unless you mean, like Churchill.
Whatever progressive instincts Roosevelt had they were due to pressure from his wife. At the wartime conferences he always tried to soft talk Stalin by publicly baiting Churchill. Except for the Balkan invasion idea he usually gave in to Churchill on the military conduct of the war, much to the consternation of the Joint Chiefs. These problems began with the Argentia meeting with Churchill where the so-called Atlantic Charter called for no territorial swaps which gummed up cooperation with Stalin until Marshall was pressured into an improbable projection of a possible second front in 1942!
A colleague, an astute historian of US diplomacy, really faults Roosevelt for not preparing the American people for the changed nature of the post war period based on using Russian lives to save those of American soldiers. Worst was in choosing Truman and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on IMO. Stalin, of course, probably underestimated the cost of the war in the far east. We were fighting on two fronts.
In general Stalin was consistently pragmatic in foreign affairs. His whole beef with Trotsky was in extending commitments in China, for example, and his conservatism about maintaining control through the Comintern actually caused great harm in the long run. An alliance with the Social Democrats in Germany might have forestalled Hitler.
But enough of late night blather.
Whatever progressive instincts Roosevelt had they were due to pressure from his wife. At the wartime conferences he always tried to soft talk Stalin by publicly baiting Churchill. Except for the Balkan invasion idea he usually gave in to Churchill on the military conduct of the war, much to the consternation of the Joint Chiefs. These problems began with the Argentia meeting with Churchill where the so-called Atlantic Charter called for no territorial swaps which gummed up cooperation with Stalin until Marshall was pressured into an improbable projection of a possible second front in 1942!
A colleague, an astute historian of US diplomacy, really faults Roosevelt for not preparing the American people for the changed nature of the post war period based on using Russian lives to save those of American soldiers. Worst was in choosing Truman and keeping him in the dark about what was really going on IMO. Stalin, of course, probably underestimated the cost of the war in the far east. We were fighting on two fronts.
In general Stalin was consistently pragmatic in foreign affairs. His whole beef with Trotsky was in extending commitments in China, for example, and his conservatism about maintaining control through the Comintern actually caused great harm in the long run. An alliance with the Social Democrats in Germany might have forestalled Hitler.
But enough of late night blather.
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