Yes. With Rump EVERYTHING is self-referential. He is unable to take his eyes off himself for a second to see someone else, never mind acknowledge their greatness. Rump wouldn't fit inside John Lewis' pinkie toe...
Â
My God, I hope you are not right. Pardoning Rump would be as outrageous and infuriating as pardoning Roger Stone --Â a travesty. Most of the country wants to see him walk out of the WH in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit if necessary...for the majority of Americans who possess a moral code, they need to see this grifter/con artist (and his whole sickening grifter family) finally be accountable. I agree that all the other Presidents were fundamentally good men, took the job seriously and were patriots in their own ways. After nearly 4 years of a weak-kneed GOP we need to see justice finally served...this outrageous Con Man has escaped accountability far too many times in his crooked life.
It is possible Trump will be too mentally ill to serve time. Â It doesn't mean he will be pardoned. I would assume they are 2 different things. Â His offspring and offspring in-laws might serve time through.
Trump won't survive for long wherever he lands. [content removed] But the world needs to see him behind bars, no matter his condition. The public won't stand for him to live out his life in a nice place somewhere. If we did, what kind of message do we send to our children and the world about accountability. That's my 2 cents.
Count me as a member of the camp that has no desire to see the Windigo-in-Chief tried and imprisoned. Think about it. If we went down that route, we'd be creating one more media spectacle centered on a man who has thrived and kept himself relevant precisely by making his life a spectacle. We'd just pour fuel on a dying flame, and #45 is in fact dying. As a partisan of the prison abolition movement, I'm generally disinclined to the "throw him in prison!" impulse. But the man is already in a jail of his own making, and the more we refuse to give him attention, the further he will sink into his pit of no return.
Also, the statute that only mentally competent individuals can stand trial exists for a reason. It's to prevent abuse (many developmentally disabled black men in the Jim Crow South were sent to their deaths based on flimsy courtroom evidence). We can't say "but we can ignore that rule this one time because we're dealing with a very, very bad man." The T White House is a morass of arbitrary exception-making and rule-breaking. Let's stop the ethical disregard right here.
It is possible Trump will be too mentally ill to serve time. It doesn't mean he will be pardoned. I would assume they are 2 different things. His offspring and offspring in-laws might serve time through.
I agree. Especially in New York, the plea bargain for non compis mentis or what they refer to as "Dim Cap" -Diminshed Capacity, is frequently used. I could totally see that being part of his eventual plea deal.
@mas1581 I agree that Trump is a category of bad until himself. But I think you are too kind and forgiving in your description of Bush as a good man or the positives about Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the nightmare of the last four years makes people forget the damage and bad will of GW Bush and Ronald Reagan. Well I don't think people should forget what they did lest it happen again.
For the record: GW Bush. He may be a nice guy at a party. He may enjoy doing art now because it's another fun adventure in his vacuous privileged life.
But he came into the presidency as an arrogant rich kid, a spoiled brat, who thought, what the hell, I can be president even though I never studied in school and don't know much of anything. Bush clowned around in the front of the cameras on the day he launched a bloody attack on Iraq under false pretenses. For him, the presidency was a lark. He was religious, and said about his decision to attack Iraq, that he "prayed about it." Over million innocent people died because of what he claims God told him to do. He is also a war criminal.
Reagan ran a hate campaign against the poor, deregulated the banks, and large corporations, was anti-environment and ramped up climate change and climate denial. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House because of important research that showed that some time in the early 21st century, we would be heading towards an apocalypse because of what we were doing to the earth.
But Reagan, denying the science and pandering to the oil barons, took down the solar panels and opened us up to the climate denial movement.
Reagan ruined our chances of saving ourselves from global warming. He reversed the bipartisan movement that had started to protect the earth.
He also opened the floodgates to billionaires to run this country. They harmed the country and ruined lives. He also presided over special operations in Central America that propped up corrupt regimes and the murder of innocent people.
Neither of these two men have apologized for what they did. They do not earn the title of good men who meant well.
@jeanne-mayell I couldn't stand either one of them, although I'm sure that they weren't evil.
I never understood Bush going after Saddam instead of Osama - I mean, what was that bait and switch about? How Bananatown was that? And what bothers me is people went along with it. I thought well, I must have been wrong about 9/11 - until Obama said the same thing in a debate. Crazy.Â
My sister is a conservative, though not a Trump person at all, tried to explain to me that Republicans are for big business because it means employing people and growing the economy. Well I'm sure that was true in the '40s. Now these corporations take the money and run. This isn't the Republican party of my grandparents, that I know.
The reason that Shrub didn't go after OBL was because OBL was Saudi, from a wealthy oil family, and the Saudi Royals and the Bush family have a long relationship. And Cheney would have never allowed it either. Oligarchs all.
Yes! I've got no sympathy for either him or T. I hope they both go to prison for a long time. Barr has no respect for the rule of law and he is corrupt.
As for T., I can muster no sympathy. Yes, he has dementia, and yes, it is a horrid disease that no one deserves, but T. has spent his entire life screwing people over and hurting them. And he's not sorry at all. No remorse for anything. Not one bit. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. There must be justice for that.
You are so right, Jeanne ...
Dubbyah was railroaded in by Big Daddy and his cronies (remember all the Band-Aids on his face at the Inauguration)? He was scared s***less....
And Reagan? Heh, he ushered in Biggg Corporate Government.... though they both pale in comparison to the dark circus we're dealing with now.
If anyone is too young to remember these decades (mas?) when the perverted powermongers (in the guise of the good ol' boys' Grand Ol' Party) started to undermine our Democracy in the worst way, just do a little intuitive look back and read Jeanne's post again.
@stargazer George W Bush's own father, former president George Bush, was dismayed at his son's ignorance in leading a war against Iraq. Â His own father said it will be a bloody, costly war that the U.S. can't win. Â Father was right. Son was an arrogant fool who, like Trump, ignored his own State Department on the Intelligence that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction, and decided to operate from a small in-group within the White House, because he was a shallow fool. Â GW Bush was a bad president who will never be held accountable for his crimes.Â
Yesterday morning I was also thinking (more like seething) about those same things you shared concerning “Saint” Reagan and Dubyah. And let’s not forget about daddy Bush, who had Lee Atwater as his campaign manager and then later appointed him head of the RNC. Remember the infamous and racist Willie Horton ad Atwater used in Bush’s 1988 campaign against Dukakis? Karl Rove was Atwater’s protégé. Palin and a number of other Rs running in national and local races also used many of his fear-based tactics. Years later when he was dying from cancer, Atwater apologized for his actions, but unfortunately the seeds of racial fear and class division were further spread and germinated.
One of the morning shows recently featured the GOP strategist, Stuart Stevens, who spoke about today’s R party. Stevens doesn't believe that the Orange One hijacked the GOP. Instead, he says that Dumpism marks the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s dark side and its so-called "ideals." He said that a lot of Rs choose to believe that this dark side was a recessive gene, but Stevens says it's a dominant theme. Stevens says that the modern GOP never cared about the foundational issues it claimed to care about. Instead, he calls the R party a cartel, existing solely for the pursuit of power. Stevens blames himself for choosing to believe and perpetuating the lie.
Attached is an excellent article by David Corn, who interviewed Stevens about his recently published book, It was All a Lie: How the Rep Party Became D** T*.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/08/racism-republican-party-stuart-stevens/
Let's also not forget that the Bush administration created and sanctioned a torture system of secret prisons and extraditions -- approved by lawyers like John Yoo (who was recently advising Trump on how to pass unconstitutional laws, see https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/20/trump-john-yoo-lawyer-torture-waterboarding ). Bush was a chump, but he didn't come to power accidentally - all of the men who surrounded him - Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Karl Rove - were all former Nixonites who had been plotting a comeback for years. They planned to invade Iraq before 9/11. They were adherents of a philosophy founded by Leo Strauss, and the philosophy involves lying to the public - hence the lies about the Iraq war (see https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/04/international/europe/the-leoconservatives.html and https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article_1542jsp/ ). I suspect, when this is all history, we will see a similar trajectory with the Orange one - there was a kind of cabal that brought him to power in order to use him to further their own goals. Both GW and OO deserve the blame but that blame should be spread far and wide to all the enablers, plotters and evil-doers who propped them up.
We can never truly know what's in someone's heart or the true motivation for their actions. If we keep making the mistake of assuming a poor decision or policy is the product of ill intent, we will continue with the same tribal, Us vs. Evil (Them), political system that we have created. Each party has convinced itself that the Other party is no longer interested in helping the country, but only in destroying any opposition; and to a certain extent, this has become a self fulfilling prophecy. While it is, temporarily, more exciting to fight and struggle until we vanquish "evil," in the long run, this type of system can only lead to it's own self destruction. If that is what we choose to do as a collective, so be it. From destruction, comes rebirth and renewal. In the end we will learn the lessons we need to learn.
However, there is another path that we can decide to take. Rather than automatically assuming someone else's seemingly contradictory policy, viewpoint, or idea is proof that our fellow humans are plotting evil deeds, we can choose to assume that there is actually good intent but it is maybe just clouded by fear, poor judgement, inadequate knowledge or simply a different assessment of priorities. In this way, our politics becomes a struggle of Idea vs Idea, rather than Us vs Them.
Either way, we are in complete control of our collective way. However, the lessons we are here to learn (Unconditional Love) will be learned one way or the other. ❤️
Stevens doesn't believe that the Orange One hijacked the GOP. Instead, he says that Dumpism marks the culmination of an internal conflict that had existed for decades between the party’s dark side and its so-called "ideals.--@deetoo
I didn't even know that people thought that Trump hijacked the GOP, that the GOP was somehow "good" before Trump. Long before Trump was running, it was common knowledge that the GOP had gotten increasingly ruthless, greedy, and lawless. It has been the party of the Corporation (not the party of Lincoln). Only Republicans in their delusions think they are the party of Lincoln.
It's the party of stock quotes. I don't know how many of the 13 regimes we overthrew were done so by Republican presidents, but I do know we overthrew free people trying to have humane leaders and installed bad people almost always because of our corporate interests.
That has to stop. To prevent an instant replay, the GOP's priorities have to change or they have to be gone. We also need to realize that democratic presidents are also going support corporate interests as well, so we have to be discerning and not gullible.
I disagree strongly.
I continue to believe that the current US regime is NOT incompetent, rather they are opportunistically malevolent.
Sometimes you have to acknowledge Evil, face it, stand up to it, and defeat it.
Somewhere back in this thread I posted a link to an article called "How We Got Here". It outlines the 70+ years the GOP has spent trying to consolidate their power and wealth at the expense of everyone else and the planet. They abandoned all sense of altruism by 1950.
Your argument is just a kinder version of "fine people on both sides." It does not hold water with me.
I do agree that lessons will be learned, the hard way.
@lovendures Not sure, but it's not necessarily discomfort. My son does this, and has since he was a teen. It appears that it is mostly energy. I've had a lot of male students in classrooms who do it as well. They mostly say it's just energy--wanting to go run somewhere. The question would be whether or not Swan does this routinely or whether it's only in tense situations.