After Queen HIllary's coronation was ruined and the years of now-discredited Russiagate nonsense and two(!) bogus impeachments that followed, I'm not so sure the left likes fair elections either.
Claiming that people were bamboozled into casting votes for a particular candidate, is at least better than saying those votes were not legitimately cast at all (i.e. fraudulent). Lefties (grudgingly) acknowledged in 2016 that Trump did, in fact, get enough votes to win the electoral college, so they have a better track record on sucking up ballot box defeats than the "Stop the Steal" brigade.
Yes. They claimed that Russia was engaged in a state sponsored propaganda operation where troll factories churned out numerous false stories and propagated them throughout social media. This was real, known before the election, testified to in early (before the Mueller investigation) congressional hearings, and then confirmed by Mueller when he indicted and convicted (in absentia) numerous Russian officials. It is also where the term "fake news" originated - to be subsequently repurposed by Trump as a weapon against the press.
Yes, they spent a pittance to do that in an election where billions were sloshing around. I don’t even know how many decimal points you would need to arrive at a percentage. The idea that it somehow delegitimizes Trumps victory is beyond ludicrous.
The amount of money spent is irrelevant. Putin is a former KGB agent who is a master of psychological manipulation and using cheap techniques to undermine and destabilize his adversaries. He gets quite the bang for his buck.
As to whether or not Trump would have won without Putin's help is also somewhat beside the point. The mere fact that Trump was the candidate Putin got behind is an uncomfortable reality Trump's apologists would rather avoid confronting. Putin supported Trump because he knew how destabilizing he would be to American democracy. And he was right. No matter what legitimate concerns may have motivated Trump's voters, Putin knows a self-absorbed demagogue when he sees one, and how to best utilize him. He got his money's worth.
Firstly, "Russiagate" has *not* been discredited. Unless you believe that either a) Russiagate consisted solely of the Steele Dossier, or b) that an inability for Bob Mueller to bring a case of *criminal conspiracy* meant "nothing to see here".
In fact, the Steele Dossier was a red herring sideshow that had nothing to do with the initial investigation and was entirely independent of the underlying cooperation discovered by the FBI and Bob Mueller. And yes, Mueller's report did, in fact, reveal a great deal of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian agents - and might have revealed a great deal more if Trump hadn't dangled pardons to keep people from squealing (which he duly delivered to the compliant, like Manafort and Flynn). But as legal analysts warned from the outset, proving criminal conspiracy is a high bar which was unlikely to be met because it would have likely required explicit statements from Trump revealing his "state of mind" - which was the reason Mueller gave for not finding sufficient grounds for that charge.
Sadly, in addition to the Trumpist Right, there are even people on the Left deeply invested in having you believe this garbage, like Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibii (who operate from their entirely siloed Substacks, free from even editorial oversight much less public criticism, making money hand over fist from an audience paying to have their anti-institutional worldview reinforced, and who then have the audacity to claim that they are an antidote to biased, corporate, pay-for-play mainstream media - but I digress).
Such people also love to feign boredom at the Ukraine scandal, as though it was just some picayune effrontery to bureaucracy rather than what it obviously was: a President abusing his position to extort a foreign government into launching a phony investigation into his most formidable political competitor. Allowing foreign powers to corruptly influence our government was a principle concern of the Founders when discussing the need for impeachment - this was a no-brainer that Republicans would have eagerly pounced upon had the shoe been on the other foot.
And let's be clear about this - impeachment was intended to combat abuse of office, *not* explicit violation of legal statutes. This is almost universally agreed upon by constitutional scholars, as it is made abundantly clear in the writings of the Founders as well as the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in English common law at the time. (Alan Dershowitz is not a constitutional lawyer, but rather a defense attorney with a fetish for celebrity and high-profile contrarianism in defense of the palpably guilty. Matthew Whittaker is an unqualified boob. So kindly spare us such appeals to authority.)
Finally, aside from the above misapprehension, I find it hard to even fathom the degree of cynicism involved in believing the second impeachment was "bogus". If you think trying to overturn a free and fair election and uproot the foundation of our democracy through utterly fraudulent propaganda and incitement isn't impeachable, it's hard to see how anyone without a (D) next to their name would ever meet your standards for removal from office, and in this case, barring them from holding office in the future. Unless you think that the Founders intended the latter provision to only apply to a sitting President. In other words, that they meant it to be a toothless, easily avoided penalty - particularly in the case of election malfeasance, where the offender could simply resign, even if his political allies in the Senate declined to protect him by refusing to re-convene for a trial (as happened here). Or you think, like the so-called "textualists" seem to, that the Founders' clear intent and the need for an effective governing document matters less than the placement of commas and semicolons and other grammatical technicalities.
The Steele Dossier was not a “sideshow,” it was the whole bogus pretext for the FBI investigation in the first place. I suggest you actually read Greenwald and Taibbi instead of making cheap ad hominem attacks on them. They can go a long way to clearing up your confusion about the facts of the matter. Unlike the MSM they’ve been vindicated over and over.
Well firstly, I do read them, insomuch as I can stomach it. It's never long before I find significant inaccuracies and distortions.
Secondly, the Steele Dossier was *not* the pretext for the FBI investigation. This is a falsehood that has been known for *years* and yet repeatedly stated by Trump apologists, not to mention those who seem happy to let you assume it as they rail against Steele and weep crocodile tears for Carter Page. (Page is, of course, entitled to redress for violation of his civil rights, but that is entirely tangential to the Russian influence campaign and the involvement of Trump surrogates. You'll have to pardon me if I doubt the sincerity of his champions.)
The actual pretext for the investigation (as confirmed by the Inspector General) was George Papadopoulos running his mouth to an Australian diplomat in the UK about Russia's plans to influence the 2016 election. For more detail:
The Steele dossier was the main reason the investigation metastasized. The Papadopoulos thing amounted to nothing and went nowhere. By the end of this we’ll probably see more Clinton campaign figures indicted for malfeasance than Trump figures. In any case, the main issue at hand is that they key point of Russiagate—that Trump’s election was illegitimate because he’d committed some kind of treason involving Russia—has been obliterated.
The "Papadopoulos thing" went nowhere? Are you kidding? This is how the US caught wind of Russia's efforts in the first place. That's what the entire investigation was about. The fact that it didn't make a media splash like the "pee-tape" says nothing about its centrality to the investigation. The article by David Frum to which I linked details the key points and findings of the initial FBI investigation, special counsel Bob Mueller's team, and the bipartisan, Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. The findings are real, and independent of the Steele Dossier.
Of course, most of the public was largely oblivious to all of this until Buzzfeed decided to dump the dossier and the whole thing blew up on social media. Politicians and media hacks know how this shaped the public narrative and so repeat the lie as often as they can. This serves the agendas of three groups: Republicans, people with an axe to grind against mainstream media (apparently some people are comfortable with the idea of Buzzfeed News being part of the "mainstream media"), and those who love to discredit the FBI.
And the "key point" of Russiagate is hardly a well defined concept. The purpose of the actual investigations was to determine if and to what extent Russia was interfering in our elections and attempting to install a candidate with compromised loyalties. It was a legitimate investigation which unearthed important discoveries regarding Trump's business and political ties to Putin. As for the public outcry, regardless of how many people casually tossed around terms like "treason", the public had every right to be concerned by what was found. The idea that anything short of actual treason amounts to nothing and the whole thing being a "hoax" that was "obliterated" is nothing but a cheap debate tactic. Trump has time after time given people entirely legitimate reason to question his loyalty to this country and its best interests in his interactions with foreign autocrats with whom he has business ties. Ties which he voluntarily refused to sever when tasked with the duty of the Presidency. He deserves every bit of suspicion that has been cast upon him.
By the way, your other comment below was somewhat surprising to me given what you wrote here. So while my factual claims stand, if what I wrote here betrays any incorrect assumptions about your political leanings or biases, I apologize. That shouldn't matter anyway, and I try to always respond in ways that are independent of such considerations. I don't always succeed.
The "self defence" argument is questionable in the case of Rittenhouse. One problem is that "Legally, if you are in the process of a commission of a crime, it negates your ability to claim self defense if you kill someone. As in, it can't even be entered as your official defense in court. It is similar to getting rear-ended at a red light through zero fault of your own, but you were driving without a license or insurance. It automatically makes you at fault because you weren't even legally allowed to be driving. That 17 year old in Kenosha had committed two crimes and was not even legally allowed to open carry the rifle he used to shoot three people. This means that he legally cannot claim self defense." And there are other problems.
If you're going to dive that deep into the weeds of the legal statutes, it was only illegal for Rittenhouse to buy the gun, but there was no law against him carrying it. His friend broke the law by straw purchasing, but Rittenhouse did nothing illegal by carrying that AR-15 through the streets.
This piece misses the point. The left and right each tell a story about this democracy with a common theme: the democracy is invalid. It is fundamentally unjust. The illiberal behaviors decried by this writer and a succession of writers in Persuasion are a result of genuine belief in these stories. The stories themselves must be confronted, not simply the behavior. This isn't difficult. The stories are clownish in their distortions -- and I'm including the left's Big Lie of systemic injustice here. It's not hard to refute them. It just takes courage and diligence.
After the Kyle Rittenhouse debacle, you could more or less sum up the problem as:
The far right hates fair elections (when they don't get the desired result), the far left hates fair trials (when they don't get the desired result).
Both impulses are inherently authoritarian.
After Queen HIllary's coronation was ruined and the years of now-discredited Russiagate nonsense and two(!) bogus impeachments that followed, I'm not so sure the left likes fair elections either.
Claiming that people were bamboozled into casting votes for a particular candidate, is at least better than saying those votes were not legitimately cast at all (i.e. fraudulent). Lefties (grudgingly) acknowledged in 2016 that Trump did, in fact, get enough votes to win the electoral college, so they have a better track record on sucking up ballot box defeats than the "Stop the Steal" brigade.
Not that that's saying much.
They claimed more than that. But I do agree Trump is worse. For whatever that is worth.
Yes. They claimed that Russia was engaged in a state sponsored propaganda operation where troll factories churned out numerous false stories and propagated them throughout social media. This was real, known before the election, testified to in early (before the Mueller investigation) congressional hearings, and then confirmed by Mueller when he indicted and convicted (in absentia) numerous Russian officials. It is also where the term "fake news" originated - to be subsequently repurposed by Trump as a weapon against the press.
Yes, they spent a pittance to do that in an election where billions were sloshing around. I don’t even know how many decimal points you would need to arrive at a percentage. The idea that it somehow delegitimizes Trumps victory is beyond ludicrous.
The amount of money spent is irrelevant. Putin is a former KGB agent who is a master of psychological manipulation and using cheap techniques to undermine and destabilize his adversaries. He gets quite the bang for his buck.
As to whether or not Trump would have won without Putin's help is also somewhat beside the point. The mere fact that Trump was the candidate Putin got behind is an uncomfortable reality Trump's apologists would rather avoid confronting. Putin supported Trump because he knew how destabilizing he would be to American democracy. And he was right. No matter what legitimate concerns may have motivated Trump's voters, Putin knows a self-absorbed demagogue when he sees one, and how to best utilize him. He got his money's worth.
Firstly, "Russiagate" has *not* been discredited. Unless you believe that either a) Russiagate consisted solely of the Steele Dossier, or b) that an inability for Bob Mueller to bring a case of *criminal conspiracy* meant "nothing to see here".
In fact, the Steele Dossier was a red herring sideshow that had nothing to do with the initial investigation and was entirely independent of the underlying cooperation discovered by the FBI and Bob Mueller. And yes, Mueller's report did, in fact, reveal a great deal of cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russian agents - and might have revealed a great deal more if Trump hadn't dangled pardons to keep people from squealing (which he duly delivered to the compliant, like Manafort and Flynn). But as legal analysts warned from the outset, proving criminal conspiracy is a high bar which was unlikely to be met because it would have likely required explicit statements from Trump revealing his "state of mind" - which was the reason Mueller gave for not finding sufficient grounds for that charge.
Sadly, in addition to the Trumpist Right, there are even people on the Left deeply invested in having you believe this garbage, like Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibii (who operate from their entirely siloed Substacks, free from even editorial oversight much less public criticism, making money hand over fist from an audience paying to have their anti-institutional worldview reinforced, and who then have the audacity to claim that they are an antidote to biased, corporate, pay-for-play mainstream media - but I digress).
Such people also love to feign boredom at the Ukraine scandal, as though it was just some picayune effrontery to bureaucracy rather than what it obviously was: a President abusing his position to extort a foreign government into launching a phony investigation into his most formidable political competitor. Allowing foreign powers to corruptly influence our government was a principle concern of the Founders when discussing the need for impeachment - this was a no-brainer that Republicans would have eagerly pounced upon had the shoe been on the other foot.
And let's be clear about this - impeachment was intended to combat abuse of office, *not* explicit violation of legal statutes. This is almost universally agreed upon by constitutional scholars, as it is made abundantly clear in the writings of the Founders as well as the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" in English common law at the time. (Alan Dershowitz is not a constitutional lawyer, but rather a defense attorney with a fetish for celebrity and high-profile contrarianism in defense of the palpably guilty. Matthew Whittaker is an unqualified boob. So kindly spare us such appeals to authority.)
Finally, aside from the above misapprehension, I find it hard to even fathom the degree of cynicism involved in believing the second impeachment was "bogus". If you think trying to overturn a free and fair election and uproot the foundation of our democracy through utterly fraudulent propaganda and incitement isn't impeachable, it's hard to see how anyone without a (D) next to their name would ever meet your standards for removal from office, and in this case, barring them from holding office in the future. Unless you think that the Founders intended the latter provision to only apply to a sitting President. In other words, that they meant it to be a toothless, easily avoided penalty - particularly in the case of election malfeasance, where the offender could simply resign, even if his political allies in the Senate declined to protect him by refusing to re-convene for a trial (as happened here). Or you think, like the so-called "textualists" seem to, that the Founders' clear intent and the need for an effective governing document matters less than the placement of commas and semicolons and other grammatical technicalities.
The Steele Dossier was not a “sideshow,” it was the whole bogus pretext for the FBI investigation in the first place. I suggest you actually read Greenwald and Taibbi instead of making cheap ad hominem attacks on them. They can go a long way to clearing up your confusion about the facts of the matter. Unlike the MSM they’ve been vindicated over and over.
Well firstly, I do read them, insomuch as I can stomach it. It's never long before I find significant inaccuracies and distortions.
Secondly, the Steele Dossier was *not* the pretext for the FBI investigation. This is a falsehood that has been known for *years* and yet repeatedly stated by Trump apologists, not to mention those who seem happy to let you assume it as they rail against Steele and weep crocodile tears for Carter Page. (Page is, of course, entitled to redress for violation of his civil rights, but that is entirely tangential to the Russian influence campaign and the involvement of Trump surrogates. You'll have to pardon me if I doubt the sincerity of his champions.)
The actual pretext for the investigation (as confirmed by the Inspector General) was George Papadopoulos running his mouth to an Australian diplomat in the UK about Russia's plans to influence the 2016 election. For more detail:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/trump-russia-senate-intelligence-report/620815/
The Steele dossier was the main reason the investigation metastasized. The Papadopoulos thing amounted to nothing and went nowhere. By the end of this we’ll probably see more Clinton campaign figures indicted for malfeasance than Trump figures. In any case, the main issue at hand is that they key point of Russiagate—that Trump’s election was illegitimate because he’d committed some kind of treason involving Russia—has been obliterated.
The "Papadopoulos thing" went nowhere? Are you kidding? This is how the US caught wind of Russia's efforts in the first place. That's what the entire investigation was about. The fact that it didn't make a media splash like the "pee-tape" says nothing about its centrality to the investigation. The article by David Frum to which I linked details the key points and findings of the initial FBI investigation, special counsel Bob Mueller's team, and the bipartisan, Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. The findings are real, and independent of the Steele Dossier.
Of course, most of the public was largely oblivious to all of this until Buzzfeed decided to dump the dossier and the whole thing blew up on social media. Politicians and media hacks know how this shaped the public narrative and so repeat the lie as often as they can. This serves the agendas of three groups: Republicans, people with an axe to grind against mainstream media (apparently some people are comfortable with the idea of Buzzfeed News being part of the "mainstream media"), and those who love to discredit the FBI.
And the "key point" of Russiagate is hardly a well defined concept. The purpose of the actual investigations was to determine if and to what extent Russia was interfering in our elections and attempting to install a candidate with compromised loyalties. It was a legitimate investigation which unearthed important discoveries regarding Trump's business and political ties to Putin. As for the public outcry, regardless of how many people casually tossed around terms like "treason", the public had every right to be concerned by what was found. The idea that anything short of actual treason amounts to nothing and the whole thing being a "hoax" that was "obliterated" is nothing but a cheap debate tactic. Trump has time after time given people entirely legitimate reason to question his loyalty to this country and its best interests in his interactions with foreign autocrats with whom he has business ties. Ties which he voluntarily refused to sever when tasked with the duty of the Presidency. He deserves every bit of suspicion that has been cast upon him.
By the way, your other comment below was somewhat surprising to me given what you wrote here. So while my factual claims stand, if what I wrote here betrays any incorrect assumptions about your political leanings or biases, I apologize. That shouldn't matter anyway, and I try to always respond in ways that are independent of such considerations. I don't always succeed.
The "self defence" argument is questionable in the case of Rittenhouse. One problem is that "Legally, if you are in the process of a commission of a crime, it negates your ability to claim self defense if you kill someone. As in, it can't even be entered as your official defense in court. It is similar to getting rear-ended at a red light through zero fault of your own, but you were driving without a license or insurance. It automatically makes you at fault because you weren't even legally allowed to be driving. That 17 year old in Kenosha had committed two crimes and was not even legally allowed to open carry the rifle he used to shoot three people. This means that he legally cannot claim self defense." And there are other problems.
If you're going to dive that deep into the weeds of the legal statutes, it was only illegal for Rittenhouse to buy the gun, but there was no law against him carrying it. His friend broke the law by straw purchasing, but Rittenhouse did nothing illegal by carrying that AR-15 through the streets.
Aquittal was the right call for the jury to make.
He was not in the process of committing any crimes. And he was carrying the rifle legally.
This piece misses the point. The left and right each tell a story about this democracy with a common theme: the democracy is invalid. It is fundamentally unjust. The illiberal behaviors decried by this writer and a succession of writers in Persuasion are a result of genuine belief in these stories. The stories themselves must be confronted, not simply the behavior. This isn't difficult. The stories are clownish in their distortions -- and I'm including the left's Big Lie of systemic injustice here. It's not hard to refute them. It just takes courage and diligence.
At the same time, it is important to renew and improve the liberal democracy itself https://www.opulens.se/english/how-can-we-democratise-our-world-for-a-post-industrial-future/