There's a great furor online -- celebration among many of the people who are critical of former President Donald Trump, anguish and outrage among his supporters.
Me, I never liked the guy and never voted for him; the real-estate promoter and reality TV figure always reminded me of every bad boss I ever had, most of whom were remarkable screw-ups, untrustworthy, overbearing and in love with their own greatness. Not all of them were crooked, not all of them were incompetent, but every one of them left a mess wherever they went, creating unhappy employees, badly disrupted workplaces and always doing more harm than good. Mr. Trump seemed to me to be cut from that same cloth in 2016 and his subsequent actions have only confirmed my opinion. I started out thinking he was a bad choice and in the fourth year of his Presidency, he managed to convince me he was a disastrous one instead.
There certainly appears to be sufficient basis to charge him with skullduggery with classified or sensitive government documents. Is he guilty? Well, that, you see, is why we have trials. He'll get his day(s) in court and he has no shortage of money and skilled lawyers to apply to the case.
Dancing in the streets or shrieking and pounding on the table (boy-howdy, I'd sure hate to be the set-building carpenter at Fox News!) are hardly appropriate actions at this point.
In my personal opinion, the man is a slug who had no business being in the White House in the first place and shouldn't be returned to it. His primary opponents range from "slightly less bad" to "not entirely awful," but so far the entire pack of them is nowhere near to baying at his heels and I doubt his current legal woes will make much difference in the Republican primary.
As for the general election, I don't think the Democrats could ask for a better motivation to get their voters to the polling places. The GOP has abandoned the political center in favor of a set of grievances and pet issues, and I don't think it's a winning strategy. In 2016, a narrow electoral college majority was willing let a bombastic outsider have a go at the job. 2020 demonstrated that a majority of voters were not happy with the results. Rerunning the same play is going to have the same outcome.
One of the things that boggles me about modern US politics, and Trumpism in particular, is the level of ardor devoted to…a politician. For me it’s always been a matter of trying to find the least bad choice. Enthusiasm seems like a real stretch. Making devotion to a politician the core of one’s identity seems bizarre.
ReplyDeleteIt’s just someone we’re hiring to do a job. Look for saviors and heroes somewhere else.
The GOP has abandoned the political center in favor of a set of grievances and pet issues
ReplyDeleteFrankly, I'm of the opinion that statement describes both parties. YMMV
As for the primary subject of your post; I'll wait and see how the trial comes out. The fact that in the past prominent political figures have gotten away with treating classified information in ways that would have had me in Leavenworth is not reason enough to let anyone else get off consequence free if found guilty.
RandyGC: The argument can be made that some members of both parties have gone pretty far in their respective directions -- but only one of party has rallied around a candidate of known appeal to their far fringes. Centrist Republicans are denigrated by their party and much of their base, while centrist Democrats largely are not, unless they wander right up to the middle or venture across. Also, the Dems have yet to whip up a mob to interfere in tallying the Electoral College votes, put both houses of Congress and the VP to flight, and do millions of dollars of damage to the U.S. Capitol. That's kind of a great big demerit.
ReplyDeleteWhen Mr. Pence and Mr. Biden found they had taken away documents they should not have, both men stepped back and called the Feds to come pick them up. Mr. Trump's behavior in the same circumstance appears to have been profoundly different, and per the published charges, different enough to merit a trial.
Remember "it's not about sex, it's about the principle" back in the 90's?
ReplyDeleteI do wonder how many people that consider themselves to be moral absolutist and people of principle are throwing those away in order to keep Trump?