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The Failed State Effort Of Indicting Trump
The effort Biden's Justice Department puts into preventing the leader of its opposition from gaining another presidency has reached an insane level.
As Inquiries Compound, Justice System Pours Resources Into Scrutinizing Trump – NY Times – Jul 23, 2023
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing criminal investigations into former President Donald J. Trump, employs 40 to 60 career prosecutors, paralegals and support staff, augmented by a rotating cast of F.B.I. agents and technical specialists, according to people familiar with the situation.
In his first four months on the job, starting in November, Mr. Smith’s investigation incurred expenses of $9.2 million. That included $1.9 million to pay the U.S. Marshals Service to protect Mr. Smith, his family and other investigators who have faced threats after the former president and his allies singled them out on social media.
At this rate, the special counsel is on track to spend about $25 million a year.
With that budget and the brainpower of such a large staff one could find fault with anyone and indict any person for whatever without much problems.
If this would happen in a foreign democracy that is not friendly with the U.S. the State Department and various think tanks would be outraged about such anti-democratic behavior. It would be explained as a sign that the state in question is falling apart.
The main driver of all these efforts and their concurrent expenses is Mr. Trump’s own behavior — his unwillingness to accept the results of an election as every one of his predecessors has done, his refusal to heed his own lawyers’ advice and a grand jury’s order to return government documents and his lashing out at prosecutors in personal terms.
That all might be a bit outrageous but what is actual criminal with it? The government documents are back to where they are supposed to be and none were reportedly of any great significance. So why still make such a fuzz about them?
Seen from the outside U.S. internal politics now look like a bad reality show. This is not the self confident behavior of an elite of the sole superpower the U.S. still pretends to be.
There is a theory that the U.S. is undergoing some form of sovietization with a similar accumulation of defects and inefficiencies as occurred in the U.S.S.R. before it fell apart.
I am not sure that it is the case, but many significant factors – transportation, public service, health, education, industry, policies – now look worse to me than I remember them to be.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 25 2023 4:59 utc | 181
You and others went into the ‘working class’ issue quite well. I would like to add in an element that I think is overlooked generally these days.
First, you and others have mentioned that the solidarity felt in the days of shift work, factories etc. has indeed diminished greatly so that even though janitors and call center workers are ‘working class’ they don’t feel much connection with each other as such.
I grew up in London in a part of Chiswick (Turnham Green) where there was an underpass tunnel dividing a middle class neighbourhood from a working class one. I used to like to cross under that tunnel to the working class playground because there were always lots of boys scampering around whereas the smaller one on the middle class side tended to be empty. I sometimes went back to the home of my best friend there and saw how they lived and he sometimes came to my home and saw how I lived. We never discussed it but we both felt it as did every other person growing up in England at that time and for centuries before and still, though to a lesser extent, today. Everything was different in each house though the dimensions were similar except that in our house everything was about 25-35% larger maybe. But similar. The furniture, the paintings, the smells, the sense of life outside, two different worlds.
America has always been less delineated that way perhaps, but yet similar. I imagine that Detroit and Chicago had extremely strong working class cultures whereas Florida and New Hampshire not so much.
However, another huge change was touched on earlier in this thread, namely the overthrow of the monarchical system which indeed was one of the principal goals of the Revolution and the prime concerns of the Framers in creating a free republic with its own Constitution.
Let us grant that the monarchy as it existed in Europe and specifically Britain by the 1700’s was in need of a total overhaul or being scrapped altogether. My issue has been that what has been developed in lieu of monarchy has been a bit haphazard. Monarchy is a very old, basic almost primordial system which exists precisely because it follows archetypical human principles (whether we like it or not). And one core aspect therein is that the very fact of having a single Head of State creates a sense of their being a single State meaning a single Reality which everyone shares no ifs ands of buts.
What we have gradually lost since ending monarchies is that single, shared Reality. It has fractured along conceptual, geographic, functional and other lines. Of course it is still there because it is an axiomatic thing, but it is muddied, occluded, confused. When you go to America it is unlike any other country in the world. Same for Florida. Or Georgia. Or Texas. Or Illinois. Or more vividly still: England, France, Poland, Russia, China etc. They each have particular character and flavor meaning they each have their One principle if you like. But it is far more diluted and subtle than it used to be especially now in Western states and especially in the most diverse one, the so-called United States.
That lack of a clear ‘we’ also effects whether or not various different classes have a clear sense of themselves as such as well as any solidarity with fellow members of that same class.
If you want some sort of bottom-up movement there has to be a sense of connection. Right now, the Trumpistas are the ones best marshalling that sort of togetherness, though I suspect it’s a relative minority that are Rally Groupies and most of the voters therein are tax-paying middle class citizens who just want things to operate without fuss, drama and endless anxiety-laden political insanity-hostility which they have been subjected to now for a few generations. In any case, there is some solidarity there.
Trying to find it in a general class, like ‘working class’ as suggested above is, I think, too beholden to old early twentieth century vocabulary. It doesn’t fit the times any more. The Trump movement is showing a way forward because it arose naturally out of a desire for centrist ordinary Americans to ‘get their country back.’ The movement was already underway before Trump stepped forward to be their figurehead, something which both he and they seem to generally understand (though there are of course some fanatics who think it’s all about their Golden Boy, a delusion he does not share).
Could another such movement arise? Sure. But not now because now this is the one there is and more than half the voting population is into it, many more would be if the press wasn’t so inflammatory and deceitful. I suspect he won by a landslide in 2020 though that is unknowable. (The American system is such that if you get about 60% of the vote that is a landslide when the electoral college votes are tallied.) He will get more votes in 2024 if able to run. And he will lose again.
Then (as is already the case) the problem will be: now what? Now that we know for sure that electoral politics is BS (at this point not enough people get it but after 2024 they probably will – if there even is an election which I can’t see happening the way things are already so surreal) what now?
That’s when it will get interesting perhaps. Maybe an appeal to ‘working class’ will do it, but I think again the Trumpistas have shown the way: it’s the so-called ‘middle class’ in America which have been the most abused and poorly served. Many of those you are calling ‘working class’ (with 2 jobs etc.) should be in the middle class in the American system but aren’t simply because of the Money Powers having taken too much and the system being unable to restrain them. In other words, in America the main class is not the workers as it used to be but the middle classes of all stripes, which means basically anyone who works for a living. Then you have the marginalized and very poor, some of whom work and many of whom don’t, the bottom rung. This bottom rung will not form the basis of a revolutionary movement. It’s in the middle where that is to be found, where Trump voters are now to be found and more independents would join in if it were not for the success of demonizing press which fools a large percentage of the population who always believe whatever they are told to believe.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 25 2023 17:52 utc | 215
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 25 2023 18:59 utc | 219
Scorpion | Jul 24 2023 23:49 utc | 163–
On Gordon Wood: I did a historiographical investigation of him for a project while at university in 1998, read his works and concluded he’s a disciple of Bailyn. IMO, he became a “Court Historian.” My primary criticism of his work is he’s guilty of presentism. I suggest critically reading his Wiki bio and very carefully consider this specific citation:
Contributing to the anthology Our American Story (2019), Wood addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He focused on the idea of equality as “the most radical and most powerful ideological force” that the American Revolution unleashed. “This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America, and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people.”
IMO, there’s a great deal wrong with that statement for the Revolutionary Era was not one of equality as the Class distinctions that existed previously were the same that existed afterwards. There were still white slaves, black slaves, a genocidal policy against the Natives, women were legal slaves when married, and there was little tolerance for Catholics and the Spanish, the latter holding the vast majority of North America at that time. And there was clearly a caste system when it came to the franchise–voting–that effectively rendered people de facto slaves. …
It’s one thing to connect the historical significance of past events to the present to show cause and effect–which is something historians ought to do–and another to use current values and mindsets to try and understand past motivations: the historian must strive mightily to adopt the mind of the subject being studied.
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So much content in so few sentences…. (I can only wish…)
Presentism: I suspect that doesn’t have a clear meaning but I take it to mean interpretating the past in the light of present view.
Re: “”This powerful sense of equality is still alive and well in America, and despite all of its disturbing and unsettling consequences, it is what makes us one people.” Then you point out that there were many class differences making any notion of ‘equality’ inaccurate, though why it is presentism I couldn’t say from what you wrote.
That said, I think you might be exercising some yourself by assuming that at the time they saw these various class differences as something optional not part of what they perceived as objective reality, aka ‘the way things are.’
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Their mission was to create a Realm of civic and national reality not beholden to a Monarch. I gather they also were chipping away at institutional notions of ‘God’ as well, some of them being Deists and so forth. In other words, they were overthrowing the aristocracy of the time in which they were born. There was only so much they could see at once, I suspect. Furthermore, viz. presentism, now that we are used to living in worlds not bound by Church, Monarch and Nobles we cannot really see how they saw.
But thanks for your warnings about Wood and others. First, I don’t have enough time to go deeply into this history though do intend to spend some time on it at some point. As someone who grew up in England, US history is too much of a blur for me and it’s high time I went further into it. Second, I take a ‘differential diagnosis’ approach in the Chinese medical sense, namely to take several different uncorrelated diagnostic systems and where they provide similar or identical results assume that this is more or less correct. So with history I like to look at things from different angles and where they present a similar story or conclusion tend to give that more weight.
And of course with history it really helps to have a good sense of what factually happened which is often surprisingly hard, either because key elements are hidden or badly represented, or because there are too many facts to make any sense of or too few to derive informed opinion from. It’s a pickle. As I’m sure you know far better than I.
But I do feel that current attitudes about rights, classes and so forth constitute a form of presentism that, unfortunately, hardly any of us can overcome. This is another way of observing that ‘times change.’ It is not time or times that change but our perspectives, our sense of reality. After a few centuries of reductionist physical materialism our reality sense is highly conceptual and, ironically, divorced from physical presence. We can rightly observe that many of our forebears were borderline psychotics, but we cannot sense the inner and outer psychic storms through which they were navigating and the criteria with which we judge them is not all that well tethered to reality itself, so at best we see through a glass darkly.
The new Eurasian civilization now emerging has a good shot at doing a better job. But its foundations are mired in many of the same misperceptions and neurosis that we are now wading through so it remains to be seen if they will manage to create something much better or not. It’s easy to be consistent when up against a formidable enemy, which the West’s Black Hand surely is. But if/when they outmaneuver it, then their real test will come. Though we will not be around to witness…
Thanks as always for your input and dialogue.
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 25 2023 20:46 utc | 227
Posted by: juliania | Jul 26 2023 0:42 utc | 232
It would be one reason for Trump supporters to rally to restore his ability to function as president without having to cope with such harassment, in deference to the voters’ assessment, should he win. They had voted him in; their vote was called into question throughout his term. And those pressures have only increased since, a continuing attack on the Constitution itself, which says, as Madison wrote: the people shall judge.
It’s hard do see this to be the fault of the Constitution; the fault lies elsewhere.
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Well, all you say is reasonable. Having recently read a little more about the Constitution process (having not done so since only a brief look about fifty years ago) I think it fair to say that whoever remarked that the Constitution assumed good will on the part of most participants had it right. (They might have fierce disagreements but all would have good intentions.) I think what has happened is that the stupid concessions made for whatever reasons to the European-British banking powers elevated finance to become the real ruler of the nation, Constitution and citizens’ beliefs notwithstanding.
I think in one of the articles Karlof1 gave us yesterday it says towards the end that perhaps they need to continue America as an idea and develop a movement dedicating to restoring it given whatever we have now in the country is no longer America but something else. That is another way of saying that the US is now a post-constitutional state.
Perhaps you are right that it wasn’t the Constitution’s fault per se, in other words Bad Actors broke a well crafted vessel, but I think it fair to lay the blame on the container as well in that a better constituted republic should have hard-coded in the right way to do Money along with checks to ensure that right way was pursued. Given Hudson’s work detailing how bad credit policy has proven such a dominant force throughout world history, they should have known better. Maybe none of them really understood such matters, I haven’t read through all their letters and arguments to know. In any case, the nation as it is now is an occluded oligarchy which is pretty much exactly what they were trying to prevent. (Maybe putting one’s faith in a Constitution as a substitute for living Monarchy was the mistake, but that’s a whole other can of worms. Monarchy is a dirty word nowadays, partly for good reasons and partly because of deliberate propaganda by the same bad actors who have seized power and know it is one of the only viable ways of kicking them out. Maybe they should have created a sane, decent, uplifted, living human Monarchy instead of a Document comprised of Concepts?)
In any case, I don’t think there is a solution for a nation run by criminals, i.e. ‘rule by the worst.’ Probably the only way out now is dictatorship or anarchy.
Maybe there is a path for reform but since elections are no longer a viable means for correcting imbalance and the Administrative State has far more power than any elected President anyway. And even if elected by some miracle anyone skillful and brave enough to actually try to expel that entrenched power from the Body Politic would probably find themselves or their family members martyred very quickly.
For those with eyes to see the 2020 election was a blatant theft. OK, that’s bad but not the end of the world. But what have the Republicans done since that election? Almost nothing. A few jurisdictions persevered with audits and suchlike through clearly hostile Courts or corrupted Legislatures and only a handful have effected any substantive procedural reforms. Which means that 2024 it’s going to be 2020 all over again, which is an election that can be rigged in so many different ways it’s impossible to count them. They had several years to tighten things up and have done almost nothing. Trump says in his rallies that they will get so many votes that they’ll simply overwhelm the cheating. Hello? That’s what he said in 2020.
This indicates that the Republic is phony at this point because nearly all systems of governance have been captured by the Money Mafia which now runs the country like slave-owners used to run plantations. It’s done but it’s just very hard for people to accept this.
It’s like a religious faith: once it takes and one orients one’s life to following a path based on that faith, it informs all one’s being, every decision, one’s behavior, one’s heartfelt intentions. Similarly, how we view our polity, our nation, or in the old days with Kings and Church together our ‘Realm’ – which is a mutually perceived Reality – that is very hard to let go of as well and most of us will never be able to do so. Probably much like old Soviets in Russia, though they must be dying out now finally.
I like much about RFK Jr. Very much. But am beginning to see him as someone trapped in the past. Not only does the past not exist in the present, but the past as perceived probably never existed as such anyway. So he has an Idea of an Ideal which is akin to a Faith-based notion of a Constitutionally framed America. We’ll see how he does, but I suspect his Ideal is going to have a hard time coming to grips with current Reality. His experience in big environmental cases and restoring the Hudson etc. means he has real-world understanding, which is no small thing, but it remains to be seen if that’s enough. His first clear hurdle is becoming the leader of a corrupt Democrat Party none of whose current leadership wants him to win. If he can handle that challenge, perhaps he can go all the way and, once in the White House, take down the FBI and CIA who murdered his father and uncle and then throw the money-changers out of the Temple. Wouldn’t that be something, eh?
Maybe we will get America-as-Camelot back again after all and men will wear those thin ties again like RFK Jr is doing.
But it really is a long shot, isn’t it? Because America really is a kleptocracy at this point run by criminal organizations whose lineage in Western power circles goes back many centuries.
Overthrowing them seems almost impossible now. So we are left with the propositions Karlof1 fancifully floated: ‘how can we get the parasite to commit suicide?!’
Actually, that might be wisdom. They live off a stream of money. Can we put poison in that stream somehow?
Posted by: Scorpion | Jul 26 2023 13:58 utc | 237
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