this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2023
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Charging him is still a big milestone, and setting the precedent that a former president can be charged is still important. But, yeah, sentencing will be the even bigger milestone.
What is crazy to me is that everyone is making it out like there HAD to be a precedent set, as if the baseline of being a U.S. citizen was not enough to already imply that they could/should be held accountable for breaking the law. That heavily implies what 99% of us already believed, there are CLEARLY two different standards for the rule of law, one for those with money and power, and another one for everyone else.
If he were a salary-slave like the rest of us (e.g. Snowden, Manning, Assange, …), there would be no case but definitely a verdict.
undefined> setting the precedent that a former president can be charged is still important
absolutely. It is already a win, but I believe the US really need the BIG win which would be to actually sentence him for the serious crimes he commited. Literally every other US citizen would be a prisoner long since for doing a microscopic part of what Trump did. The damage that one person did in 4 years, and not just locally in America but also internationally, is sheer unbelievable.
While I agree with you 99.9% and emphasize that I strongly so do… as much as the "both sides" bullshit is, in fact, bullshit… the one small bit of it that is true is that our politicians do get away with these things, although most of them are only doing a microscopic part of what Trump has done. But plenty of them - both parties, even the one I always vote for - act poorly and get away with it for any number of reasons, including the fact that we hesitate to go after politicians because it's seen as political.
But let me finish by reiterating that Trump has been particularly and unprecedently egregious in his blatant criminal acts.
Beautifully said!
But what is the solution on the political front then? Is it to get new blood in while forcing the "old garde" out? How do you do that through brigades of lobbyists that prevent according laws from even existing? From the outside, the whole system seems pretty fucked.
You have two parties. Both are basically center right, one a bit more right than center maybe ( R ). The whole county is "gerrymandered" to the point where the actual voices of the citizens dont seem to matter anymore because some individuals decide for thousands.
While it would certainly be possible to run as an independent 3rd party, the cost of that would be prohibitively high because of the established apparatus the two main parties already have.
The leaders and high functioneers of the two main parties do their damndest to stay there because power is power and wealth is wealth.
Then there is a gigantic lobbying industry, so buying votes seems not only tolerated, but even encouraged. (sidenote: how the fuck did that even happen? not only in America ofc.)
And then there is the media. I do believe free speech is a good thing. But I honestly believe that what eg. Fox News is allowed to send is more like "incitement of the people" than "information". And I know they get away with it due to calling it "entertainment". Well, a good third of the country is certainly "entertained" to the point of starting revolts.
To me it seems, the only way would be to get in good (as in, ethically) new blood at the local level, feed and groom them, then rise to regional, then national level. While simultaneously waiting for all of the old garde to die. LoL.
I bet I missed a thousand things but that seems to be the gist of it to me. What are your all opinions?
*edited with paragraphs for readability and fixed the minor mistakes
Sadly this is not Trumps achievement, but the rising hostility of a collapsing ecology coupled with late stage capitalism (read survival-of-the-fittest-mentality). We don't talk much about it but most people dying in the climate crisis wont die of heatstroke but by wars. It is a struggle to keep your humanity in the process. Sadly there are an increasing number of people who stop bothering.
/edit grammar
You say a lot of sad truths there.
Of course it is not Trumps responsibility that our planet goes to shit. That people get more alienated from each other in general. That hate and fear spread like wildfires while empathy and humanity is in short supply.
But what IS Trumps accomplishment is that he is responsible for giving all those hateful, ignorant people a voice. He normalized saying shit that you'd only dared to share in the company of a few close friends in the past. He normalized the complete lack of empathy towards adversaries. He normalized acting like a complete moron against all evidence. He normalized distrust in science. He normalized abusing a political responsibility for selfpromotion. ... I could go on.
But what is really grinding my gears behind that context is, that he normalized all that shit not only in the US, but basically worldwide due to the insane reach he had as US president. Parties in my home country are beginning to do exactly the same shit, not on full-removed level yet but we will get there.
/rant sorry
He used and improved on the populists playbook. All the neofascists worldwide seem to have one shared toolbox. Whereas liberals have more individualistic worldviews than active participants :(