The danger of the "Trump? Whatever" syndrome.

Case in point:

We just learned via a whistleblower that Trump “promised” the leader of Ukraine something if he dug up dirt on Hunter Biden, and worked with Trump’s personal attorney, Giuliani, to do so. To me, this is impeachable and should garner Trump’s removal by the Senate. It won’t, but it should. The timeline indicates that Trump did this after the Mueller testimony, which basically assured that Trump would skate on the last time he tried to get help from foreign powers to win elections/pay his debts/get more cash.

Along with enabling others in their pursuit of corrupt practices, this dismissal of all things Trump encourages him to amp up the corruption. He’s getting away with it, so he figures he can do it again, and again, and again.

Of course, even though he does so much of this out in the open, figuring that will be his legal cover, he no doubt is doing it the old fashioned way too: behind closed doors. As in, both/and. Not either/or. Who knows what other leaders he’s pressured into helping him take down his political opponents? Who knows how many other Republicans are doing the same?

And what will Republican dirty tricks likely lead to? A muted, wimpy response from DC Dems, at least in public, and potentially their own dirty tricks. An arms race of sorts.

It’s long past time we take this shit seriously, IMO.

wv wrote:

“Everyone and everything is corrupt. I don’t care what Trump does. It’s just more of the same old same old. In some ways, I even find him refreshing. We have bigger things to worry about.”
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Hmmmm. Well, thats purty close to where I’m at.

I dont think ‘everything’ is corrupt, but I think at the National level the American Government is almost-totally-corrupt. Remember the Senate scorecard — 99-1.

99 to 1.

99 owned by big-money. 1 not.

Its a dark, unsettling, ugly, un-hopeful view. I admit that. Not a fun view to hold.

I would like to have a different view. But….

w
v

It’s not easy to articulate this . . . but, to me, it’s not necessarily a problem for us to think that way, in our heart of hearts. Rank and file citizens. But I do see a major problem when that’s the public narrative. I think it encourages even worse behavior at the top. Much worse. They, in fact, count on the belief that the populace simply doesn’t care. Indifference and apathy are tools of statecraft, going back millennia.

And I also think everyone is kidding themselves if they think it can’t get worse. Much, much worse. As rotten as things are now, if the powers that be think we don’t give a shit, about anything, they’re going to tighten the screws in proportion to that sense of indifference and apathy.

Yes, folks should choose their battles wisely, and not sweat the small stuff. But the fastest way to an actual fascist society is open, obvious indifference, etc.

Just my take, of course.

This frustrates me as well: That small group of public-figure lefties seems to ignore the fact that Trump has managed to pretty much purge all the people who investigated him . . . . most of whom were Republicans, btw . . . and some of whom were Trump’s own appointees. He’s either fired them, hounded them out of office, forced resignations, or they just quit after Trump’s endless tweets, etc. Comey, Sally Yates, McCabe, Rosenstein, Strzok and Page, etc. The list is lengthy and hard to keep up with. I think it’s safe to say that no president has ever been this successful in getting rid of threats to his presidency. It’s not close.

The above is the backdrop to this latest outrage, and it really makes me wonder: Why does that small group ignore all of this? Why do they seem to think it’s far more important to talk about Clinton, the Dems, the media overhyping Russiagate (perhaps)? Reading them, one gets the feeling they think Rachel Maddow is a bigger threat to the country than Trump and his white nationalist base.

Compare and contrast. On the one hand, we have a president known for his sleazy, criminal behavior, long before he was elected, which included serious connections with Russian oligarchs. He later hires well-known grifters like Manafort, fanatics like Eric Prince and Flynn, works with dirty tricksters like Roger Stone, and seemingly everyone he adds to his campaign staff has Russian ties and lied about them. He’s investigated. He surrounds himself with protection by his own DoJ, the entire Republican party protects him, Fox News protects him, as does the entire right-wing media complex, and he basically skates. On the other, we have some Dems who blamed Putin for Clinton’s loss, and media who covered an actually existing scandal.

Why on earth would any leftist lift one finger to help this crook, in any way, shape or form, directly or indirectly? And it’s not as if he’s some kind of champion for the poor, the oppressed, or for any leftist ideal. Quite the opposite. He’s made life significantly worse for the very people leftists traditionally champion.

I. Don’t. Get. It.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

This frustrates me as well: That small group of public-figure lefties seems to ignore the fact that Trump has managed to…

===========================

What ‘lefties’ are you thinking of?

There’s very very few public figures I’d call ‘lefties,’ myself.

99-1

w
v

That may be a poor term to use. Probably is. I just want to distinguish between them and rank and file citizens without megaphones. I’m thinking of people who have access to electronic and print media, as writers, hosts and guests. Like Greenwald, Mate, Dore. To a far lesser degree, people like Wolff who rarely discuss the topic. Those who have the ability to shape the narrative for the public to some degree at least.

As for that 99 to 1. It all depends upon what their deeds are within that structure of legal corruption. What are their deeds? They’re obviously all not doing the same things, or doing the same amount of harm, or hurting the same people, etc. etc.

Trump and the Republicans, OTOH, are bought and paid for AND they do things like the recent rollback of 85 important regulations protecting the environment. They do things like gut protections for endangered species, and go out of their way to block California from reducing pollution in that state.

While we’re in this system — which I despise and want replaced (100%) — it actually does matter who holds power. Even between the two Money Parties, the two War parties, it matters. The Dems simply wouldn’t be eviscerating those environmental standards, or handing over two million acres of protected wilderness to the fossil fuel industry. Obama, for all his faults, set them aside, which was a great thing. They wouldn’t transfer funding from Puerto Rico to try to build a racist wall, and they wouldn’t turn pretty much every government department into its darkside opposite.

They’d still suck. They’d still do the bidding of their donors. They’d still put corporations and capitalism first. But they wouldn’t be nearly as destructive or corrupt as Trump and the Republicans. To me, it’s not close.

Until we actually grow up and create the kind of society Martin Hagglund talks about in his This Life, we’re going to have to work with the two-party/Money/War party system. And it matters to the earth and the masses who sits on top.

And another clean up on aisle 21, just in case:

I love dialogue about political matters, especially with my fellow lefties. In no way do I advocate holding back on that, or “being careful what we say.” Quite the contrary. I say let it all out, etc. In fact, personally, just speaking for myself, I’d rather discuss what the people here think about things, in their own words, than the stuff in the media . . . though it’s often useful to include that in the mix.

And even with the folks who have the megaphones, I don’t want them to curtail their views either, or try to shape them according to their potential effects, necessarily. In fact, that’s part of my own critique of some of their pleas. That their criticism of public discussions about Russiagate, for instance, was largely based on their own predictions of dire consequences, should we continue to debate the issue.

In short, I haven’t expressed myself very well on this topic. Sorry.

:>(

I guess what I’m trying to see is this: We need well-informed conversation about the issues now more than ever, and that conversation should be as broad and deep as possible. There are all kinds of ways to truncate this, flatten it, drive it into little pens like sheep. We should do our best to avoid this, and push others to avoid this as well, when possible.

Rams 31, Browns 20.

wv wrote:

I’m rambling, darkly. Again 🙂

None of this means I believe in ‘apathy’ or silence or not-bashing-on-relentlessly. It just means i believe in bashing-on-relentlessly with no hope. Itz a skill 🙂

Rams 99
Browns 1

w
v

At least you can find humor in that darkness. Rams 99? You’re such a homer. I can see 77 or 84. But 99!!

;>)

Quick thought or two, WV, on the WaPo:

I know you know this already . . . but it hasn’t been in the “liberal” range since Watergate. It’s pretty comfortable as the centrist paper of record. As in, center-right. And since they were oh so quick to hire several refugees from Dubya’s administration, I’m betting it will do the same for Trump’s, once he leaves town.

Also, like most of the MSM, when they go out of their way to find partisan righties, they tend to go after seriously aggressive partisan righties . . . like Hewitt, Thiessen and Gerson . . . though the latter has transformed himself into an anti-Trumper, as has Jennifer Rubin.

The MSM seems to virtually never find confident, aggressive voices left of center, preferring “measured” voices instead. And, as you know, they pretty much never hire to the left of liberal either. The only exception I can think of for the Post is Elizabeth Bruenig, whom I like. She’s married to Matt Bruenig, another lefty. By no means are they “far left.” But I’d say they’re left of liberal.