Trump Watch: The Conservative Condition

If it wasn't well-paid I figured you wouldn't find it significant enough to mention.

Huh? It doesn't pay shit and neither does it pay millions. It pays well enough. For me, at least. I live very cheaply. Still not sure what your point is.

You're bragging about your reading comprehension (as opposed to my 8th grade level) so I just assumed that you made it to the end of that particular paragraph.

Where exactly do I "brag" about my reading comprehension? I've only pointed out that you seem to struggle with it.

If you don't like to work full-time (your choice) but that doesn't really gel with expecting the public to provide. When the public does provide in too generous a manner, that's what happens and everyone and the overall economy eventually suffers from it.

Anyways, you do you, bro. I'm just a racist who a black guy was mean to as a kid. What do I know? You're the paid writer after all.

I said nothing about not "lik(ing) to work full-time." I said "I've never really been into the full-time career thing." Try to keep up.

And, apart from occasional grants, I've never relied upon public funding, so I'm not sure where you were going with that.


Edit: What I did say was that I was well-paid by a university. Honestly, that's always been kind of a mystery to me--because it was too much money. It was way more than anyone could possibly need for living expenses, including really pricey textbooks. I don't think it was a mistake, but it was weird.
 
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If you don't like to work full-time (your choice) but that doesn't really gel with expecting the public to provide. When the public does provide in too generous a manner, that's what happens and everyone and the overall economy eventually suffers from it.

I actually partly agree with you here. I don't think that people ought to be "on the dole" indefinitely with absolutely no conditions or expectations. They shouldn't be cut off entirely if they don't find some means for supporting themselves after some specified period of time, but there ought to be more encouragement--and viable pathways--for them to get some sort of education or training. Of course, "the dole" isn't really so much of a thing in the U.S.

Thing is, most people want to do something and to be able to support themselves. There are undoubtedly some who abuse the system, but there is no evidence to support the contention that such a problem is widespread or even statistically significant.

Rather, what you have (in the U.S., at least) are a lot of people for whom "getting a job" is not really a viable or sensible option--because welfare pays better, and if they have very young children, say, they don't have to pay for childcare. Oftentimes, even part-time work isn't financially viable, because too much money will be subtracted from their government cheque.
 
I actually partly agree with you here. I don't think that people ought to be "on the dole" indefinitely with absolutely no conditions or expectations. They shouldn't be cut off entirely if they don't find some means for supporting themselves after some specified period of time, but there ought to be more encouragement--and viable pathways--for them to get some sort of education or training. Of course, "the dole" isn't really so much of a thing in the U.S.

Thing is, most people want to do something and to be able to support themselves. There are undoubtedly some who abuse the system, but there is no evidence to support the contention that such a problem is widespread or even statistically significant.

Rather, what you have (in the U.S., at least) are a lot of people for whom "getting a job" is not really a viable or sensible option--because welfare pays better, and if they have very young children, say, they don't have to pay for childcare. Oftentimes, even part-time work isn't financially viable, because too much money will be subtracted from their government cheque.

You say that the dole isn't really much of a thing in the U.S. and then you go on to describe the dole in the U.S.?
 
You say that the dole isn't really much of a thing in the U.S. and then you go on to describe the dole in the U.S.?

I'm saying that welfare and unemployment compensation in the U.S. are vastly different from what is called "the dole" in the U.K. There are a lot of criteria that need to be met in order to obtain either (welfare/unemployment) in the U.S., that needn't be met in order to go on the dole in the U.K. Are you really gonna pretend like you don't understand that?
 
I'm saying that welfare and unemployment compensation in the U.S. are vastly different from what is called "the dole" in the U.K. There are a lot of criteria that need to be met in order to obtain either (welfare/unemployment) in the U.S., that needn't be met in order to go on the dole in the U.K. Are you really gonna pretend like you don't understand that?

It doesn't matter how it is in the UK, it's still being on the dole here. Why only have the kids that you can afford if you get paid more, the more kids you have? Why get off the dole when it's easier to be lazy and just stay home?

Mothers with kids under 18 get health care for themselves and the kids, food stamps, government housing and it's not uncommon for this to continue for generation after generation. Who is really being "helped"?

I don't find the argument that we should raise taxes to make it even easier and more generous, to be persuasive.

The U.S. isn't the UK. Why should it be? Why isn't the U.K, the U.S.? It's the same logic.

Why are you concerned about the U.S. system either way? I don't think you are even satisfied with the U.K. system, are you?
 
No job, no home, no dole.... What do you think they'd be doing?
We were speaking of woman with multiple kids who keep having more kids for more money. Their life isn't better because they stay on the dole forever. We have unemployment insurance to allow for enough time to find another job. We're talking about people here who aren't even looking for work.

Why isn't everyone one the dole? Everyone would be in the streets if no one took responsibility for themselves. When people talk about there being too many people on welfare they aren't talking about the few who actually need the help for a short period of time.

Welfare was more ongoing until the Clinton years when it was limited to 3 years (or whatever) and guess what...a lot of people suddenly found a job.
 
Because they can make more money by working.
Yet, many don't and thus the term "on the dole". When you have generations on welfare you aren't really "helping" them since nothing is changing.

What helped more being on welfare for generations or Clinton limiting welfare and many more people getting jobs? That's help. Those people are now better off with jobs whether they were forced to find them or not.
 
Yet, many don't and thus the term "on the dole".
The term "on the dole" covers short periods as well as generations. I know a family of five children who grew up "on the dole" because their father died. Once grown up, none of them have ever been "one the dole".
 
The term "on the dole" covers short periods as well as generations. I know a family of five children who grew up "on the dole" because their father died. Once grown up, none of them have ever been "one the dole".
My father died when I was 3. I can identify with that situation however that's not the situation I was talking about.

No one is talking about no public assistance being available at all. There are few who can't work for a whole generation.

There's always some excuse for why something can't be done but there are always others in a similar circumstance who are able to take care of themselves with no excuse needed.
 
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pro hac vice

The update↱ is that Trump will not challenge DoJ pro se, but that he was listed as such because the attorneys he found to represent him had not yet filed pro hac vice, which in turn means that he found lawyers from outside the applicable jurisdiction and they need to file for admittance to this court for this matter.
 
trump & republicans call "Treason" when hillary clinton wants to keep her private emails private
then trump runs an armed gang into the capitol building looking to lynch people and trump & the republicans call that democracy.
 
Effin' Ineffable

And then there is Emptywheel's analysis↱ of the Trump SDFL filing; the thread is mind-bending. For instance, Trump's attorneys contradict themselves from one sentence to the next, and even reiterate their own make-believe which in turn might actually have constituted a threat directed at a law enforcement official. Wheeler notes↱ an effect of the pro se question that arose because Trump's attorneys had not filed properly to be admitted to this case: "… on top of lying (which is easy when you're not filing as an office of the court)". Oh, right, we should probably recall this part↑

candy said:
Apparently FBI agents do not read the instructions either. DOJ has agreed to return the passports. No word on the attorney-client communications.

—because Trump's attorneys "admit DOJ is returning stuff outside the scope OF THE INVESTIGATION (which is different than outside the scope of the warrant)". And if we might have already considered↑ that the magagaga might be under some delusion about law enforcement, or don't know how things work, and the question of what would not be at all unusual in the history of law enforcers serving search warrants, a recurring↱ theme↱ in Wheeler's↱ analysis↱ is that Trump's attorneys reinforce the idea that "this was a very routine search". And somewhere around here, it's worth noting that the question of attorney-client privilege starts to get complicated: Wheeler suggests↱, "this is practically a crime report", and explains, "EVERY BIT of Executive Privileged material belongs in the Archives". And we could probably actually find a lot to discuss about the idea↱ that Trump "pretends that a subpoena is a wedding invite"; it's not quite literal, but the filing really does twist the meaning and implications of a subpoena.

Now, I want you to imagine that sometime down the line, it's over, and Donald Trump is wrecked, indicted, arrested, and convicted, but he might skate because his attorneys were incompetent. Because here is a sentence they wrote in the filing: "Responsive documents were provided to the FBI." Wheeler is straightforward↱: "This sentence is a confession to a violation of the Espionage Act."

Which makes a prior note↱ that much more important: "Curiously, Donny's team claims that they haven't been provided the information that I--and everyone else in American--got: Which is that this search was conducted to find evidence of Espionage Act and obstruction violations."

I know, I know. But this really is how it goes. And as to what is or might be unprecedented, it's kind of hard to explain the part↱ where Trump's attorneys include the detail about one of Trump's attorneys appearing to threaten the Attorney General on Donald Trump's behalf. "Keep in mind," Wheeler suggests↱, "that at least one of the lawyers involved here is either a witness or co-conspirator in Trump's suspected obstruction." And if that's not enough, well, okay, so Wheeler points out↱, "Note what's missing here? The Trump supporter who took weapons to the Cincinnati FBI office?" and, yeah, that is kind of interesting, but focus for a moment on the implication: Trump's attorneys are suggesting the efficacy of the apparent threat to Attorney General Garland.

And it is also difficult to express how much of the filing relies on make-believe; it is like an internet argument; Wheeler reminds the obvious↱, that it is, "Hard to 'dig in' if no legal request from the target of the subpoena has been made so far." Meanwhile, Trump's lawyers undermined↱ earlier claims about passports, and again appear to acknowledge↱ that Trump broke the law, referring to "boxes of personal documents, photographs, and items such as clothing" that the filing claims "are by definition not 'contraband'"; Wheeler again reminds the obvious: "If you're the former President, these ARE contraband covered by Presidential Records Act."

This is what passes for subtle: "Thus far, these bozos have pretended they never read the actual crimes mentioned in the subpoena," says↱ Wheeler, and then comes the tricky part. "PRA," she explains, "is not (I was surprised about this, but now it looks smart) among them." But what does that mean? It means Trump's lawyers took time to defend against something not on the table. It's one thing to accuse that the government sought to improperly evade limitations on Presidential Records Act enforcement, but there is no PRA question in the warrant.

And then we come back to a conflict of privileges: "Trump APPEARS to be ceding his attorney-client claim," Wheeler notes↱. "Instead, he's arguing Executive Privilege." This, of course leads back to the point that such documents belong in the National Archive. More directly: "Another confession to a crime."

There comes a point↱ where Trump's lawyers are "citing a terrorist's lawyer who was ultimately convicted of conspiring with that terrorist." And if we might have already considered that one of the reasons agents were able to get a search warrant was because they knew paperwork filed by one of Trump's attorneys made false statements, Wheeler points out↱ that Trump's filing "accuses his own lawyer, Christina Bobb, who is referred to in this filing by reference, of incompetence".

And as one more point, on incompetence, there is a PACER joke↱ in effect, and those are hard to explain because they feel relatively new, but the punch line is that the lawyers' excuse is that they don't know how to lawyer.

We can only wonder what sort of faith Trump's legal team inspires among the magagaga.
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Notes:

@emptywheel. "Uh, 'pro se' means, Trump's going it alone." (thread) Twitter. 22 August 2022. Twitter.com. 23 August 2022. https://bit.ly/3ccJ3Sh
 
American conservatives have always been vicious supremacists; the racism and sexism are part of the American tradition they seek to conserve.
Like I said, not all of them. I know a great many republicans who do not want racism and sexism promulgated.
 
What is needed and what is lacking, regardless of your preferred system, is the following, IMO...
1.A feedback loop
2.Responsibility
3. Stability

1. Whether you want to kick all "foreigners" out or whether you want to let all "foreigners" in, you need to establish a feedback loop to monitor the results, intended and unintended.

You might feel that drugs should all be legalized. You then need to establish a feedback loop to later determine what is working and what isn't working. Did crime go up or down? Are there more or fewer people living on the streets? Has general health improved or declined?

If it's not working you change the policy. If it is, you live it alone.

2. If you want free higher education for all, free nursery schools for all, a minimum wage of 25 dollars an hour or whatever, you need to pay for it. So a balanced budget would be the responsible way to go. You could make allowances for recessions vs better times but in general you would have to pay for any programs you propose. This would also put an end to a lot of rhetoric.

3. Any changes need to be gradual. You can't make a treaty with some country and then break it with the next administration and restart it two administrations later. You can't end Social Security or drastically change the capital gains rate and do it over a short period of time. People need time to adjust. Financial stability is important for an individual (rich or poor) as well as for a business or a government.

1,2 and 3 should apply whether you are liberal, conservative or have any other viewpoint. When you are responsible and money isn't infinite you also have to prioritize (you can't have it all).

I see no reason for there to be "homeless" camped all over public property in every American city. A sane society should be able to solve that problem and I don't mean buying a house for everyone. I mean dealing with drug addicts and the mentally ill without allowing them to take over public areas as they have.

When the police drive by such places, it should be illegal and they should be dealt with out of the public areas however "we" (anyone) wants to solve that problem. This isn't the solution.
 
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I have to disagree. You are painting ALL conservatives with too wide of a brush.

So making the case ought to be easy, right?

Start with a simple question: Who?

What it means: Who will bring that platform? There are plenty of conservatives who claim to not support something their fellows are doing, but neither will they do much to stop it, and in the moment, conservatives generally tend to fall in line and dutifully complain about Democrats, liberals, feminists, and even make-believe.

Who are these other conservatives?

Historically, the racism and sexism of our institutions precedes the Republic itself. Slavery, 1619. Hutchinson clearly won the argument, but she was a woman, so they threw her out for being uppity, 1637. Praying towns, 1645. Anti-Catholicism in Maryland, 1654. Even after the Revolution, the failed Articles of Confederation in 1781 left slavery to the states, and its successor, the Constitution, presupposed slavery within its society. The Fourteenth Amendment is what it is, but the Equal Protection Clause has always struggled against conservative opposition. The Plessy period, for instance; the dissenting Justice was a former slave-owner, and could see the trouble "separate but equal" would bring. The fact of the the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, reminds of our persistent societal disdain shown women. Remember, the law struck in Griswold, 1965¹, was a nineteenth-century speech constraint sponsored in the legislature by P. T. Barnum. Presently, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, having overturned Roe in an act of calculated activism that is its own magnificent irony, eyes Griswold.

In my own time, a basic difference in the both-sides argument about racism in American politics is that on one side it's supposed to be unwelcome, while the other side is softer about the question. Or, rather, that is obsolete; having failed to stop this, what are conservatives going to do now that the rightists, supposedly extremist, are in charge? That is, other than dutifully lining up to complain about Democrats, liberals, women, people of color, schoolteachers, doctors and nurses, homosexuals, transgender, Aunty Phở, workers, migrants, imaginary radical leftists, imaginary child traffickers, and even actual windmills?

Remember, the Democratic Party has never been especially liberal; it's all of twelve years between the '68 convention and the Reagan experience, and in my time it has been all Democratic voters can do to hold the line against the sort of catastrophe that prevailed in the Trump presidency. Tough-on-crime, bawling about welfare queens, supremacism² as equality, and a story of increasing, self-inflicted alienation literally leading the Republican Party to insurrection.

It's a difficult part of the story to explain, but the whole time, there were so many people who weren't this or that supremacist, but they would wag on cue and moralize about liberal elitism, and pretend it was a reason to vote not so much for Republicans they otherwise supported, but against Democrats.

Think of politics around jobs and economy, or tax reform. And then think about the number of conservatives who vote for Republicans who will steer those reforms toward corporations and the one percent because something about birth control, homosexuals, or other moral crises threatening the nation. Where are these other conservatives to stop the widespread censorship in conservative-governed public schools? If this is like any other year, the answer is that they appreciate and desire the political momentum and impetus of authority these supremacist crackpots bring the party and movement. As it has been, now, for several years at least, the only difference between this and older conservatism is how simplistically and superficially it is being expressed, even boasted. An interesting contrast in recent years is the idea that William F. Buckley Jr. would somehow be distressed by what conservatism has become, but if we consider what the proposition means, the actual point that would trouble him is the lack of subtlety.

There is in that aspect of conservatism the value of good men doing nothing; the underlying conservative pretense concedes certain ways of the world and then calculates to operate within and even exploit those constraints. This question of a place for everything and everything in its place runs back at least to Aristotle, and if we might in historical rumination agree that Catholics made a living mess of it, and Anselm's desperate assertion of proof in order to justify faith ought to be laughable, but there is also Weber, on the Protestant ethic in the history and evolution of capitalism. Fast-forward: We ought not be surprised to find economic applications of stable hierarchies and fixed stratification popular in the pro-business politic. Compared to Wilde's↱ argument that the "proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible", the requisite poverty of capitalism and the aesthetic priorities by which it is allocated really do stand out as both craven and arbitrary.

I could try to tell you a long, messy story about a Jesse Jackson speech in '82, and what it cost the Democratic Party to achieve that appearance sometime around 2014, which in turn was only pretty much everything else. The punch line is that over the decade after Jackon's speech, the good Rev won on points, but the DLC and Bill Clinton won on votes. There are reasons why it took thirty years, and reasons why the other route took ten.

A basic formulation: Consider, a generic corpus of tradition. From this, a person raised in a society will inherently learn a prevailing narrative, an underlying story against which other stories are compared. Appeals to change, that is, deviation from tradition, raise a particular sort of uncertainty, which is a mystery of unknown future resolutions. It is easy to fear the uncertainties of unexplored futures; it is a fear of the unknown.

But what happens, then, if the comfort of familiarity includes the sins of the traditional corpus? Think of the 2008 election cycle; no matter how angry we were supposed to be at a Black preacher saying, "God damn America", our society just couldn't muster the same sort of outrage about the white vice-presidential candidate's white preacher angrily warning that God will reach out his hand against America. See, the difference is that the one was a Black guy lamenting the cruelty of our society; the other was a white guy complaining that our society was not cruel enough.

It's not that so many people intend to be cruel, but that they cannot countenance the cruelty of their familiarity. Still, though, the cruelty had long been problematic; it's just that after so long, with all the façades and pretenses and excuses worn through, conservatives are pretty much coming right out and saying it.

Consider a simpler example, something we can draw from our own community history: What is the value of rational discourse? There is a principle of sorts that eschews basic standards of rational discourse as some tool of oppression, as if certain political viewpoints would be utterly censored and silenced if they were somehow obliged to make sense. Maybe it's easy enough to wag at fortean crackpottery or one's favorite religion, but one part of our experience that is not unlike the American tale is when people make excuses for particular, familiar brands of infamy and dysfunction because they would somehow feel badly³ if they didn't.

It's easy enough to say↑ a great many Republicans do not want sexism and racism promulgated, but they're clearly not winning their internecene partisan argument, and are inclined to accept and even enjoy the influence, prestige, and authority the supremacists bring. After witnessing the reluctantly indulgent in so many iterations over the course of decades, it might start to seem those many Republicans do not want to see sexism and racism promulgated, but are kind of okay with the actual sexism and racism. That would make more sense than continuing to pretend they still don't get it. Those great many Republicans have had decades, even generations to correct course; at this point, only a fool would pretend surprise they have not. Trumpism, as such, is a brand experience↗, and the underlying product it is and represents existed before, and will continue in the marketplace.

As a question of broad brushes, fine, there was this one time, in Oregon, when the Republican Party dissolved in order to evade the machinations of Christian nationalists. It was more about appearances, of course, and didn't add up to much, in the end, but at least they tried.
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Notes:

¹ Historical note, file under pub trivia: Justice John Harlan dissented in Plessy v. Ferguson. His grandson, Justice John Harlan II, appointed to the Supreme Court the year after the Plessy decision fell, would write a powerful concurrence in Griswold, believing the majority opinion historically and procedurally insecure, i.e., the Court did not go far enough to secure free speech. The doctrinal subtlety of the difference continues to haunt American society and governance.

² i.e., nonreciprocal authority, an advantageous position of inequality, superior protection under law, supremacy

³ i.e., powerless, remiss, derelict, guilty​

Wilde, Oscar. "The Soul of Man Under Socialism". 1891. Marxists.org. 20 August 2022. http://bit.ly/1JdDOaw
 
3. Any changes need to be gradual. You can't make a treaty with some country and then break it with the next administration and restart it two administrations later. You can't end Social Security or drastically change the capital gains rate and do it over a short period of time. People need time to adjust. Financial stability is important for an individual (rich or poor) as well as for a business or a government.
Interesting. Should slavery have ended gradually? That was certainly a very abrupt change - abrupt and upsetting enough to cause a very deadly war. Would a gradual phase-out have been better, or was the evil that slavery represented so egregious that it had to be ended that way?

For more minor issues I tend to agree with you, and thus support laws that have cut-ins over time. Those work pretty well as long as the next adminstration doesn't gut it (which you mentioned above.)
 
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