So far, support for the impeachment inquiry is falling directly along party lines with very few exceptions. A notable exception is Mitt Romney, who, regardless your views of his presidential runs, is a more moderate and more principled politician than most. That’s my view, at least. I don’t agree with him on everything, and I felt he came across as robotic, but I do believe he’s at heart an ethical person with a reasonably good moral center. As a fellow Mormon, maybe he just feels more comfortable to me.
But even he’s not fully breaking with the party on this one, and he has really nothing to lose. All he’s saying is that there should be an inquiry. When push comes to shove, it remains to be seen where he shakes out.
There are several potential outcomes to the current impeachment inquiry, and what the actual outcome is will depend on a variety of factors, chiefly including new facts that emerge as people give testimony and public polling on impeachment (politicians in contested areas may be swayed by their constituents’ feelings on the matter), especially if it’s likely to affect their reelection chances. I listened to a Vox podcast (article here) a week ago that went through 9 different impeachment scenarios. The article is worth a read for thoroughness if nothing else, but I’m not going to list all 9 scenarios. The ones I consider most likely right now are:
Trump Impeached by Congress, Senate Acquits. I consider this the most likely scenario of all, that votes will fall directly along party lines with one or two crossing over. Right now, the evidence seems pretty clear that Trump did request that a foreign power (Ukraine) intervene by digging up dirt on what polls are (unfathomably to me) still showing is his only real political rival, Joe Biden. Current polling shows him defeating both Sanders and Warren–Sanders narrowly, Warren by a large margin. Biden is the only Democrat that could squeak a win given the electoral college and the current lay of the land. A smear campaign is not enough without some actual corroborating evidence to convince enough Dems to cool on Biden enough to stay home, or at least, Trump didn’t want to leave it up to chance.
White House transcripts revealed this as did several witnesses on the phone call. The only people who seem to think he didn’t do this are some of his rally-goers who are basing it on his claims that it was a perfect phone call rather than reading what was actually said on the call.
The Senate’s basis for acquittal is still up for grabs, but here are a few:
- It was poor judgment, possibly unethical, but not illegal. (This compares his actions favorably to Watergate in which a crime of breaking and entering was committed).
- The request was improper but because it didn’t happen (aid was not withheld), the request alone is insufficient to impeach.
- It’s done all the time (ergo, not poor judgment), and this is just evidence of Trump “draining the swamp” by going after corruption. Trump would prefer this party line to the first one because he doesn’t want his actions to be criticized. It’s undermined by his dismissal of Ambassador Yovanavich and the actions of Guiliani in Ukraine, all of which are highly unusual and appear suspicious.
- The President doesn’t need to be impeached because there’s an election in a year anyway. This begs the question–when is the right timing to hold POTUS accountable for actions that are unethical?
To date, the lack of bipartisan support for impeachment makes it very likely that it will not make it past the Senate, and the strict party line vote implies to me that nobody is going to be willing to break ranks for whatever reason, no matter what testimony reveals. They might make it a quick vote, or they might make a longer show trial (which Trump will pressure them to avoid), but acquittal is at this time the most likely outcome.
I’d peg this one at 90% likely, and that the Senate will do a fast vote, not even really a sham trial. They will claim that Trump’s actions are above reproach as POTUS, meaning that future presidents will have expanded powers and be even harder to impeach.
Trump not Impeached. I think this is the second most likely scenario, although it seems unlikely as there is ample evidence for the behavior, and only more evidence mounting through testimony. Even the act of refusing to cooperate is evidence of obstruction which implies guilt. But there is some small chance that impeachment is enough of a negative in public perception that Congress backs off or does something lighter like a censure.
I give this one an 8% likelihood.
Senate Impeaches but Does Not Vote to Remove. This feels like it would take a level of party departure nobody in the right is willing to do at this time. The only reason they would is if they feel that the public opinion has turned so much against POTUS that they need to be seen as condemning his actions for their own re-election chances, and so far, I don’t see that happening. I don’t understand it, but Trump’s supporters do seem fully capable of justifying just about any action he takes.
I’m going to go 1.5% on this one. The fact that Trump might Tweet at them is just too scary for these guys to impeach.
Trump Pressured to Resign. To me, this is a very unlikely outcome. Trump can’t abide failure, and in the face of accusations he has consistently denied everything (or in this case, admitted then denied). This outcome presupposes that Trump is capable of being pressured by the party, when all I’ve seen evidence of is that the power dynamic goes completely the other way. The upside of this one, and why the party would be wise to go this route, is that Pence is deeply implicated in the scandal and if Trump were impeached, Pence is likewise culpable and subject to removal. However, if Trump resigned, Pence could theoretically finish his term. The Republicans would only want to do this if they felt Pence could win the 2020 election, and I haven’t seen any polling on this, but honestly I doubt it.
I have to go 0.5% or less on this one. I just don’t think the party has any control on Trump, even if it means the party fractures in his wake.
So what do you think will happen? Are you hearing any discussion of this among your fellow ward members? Where do their sympathies lie?
- Do you think Mormons favor impeachment, censure or do they believe the party line that it’s a sham?
- Would the Mormons you know like a Pres. Pence?
- Will many Mormons break ranks in 2020 and vote for a Democrat? Have these scandals rocked their faith in the Republican party?
- What do you think will happen to the Republican party after Trump?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
The friends I have who are active in the church defend trump and see it as some sort of conspiracy. Since I am a Democrat, the conversation gets awkward. I do think it will go to the Senate and they will defend him to the end with impeachment failing along party lines for the most part.
For me, Trump just revealed the extent the Republican Party is had moved to the extreme.
I doubt that many Mormons will favor impeachment. They’re a reliably Republican voting bloc, and most of the Republicans that found Trump repulsive at the beginning have warmed up to him by now – they’ve realized that his differences with other Republicans are a matter of style and not substance.
Democrats are trying to paint the Ukraine affair as Trump attacking a political rival and nothing more. They don’t want people talking about the fact that Hunter Biden actually did things that are worth investigating, and that in fact his firm was being investigated by the Ukrainian government for corruption during the Obama administration, until his father demanded that the Ukrainians halt the investigation. Donald Trump asking them to start it up again is hardly criminal – unless you happen to believe that being the vice president’s son should grant you immunity from such things.
President Trump, like every other president of my lifetime, has done plenty of questionable things, so when the Democrats decided it was time to impeach, they had plenty of reasons to choose from. Why they picked such a comically bad one – one that will expose their front-runner’s history of graft in front of the whole nation – is beyond me.
A lot of my practicing LDS friends and family are very disturbed by Trump’s actions and want to see him impeached. But I know that there are so many people who are just fine with what Trump did. I saw some poll results this morning that said that over 60% of Trump’s base say that nothing that he could do would cause them to stop supporting him. I know that’s only like 20% of the country, but still, it terrifies me that so many of my fellow citizens just don’t care if their president is even law-abiding.
I like OP’s assessment of what is likely to happen. It makes me sad for my country, and also very fearful of what is in our future. I tend to be an optimist, but I’m having such a hard time thinking of any good way out of this mess.
As for what I hear at church, the answer is almost nothing political. One guy is a very vocal anti-Trumper and he tries not to talk about it at church, but sometimes it spills out, but that’s about it. I of course am anti-Trump, but I don’t talk politics at church. My working assumption is that most ward members are at least nominally Republican, but I suspect there are a lot of misgivings about Trump.
As for what I think will happen, I think you’re pretty spot on. Almost certainly there will be an impeachment and an acquittal. The only thing that gives me pause is the possible trend of public opinion. In Nixon’s case, for example there wasn’t a lot of support for impeachment originally but it grew over time. If polling eventually starts to show increasing public support for conviction, even the Republican Senators have to pay attention to what the public wants. But I don’t see Trump’s 40% base wilting any time soon, so that scenario is a long shot.
My priors: up until 2016, I’d spent most of my adult life mostly voting for Republican candidates–maybe 70% of the time.
My feeling is that when political scientists look back on this time frame, they’ll essentially decide that the Republican party has already changed so much in the last 5 years that it is already essentially a different party than the one Reagan and Eisenhower, e.g., were a part of. Kind of the way political scientists look at the Democrats in the ’60s, where they became something appreciably different than they had been before, but kept the same name. I used to vote for Republicans because, among other things, I like free trade, a commitment to less government spending, a cogent and cautious foreign policy (Bush II notwithstanding), and a respect for rule of law. I get none of those with the Republican party now. Indeed, I’m not sure now what the tenets of the party are, and I’m pretty sure the party leaders don’t know either. For the last 5 years, they’ve had a Hobson’s choice: follow Trump, who doesn’t seem to have an ideology beyond naked populism, or get voted out of office. They’ve consistently picked the former, but have had to sacrifice much of what the party used to espouse to do so.
Put another way, I don’t think the Republican party I grew up with still exists. Whether what it has become can continue to be viable in its present form is perhaps the more interesting question.
Putting my comments into perspective, I voted third-party last election because I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Trump (found him that distasteful) but also couldn’t pull the lever for Clinton (found her even more distasteful). I would have called myself a “Never Trumper” except that time has brought me to the point where I will likely hold my nose and vote for him this next time around because there are not any other palatable options (all the Democrats had to do was not be crazy to get my vote, and they couldn’t clear that low hurdle). The damage he would do to culture and society has already been done and unfortunately the Democratic Party hasn’t seen fit to give me a reasonable choice — the top three candidates are a socialist, a communist, and Joe Biden. Jack Kennedy, they are not.
With that in mind, and having read the transcript, I don’t have any problem with the call. Was it a perfect phone call? No, of course not. But a big issue is whether or not there was sufficient initial evidence of impropriety in the behavior of Joe and Hunter Biden — I don’t want the fact that Joe Biden is running for President to be a carte blanche that a sitting President cannot investigate. After all, the same rationale could be applied to President Obama’s efforts to investigate Trump for ties to Russia — it seems hypocritical and results-oriented thinking to find that Obama could investigate Trump but Trump should be hands-off on Biden. While there are some differences, the underlying theory is applicable in both cases.
Me personally, I like to see corruption investigated — whether Trump and Russia or Biden and Ukraine. There was enough smoke (heck, Biden’s own words that he held $1B in aid up to get the prosecutor fired) that it was appropriate to investigate. Would I have preferred Trump handle it differently? Certainly, but I would also prefer a different President in office — in the end you play the hand that you are dealt.
Incidentally, I haven’t seen very many in favor of impeachment and/or removal answer what seems to be the most important question to me — how do you govern the Trump supporters after impeachment? We have a history of accepting election results, but you will be left with 60M or so individuals — many of whom believe that the government has lost the consent of the governed. It is a certain recipe for civil strife and a dozen more Timothy McVeigh’s (or even Bundy standoffs) if something doesn’t happen to bring them back onboard. I cannot see how that is a good thing — impeachment needs to be broadly agreed upon by the people for it to be anything other than destructive (which is why the requirement for supermajority in the Senate).
Jonathan: I agree that how to govern Trump’s base in a post-Trump country is a scary question. They are utterly convinced (by his rallies) that their will is the “will of the people,” so if they don’t get what they want, who knows what they will do? They will see it as democracy having been destroyed. They are not only under-informed, but they’ve been steadily fed conspiracy theories and lies while thinking that the other side is all corrupt and full of liars and criminals. They distrust the press. They only believe their Glorious Leader.
Even more scary if Trump makes good on his little “jokes” about 2 terms not being enough. It’s a real Pinochet vibe to hear his comments about how he’s owed more time due to the grief he’s taken. In a recent David Frum article in the Atlantic, some of his quotes were compiled:
– Toasting Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in March 2018, Trump said: “He’s now president for life. President for life … I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
– At a rally in Elkhart, Indiana, two months later, Trump mused about getting an “extension” of his presidency beyond the eight-year constitutional maximum.
– This May, he retweeted Jerry Falwell Jr.’s suggestion that Trump should get a two-year extension of his first term as “reparations” for what Falwell called “the corrupt failed coup”—the special counsel’s investigation and related inquiries.
– In July he tweeted jokingly (“just kidding”) about staying in office for “10 or 14” more years.
– Even on the verge of an impeachment inquiry, in September, Trump enjoyed the familiar joke once more, this time with the head of the soccer association FIFA. “We’re going to have to extend my second term because [of] 2026,” the year the World Cup will return to North America, he said. “I’m going to have to extend it for a couple of years.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/when-trump-goes/600736/
It seems like you can tell which news channels or forums a person follows by what they have to say about Joe and Hunter Biden.
One correction. We can’t read the transcript, because it has NOT been released. Just a sanitized summary that the White House released. From what one of the listeners to the call indicated in sworn testimony, the “transcript” was missing a few things, which should not surprise us. This whole episode in the ongoing drama “The Demise of the GOP” just goes to prove that politics trumps ethics.
Does anybody have anything positive to say about Hunter Biden’s business with Burisma?
Positive, as in uplifting and heartening? No. We can say that it was not illegal, and there is no proof that his father tried to halt corruption investigations in Ukraine to protect his son. In fact, even Ukrainians interviewed say the opposite. It appears that Burisma added the younger Biden to make the company look more legit in the West, but one would have to be a fool to not think it wasn’t also an attempt get Joe Biden to back off his continued insistence that the government in Kiev take corruption more seriously and fire the prosecutor who was doing little in that regard. Hunter Biden has now publicly stated that it was probably a bad idea to take the position (Duh!) and Joe Biden says it was his son’s choice and he wasn’t going to interfere.
The thing is, people are added to boards of directors and paid a TON of money all the time for all kinds of reasons, many of them political. This isn’t illegal and, in the West, it isn’t even seen as corrupt. Ask George Schultz and James Mattis why they joined the board of Theranos. Because Elizabeth Holmes was that compelling, even though she couldn’t tell anyone how the damn black box actually worked? I’m skeptical.
Angela:
I think you somewhat dodged the substance of my concern with your response. If Trump loses at the ballot box, I don’t think you are looking at civil unrest (your complaints about his acolytes notwithstanding). But an action outside of the election context poses some significant risk (in my estimation) of civil unrest. People need to believe their vote matters — even when they lose. When they win an election and then the political elite appear to undo the results of that election, that is where you run a risk of losing the consent of the governed. I understand it isn’t as clear cut as this, but I also recognize that it will appear that way. I don’t think the behavior of the Democratic Party is doing anything to ameliorate those concerns in the way they are handling things.
On your other criticsms of Trump supporters, I don’t think they are uniformly fair — there is a large undercurrent of contempt in what you write that is inconsistent with my experience in discussing things with Trump supporters. Most aren’t blind to his faults (though many are more tolerant of them than I am). They just see him as the only person who was willing to listen to them — and nothing has happened since to make them think differently. Even your language “Glorious Leader” — presumably a deliberate choice to mock both Trump and his supporters (for ignorantly following him) — demonstrates the validity of their concerns. When you write off millions of people as too stupid or evil to know how to vote properly don’t be surprised when they vote for anyone but you.
There exists a strong temptation towards tribalism on both sides. Conservatives have a bit of an advantage as it is impossible to escape the Liberal narrative (between media and the press). But either way, it is important to find people who are smart, good, and believe the exact opposite politically to you — not only because it refines your thinking but also because it helps prevent the idea that the only people who disagree with you are evil and/or stupid (or misinformed) and thus refusing to listen. I carefully hold close to a number of friends on the other side of the aisle that I can go to when the behavior of the other party don’t make sense. Usually, after the conversations, my opinion isn’t changed (so much of politics is about value judgments, after all). But I always understand better where they are coming from and realize it isn’t stupidity or evil at all but just them valuing one good more highly while I value another good more highly.
Meanwhile there doesn’t seem to be much recognition in your comment that corruption is not unidirectional. While I don’t think the other side is all corrupt and full of liars and criminals, I do believe that BOTH sides are full of corruption, liars, and criminals (and both sides have some honest servants). You cannot read the Book of Mormon without becoming convinced that secret combinations are a thing and if you are only looking for them amongst your political opponents you are not behaving in a wise manner. It becomes all of us to look with skepticism at our own side.
That includes skepticism about the modern press. We had another great example of that this week — ABC News spiked a story on Jeffrey Epstein. The reporter claimed she had multiple-sourced claims, interviews, pictures, videotaped confirmation, and more. She had this three years ago — during Hilary Clinton’s run for President. According to the reporter, on a hot mic, she had information on Clinton as well. George Stephanopolous — a former Clinton bag man (who bragged about burying stories of Clinton’s sexual improprieties during Clinton’s presidency) — was and is the chief political correspondent for ABC News which made the decision to spike the story.
Maintaining trust in the media after this is a deliberate exercise of results-oriented will. You don’t have to imagine what your reaction would be to that if the shoe was on the other foot — this is very similar to the behavior of the National Enquirer spiking a story unfavorable to President Trump. The only difference being that story dealt with a porn star and this story dealt with underage, abused children. If you got mad then (and who wouldn’t) with Trump you must likewise get mad with ABC News here. And if you condemn Republicans for selling their souls for Trump (a valid complaint) you must likewise condemn Democrats for contining to sell their souls for Clinton.
Either way, it appears that a major news network buried a story that would have refected badly on their preferred candidate for high office. Was it for access or for political results? How many children were abused in the three years after this story was spiked? If ABC had run the story, could some or all of those children been saved from this abuse? This is one of dozens and dozens of examples — there is good reason to distrust the press. If you have a solution for this, I am all ears (I don’t have one) — because the absence of trust in the news media is a serious problem and invites disinformation to take root. But I’m also confident that the solution is not to wish for those who distrust the media to become more trusting — it is for the media to become more trustworthy.
That being said, I do not genuinely fear Trump making good on any of his jokes about extending beyond two terms. There are too many who will vote for him now out of necessity but would stand arm and arm with you to excise him out of office should he move to violate the Constitution.
Politics here?…on this blog? Not interested. More than enough “talking heads” everywhere else. Otherwise, I love hawkgirl’s writing. Skipping this one.
I considered impeachment appropriate when Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona Sheriff convicted of criminal contempt of court for continuing to detain “persons for further investigation without reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is being committed” – called kidnapping when you or I do it. This was the first concrete action I recall that Trump took to ignore the rule of law. To those who say Trump was exercising his constitutional right of a president’s power to pardon, my answer is it is also well within Congress’s constitutional right to check abuse of such power via the impeachment and removal process.
I quit the Republican Party the day Trump was nominated. Before that I was there with them when they impeached Clinton for lying to a grand jury and their uncovering abuses in the Obama administration that included “Fast and Furious,” the IRS scandals, Richard Windsor, and rule by “pen and phone” to name a few. But I won’t abide using those as reasons to excuse Trump’s abuse of power. It’s a shameful argument.
And Democrats – the failure to check your leaders when your party was in power is a primary reason it will be damn near impossible to remove someone as bad as Trump now. In fact, if that happened with Clinton, I doubt Trump would ever have come close to being president.
To tick off any remaining readers who haven’t been ticked off with this rant yet, my disillusionment with the Republican party was a contributing factor in my disillusionment with the Church which has too many leaders and members who don’t know the difference between the two.
Do you think Mormons favor impeachment, censure or do they believe the party line that it’s a sham? Most Mormons I know (well, conservative ones) don’t favor impeachment. They think the Democrats are making a mountain out of a molehill. While they tend to acknowledge a dislike of Trump and his antics, they generally see him as on their side and pursuing the right policies (hey, the economy is doing fine, they say to themselves, nevermind the record high deficit and signs of a recession around the corner (inverted yield curve), trade wars, and no progress on bringing big coal back). Trying to inform them of how corrupt and unconstitutional he is tends to either fall on deaf ears and/or is met with whataboutism (well, what about the Democrats and this?).
Would the Mormons you know like a Pres. Pence? Yes. More than Trump. In fact, many I know think he is this dreamy ideal president. I see posts on Facebook fawning over how much more articulate he is and better-sounding in tone. Still, however, no cries for the impeachment of Trump, even from Pence-adorers.
Will many Mormons break ranks in 2020 and vote for a Democrat? Have these scandals rocked their faith in the Republican party? No. They remain lodged in an echo chamber and think that there is this creeping socialism among the Democrats (a la the socialism of the worst socialist experiments such as Venezuela) and that the Democrats are pure evil because they are pro-choice and in favor of gay rights. Plus, they think that Democrats are anti-free speech because of a select few protests against provocateur speakers at college campus (a relatively small insignificant phenomenon, we also see cases of conservatives pushing out liberals because of their politics on college campuses too) and obsessed with political correctness (nevermind rampant conservative correctness, anyone remember the war on Christmas?) based on a select few anecdotes of real extreme nutjobs who seem to carry no influence in mainstream liberal publications or among the Democrats in Congress.
What do you think will happen to the Republican party after Trump? It will remain strong. Trump is very popular with Republicans. Conspiracy theories are more popular on the Republican side as well and Trump speaks the conspiratorial language. I used to believe in the doctrine of imminent collapse of the Republican Party. It would collapse because of Bush 43. But it rebranded and waged a strong fight against an overwhelmingly Democratic government in the Obama era. I thought it would collapse because of Trump winning the Republican nomination. But false equivalence and whataboutism narratives (Hillary just as bad or worse, and you Dems are blind to that, what about Benghazi and emails?) deflected and minimized criticism of Trump. When Trump won the election, Mormon conservatives thought, “well it was all just an act, part of his strategy, now he’ll be a good president.” And when the daily scandals started breaking out, they dismissed it as liberal fake news and doubled down on the victimhood complex, which drives conservatism today. More and more conservatives are trying to make conservative like a biological ethnic identity, as if you’re born conservative and its part of your blood. And the deep state, education system, legal system, the press, you name it is controlled by the liberals who routinely target and victimize conservatives. And Mormons buy into this narrative hook, line, and sinker. Perpetual victims, even when they controlled the entire government and most state governments 2017-2019.
Trump was not a bug of conservatism, even Mormon-brand conservatism. He was always feature of it. That’s all I have to say, though. Didn’t read the comments. And I won’t read any follow-ups (sorry, angry MAGA guys).
Warning: this comment fails the basic Christian test of charity.
Well, I had hoped that this topic would not appear on Wheat Tares, because it is like getting a root canal. But it looks like the House will vote to impeach, and the 800-pound gorilla is sitting in the middle of the living room. Maybe Wheat and Tares can get back later to dealing with Mormon issues.
So. I have mixed feelings. I speak as a proud Goldwater-Reagan conservative who stuck with principles of limited government, when Republicans jumped the rails for the flesh pots of ethnicity, nationalist chauvinism and isolationism.
Lisa Murkowski, the moderate Republican Senator from Alaska, said it best. She said that Democrats have handled the issue poorly, and as a tool for partisan political advantage. Their closed-door hearings were an affront to our democratic process. Does anyone seriously believe their pious fraud that they are merely acting in the interests of what is left of our Republic? Give me a break. Nancy Pelosi showed her true colors: after resisting impeachment for months, claiming that there needed to be a broad consensus. Well, her broad consensus included zero Republicans supporting the vote to start formal hearings, and only two Democratic votes against.
But Murkowski was also emphatic that hearings still do need to be held. Nixon and Clinton, vile as they were, never got down to Trump’s level. An impeachment process is necessary, because what Trump did with the question of aid to Ukraine beggars belief: trying to strong-arm a foreign government to dig up dirt on your political opponent.
So Hunter Biden is a sleaze. Try to find a way to get him behind bars. But Trump is an existential threat to our American society. His very existence defines deviancy down. And all the so-called conservatives out there who laud his judicial appointments (which I happen to like) and his roll back of the regulatory state, fail to realize that whatever good Trump might do is vastly outweighed by his awfulness: what he did to the Kurds was evil, and is just the latest example. I mean, who else but Trump would continue to smear John McCain, after his death? After three years of this guy, no one has any hope that he can or will change. He is the kind of person who, when it is pointed that he is acting badly, will only act worse, just to stick it to his critics. He is a bully stuck in full-time primal-scream rage mode. He is mentally unstable.
Let’s remove him from office. Yes, Elizabeth Warren will be awful, and Joe Biden only marginally less so. But Trump is genuinely unfit. I mean, the man likes dictators! Putin, Erdogan, to name some. And if they say nice things about him, he believes their lies.
I will dread going to Church, because of a man who just can’t help himself , and who already gets up and testifies that God called Trump to save the USA. What will he do now? I suspect that there are a few more waiting to use Church to support their Trump.
But this will eventually pass.
“Let’s Talk About Impeachment” mmmmm… let’s just talk about pizza.
There’s too much psychology at play and how humans deal with information that contradicts what they’ve been taught. This is regardless of being Mormon or not. Being Mormon just means you’re more likely to be republican, it doesn’t mean you’ll exercise better moral judgement than any other person.
Wally: True enough, although what was released was pretty damning.
Jonathan: I used the term Glorious Leader to make a parallel to the dictators Trump so admires and befriends. I agree that there are improper actions on both sides, but not to the extent of this President. He’s in a new class all his own, along with thugs, mafia dons and dictators. We don’t see his like very often in politics, and he has a populist charm (I’m immune to it, but it speaks to many) that makes him hard to beat. Your comment feels like whataboutism to me. Yes, we see nepotism (Hunter Biden should not been paid over half a million per year for that board seat given his lack of qualifications, although I don’t see that his dad was at fault so much as Ukraine hoping to gain influence–something that apparently didn’t bear any fruit anyway), and we see families with outsize influence (Clintons) in the party, a sort of de facto royalty. Nothing makes me more skeptical than the unwillingness of politicians to break ranks, and this has calcified in the last 5 years. I have absolutely lost all respect for many, but not all, Trump die-hards.
Dave C.: I agree about Sheriff Joe. That was a low point for sure.
John W: I really appreciate your answers to the questions. I was genuinely curious as I’m not having many political conversations with my fellow Church members lest I become completely unable to serve them or serve beside them. I want to know how they justify what they think but without knowing who is justifying what. It’s very difficult to be among people whose views I find so morally unsound. Listening to the Left, Right and Center podcast was helpful to me, although the Right argument is usually about it not being that bad or let him be voted out, not impeached.
Taiwan Missionary: It sounds like you & I are pretty aligned, although given checks & balances, I’m not that worried about a left-leaning president. They aren’t going to have carte blanche anyway. And I 100% prefer a liberal court (but we’ve already lost that for the next few decades now). I like progress, but I also think you have to have sufficient consensus.
My take is that many Mormons support Trump, and many are just holding their noses until this whole episode ends. The vast majority of Mormons are in those two camps or somewhere in between. Very few are willing to oppose Trump to the point where it would be seen to support a democratic position. Even Mitt Romney won’t do that. To put it a bit hyperbolically, the Democratic party is, to many Mormons, The Great Satan that is going to come to your house, abort your babies, divorce you from your spouse, gay-marry you to a stranger, nationalize your self employed business as a dentist, fire you, and force you to work as a TSA agent doing full body pat downs on people of the opposite gender.
Okay, that is very hyperbolic. But the real point is, it seems like it doesn’t matter how bad Trump is, Mormons who don’t support him are waiting him out instead of supporting a Democrat.
I agree with someone above who said you should have friends who disagree with you. But that is getting SO MUCH harder. I’ve never had trouble before. I had friends I respect who liked Obama, McCain, Romney, Gore, both Clintons, and both Bushes. But while I have friends who support Trump, I can’t explain their reasons in a way that makes sense to me, and I’m not convinced they can either.
For those bothered by closed door hearings, I wonder if you have looked into the reasons why they are held? Are you aware that closed door hearings have been held consistently for other investigations, including the Clinton impeachment? Lindsay Graham made a passionate case for closed door hearings on the Clinton impeachment, which I how you will review; how is the Trump inquiry different, other than the political party? (Okay, the fire two questions are largely rhetorical, but I really would like to hear on the last question.)
One more thought. The popular narrative is shaped aroundthe question of should he be impeached? (A no-brainer, Trump is by far the worst president in history and we should be doing everything in our power to remove him from office). However, another question I am more interested in is what is the strategy behind impeachment? Democrats are not fools (and neither are Republicans nor Trump, who wouldn’t be where he is if he were). They are playing a carefully calculated chess game. Pelosi knows she has to motion for impeachment and a great opportunity presented itself. She can’t just ignore the opportunity. It is too seemingly unconstitutional. If she did, Trump would just continue to walk all over her. She knows that now is the right time to pounce, and pounce only on the Ukraine issue (if she included other issues, it would make it look more political and less principle-based). If impeachment backfires and fires up the conservative base, the torrent of rapidly moving news cycles will wash any possible backlash against impeachment down the drain by October 2020. There will be other issues by then. However if impeachment catches hold, the public will remember how Trump committed an impeachable offense any time he tries to bring up Hunter Biden and Ukraine during his reelection campaign. Pelosi knows the Senate won’t impeach. But this impeachment trial could really embarrass the heck out of Trump and put him, and the Republican establishment, on the defensive. Plus it is likely to blunt a key attack on his likely opponent.
I am proud not to be an American. I am not at all proud that most leaders of the church are Republican, even when Trump is the Republican leader. I have concerns about what happened to their moral compass, and think it shows they are Republicans first, and christians later. Most people in Australia see Trump as a bafoon, but with power.
On the international scene, apart from droping the kurds in it, giving the region to Putin etc. He has created a trade war with China, and seems to be trying to contribute as much as possible to climate change when the rest of the world sees a disaster coming. The fact that we have a GA who was big oils man in washington, and spent a lot on undermining environmentalists, and attacking climate change is disgusting. And Trump is giving encouragement to dictators around the world by what he gets away with.
Many overseas mormons see it as their duty to be the equivalent of Republicans, which is extreme in a country where the conservative party, claims to be meeting its climate change obligation, supports gay marriage, supports leagal abortion to 22 weeks, and supports universal health care.
Are these the things that make Democrats socialists, and terrible?
The media here says there were Republicans in the closed door enquiry relating to impeachment.
The media here did not report the terrible things republicans believe Obama or H Clinton did. Are you sure you are not being fed lies by Putin? How do we know any more what is true.
“But Trump is genuinely unfit. I mean, the man likes dictators! Putin, Erdogan, to name some. And if they say nice things about him, he believes their lies.”
Amen
I believe it a truly scary time for our country with Trump in charge and few to none in his party willing to call him out—and hold him accountable. He has a penchant to praise dictators while criticizing allies, and our own democratic institutions etc. I never thought we would be at this place. I have no doubt a majority of local church members wouldn’t agree with me—(since we didn’t agree on Prop 8). For starters, At a minimum, Ive asked myself how can my fellow church members not bat an eye at electing a serial adulterer who was taped saying he grabs women without consent, (backed up by several women claiming he did just that)? (after all Bill Clinton was unsuitable) And the list of horrible goes on—like name calling, separating children from their moms and dads, denigrating a POW, crude language, constant blatant lying, etc etc etc.
I strongly believe, largely we are where we are due to conservative media—am radio programs and talking heads on various tv programs.
I thought at some point the party would tire of Trump drama and look for a way to promote Pence to a higher position.
Ultimately I don’t think he will be kicked out of office. Politically I don’t think it necessarily a wise choice for Democrats to pursue impeachment, but I think it absolutely ethically and morally important that we at least go through the process—that this is not okay in any way, shape or form for a POTUS to conduct his duties (using a sleazy private attorney)in this way.
A day late to the discussion. I have mixed feelings about impeachment, but no mixed feelings about President Trump. He needs to be removed from office, and I can list a dozen reasons. I agree, though, that actual removal from office through impeachment is almost impossible, given our severe partisanship that has driven both parties to the extreme end of their platforms.
However, as I look at Trump’s support among evangelicals and Mormons, I think we miss what is driving his continued loyalty among his base: the abortion issue. Trump knew he could play on the sympathy of the Christian Right by promising to appoint anti-abortion judges, and it is the one promise that he has been able to keep. I believe that his support among members of the Church that I know mostly hinges on these appointments (25% of the total federal judiciary at this point), with a few more strictly looking at the growth in their IRA accounts as reasons to like him. Republicans have been successful a labeling Democrats as baby killers, and the Democratic Party has done little to provide their candidates any chance at subtlety on this issue. As a Democrat for almost all of my adult life, I am disheartened that this is the case.
The Church’s abortion policies are more nuanced than most members realize, still allowing it in cases of rape, incest, or serious threats to the mother’s health. I nother words, safe, legal, and extremely rare. It is not encouraged, but Church policy does allow it and does caution that the decision should not be made lightly. Most members, from what I see, are willing to join forces with the evangelical right to enact egregiously strict abortion laws that don’t take into account any of these other circumstances. As long as members see that Trump continues to support anti-abortion judges, they are willing to overlook his moral bankruptcy, use of his office to enrich himself and his family, and the attack dog mentality of his rallies and tweets. We’ve sunk pretty low as a nation. And I do wish that there was a more moderate Democrat who seemed likely to catch voter’s imagination, but even Buttigieg seems unlikely to pull voters from Trump as an openly gay candidate. If Trump serves a second term, our democracy is not likely to recover in fifty years, if ever.
i have lots to say but also have my dominant hand in a cast so ill leave it to hawkgrrls assessment is 100% but in a world with any decency at all or any concern for the future of the nation trump would be impeached for failing in every possible way olive up to the oath he took to defend and support the Constitution
everything trump gets away with now will become legal precedent and will be repeated and pushed that much further toward dictatorship
What’s fascinating to me about this particular news item is how so many presumably smart people can look at the same thing–the released transcript–and draw such opposite conclusions. Depending upon who one talks to, the document is either the smoking gun we’ve all been waiting for or it’s an exoneration. One can read it and come away utterly convinced that it’s a demonstration of Trump’s own corruption–or of his trying to understand corruption within the Ukraine and the 2016 election. Nearly all who’ve followed Trump’s exchange with Zelensky have very few doubts–that the exchange is either an unprecedented presidential low or the same type of back-and-forth engaged in by every US administration. Again, it’s all quite fascinating because I can’t recall a similarly polarizing event in recent history. As for me, I’m convinced of only one thing: It’s a Rorschach (inkblot) test. So far, the letter reveals far more about the reader’s own self and political fears or desires than it does about Trump and his crimes.
Pagan: I dunno. How many on the right are just taking the position Lindsey Graham has, that they will not read the transcript because their minds are made up? The biggest problem I see is that the Dems aren’t distilling the information into sound bites, and the American people, like college students, don’t actually read the material. Just the SparkNotes. Well, they need to do a better job putting out SparkNotes then. Trump’s tweets are gobbled up because they are easy to follow (well, except when they are incoherent “covfefe”). He can say whatever he wants because nobody in his party is motivated to actually look at the record.
An interesting take on this is that the GOP hates Dems more than they hate foreign interference in our elections. That’s the core issue here. Do you believe the Dems need to be stopped at all costs (e.g. you believe that abortion is an infant genocide, you believe that God hates gay marriage, you believe that your way of life is under threat from the left or that immigrants are taking away your jobs, do you feel the Dems are condescending people like you, calling you racist and sexist and policing your words)? If so, then you probably don’t really care that POTUS would try to win the election by using foreign influence, which the Mueller report already showed happened in 2016 (that Russia interfered successfully on behalf of Trump, not necessarily that Trump knew or directed it).
The winners (GOP) not only don’t care that it happened, but Trump is eager to control that interference for his own gain by manipulating a weak foreign leader to be his puppet. That’s not normal historical behavior. It’s now out in the open. If we let it stand, that’s how it’s going to be in the future. Will the Dems stoop to his level in future elections if they are in the same position? (I hope not, but who knows). Will every incumbent president now be allowed to use the power and resources of his office (I have no hope that we will have a female president in my lifetime given what happened in 2016 and current polling) to win a second term rather than to further the interests of the republic?
I’m a bit older than most of you and can remember the twice yearly talks that President Benson gave in Conference, not to mention at BYU, stake conferences and the like. His only topic seemed to be that Republicanism was righteousness and that the “Righteous Republicans” would defeat the evils of Communism, and the other evils of the world. Democrats were of the devil because they advocated abortion, women working outside the home, homosexuality,”free love” and every other sin you could imagine. My sibs and I would just roll our eyes as if to say, “Oh no, here we go again.” My father taught us to think for ourselves and stressed to us that that giving blind obedience to anyone, even a church leader, was not pleasing to God. (My mom was the complete opposite which made for interesting times at home.) During my first year at BYU I discovered to my horror and dismay that not all church leaders and other people in positions of leadership and authority have our best interests in mind. It was a sad lesson to learn, but the lessons my dad taught me about thinking for myself were validated. I see the problem with church members following Trump as a result of the conditioning I have mentioned. When righteousness is equated with being a member of a particular political party you join it. Who doesn’t want to be seen as being “on the Lord’s side”? The other problem is the pervasive insistence on obedience from leaders. Blindly following someone leads to myriad problems. Studying the leader’s platform/teachings carefully, considering what the possible consequences of those teachings/platform might be, praying about it and then making an informed decision to follow that person(or not) is a completely different thing than blindly giving up your right to think for yourself and just becoming one of the mob. Once you’re one of the mob it’s easy to get caught up in the mob mentality and give your assent to people and ideas that would’ve once horrified you. History is replete with stories of despicable people and heinous behavior that were facilitated by the mob mentality. Think of Trump’s rah rah rallies across the country.
Angela said: “GOP hates Dems more than they hate foreign interference in our elections”
This is an interesting micro case study in how we see what we want and ignore what doesn’t fit. I’m trying to be neutral so you can see both sides since I know both sides.
If you ask a GOP person about foreign interference in our elections, they’ll say that the “foreign interference” was fake Russian Facebook posts that were designed to stir people up.
Is it good? No. Is it something we need to get up in arms about, no. Just learn to spot fake news. They’ll also point to the DNC server hacking, was analyzed by a Ukrainian owned company that had motive to implicate Russia.
If you ask democrats, they’ll refer to Russian sponsored groups that fronted as conservative groups and held rallies to rile up the GOP as well as the hacking of the DNC server. The company that verified the hacking was a reputable company and their ruling is sound.
That’s a lot more significant because the idea of “boots on the ground’ is a lot more concerning than fake facebook posts.
Going back to the GOP voter, Russia gate has been so overblown and to them demonstrably false. How would one really know that Russia was behind the rallies? Everyone at the Rally looks just like them. This sounds like the news trying to drum up another conspiracy to discredit Trump.
This is a beautiful article from an Orthodox Jew who is a psychologist and is trying to understand why his fellow orthodox jews are still holding on to the Torah being 100% Mosiac. He touches upon how we interpret facts that contradict us:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-psychological-mechanisms-that-protect-unreasonable-faith-claims
Andy, if you ask your average Republican or Democratic voter about Russian interference into the 2016 election (an established fact in the Mueller Report, and by myriad other high-level sources), they probably won’t have much to say because they don’t follow news that closely and vote based upon mostly uninformed general impressions of how good one side is or how bad the other side is.
You seem to preach this idea of centrism that both sides are somehow equally extreme and that the truth is somewhere in between. This is an absolutely untenable and irresponsible attitude to maintain. It is prone to compromise truth and reason and give way to ideas based on delusion, poor reasoning, and outright lies. If we were to maintain a centrist attitude on the shape of the earth, it would be oval, because there are flat-earthers who say it is flat and scientists who say it is spherical. At some point we have to dismiss some ideas and insane, completely unsubstantiated, and outright fabrications.
The fact of the matter is that people, not all, but many, are very prone to delusion, paranoia, tribalism, confirmation bias, groupthink, ignorance, and lunacy. Another select group of people are liars and con-artists who knowingly lie and deceive for their political and financial advantages. The GOP voters are overwhelmingly more prone to believing in conspiracy theories and other outlandish ideas than Democratic voters (a sizable percentage of Republican voters believed that Obama was born in another country). They are more tribalistic and given to confirmation bias than Democratic voters. This is evidenced by their support of Trump (look at evangelicals and their support for him even despite the fact that he has repeatedly and proudly cheated on his wife). And con-artists and liars abound much more in the GOP than they do in Democratic Party. There is no equivalent of Trump in the DNC. Neither is there is any equivalent of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, or Lindsay Graham and many other liars and con-men in the DNC. Not to say there isn’t corruption in the DNC or good people in the GOP. But my point shouldn’t be that hard to understand.
An important point here is that, completely absent any conspiracy with Russia or attempt to pull Ukraine into American politics, Trump is still a very bad president by any measure. This is no longer about liberal versus conservative. Ronald Reagan, the patron saint of true modern conservatives, would find Trump appalling, as do many actual conservatives now, including David Frum, Bill Kristol, etc. The patrician William F. Buckley would see Trump as coarse, ignorant, self absorbed and inept, because he is all these things.
Based on the bad presidenting alone, Trump should lose re-election in a landslide, but he won’t. If that were a certainty, I’m not sure impeachment would be on the table, given just a year to the next presidential election. There is a legitimate fear that the country cannot take another four years of dismantling healthcare (say what you will about Obamacare, the responsible thing to do is not to throw people off insurance with no viable options), conducting awful foreign policy, ignoring climate change, undermining farmers and manufacturers, and lying, lying, lying the whole time. Read Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk to understand the costs to taking a wrecking ball to Energy, Agriculture and Commerce alone. How’d you feel about not having weather information unless you paid for it?
So, not about liberal versus conservative anymore because Trump has built a cult. Accused of being in a cult, Mormons hate the accusation and many will vote for anyone else, given the option (Evan McMullin).
I think hawkgrrrl’s percentages are about right. I think Trump will be impeached (because using presidential power to force others to help you maintain your grip on that power is terrifying — it’s the type of corruption that keeps third world dictators in power), but the senate will simply vote along party lines and Trump will call it vindication. I don’t hear politics talked about at church, but I do have vocal LDS facebook friends who are deeply in Trump’s camp and post constantly in his favor. I’ve always voted Republican, but the party has sold its soul. I personally could never vote for Trump, and I will never vote for a Republican for any office if that person has a track-record of supporting Trump. I have shared my feelings with several ward members, and they seem to agree, but it may just be because my feelings are so strong and they don’t want to offend me (we church members are really worried about that). I think LDS people would support Pence, simply because he’s for religious freedom and opposed to abortion. It’s hard to know if LDS people who traditionally vote republican but dislike Trump would vote democrat. I would if I considered my state in play, but since I live in California, I might try to find a 3rd party candidate. My fear is the democrats are going to pick a candidate who can’t win. Biden’s too old, Bernie’s crazy, Warren’s a yapping chihuahua, Buttigieg is too young and gay, Harris had potential but being female AND black might be too much, Klobucher might be a closet sociopath (but she’s the one I donated to), and Booker… well, I don’t know.
You have to understand that a lot of right-wingers, including church members, are genuinely fearful that democrats are going to take away their guns, their religious freedom, their healthcare, their money, and their ability to send their kids to public schools if they don’t inject them with potentially hazardous vaccines. These fears are well-founded. That’s exactly what the democratic candidates are promising. This fear is very powerful, and when it comes right down to it, they’ll hold their noses and vote for outright criminals (just wait, Duncan Hunter will get re-elected) who clearly share none of their values just to get someone who promises to protect those things. What they don’t seem to realize is that by tolerating the type of corruption manifest by Trump, they’re putting our very democracy at risk. That’s what I’m afraid of, and my fear is becoming powerful too.
Four thoughts:
(1) Several people on the comment thread have raised the point, “How can Trump’s base stick with him?” Angela C. is right that Trump’s base hates Democrats and liberals more than the bad things that Trump does.
I understand that anger, even though it is dangerous for our Republic. I grew up in a labor Democrat household, for FDR, for Truman, JFK, for the working man, but also strong on traditional values, and believing that America was on the right side in the Cold War. Then off I went to college in Fall 1970, right after Kent State-Cambodia, and discovered on campus that righteous anger from the Left on specific issues was subsumed by a larger, insufferable disdain for anything mainstream in U.S. culture. It is there, it is worse now, and can be felt by all but the most self-righteously oblivious. I CAN offer specific examples if wanted (I can hear readers crying, No Thank You! And besides, I would be even more long-winded than usual.)
The right, of course, is plagued by the same tendency. When it gains power, poking liberals in the eye becomes a blood sport. And, of course, the Left returns the favor, in spades. Victory becomes a zero-sum game, in which you cannot win unless the other guy loses. To the Left’s dismay, Trump won the election by out-nastying the Left—I still remember him claiming that Ted Cruz’ father was involved in Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination— and unfortunately Trump degrades and threatens our Republic and its civic culture, in the process. And don’t deceive yourselves that once Trump is toppled, as he inevitably will be (thank goodness), liberals will be any better.
If you want examples of conservative condescension, look at so-called True-Blue Mormons, as they struggle to respond to out-of-the-box thinking about Church issues. I genuinely resent the gaslighting that takes place when legitimate concerns are raised. Or on a political level, the pro-life zealots who resist any sensible attempt to restrict access to guns. (I am pro-2nd Amendment, BTW, but am NOT a purist.)
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely—both Left and Right. Take your pick.
(2) Churchill said that fanatics won’t change their minds, and won’t change the subject. Look at the Birthers, three years after Obama left office. Look at Trump’s base.
(3) Facts are inconvenient, and when people are confronted with facts that challenge their assumptions, they get angry. To take pot-shots at both Left and Right, look at:
A. Trump’s base, generally;
B. climate change denial;
C. The developing civil war between the more radical Lesbian and Trans-Gender activists. Hostilities are already in full swing in the UK and Canada, and are beginning in the US. Both sides are convinced of their absolute righteousness and the total evil of their opponents—anyone who opposes me and what I want must be evil. Both sides revile data that does not support their positions.
D. Church leaders’ anger when confronted with facts on issues that they dislike—evolution, warts-and-all Church history, the reactions of Church leaders to the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s, and LGBT issues now. Changes were/are accommodated only very grudgingly. It has taken us 40-plus years to get from, “Ew! Disgusting” to “we disagree with you because of our doctrine, but God loves you, and so do we, even though we can’t change.” Let’s hope thus one particular needle can be budged.
E. Vaccination opponents.
(4) From Ambrose Bierce: conservatives believe in existing evils. Liberals wish to replace existing evils with new ones.
Hi John W, I believe nothing of the sort regarding centrism and my comment had nothing to do with that.
It tried to show an intellectually honest view of both sides so you could see how biases shape perception of events.
Andy, in your comment, you are conflating two completely different things: public opinion on claims about the truth and the actual truth claims themselves. You write that Dem voters say this and GOP voters say that, which refers to public opinion (and honestly, I’m not so sure you are correctly representing what different voters think about the issues you raised, do you have any public opinion poll that you’re basing these figures off of, also you are lumping the different voter groups together. There are trends among GOP voters and Dem voters but diversity within them as well). However, we should always separate claims from the people that are claiming them. We should then see what evidence there is to back the claim. On the issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election to favor Trump, there is plenty of evidence to back such a claim. Democratic voters simply tend to support a claim that has a lot of evidence behind it and GOP voters tend to support claims that are baseless on question of Russian interference and are not recognizing the ample evidence there is to back the claim.
If you do not separate the claim from the people holding them, then you run the risk of greatly compromising the quest for truth. Lots of GOP voters also believed that Obama was born outside the US. According to polls, a very small number of Democratic voters did as well; however, the overwhelmingly majority of Democratic voters believed that he was born in the US. Does the fact that a large number of GOP voters believed that Obama was born outside the US give the claim any merit? According to your reasoning in your comment above, it seems that it would have some merit. For your attitude toward ideas is that it is wrong to proclaim an idea to be false if a large number of people believe that idea, for in so proclaiming the idea’s falseness, you risk offending those who subscribe to it. In that sense, it takes a lot of courage to stand up for well-evidenced ideas and to call clearly false ideas false. Yes, by loudly claiming that Obama was born in Hawaii and that there is ample evidence to prove this, you risk offending a conspiratorial GOP voter (of which there are many). But so be it. If someone does not believe that Obama was born in the US, I have no problem telling them that they’re completely wrong. You seem to worry about doing this.
“The developing civil war between the more radical Lesbian and Trans-Gender activists”
What??? You lost me here. There is a civil war between radical lesbian and transgender activists?
The rest of the comment was sort of rambling incoherence peppered with bothsidesism, also an incoherent and nonsensical position. The idea that both sides are equally biased and wrong is lazy and irresponsible that appears to be rooted more in concern with not offending people than actually trying to make a case for the truth.
“True-Blue Mormons, as they struggle to respond to out-of-the-box thinking about Church issues.”
The difficulty seems to be to find a forum where this is a possibility. Most of the quibbles about Joseph Smith I tend to ignore. He’s dead, it was long ago in a galaxy far away. An essential Mormon philosophy is today’s prophet for today. What could matter is whether the current prophet is right or wrong; inspired or not on any particular thing and another essential Mormon philosophy is that I decide for me and you decide for you.
“Facts are inconvenient, and when people are confronted with facts that challenge their assumptions, they get angry”
Sometimes. I think you exaggerate how often anyone is confronted with a fact rather than an argument. After all, what part of “confronted” is not confrontational? My responses are variable : “Michael 2, the Kaya identity does not work that way.” I sit corrected! I tend to be embarrassed, not angry, at being shown to be wrong about something; but it takes a rather high degree of evidence to show that I am wrong about something.
“At some point we have to dismiss some ideas and insane, completely unsubstantiated, and outright fabrications.”
You can decide for yourself whether the Earth is round or flat (for example) and that’s usually okay. Whether your dismissal is made public and used to insult someone is a different thing entirely. My mother had many ideas that were completely unsubstantiated (Tarot cards, astrology, crystals, a mish-mash of New Age San Francisco stuff) but I didn’t ridicule her for it. Her world was a tiny apartment in San Francisco and her friends were cut from the same cloth.
John W:
Thanks for your comment. By way of reply:
1. Yes, there unfortunately IS a developing civil war between radical activists on both sides. The term “TERF,” standing for Trans-Excluding Radical Feminist,” is unfortunately now a commonly-used epithet in the ongoing debate about transgender rights. There IS a wealth of material that is out there on this subject, much of it written by the disputants themselves , and you CAN read it, should you wish.It is not a matter of preference for a particular position, but an unfortunate example of disadvantaged groups turning against each other.
2. You assert that I said both sides are equally biased and wrong. Perhaps that is how you reacted to my comment, but that is NOT what I intended to convey. What I tried to do, evidently unsuccessfully, was to point out excesses on both sides, and that both sides are more happy pouncing on the perceived weaknesses of the other side, rather than offer reasoned comment in rebuttal. For what it’s worth, as a life-long conservative, I have reluctantly concluded that the Right now poses the greater threat to our society. But at some point in the future, that will probably change back to the Left.
And my basic point remains. The pursuit of power, whether by the left or the right, results in their abandoning principle. Power corrupts.
3. You assert that what I said was lazy and irresponsible, based on a mischaracterization of my statement. But you gave no data or supporting statements for your assertion. You also claimed that my position was incoherent and nonsensical, but provided no support for that claim. Your comments struck me (I hope incorrectly) as a sort of oracular judgment that did not require supporting data.
I am happy to listen, and revise my assumptions, when provided with better arguments, and hope that you will do so..,That is why I enjoy visiting Wheat and Tares, because it challenges so many of my assumptions, and gets me out of my echo chamber.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Taiwan Missionary
“civil war between radical activists on both sides”
OK, you originally said between radical lesbians and transgender activists. Do you mean between radical lesbians/transgenders and non-lesbians and non-transgenders? Honestly I’m not seeing a “civil war” between LGBTQs and anyone else. I see a lot of homophobia and LGBTQ haters, but I don’t see LGBTQs hating on straights.
“What I tried to do, evidently unsuccessfully, was to point out excesses on both sides”
Of course there are people who have extreme ideas on a range of issues. Even there, there really isn’t much of an equivalence between the various extremes. Most violent terrorist attacks in the US over the past 15 years have been right-wing. Left-wing terrorism has dropped significantly and it is mostly perpetrated by radical environmentalists and does not target human lives, but property. Also, consider the fact that there are communists in the US who think that the US is evil and speak highly of Castro, Chavez, and the Soviet Union (I interacted with some commies the other day and thought their ideas were insane). Yet, we hardly ever hear of these people, nor do we see any violence perpetrated by them. By contrast, neo-Nazis, especially crypto-Nazi alt-right movements (Proud Boys, Richard Spencer, et al.), are very active and have a thriving underground movement.
“I have reluctantly concluded that the Right now poses the greater threat to our society. But at some point in the future, that will probably change back to the Left”
Fair enough. Although as it stands now, I simply can’t see leftist extremism gaining traction on the left like you have on the right. I routinely hear centrists pointing to people like AOC, the squad, and Bernie as just as extreme as Trump and others on the right. I have listened to quite a bit of what AOC and other progressives have to say. Sure they are a little bit idealistic and pie-in-the-sky, but they are mostly quite rational and call attention to important problems such as health care and climate change that the GOP buries their heads in the sand about. Many of the policies that progressives are proposing are implemented in many other developed countries.
I would like to try and give you some international perspective. The obsession with banning abortion is counter productive. If you look at rates of abortion by country. Some countries where abortion is banned have 50 abortions/. America is 20, Australia and Canada 15, and Germany 6. Germany has universal health care, respect for women, sex education, affordable birth control and abortion as a last resort. When abortion is illegal, desperate women will get illegal abortions. Trump, and previous republicans, has made overseas aid not fund abortion, so in sub saharan africa, the ngos that provide womens services have been defunded, so no birth control or sex education. Result more (millions) abortions many not professional and thousands of women dying.
Universal health care for exammple. USA only OECD country not providing. I live in Aus our health care costs less than half what America pays, and our life expectancy is higher. An example of why. Bowell cancer is a problem for elderly, so everyone is sent a poo test at 50, 60, 70, 80. If you return it, and you return a positive, as I did at 70, you get a letter inviting you for a colonoscopy, and a follow up in 6 months. I do not have health insurance, and I paid nothing.
Trump pulled America out of the Paris climate change agreement, which was the world coming together to address a looming problem facing the world. The conservative government in the UK has declared a climate emergency (they are not left wing loonies). This issue alone should be enough to get rid of the republicans. We have drought, and more of Australia is on fire at present, than would burn in a year a few years ago. And the fire season is longer. California is burning too.
By first world standards republicans are extreme. Democrats are trying to bring you up to world standards.
The church is associated with this extreme politics.
I saw an intering thing saying America first actually means America alone.
Just curious where you’re getting your polling data that shows Trump beating Warren and Sanders. All the polling I’ve seen shows the opposite, although I am admittedly not a devout follower of politics.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_warren-6251.html
In my opinion, it doesn’t matter. Just so much bread and circuses.
The time of classic Democrat and Republican divisive politics and polcies may soon be waning, to be replaced by libertarian vs. human value (Yang revolutionary ideas) politics of the millenial and Gen Z generations.
We may not see it coming due to our preoccupation with the old guard politics as usual, until they are swept out in the not too distant future. Personally, I think upcoming institutional changes based on a future clash of ideals may make the US stronger, prepared to face emergent challenges, and strengthen our humanity.
Wheat and Tares is “going to hell”…..I don’t need any more political commentary!!!