One truth all of America should know.

[kentuck]

The President is not a King. He should not be exempt from any of the laws of this country.

In fact, he takes an oath to "faithfully execute" the laws of this country. He does not take an oath to "faithfully break" all the laws of this country.

When it comes to obeying the laws of this nation, the people have a right to expect more from their president than from common citizens.

When he breaks his oath, he should be severely punished. He has broken his faith with the American people.

In my opinion, it is as simple as that.

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...nt

[3catwoman3]

2. Should not a/the president be held to...

…a HIGHER standard than everyone else?

I think so.

[Novara]

14. I agree

It used to be that people in authority acted like they were held to a higher standard because they essentially were. They had to be role models.

Obama couldn't get angry because of the "angry black man" stereotype. I imagine he wanted to. But fuck, look how he was vilified when he criticized the cops who arrested Henry Louis Gates on his fucking front porch. He knew he had to act above the fray at all times.

So yeah, I expect BETTER behavior from people in leadership positions. Is it fair? Maybe not, but it comes with the job.

Or it should.

[DownriverDem]

3. Exactly

What folks hate about trump, they should not expect Biden to do.

[BlueIdaho]

4. It's time to stop mincing words.

The then President engaged in criminal behavior designed to overthrow a rightfully elected President starting about mid December 2021 and continuing to this day. He deserves a felony conviction and the hatred of all Americans.

[pazzyanne]

6. + 1 nt

[HariSeldon]

19. And if was non-prosecutable for Trump...

maybe Biden should just plan to pull something just as illegal -- but actually succeed, because he's vastly more competent and would employ people who are more competent. I mean, if the rules aren't enforced, then they're not really rules, more like suggestions -- suggestions that Republicans have been ignoring, and with which Democrats are only hobbling themselves to Republican glee.

[BlueIdaho]

21. As tempting as that sounds...

We are better than that. That doesn’t mean we can’t play hardball with these criminals. As much as people say they want bipartisan action, they never seem to reward it with their votes.

[OMGWTF]

5. One million Americans are dead from Covid because of Trump

Hanging is too good for him.

[Ponietz]

10. And many, driven to despair, took their own lives

[ancianita]

7. Fact all Americans should note. 74 million Americans wanted a king.

They're still waiting for their chance to bring him back, in person or through a proxy.

[zanana1]

12. They'd like a king if things went their way.

If the king made laws that didn't favor them, they'd lose their minds.

[ancianita]

16. I meant "the" king they want -- Trump. He's done everything they want.

Most importantly, he's WHITE.

[BidenRocks]

17. Sure about that?

He is orange!

[ancianita]

18. They are. And they're glad we distract ourselves with jokes. But they ain't playin'.

[BlueIdaho]

22. That's 22%...

That qualifies them as lunatic fringe.

[ancianita]

23. And yet there they are, THE large minority of trumpcult in both Houses, and a majority in the SCOTUS

We are one election away from minority rule if we don't GOTFV.

[BlueIdaho]

24. Nobody is saying otherwise...

I haven’t missed a primary or an election since I started voting in 1968. All I’m saying is - let’s not turn these malignant assholes into a something bigger than they are.

[ancianita]

25. I hear you.

And am counting on the rest of the country to see clearly and vote again for the peace and prosperity our 7 million more voters have brought to it, and to discount the 23% who plot vengeance.

[BlueIdaho]

26. I stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

This is no time to show weakness, we must continue what we started in 2020.

[ancianita]

27. Same.

We're not weak. We are media stalked as weak, but the public really knows.

2020 continued what 2018 started, so we're on our third wave.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

28. Wilhoit's law ...

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

Recently seen on here at: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100216924085

I remember there was a meme some time ago, spawned by a Florida woman complaining that "he" wasn't hurting just the people he was supposed to hurt.

[ancianita]

29. Love its succinct political clarity! Thanks!

But who's Wilhoit?

[Hermit-The-Prog]

30. Sorry,

I have not yet had time to research. Someone in that other thread did some, but again, I've just not had (or taken) the time to follow up.

Before reading that, I didn't know it had been summarized so well and posited as a "law". It is an elegant fit to so many otherwise puzzling tales of MAGAt and conservative actions and speech.

[ancianita]

32. There are two Wilhoits, one a poli-sci prof & one a music composer. It was the composer who said

this originally, and the poli-sci guy who gets mis-credited with it.

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html

I just posted the Crooked Timber discussion where he originally said it.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

34. Thank you for that link.

I only get to sit and read during the heat of the day and late at night. That time is taken up on DU because no other place gathers all the bits and pieces together like this gang.

[ancianita]

35. I gotta say, you understand MAGAts through an intellectual interpretation

that they wouldn't understand and actually don't give a damn about. They are about "replacement" fear, along with being on the side of Might Makes Right, and so the guns and their slow roll mass shootings while their sympathetic law enforcement stand by and do nothing. This is in our future. And we can't talk about this in the abstract.


I'd recommend that you read Malcolm Nance's They Want to Kill Americans, which lays out MAGAts evolution since Obama. It just got released. A lot of it we're familiar with, but he's solid and succinct on the history of their change by Q and guns, and how they've come to conclude together that we liberals need to be literally wiped out. He also names names. Unfortunately, he's also bit short on solutions, only about 18 pages of that, because he's really constrained, as we all are, with Rule of Law and the need to stay fair in the face of those who want us dead.

But re counterterrorism, military training, active duty 'enforcers' involvement in trumpism, he's the real deal.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

36. The proposition encapsulates every RW atrocity

60 bullets into the back of an unarmed, fleeing black man: Who is unbound by the law and who is unprotected?

77 minutes waiting while children and teachers are murdered: Who feels protected by the law and who feels unbound by it?

A plethora of extremist, religion-based anti-abortion laws across the country, guaranteed to kill women and girls: Who is the in-group and who is the out-group?

The Subversive 6 on the Supreme Court may try to hand complete control of national elections to radicalized Republican legislatures as an October surprise. The atrocities will escalate.

[ancianita]

37. Indeed. And agreed.

I'm only pointing out that those agents of injustice don't even think about this as their motive, so while I would apply it to how they act, I'd also keep aware of the groomed motives they think they hold. All of which fall under these statements.

That is at the heart of America's crisis: it's either a bastion of human equality or not.

[ancianita]

31. Ahh! He's the composer guy. Slate did an article on that.

Frank Wilhoit 03.22.18 at 12:09 am

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

33. Thank you! That IS elegant!

Many need to see and understand that.

[inthewind21]

8. That's

not a truth, clearly. It's an opinion. A good one, but definitely not a truth.

[Upthevibe]

9. kentuck........Thanks for the post....N/T

[zanana1]

11. I think they're afraid to prosecute him.

They fear the MAGA mobs.

[EnterwebsJohn]

13. then strip the authority to pardon

criminals. the power to do pardons is solely a hold over from the king of Englands ability to pardon criminals. And as we have seen with criminal TFG can be used to obstruct justice when it came to his criminal cronies. It can also be used for revenge against an opposing political party.

[Novara]

15. That would take a Constitutional amendment

Not that I don't agree with you. The pardon power - precisely because it was so abused - needs an overhaul.

All the criminal shit he did exposed how weak our systems really are, because we've relied on "good behavior" for more than 200 years. All it takes is one wholly corrupt fucker to blow through every single norm to reveal how we need laws with appropriate punishments spelled out for just about every single thing. He is why we can't have nice things.

Simple example: emoluments clause. It's unenforceable. It should be punishable. A lot of the shit he did should have resulted in him losing his goddamned job but that's not how this all works. Dammit.

[Glaisne]

20. It would be nice if it worked out that way.

But it doesn't. In this and other countries, many very powerful people are simply above the law, including former presidents and many members of their administration and inner circle. The concept in this country that "no one is above the law" is a myth, it simply does not apply to everyone.