🗯️ A Few Simple Questions

[cahwyguy]

A few simple questions for my Republican and Trump-supporting friends. But first, let’s enter the Wayback Machine, shall we? (harp music plays). Just imagine. It is Summer 2014, four short years ago. Obama is President; Kerry is VP. While investigating Benghazi, the FBI uncovers information about the President and follows the leads:

• They discover that during the 2012 campaign, President Obama’s lawyer illegally paid off two women who had threatened to expose sexual affairs with President Obama, and that such payments were “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office” and had been done “for the principal purpose of influencing the election”.  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?
• They discover that Obama’s campaign advisor had comitted bank and tax fraud, and was subsuquently indicted and found guilty of those crimes.  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?
• They discover that Obama and top members of his campaign team had met with the Russian government to obtain information on Mitt Romney in order to influence the election?  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?
• They discover that Russia, immediately after President Obama made a call for them find Romney’s smoking gun, had broken into Romney’s campaign servers.  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?
• They discover that Russia was still attempting to influence American elections and was hacking into election systems and state and local voting systems to influence the 2014 elections.  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?
• They discover that Obama is trying to influence the investigation and publicly discredit it, and is attempting to influence witnesses through any means at his disposal.  What would you demand to be done about Obama’s behavior?

I truly doubt that, in such a situation, Obama and the Obama administration would get a “pass”. I doubt that you would consider the investigation a “witch hunt”. After all, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a cigar.

What you would demand be done about Obama in such a situation?

What does the fact you are not demanding the same thing be done about Trump say about you?

If some action is wrong, it is wrong no matter who does it. People of your party do not get a pass just so they stay in power. Corruption in government and foreign influence of our elections is wrong whether it is done for or by the opposition party or your party. If you don’t speak up about it, and demand action, further investigations, and potentially the President’s impeachment, you are at minimum hypocritical. You are at minimum putting political parties over the nation’s welfare. And, if you are doing it because you didn’t like that black man in the White House, you could be racist.

If your son and his black friend both stole cars, and then used them to steal money from a bank, and you don’t think they should get the same penalty for the same crime, what does that say about you?

 

This entry was originally posted on Observations Along the Road as 🗯️ A Few Simple Questions by cahwyguy. Although you can comment on DW, please make comments on original post at the Wordpress blog using the link to the left. You can sign in with your LJ, DW, FB, or a myriad of other accounts. Note: Subsequent changes made to the post on the blog are not propagated by the SNAP Crossposter; please visit the original post to see the latest version. P.S.: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog.

Comments

[marahmarie]

Just imagine. It is Summer 2014, four short years ago. Obama is President; Kerry is VP.
Sorry, can't imagine that. Kerry was never the Vice president, so I don't see the point.

Also a PSA for you, more than anyone else: when Clinton got investigated/impeached I hated what he did. I was embarrassed about voting for him and supporting him, and I felt tremendously bad for his wife (and still do!) yet I still supported him. I think the rationale for this might fall along the lines of: "Yes, he's been a cockup from soup to nuts in some ways, but I still support him on policy/along ideological lines/for his handling of the overall direction of the country/because he gives me a feeling of hope while this other person does not" or whatever.

You're going to run into the same problem with your Republican and Trump supporting, ah... *looks up and quotes* "friends": they're going to feel the same way, only about Trump. There's no rational discourse possible for most readers using this approach. I was not rational about Clinton (though longterm, the whole scandal left a bad enough feeling that if I could've voted in 2000 - but I'd just moved states and couldn't update license info quickly enough - I might've voted for Bush) and I can pretty much promise you that your right-leaning/Trumpist friends are not/will not be rational about Trump.

And though I resent them for it, and don't agree with their reasons, I do understand.

[cahwyguy]

First, the correction of Kerry being at State was made almost immediately after I realized the typo, but edits don't show up in the cross-posted Dreamwidth article with the nature of the cross-poster I use. Look at the RSS feed, or better yet, look at the original article as I ask people to do.

As for whether this will convince anyone: You note it yourself - "most". If I convince oen, and then one, and then one, and then one... I'm happy. I wrote the article to use on these folks that defend Trump, to use in comments so I don't need to keep repeating myself. The Conservative friends I do keep are the more rationale ones -- the true Trumpists can't be convinced -- they've drunk the kool-aide of personality.

[marahmarie]

I refreshed several times in wandering back and forth all over Dreamwidth last night and it hadn't corrected on my end (it *still* hasn't, almost a day later...dumped cache/cookies/history, so it's not me) so there's really nothing I can say about that now. VP Kerry would be interesting, though, like the multiverse version of "What if instead of Biden we'd had...[fill in blank] for VP" :)

"If I convince oen, and then one, and then one, and then one"

Yeah, no, look: you have my sympathies as I know the feeling - from pre-general election times onward I was writing for my trolls. Not for my fellow Dreamwidthians, because that's just preaching to the choir. For every hater who thinks Jews are this or Democrats are that or Trump is the second coming of Christ, or whomever.

But after a few years of it I can tell you I'm getting tired of standing on my head/pandering/wasting my freaking time. I approached it the same way you do: "If I can change one mind...just one" *cue network effects* "then yay, I've done something important, here".

But then I read an article saying they're basically unreachable: https://thedailybanter.com/issues/2018/02/07/study-shows-trump-supporters-now-basically-unreachable/ and though that didn't immediately sway me, I am slowing down/will probably slow down some more. You beat your head against a brick wall enough times it hurts and the wall just gets messy. More power to you, though, as I have nothing against the idea, at least not in theory.

[cahwyguy]

If you give up, nothing will change. You have to keep trying. Not all are unreachable.

Ps. To see the changed version, you MUST go to blog.cahighways.org . The crosspst does not update, the RSS feed does.

[marahmarie]

Huh. I'm going to have to make a mental note to read the relevant Dreamwidth FAQ(s); I had no idea crossposts don't update with edits but it seems like they should. I don't crosspost myself, though I've tried, over the years, to stay current with/read up on whatever technology currently runs this thing.

If you give up, nothing will change.

Well, my public facing page has been quiet/slow/light on content not because "I give up" (I never give up; sometimes I just take a break before jumping back in) it's been busy season at my work. I thought I might resume public posts this week after a short break with work but whoops, we're on again, so oh well.

I do talk about all this under a lock. I'll add you to access tonight (if that turns out to not be your cup of tea, feel free to let me know).

[cahwyguy]

It's not a Dreamwidth issue; it is the plugin I use for Wordpress on my main blog. The old plugin, which stopped working and wasn't maintained, did update the posts. This one doesn't. That's why there's that "Click Here to Comment" box, as well as the text that notes that "Note: Subsequent changes made to the post on the blog are not propagated by the SNAP Crossposter; please visit the original post to see the latest version. P.S.: If you see share buttons above, note that they do not work outside of the Wordpress blog."

[marahmarie]

I never do read your warning blurb at the end *headdesks* so that solves it, doesn't it. Sucks how there's no plugin devs still writing a crossposter that will update with edits (also, glad for your warning on that, so if I ever decide to crosspost to WP and DW at least now I'll know it's manual "after the fact" edits all the way).

[cahwyguy]

Well, the market for crossposting to LiveJournal and Dreamwidth is much smaller than it used to be.

[marahmarie]

I wasn't going to say that because I'm not trying to knock the place, too much (I still vastly prefer posting to DW over posting on any other social media) but yep, exactly.