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Trump Lawyer Speaks Out After Former President's Acquittal
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Any political party that would weaken the Constitution, and most particularly The Bill of Rights, is a threat to America. Therefore, in view of what the Democrat Party has come to be it is one of the greatest threats to America's future and sustainability. Why? Because it seeks total power, defies reasoning, wants to crush free speech, alter culture, turn education into propaganda and restrict the right to bear arms. It's ultimate goal is to intimidate and weaponize virtually everything, including language, so it makes it easier to turn citizens into law breaker. Worst of all it has become a party of hypocrisy and hatred.
An Oppressive Boot on the Neck of Free
Speech
Freedom of speech was so important to America’s
founders that it was not the tenth, or the fifth, but the First Amendment to
the Constitution. It is under assault today from many quarters as evidenced by
speech codes and the cancel culture ready to pounce on any words, spoken or
written, not approved by the left.
Colorado State University, several years ago,
prepared a draft “Inclusive Language Guide.” This is a modern-day version of
George Orwell’s “Newspeak,” the official
language of fictious Oceania, words designed to be politically correct without
a hint of rebellion or opposition to the establishment.
Although the CSU guide is a few years old, it is worth revisiting as the cancel culture is in overdrive these days, invigorated by their supposed landslide electoral victory last November. Those with conservative views are being erased from the corporate world and academia simply because terms like “free expression, tolerance, and diversity” only flow in one direction, to the left.
Disney actress Gina Carano was recently fired for comparing current cancel culture to Nazi pogroms a century ago while those on the left are free to compare Republicans and Donald Trump to Nazis, Hitler, racists, supremacists, and all manner of vile insults, without fear of losing their jobs or reputations.
The CSU guide was created by a group of
university staff to avoid offending anyone who might hear or read words that
have been part of the American lexicon for centuries. Here is the actual
guide and some examples.
Note that it is not “official policy or required
practice,” only a guide, but woe to those who disregard the suggestions. It’s
also a “living document”, meaning it can change based on the political winds,
as in who occupies the White House.
“Birth defect” should be replaced with “person
with a congenital disability” as it supposedly generalizes the population.
“Defect” implies the person is “sub-par” or incomplete. Doesn’t “disability” do
the same?
“Colored” should be replaced with “person of
color”, as it was decades ago. When was the last time you saw anyone use the
term “colored”? Was a written guide necessary for this?
“Cake walk” somehow dredges up images of
minstrel shows and racism. I had no idea instead thinking it a more colorful
way of saying what CSU prefers, “that was easy.” Are “walk in the park”
or “day at the beach” with similar meaning also racist or implying privilege?
“Freshman” should be replaced by “first-year”
due to the man bit. They don’t address the “man” in human or the “son” in
person.
“Ghetto” should be avoided, instead referring to
a specific neighborhood by name. What if one is simply referring to poor
neighborhoods, not one in particular? Of course the New York Times is
permitted to use the term “ghetto” as long as they tie it to Trump.
“Handicap parking” minimizes personhood,
according to CSU, preferring “accessible parking or parking for people with
disabilities.” Someone should tell local county officials in Colorado who describe “handicap
placards”, or Amazon, which sells
large blue signs with wording, “handicapped parking.” It would be difficult to
fit all the preferred words on a placard or sign.
The traditional speech opening, “ladies and
gentlemen” implies binary gender and should be replaced by “everyone.” Perhaps
in the South, “Y’all” would suffice.
Of course “illegal immigrant/alien” is offensive
as it points out the truth, that the process by which someone entered the
country did not follow the law, making it by definition illegal. Someone should
have told then President Bill Clinton, who used the terms
“criminal alien” and “illegal alien” freely. CSU wants them called simply
“immigrants,” just as we would refer to those who followed all legal processes
for residency or citizenship.
Bank robbery, by this logic, should be an
“unauthorized withdrawal,” shoplifting an “unauthorized purchase”, and murder
an “undocumented death.”
Common expressions, “long time no see” and “no
can do” are somehow mocking Asians. No, that would be Joe Biden saying, “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin'
Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”
CSU prefers “person with a spinal cord injury”
over “paraplegia or quadriplegia”, which are medical terms specifying the level
of spinal cord injury and function. How useful in non-medical discourse would
“C7 incomplete” be compared to “paraplegia”? Should we lump pneumonia, COPD,
and asthma, all different diseases, into “person with breathing challenges” to
avoid minimizing personhood.
“Pow wow” is an term for a meeting or gathering,
traditionally Native American but now a common expression. I have not heard of
someone organizing a “Zoom or Skype pow wow” rather than meeting, so perhaps
this expression isn’t used much anymore, except as a culturally appropriating book title where
Elizabeth Warren shared her “Cherokee family recipes” which were word for word
copies of a famous French chef’s recipes.
“Rule of thumb,” a popular expression for
“general rule” is deemed offensive as it supposedly derives from English law
allowing wife beating. Who knew? I looked it up and it’s a myth, not mentioned
in English law, with the origin of the expression unknown.
“I’m starving” should be replaced with “I’m
hungry” as it “appropriates real hardship.” “Food coma”, as in sleepiness
after a big meal, supposedly alludes to “stereotypes of laziness associated
with African-Americans.” Who knew laziness was racial? Asserting such a
stereotype is itself racist.
“Thug” is also racist and should not be used,
except by Barack Obama when he described Baltimore
rioters. I didn’t realize Obama was a racist.
“American/America” was included in the first
draft, but ultimately deleted. The original thinking was that the “Americas”
covered North, Central, and South America, rather than just the United States.
Hopefully Joe Biden, when he gives the State of the Union address, won’t begin
with “my fellow Americans” instead saying “my fellow persons from the United
States”.
Yes, this is only a guide, and not a mandate,
but I wonder how many freshman writing class instructors correct students when
they use “words to avoid” rather than “suggestions for replacement”?
Let’s try the inclusive language guide, with the
verboten words in parenthesis.
I am a first year (freshman) sitting in the
audience (peanut gallery) of the huge lecture hall, feeling sleepy because I
ate too much (I’m in a food coma), listening to my boring and uncool (lame)
professor presenting a choice of writing topics. I randomly select one (eenie
meenie miney moe) to write about. I was nervous (a basket case) as I was
experiencing a hostile environment with (at war with) my surprising and wild
(crazy) roommate who parked my car in a parking for people with disabilities
(handicapped) spot.
The police officer (cop) wrote me a ticket,
cheating (gyping) me out of fifty dollars. I asked for a warning but ze
(he/she) said I can’t do it (no can do). What a boring and uncool law enforcement
officer (idiot cop). Oh well, back to class.
Brian C Joondeph is a
racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, white supremacist, privileged,
extremist, insurrectionist, fascist, deplorable, smelly, bigoted, domestic
terrorist (conservative) writer and physician.
And:
With Trump’s Acquittal, The Fragility Of America’s
Democracy Is Even More Clear
By Perry Bacon Jr.
The U.S. Senate’s vote on Saturday to acquit former President Donald Trump,
following the House’s impeachment of Trump last month, played out almost
exactly as expected — but it also captured the broad outlines of his four-year
presidency in miniature:
1.
Trump does something anti-democratic and/or extreme that is hard to imagine any previous president doing;
2.
Republican voters stand by him, as do core party activists;
3.
With the GOP base behind Trump, Republican members of
Congress don’t break with Trump, even while they carefully try to avoid defending his specific actions;
4.
A plurality or outright majority of the public align with
Democratic criticism of Trump, but opinions are also split along party lines;
5.
And finally, Democrats decide against taking the most aggressive anti-Trump steps available to
them and instead move on to policy issues, since most steps to restrain or
punish Trump can’t happen without votes from Republican elected officials.
What happened on Jan. 6 and the
days leading up to it — an American president spending weeks trying to reverse the results of a free and fair election,
culminating in his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to try to keep him in power by force —
was so shocking that it seemed at least possible (if unlikely) that it would
break the pattern. Could Republicans stick with Trump again? And if they did,
wouldn’t Democrats try to shame GOP senators as much as possible?
But by the time we got to Feb.
13, less than six weeks after the attack on the Capitol, it was obvious that
nothing had fundamentally changed. Democrats, fully aware that there weren’t
nearly enough GOP votes to convict Trump, opted against calling any witnesses
and, in less than a week, wrapped up Trump’s second impeachment trial,
stemming from one of the most terrible incidents in recent American history. In
the end, only seven of the 50 Republican senators voted to convict
Trump of the charge of “incitement of insurrection,” joining all 50 Democrats.
The 57 votes against Trump — versus the 43 GOP votes to acquit — fell short of
the two-thirds needed per the Constitution to convict. Trump was acquitted. He
can run for president again. And, at least for now, he remains an influential figure in the Republican Party and therefore American politics
overall.
In some ways, it’s as though Jan.
6 never happened — Trump is a fairly unpopular, impeached, one-term president who still retains a deep base of support among Republican voters.
Trump and his brand of politics may be politically damaged, but they’re not
going anywhere.
How did we end up in a situation
where not much has changed? Well, the big story of the weeks since Jan. 6 is
simple: The GOP base stuck with Trump. Even before the attack at the Capitol,
some top Republicans, most notably Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, were ready for the
party to move on from Trump, viewing him as a drag on the GOP’s electoral
prospects (since Trump’s election in 2016, Republicans lost the House, the
Senate and the presidency, in part due to voter backlash against Trump). In an
alternate reality, Jan. 6 might have both strengthened the resolve of the party
to dump Trump and also ease that break, since Republican lawmakers could argue
that of course they were uncomfortable with a president whose supporters
invaded the Capitol.
But the party’s base, particularly core activists, was overwhelmingly opposed to Trump being convicted in the
Senate or facing any kind of punishment for Jan 6. Once that became clear,
Republicans in Washington started citing an argument — one rejected by many legal experts — that it is unconstitutional to convict a president who is out of office.
This was a convenient rationale — it allowed Senate Republicans to avoid both
angering the base and defending Trump’s conduct in the run-up to and on Jan. 6.
And with little chance of convicting Trump, Democrats basically
decided to move on rather than just delaying the inevitable acquittal.
The big question is what happens next.
Trump is, of course, out of
office. He is no longer an imminent, direct threat to lawmakers (a sitting
president who can encourage his supporters to protest at the Capitol). Nor is
he an imminent threat to American democracy (a sitting president regularly breaking with democratic norms).
But the results of this trial
mean that both threats remain. Many of the people who invaded the Capitol have been arrested, and many of them are likely to serve time
in jail. But it appears that none of the politicians who propagated the
falsehoods about election fraud in 2020 — setting the conditions for the
insurrection — will face any serious repercussions at all. That’s most notably
Trump, but also figures like Sen. Josh Hawley. What’s to stop Republican
officials in 2022 or 2024 from making up frivolous charges of election fraud
and then watching as conservative voters take aggressive and even violent
actions because they believe what prominent Republicans are saying?
Because the Senate trial did not result in conviction, Trump
himself could seek another term as president, and there is every reason to
think that he would accelerate his anti-democratic tendencies if he were in
office again. And even if Trump himself doesn’t seek the presidency again,
aspiring Republican politicians know now that the party’s base and elected
officials will tolerate a lot of anti-democratic behavior. So, both Trump and
Trump-style politics remain major threats to American democracy and potentially
the future of the Republican Party.
What does this acquittal mean for
conservative Americans not aligned with Trump? There is already a formal effort from
some on the right, such as Evan McMulllin, a Republican who ran for president
as an independent in 2016, to start a new conservative party that is not aligned with
the current GOP. Republicans like Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are likely to try to
build anti-Trump and anti-Trumpism movements within the
party.
The Democrats, already divided in
some ways on ideological grounds on issues like Medicare for All, now have
another big question: How do they try to defend American democracy against
rising anti-democratic forces largely centered within the GOP? That debate is
likely to center on to what extent Democrats should adopt more hardball tactics to try to reduce GOP power,
including steps such as getting rid of the filibuster or adding justices to the
Supreme Court. That debate will also have an electoral dimension, as the party
must figure out whether conservative voters wary of Trump and Trumpism
constitute a big enough bloc to make it worthwhile to court them, even if that
means sidelining some of the policy goals of the party’s more progressive wing.
Finally, Trump’s acquittal and
the tacit acceptance of his actions by much of the Republican Party presents
challenges for institutions who see themselves as “nonpartisan” but hold some
democratic values, most notably the media, big business and tech companies. In
the wake of Jan. 6, a lot of corporations announced at least temporary halts
on donating money through their political action committees to
Republicans who voted against the certification of Biden’s election victory.
Can corporations continue that
policy, which in effect positions them against most Republicans in Congress? Can Twitter sustain a permanent ban on Trump if he remains perhaps the most
important figure in a party that represents the views of nearly half of
American voters? Can other social media companies get aggressive about limiting
speech that might incite violence if that also results in limiting speech from
conservatives more than liberals? How does the political media try to reach
people who voted for Trump but still directly and honestly cover the racist and anti-democratic behavior from Trump and some of his
supporters?
The riot on Jan. 6 provided an opportunity for the Republican
Party and therefore the country to begin to take an off-ramp from Trump himself
and Trumpism. But Trump’s acquittal suggests that Republicans did not want to
take that off-ramp — and that means the nation couldn’t either.
CORRECTION
(Feb. 14, 2021, 7:36 a.m.): This article has been updated to correct Sen.
Hawley’s first name.
Perry Bacon Jr. is a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight.
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