Trump's mugshot

I'm not going to vote for any of them, so I didn't have to watch the republican debate. Only 2 candidates had the guts to say they didn't support Trump, so I guess those two were against the criminality and not so blinded by bias. And they're the only ones who should be running for president as Republicans because the others should drop out if they don't think he's guilty. Their actions betray their stated beliefs. 

I'm blinded by bias. Anytime you say something against Biden, I think, that's not so bad, and it's a lot less worse than Trump. Does he have the elderly too handsy with children thing? Is he really old? Maybe. I don't even want to compare his sexual misconduct to Trump. Jimmy Carter was a man of integrity and America chose a cold hearted Reagan who put us on this horrible conservative path. But Conservatives see us put on a horrible path by Roosevelt. The democrats lost the racist vote when Roosevelt started to make inroads into justice and fairness. 

Each party constructs a strawman of the other party, which logically stems from the rhetoric, but you'll never find anyone who fits the idea of the strawman. The principle of charity is thrown out, and even exaggerated in the reverse to make a point. That's why political discourse feels so weird to me. I don't think that, why are you painting me with that brush? There's a lot of noise in politics, and it also is very emotional. It's catered to stir up emotions to provoke you to vote. And it's instinctual and philosophical, an odd mix. Political scientists have to focus on really specific things, to try and simply things like aspects of democracy, and other things. And they will have conservative or progressive instincts. It's so complicated, and yet our instincts say it's really simple. 

I have a friend in the park who said America never prosecutes their presidents. Never. I can't help but feel a little glee at Trump's mugshot. Another conservative leaning friend thinks one juror didn't report how they weren't going to vote to convict, and he's going to get off. 

There is a limit to how criminal you can be as an American politician. When one party wants to obstruct and prove government is bad by them being bad, it's almost seen as a political choice to be criminal. See how corrupt government is. That's attracting the wrong kind of voters, just the way Republicans are trying to attract the wrong kind of voters since Roosevelt, at times, in some instances. 

If everything is a political opinion then there is no right or wrong and therefore nothing is criminal. You'd have to go really far to provoke this many criminal cases. The lawyers are the ones who are getting slammed because the court of law is different than the court of public opinion. Trump gets slammed in court. And his lawyers are losing their licenses and are going to jail. They have a specific code of conduct that Trump does not have. It's almost like professional code of conduct is the only thing holding this world together, fending off total chaos. Not wanting to lose your profession. 

Doctors are supposed to be all about health, but now that you can't provide health care by giving abortions to babies without brains and no viability, they're leaving places where they have stupid laws that hamper doctors. 

Academics are leaving Florida because the harsh bathroom rules, and other bizarre curbs on academic freedom.

There are pockets of backwardness that used to be erased by being in America. Educationally there has been integration. Electorally, we have fought to allow integration and the erasure of fishy rules meant to discourage voting. It's the federal government that is doing that, and the right wants to get rid of the federal education department. 

That was the fight before I was born and when I was too young to really understand what was going on. I didn't really come of age in political thinking until I was in high school, and I was put off of it by my stepfather ranting at the TV every night. It didn't make for good digestion. I was only when Trump was elected, that I realize I couldn't hide, that my saying, "I'm not political," and, "both parties are corrupt," isn't true, and isn't a good citizen. You can't hide your head in the sand out of repugnance at the process.

What Trump did do, was vigorously pursue his selfish agendas. That is what the left hates, and the right likes. They will never agree on him. I prefer the hypocrisy of trying not to be selfish over the rhetoric of selfishness. We'll never get anywhere without the appeal to everyone's interests, even if it's abstract, and doesn't obtain in all cases. 

It might not have been a conscious theme in the TV show The 100, but the leaders trying to get things done, could only get things done if everyone believed 100% in the plan. That doesn't happen, and what happens is a mess as a majority puts their support behind one plan, and then another, when that one seems right. There is no plan that everyone is 100% behind even if we could do great things if we could hold that discipline. Humans are too pragmatic, and when the winds shift, their support shifts. We can't make up our mind on conservative or progressive, we reserve the right to switch every 4 to 8 years. In a way it's good it's only every 4 years for president, because it's exhausting. People make their choices right away based on instincts, you don't need much information.

If you can ever talk objectively, and have a standard of criminal law, it's in the courts where it will happen. The courts can't be so right wing or left wing that they abandon the objective aspect to the law. For all the bluster about Hunter's laptop and Hillary's email, they were never really convicted, though Hunter might be. I don't actually experience that as a blow to the elder Biden, I see the rule of law as beyond any personality. Trump's children might go to jail with him, though. They're part of his crime family. The political bias will inform your opinions about guilt, but the court of law strives for objectivity. 

My cousin who is a lawyer bet me $20 that Trump would see jail time. I was bet against my hopes, because I was listening to my friend in the park who says presidents never go to court, that's not how America works. It wasn't until one president took advantage of that fact and pushed the limits. There are usually exceptions to every social rule. 

There is a death instinct, smoking is an example because it hastens your death. It doesn't kill you right away, it just clips years off at the end, but it's a death instinct and addiction. Man against himself. There are the Darwin Awards, where people got themselves killed with decisions they made. You can see people making decisions against their own interests every day. 

In politics the death instinct is to find death an acceptable results. For not wearing a mask or the gun laws. Some people deny the straight line to death and these political decisions. Free will intervenes, and humans will always choose death by mistake. Some think that's inevitable as original sin.

Wars might seem righteous. I grew up in hippy liberal Madison Wisconsin, and I was surprised to see a just war doctrine articulated by a British philosopher. World War 2 is seen as the just war, stopping a murderous dictator is seen as a just war. If that is true, then Putin must be stopped too for what he is doing in the Ukraine. I'm incredibly confused to see how you could even support him, even from outside the country as an American. Some people admire the strong man who kills others. 

I have fantasies of a dystopian post-apocalypse society that is vigorously against any expression of the death instinct, but human nature is human nature, and I don't think we learn, over and over. We are still animals. We might be the top of the predator pyramid, but we can invent some enlightened rhetoric. This is the fundamental contradiction of human existence. And your instincts on it, will lead you to political sides. 

The Avatar movies express what happens when a native nature loving culture who seeks harmony comes in conflict with a waring state trying to take over their spaces. For me they are incredibly painful to watch. I don't enjoy watching them, and yet they are some of the most popular movies of all time. This is a central conflict with humans. There are people who are not on the harmony and nature side. 

"It’s pathological how cruel we are to each other, how ungenerous and suspicious we can be—how willing we are to keep each other (and ourselves) at risk. I can’t stop wondering why we keep failing to learn the lessons of the not-too-distant past. How, and why, do so many of us continue to believe that helping people—those less fortunate than we are or those different from us—is seen as a threat to the majority. Why does such a large number of Americans refuse to believe that helping others helps all of us? I understand this failure intellectually—the trend can be traced back through the history of white supremacy in America—but as an empathetic human being sometimes I just don’t get it." (Mary Trump)