Kobach witness can’t support claim that illegal votes helped Hillary Clinton

[*PhilHos*]

(03-20-2018, 04:41 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: 1) The president of a country telling a blatant and baseless lie that undermines the integrity of our electoral process, and then wasting time and resources to try and validate that lie, is "not important"?

2) Granted, importance is subjective and will vary from person to person, so I can understand/respect that some would consider other Trump activities as more serious.

1) Well, first off, I don't think Trump's lying. I think he actually believes most of the crap that comes out of his mouth.

More importantly, politicians LIE. It's what they do. President's both present an dpast have wasted time and resources in all different manners that many have complained about.

In this particular instance, aside from the wasted time and resources which hasn't caused us to take money from starving kids or something equally horrible, this topic is rather petty, IMO Which leads me to ...

2) I think you're correct that there is definitely a subjectivity to what one might consider petty. The topic at hand, for example, is a petty topic IN MY OPINION. You seem to disagree and that's ok. 

(03-20-2018, 06:29 PM)Dill Wrote: I agree with you on the substance of your post, Philhos. Trump has done more egregious things.  But we are complaining about those too. They are connected to "the petty" more so in him than any other president.

So we differ on what is petty and the importance petty in this case. 

I take the lying seriously because it is quite possible that Trump believes there are millions of unregistered voters tipping the scales towards Democrats. If that is true, then his ability to judge social reality and assess policy is very limited. And he is the Commander in chief of the Armed Forces and the nations Chief Diplomat. How can he possibly asses intel accurately from places like Palestine or North Africa?

Even if he knows he is lying, lying tweets from him have the authority of the office for many. They support conspiracies which have real world consequences in terms of the policies and people millions of people vote for. If Vlad or Djam throws up post claiming 3-5 million illegals voted, that has no effect. It would indeed be a waste of time to write newspaper articles about that. But when the president says such things, with his tremendous power to shape policy and shift federal monies about, then it is a very serious issue.  Masses of people are moved to "prevent illegals" from voting.

Another way to put this. These kinds of views were once fringe and could be ignored. No one in the leadership of either party or in important government offices with great responsibility would make such outrageous claims.  The import of the Trump presidency is that the fringe has come to the center of power, where it can really do damage. The tweets are part of that damage. They shore up "the petty" as policy.

Agree to disagree because I just don't see it that way.