Presidential Pardons - when would you call it corrupt?

[Dill]

(01-18-2021, 05:25 PM)hollodero Wrote: I see all that points, but I feel you leave out the one most important factor. Which imho is that you live in such a deeply polarized time that someone from the own side can do no wrong and gets defended by all means necessary. It's not about the issue really. In that environment, a president can do almost whatever and simply not care about "optics". Whose optics, whose perspective? The leftist MSM? Liberals? Well, that does not really matter much, does it. It probably did matter in the end, but just barely, Trump got elected and almost got reelected after all. He was guaranteed almost half of the vote from the start, and nothing but the "R" mattered for that. Same goes for Biden.

That's what Trump figured out about you, probably by just watching FOX all day. You're deeply divided and entrenched, always out to argue a win for your own side and a loss for the other side, up to a willingness to ignore reality and defend the indefensible. You hardly lose anyone of "your people". Something that is not true for our own way more diverse political spectrum. That, imho, is the root of all your current problems, yet another 18th century heritage, the strict political duality where it's always an "us vs. them", nowadays by all means necessary.

And while imho the left side is way less extreme in that regard, this truth to a certain degree applies for both sides. Democrats got away with a lot and could get away with a lot more too now, eg. with pardoning a personal friend or political ally. One can easily tell a critic that Trump did way worse and hence all outrage is hypocritical. Which would be true.

Two quick points: 1) "both sides do it" is rarely the basis of accurate political analysis. We hear it sometimes from one side (usually the liberal) when they want to find common policy ground and know they cannot begin by just blaming others, even if (as you recognize) one side does it more. We also hear it from one side (usually the conservative) when some incident casts doubt on party character--like a president's impeachable behavior. It then becomes a means of spreading or mitigating blame, deflecting any implication that a party's judgement as a whole might be flawed. Most of the time, it is a mirror image imposed on the surface of a political conflict, in which each side may indeed be accusing the other of the same thing, which may look very different once one looks deeper into material/social causes of division--and whether the accusations are actually true. It is rarely a useful analytical tool, how ever politically useful it might sometimes be. Rather it superimposes a pattern upon conflict which may not really be there and so distorts analysis.

2) If we are really trying to understand causes, which may be necessary to finding workable solutions, then we ought to begin by trying to understand what material/social forces have conditioned the aforementioned division. When we do that, I don't think we'll find find the two major parties have somehow became mirror images of one another, each equally willing to "ignore reality and defend the indefensible."  The divisive rhetoric from Congressional leaders, for example, was simply not there through most of the '70s and '80s. There is a before and after. It its origins can be dated, traced to  individuals, to one party, as can the incremental ratcheting up of that rhetoric, aided and abetted by new technologies and legal innovations, leading us to a point where now 74% of Republicans believe that Biden was not legitimately elected president. The other side has sometimes attempted to respond in kind, but generally without success because its constituents for the most part do not respond to that rhetoric. That is a very thin summary, but accurate enough to dispute the notion of a mirror image.

Some added notes: The "strict political duality" in the U.S. has, since the 18th century, not been "us vs them," but compromisers, pragmatists and unifiers vs those who embrace "us-vs-them."  And that is still what we have.

I don't think Trump figured out that we're "always out to argue a win for [our] own side and a loss for the other side, up to a willingness to ignore reality and defend the indefensible."  I think he just noticed that when he promised racist and xenophobic policies, a segment of the public responded quickly. When he did it more, they responded more, and he responded to them, thereby building, organizing and fixing that previously suppressed xenophobia into a formidable political force and some terrible short term policies. Along the way he discovered that some checks and balances would fail if he pushed against them hard enough. And so he pushed harder. A right wing media machine primed this audience for him two decades before his election, and he rode it into office and out all accountability, until Jan. 6.  All this has not happened because "both sides" are equally ready to "defend the indefensible."

Even if a president can still legally "do what he wants" in this environment, it is not at all clear that each side wants to elect someone who will JUST do what he wants. You yourself think rule of law is important. If people want to live under rule of law, then they must elect representatives who also think that and hold them accountable. That is one reason why so many the "D" mattered to so many people. The division in the US right now appears to be between people who agree with you about the importance of rule of law and those who want a form of law and order, which can trump rule of law.  I don't think Biden will be defended by "all means necessary" in the coming year, as Trump was over the last four.