mikwut wrote:Hi Res,
I am about 80% there. Maybe 85%. My last obstacle is getting into minds and intentions particularly of the President. Doesn't a paradox rise the more obvious the dastardly deed and bribery (the impeachable offense) is, shouldn't we have more than the whistleblower raising it as a actual criminal concern beyond just "inappropriate" that we consistently get from the witnesses?
And if the bribery is so clear doesn't it become ridiculous to do it through the channels that what ever was communicated was communicated, just right there out in the open a straight up unambiguous and obvious impeachable offense?
mikwut
Hi Mikwut,
Yeah, I don't think there is or will be any way to view this kind of complex fact situation in a way that makes those involved look rational. They're all people, and people don't act rational. That's why try to stick to my own standards of impeachable conduct and whether the facts we have meet those standards.
I think our brains have a "normalization" bias that tends to make us think that whatever situation we find our selves in is "normal" or, at least, "not that bad." Do you remember how the lawyers in the Rodney King beating trial got not guilty verdicts? They showed that horrible looking video about a million times during the trial. The jury got so used to the video that I think they're brains started to normalize the conduct they were seeing -- maybe it wasn't that bad. So, I think that people who are exposed to whatever the bad conduct we're looking at is are more likely to suffer from that normalization bias. I saw Rick Santorum defend Trump on CNN last night by basically saying: Yes, what Trump did was wrong. But we all know Trump's an ignorant windbag who talks about doing all kinds of crazy crap -- but it all works out in the end, and that's all that counts. Finally, for whatever reason, someone says "hey, that's just way over the line" and may become a whistleblower. If they aren't too intimidated to blow the whistle.
So, for me, the reactions of people who witness the bad conduct aren't a reliable metric. They've been subjected to the crazy antics of Trump for quite a while now. Who knows how much normalization bias has kicked in.
And I really don't see the whole scheme as a brazen attempt at bribery. It was set up to keep Trump's hands completely clean. Trump delegated the dirty work to his current fixer. The quid pro quo was communicated through back channels. All Trump had to do was stick to the script for one phone call. All he had to do was praise Zelensky and say that he'd been told that Zelensky was committed to combating the terrible corruption in Ukraine. Zelensky just had to answer that it was one of his top priorities. Then Sonderland and Volker would arrange for the public announcement that Trump wanted, which they did, and then Trump gets his political weapon, Ukraine gets war weapons, and Zelensky gets his meeting.
That was the script. It was so simple, the White House wrote the "read out" it gave to the press before the phone call was even made. But Trump couldn't control his mouth, as is typical, and ended up documenting the bribe, or extortion, or quid pro quo, or whatever you want to call it. He called from the residence, where he likely didn't have the briefing materials that he is always given for a call with a world leader and just shot from the hip, with no one present to even queue him to stop.
So, no, I don't find anything about the scheme paradoxical or contradictory. It fits Trump's long time style of doing dirty work and his more recent inability to control his mouth.
I think the founders gave Congress the impeachment power as the check on the abuse of executive power. So that's really my standard: abuse of power. And, based on what I've seen so far, there's no question in my mind that putting the squeeze on a very vulnerable ally to gain political advantage in the upcoming election is an abuse of that power and warrants both impeachment and removal. Nixon's abuse of power was for exactly the same reason. And if lying about a blow job warrants impeachment, there is no argument that Trump's conduct does not.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951