Impeachment 2, the reckoning revenge redemption.

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
Why has nothing been said about Cruz, and Hawley yes impeach Trump, but 14 amendment Cruz, and Hawley ASAP so we don't get Trump 2.0, or even 3.0. We need this nightmare to be over.
Democrats contested the electoral college votes from 9 states in January 2017.
Because it was, and no serious historian disputes it.
Serious historians say Johnson was a good president, ranking him consistently in the top 3rd. The man who literally justified Vietnam with him penis.
Whatever. That's no good reason to unfairly deny him the credit for what he achieved.
a) Yes it is.
b) Conservatives disagree with the vast majority of his achievements. The Great Society and War on Poverty are public enemies 1 and 2 in conservative circles. These programs were implemented and within a few years the economic gains of black Americans had stalled and more people were living in poverty. Reagan ran on this concept in 1980 to huge success, yet al you hear about that campaign is the super secret racist dogwhistles.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
Maybe the Republicans(aside from Trump) aren't racist at their ideological core, but they are disturbingly quick to coddle the racists in exchange for vote. The damage gets inflicted whether they do it for the glory of the white race or just as an opportunistic hunt for extra votes. And if you combine that with voter suppression tactics that primarily target minorities, an apparent apathy about police violence against the black community, and their downright fanatical opposition to Obama then things don't look very good.
Yeah, but all of this is nonsense you believe because mainstream narratives are built by one party exclusively.

A) What racists are being coddled to?
B) Democrats cheated elections for a century and now claim any and all election security measures are voter suppression. Voter ID is not voter suppression.
C) Republicans had a police reform bill in the Senate ready yo go before Democrats stalled the debate, deciding that defunding the police is now the only acceptable solution.
D) Some Republicans were fanatically opposed to Obama, but compared to the opposition to Trump, Bush, Clinton, other Bush? Obama wasn't treated worse than other presidents, the media just pretended opposing a president was something only racists do, even though they had spent 8 years calling W Hitler.
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,029
5,796
118
Country
United Kingdom
Serious historians say Johnson was a good president, ranking him consistently in the top 3rd. The man who literally justified Vietnam with him penis.
Serious historians don't tend to just categorise presidents as "good" or "bad", unless it's somebody like Lincoln. If they're worth their salt they'll look at specific accomplishments and evaluate those.

We're talking, here, not about Johnson as an entirety but about the pre-Civil Rights Act status quo (Jim Crow, racist segregation tolerated and enforced on a local level) and the post-Civil Rights Act impact (immediate federal outlawing of the above). If you don't credit banning racist segregation with an improvement in civil rights, then I don't know what to tell you. It's patently ridiculous.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
If you don't credit banning racist segregation with an improvement in civil rights, then I don't know what to tell you. It's patently ridiculous.
I credit banning racist laws for an improvement in civil rights. That's something easily controllable, Jim Crow needed to go, racist politicians were forcing non-racists to segregate people.

What's less clear is the effect of federally banning the behavior of individuals. Did prohibition work? Is the federal ban on marijuana effective? Like, Goldwater would have been happy with the bill had it declared racial discrimination banned and tasked the states with enforcing it themselves. And I understand the problem with telling states that had enacted Jim Crow to desegregate themselves, but I also recognize that federal banning of things is notoriously unenforceable and often counterproductive.
 

Hades

Elite Member
Mar 8, 2013
1,966
1,430
118
Country
The Netherlands
Reagan ran on this concept in 1980 to huge success, yet al you hear about that campaign is the super secret racist dogwhistles.
No? No that's far from all that we hear. Discussions about Reagan are dominated by him and Thatcher being the public face of ''neo liberalism''.

A) What racists are being coddled to?
B) Democrats cheated elections for a century and now claim any and all election security measures are voter suppression. Voter ID is not voter suppression.
C) Republicans had a police reform bill in the Senate ready yo go before Democrats stalled the debate, deciding that defunding the police is now the only acceptable solution.
D) Some Republicans were fanatically opposed to Obama, but compared to the opposition to Trump, Bush, Clinton, other Bush? Obama wasn't treated worse than other presidents, the media just pretended opposing a president was something only racists do, even though they had spent 8 years calling W Hitler.
A: The ones who want a border wall to keep the brown people out? The ones who want to ''say it like it is''? Those that for whatever reason were very nervous about Afro Americans gaining more rights and wanted to see those obstructed? those that wanted to arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news? Those that think any black man becoming president just has to come from Kenya?
B: That's like saying Belgium should get its turn to conquer half of Europe because Germany and France also got their turn of doing that. Two wrongs don't make a right and you'd think norms would be strengthened as time goes on rather than weakened. Whether voter ID counts as suppression hinges on the circumstances of getting one.
C: When policemen are better armed then some soldiers then defunding them doesn't sound too extreme. They don't need a grade military gear.
D: The difference is what they did to prompt that opposition. Trump is a corrupt demagogue who should rightfully be resisted to protect democracy. Obama is just your standard center right politician who just happened to be black.
 

Generals

Elite Member
May 19, 2020
571
305
68
B: That's like saying Belgium should get its turn to conquer half of Europe because Germany and France also got their turn of doing that.
I like that idea. I wonder how many government layers we would create once it's all ours though.
 

Thaluikhain

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 16, 2010
18,580
3,539
118
I like that idea. I wonder how many government layers we would create once it's all ours though.
Give it a little, and then if you promise to put the UK back in the EU once you conquer it, they'll help you conquer them William of Orange style.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
These programs were implemented and within a few years the economic gains of black Americans had stalled and more people were living in poverty...
Sure, because the USA (and much of the rest of the world) went through a series of economic shocks and general crisis that lasted across much of a decade.

I am well aware that Republicans don't like FDR, or Johnson, or anyone who overtly helped out the poor. Perhaps that's why a race which is colossally overrepresented in poverty tends to not like your party very much, and the lack of interest of your party has shown in doing anything about it has a lot to do with why the accusations of racism have traction. That and, you know, the hostile rhetoric also against Latin Americans, Muslims, and the white nationalists, etc.

So as you see, it's really not all Johnson at all. It's in substantial part the Republican Party's own voluntary triangulation to win elections. Republicans were traditionally big on taking responsibility for oneself, and they need to apply more of that rather than pretend it's all someone else's fault.
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,029
5,796
118
Country
United Kingdom
I credit banning racist laws for an improvement in civil rights. That's something easily controllable, Jim Crow needed to go, racist politicians were forcing non-racists to segregate people.

What's less clear is the effect of federally banning the behavior of individuals. Did prohibition work? Is the federal ban on marijuana effective? Like, Goldwater would have been happy with the bill had it declared racial discrimination banned and tasked the states with enforcing it themselves. And I understand the problem with telling states that had enacted Jim Crow to desegregate themselves, but I also recognize that federal banning of things is notoriously unenforceable and often counterproductive.
It clearly had a much better success rate at preventing racist segregation than the system before by any reasonable metric.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
B: That's like saying Belgium should get its turn to conquer half of Europe because Germany and France also got their turn of doing that.
No, it's like if Belgium prepared to defend itself from invaders, and Germany and France accuse Belgium of trying to conquer Europe with its defensive measures.
C: When policemen are better armed then some soldiers then defunding them doesn't sound too extreme. They don't need a grade military gear.
I'm not necessarily against the idea of shifting funding from police to other resources. I think we depend on police to handle things they're just not equipped to handle, and it's bad for everyone involved. What I am against though is turning down reform efforts because they decided reform is now apparently defending police brutality.
D: The difference is what they did to prompt that opposition. Trump is a corrupt demagogue who should rightfully be resisted to protect democracy. Obama is just your standard center right politician who just happened to be black.
And Bush, and Bush, and Clinton? I'm not going to agree with Obama being on the right necessarily, but there's no shortage of white center-right presidents who got just as much crap as Obama. Freaking, people still claim Bush did 9/11.
I am well aware that Republicans don't like FDR, or Johnson, or anyone who overtly helped out the poor.
I'm gonna have to ask you to back this up. Their efforts were overt, sure, but did they actually help the poor? The evidence for that is thin at best.
If you don't credit banning racist segregation with an improvement in civil rights, then I don't know what to tell you. It's patently ridiculous.
I wanna expand on my response to this. Because I compared banning segregation to banning drugs, and I can see the obvious objection to comparing racial segregation to illegal drugs as non-comparable things, but the connection on the enforcement is very direct.

Goldwater's protest to the Act of 1964 was not that people should be allowed to be racist. That wasn't his complaint. His complaint was that the federal government passing laws controlling citizen's behaviors and tasking itself to enforce those standards required a nation-wide police state to enforce them and would set the precedent for misuse of power in the future. The very next administration after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed started the War on Drugs, widely regarded as a civil rights failure.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
It clearly had a much better success rate at preventing racist segregation than the system before by any reasonable metric.
Based on what metrics do you make that claim? Is racial inequality solved? I would personally argue much more progress has been made in taking racism out of people's attitudes than have been in reaching any sort of racial equality.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
I'm gonna have to ask you to back this up. Their efforts were overt, sure, but did they actually help the poor? The evidence for that is thin at best.
I don't think there's any serious doubt that it did overall. Poverty is very complex, but I think it would be hard to query the advantages of Medicare and Medicaid, or educational attainment (especially amongst non-whites) from his policies.

Nothing exists in isolation. Other (often later) policy or systemic economic changes can cause opposite effects. Programs can later be repealed, gutted, or altered. For instance, if we talk welfare, if the government gives everyone $100 dollars and a recession promptly wipes it away, it doesn't look like the welfare did any good according to the gross statistics, but actually it left people $100 better off than they would have been otherwise. Specifically, 70s economic weakness; median and sub-median wages started their decades-long stagnation the 1970s; manufacturing declined; the wealthy moved to the suburbs (taking their money with them) and increased urban decline. And so on. Any and all of these would affect many people's quality of life and salary, and could counteract benefits from Johnson's legislation. But that's not the same thing as the legislation doing no good.
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,029
5,796
118
Country
United Kingdom
Based on what metrics do you make that claim? Is racial inequality solved? I would personally argue much more progress has been made in taking racism out of people's attitudes than have been in reaching any sort of racial equality.
Obviously it's not solved. But it is no longer legal for local authorities to institute racially segregated education, or unequal voting laws, or to allow proprietors to turn people away from housing or restaurants because of the colour of their skin. Those things being outlawed is inarguably an improvement over them not being outlawed. Unless you see some benefit to those abhorrent practices continuing.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
Obviously it's not solved. But it is no longer legal for local authorities to institute racially segregated education, or unequal voting laws, or to allow proprietors to turn people away from housing or restaurants because of the colour of their skin. Those things being outlawed is inarguably an improvement over them not being outlawed. Unless you see some benefit to those abhorrent practices continuing.
Only one part of that list was contentious. And you're conflating banning something with that thing ceasing. It's not a simple as that. The government doesn't just get to declare "Thou shalt not segregate facilities" and poof it happens. It's requires enforcement, and in this instance, it was the mechanisms of enforcement being contested.

Can you not imagine a situation where the government bans something you agree should be banned but enforces it in a way that you don't think should be allowed?

Edit, example: Imagine the government decides to stamp out child pornography. I think we can all agree on the cause, I don't imagine people here are displeased that such a thing is banned. Now imagine the mechanism they choose to stamp it out involves the government digging into every citizen's email accounts searching for the guilty parties. That's an action people might reasonably disagree with. Now imagine Barry Goldwater objected to massive government intrusion into your privacy, and in response he was regarded as a famous child sex predator after his death. Does that seem fair?
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,029
5,796
118
Country
United Kingdom
Only one part of that list was contentious. And you're conflating banning something with that thing ceasing. It's not a simple as that. The government doesn't just get to declare "Thou shalt not segregate facilities" and poof it happens. It's requires enforcement, and in this instance, it was the mechanisms of enforcement being contested.

Can you not imagine a situation where the government bans something you agree should be banned but enforces it in a way that you don't think should be allowed?
It wasn't the mechanism of enforcement. Obviously there are necessary limitations there. It was that he believed the federal government should not compel states to comply. On a question of utter moral necessity such as legal equality between people of different ethnicities, I don't believe there's more than one morally valid position.

It doesn't happen automatically and requires enforcement, yes, obviously. And it's only after it's actually law that it even can be enforced. And.... by-and-large, it's been enforced quite well: dramatically fewer places were able to legally discriminate on basis of race, eh? Beforehand, the solution was... just to let it ride.

Edit, example: Imagine the government decides to stamp out child pornography. I think we can all agree on the cause, I don't imagine people here are displeased that such a thing is banned. Now imagine the mechanism they choose to stamp it out involves the government digging into every citizen's email accounts searching for the guilty parties. That's an action people might reasonably disagree with. Now imagine Barry Goldwater objected to massive government intrusion into your privacy, and in response he was regarded as a famous child sex predator after his death. Does that seem fair?
But that's not anywhere even remotely close to what happened, is it? It was a choice between: leaving something de-facto legal and tolerated, or prohibiting it on a federal level. So, to use your child pornography analogy: imagine child pornography is legal in an alternate-reality country. A bill is introduced to outlaw it, and Gary Boldwater votes against, because he believes that only the local mayors should be able to ban it or not.
 
Last edited:

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
But that's not anywhere even remotely close to what happened, is it?
Yes, it is. You're creating that dichotomy, but it isn't an all or nothing decision. Had the bill failed that vote, it would have been debated and reconsidered with different language. If the only options are one extreme or the other, you may be right, but that's not how legislation works here. There's no double jeopardy law for bill passage.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
Oh oh oh! Big news in.

Rumour has it via the NYT that Mitch McConnell has told Republican senators that he believes Trump committed impeachable offences and is glad the House is advancing the case.

This could be some kind of play where they end up not voting it through anyway, but if true and McConnell really is in favour of finding Trump guilty, then you have to suspect enough Republican senators will agree and Trump is going down. Maybe after he's already left office, but that's still going down.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,230
7,007
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
Oh oh oh! Big news in.

Rumour has it via the NYT that Mitch McConnell has told Republican senators that he believes Trump committed impeachable offences and is glad the House is advancing the case.

This could be some kind of play where they end up not voting it through anyway, but if true and McConnell really is in favour of finding Trump guilty, then you have to suspect enough Republican senators will agree and Trump is going down. Maybe after he's already left office, but that's still going down.
OTOH, Mitch isn't gonna be the Majority Leader in a week and the Senate won't go back in session until after then regardless(Unless I'm mistaken) so it doesn't cost him much to say that. He's gonna hand off the Schumer on the 20th and it's gonna be Schumer taking Impeachment up.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
OTOH, Mitch isn't gonna be the Majority Leader in a week and the Senate won't go back in session until after then regardless(Unless I'm mistaken) so it doesn't cost him much to say that. He's gonna hand off the Schumer on the 20th and it's gonna be Schumer taking Impeachment up.
No, but (assuming all the Democrats and independents vote for) a third of the Republicans have to also support impeachment for it to pass. McConnell is still his party's leader in the Senate, so what he thinks will have a lot of impact on how some Republicans vote. Likewise that in the House others, including Liz Cheney, have come out in favour of impeachment signals that the appetite really is there.

I'm heavily in favour of cooling things off and trying to build some unity. I just think Trump has to go down first, because he has been beyond the pale. You cannot send a mob to sack the Capitol, then watch it on TV delighted and refusing requests to help, and not face severe repercussions. His stupid bleating against violence and for national healing now he's in trouble is infuriating, because he has been a prime aggravator and hatemonger for years. There's no hint of taking responsibility or repentence, he just acts like his misdeeds have nothing to do with him, always has and always will. What do you think would happen if Trump were let off? He would go right back to the same behaviour because he just doesn't think he did anything wrong. Maybe is borderline psychologically incapable of admitting error.

If we want to start unity and healing, what I'd suggest is starting at the mob that stormed the capitol. There's the tragedy of a policeman killed in action, and those responsible have to pay for that. But most did much less and if they are prepared to take responsibility and show contrition, I'm okay with extreme leniency if it helps draw a line under the mess and for the country move on more healthily.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dalisclock