Should President Trump be Impeached and Removed?

Not gonna say I told ya so but I told ya so. The Democrats and Republicans were basically just putting on a fake show up until Wednesday. What goes on behind close doors make actual conversations about what's the right thing to do pretty pointless. Both parties planned this acquital on this day at this specific time way way ahead of time

 

Let's vote em all out

 

I wanted to briefly talk about something to which Sebo earlier alluded, that we were never "a democracy for the people". I also wish to tie this point in with one of your previous quotes:

"Their [Trump supporters'] opinions, sense of right and wrong, world view, political logic, mental workflows are absolutely foreign and alien to me."

What I want to say is not directly related to the impeachment farce, but a point that I wish to make in my own, conservative way for your (and whoever else's) opinion:


Over two millennia have passed since Plato warned in The Republic that "tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." The founders understood this well, which is why they wished not to create a democracy, but a republic with some democratic principles.

The Bill of Rights was added specifically to avert the kind of threat posed by a democracy, which was to them a dominatio plebis... the abrogation of natural rights which proceed from the divine law. Whether they were Christians, Deists, etc., does not matter. What they all share in common is the concept of telos, a Greek word that can refer to an end point in a spatial relation, but also to an end with the meaning of a goal, thus implying purpose.

Without telos, our existence is accidental. If accidental, then there is no purpose and morality is subjective. Who determines right and wrong in a democratic society? The majority.

Besides the Bill of Rights, there were other measures put into place in order to avert "the tyranny of the majority." One of these was a purposefully anti-democratic institution known as the Senate. Otherwise, Hamilton could not speak of it as though it were non-partisan in Federalist 65. Unfortunately, progressives have helped to destroy this institution with direct elections. It is now as partisan as the rest of the legislature, so the recent decision of the Senate was no surprise.

We also now hear of them trying to democratize other institutions by, for example, removing the Electoral College. They also want to increase the number of justices in the Supreme Court, because the current justices they don't like.

The "tyranny of the majority" which stems from democracy explains much of our current state as a nation, of which Trump is only a symptom...


I now quote an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' "Screwtape Proposes a Toast":

"But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector (where I saw most of my front-line service) a horrible thing had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalising movement and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of its old anti-Christianity remained. The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant. Factory owners of the good old type who grew rich on sweated labour, instead of being assassinated by their workpeople — we could have used that — were being frowned upon by their own class. The rich were increasingly giving up their powers not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences. As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties — as we reasonably hoped and expected — for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous. Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious.

Thanks to Our Father Below the threat was averted. Our counterattack was on two levels. On the deepest level our dealers contrived to call into full life an element which had been implicit in the movement from its earliest days. Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, you remember, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side) we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a tool-shed in his own garden.

Such was our counter-attack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counter-attack takes a different form.

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that Democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor, of course, must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether ‘democratic behaviour’ means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.

You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the word Democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of all human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist-measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food. ‘Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, lah-di-dah affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he must be one of those highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were the right sort of chaps they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.’

Now this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to the humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it — make it respectable and even laudable — by the incantatory use of the word democratic.

Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from it for fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being like Folks; that people who would really wish to be — and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be — honest, chaste, or temperate, refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend again the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: ‘Oh God, make me a normal twentieth-century girl!’ Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly, ‘Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite’.

Meanwhile, as a delightful by-product, the few (fewer every day) who will not be made Normal and Regular and Like Folks and Integrated, increasingly tend to become in reality the prigs and cranks which the rabble would in any case have believed them to be. For suspicion often creates what it suspects. (‘Since, whatever I do, the neighbours are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb and become one in reality.’) As a result we now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell.

But that is a mere by-product. What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them ‘tyrants’ then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of corn, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy’ can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

I have said that to secure the damnation of these little souls, these creatures that have almost ceased to be individual, is a laborious and tricky work. But if proper pains and skill are expended, you can be fairly confident of the result. The great sinners seem easier to catch. But then they are incalculable. After you have played them for seventy years, the Enemy may snatch them from your claws in the seventy-first. They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss."


When you wish to "vote em all out", I wonder what that means in practical terms. Does this mean voting for the "strongman" who will alleviate their concerns of the current political milieu? Whoever wins will polarize, validating the concerns of the conservatives of the 18th century that our politics would be factional with a kind of religious zeal to change the status quo at any cost... in Trump's construal: "Winning!" Add this to the ongoing democratization of anti-democratic institutions, among other things, and in the end what will we have?

I fear that there is no turning back; it shall remain "Us vs. Them". It is not enough that we have a cultural disagreement... no, it has to be a culture "war". Do not dare to be different. I, myself, have been labeled by Trump as "human scum".


"[T]he same disease magnified and intensified by liberty overmasters democracy — the truth being that the excessive increase in anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction."

"The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess slavery… And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy." (The Republic, Book VIII)


Conclusion: Morals lie at the heart of a functioning society, and these must exist outside of ourselves, not arbitrarily decided by society... "the tyranny of the majority." The puritans on one side will seek to destroy the puritans on the other.

 

Since you quoted the same thing but came away with different takes... which parts are you even referring to?

As for your second point: when do I indicate I'm opting out? I think you misunderstood me.

Analogy, Thread is about Abortion from a Pro-Choice perspective.

Thread starter: Abortion is a human right, it's what the suffragists (who where perfect people btw) wanted, and the science behind gynecology and the creation of birth control were the greatest advancements with no down sides!

Responder adding nuance and a contrarian point without disregarding the main premise: Yes, Abortion is a human right, women shouldn't be forced against their will to do shit. However your version of history is white washed. While it is great that we do have the technology and knowledge we have now, let's not forget that the study of gynecology was found on experiments on slaves. Or how the development of birth control pills used Puerto Rican women as test subjects that sterilized many of them. And since your randomly brought up the suffragettes, let's not forget many of them were for eugenics and in general fucking sucked.

Thread starter: Woah!!! Please don't tell me you're pro-life.
_____


I think it is clear that I support the best presidential candidate we have had since Eugene Debs. (some good reading directly from Debs)

As for voting: I'm for voting, I do it for almost every level of government I'm able to participate in. I even sometimes volunteer for candidates I agree with. I will vote in November on the entire ballot, but I will leave the president slot empty if it isn't Bernie (which is fine in a safe state like this one).

What I am against (and what any self respecting person with any perspective on history) is electoralism, as the ballot box alone (in our oligarchic system, upheld by our shit constitution) will not bring about any lasting change. There was change during the New Deal (granted, the aid didn't help with POC or women), but it got eroded away because the oligarchs responsible for the collapse of the economy didn't have their assists seized.
What we need is dual power. A system parallel to the shitty one we deal with. I think a good demonstration of this is by this HERO.

I have a number of hobbies, and following the news, politics, and learning about political theory is one of them.

But to those points:

1. Strong economy, but for who? (2 year old article, but the numbers are worse now)
2. Low unemployment (based on what metrics?), but what kinds of jobs and how is the pay?

Working people aren't benefiting from capitalism, we're expendable cogs. Just ask yourself this: have you or anyone you know are actually seeing material benefit from when stock markets are booming?

What?

What?

What?

Ooohkay. Just curious though, since I didn't press you on it then, but I wrote in this thread:

(emphasis on Punishment made by you)
To which you reply:

How does Punishment weigh-in on your conservatism?

No disagreement here. It's a dead document that some people hopelessly try to keep relevant, but is no more a nice window into time that allows one to see what some aristocratic slave owners thought was important.

Perhaps a less shitty document wouldn't be so open to interpretation? Sounds like we could use a new one.

This kinda goes back to the first quotation, but if people were actually informed, regardless of the text in those shitty documents (I'd give it a 3/10, points for brevity and relative originality at least), they'd understand that this entire spectacle was a sham.

 

Dear @Sebo

You ask me:

"How does Punishment weigh-in on your conservatism?"

You ask this based upon the following observation:

"(emphasis on Punishment made by you)" in reference to this quote:

My reply to you was in reference to what you said near the end, which I have underlined. You said that Brad is "played by... conservatives", and then you ask why me why I placed an emphasis on "Punishment", when in fact, I did not place any such emphasis on that word. Reread your original post, and you will find that it was you who emphasized that word...

This is why I tell people to "read" in order to understand, which was one of the points you "emphasized" by quoting it from me. However, I did not realize that people would misinterpret their own words, falsely claiming that what they said was said by someone else. (laughing emojis added)



Do not worry... forgiveness weighs in much on my conservatism.

Have you read the Constitution and the Federalist (and Anti-Federalist) papers? Do you realize that when you say that we never had "a democracy for the people" that the founders were in agreement with you, and that they considered democracy to be compatible with authoritarianism? Do you realize that this impeachment hoax would not have happened had it been for people who read, and applied, what the founders had to say? Do you also realize that "the tyranny of the majority" is what the founders meant when the progressive Woodrow Wilson demanded a war because “[t]he world must be made safe for democracy”? (The problem of American interventionism is shared by both the left and the right.)

Finally, do you realize that the solution to our problems will not come from replacing the Constitution, and that the root of all evil is human nature? It does not matter which document we use... The fact that you say that all of the US Presidents "should be put on trail [sic]"... do you think that the situation would be different had the Constitution been different?

Unlike you, I am not concerned with rewriting our Constitution until it is perfect... whoever gets to decide what that entails. We are not replacing the Constitution anytime soon, so in the meantime, I will reveal the fallacies of using Constitutional law to defend the incompetence and malfeasance of our current malAdministration.

 

@Libertine, @Sebo lot of good points you both made, and human nature as central to the problem.... In so much of this human nature is the final problem. The human cognitive infrastructure and the conditions that it is developed under. The old nature and nurture thing. The troubling fact is that things are about to change as a result of synthetic biology, synthetic chemistry, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence that will change human nature. And what is particularly distressing is the human nature of those architects of the upcoming change

 

Welp nun of this political discussion matters anyway cuz Trump just got acquitted of all charges. Lol TRUMP SECOND TERM HERE WE COME BABYYYYYY!!!

 

Correct on this point, sorry.

In my defense, it's hard to keep track of everything when writing a wall of text and providing, jumping to different threads to cross reference is the cause of that error (and innumerable typos). Again, sorry, I fucked up.

But what are your stances? Just because you have a lot of legalese in your vernacular is not the bed rock to why you would consider yourself a conservative.

Over decade ago, but again: yes. I will expect you to ask 20 more times though.

YES, of course they'd think that, they were idealists (their ideas were based on abstract thoughts of out-of-touch aristocrats not the hard sciences).

It's why they created the governmental system that benefited their class. The "American Revolution" was a fraud, as all it was based on was the colonials wanting to maintain slavery despite the wishes of the British and were not willing to pay their share in supporting the home government after the costly 7 Years War (because why pay taxes with the stolen labor of slaves and indentured servants when you can keep it yourself?).

Eh, no.

The answer to the root of our problems in a capitalist world is building solidarity with our fellow workers and raising class consciousness.

No, this is idealist thinking. You even got the liberal repeating it.

There is no one, monolithic "human nature."

We are byproducts of our material conditions. The "human nature" we have is vastly different from what gatherer-hunter societies would have as their "nature."

And under a system of false scarcity and unnecessary competition (which has gotten worse during neoliberalization, i.e literally my entire life) people will act shitty because it's how you survive in an economy where a single 40-hour job doesn't support a family like it once did. If we had universal health care, "free" education, guaranteed housing and employment, universal vacation days/sick days/paternal leave, and weren't told constantly that we need to waste 700 billion of our budget to fund the war machine: our "nature" collectively would be different.

Living in Japan for 5 years, where you could afford to go to the doctor and not go bankrupt was liberating. According to all my family that remained in Poland, they had optimism under socialism, and because of their experiences having all of their needs being met they have way more faith in humanity than the average American I know (and that isn't based on religious nonsense).

I can tell you that all my family that remained in Poland under the socialist government, and friends from other socialist states: their views of human nature are vastly different (understandable when you have guaranteed housing, employment, healthcare, and high quality education etc).

What?

1. My main point on the impeachment was: the Democrats failed to bring up real charges. "Abuse of Power" was dumb, and if they knew enough about the constitution they should have brought up Trump's corruption and use the Emoluments Clause. And if they were actually smart enough, they should have given up the Bidens for questioning (sacrificing his campaign) so they could get witnesses of their own.

It requires repeating, the democrats are controlled opposition. They're the "left" wing of the capitalist bald eagle that drops bombs arounhow to use it.

2. Doesn't matter which document we use? There would be a difference if the documents had positive rights, instead of negative rights in regards to quality of life.

It bears repeating, the rules were written by aristocratic, out-of-touch, fuck-wits. We can go at length about what the framers "intended," going through every article and clause of that dusty-ass document; well shit, the "good ones" signed off on the compromise to count slaves as 3/5ths of a person.

They could benefit from a rule-set that was filled with negative freedoms because they already owned everything.

What?

@Jason Elbow

No response to my previous questions?

 

I dont care. And im not reading all of that boring shit you typed to make a informed response. Thats why I didnt respond.

 

Nall thats aiight. Yall are worse with the SJW cuckery then even America is. Imma stay right here in Trump-land thank you very much!

 

What are you confused about? SJW's meaning? Or cuckery?

 

I mean. If you dont understand then thats on you. Any straight forward explanation will only have Maid Man come down on me hard. So just pretend i didnt post anything

 

Amen....

 

I mean. If you understand that much. Then use that "intelligence" to decypher what I said previously. I felt what I said was pretty straight forward. If you dont know then google it or something..