Monday, January 18

Rant

Pixy Had Never Seen Such Fuckery

This latest thread from Bret Weinstein requires a response, because it is the most outrageous political commentary I have ever seen from anyone not already on trial at Nuremberg.

(Full text on Threadreader - though I'm not sure if it will survive if the tweets get deleted.)



First: Encouraged supporters to do what, Bret?  Peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of their grievances?  Because that is what he actually did.

Second: Congress has neither the right nor the power to prevent him from seeking political office again.  That would be a violation of his First and Fifth Amendment rights, and the Tenth Amendment rights of the states and of his supporters.  It is not anywhere in the enumerated powers of the Senate, nor in the Constitutional procedure for the election of the president.

Third: Are you fucking kidding me?  That would require a show trial of a single day, and then you speak of avoiding political witch-hunting?



Fourth: No, the nation is not more important than any person.  The nation is the people.  Putting the nation before its own people is not merely the road to disaster, it is the disaster itself.

Fifth: Our focus on Trump is not unnatural.  We have not been drawn into anything.  That's you.  That's the Democrats.  That's the mainstream media.  You have been driven insane by your own irrelevance.

Sixth: If the Senate acts as you describe, it will be catastrophic.  They will be wiping their behinds with the Constitution, trampling every process and protection in the name of - in the name of what, exactly?  They will never be forgiven.

Seventh: If the republic cannot afford an innocent man to go free, then the republic cannot be saved, indeed, is not worth saving.  Not that I even for a moment accept your premise.


Eighth: This is not a pro nor anti-Trump proposal.  It is a fascist proposal.  You have explicitly placed the state before the rule of law or the rights of the individual.  You have determined that a show trial, without rules, without evidence, without opportunity for defense, is somehow just.

Ninth: And who, pray tell, has put the republic into a tailspin?



Tenth: The president's family?  Why would they need a pardon at all?

Eleventh: Beyond?  Beyond to where?  Just pardon everyone?

Twelfth: Hope is unpatriotic now?



Thirteenth: I agree with nothing you have said.  Nobody should agree with anything you have said.  Your premises are false.  Your understanding of the law is juvenile.  Your proposed course of action is totalitarian.  And your logic has the intellectual rigour of warm jello.

Fourteenth: Speaking for the world - which I do, I have a permit - fuck the world, if this is what it takes to "save" it.


Coda


The nation is divided between fascists and defenders of liberty, and you, Bret, have made it abundantly clear you do not side with the latter.


Postscript



This is Weinstein's podcast.  I haven't watched it and don't intend to, but I will note that the comments are not kind.  Not kind at all.  And this is from his own viewers.

It seems that the YouTube commentariat is less hopelessly lost than Twitter.

Update: And the savaging he's getting in the comments is apparently what remains after a purge.  I can barely imagine what the deleted comments were like.



Full text:
The President encouraged supporters while maintaining formal deniability. Congress has the right and power to prevent him from seeking the office again. It should. Then President Pence should issue the pardons necessary to prevent political witch-hunting.

The nation is more important than any person. Our focus on Trump is unnatural—we have been drawn into his self-obsession, and if the Senate does not act, the next four years will become a cataclysmic battle between his tormentors and his disciples. The republic can’t afford it.

This is neither a ‘pro’ nor ‘anti’ Trump proposal. This is a non-partisan proposal to get our democratic republic out of a tailspin. Pardons would have historic precedent in the response to Shays’ rebellion. Alexander Hamilton describes the reasoning for it in Federalist #74.

Pardons should go beyond the President and his family. I truly believe this is our best chance to staunch the national bloodletting

Some will disagree because they project all hope onto Trump, others because they relish the prospect of hounding him. Neither instinct is patriotic

Those who love this fine, flawed country should agree on whatever course allows us to prevent further national disintegration and to confront the systemic disfunction that set the stage for this perilous chapter in our history.

It’s fair to say the world is depending on us.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 782 words, total size 7 kb.

1 I like the part where he invents Two Americas out of thin air: "convict and don't pardon" versus "pardon and don't convict". I'll bet he felt so clever that he stared at that sentence for at least five minutes before pulling his hand out of his pants.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, January 18 2021 02:53 PM (ZlYZd)

2 a) I am fundamentally opposed to the rest of the world.  If the rest of the world was willing to wage war in an attempt to create world government, I would cheerfully do my best to burn it all down.

b) I am reminded of the reasoning behind the distinction between the South African Bureau of State Security, and its replacement, the Department of National Security.  National security is the people.  State security is the likes of congress or Trump. 

c) In my opinion, the controlling legal precedent is volume four of the collected works of Lincoln.  Violent combination too great to be resolved by the ordinary proceedings of court.  Trump is still president, and could legitimately call the militia to restore enforcement of law at anytime following the Georgia run off proof. 

d) This is clearly a commie regime cheating its way into power, to be followed by mass murder.

e) This isn't Nixon-Ford.  Pardons will do nothing to keep Trump or his family alive.

f)  Charitably, the Democrats are desperate, and determined to push things.  DC situation smells.  If he isn't in on it, as someone with a career in making political comments, and without enough prep to go find a new career, he is probably nuts from the stress and confusion.

g) The problems are more complex than is understood by the people who are suddenly discovering that something urgently needs to be done.  They don't understand it well enough for a carefully designed simple solution, if any simple solution would work. 

h) What we have is a breakdown in trust and consensus, with cracks that have been growing for a long time.  Hitting it with a hammer makes the cracks grow more.  The reason war will occur is that Biden and Harris don't have the temperaments to do anything but hit it with a hammer.  Bret's hammer is also a hammer.  Situation is not going to be restored to prior the lockdown hammerblow, or the most recent BLM hammerblows.  If a new stability occurs, it is going to be by a different mechanism than these grand hammerblows.

i) It is afraid. 

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, January 18 2021 03:51 PM (6y7dz)

3 I am reluctantly coming to the opinion that the protesters who hounded Weinstein out of Evergreen College may have had a point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, January 18 2021 04:37 PM (PiXy!)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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