TUESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2023
Georgia should build many jails: We're nor in love with the relentless drive to put Donald Trump in jail.
As we've said for the past year or so, we don't think you can solve a political / cultural / journalistic problem by putting Others in jail.
The problem at the heart of Trumpism involves the former president's ability to convince tens of millions of people of a basic proposition—The 2020 election was stolen!—for which he has offered no evidence at all.
This mass belief in unfounded claims is a very major problem—but it's a political / cultural / journalistic problem, not necessarily one which calls for the use of jails.
That said, to what extent is our blue tribe in love with the "Lock them up" thesis? Consider the second of four "takeaways from the latest indictment," as described by the Washington Post's Aaron Blake:
2. The indictment focuses on false statements, oaths
A core Trump defense in the federal Jan. 6 case is the idea that he was merely exercising free speech.
But that defense won’t work as easily in Georgia, which has a broad prohibition against making “a false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation … in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government.”
That law figures heavily in the indictment, with the phrase “false statement” appearing more than 100 times, including as individual counts and as part of the alleged racketeering. (The indictment lists 161 overt acts as part of the latter.) Defendants like Trump and Giuliani are accused of making false statements about voter fraud publicly, in legal filings, in hearings in Georgia and elsewhere.
In Georgia, it's against the law to make a false statement "in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government?”
So Blake reports, without blinking even once or offering qualifications. We'll only suggest that this particular state should perhaps get busy building a lot more jails.
How has Trump been able to convince so many people of a sweeping claim for which he's provided no evidence? How can such lunacy happen?
Perhaps more strikingly, why are we blue tribe members unable to persuade our fellow citizens of the obvious error of their ways?
Those are basic cultural problems. Almost surely, they can't be solved by putting a madman in jail. And yes:
Donald J. Trump seems to be some version of insane. Why has it proven to be so hard just to discuss, let alone convey, that basic possibility? Could someone possibly go find the kid who described the emperor's clothes?
It's against the law to make a false statement! So reports Blake in the Post!
"why are we blue tribe members unable to persuade our fellow citizens of the obvious error of their ways?"
ReplyDeleteBecause the red tribe is in love with political correctness, when we tell them the truth about themselves.
Even Right-wing elitist, David Brooks, says being perfectly honest about who the Red tribe is hurts his feelings.
The fact that the red tribe thinks rapists should be walking the streets freely to rape again (unlike the blue tribe, who are in love with locking people up) tells you everything you need to know about the red tribe.
ReplyDeleteThe Right has always been soft on (white collar) crime.
ReplyDeleteTrump is not insane in any way that would allow him to claim he is not guilty by reason of insanity, or unable to stand trial because he is unable to cooperate in his own defense. It helps nothing for Somerby to keep insisting Trump should not go to jail because he is crazy.
ReplyDeleteTrump isn't being charged because he said something false. He is being charged for coordinating a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election by fraudulently claiming that there was voter fraud that would have given him enough votes to win. To that end, he pressured officials to help him in that effort by ignoring their oaths of office.
None of that has anything to do with simply making a false statement (out of ignorance or otherwise). This is not a free speech issue.
Georgia voters elected the legislature that decided to make false statements by someone holding office a crime. Trump is a bad test example to criticize that law, because it is far from the only law he has broken and because he made those false statements knowingly in order to commit fraud and stay in office after losing an election. Somerby's belief that Trump didn't know that his claims were false (because he is crazy) are entirely unsupported and even contradicted by Republican witnesses. That will be proven at trial.
Minimizing Trump's crimes against the American people by reducing them to making mistaken statements and then claiming that shouldn't be a crime, is Somerby's own type of fraud against his readers. Somerby wanted news readers we can rely on, such as Cronkite, then he makes specious statements about Trump's motives to try to absolve him of obvious wrongdoing, undermining his own credibility as any kind of thinker on this blog.
Clearly, Somerby is trying to defend Trump and he is doing so at someone's behest. This contorted thinking is unnatural and appears to be motivated, not accidental. I don't know who is paying Somerby to write such crap, nor do I know who pays the recent infestation of right wing trolls. I do know that portraying this as genuine opinion is ridiculous. No one is this stupid and Trump-serving except guys like Giuliani, who are serving their own self-interest by following Trump. So, what is Somerby's self-interest in writing this complete and utter bullshit?
Agree, well said.
DeleteThe commenters on Bob's blog make more of an effort than he does to show that the far-right "news" is further from reality than most standard corporate package cable news. But that's the whole point of this blog. He wants to make sure that at least somebody is still trying to look at what's called liberal corporate news and hold them accountable too, "daily."
DeleteIt's common for intellectuals to miss their target over time, tilting at windmills with idiosyncratic nitpicks. The middle class American liberal is a liberal in every sense, hoping to increase trust in most major institutions, including the media which one day will be restored to the old days when the narrow center-left to right could hold power with less shouting over everyone else. Bob is tired of the howling.
It's staring him in the face Trump is late capitalism playing its hand of selected racist demagogues, but that's gauche to say in nice company. That's only something 20 year old college students say after their first bell hooks reading.
Bob's general picture is that media but especially Trump are a virus of irrationality which he calls insane . It's the American scientific-managerial desire for sterilized culture, where you go see a doctor if you don't play nice in society. Impurity turns into mass hysteria. This fear comes from political assumptions of the semi educatied literate classes, and has been debunked by scholars of both psychology looking at crowd behavior, and historians who put more emphasis on the state ideology in the rise of most political mass hysteria.
Tribalism is just a natural feature of human society functioning. It's only aggrieved, resentful, bruised egos and vulnerability that produce stereotypes that people use to twist tribalism. Prejudice and society are two sides of the same coin, the same way conquest and taxes are two sides of the government.
Bob Somerby: the man who can't persuade Right-wingers to stop supporting someone who he believes is insane, as their Presidential nominee.
ReplyDeleteSad.
"In Georgia, it's against the law to make a false statement "in any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of state government?”
ReplyDeleteThis is clearly intended to protect citizens against lies told by people holding public office or a govt job with public responsibility.
It may be why Fani Willis refused to speculate about how that fake info got posted on the county clerk's website. Presumably, whoever posted it, whether a Trump-loving employee or someone who hacked the webpage, can be prosecuted under this law. That fake statement does seem to be integral to Trump's issued complaint about the grand jury being rigged. That makes Trump (and his supporters) the obvious culprits. But Willis cannot say for sure, so she made no comment.
Contrast that with Trump's behavior as President. He was willing to spout off any far-fetched conspiracy theory that came his way. He regularly made things up without concern for truth. And he told deliberate, verifiable lies over and over, even after they were debunked. If our nation had a law similar to Georgia's, it might have spared us the deep political divide that Somerby keeps complaining about, where the right believes everything Trump says, while the left knows better. That makes it hard for me to see why Somerby is complaining about such a law.
And then he says everyone would wind up in jail. Does he really believe that so many people lie in their day-to-day lives, even when there is a law against it? That is an extremely cynical view, but would be unsurprising in someone who himself doesn't tell the truth about much. Crooks tend to believe that other people are all crooks too.
I think this is referring to claims and applications, official paperwork submitted to any govt agency.
DeleteIt would cover things like the recent Supreme Court case (had it been a state court case instead), where the plaintiff made up facts about the wedding website and the customer requesting it -- portraying a straight person as gay, pretending a site was created when it wasn't, and otherwise lying about what happened.
Yet., they want to give the Boston Marathon bomber the death penalty for leaving a backpack in public.
ReplyDelete"Those are basic cultural problems."
ReplyDeleteOur culture as a nation doesn't condone fraud or lying or insurrection, or trying to get officials to abandon their oaths of office.
We have a minority who thinks it is OK to pursue conspiracy theories without evidence, use violence to settle political questions, impose their own religious beliefs on others who do not share them, and so on. Because these people do not respect the shared cultural beliefs of the majority, they are throwing a hissy fit and using their weapons indiscriminately against others. They are breaking lots of laws by doing this stuff.
One of that minority lied his way into public office, with the help of a corrupt FBI agent (Comey) and Russian money and meddling in the 2016 election. He lost in 2020 because our culture does not condone or support that kind of behavior. He tried an insurrection that failed and is being charged with offenses related to it. He also tried to overturn the election using claims of voter fraud without evidence. He is now being charged with offenses related to that plot. He is in the midst of a fraudulent campaign against Biden involving more crimes and lies. Hunter Biden has filed suit over his laptop, but it remains to be seen what charges may be brought due to this "Biden crime family" outrage, once the dust settles. It may be that the collusion with the Saudis and Russia alleged over the ongoing effort may finally be proven while someone who will actually prosecute Trump is in office. We'll see.
But fraud and lawbreaking are not part of our American culture. It is why there are laws against it. Calling this a cultural problem implies that our culture does permit such behavior. That would be like saying that Al Capone shouldn't have gone to jail because selling illegal booze and shooting competitors and not reporting the income were all just a cultural problem related to prohibition. The booze may have been cultural, but lawbreaking, murder, and tax evasion are not part of any culture Americans support. And that applies to Trump too. His belief that he should never be prosecuted for anything is idiosyncratic, not part of any larger American culture and thus not a cultural problem. Grifting, bribes, influence peddling, lying to the people, stealing public assets. None of these are part of our culture. It is an insult to law-abiding Americans to claim that this is normal and therefore Trump should not be prosecuted.
I think Somerby is the crazy one here.
Well said. Playing journalism for Trump’s lawlessness makes about as much sense (zero). Bob and Trump are two sad, bitter men.
Delete"How has Trump been able to convince so many people of a sweeping claim for which he's provided no evidence?"
ReplyDeleteThere is evidence that many of the people charged with Trump and also many of those who are unindicted co-conspirators, did not believe Trump's lies about election fraud for even one minute.
The paradox is that people who recognize that Trump is telling lies nevertheless support him. Many are doing that out of greed, self-interest, or fear of retaliation. Some are doing it because they think they are entitled to some payback, having been victims their whole lives (or some similar justification). Some are sociopaths like Trump.
Another paradox is that members of the so-called law and order party are engaging in so much criming.
On this question, Bob has little reason to believe these people sincerely believe Trump is not criminal or the actual winner of these contests he has lost. Some perhaps do. But clearly they believe he, and they, are entitled to cheat. Hate justifies all.
DeleteWe don't have to put Trump in jail. Just take away his money and toys.
ReplyDeleteI will except a minimum security facility for the mentally unsound.
DeleteWell, give Bob this: there will not be a more foolish and dishonest opinion written on Trump’s trials written from the right. At least they won’t be claiming to be from “the blue tribe.”
ReplyDeleteThe worthwhile, even important work Bob did seems further away than ever, and will now be inevitably buried. He appears to be as mentally ill as Trump. Maybe more so.
"Georgia should build many jails...[bold emphasis by Somerby]
ReplyDelete"As we've said for the past year or so, we don't think you can solve a political / cultural / journalistic problem by putting Others in jail."
Notice how Somerby has widened the topic from putting Trump in jail, to putting his supporters (Others) in jail. He is tacitly using the same meme as Trump does, when Trump tells his supporters that he is being indicted and going to jail for them, and that they will be coming for all of us if they are allowed to prosecute him.
Yet another example of the way Somerby promotes right wing talking points.
Bob argues Trump is in trouble merely for making false statements, or that that is the claim of his critics. That would argue that Smith and Willis are themselves criminals.
ReplyDeleteHe’s really a POS, eh?
Bandy X. Lee sez:
ReplyDelete4 indictments, 91 charges, 2 impeachments, 1 act of sedition, and threatening civil war. 26 women alleging sexual assault. 1.13 million Americans dead from Covid. And he is the front runner of the Republican Party. This is why I call it a collective psychosis.
He’s their crook, they think. There’s nothing crazy about pursuing perceived self-interest. Trump supporters have no empathy, they want civil war. They like what he’s doing.
DeleteDr Bandy Lee says Trump and his supporters are suffering from a pathology that keeps them stuck in survivor mode, and thus are unable to engage with reason or logic; in other writings she talks more broadly about the connection between childhood trauma and brain development.
DeleteTrump will not be pleading insanity. Somerby should be concerned.
ReplyDelete“ Trump isn't being charged because he said something false. He is being charged for coordinating a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election by fraudulently claiming that there was voter fraud that would have given him enough votes to win. To that end, he pressured officials to help him in that effort by ignoring their oaths of office.”
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Donald J. Trump and his 18 indicted co-conspirators allegedly used fraud to try and deprive the citizens of Georgia of their lawfully casts votes.
That’s why the group has been indicted.
No one suggested that a political/cultural issue can be solved by enforcing the law against those who have broken it. If Somerby wants the law applied inequitably with special regard to certain members of the population, such as politicians or the rich and famous, that is his failure. If he finds the prospect of jail time for any or all of the 18 indicted in Georgia unpalatable because he believes they are not guilty he can argue that case. Otherwise justice should be served according to criminality, not Somerby's desire to avoid rocking some cultural boat.
ReplyDeleteSomerby has declared that Trump is insane, but why? He and his lawyers will not be pleading that, so what is Somerby’s point in exhorting the media or “us liberals” to dwell on the assertion?
ReplyDeleteSome people solve the paradox of intolerance by saying that "I'm not judging you God is judging you." Bob is too educated to use such hokey language so he appeals to the institution of psychiatry which is just scientific enough to sound professional and just incomplete enough to create a fudge factor the size of a billionaire con man.
DeleteIn the big scheme of things, he will do less damage being treated like crap by the state than being ignored, like he and his movement were during the Bush and Obama years.
ReplyDeleteScott Adams cried that he was being treated like a Black Man too.
I am in love with the drive to put Trump in jail, as I am with all criminals. It would have been better if our fellow liberals had not stabbed Hillary Clinton in the back and elected this crook in the first place.
ReplyDeleteYou must not be familiar with the origin of the language of being stabbed in the back in politics. Is what they said about the Jews in Germany before world war II.
Delete