Tag: impeachment

If the case for impeachment is so bad, why won’t Fox let you hear it?

Fox News showing Sekulow instead of House managers making case
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGVjBoE-zio

Aristotle argued that if people who disagree argue as hard as they can, and the people making the arguments have equal skill, then the truth will prevail. And that’s not a bad argument. It might be a little idealistic. After all, there are lots of situations in which the people arguing (the rhetors) might not have equal skill: a 300-dollar an hour attorney v. you. But, if you’re talking about rhetors who have all the money they need, then Aristotle’s argument makes sense.

People with lots of resources making true arguments don’t worry about their audience being exposed to false arguments because, on the whole, people are sensible, and if the audience is shown something true and something false, they can find the truth. So, a major media source, call it Chester News, doesn’t have to worry about people watching other media, unless watching other media will enable Chester News viewers to realize they’re being lied to. A lot.

People who are lying, however, need to make sure you don’t read other sources because then you’ll figure out they’re lying. So, they spend as much time telling you their lies as they do telling you not to tune in to anyone who might disagree.

Con artists (this book is really interesting about con games), like abusers and cult figures, first isolate you. They spend a lot of time telling you what They believe. The “They” here is a fabricated version of various out-groups that lumps them all into one false image that is both much stronger and weaker than any of the groups are—weaker in the sense that their arguments aren’t presented, but just straw man versions of them, stronger in the sense that They are presented as well-organized, powerful, and incredibly dangerous. Chester News might give cherry-picked quotes or data that, in context, don’t mean what they claim, and they don’t give you the sources so that you can see the full quote in context. Similarly, they give you the clip of This Person (who represents They) saying something outrageous, but they don’t give you a link where you could watch it in context.

And Chester news will, as Benkler et al. and Levendusky show, insist you not listen to anyone else, especially not to any They sources. Why?

It’s like the worst moments in junior high, when someone tells you, “Terry said this terrible thing about you, but don’t ask them about it, because I’ll get in trouble.” If you were sensible, you learned not to listen to them. Don’t believe what Fox tells you “liberals” believe, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context. And don’t believe what MSNBC tells you Fox is arguing, unless they link to direct sources, and you look at those sources in full context.

If the Fox case about impeachment were as good as they claim, they would give you all the sources. They would show you the whole videos, all the documents, all the speeches. They don’t. Fox, Trump, and the GOP are all admitting that they can’t defend themselves if all the evidence is open to their base. That’s important.

And, c’mon, we all know what it means when someone won’t let you look at the data. We’ve all had someone tell us, “Here’s the bill, and I won’t actually explain why I’m right.” And we know it means that they’re lying.

We aren’t talking about someone prying into potential irrelevant details. We’re talking about testimony regarding what Trump said in a phone call. If Trump did nothing wrong in the phone call, then all the people privy to that phone call could testify and he would be exonerated. If they can’t testify, then why not? If Fox won’t let you see that evidence, or the arguments about it, why not? If they had a slam dunk for their interpretation, you know they would share it. They won’t because they’re afraid of it.

If Fox won’t let you see the evidence, their case sucks.

That’s rhetoric 101.

There is no principle here to which any GOP wants to commit. Had HRC won, and had all of this played out, but with HRC substituted for Trump, y’all would be screaming for blood.

And that is how democracies die. They die when people value faction over principle. If we value democracy, we hold our party to the same standards we hold the other party. Otherwise, we’re looking at Athens as it imploded. We’re valuing party loyalty above anything— the truth, fairness, the law, any principles. And if we’re supporting a party whose claims are so weak that they have to make sure their base doesn’t have any direct contact with the opposition arguments, then we’re in real trouble.

“Clinton opened the door, and Trump just walked through.”

One of the rhetorical puzzles in our current situation is how people who advocated impeaching Clinton now argue that impeaching Trump would be nothing more than trying to undo the 2016, and is therefore not a legitimate position. There was a similar puzzle during the Clinton impeachment trial as to how people who hadn’t wanted Reagan impeached (for the Iran-Contra decisions) did want to impeach Clinton. It’s a little hard to say that they had a principled position about impeachment, and there certainly was the accusation that it was nothing more than trying to undo the 1994 election.

While, with every case, there are and were people operating on the basis of principles they applied across faction, at play in every case were open statements of sheer factionalism on various sides, justified (sometimes pre-emptively) by the factionalism of “the other side.” Impeaching Clinton was justified because “Democrats” would do the same. Refusing to consider impeaching Trump, regardless of the evidence, is justified because “they did it too.”

In other words, “They did it too, and so it’s okay for us to do it” (with “it” being “pretending to have principles while acting out of purely factional motives”). Thus, factionalism is justified by factionalism (“it’s okay to be this factional because the other faction was this factional first or would be this factional if they had the chance”).

The line that I’m hearing (and reading) on this is: “Clinton opened the door, and Trump walked through.” Sometimes it’s “The Dems opened the door, and Trump walked through.” The argument is that the defense of Clinton was nothing but factionalism, as any principled person would have voted (or did vote for) conviction; thus, Trump supporters believe that they have a “get out of impeachment free” card since Dems did it first.

What’s interesting to me about this defense—it’s okay for us to do it because you did it first—is that it’s engaged in by people who raised children.

Anyone who had siblings, who raised more than one child, or even just spent an entire day with multiple children knows that it’s just a question of time till you have this conversation:

You: “Stop hitting Alex!”
Terry: “Alex hit me first!”
Alex: “Well, Terry stole my cookie!”
Terry: “Terry stole my bike yesterday!”

If you let it go on, they will be arguing about events that happened in the Pleistocene.

How many adults under those circumstances say, “Well, Alex, you opened the door and Terry walked through!”?

I’ll wager few or none.

No sensible parent would say that because saying that “you opened the door and Terry walked through” is either opens the door to a world of tit-for-tat, in which case that parent is going to have to go through that whole history of injuries to one another to determine what the score is. Or else they are saying  “Well, this kid hit the other, so now hitting is okay” is a family choosing to live in a world of violence, theft, and anarchy.

Sensible parents respond in one of two ways.
1) They say, “I don’t care who started it. It stops now.”
2) They try to look into situation and figure out the rights and wrongs, being fair to both children, and not immediately taking the side of one child.

Most parents do the former. Sometimes they say, “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” meaning that Alex hitting Terry doesn’t make Terry hitting Alex right, because hitting is still wrong.

Personally, I think Clinton should have been censured. But, I’m not Queen of the Universe. One thing that is true, though, is that the failure to convict was not factional. Five to ten Republicans voted against the articles of impeachment.

But, here is the more important point:
1) we can decide that Clinton (or Reagan) “opened a door” and that no President should ever be impeached;
2) we can admit that we only want out-group Presidents impeached, and that we reason entirely factionally;
3) we can look into the rights and wrongs, weigh the various things that Reagan, Clinton, and Trump did, and try figure out the math of the tit-for-tat;
4) we can say that we don’t care who started it; treating impeachment as a purely factional issue stops now.

The first and second put us in a world of hell, and it doesn’t matter if the other side does it too. That the other side reasons rabidly factionally doesn’t make our rabid factionalism okay—two wrongs don’t make a right.

We’re all still in a world in which we need sensible policies, and hating the other side doesn’t get us sensible policies.

The third is complicated, time-consuming, and, in the long run, does it matter? We can spend a lot of time arguing about the tits and tats of Reagan v. Clinton. But would that math change what we should do now? Would it change how you, as the adult in the room, managed the kids hitting each other?

I mentioned earlier that the “it” in this case is reasoning and acting entirely in service of our faction. If we choose to behave the way most sensible adults do, that would mean that we, all of us, assess carefully the accusations against Trump, and, if we like him, we hold him to the same standards we would hold an out-group President, and, if we don’t like him, we hold him to the same standards we would hold an in-group President. (So, Dems and Republicans should ask: if Obama had done these things, would we have advocated impeachment?)

Our whole political world right now is tainted by the genetic fallacy, in which you reject information on the grounds that it came from a “biased” source (by which you mean “the other side”). That’s is a fallacy with damaging political consequences—making a good decision should always involve listening to other points of view.

Making a reasonable decision about the accusations against Trump means reading “the other side”—directly, not relying on mediated versions (and not relying on the “other side” spokesperson on your otherwise factional media, so watching the clips that Rachel Maddow presents or watching Shepard Smith doesn’t count).

Neither Clinton nor Reagan opened a door. If what you’re doing is unethical, that someone else did it doesn’t magically transform it into ethical. Wrong remains wrong.

Why I think impeaching Trump now is not a good choice

I think Trump should be impeached. I’d think a Dem who had a similar history of violations of emoluments, security, dishonesty, relations with foreign entities should be impeached. (I’d want a Dem with this history of emoluments violations alone impeached.) Supporters of Trump would want a Dem impeached for far less than what Trump has done.

But the GOP is the party of Trump, and there is no reason to think that the GOP Senators will assess the evidence rationally or non-factionally. I see no reason to think the Senate will impeach Trump because, as many Senators and many Trump supporters say, there is literally no evidence that would cause them to support an impeachment conviction because he (and his supporting media) has persuaded many people they are at war, and so we are in a state of exception.

There are enough Senators who have made it clear that they would not support an impeachment conviction regardless of what comes to light that impeachment cannot win with this Senate.

Impeachment hearings could bring enough evidence forward to put pressure on Senators in purple states, but that pressure is most likely to work if the hearings are happening close to the election—before the GOP Propaganda Machine has time to spin the information. If the hearings end with a Senate that votes against impeachment, and the evidence is good enough, it might mean that people will vote out Senators who voted not to impeach Trump, but, again, that’s most likely to be effective if it’s just before the election.

As much research shows (much of it summarized in Democracy for Realists) a large number of people vote purely on the basis of in-group identification, and another large group votes purely on the basis of what happens just before the election. Thus, if we want the Senate’s impeachment vote to be representative of what Americans want, then we want it to happen close to the election when voters will hold the Senate accountable about impeachment.

If impeachment happens long before the election, then other issues will intervene.

I might be wrong on this, but I think I’m right.

I think people who are arguing for impeachment now are wrong, but their disagreeing with me doesn’t mean they must be irrational or have bad motives; I disagree with them, but I recognize it’s because of how they weigh various factors. I disagree thoroughly, deeply, and completely with people who think we shouldn’t impeach Trump at all, but there are versions of that argument that I think are legitimate and sincere—even if I think wrong. Democracy requires that we do that hard and unpleasant work of distinguishing between arguments that we think are entirely wrong, awful, offensive, even unethical and yet within the realm of arguments we need to consider, and arguments we think are entirely wrong, awful, offensive, and entirely in bad faith.

Being very clear that you’re right doesn’t require believing that no one else could possibly have good reasons or good motives. Believing that democracy requires deep and unpleasant disagreement doesn’t require that we abandon all standards of what arguments we consider.

We are, I believe, at an important point for democracy, but the urgency of our situation does not mean are exempt from the responsibilities of democratic deliberation regarding our policy options. We are not suddenly in a world with only one reasonable option.

This is policy argumentation 101: we might agree on the need, but that doesn’t mean there is only one possible plan.