(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . My Exchange with a Republican on My Piece on the "Moral Test" Facing the Republican Base [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-02 I published here recently a piece titled, “The Coming Moral Test for the Republican Base.” That piece garnered more interest than most of my Daily Kos offerings. And this weekend it has been published in a couple of newspapers where my weekly pieces appear, where I consistently challenge the readers of my 2:1 Republican region around me. (Readers at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and another set of readers in the Lynchburg region, where Liberty University resides, and where I’d presented as the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 2012 election.) I’m continually trying to challenge the good and decent people I knew in the 1990s, when I did radio conversations with conservatives— challenging them to see that what they’re supporting is profoundly contrary to their own values, as they described them to me back in the 90s. In other words, challenging them to stop supporting a Republican Party that deceives and manipulates them into mistaking which side of our politics represents what they used to declare to be “good.” (Today’s Republican Party is darker than anything I could have imagined growing up in post-War America, and is something that previous generations of “conservatives” would have called Evil.) In that “moral test” piece, I challenge those good and decent Republicans to see that Trump is clearly a criminal — a kind of one-man crime wave, showing consistent contempt for the system, trying at every turn to game it for his advantage. And, seeing it, not to side with Trump in Trump’s war against the Rule of Law. When that piece appeared in the newspaper Friday, I got a comment on the online publication from a Republican of whom I am quite fond, and regard as a fine fellow. We’ve even begun to have a personal relationship, in which we agree not discuss politics when face-to-face, and we then get it on great together. But we do talk politics when we meet online, publicly. He often responds to my challenging pieces, in ways that combine civility and reasonableness with a set of beliefs that I don’t understand how he could hold, in view of all sorts of clear evidence. In our public exchanges, he is very gentlemanly. He praises my civility. I am civil, but I am also aggressive (in the manner of the prophets who denounced evil in the bible). I give myself permission to simply speak the truth (while never being unkind). That kind of moral truth-telling is required, I feel, because of the mission I am on: to win back, if at all possible, good and decent people who — for reasons that still puzzle me — support a political force that’s neither good nor decent. And lo and behold, when my piece was published two days ago in the Northern Virginia Daily, he commented on my piece by saying, in effect, prosecuting Trump will serve Trump’s political purposes, and so it is against the interests of Democrats wanting to keep Trump out of the Presidency in 2024 to bring prosecutions against Trump now. And he also described these prosecutions as “politically motivated.” I responded a bit, as you can see below, about that political expectation. But, as you’ll see, I focused far more on his having begun his comment by describing this Trump-prosecution with that phrase, “politically motivated.” In that one phrase, I saw revealed how my wonderful conservative guy was failing that “moral test” that my original piece was about. (A moral test that, as far as is yet visible, the Republican base as a whole appears to be failing.) Here’s what I wrote: "Politically motivated." Well, xxx, here are we are again. Let me address two points here: First, people in the real world have discussed the possibility you raise that Trump might benefit in some way politically. The consensus view with which I agree is that it is not legitimate for the justice system to take that issue of Political Consequences into account. It is a matter of the Rule of Law, and whether it will survive in America (or be restored is more like it). What is required of the American justice system is that the law be applied with respect to this extraordinarily dangerous defendant -- Donald Trump -- the way the law is supposed to be applied. The prosecutors would be politically motivated if they failed to prosecute because of imagined political consequences. They are keeping their oath of office by doing what the Rule of Law requires of them. But, in fact, I actually don't believe that the political consequences will be adverse for the nation. Trump may be helped in get the Republican nomination, but just as the general-election electorate rejected the MAGA candidates (Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, etc.) in 2022, the majority of Americans will be repelled by the exceptionally ugly picture of Donald Trump that these cases will continually expose, with this sequence of indictments: an imagine of a completely lawless and self-serving man. And a man whose crimes — like what will be exposed by the Georgia case and the indictments brought by Jack Smith about both the documents case and the more profoundly important case of Trump's criminal efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election — are as serious as crimes can be. I have that much faith in the American majority. What concerns me is what's happening in the Republican base, where you and I agree that it is entirely possible that Trump will benefit from these prosecutions. That would represent a terrible failure of that "Moral Test" I write about. It would be a failure if Republicans as a whole will side with him — which would include believing these prosecutions were "politically-motivated" and failing to recognize them for what they so so exceptionally clearly ARE: which is an absolutely necessary reassertion of the rule of law. (Which requires prosecuting so blatant a criminal despite his being someone willing to foment violence rather than submit to the Rule of Law.) What would cause such a failure? I believe there's a significant segment of the Republican Base that truly IS knowingly willing to support a man despite his being completely contemptuous of the law and the Constitution, as Trump so clearly is. I never would have expected there would be so many Americans willing to overthrow the system our founders gave us in order to have a kind of Strong Man rule that has been popularly supported in some other fascistic tyrannies (like of course Germany in the 1930s). But I don't think those people — the kind of people that form White Supremacist militias — make up more than a third or a fifth of the Republican base. Those are people happy to have a tyranny, as long as the tyrant is On Their Side. Most of those who will side with Trump's ludicrous charge that the prosecutions are "politically motivated" will be people who DO CARE ABOUT THE CONSTITUTION. Somehow, in a way I’ve striven unsuccessfully to understand, they believe Trump even though he’s such a prodigious liar about all things, and even though an overwhelming body of evidence in the public sphere reveals unambiguously that Trump has been a criminal in multiple ways for a long time, and even though his lawlessness clearly represents a genuine threat to our constitutional order. Trump’s lie about the prosecutions being “politically motivated” represents just one more way Trump is attacking our basic American institutions. He is trying to deceive millions and millions of Americans to oppose the Rule of Law, and to support him in his refusal to accept that in America, “No one is above the law.” That’s the moral test. Will the decent people in the Republican base be willing to SEE what is right in front of their eyes? The evidence before our eyes, for people who are paying good attention, also makes clear that these prosecutions are NOT politically motivated: 1) Merrick Garland showed himself to be excessively hesitant to investigate Trump, failing to do what obviously needed to be done until the 1/6 Committee in Congress revealed to the whole nation the unambiguous and ugly picture of Trump’s attack on American democracy, in his effort to deny his defeat and seize power against the constitutionally expressed “will of the American people.” One still hears, from figures in the American justice system, criticisms of AG Garland for his having been so hesitant in undertaking the investigation of clear crimes that the whole nation had been witness to. 2) Likewise the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. He was bitterly attacked for FAILING to prosecute Trump on his New York crimes just a year ago. So bitter than a highly-respected prosecutor resigned and wrote a book that criticizes Bragg’s hesitance in prosecuting Trump. Any reasonable observer would see in Trump’s conduct a clear pattern: he’s a man who is truly and openly warring against the Rule of Law, that concept of America that patriots have always believed in. And I see you as such a patriot. I’m wondering how much of the evidence that’s been coming out regularly for years you’ve noted, and hold in your mind, when you judge the prosecutions of Trump to be “politically motivated.” ******************* Subsequently, I made the argument that the history of recent times shows that the Forces of the Rule of Law has never been too combative but on the contrary, it has shrunk from the battle that has needed to be fought. (Examples have been President Obama, and his failure to go all out to defend the Constitution when the Republicans in the Senate distorted “advise and consent” to rob Obama of his rightful constitutional powers and steal a most crucial Supreme Court seat; and Robert Mueller who turned out not to be the fighter America needed, and stopped far short of using his investigation to make sure the criminality of President Trump was fully exposed to the nation.) The present investigations/prosecutions, far from being politically motivated, I argued, represent a belated and much needed arousal of the Force of the Rule of Law to defend America’s precious heritage, i.e. that we are “a nation of laws, and not of men.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/2/2161310/-My-Exchange-with-a-Republican-on-My-Piece-on-the-Moral-Test-Facing-the-Republican-Base Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/