One of the tyrant things tyrant-kleptocrat DJT will do if he gets re-elected: Pervert justice

 The NYT reports (not paywalled) about what DJT tried to do to his enemies while he was in office. We can reasonably expect he will do the same again if re-elected, but this time with a lot less restraints and an even more enraged vengeance:  

As President, Trump Demanded Investigations of Foes. 

He Often Got Them.

He has threatened to target his perceived enemies if elected again. A look at his time in the White House shows how readily he could do so.

It was the spring of 2018 and President Donald J. Trump, faced with an accelerating inquiry into his campaign’s ties to Russia, was furious that the Justice Department was reluctant to strike back at those he saw as his enemies.

In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.

Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.

“How about I do this?” Mr. McGahn told Mr. Trump, according to an account verified by witnesses. “I’m going to write you a memo explaining to you what the law is and how it works, and I’ll give that memo to you and you can decide what you want to do.”

The episode marked the start of a more aggressive effort by Mr. Trump to deploy his power against his perceived enemies despite warnings not to do so by top aides. And a look back at the cases of 10 individuals brings a pattern into clearer focus: After Mr. Trump made repeated public or private demands for them to be targeted by the government, they faced federal pressure of one kind or another.

The broad outlines of those episodes have been previously reported. But a closer examination reveals the degree of concern and pushback against Mr. Trump’s demands inside the White House.

And it highlights how closely his expressed desires to go after people who had drawn his ire were sometimes followed by the Justice Department, F.B.I. or other agencies. Even without his direct order, his indirect influence could serve his ends and leave those in his sights facing expensive, time-consuming legal proceedings or other high-stress inquiries.

Nearly four years after Mr. Trump left office, a more complete picture of how Mr. Trump’s critics and rivals came to be scrutinized by the government is emerging from interviews and court records.

Mr. Trump sought to use the government to go after four broad categories of perceived enemies and critics.

One was F.B.I. officials, whom he sought to portray as biased or corrupt as they investigated him. Another was political rivals, whom he sought to tar with allegations of the same kind of wrongdoing, like collusion with foreign countries, that he was under investigation for.

He also wanted government power deployed against news organizations that produced coverage he did not like, as well as against people from his personal and business life he felt had betrayed him.

The NYT article is long and has some examples of DJT's authoritarian moral rot. Two points for consideration:

• Most of the MAGA rank and file (my guess, about 99.5%) will either (i) never become aware of information like this and thus it will have no impact on their votes in November, or (ii) become aware of what DJT did but will reject that reality as communist Dem/liberal/MSM lies, or rationalize it into less importance compared to how evil and tyrannical Harris and the Dems would be.

• This information, coupled with everything else, will lead very few or no MAGA elites (mostly corrupt authoritarians) to change their vote for DJT -- most MAGA elites already know all about all the nasty business that DJT did. They heartily approve and are looking with hopeful anticipation of a lot of purging and jailing of opponents to come. 👍 

Elite MAGA thugs

Hm, Matt Gaetz, naughty newt, proud sex pervert and 

prominent, MAGA respected & approved thug MAGA elite

MAGA seal of approval

Matt Gaetz accused in new court filings of attending drug-fueled sex party with teen -- The sworn affidavits contain details that previously only existed as rumors, according to a new report

Even the Hindus are shocked 😮: 

Matt Gaetz attended drug-fueled sex party with 17-yr-old girl, court docs claim

As expected, Gaetz denies the charges as all good MAGA elites do when accused of lawbreaking, 

corrupt sleaze, lying, pedophilia, murder, fornication, tax evasion, wife beating, etc.

___________________________________________________________________

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Reporting about DJT and other fun-filled MAGA-approved/inspired activities:

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

Trump’s Electoral College Power Play in Nebraska Is a Troubling Sign of Things to Come | He’s already pressuring lawmakers to change the rules in his favor. Imagine if he loses.

Trump to women: Stop ‘thinking about abortion.’ You’re broke and depressed, but I can make you happy (😱)

New Docs Reveal Horrific Extent of Matt Gaetz’s Creepy Sex Scandal

Mark Cuban says Trump's billionaire backers know they can manipulate him because he's 'so transactional, and so devoid of core values'

Is Donald Trump a fascist?

Election-Deniers' Georgia Scheme Is Going Exactly According To Plan | The MAGA fanatics who hijacked the election board just passed a ballot-counting measure that could royally f*ck things up.

Donald “Blame the Jews” Trump Is Truly Losing His Sh*t Now

Etc.

A MAGA storm is 

coming

Personal musings about essentially contested concepts and rationality

In my opinion, "rationality" in politics is an essentially contested concept . If so, at least as applied to politics, a definition will never be universally agreed on. The Google definition, the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic, itself is circular/flawed. My new friend Perplexity agrees with me that "rationality" is an essentially contested concept (ECC). For politics, "reason" is also an ECC. So are concepts like reasonable, open-mindedness, fairness, true truths, the rule of law and lots of other concepts common in politics, sometimes including, "constitutional", as in that is (or isn't) constitutional.

In view of the human messiness, my personal definition of rationality constitutes a description of an ideal to strive for. Specifically, my definition of rationality for politics is, more or less (and subject to revision or correction), that it is a state of mind consisting of (i) some non-trivial degree of self-awareness of human cognitive biology and social behavior such as unconscious biases and personal moral beliefs, (ii) a reasonable degree of open-mindedness and acceptance of (all three are essentially contested) toward inconvenient facts (not essentially contested among rational people -- see the circularity in that?), true truths (essentially contested) and sound reasoning (essentially contested), and (iii) reasonable adherence (contested) to a personal moral framework. 

See how messy that is? That, coupled with personal agendas among the elites, is mostly why politics is so damned messy.  ECCs shoot through about all or nearly all of politics. It is a freaking human plague. ECCs arise from the human brain-mind that came from evolution. Disagreements over ECCs lead to or underpins the "rationality" of wars, savagery, good things, stupid things and just about all other kinds of human behavior and disagreement.

In time, I came to understand and internalize what an ECC is and what it does to people, and their minds and politics. That understanding significantly changed how I viewed politics, individual humans acting alone and humans acting in various groups, e.g., families, clans, tribes, cults, and nations. My understanding of ECCs also made me aware of how powerful and effective dark free speech is in the hands of a talented demagogue. Demagoguery relies heavily on appeal to ECCs that the demagogue defines in ways that serve the demagogue's personal agenda, usually ideological supremacy and/or crass personal lust for lots of wealth and power. A demagogue's appeals are usually irrational and/or based on false information. 

For me, stumbling across the concept of the ECC was a major personal epiphany. Applying it to rationality was fun.

How philosophy wonks define

"bounded rationality"

As we all know, Herbert Simon introduced the term ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon 1957b: 198; see also Klaes & Sent 2005) as a shorthand for his brief against neoclassical economics and his call to replace the perfect rationality assumptions of homo economicus with a conception of rationality tailored to cognitively limited agents.

Hey!! Is that yahoo calling me a cognitively limited agent??

Them's fightin' words!

If the Dems really want to win the election........

 They just have to post the following comments on every social media outlet, on every billboard, put it into every ad, and make NO commentary about the following comments, because they speak for  themselves. 

Thoughts about ill-will in American politics

Rhetoric from MAGA (America's authoritarian radical right) consists almost completely of ill-will toward its opposition.[1] There is a lot of evidence to support that assertion. In view of the evidence, one can see that as being a fact, not mere opinion. For example, JD Vance recently publicly said that he will lie to the public as a means to draw attention to all the horrible things being done to the Americans people. He did not specify what the horrible things are or why lies were necessary to get the job done, when facts and reason work just fine for sane people.* He used that "reasoning" to justify vicious lies about falsely alleged illegal Haitian immigrants (they are not illegal) eating house pets (none have been eaten). That clearly consists of both lies and Great Replacement Theory racism. 

* One can reasonably believe that Vance sees himself, DJT and the MAGA movement generally as populated by sane people. If asked, that is what he will say.

In malicious mendacity like that, where is the good ill or good faith? There is none as far as I can tell. There is cynical ill-will for sure, but where is the good will? 

The same argument can be leveled at the MAGA rank and file. Many or most of them have been argued to joyfully revel in the discomfort and pain their arrogant lies, racism, bigotry and slanders inflict on innocent targets. From my blog post yesterday:

MAGA likes inflicting pain on its political enemies. It likes and enjoys creating these ridiculous and absurd memes. It loves to provoke people who are on the outside. It’s part of the joy of this MAGA movement that can include this extreme aggression online. The people who are in on the joke [Haitians eating dogs and cats in Springfield Ohio], the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

From what I can tell, there is a lot of truth in that argument. Much of the MAGA rank and file seems to be having a darned good time, or at least they act that way. Listen to them talk. They like pissing off attacked and slandered people and groups.

In response to all the ill-will, joyful or not, what reactions among the lied to, slandered, attacked and crackpotted upon are fair and reasonable? From what I can tell from science and personal experience, emotional and moral impulses give rise to most of the reactions among groups and individuals that MAGA attacks, insults, lies and slanders. As usual, the range of responses is quite broad, probably ranging from boredom and/or indifference to seething outrage and/or intense fear.

Some argue that the center and left are not sufficiently empathetic toward MAGA compared to other groups. Well, isn't that to be expected? Sure it is. Most attacked and/or insulted people will tend to emotionally distance themselves from attackers in emotional/moral self-defense. In those situations, negative feelings like anger and resentment toward abusers will override empathy for many or most people. In these moral assessments, one needs to be cognizant of who is the attacker and who is the attacked. 

I have experienced exactly that kind of self-defense and democracy defense response. Early on, e.g., 2016 to about 2018, I had some empathy for the rank and file. I accorded the MAGA rank and file less moral responsibility for supporting DJT, because I saw them as deceived, manipulated and betrayed by MAGA dark free speech. I accorded MAGA elites ~85% of the blame and ~15% to the rank and file back then. But now after years of accumulating evidence proving that DJT is extremely dangerous and thoroughly morally rotted (and a convicted felon), I accord the rank and file 45% of the blame and the elites 55%. Although blame assessment in politics for things like this is mostly a subjective assessment, maybe I should nudge the blame estimate to ~50:50.

When it comes to the MAGA rank and file, I lost my empathy. In my opinion, mostly amounts to just being a sane human being under attack.

Q: Is it reasonable or morally justifiable to lose empathy for all of MAGA, elites and rank and file, in the face of a perceived deadly MAGA attack that is grounded mostly in ill-will, was unprovoked and is implacably opposed to my core moral values?***

*** My core moral political values: support for and belief in pluralistic, secular democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, fact, true truth, sound reasoning, etc.

Footnote:

1. What about ill-will from the left aimed at the right and center? Yes, some liberals express ill-will toward conservatives and/or the very different MAGA wealth and power movement.* Examples include, stereotyping and insulting language, e.g., "idiot[s] out on the farm", uneducated, racist, homophobic. How prevalent that is in the non-MAGA world is unclear. But the prevalence of ill-will is shown by overwhelming rank and file MAGA support for DJT. That is quantified by opinion polls. One cannot rationally, or in good faith, argue that support for Harris and Dem politicians amounts too a mindset as about equally driven by ill-will as minds that support MAGA.

* Real pro-democracy conservatives are not MAGA -- they have left the GOP or been RINO hunted out by some combination of the elites and the rank and file. The rank and file, not the elites, voted Liz Cheney out of power.

Is liberal ill-will qualitatively and quantitatively about the same as MAGA ill-will? From what I can tell, most conservatives do not convey nearly the same level of ill will and mendacity that MAGA does. Fact-checkers provide significant evidence of ill-will in the MAGA movement. In my firm opinion, lies** and slanders are direct evidence of ill-will. And to me, lies are direct evidence of moral rot, ranging from mild immorality to flat out evil. Political lies aimed at political opposition tend to, probably usually do, attack and/or insult the target. 

** Lies are intentional and knowing, unlike honest mistakes that are unknowingly based on false information, insufficient information (ignorance), or unintentionally flawed reasoning. 

My emotional and moral assessment:

Lies = ill-will and ranging from immoral to evil

Honest mistakes = good will and moral