Why?
Iâm sure you are already aware of this. It just felt good to say.
The pool of acceptable civil servants is significantly smaller.
About an hour ago I came from a physicianâs waiting room where I was a captive audience for Fox News for about 45 min.
That is the longest by far and away Iâve been in front of a Fox newscast. Iâve been a student of propaganda since high school. Their news writers are masterly propagandists to be sure.
They use a straw man for the premise of virtually every question put to a guest. They had a token Dem when I watched â er, listened as I could not watch the blondes.
They brought Obama into it, too, completely without relevance.
The token Dem was shut down right away with an untrue or half-true statement.
Watch this every day exclusively and itâs easy to see how the Fox watchers live in an alternate reality.
âTell us counselor, have you now or have you ever read the works of Saul Alinsky?â
Shay-Shay also implied he was a crook by saying that the $130k was paid to him and asking if he had passed the money on to Ms. Daniels. He shot her down on that one too by noting it was Ms. Danielsâ previous lawyer who was involved In the money exchange.
Iâm pretty sure Shay-Shayâs âaudienceâ only âheardâ her âgotchaâ question. You will now hear from the Right-wing echo chamber how Danielsâ lawyer kept the money for himself.
And your point is?
I have a deep distaste for greed, specially when coming from lawyers like Avenatti that contribute nothing to society.
If this Stormy Daniels deal was happening to someone that I like I would be outraged. After all the woman has already been paid twice. But since itâs happening to Trump and Cohen I find myself laughing.
Greed aside, is Stormy Daniels helping to educate the publicâespecially those whose heads have still been in the sandâabout the kind of person Trump is? Yes. So her lawyer is performing a socially desirable act.
The lawyer is not an opponent in a political sense. But isnât it OK to ask whether Stormy Daniels (registered Republican since 2010, under her real name) is acting out of some political motive? Maybe sheâs a never-Trumper. And even if sheâs in it only for the dough, whatâs wrong with asking her lawyer if he has reasons other than a fee for representing her? I represent at least some of my clients for reasons other than fees (I donât like bullies).
Itâs a valid point, howeverâŚ
Stormy and her lawyerâs actions could just as efficiently be explained wholly in terms of seeking publicity and the benefits that flow from it. Regardless, I donât think that itâs relevant in assessing the evidence that they present â I think, particularly in this case, that itâs crucial to keep the message separate from the messenger.
My impression is that one of the Republican strategies in defending Drumpf (whose campaignâs guilt I do not doubt) is to attempt to impugn the motivations of the investigators and, from there, to fallaciously attack the evidence using a poisoned tree and fruit analogy (as weâve already seen with the Steele dossier.) To proceed from the statement âdidnât like Trumpâ to âbehaved corruptlyâ would, ideally, require proof that the actorâs deeds were influenced by their disposition towards the candidate. I donât think that thatâs ever going to happen here in any definitive way. Rather, I expect these âfindingsâ will be used for political theater and as the sources of pretexts for other actions (i.e., shutting down the Mueller investigation.)
The long and the short of it is that pulling up the principalsâ political affiliations is a strategy for muddying the waters (which will, here, form the basis of an argument for guilt by association) and distracting from the conclusions indicated by the evidence.
It also seems to me that thereâs a tremendous, and protected, underlying hypocrisy here: the politics of Drumpfâs accusers can be made an issue while that of his defenders (invariably Republicans with a clear interest in the outcome of these investigations) is somehow not open to the same kind of questioning.