Law, Power, and Justice

Thursday 29 June 2023

Notes on the News

MSNBC Nicolle Wallace

• Nicolle Wallace (who has a female worship problem) is now trying to make Sue Gordon, Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence at DNI, the kind of hero she made Liz Cheney out to be.
• First, glorifying Liz Cheney ignores the fact that many people will vote for her (when she runs) for this last two years of integrity about Trump.  They will not examine her policies and her voting record.  She voted with Trump almost every time.  She is not a person to be lionized.  She was doing what every person with character would do.  The problem is that we are woefully short on people with good character.
• As I said, she voted with Trump on almost every vote that came before the Congress.  To lionize her is like saying I’ll vote for a person who states:  “I hate Hitler, but I’ll gladly vote for building more concentration camps.  Please Nicolle Wallace and friends stop this hero worship of Cheney.
• Alright, second people will hear these glorifying stories about Cheney’s character and courage, etc. and vote for her, totally ignoring the disastrous policies she represents.  It’s not responsible.
• Then, there is Sue Gordon, who Wallace also is trying to make into a hero.  But, Gordon explicitly took the position on Nicolle Wallace’s program that civil servants must just follow the rules, no matter what president is in office, they have to give them all the secret information they ask for and do whatever they say.  According to Gordon, it’s not up to the individual civil servant to decide what information to give a President.  It’s not up to the individual civil servant to decide which president can be trusted and which can’t. 
• But, this is obviously bullshit and has, in part, gotten us where we are.  This is a total abdication of responsibility.  The civil servant is just supposed to say: I am just doing my job, if a tyrant, an authoritarian, a treasonous bastard is asking for the names of all the secret agents representing the country, I’ll just have to give it to him.  I’ll give it to him in a bi-partisan way, whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican.
• Sue Gordon needs to grow up.  The entire system cannot just hide behind the “doing my job in a non-partisan way” excuse. 
• How does it work, Sue Gordon asks, if individual civil servants start asking themselves: How will this particular guy (president) deal with this sensitive information  Her argument is that individual civil servants cannot start deciding for themselves which president to give information and which not ot.
• But, you know folks, individuals have to, in the end, stand up and decide which side they are on.  If you have a treasonous maniac in the White House it is your responsibility to hide information from him to prevent him from bring about a disaster.  You must stand up and do this no matter what the consequences, or how much it disrupts the normal rules for behavior.
• Sue Gordon also, said on Nicolle Wallace’s show that she is a “system girl,” i.e., she believes the system works.  She believes that the trial will be fair and that 12 citizens can be trusted to come to the right decision.  Really?
• The Republicans have been working for 40 years to make sure that the justice system doesn’t work for people who are rich and powerful.  They have worked hard to dominate the entire justice system, and just repeating the mantra that the institutions are still working, or that you trust the jury system, is childish and myopic. 
• The reason the Republican party has worked so hard to stack the Supreme Court and get unqualified political hacks onto lover courts, is that they want to destroy the institutions in this country.  Pundits like Wallace and Gordon may believe that the “system works” but that belief will not make it so.
• We have already seen that a Trump appointed judge who made rulings that were slapped down by a superior court, is in charge of part of the Smith cases.  She can set the timing of the trial (which will be crucial), delay deciding motions.  She has much more power than lower court judges to choose jurors, and she had sentencing power.  The people who keep repeating that she will rise to the occasion are like people repeating a mantra.  They have to believe this to keep going.  Well, I don’t have to believe it.
• The Republicans have been successfully infiltrating the court system for decades and like always, the Democrats refuse to acknowledge what they are doing.
• Nicolle Wallace remarked the other day: :For Trump, it will be different for Trump.”  She is assuming that once inside a courtroom, facts, evidence, logical reasoning, and the law are the ruling paradigms.  She may well be wrong.  We have a judge appointed by Trump who evidently doesn’t give a hoot in hell about president, logical reasoning, legal reasoning or anything else except Trump.
• Corporate news anchors need to grow the fuck up.  We are in a war, a war against Republicans and until we realize it, we are doomed to fail.