Instead of throwing around attacks and insults, and refusing to treat individuals in good faith, why don't you actually engage with my arguments?
I am pro-left. I am pro-social-democrat. I am even pro-DNC, if the choice is between them and Trump (heck, I've been quite vocal in my support for Hillary Clinton, and now Joe Biden, on the basis that I'd always favour a pseudo-liberal neo-colonial conservative over a white supremacist borderline fascist, if those are the choices we're reduced to).
What I will not do is sincerely champion 'patriots' on either side of the Atlantic who truly believe their country is 'the best in the world' and that every awful thing done in the name of US and European, including UK, democracy, is attributable to 'evil' foreign forces like Russia, or formerly the USSR.
I have always advocated vigilance towards Putin and Russia. They are emphatically NOT are allies, but to blame the West's woes, including Trump and Brexit, predominantly on foreigners is not merely xenophobic, it's politically illiterate and an example of smug pseudo-liberal types polishing their lapels rather than engaging with the real issues that cause so many people to support the far-right. And no, before you say it, I'm not talking about immigration here since, unlike some of the rest of you, I've made it quite clear that I am anti-xenophobia. I'm talking about living standards, poverty, education, well-paid employment, infrastructures that do not leave vast swathes of the country (i.e. those parts that aren't New York, Los Angeles and Chicago) jobless or underpaid, cultural engagement, and a real drive to make EVERY SINGLE LIFE (black, white, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, male, female, old, young, poor and rich) COUNT.
Sorry, if that all strikes you as the words of a 'concern troll' or 'right-wing projection'.
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ultravioletx (10216)
5 years ago
I have no knowledge of your professional history so I won't comment on that. But my overall criticism of you was not that you are alt right yourself but that you are susceptible to their talking points about the left.
And with the Bay of Pigs and Communism reference you were attempting to assert the leanings of the left go back to that era as if it still had some influence over the mindset of today's liberals. I just feel that is off base from what a progressive would feel and sounds more like a talking point from the right.
Overall I would argue liberals are less xenophobic than any other ideology. If you round up all of the ideologies and examine them for xenophobia you are going to find it. In fact if you round up any ideology and thoroughly search it for anything you will find it which is why I don't like those arguments. Criticizing an ideology for not being completely on the same page is silly because such a feat is impossible.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
Thank you for your reasonable response.
You are one of the more reasonable posters, left or right-wing, on this site so I was looking forward to it.
Just to be clear, I am not criticising 'liberalism' per se. I am a progressive 'liberal', at least in the US sense of the word.
But I am criticising an unhealthy and hypocritical strain within supposedly progressive liberalism that strikes me as anathema to those values.
For what it's worth, I'm not interested in comparing ourselves with the far-right. I can expect them to trot out the same misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic talking points.
We do need to win some of those right-wing voters, but not by trying to outdo them on issues like immigration or by trying to show that we can be as 'rah rah' patriotic as them. That's not us, and it shouldn't be us.
We should seek to outdo them on economic populism. Not socio-cultural populism.
You're a very smart guy. Do you see what I'm saying?
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eYeDEF (5050)
5 years ago
Because you've already proven yourself to be someone who shouldn't be treated in good faith after falsely claiming to be a lawyer and British barrister. The very claim is preposterous given your gaping ignorance of the law. You've earned your label as a fraud.
Given how much you like to preach to liberals needing to hold themselves to higher standards, the brutal truth is that it is YOU that needs to look in the mirror and hold yourself to the standards that you preach. By lying about being a lawyer in your desperate ploy to gain credibility exposes that you really fall far short. You are in no position to lecture liberals about anything because you're a consummate hypocrite.
And once again you're lying about advocating vigilance towards Putin and Russia since you never have. If you did you'd recognize they should rightly be faulted for their attacks on our elections. Mueller revealed they were successful in hacking a Florida county's election system in 2016 which Rubio confirmed; very likely Miami-Dade county. That means they could have played a pivotal role in affecting the outcome more than just influencing voters on the fence with fake news and propaganda, which we already know they did. Trump refuses to do anything to protect US voting infrastructure from the Russians, yet you think Russia and Trump deserve no blame. You're a fraud and a joke.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
I'm going to refrain from insulting you...
All I'll say is that firstly, you're entitled to believe what you want. I don't recall how me being a lawyer (or, according to you, me lying about being a lawyer) came into this particular topic, but really it isn't relevant. I've certainly not used my professional credentials in this discussion to gain some sort of rhetorical credibility. I don't look down on opinions simply because they are attributable to non-graduates. I take each argument and opinion on its own merits, and not because it was made by a lawyer or some other type of professional.
However, I do resent being called a liar. I am indeed a qualified lawyer. But ultimately, if you don't believe me, that's your prerogative. Still, if you're unable to take anyone in good faith, you really need to do something else with your time but have discussions with people over the internet.
Secondly, I haven't denied Russia's interference in the US election or Brexit. I campaigned rigorously against Brexit in 2016 (no doubt you'll choose to believe I'm lying about this too), and so I do have skin in this game, so to speak.
But what I will NOT do is attribute the results entirely to Russia, or to pretend that there were not inherent domestic issues that led people to, unfortunately, support Trump in the US and to back Brexit in the UK. To do otherwise is to stick one's head in the sand.
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BreakbeatSavant (413)
5 years ago
Your pretense of being a lawyer is hysterical given how easily you bought Bill Barr's argument that there can be no obstruction of justice without an underlying crime. If you were a real lawyer you'd know the whole reason there is an obstruction law is so that even if a guilty party destroys or covers up all the evidence of their crime they can still be held to account. People get convicted on this all the time.
It's even funnier how you claim to be a British Barrister seeing as how they take obstruction of justice far more seriously in Britain than in the US. Perverting the course of justice in the UK carries a maximum sentence of life in prison where it only carries a 20 year max by US federal law.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
For the record, I've never once denied that perverting the course of justice is a serious criminal offence, nor have I ever argued that for it to be prosecuted there must be an underlying offence to obstruct.
Please do not make false allegations or come to make unfounded assumptions.
For the further record, I've never advised anyone that I'm a practicing criminal barrister. I'm not. I do some criminal work, but not in the capacity of a barrister.
What I do categorically stand by is my argument that, irrespective of the law, I fear that there may be potentially unfortunate political implications in pursuing impeachment proceeeings against Trump. Even if the numbers exist in Congress to successfully pull off an impeachment, I hope that public opinion and political implications are factored into the decision.
Personally, I'd rather liberals and anti-Trump conservatives focused on defeating him politically and ensuring that the public is sufficiently convinced of the case against him and his brand of toxic politics, a brand that is not wholly dependent on Trump.
Why you find my arguments so offensive and/or stupid, I do no know, but unlike you, I have refrained from personal insults and attacks on your integrity.
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ultravioletx (10216)
5 years ago
Personally I would avoid the "I am a _____ so I know _____" argument all together. It just seems like a bad practice that people use when their original point has failed. It wasn't long ago on here that we had a guy saying black people were inherently more violent than white people and his defense for it was that he was a black guy. Then he did the same thing in another thread discussing field workers and he claimed he was a field worker and that he knew better. Then we had HarvardBarbie saying she knows illegal immigrants are violent because she was raped by one which anyone with a brain would realize thats a foundation for bias rather than a foundation for truth. Either way its just bad practice to make a claim that you use to give credit to your own argument when you have no way to validate the claim. Your argument should always stand on its own.
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[deleted]
5 years ago
Personally I would avoid the "I am a _____ so I know _____" argument all together.
Well, hopefully I haven't done that here.
Even though I am a qualified lawyer, it's neither here nor there, especially in this instance, simply because I've never once claimed to be an expert in US law, either criminal or constitutional (I studied it for a year as part of one, of four, electives, a decade ago, but that's about it). Moreover, I always made it clear that whether my argument was wrong or right, it wasn't a legal argument, but a political/strategically motivated one.
Legally I entirely agree that Trump should be held to account (although few Presidents are - I personally think Iran-Contra is one of the shadiest things a post-WWII President has been involved in, and that involved both Reagan and Bush Senior, but that came to nothing in terms of major indictments), but politically, I wonder if the conservation shouldn't be focused more on policy than pushing the line (as accurate as it may be) that the election was robbed thanks to Russia.
Data and social networking companies need to be held to account. The CIA needs to work in collaboration with such companies to ensure that foreign regimes cannot interfere wholesale in future elections. But simply saying that the election, which ultimately came down to a mere 300,000 or so votes in the rustbelt states, was won by Russia ignores the much more constructive work that should be done to convert voters in those states from Trump to the DNC, and to mobilise stay-at-home members of the electorate in those same states who said 'a plague on both your houses' with respect to Trump and Clinton (who I personally maintain would have made for a very good Commander-in-Chief).
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BreakbeatSavant (413)
5 years ago
Again, you're not a lawyer. If you were I would be able to tell since I am one. No qualified lawyer would have bought Bill Barr's claim like you did that there can be no obstruction of justice without an underlying crime.
You continue to lie about your profession and I'll continue to call you out.
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HushPuppy (142)
5 years ago
Isn't Bill Barr a lawyer? Isn't he advised by a whole team of lawyers? Their profession is based on argument. You're not a lawyer. You're an autocrat.
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ultravioletx (10216)
5 years ago
It goes beyond lawyering unfortunately. Its political. Always political. Barr says there can be no obstruction if there was no crime yet we all know how it went down with Bill Clinton saying under oath he did not have sexual relations with Monica.
Lawyers are going to pull whatever strings they can to get their team a victory.
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BreakbeatSavant (413)
5 years ago
Your comment is especially ironic in light of who William Barr is.
This is a man who got his job by forwarding a 19 page legal memo he authored to the administration last summer in which he argued that Trump could not commit obstruction of justice because he is President, and therefore the SCO investigation was illegal and improper.
Only autocrats ascribe to the Imperial Executive theory of presidential power that Barr believes. William Barr’s view as outlined in his memo would hold independent agencies unconstitutional, overturning nearly a century of Supreme Court precedent and upending dozens of regulatory agencies. He repeatedly asserts that the President’s constitutional powers are illimitable.
Barr's legal theories are lunacy because they're indefensible based on any objective reading of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. The founders did not design our system with the intention that a president sits above the law. Yet according to William Barr, the office he holds is exculpatory evidence that the President cannot be held to account for his crimes. That's what autocrats believe. Barr is the crypto-autocrat. It's the magic of propaganda that Fox has somehow convinced their viewing audience that anyone challenging Barr's autocratic legal opinion is somehow the autocrat.
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eYeDEF (5050)
5 years ago
I dug up this gem from you trumpeting your own prediction that turned out to be utterly wrong. He's right, you're no lawyer. No real lawyer would have spoken so dismissively about a report without first being aware of which evidentiary threshold was being applied. There can be lots of evidence that implicates Trump in collusion that falls short of the "reasonable doubt" standard to convict, and it turns out there was.
You were clearly unconcerned and wrongly took Barr's claims at face value. You got way ahead of your skis before bothering to learn what the evidence was. No real lawyer would have done that.
https://moviechat.org/nm0874339/Donald-Trump/5c9817180196407a1087ee3b/This-Is-a-Bad-Day-to-Be-a-Democrat?reply=5c98d0140196407a1087f263
Then when called out you tried to bring up Nixon as your reason Trump shouldn't be impeached while disregarding his blatant criminality and lawbreaking as meticulously documented by Mueller in his report. As mentioned already, your Nixon argument doesn't even make any sense. AOC gets why Trump needs to be impeached because no man should be above the law, and she's not even a lawyer.
Face it, you're no lawyer. You've shown far too little expertise in criminal law to be a lawyer in either the US or the UK.
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