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comment by johnnyFive
johnnyFive  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Let’s Not Get Carried Away

I have a hard time saying he's wrong, really. As he says, we should figure out what happened, but we shouldn't pretend this is the only terrible thing he's done.

    Donald Trump rose peddling the politics of scandal — oblivious to policy, spreading insane allegations about birth certificates and other things — so maybe it’s just that he gets swallowed by it. But frankly, on my list of reasons Trump is unfit for the presidency, the Russia-collusion story ranks number 971, well below, for example, the perfectly legal ways he kowtows to thugs and undermines the norms of democratic behavior.




OftenBen  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Legal

I hate this word. It has no bearing on the 'should' of an act. There are tons of anti-social things that are legal or pseudo-legal because no one will actually prosecute them. Saying something is 'legal' is a non-phrase at this point. There is no cohesive or consistent rationale that makes something legal or illegal, and the actual legality of a given act is completely irrelevant to if it's actually prosecuted, let alone the perpetrator being punished, or given a punishment that fits the crime. The guys who keep wrecking the economy keep getting multi-million dollar bonuses.

johnnyFive  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't think what you said is contrary to what Brooks wrote -- he's saying that these "perfectly legal" things are among the reasons he believes Trump is "unfit for the presidency."

OftenBen  ·  2473 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Right.

I'm decrying the degradation of the rule of law.