Ray9
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2016
- 2,707
- 4,485
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- Banned
- #1
I’ve been reading Alexis de Tocqueville:
“We must not be misled by the apparent mildness of the American legislation in all that relates to political jurisdiction. It is to be observed, in the first place, that in the United States the tribunal which passes sentence is composed of the same elements, and subject to the same influences, as the body which impeaches the offender, and that this uniformity gives an almost irresistible impulse to the vindictive passions of parties”.
He's talking about impeachment here and he has reservations about the balance of American jurisdictional politics because the self-serving momentum of the human personality will always provide inspiration to put a hand on the scale.
Even in the 1830’s de Tocqueville worried that partisan influences in the US could easily tailor and corrupt impeachment proceedings to produce a technicality and thus remove a populist threat from office. In other words, impeachment could become a mechanism or a tool to cancel the will of the people.
Granted, I’m filtering de Tocqueville through a blue-collar mind but he’s loud and clear. If a marathon runner is way ahead in a footrace his competitors can argue that he bribed a sponsor for better shoes or if a pitcher is throwing a perfect game the opposing team can accuse him of secretly lobbing spitballs. Last-ditch efforts to change rules in the middle of the game or even cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the rules were recognized by de Tocqueville in his travels here-conclusion: democracy is imperfect.
But we as individuals in an imperfect democracy must conclude that all cases it’s better than the alternative. Here’s something else de Tocqueville said:
"But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".
This retrieves a recollection from one of my high school teachers: “Misery loves company”. If you didn’t do the work, don’t rain on the parade of those that did. The go-getters in our society like Trump can provide good jobs for you someday or you could just go into debt for a worthless college education.
An embedded US deep state is not the masked Lone Ranger fighting for universal fairness; it's something much darker. Presidential impeachment is a Kamikaze tactic to ensure the survival of a failed status quo.
“We must not be misled by the apparent mildness of the American legislation in all that relates to political jurisdiction. It is to be observed, in the first place, that in the United States the tribunal which passes sentence is composed of the same elements, and subject to the same influences, as the body which impeaches the offender, and that this uniformity gives an almost irresistible impulse to the vindictive passions of parties”.
He's talking about impeachment here and he has reservations about the balance of American jurisdictional politics because the self-serving momentum of the human personality will always provide inspiration to put a hand on the scale.
Even in the 1830’s de Tocqueville worried that partisan influences in the US could easily tailor and corrupt impeachment proceedings to produce a technicality and thus remove a populist threat from office. In other words, impeachment could become a mechanism or a tool to cancel the will of the people.
Granted, I’m filtering de Tocqueville through a blue-collar mind but he’s loud and clear. If a marathon runner is way ahead in a footrace his competitors can argue that he bribed a sponsor for better shoes or if a pitcher is throwing a perfect game the opposing team can accuse him of secretly lobbing spitballs. Last-ditch efforts to change rules in the middle of the game or even cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the rules were recognized by de Tocqueville in his travels here-conclusion: democracy is imperfect.
But we as individuals in an imperfect democracy must conclude that all cases it’s better than the alternative. Here’s something else de Tocqueville said:
"But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom".
This retrieves a recollection from one of my high school teachers: “Misery loves company”. If you didn’t do the work, don’t rain on the parade of those that did. The go-getters in our society like Trump can provide good jobs for you someday or you could just go into debt for a worthless college education.
An embedded US deep state is not the masked Lone Ranger fighting for universal fairness; it's something much darker. Presidential impeachment is a Kamikaze tactic to ensure the survival of a failed status quo.
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