Take Courage
From this morning’s Daily Stoic: The timeless symbol of Stoicism is the lone knight fighting a war they cannot hope to win–but fighting bravely and honorably nonetheless. It’s Thrasea challenging Nero, even though the challenge will cost him his life and fail to stop the man. It’s Marcus Aurelius struggling not to be corrupted by absolute power, to be a good man even in the face of Rome’s decadence and decline. It’s the Percy family–the great Southern Stoics–generation after generation: LeRoy fighting the Klan in 1922. William Alexander giving up bachelorhood to adopt his three young cousins. Walker Percy resisting the rising tide of racism and hatred that consumed his generation, trying to be calm and philosophical through it all, to be a quiet beacon of goodness through his writing.
From dissident journalist Chris Hedges: I don’t fight fascists because I think I’ll win; I fight fascists because they’re fascists.
It appears that dealing with the crisis unfolding in the U.S. is going to require an enormous amount of courage. Trump has just begun discrediting and obstructing the Mueller investigation. Where this is going is anyone’s guess, but it certainly looks like a bloodbath, at least in the figurative sense, and possibly in the literal sense as well.
Real patriots are not loyal to a man (especially not this one); they’re loyal to their country. Stay strong.
Craig,
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel ! ” [Dr Samuel Johnson 1775]
” Trump has just begun discrediting and obstructing the Mueller investigation”.
The President is not alone in judging the Mueller investigation as having long since expended any legitimacy it might once have possessed and become a short of Grand Inquisition against the President and his supporters.
At the best, the Mueller Inquiry has become diverted from any legitimate original objective and become bogged down in side issues, becoming a never ending self-perpetuating political weapon for anti-Trump media and Democrat political forces.
The intense media campaign surrounding the inquiry has made the objective of the inquiry a refuge for those seeking to prove two objectives. The first is to prove the results of the election of 2016 wasn’t “legitimate” and the Trump Presidency should be abruptly ended by any means, at any cost.
The second objective is to restore the old political order that existed before the Trump reforms so brutally brought home reality to Washington.
Does anyone really care if the paid minor female celebrities hush money, decades before seeking office ? Maybe, but that’s the business of tabloid journalists and the readers with a taste for prurient gossip.
What it should not be, is of any concern to an official inquiry. More has been discovered about the actions and misdeeds of the Clinton Campaign (including a long history of collusion and corruption while in office by the then secretary of State and Democrat campaign officials than any petty speculation against the President.
Nor have the intelligence agencies covered themselves in glory or competence in these matters, but that’s to be expected of the CIA etc.
What is more disturbing is the obviously politicized and improper conduct by the senior echelon of the FBI.
The President has real grounds to feel aggrieved a the subject of a “Witch-hunt”. In reality, the President is the target of a Witch-hunt ! The obsessive persecution by the media, who now demand the President stops defending himself, and accept vilification without demure, would be laughable if it wasn’t so obvious that the Mueller inquiry seems to be expanding to cater for the appetite for ever more flimsy speculative and sensational activities by the Mueller Inquiry.
Even that most ardent critic of the President, The New York Times,concedes that according to three “sources”, special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to stitch together an obstruction of justice case against President Trump based on public tweets, TV appearances, conversations with public officials and other entirely lawful acts.
If the NYT is correct, this is a disaster for the legitimacy of Mueller and his Inquiry. The NYT ‘sources’ suggest Mueller only seems to seems to have some dry twigs from which he is trying to build a bonfire.
As Harvard Law School Emeritus Professor, Alan M. Dershowitz observed, ” The Times’ headline, “Mueller looking for Obstruction in Trump Tweets” should raise a red flag for all civil libertarians. This is exactly the kind of creative manufacturing of crimes from innocent,indeed, constitutionally protected acts that endangers the liberties of all Americans ! ”
Professor Dershowitz also observed, ” The problem with turning communications, all of which by themselves are noncriminal,into an overarching criminal obstruction case is that life is lived prospectively while prosecutors look at evidence retrospectively.
As Kierkegaard put it, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”
Translated into legal language, this means that isolated statements may have an innocent intention at the time they were made but, when looked at “backwards,” they may appear to be part of a guilty pattern. Even more fundamentally, crime requires both guilty acts and guilty intentions. There is considerable danger in turning innocent acts, especially constitutionally protected ones, into criminal obstruction based on an intent inferred after the fact from a pattern that may not have been contemplated or apparent at the time of the acts.
This is what Mueller appears to be doing.
All of us who care about preserving civil liberties and the rule of law should be concerned about this dangerous approach to stitching together a guilty fabric from together a guilty fabric from innocent threads “.
(It should be noted, Emeritus Professor, Alan M. Dershowitz is hardly a lightwieght legal commentator, nor a political supporter of the President).
The other danger about all this nonsense is it detracts from the real business of genuine political debate about policy !
As long as the Democrats, leftist media etc allow the opposition to be dominated by “Never Trumper”s and “Impeach the President” fanatics, no valid alternate policies will evolve and the Democrats will remain defined as just anti-Trump, not “for ” anything positive.
For Democrats,sensational daily disclosures of high drama and scandal may be of fascination for while, but voters slowly realize it’s against their own best interests if the President fails.
Middle class, working class, black,the affluent in fact nearly everyone, are beginning to realize the Democrats and anti-trump forces are hoping American job growth either fails or fall short taking down the U.S. economy.
This appears to be the objective of the DC establishment who used in power.
Not just the inhabitants of the ” DC Swamp” but the liberal media, Economists, Economists are Ivy League egghead, Hollywood celebrities etc, all hate Trump with such intensity they would rather the economy fail, hurting all Americans, than the Presidents policies succeed, .
Those democrats supporting political extremists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demanding open borders and abolish ICE, are only displaying the paralysis of a party which can’t come to terms with the new dynamics of a new era.
Despite an unprecedentedly intense and bitter media barrage, Trump’s popularity is growing. The reason is simple, the President’s policies are working and people are feeling the benefits.
Last week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll concurred with all other major polls when it showed the President Trump’s approval is the highest of his presidency. Among members of his own party, it’s the second-highest in history. Trump beats Reagan, Obama, JFK and Bill Clinton among voters from their own party.
Despite all the negative media, the President Trump forced NATO to find $33 billion funding from it’s own resources and stop demanding more funds from the US. The European Union capitulated on energy, soybeans, energy and tariffs. Trump didn’t “start WW3” in North Korea as his hysterical critics claimed. Kim Jong Un turned over the remains of 55 U.S. personnel missing since the Korean War, and progress is being made to de-fang the North.
More importantly, GDP product growth is 4.1 percent, the fastest in years. The second-highest since 2003. The Trump economy is in overdrive.
The President is carefully separating Iran from all major allies, while ensuring energy prices won’t rise in the advent of a prolonged pressure campaign on Iran.
The problem for the Democrats and Trump critics is by obsessing about the man and not his policies, they musty hope for failure to bring them to power. Having no alternate policies leaves only the politics of negativity.
In the end, people will vote in their own self interest, and as long as Trump’s policies continue to work, his interests and those of the majority of Americans are intertwined.
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