The Witness Chronicles, 12/13/24

Pardons on both sides on a scale never seen in our lifetimes

Photo by Brittani Burns on Unsplash

Pardon Me? I’m Mixed About This Pardon Stuff

It’s that rule of law thing

Yesterday Joe Biden did a good thing and commuted charges against ~1500 people serving house arrest for non-violent crimes and pardoned 39 others. It’s the largest pardon in recent history. Jimmy Carter issued a blanket preemptive pardon that covered an estimated 100,000 Vietnam war draft dodgers. It was specific to those charges.

It may well be that more are coming.

I’m ok with this but I’m not ok with preemptive pardons designed to protect those Trump wants to wreak revenge on for daring to suggest he was behind the January Sixth insurrection, which he was. I understand the thinking but there’s a real moral problem here.

Preemptive pardons are designed to make it impossible to convict people of federal crimes in the future, effectively skirting the rule of law, the core of the US Constitution. Trump has successfully created a legal bubble around himself and now stands above the law, a situation that has no precedent and should have no precedent.

Of all the things he and his corrupt courts have pulled off, this is by far the most dangerous to our democracy. A truly shameful moment in US history and it came from the highest legal authority in the land, the Supreme Court. But the preemptive pardons being considered by Biden come very close to doing the same thing, leaving the Democrats open to being further viewed as hypocrites.

Frankly, at this point in time I wish Joe would think these things through more. The Hunter pardon is understandable from a father’s perspective, if Biden had not said repeatedly that he would not do it. But if we rail against Trump’s constant skirting of the law and lies, we need to be very careful not to go down that path ourselves.

We are going need the high ground as these guys start messing things up, which looks inevitable given the level of incompetence and fanaticism we are seeing across the board in Trump’s nominees.

If, and this a big if, Trump voters wake up and start realizing what he intends to do, we are going to need to present a normal and honest alternative, not just a less bad choice.

The definition of the right has moved so far to the extreme right that it has pulled those of us who once considered ourselves liberals into the center. That’s why I’m a moderate and moderation needs to be where the Democratic opposition resides. And progressives need to reconsider their extreme views which often try to see everything as black and white in a multicolored world. The prime example is Palestine where you either hate Jews or you are anti Palestine with no shading whatsoever.

There needs to be room on our side for subtlety and a mix of points of view because the Trump side will have no flexibility in what they accept. His way or the highway and that highway might lead straight to hell. The thing they fear the most is inclusiveness because division was the tool that brought them back into power.

And they know how narrow that power is, even if it that can never be publicly acknowledged. Their story is that they have a mandate but that term implies a much larger margin of victory than the 1.2% he actually got.

I don’t know how this pardon thing will work out. Maybe it is a good thing or maybe it never happens. But it’s important to remember that Trump will soon have that power and already promised to widely use it as a political tool for retribution and revenge. He may talk of deporting imaginary hordes of illegal criminals but he is actually going to release hordes of January Sixth criminals as soon as he takes office.

My predictions for the near future are that the implementation of Trump’s promised actions in the first days will create total chaos. Most of those actions are designed to disrupt and destroy rather than build a better government. If it gets as bad as it might, having a moderate Democratic alternative might look pretty attractive to a lot of voters.

That is, if the Democrats can stick together and unite under a strong moderate leader. As I’ve written before, Pete Buttigieg comes to mind. A pragmatic voice of reason. Sounds pretty good right now.

I have been scanning a range of news sources this morning (Wednesday), something I’ve avoided since the election and the overall emerging news is alarming. Trump is starting to openly embrace things he stayed away from while campaigning including the anti-vaxx sentiments of RFK Jr and doubling down on threats to those he sees as enemies, including Hillary Clinton.

He also admitted that it’s nearly impossible to lower prices once they go up, despite campaign claims he would bring them down. Empty promises, no surprise there.

This is a man who holds grudges for a very long time. And Pete Hegseth now says having gays openly serve in the military is a sign of Marxism. Not sure what that means but it sounds pretty far out there and seems to signal he thinks he has the votes to be confirmed. If he is it will represent a moment of extreme shame for the Republican Senate and an omen that should alarm all Americans.

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