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A Deeply Fractured US

 
He has quite the peanut gallery. A bunch of low brow idiots using the words racist and hitler (reductio ad Hitlerum) as the basis of their fallacious comments.

A bit of background on the author:




Salon Use Fake Soldiers to Attack Commander In Chief
ROB LARRIKIN NOVEMBER 23, 2018 42 COMMENTS
A familiar pack of cowardly jackals bombarded President Trump, with all the usual lies, underhand dealing, and skulduggery. As I picked one out of the horde to take apart and research, I came across a 46-year-old newspaper article that would perform my task for me.

It was written by *Col. Robert D. Heinl [backup here], ‘one of the finest writers of military literature ever to emerge from the profession of arms in the United States.’

A 27 year veteran of the Corps, he saw combat action at Pearl Harbor, the South Pacific, Iwo Jima, and Korea. A contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica, National Geographic, and other professional journals, he was the author of a history of the Marine Corps, Soldiers of the Sea (U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland), and Victory at High Tide.

How would Col. Heinl assist me? In yesterday’s Salon .com, there was a particularly oafish Trump insult salad tossed together by Lucian K. Truscott IV. It was just another run-of-the-mill rant about Trump, but at the bottom, it said:

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered stories such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels and several unsuccessful motion pictures. He has three children, lives on the East End of Long Island and …can be followed on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.


Lucian K. Truscott IV
I wondered how a brilliant person like that could be such a twerp. Online I soon discovered that Lucian K. Truscott IV was not as outstanding as he would have us think. This was him back in 1972, writing for a hippy rag, The Village Voice:

It did not gel with what Salon said about Truscott, so I looked through newspaper archives to see what others stated on the matter.

I came across a 1973 article by Col. Robert D. Heinl, an extraordinary expose on Lucian K. Truscott IV. It was very unusual for those days as you would practically never see one journalist attacking another, let alone ripping pounds of flesh off his carcass. Heinl used words the journalist union thugs probably did not understand, to get around their protection racket. The article went to print, and who knows what trouble it caused Heinl’s career once the union saw it? He was furious with Truscott and the New York Times and pulverized them both.

I have reproduced most of the article below, emphasis mine, with definitions of some of the words used. See the whole original article here.

N.Y. Times offers platform for scurrilous attacks on Army
Col. Robert D. Heinl, Arizona Republic, 26 Feb 1973, Page 5

Lucian K. Truscott IV, cashiered West Pointer and bearer, via his father and grandfather, of one of the Army’s most respected names, has for some time been a *hair shirt not only to the Army but in particular to West Point, from which he was allowed to graduate In 1969.
[*a constant punishment to the Army and West Point]

Truscott has written incessantly against the Army in the Village Voice, Saturday Review and the New York Times. He has concentrated much of his fire against West Point, which he correctly perceives as embodying ethical and professional values central to the American regular officer corps.
….
For a standard-bearer in a crusade against values whose common factor is honor, Truscott has, by public record or his own admission, a somewhat *gamey pedigree.
[* malodorous; smelly.]

While at West Point, Truscott was far from a model cadet.

Among others at the Point to brand him as a cadet troublemaker was (by Truscott’s admission) then Col. (later four-star general) Alexander M. Haig, Henry Kissinger’s Man Friday and new deputy to Army Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams. Haig was deputy commandant of cadets (the No. 2 disciplinary officer of the military academy).

Not only did Truscott receive demerit-totals above the ceiling for graduation, but, according to the New York Times of May 22, 1969, he was one of four cadets found guilty (less than a month from graduation) of running up $562 worth of long-distance calls on a fraudulent credit-card number.

Allowed to graduate despite the foregoing and given a probationary Army commission on the personal Intervention of Brig. Gen, Bernard W. Rogers, long a ‘‘progressive’’ and champion of Army permissiveness, Truscott lasted 13 months and 17 days as an officer.

At Ft. Carson, Colo., in mid-1970, ironically under command of Gen. Rogers, who had left West Point when Truscott did, Truscott was allowed to resign from the Army “under other than honorable conditions” for the good of the service. Charge: “Conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”
….
…Truscott since has repeatedly *traduced the honor code of the Army and West Point
[*speak badly of or tell lies about (someone) so as to damage their reputation.]

…the New York Times, which has afforded this *scapegrace ex-officer the considerable platform of its prestigious op-ed page, declined to enlighten its readers as to Truscott’s unsavory credentials.
[*a mischievous or wayward person, especially a young person or child; a rascal.]

Last Aug. 19, the Times ran a bitter and cynical op-ed column by Truscott, “West Point: On Their Honor.” For the Times to have published such a piece by a contributor of Truscott’s background can only be likened to printing a polemic against bank examiners by a known *embezzler.
[*one who steals money he has been trusted with, especially from his employer]

To compound what must surely be construed as extreme unfairness if not one-sidedness against West Point and the Army, the Times then refused room in its pages for a *remonstrance and rebuttal written by J. Robert Harman Jr., president of the West Point Society of New York.
[*a strong protest, complaint, or criticism about something.]

Harman’s letter, dated Aug, 31, not only refuted the Truscott column but called the Times to task for accepting a contribution from a person of Truscott’s bias and history (which Harman briefly summarized).

More than three weeks later after the Times had hastily printed a routine opposed letter objecting to the Truscott column but making no disclosure of the writer’s past, Harrison Salisbury. Times associate editor, wrote Harman that, because it had already run one letter (dated five days after Harman’s), the Times “had decided against carrying anything further.”

In opening its op-ed page to the likes of Truscott, whose background the Times surely must have known, and in then declining to grant equal time to a respected West Point alumni spokesman, let alone to disclose the nature of Truscott’s past association with and separation from the Army, the Times violated elementary tenets in the journalist’s code of fair play and truth.

Were this shabby episode alone, it would reflect badly enough on a journal which proclaims considerable rectitude if not moral anointment.

The Times has, however, also lent its op-ed page in 1972 to irresponsible attack on West Point and on the Army by a sorehead non-West Point officer who had retired hastily on receipt of Vietnam orders.

It also has run how-to-do-it incitations for putting out underground Army newspapers, contributed by a seditious soldier-editor.

The entire thrust of these New York Times articles, tendentious in the extreme, antimilitary, cynical and destructive in nearly every respect, has been to undermine the Army as an institution in its hour of greatest travail, national unpopularity and vulnerability.

For the Times to give the sanction of publication in its pages to such views is hurtful enough to the common defense. For it to afford space — while stifling full disclosure and rebuttal — to anti-Army advocacy of such tarnished provenance is unforgivable.



There is more to say about Lucian K. Truscott IV, and how he let his ancestor Thomas Jefferson down, but I will leave that for another time.

Today Truscott likes to attack Commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, President Donald Trump. Were Thomas Jefferson alive today, he might apologize to President Trump, saying, “I have hundreds of descendants. There was bound to be at least one turncoat among them.



So, we have a fraudster and a thief at the minimum. A supporter, no, a defendant of CRT. A sixth in line grandson of Thomas Jefferson, who advocated to have his statue torn down. Had a privileged upbringing. A staff writer on the Villiage Voice. A person who claims that every word from Trump is a lie, but fails to provide any proof or backup. Honestly, if I were a Democrat, I would distance myself as far as possible from this biased hack story writer. He just isn't credible.
 
He has quite the peanut gallery. A bunch of low brow idiots using the words racist and hitler (reductio ad Hitlerum) as the basis of their fallacious comments.
Neither Hitler nor racist appeared at all in the quoted article. "Racism" did once in a line of "appeals to racism."

There were paragraphs accurately describing the absurdity of the 2020 convention and lack of platform, then the majority of the article was spent on verbatim quotes from a campaign speech.

Unless you're comfortable using the same ad hominem attack to discredit @KevinB- who brought the article forward in seeming agreement to it- refuting it's contents in this forum will take more than frothy vitriol.
 
"It's a cult" is just another dismissive take. If the people who aren't prepared to admit that their education and position in life has made them more comfortable rubbing shoulders with Democrats are also not prepared to admit the facts of the shifts in the core demographics of the Democratic and Republican parties and then take action accordingly, they are not to be taken seriously. "If we can't captain the team, we're going home."

"But we can't allow Trump" is the wrong framing. The correct framing is always "who are the choices"? The foreseeable alternative is Biden, who might reasonably be incapacitated while in office, so the alternative is really Biden/Harris. Looking in the other direction, Trump is only alternative to a political establishment whose members occasionally let the mask slip and admit they despise the mouth-breathers who have to do physical work for a living.

People who claim to be Republicans but can't stomach a party they don't thoroughly control now have some choices: kick out the people they disdain who have moved in; move themselves out; or start making some changes that benefit the new Republican-voting coalition. That necessarily requires some policies that don't all happen to make them the beneficiaries and make others pay the costs. First thing would be getting finances in order. If the US cracks and can't maintain all its spending - which is the current path - the prudent assumption is that people will vote for whichever politicians promise to prop up social spending at the expense of defence spending. No-one should need to guess which party is more likely - in fact, happy - to chart and follow that course. The neo-cons/NeverTrumper foreign policy/defence hawks are basically on track to gut themselves.
 
"It's a cult" is just another dismissive take. If the people who aren't prepared to admit that their education and position in life has made them more comfortable rubbing shoulders with Democrats are also not prepared to admit the facts of the shifts in the core demographics of the Democratic and Republican parties and then take action accordingly, they are not to be taken seriously. "If we can't captain the team, we're going home."

"But we can't allow Trump" is the wrong framing. The correct framing is always "who are the choices"? The foreseeable alternative is Biden, who might reasonably be incapacitated while in office, so the alternative is really Biden/Harris. Looking in the other direction, Trump is only alternative to a political establishment whose members occasionally let the mask slip and admit they despise the mouth-breathers who have to do physical work for a living.

People who claim to be Republicans but can't stomach a party they don't thoroughly control now have some choices: kick out the people they disdain who have moved in; move themselves out; or start making some changes that benefit the new Republican-voting coalition. That necessarily requires some policies that don't all happen to make them the beneficiaries and make others pay the costs. First thing would be getting finances in order. If the US cracks and can't maintain all its spending - which is the current path - the prudent assumption is that people will vote for whichever politicians promise to prop up social spending at the expense of defence spending. No-one should need to guess which party is more likely - in fact, happy - to chart and follow that course. The neo-cons/NeverTrumper foreign policy/defence hawks are basically on track to gut themselves.

Excellent points. Largely ignored by many affected with TDS.
 
"It's a cult" is just another dismissive take.
Except that it fits. Some of the beyond incredulous stuff that comes out of the Trump/MAGA movement can’t honestly be explained any other way.

If the people who aren't prepared to admit that their education and position in life has made them more comfortable rubbing shoulders with Democrats are also not prepared to admit the facts of the shifts in the core demographics of the Democratic and Republican parties and then take action accordingly, they are not to be taken seriously. "If we can't captain the team, we're going home."
Would you let an 8yr old take the controls on a plane and happily get on board?

Because to me that is what the Trump side is. Frankly I’ll go home rather than get on idiot airlines

"But we can't allow Trump" is the wrong framing. The correct framing is always "who are the choices"?
One bad choice and one completely unacceptable one, I’ll choice the bad choice in that case.
The foreseeable alternative is Biden, who might reasonably be incapacitated while in office, so the alternative is really Biden/Harris.
Like I said, a bad choice.
Looking in the other direction, Trump is only alternative to a political establishment whose members occasionally let the mask slip and admit they despise the mouth-breathers who have to do physical work for a living.
Trump has made extremely disparaging comments about the Military and ‘mouth breathers’ yet the MAGA crowd chose to ignore it -
People who claim to be Republicans but can't stomach a party they don't thoroughly control now have some choices: kick out the people they disdain who have moved in; move themselves out; or start making some changes that benefit the new Republican-voting coalition. That necessarily requires some policies that don't all happen to make them the beneficiaries and make others pay the costs. First thing would be getting finances in order. If the US cracks and can't maintain all its spending - which is the current path - the prudent assumption is that people will vote for whichever politicians promise to prop up social spending at the expense of defence spending. No-one should need to guess which party is more likely - in fact, happy - to chart and follow that course. The neo-cons/NeverTrumper foreign policy/defence hawks are basically on track to gut themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m unhappy with POTUS, but Trump wasn’t good for the American economy either - and while some of the debt he ran up can be linked to COVID a lot wasn’t.

Trump is also way to cosy with Putin, and the MAGA side just loves to repeat Russian propaganda, so much so that it turns my stomach and provides another reason to vote for Biden/Harris, if Trump is the Republican nominee.
 
Except that it fits. Some of the beyond incredulous stuff that comes out of the Trump/MAGA movement can’t honestly be explained any other way.
I just did. "He's not the establishment." That's all you need to know to understand much of his support.
Like I said, a bad choice.
Not necessarily. That could be the choice that puts the US further down an economic spiral. To some people, that's unacceptable, and Trump's character flaws combined with a relatively conventional set of administration policies pushed by other people through a compliant president is the "bad choice".
Don’t get me wrong, I’m unhappy with POTUS, but Trump wasn’t good for the American economy either - and while some of the debt he ran up can be linked to COVID a lot wasn’t.
President's don't run up debt; Congress does. There are exceptions, such as Biden's attempts to give up to $400B away to people with student loans, but that's widely understood to be a one-time vote buyer, not a permanent policy. Democrats have not really tried to overturn Trump's protectionist policies, either. The most recent article that crossed my path on the subject basically sums up their positions as "Trump Plus". Hard to see more of a thing as the cure for some of it.
 
I just did. "He's not the establishment." That's all you need to know to understand much of his support.

Not necessarily. That could be the choice that puts the US further down an economic spiral. To some people, that's unacceptable, and Trump's character flaws combined with a relatively conventional set of administration policies pushed by other people through a compliant president is the "bad choice".

President's don't run up debt; Congress does. There are exceptions, such as Biden's attempts to give up to $400B away to people with student loans, but that's widely understood to be a one-time vote buyer, not a permanent policy. Democrats have not really tried to overturn Trump's protectionist policies, either. The most recent article that crossed my path on the subject basically sums up their positions as "Trump Plus". Hard to see more of a thing as the cure for some of it.
Well in Trumps own words, reasons I’ll never vote for him.

 
Well in Trumps own words, reasons I’ll never vote for him.

He's right, otherwise you'll have a constant and endless series of frivolous indictments and law suits. Can you imagine the courts if Biden didn't have immunity?

If a POTUS is outside their mandate and acting improperly, Congress already has the tool of impeachment to deal with it.
 
He's right, otherwise you'll have a constant and endless series of frivolous indictments and law suits. Can you imagine the courts if Biden didn't have immunity?

If a POTUS is outside their mandate and acting improperly, Congress already has the tool of impeachment to deal with it.

If that were true there would be a couple hundred years’ worth of these supposed frivolous indictments. And yet there haven’t been.

For a country that violently rose up to depose a king, a portion of Americans seem to desperately want their particular guy to have a king-like immunity from criminal culpability.

Given your frequent references to the “Biden crime family” and supposed offences by Joe Biden, do you believe he should enjoy perpetual immunity were he to commit crimes during his years as president?

As at least one court has said so far, “a president is not King”. A president while in office is reasonably protected by the impeachment mechanism- and indeed, a number of Republicans voted not to impeach trump specifically because they said he would face criminal liability after the transition of power, if grounds to indict exist. Impeachment is simply getting fired from your job. It’s not criminal trial or sanction. He has simply found himself in exactly that position. A claim to absolute presidential criminal immunity for actions taken in office is absurd. Fortunately there’s no chance the courts grant it to him, or to any president.
 
Do I think Biden should have perpetual immunity? Of course not. That's why there is an impeachment inquiry going on. The proper venue to establish wrong doing. If criminal charges are warranted, say for money laundering, bribery, tax evasion and consorting with the enemy, they can then proceed.

In the same token, do you think the current DOJ would prosecute Biden for his supposed malfeasance? Of course not. They already effectively provided him with immunity over his classified documents case. Do you seriously think he'll be prosecuted after office? They'll use this exact excuse, that he has immunity, as democrats are want to do. If they do something, oh I don't know, deny an election result, nothing happens. When Trump does it, he needs prison. No person with even a schmick of intelligence can deny the biased, two tiered justice system in full view today. Or that they waited almost three years to go after Trump? It's all about election interference. Please, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.

We'll never agree, ever, if Trump's current indictments are right or wrong. You've proven that a number of times already. So I'm not even going to get into parsing that.
 
Do I think Biden should have perpetual immunity? Of course not. That's why there is an impeachment inquiry going on. The proper venue to establish wrong doing. If criminal charges are warranted, say for money laundering, bribery, tax evasion and consorting with the enemy, they can then proceed.

In the same token, do you think the current DOJ would prosecute Biden for his supposed malfeasance? Of course not. They already effectively provided him with immunity over his classified documents case. Do you seriously think he'll be prosecuted after office? They'll use this exact excuse, that he has immunity, as democrats are want to do. If they do something, oh I don't know, deny an election result, nothing happens. When Trump does it, he needs prison. No person with even a schmick of intelligence can deny the biased, two tiered justice system in full view today. Or that they waited almost three years to go after Trump? It's all about election interference. Please, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.

We'll never agree, ever, if Trump's current indictments are right or wrong. You've proven that a number of times already. So I'm not even going to get into parsing that.

That's fine, let's stick to Biden. Let's say, hypothetically, Biden commits some serious offences. Say he sexually assaults three women in the span of two years. They all come forward, give police statements, and commit themselves to their willingness to testify in court.

The House holds an impeachment inquiry and, quite rightly, impeaches him. The matter moves to a senate trial. Some Democrat senators vote to convict, but, on largely partisan lines, Biden is not convicted in the senate, notwithstanding very convinving evidence that he committed sexual assault. In a criminal trial he would very, very likely face conviction.

Your position would hold that Biden would never face criminal culpability, simply by virtue of winning in the senate. Your position would hold that, say Biden were to steal classified documents and get caught selling them to China, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, a subsequent Republican administration DOJ could not prosecute.

Take an even more extreme - a ridiculous - example: Biden is defeated in the 2024 election, Trump wins. A day before the inauguration, he pulls out a gun and shoots Trump dead live on camera. The House and Senate are not sitting. Impeachment proceedings are commenced on an emergency basis, but Biden succesfully runs the clock, and his term expires before he can be impeacehd. Your position would hold that, since he was not impeached by Congress, he is immune from criminal culpability for murder.

They're deliberately extreme examples, but they have to be to highlight how absurd the position is. A hundred less extreme, yet still egregious examples would be easy to conceive. Given the threshold needed in the senate, it would be exceptionally difficult for any impeachment of a president to be successful in anything but the most egregious case.

I agree that you and I will likely never agree on whether Trump ought to be indicted for crimes committed while in office. But that's not the same as being unable to discuss and come to agreement on whether any president ought to be able to be indicted for crimes committed while in office, after their term expires.
 
There isn't a law which says the president is immune from prosecution. It's just a DoJ rule to prevent presidential incapacitation (particularly by frivolous actors) while the president is in office. Irrespective of Trump's situation, it's obvious by now (this era of strained ends-above-all politics) that the rule is necessary.
 
There isn't a law which says the president is immune from prosecution. It's just a DoJ rule to prevent presidential incapacitation (particularly by frivolous actors) while the president is in office. Irrespective of Trump's situation, it's obvious by now (this era of strained ends-above-all politics) that the rule is necessary.

That is not obvious. It's an opinion (frankly, likely a highly partisan one) that you hold and that some others share. But presidential immunity, to be meaningful, could not really be conditional.

America is a bipartisan and hyper-partisan state. Any prosecution of a prominent political figure is bound to be highly contentious and sensational. That does not detract from the potential validity of an indictment.

An indicted president has the same right to due process as anyone, and likely has the means for much, much better counsel than almost any criminal defendant.

Any position to extend immunity to a former president for crimes committed while president basically turns a president into a king for four to eight years. With sufficient support in either the house or senate - and not even a majority, in the latter case - you have essentially made a president forever untouchable for any crime they commit while in office. That's absurd.

But, as you say, there is no former-presidential immunity for crime, and an appellate court is about to affirm this.
 
That is not obvious. It's an opinion (frankly, likely a highly partisan one) that you hold and that some others share. But presidential immunity, to be meaningful, could not really be conditional.

America is a bipartisan and hyper-partisan state. Any prosecution of a prominent political figure is bound to be highly contentious and sensational. That does not detract from the potential validity of an indictment.

An indicted president has the same right to due process as anyone, and likely has the means for much, much better counsel than almost any criminal defendant.

Any position to extend immunity to a former president for crimes committed while president basically turns a president into a king for four to eight years. With sufficient support in either the house or senate - and not even a majority, in the latter case - you have essentially made a president forever untouchable for any crime they commit while in office. That's absurd.

But, as you say, there is no former-presidential immunity for crime, and an appellate court is about to affirm this.
There's nothing partisan about it when elected public prosecutors have publicly campaigned promising to "get Trump".
 
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