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I think it was a retired diplomat who was defending the highly criticized policy of offering retired dictators a comfortable and protected life in France. He wa

by Iv 7y ago

I think it was a retired diplomat who was defending the highly criticized policy of offering retired dictators a comfortable and protected life in France. He was explaining that this was a condition to many peaceful transitions. This is balanced by the desire to keep leaders accountable and is a compromise against the rule of law. Saying that this applies to the US is really saying you have dictators who abuse their powers and are willing to bend the law in the name of a democratic transition. It can be an exceptional temporary measure, but certainly not a sustainable norm.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
1. Some on the left believe that Trump deserves prison, not just removal from office, and are quite public about saying so. 2. Some on the left fear that Trump will not leave office when the rules say that he must, and are at least somewhat public about saying so. You don't have to believe either of these things to see the problem. The more they shout about #1, the more likely they are to create the conditions for #2 to happen. I am not claiming that #2 would actually happen, even given the right conditions. I am merely pointing out that, given their stated beliefs, they should stop publicly calling for Trump to go to prison. A real cynic might suspect that such people don't actually believe what they say, and are just looking for anything possible to yell at Trump about. A cynic of a different flavor might suspect that they aren't bright enough to see the problem. A charitable person might suspect that different groups of people on the left are shouting #1, and darkly muttering about #2.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  ...unless you're optimising for other things, like keeping leaders accountable to laws. If you believed a given leader had broken laws which would theoretically result in their imprisonment under the current system, and you believed that pursuing their imprisonment would definitely cause them to seek illegal extensions of their power, you still couldn't come to a "should" statement about whether or not to pursue legal action without weighing the competing goals of "enforcing the rule of law" and "preventing further abuse of power" against each other and deciding which one you care about more (perhaps with some assumed probabilities of various outcomes attached) -- and that's if you accept that the ends justify the means, meanwhile the means-over-ends crowd will want to pursue justice even in the face of armageddon.

by Iv 7y ago

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

1. Some on the left believe that Trump deserves prison, not just removal from office, and are quite public about saying so. 2. Some on the left fear that Trump will not leave office when the rules say that he must, and are at least somewhat public about saying so. You don't have to believe either of these things to see the problem. The more they shout about #1, the more likely they are to create the conditions for #2 to happen. I am not claiming that #2 would actually happen, even given the right conditions. I am merely pointing out that, given their stated beliefs, they should stop publicly calling for Trump to go to prison. A real cynic might suspect that such people don't actually believe what they say, and are just looking for anything possible to yell at Trump about. A cynic of a different flavor might suspect that they aren't bright enough to see the problem. A charitable person might suspect that different groups of people on the left are shouting #1, and darkly muttering about #2.

blotter_paper 7y ago
...unless you're optimising for other things, like keeping leaders accountable to laws. If you believed a given leader had broken laws which would theoretically result in their imprisonment under the current system, and you believed that pursuing their imprisonment would definitely cause them to seek illegal extensions of their power, you still couldn't come to a "should" statement about whether or not to pursue legal action without weighing the competing goals of "enforcing the rule of law" and "preventing further abuse of power" against each other and deciding which one you care about more (perhaps with some assumed probabilities of various outcomes attached) -- and that's if you accept that the ends justify the means, meanwhile the means-over-ends crowd will want to pursue justice even in the face of armageddon.