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Jason Scott Montoya @JasonSMontoya · Aug 4, 2023
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"Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison. But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable."
Article
What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?
by David Brooks
Jason Scott Montoya @JasonSMontoya · Aug 4, 2023

Whether we see the the 2020 election one way or another seems to come down to... Do I trust the legal system or not? That's what many discussions with people about the 2020 election being stolen came down to...

This is pretty easy to test at different levels. Many people who distrust the legal system, particularly with the 2020 election, are not open to demonstrations that it was trustworthy. And they are resistant to test those they trust on the matter who say it was untrustworthy.

If our legal system was fully corrupted... things would be really really bad right now. And there would not be much anyone could do to turn things around. At that point its over and our society disintegrates. The people who are most grounded seem to lean on agnosticism...

"Everything is possible..." was a core totalitarian ideal of the Nazis/Communists. It allows me to say, maybe Trump is right, maybe the system is corrupt how he's saying. The belief blinds me to the corrupt Trump saying it.

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