Will You Accept the Findings of the Muller Probe?

[Stars Fan]

I was thinking today on my drive in to work that I should give up on the idea that the United States is anything but a place that I live, nothing special, full of flawed people. Then I wouldn't be so disappointed when it continually fails to live up to the ideals that I grew up believing. Maybe I should give us another chance.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never.

 

[Hotdog]

This is normal. Everything is fine. This guy used to work in the White House. Totally normal.

Ummm. What did he say that was so outrageous and crazy?

OMG everyone this guy just said trump is going declassify some files that might prove Obama and his crew are corrupt. What a lunatic.

 

[Hotdog]

And this from today, just 30 minutes ago is also well worth reading:

OMG everyone. The president didnt want to cooperate with an illegal investigation made up witch hunt/political game. This president is a lunatic. Also he has orange skin. **** orange skin. Orange man bad.

 

[Hotdog]

Funny how the left is all about transparency until that transparency might prove something they dont want hear.

Just another example of child like behavior. Plug your ears, close your eyes and make loud noises. Thats the left's go to. If that doesn't work start projecting. But whatever you do, dont concede the facts and talk about them like an adult. Find your safe space. Use the ignore button. Report someone. Quit. Ban the other. Cry. Attack. Use violence. All this sound familiar?

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

I just want to say that as someone who has taken a LOT of time to understand this region of the world better at this point, it is particularly short-sighted and cruel that Trump keeps trying to pin the blame on some kind of collusion between Democrats and Ukraine.

Ukraine is making a real go at democracy and is a place where they are trying to generate hope, slowly and surely. There's a lot of evidence that they love American values and ideals. You can go on Netflix right now and watch a Ukrainian television show (part West Wing/part Parks and Recreation) called "Servant of the People." In this show, a fictional Ukrainian president is unexpectedly elected and tries to reform the fundamental corruption of this post-Soviet state. This show is a utopian fantasy, and a comedy, because it is truly an unrealistic fever dream that anyone would even attempt to be truly good at selfless government in Ukraine.

I've put a screen cap in below from the third episode, in which our president elect is having a day dream about what kind of President he'd like to be. During the day dream he communes with Abraham Lincoln and ponders the similarities between Lincoln freeing the slaves and what a good Ukrainian president would do: free common citizens from oligarchy.

Really think about this for a second: this is a society that was part of the Soviet Union less than three decades ago. The people who wrote the show grew up in the Soviet Union and went to Soviet schools. And their idealized version of what virtue could look like is aspiring to be like the United States. They IDOLIZE us.

What Donald Trump will never understand is that the image below is what real power looks like. We, as a society, occupy the realm of the Ukrainian's people's symbolic fantasy. We are a big brother they have no hope of catching but desperately worship. And it has nothing to do with raw military or economic power - but about the ideal of what it means to be a country that has civic values.

So to turn your own bad acts around, accuse the Ukrainians of crimes to save your own behind, and collude with a hostile foreign power against them is just an unbelievable betrayal. It is telling them that their dreams are a lie. Out of selfishness. No one deserves that.



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Post-Script: The hope behind "Servant of the People" was so powerful and so potent that the writer/actor that portrayed the fictional president ran for actual president and won. That just happened. He was just sworn in; he quoted Ronald Reagan in his inaugural address. Imagine if a cross between Martin Sheen and Jon Stewart was the new president and everyone was excited that he might make their fantasy a reality. Very interesting time in Eastern Europe: change is in the air.

The Ukrainian thing is fascinating and I wish them the best. I'm not understanding what you think Trump is doing wrong in this interaction. Can you explain? I assume you are somehow referring to the revelations in articles like the one below:
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaig...-fades-ukrainian-plot-to-help-clinton-emerges
Are you suggesting that wrongdoing that might have taken place involving Ukrainians should not be investigated because some people there might have pure motives or look at our country with admiration?

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

Thank you for this, and everything else you spoke. It's that idealization of America that I miss the most, that is in the past somewhere, in a childhood where we were "a city on a hill", a beacon. Sometimes I think "well, it never existed, grow up", but it does exist in the eloquent words of citizens like yourself, and I hope we can all see it as clear as day again.

In other words you'd like to make America great again? I, too, wish we could have another president as great as Reagan.

 

[Red]

In other words you'd like to make America great again? I, too, wish we could have another president as great as Reagan.

No, I not sure that's what I was struggling to say. I just vaguely remember in grammar school, and in high school, prior to the JFK assassination, being taught that America was a very special experiment in the world's history, and that we were in some fashion a model for the rest of the world to both admire, and emulate. It must have been some version of a belief in American exceptionalism. This was the 50's, and up to 1963.

Now, many people I know who lived through the Kennedy assassination carry with them the belief that America was somehow never the same after that event. My wife and I lived through it, remember exactly where we were when we heard the news, and find it accurate to say something beside Kennedy died that day. You know, they called it "Camelot", the JFK years, and so seeing a youthful, idealistic president killed (even though his flaws had not been focused on by the press at the time), represented the end of something.

When that was followed, over a 10 year period, with the murders of RFK, MLK, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, somehow, whatever idealistic image of what America represented to me, and impressed upon me mostly in grammar school and high school history and civics classes, was no more. Now, a part of me says, "well, all those early lessons were really propaganda. Not deliberate, but just an idealized vision of America that everybody bought into at the time".

But, although I was completely radicalized politically by the Vietnam War, and became an opponent of American imperialism, that child that believed in that idealized "city on a hill" America, is apparently still alive inside of me. If it weren't, I would not have been so pissed off by Putin's attack on our democratic institutions. Because I became very apolitical after Vietnam, did not vote again for decades. Yet here I am as angry as anybody at what Putin did, and Trump condoned.

So, I'm guessing the lessons of those early years still somehow live inside me. I thought I was way too jaded to ever care again. I was wrong. Yet, it's entirely possible I am very naive and I really should let that child and his idealization of America die once and for all.

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

No, I not sure that's what I was struggling to say. I just vaguely remember in grammar school, and in high school, prior to the JFK assassination, being taught that America was a very special experiment in the world's history, and that we were in some fashion a model for the rest of the world to both admire, and emulate. It must have been some version of a belief in American exceptionalism. This was the 50's, and up to 1963.

Now, many people I know who lived through the Kennedy assassination carry with them the belief that America was somehow never the same after that event. My wife and I lived through it, remember exactly where we were when we heard the news, and find it accurate to say something beside Kennedy died that day. You know, they called it "Camelot", the JFK years, and so seeing a youthful, idealistic president killed (even though his flaws had not been focused on by the press at the time), represented the end of something.

When that was followed, over a 10 year period, with the murders of RFK, MLK, the Vietnam War, and Watergate, somehow, whatever idealistic image of what America represented to me, and impressed upon me mostly in grammar school and high school history and civics classes, was no more. Now, a part of me says, "well, all those early lessons were really propaganda. Not deliberate, but just an idealized vision of America that everybody bought into at the time".

But, although I was completely radicalized politically by the Vietnam War, and became an opponent of American imperialism, that child that believed in that idealized "city on a hill" America, is apparently still alive inside of me. If it weren't, I would not have been so pissed off by Putin's attack on our democratic institutions. Because I became very apolitical after Vietnam, did not vote again for decades. Yet here I am as angry as anybody at what Putin did, and Trump condoned.

So, I'm guessing the lessons of those early years still somehow live inside me. I thought I was way too jaded to ever care again. I was wrong. Yet, it's entirely possible I am very naive and I really should let that child and his idealization of America die once and for all.

I was born a month before JFK was assassinated, but I learned and still believe in the same general ideas that you laid out. I have not become nearly so jaded as you. Yes, I know that America has made mistakes, but I still see her as a very special experiment and I remain extremely proud of this country.

 

[colton]

OMG everyone. The president didnt want to cooperate with an illegal investigation made up witch hunt/political game. This president is a lunatic. Also he has orange skin. **** orange skin. Orange man bad.

The investigation was not illegal. It was not made up. It was not a witch hunt. Yes, I think the president does show signs of mental illness. And nothing in the tweets I quoted referred to orange skin.

 

[Red]

I was born a month before JFK was assassinated, but I learned and still believe in the same general ideas that you laid out. I have not become nearly so jaded as you. Yes, I know that America has made mistakes, but I still see her as a very special experiment and I remain extremely proud of this country.

Well, as I've said in the past, there are far worse places to live.

 

[Red]

The investigation was not illegal. It was not made up. It was not a witch hunt. Yes, I think the president does show signs of mental illness. And nothing in the tweets I quoted referred to orange skin.

Yeah, massively insecure, at the least. I watched a longer video of this infrastructure meeting last night, and when it was over, the first thought I had was this administration might best be described as a fake presidency. What a bizarre performance. I can appreciate why Pelosi would say she would pray for the guy. Fake president!

 

[Joe Bagadonuts]

The investigation was not illegal. It was not made up. It was not a witch hunt. Yes, I think the president does show signs of mental illness. And nothing in the tweets I quoted referred to orange skin.

And you know this primarily because you dislike Trump him, right?

Will it make any difference to you if the investigation shows that the surveillance was not justified? Will it bother you if it is discovered that the Government's prosecution team withheld exculpatory evidence? Will you care if it is shown that the Dossier was a politically motivated document designed to trash a campaign and not based on facts? Will it make any difference to you if you learn that key FBI personnel had it out for Trump and decided to use the organizations special privileges and powers against him? Or are you okay with government bureaucrats breaking the law? And if so, does that apply to any instance or only in the cases that you agree with what the objectives are trying to accomplish in doing so?