Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Fisking the Left’s escalating demands for Trump’s impeachment

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Even though Mueller has totally vindicated Trump, you can expect cries for impeachment to intensify. Learn here how stupid those impeachment demands will be.

Impeachment Trump Derangement SyndromeOne of the Progressives on my real-me Facebook feed contends that she never wanted Trump to be impeached because, as Nancy Pelosi said, “he’s just not worth it.” However, now that the Mueller Report has finally dropped, she’s suddenly changed her mind and says that impeachment is the only way to rein in Trump’s power. In other words, now that the Progressive’s primary nefarious scheme to reverse the 2016 election has failed, it’s time to move on to the next nefarious scheme.

To support her new tack, the Progressive cites to The Atlantic’s March 2019 issue entitled Impeach Donald Trump : Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.  The article is certainly timely insofar as its publication conveniently coincides with the Mueller Report. The Progressive says the article is totally believable because the author, Yoni Appelbaum, is a “moderate,” albeit one with a “little bias.”

Having looked at Appelbaum’s article, I have to say I disagree with the article’s title, with every argument contained within it, and with my friend’s assessment that Appelbaum is a “moderate.” It therefore struck me as an article ripe for the fisking. Before I do so, though, I want to do three things. First, even before addressing Appelbaum’s argument, which on its face gives the lie to any claimed “moderation,” I’d like to address Appelbaum’s record, which also gives the lie to any claimed “moderation.”

Appelbaum is an editor at The Atlantic, so he doesn’t write a lot. When he does . . . well, here are most of Appelbaum’s videos or articles over the past couple of years:

I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing political moderation in Appelbaum. Instead, I’m seeing monomaniacal hate against Trump from a hard-Left perspective.

Second, before diving into Appelbaum’s article, it’s worth remembering what the Constitution has to say about impeachment (Art. II, Section 4; emphasis mine):

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

After Friday’s news drop, I think we can confidently say that, with Mueller refusing any indictments, treason is off the table. (Also, considering Trump’s morning joie de vivre, I doubt that the report says, “Trump should be indicted, but the DOJ has to wait until he leaves the White House before beginning the process.”) The question, then, is whether Appelbaum can make an argument for “Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Third, as we dive into Appelbaum’s reasoning, I’d like to remind you that surrounding a bad argument with endless historical facts and analysis will not remedy the false data and poor analysis lying at the article’s heart. Appelbaum, a history major, likes to tout his erudition. That erudition, however, does not offset the flat-out lies he advances, nor does it offset his illogical and often hysterical take on Trump’s presidency.

Now, let the fisking begin:

Appelbaum’s first two paragraphs say that President Trump swore to uphold the Constitution and, instead, has blatantly violated it, running roughshod over the separation of powers, the rule of law, and civil liberties (implying that Trump is a racist, misogynistic  Muslim hater). Well, at least we know what Appelbaum believes he will prove. Whether he meets his self-imposed burden of proof remains to be seen.

Things start falling apart immediately because, in his third paragraph, Appelbaum goes directly to a tried and true fallacy, namely the appeal to authority. In this case, his authority is two well-known #NeverTrumpers; namely, failed presidential candidates McCain and Romney: [Read more…]

Are Trump supporters racist? The Atlantic says so, but only because it lies

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Are Trump supporters racist? By abandoning both facts and logic, That Atlantic claims Trump is a neo-Nazi, so his supporters must be racists too.

Trump Supporters Racist Donald Trump Diamond and SilkMy Progressive friends have been on fire this holiday weekend, posting all sorts of articles from anti-Trump mainstream media publications. When I wasn’t cooking, eating, or stuporously digesting, I glanced through a few of them. It would take too much time to fisk them all because, as is the case with Ruth Bader Ginsburg decisions, they are all long, long articles, with the MSM manifestly hoping that length, repetition, and partisan fervor will hide warped facts and contorted logic.

Just for the heck of it, though, I’ve fisked one of the The Atlantic’s latest offerings because it overflows with outrageous assumptions and arguments. In The Nationalist’s Delusion, the author, Adam Serwer (or, as I came to think of him, Adam Sewer) promises to prove to us that “Trump’s supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination.” Well, with that agenda, how could I stop myself from seeing what it takes to make good on that promise?

The article starts with an endless riff about the Louisiana voters who once elected David Duke to Congress. The riff wraps up with Trump’s long-ago prediction that voter anger at Bush Sr.’s weak economy would lose voters to a hypothetical “Duke for President” run or a real Pat Buchanan run. Serwer’s logic is (1) Duke once won a Louisiana seat in Congress and (2) Trump explained why he thought Duke won, therefore (3) Trump is a neo-Nazi. Reading that syllogism, all I can think of is the Professor’s oft-repeated complaint in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” Whatever school Serwer attended clearly failed the Professor’s test.

In the face of Serwer’s syllogism, which is ridiculous on its face, it’s important to follow-up by reading Serwer’s own effort at summarizing what Trump actually said. Trump’s words had nothing to do with white supremacism:

A few days after Duke’s strong showing, the Queens-born businessman Donald Trump appeared on CNN’s Larry King Live.

“It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote. People are angry about what’s happened. People are angry about the jobs. If you look at Louisiana, they’re really in deep trouble,” Trump told King.

Trump later predicted that Duke, if he ran for president, would siphon most of his votes away from the incumbent, George H. W. Bush—in the process revealing his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.

“Whether that be good or bad, David Duke is going to get a lot of votes. Pat Buchanan—who really has many of the same theories, except it’s in a better package—Pat Buchanan is going to take a lot of votes away from George Bush,” Trump said. “So if you have these two guys running, or even one of them running, I think George Bush could be in big trouble.” Little more than a year later, Buchanan embarrassed Bush by drawing 37 percent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Republican primary.

In February 2016, Trump was asked by a different CNN host about the former Klan leader’s endorsement of his Republican presidential bid.

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay?,” Trump said. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don’t know.”

Serwer concludes that Trump revealed “his own understanding of the effectiveness of white-nationalist appeals to the GOP base.” My read on the above is that Trump learned that, if the political class betrays its trust, there is an opening for a new candidate — any new candidate, not just a white nationalist.

To Sewer, er, Serwer, it’s neo-Nazis all the way down. Thus, having duly established (to his own satisfaction) that Republicans are Nazis because Trump supported Duke’s white supremacism, Serwer offers a paragraph manifestly intended to tie modern-day Trump supporters to Duke and, by association, to all Nazis: [Read more…]