Can We At Least Try to Approach the Mueller Report With Some Common Sense?

Just drop all the political posturing for a moment and use basic common sense:

               Imagine you are hired for a job, a job for which both you and the people who hired you believe  that you are someone who can accomplish great things and turn around what you and those who hired you saw as a movement in a wrong direction.  The day you begin you are told that you are being accused of a terrible crime that will not only affect your reputation but also interfere with your ability to perform your job duties. You know you did not commit this crime, yet you are under daily attack by those who wanted someone else to get your job.  Your friends and family are slandered.  The investigation of you for something you know you are not guilty of heats up more and more every day.  

               Wouldn’t you be both frustrated and angry with this daily barrage of interference with your ability to perform the job you were hired to do?  Wouldn’t you wish and then verbalize your desires that the investigation stop so you could just do your job?  Wouldn’t you even perhaps think about actually stopping it? 

So, in the above scenario, are you nonetheless guilty of obstructing the investigation when, while you wished and verbalized desires to do so, in the end you did not actually obstruct the investigation?  The Democrats think so.  Not because it makes sense, common or otherwise, but because they must condemn the President.  That seems to be the only thing for which they live – not to do their jobs as elected officials, not to work for the good of the country, not to support our system of government, not for any other reason than to destroy Donald Trump and hopes and dreams of all those who believe in him, in our country, and in a strong and proud America.

I have now read the Mueller report, though in reality it will take more than one reading to fully understand all of it.  But here are some comments on the obstruction issues (Volume 2 of the report).

First, one must understand that Mueller is a Prosecutor who was charged with developing a case against Donald Trump.  His job is to look at evidence and develop the strongest case that he can against the subject of his investigation.  So, here is what he does:  He looks at the law and what he must prove to make a case against Trump under that law.   If the law is ambiguous, he develops the best argument he can for an interpretation of the law that is favorable to his position.  That argument/interpretation might or might not prevail in court.   Then he looks at the evidence in the light most favorable to him (and most unfavorable to Trump) and develops the best possible argument against Trump that the evidence can support. Again, that might or might not be an argument that would be successful in court.   He then determines whether this best prosecutorial case is actually strong enough to indict.

So, what we see in Volume 2 are a lawyer’s presentation of the argument that could be made against Trump on 10 specific allegations of obstruction.  This is a one-sided presentation – the strongest view that the prosecution can come up with.  One must remember that there is also a view and arguments that can be made in favor of the other side.  Law is an adversarial profession; lawyers represent one side or the other and make the best argument they can for their client.  Lawyers are not the judge or the jury.

Mueller and his team are good lawyers and they write arguments that sound convincing.  But, remember, there can be even more convincing arguments written for the other side.  And that is likely why Mueller was unwilling to make an up or down call on obstruction.  He did the investigation and left it to his superior to take a more objective look and make the final call.  As was appropriate under the law, his superior, the Attorney General, did so.  (And, as the Attorney General noted, it was for him and not for Congress – we don’t use our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to go on investigatory (and sometimes witch) hunts to gather information that Congress can use for political purposes).

Everyone will have their own reaction (largely based on their political leanings) to the evidence set forth in the Mueller report.  The main thing I see in Volume 2 (the obstruction portion of the investigation) is that Donald Trump was very human in his anger and frustration of being wrongfully accused of collusion.  He was angry and frustrated that the political climate allowed the investigation to become so overtly hateful of him, his policies, and his supporters.  He was angry and frustrated that this was all interfering with his ability to focus fully on his job as President of the United States.  And, he was not a political operative and was less savvy in handling this political witch hunt than would be a seasoned politician.

I think it is time for everyone to let this go.  As did the Attorney General, look at the evidence objectively and in context.  Put the evidence into the larger context of the collusion investigation which it is clear that Trump felt, and rightfully so, was a witch hunt.  So, the President did some things, made some statements, that may be interpreted negatively; he was not perfect in the face of the false allegations against him.  But, that does not amount to obstruction.  And, the greatest argument that there was no obstruction is that the investigation went forward to its end, Trump gave unprecedented access to the investigators, and at no time claimed executive privilege.

While I, and most others who care about this country, may think that it is time to let this go, sadly, the Democrats and the Left-biased media do not.  Instead, they double down on their attacks against the President and now, also, the Attorney General, and even Mueller (their yesterday hero when they thought he was the one who would “get Trump”).  Some now see the Mueller report as presenting a plan for their impeachment of the president.  They want to unveil grand jury testimony, something protected by law (protected so that people will not fear testifying in the future).  They are issuing subpoenas against any and all who might give them some scrap that they can chew into some sort of allegation.  Meanwhile, the rest of the country’s business that they should be attending to goes unattended.

Above I explained my overall reaction to the Mueller report.  My overall reaction to the Democrats' responses is that they do not have any understanding whatsoever of the law, of our country and its government, of their role as elected representatives of the people, or of human nature in general.  They would rather continue their campaign of hate and anger against the President who, even despite their daily attacks against him, is accomplishing more for this country than they have been able to do in many years.  Perhaps they might look, instead of at how next to attack the president, at how they can applaud the low unemployment and growing economy, the improved international respect that we see.  Perhaps they could try to support instead of interfering with Trump’s efforts around the world and within America.  Hey, maybe they could even try to solve the immigration crisis instead of denying its existence.  (But, sadly, for many Democrats the only crisis is that Donald Trump and not they are in power; that Donald Trump and not they are getting things done.)

As I watch the Democrats react to the Mueller report my (diminishing) hope is that they might at some point come to their senses.  They are destroying themselves with their overwhelming and irrational hatred.  The danger is that they will take this country with them in their destruction.  I pray that, even if their leaders do not, the rank and file Democrats will come to their senses and demand more than hatred from their party.

The Mueller Report and the Barr Summary

This is an example for America.  This is how the rule of law, not the rule of political angst or mob rule work.  This is the culmination of a very thorough investigation with decisions based on law, not emotion.  And now, for those who are bemoaning that the objective law did not satisfy their grief, it is time to grow up.

Here are some further thoughts.

The Democrats Show Their True Colors

Two years ago the Democrats were not able to face the fact that they lost the election.  Rather than try to understand what it was about Donald Trump and his policies that appeals to much of America, rather than examine their own policies to see what they were lacking, the Democrats simply chose to assume they were right, that they should have won, and that the only way they could have lost was if the other side had cheated.  (No space here to go into the psychological concepts about seeing others through one’s own eyes, assuming they behave like you, and how the Democrats generally and Hillary in particular seemed to approach rules and law as something to get around and perhaps even cheat against)

So, rather than accept defeat and work with the new president for the good of the country, the Democrats spent their time focused on finding ways to remove President Trump from office: fake dossier, lies to FISA court, lies to the public, and 25 million of tax payer money on an investigation that realistically all knew would not find collusion and without collusion could not find obstruction.  (That is, all who were not completely deluded by jealousy or hate or what has come to be know as Trump Derangement Syndrome)

The Democrats have shown us that they care not at all for our country or our laws or our constitution or our people.  They have made it perfectly clear with their monomaniacal focus on destroying Trump that all they care about is themselves and their own power.

Beyond that, their followers have shown us how ignorant they are of the law and how our country works.  They have been content to scream for what they want without evidence but with the passion of a mob.  The main stream media has joined in as each anti-Trump network and reporter sought to outdo the others with excessive opinion couched in the guise of reportable news.

And the Democrats are still angry.  Any American should be overjoyed that the duly elected president did not collude with a foreign power to sway the election.  They should understand that under the law the Attorney General properly made a decision about obstruction.  Yet, many Democrats are voicing their anger that our president was not found guilty.  And so, the report that they have touted as thorough and objective they now dismiss as incomplete or biased.  They will continue their hate parade as they claw and grasp at anything they can in the hopes of destroying this president, a subject that is far more important to them than the country and people that they allegedly serve.

Yet Think What Could and Should Have Been

Just imagine if all these Trump haters had, instead of pursuing their own angst, decided to be Americans who care about their country.  We have some of the lowest unemployment figures ever.  We have made progress towards peace on the international stage.  The economy is growing.  Our country is thriving again, and all this despite the fact that the President and his administration has been under constant attack every hour of every day since he was elected.   Imagine the even greater accomplishments if the Democrats had not been focused on trying to prohibit any accomplishment for America and Americans that the current administration put forth.

Imagine if instead of constant focus on a bogus allegation brought forth based on partisan lies, that the media had chosen to focus on the many other important stories and had chosen to present them without the ever-present anti-Trump bias.  Imagine, for example, if we saw objective reporting about the border crisis and if the Democrats had realistically sought to address the problem, if not with a wall then with some other form of security that would protect the daily invasion of hundreds of illegals into our country. 

Imagine if the Democrats and their media had chosen to include in their news feeds many of this administration’s accomplishments, instead of focusing attacks daily on Trump’s character.  Imagine if they had chosen to present anything about Trump without at the same time throwing shade on even achievements that did nothing but good for our country.

Imagine if the Democrats had taken the time to listen and hear voices from the other side of the political debate instead of simply trying to condemn and silence them at every turn.  If, instead of spreading hatred and its cohort identity politics, that the Democrats, instead of trying to divide us at every turn, had chosen to follow the words of another President, Bill Clinton: “For any one of us to succeed, we must succeed as ONE America.”

In America, we follow rules.  We have elections.  When our candidate loses, we must face our defeat with joy that the system works, and we must all support those who have been elected by our fellow Americans.  The phrase “loyal opposition” includes two, not one word; with the opposition to a policy or position comes also the understanding and responsibility of loyalty to our country and its elected leaders, even those for whom we as individuals did not vote. 

Had the Democrats understood how this, our Democracy works, we would have had 2 years of even more good news for our country both domestically and abroad.  We would have had less anger and less hate.

What Next?

So now the Democrats can grow up and show us that they have finally learned how to maturely handle adversity, or they can continue in their childish quest to destroy the man who hurt them by winning an election. 

They can try to change the election process and eliminate the electoral college so that they will perhaps have their way next time (and will most certainly have an unfair mob rule rather than the representative government that makes our country great).  They can try to stack the Supreme Court with 15 or more justices hoping that someone will rule in their favor.  They can continue to challenge and demean every action and word of the President and his followers, they can block even those actions and words that would benefit America.  They can continue their investigatory witch hunts costing the country millions of dollars as well as essentially destroying our system of government and law. They can refuse to accept Mueller’s conclusions and that the Attorney General was fulfilling his obligation under the law in reviewing the report and concluding that the evidence did not support obstruction charges. That is, they can continue to act like jealous and spiteful children, not giving up when they get news they don’t like, then changing the goal posts and trying to find some other way to get what they want.

Or, the Democrats can just buck up and face reality.  They lost the election.  They had a man they respected until yesterday do a thorough prosecutorial investigation and find nothing supportive of the charges they sought.  They do not like the President.  He is the President.  He has done many good things for the country and for the people of the country.  Many people support his policies.  The Democrats can seek to temper some of what they don’t like by listening to the people of this country and by reaching across the aisle achieving something that used to be fairly common in the halls of Congress – compromise.

The media can and should take a time out from their anti-Trump reporting and do some self-examination.  They need to ask themselves if they are fulfilling their important role of informing the people of this democratic republic, or have they abandoned that important task to become entertainers and purveyors of propaganda?

Republicans must be careful not to gloat.  It is easy, having been under attack for two years while stating the obvious – that the investigation was a witch hunt – to gloat when proven right.  But, if the Democrats should finally stop their infantile behavior and investigations and decide to do the work of the country that they were elected to do, then the Republicans must reach out with open arms to accept this.  On the other hand, if the Democrats have learned nothing from these 2 years, if they seek to continue their campaign of hate, then every Republican should stand in opposition to what is nothing less than assaults upon our very democracy itself.

I hope that the Mueller report brings an ugly 2 years to a close and we can now move forward to other stories and issues that are far more important.  I hope that the Mueller report reminds people that in the end we are a country of laws and that if we expect to preserve all the wonders and benefits that this country has to offer that we must support that rule of law and live by it rather than emotion and political hate.  

Each and every one of us has the personal responsibility to support all that this great nation stands for.  We have allowed the disgruntled left to act out their angst for 2 years.  Now, all of us who truly care about America must say “It is time to move on, to move forward, to work always to make America great” and we must demand that our elected officials put their country and constituents before themselves and their own power.  With this commitment American will flourish.

Social Justice or Actual Justice For All?

Social Justice is not actual Justice.  It should not replace actual justice and the media should not take sides in helping it to do so.

What is social justice?  It is a concept that involves fair relations between various classes of society and usually involves the distribution of wealth, opportunity, property, and privileges within that society.  Social justice causes often fall into sociological categories that easily correlate to those involved in identity politics: race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, nationality. 

Justice is that which allows for fair adjudication between competing claims.  Decisions are based on rules such as the law and the Constitution that provide for fair and equal adjudication between parties without regard to a party’s identity categorization.  Hence, the concept of “blind justice”:  justice will treat all individuals equally.

Justice cares about facts; social justice cares about causes.  Here are some examples of social justice warriors bringing their cause to a case where there are facts not supporting their cause:

• The #MeToo Warriors sought to advance their cause using the allegations of sexual misconduct against then nominee and now Justice Kavanaugh.  The facts did not support their cause.  The warriors chose to deny the facts and/or find them not important.
• The anti-Conservative/anti-Trump Warriors sought to attack and silence a group of high-school boys wearing MAGA hats by claiming that the boys had instigated a racist incident on the steps of the Lincoln memorial.  When video tapes and other information did not support their claims, they ignored those facts and continued to fault and attack the boys. 
• The Social Justice Warriors who believe that Trump is the antithesis of all their causes are supportive of any actions against him.  Thus, they support the Mueller investigation in the hopes that it will destroy the President and remove him from office.  Hence, they applaud tactics used by that investigation that at a minimum push the envelope towards denial of 4^th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure in the repeated use of gestapo-like tactics whenever someone closely related to Trump and his campaign are arrested.
• When a Black child was shot in her car and there was a White man in a pickup known to be nearby, without more the Warriors began demonstrations and claims against the White man whom they claimed was a racist and white supremacist and whom they immediately found guilty of the murder.  When facts proved that the White man was nothing more than a by-stander and that the child had been murdered by a Black man in a case of mistaken identity, the facts were again ignored. 
• The Warriors claim that Donald Trump is not qualified to be president, seemingly making one of the qualifications that the president be someone of whom they approve.  Again, they ignore the facts of our Constitution which clearly sets forth the qualifications: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”  Clearly, President Trump meets these qualifications, yet the Social Justice Warriors continue to claim he does not.

These are just of few of the more recent incidents that demonstrate that not only is social justice not the equivalent of justice, it is actually often its antithesis.  Social Justice will support lying to further its cause.  It accepts bearing false witness and accepts manufacturing facts that support its narrative and its causes.  It accepts and supports violation of our Constitution and our protected rights if those rights stand in the way of furthering the causes of the Social Justice Warriors.

This approach of the Social Justice Warriors goes hand-in-hand with identity politics that try to pit one identifiable group against another for political gain.  Identity politicians often try to pit a group that is less well-off in some way against another group with more of what the less well-off group lacks.  Socialists and Communists have long pitted the “workers” against the “bosses,” promising a better life to the workers if they will support the Socialist/Communist leaders. 

Identity politicians also pit one group against another; they convince one group that all their problems are due to another group and promise the first group that their life will be better if they support the identity politicians in their fight against the second group.   Look again at the list of social justice causes and see how they compare to identity political hatred:  race – fomenting minority anger against alleged White privilege; sexual orientation – fomenting LGBTQ anger against those whose religious beliefs, while demanding tolerance of diverse orientations do not condone such practices among their believers; nationality – fomenting anger of immigrants and especially illegal immigrants against all those who seek to contain illegal immigration regardless of their views on how broadly or narrowly the legal immigration laws should be drawn. 

Identity politics have always been with us to some extent, though I would argue that beginning with the previous administration they became a much more prevalent tactic, especially of the political Left.  But now, we have that Left using those tactics along with their claims of social justice as a way to negate a legitimate election and silence all who do not fully accept their views.  And the real victims in all of this are facts and the rule of law – the two things that are necessary for justice to prevail.

True Justice, true Fairness, requires that all be treated equally and that the rights of all, not just those of this or that favored group, be protected.  For rights to be protected, facts must be heard, verified, and accepted.  Partisans can argue over what the facts mean and what is their significance, but they cannot deny or make up facts to suit their purposes. 

The problem currently is that the partisans, with the help of the 24-hour news cycle and a partisan press, rile up their appropriate identity groups first.  Then, when facts are revealed, those facts no longer matter as the mobs scream for their latest social justice cause.  Worked into a frenzy, rationality is lost.  That is just the state that the Social Justice Warriors need their supporters to be in – a state where feelings can be used and manipulated, a state where specific identity groups can be characterized as enemies not entitled to basic rights, or to fair treatment under law, a state where the chosen identity group will believe the promises that they will have all their wants as well as needs fulfilled if they only support their social justice warriors. 

The problem with social justice and its identity political practices today is that it is by its very nature unfair.  The Social Justice Warriors believe that their chosen groups should have all that they demand while at the same time believing that it is appropriate and acceptable to silence and deny even basic rights to the groups they have designated as enemies and those not in line with their “social justice” positions.  Thus, for example, the Left assert their free speech rights, while seeking to deny free speech to those supporting the opposition – it is acceptable to silence and destroy those wearing MAGA hats, while supporting threats and attacks (both verbal and physical) by those on the Left against those on the Right.

Blacks Law Dictionary, defining law in jurisprudence, states that justice is “The constant and perpetual disposition to render every man his due.”  This is very different from rendering every person, or every person on your side only, their every desire.  Justice is fairness – to all, not just to one favored group over another.  It takes into account the actions of the individual as a person, not as a mere identity caricature.  And, it requires a respect for the facts and the law. 

Social Justice may be based on high ideals; it can be simply a partisan political tactic.  In either event, it is not a synonym for Justice.    And while Justice allows for Social Justice to push its causes, Social Justice as currently practiced does not allow Justice for all.