Gotta say, I absolutely love Impeachment Inquiries, for entertainment value:
Love the Ukraine transcript:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf, it's the most blatantly slimy thing I've read.
Love how it takes exactly one statement for Trump to go from "The US does a lot for Ukraine and it's not always reciprocal" to "By the way I need a favour, dig up dirt on my main campaign rival". That combined with the withdrawal of military aid means that this isn't even subtle.
"The first time, you called me to congratulate me when I won my presidential election, and the second time you are now calling me when my party won the parliamentary election. I think I should run more often so you can call me more often and we can talk over the phone more often." My god, this entire thing
Like this whole thing is as blatantly obvious as "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, I didn't ask anyone to lie".
By the way, something I saw while looking in to the Ukraine scandal. You know the Obama administration did the exact same thing, withdrawing funds from the Ukraine to get a prosecutor fired?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Shokin
This isn't to say Trump shouldn't be impeached for this, or it isn't criminal, it absolutely is. But I find there's this liberal assumption that Trump individually represents what's wrong with America, and that if you get rid of the
bad person who upholds dominant power structures and the status quo, then the
good person who upholds the dominant power structures and the status quo will suddenly sort everything out.
Why else was it surprising that Obama was drone-striker in chief, but not at all surprising that civilian casualties rose dramatically under the Trump administration?
The US on a global stage has always acted like a bunch of hyper-nationalists interested in furthering their own self-interest. They usually disguised it under a thin, fake veneer of liberal tolerance. The only thing that Trump does differently is that he drops any veneer of being tolerant or respectable and says "Yes, I am all of these things. I am self-interested and pushing a zero-sum game agenda that sees all other countries as assets of the US. I am using blatant corruption to further my campaign".
In this sense, the main difference between Trump and Obama, Bush, Clinton, all the presidents going back to Reagan if not further, is that Trump is
openly cynical and corrupt. Most Presidents have the common sense to hide it under a false political persona.
Maybe Trump really will drain the swamp, by stumbling enough to reveal the underlying corruption.
More likely is that the moment Trump leaves office, all the liberals will give up their proggresive ideals and start thinking "Yay, we have a respectable president again. Now we can live in ignorance of the systemic problems that haunt the US and do nothing to further human rights, because at least we're not
openly acting in shitty ways anymore" and nothing will be done to sort out the underlying problems that the Trump administration brought light to.
