The White House has found a novel way to ensure Donald Trump’s nominees ascend to power.
Federal judges in the Western District of Washington swore in former King County Superior Court Judge Roger Rogoff as U.S. attorney Wednesday morning. Within 54 minutes, Trump fired him.
The district’s 17 federal judges have been trying to find a replacement for Seattle’s First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd, after Trump failed to formally nominate him. Floyd was appointed in October, though his name was never officially advanced to the Senate for consideration.
Federal law grants a district’s judges the power to appoint a U.S. attorney if the president and the acting attorney general fail to do so within 120 days, subsequently stonewalling the procedural Senate hearings.
Kind of.
I don’t think the term “bad person” is helpful in this context. No I don’t think that everyone living in a country with a bad government is a bad person.
However, citizens of any country are accountable for the actions of their government.
For example, Australians of today are accountable for the human rights abuses perpetrated against First Australians even though we may not have been alive when that was occurring. I’m not a “bad person” because of it, but nor can I wash my hands of it.
Over the last 2 years I’ve developed a fairly deeply held frustration and anger at “Americans” due to the behavior of the Trump administration. The entire world is bearing the consequences of their shit decisions.
I acknowledge that no individual American is responsible for any of this, and many are opposed to the Trump administration. However, I’m still angry and frustrated at America generally and it’s very difficult to separate that from my feelings toward an anonymous American I interact with in the fediverse.
I get that. I live as an immigrant American in the UK, and it’s very frustrating sometimes. I more get along with the people who hate America, but I’m used to seeing the light in their eyes die when they hear my accent the first time. I don’t wash my hands of anything America has done, but I’ve done everything I practically can. I still vote, I stay informed, and I am depriving the regime of my taxable income.
I watch with great satisfaction when a leftist sets a cop car on fire, but I have a family to think about. I can’t be doing those kinds of heroics, and the temptation to throw down was too great when I was living stateside. I have pacifist beliefs and ideals, but not pacifist emotions. I probably never will. Growing up has been a slow motion destruction of everything I was raised to think I was part of. I was raised in cosmopolitanism and intellectualism, only to learn that my country had abandoned those ideals decades before my birth (if they were ever sincerely held at all).
I do understand hating Americans, I’m the conflicted vampire-hunting daywalker of hating Americans. But even I try not to judge people purely by their governments, that would just be stupid. Imagine hating North Koreans or Russians, it’s obviously wrong. What are they supposed to do, overthrow their governments? Their governments that are orders of magnitude weaker than the US government? See?
You’re doing critical self-examination unlike what some “America bad = all individual Americans bad” emotional onanists here do, and I appreciate that.
But further, there is no true moral defense for collective punishment, and all of that philosophical foundation applies to collective blame. For example, collective punishment violates both the Hague international legal principles and the Geneva Convention. It is contrary to Kantian ethics (and if you’re using utilitarianism to justify depriving people of individual moral agency, then we have nothing to discuss). There is plenty more food for thought here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_punishment .
Blame people who support and act in support of Trump. But don’t blame people who oppose Trump and act in opposition to Trump. It’s pretty easy to understand, morally-sound logic.
“I am against world hunger.”
There, all of the world’s problems are solved.
Talk is cheap. Americans clearly haven’t done enough to address Trump and/or the causes of Trump, or we wouldn’t be here. Rigged prosecutors is just one symptom of that, and should be seen as a kick in the ass to do more.
What have you done? The point of my post was to remind you that there is no single American monolithic moral entity.
As an individual, you and an American have the same moral agency and duty to correct a wrong that you did not directly create. Likewise you share the same collective blame. So tell me, why haven’t you done more? If you think the question is absurd, you’ve just explained to yourself why it’s absurd to hold an individual American who hasn’t personally solved Trump to blame for Trump.
Again, some Americans do deserve blame. A lot of them in fact. Which ones? The ones who support and acted in support of Trump. It’s pretty simple actually. Moral reasoning doesn’t have to be hard, but you have to put in the effort rather than just say what makes you feel good and righteous.
Sure, it’s a fair question. Without doxxing myself, I’m in a situation where there’s few realistic options for me to contribute more without getting myself arrested. Plus, I have my own local politics to focus on, which helps my community resist Trump.
To be fair, maybe I could help do some remote organization with more engaged groups, I will look into that.
Anyways, scapegoating the 30% of Americans who actively voted for trump honestly just makes the problem worse.