Trump’s Indictment Threatens to Shatter Our Founding Myths ｜ 8⧸3⧸23
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
164.4176
Summary
Donald Trump has been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, and lying to the FBI, and conspiracy to influence the 2020 election. What does this mean for the future of our democracy? And what does it mean for our political system?
Transcript
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We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.
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Fast-free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land.
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Wi-Fi available to Airplane members on Equipped Flight.
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Every state is operated by an organized minority, a ruling class.
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That class may rule by divine right, wealth, the authority granted to them by their birth,
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But there will always be two groups, the rulers and the ruled.
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Brutal warlords and dictators can rule through raw force for a time.
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But that's a brittle power that can easily snap.
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Eventually, every regime requires a political formula that grants their rule legitimacy in
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In America, and the wider Western world, elections are the only acceptable,
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And other political formulas are considered authoritarian.
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Both major political parties have made a habit of calling the validity of America's elections
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But with the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, an incredibly dangerous
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The criminalization of political opposition in America threatens to become a common feature
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of the electoral process, shattering the illusion of legitimacy that has held our decadent ruling
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Conservatives like to see their elections as practical affairs, a contest between two competitors
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in the marketplace of ideas vying for support and the chance to implement the priorities
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Once every four years, Americans walk down the supermarket aisle and evaluate their choice
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for president like they're selecting a brand of toothpaste, then go on about their business.
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But the relationship between rulers and the ruled is far more metaphysical than most voters
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Americans believe in popular sovereignty and, like the coronation of a king, elections are a
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ritual meant to affirm their faith in the system by which they transfer authority to the ruling
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Humans will always invest their leaders with some portion of their hopes, dreams, and identity.
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This might sound silly to modern ears, but one only needs to remember the fainting spells
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of supporters at Obama rallies or the former president's speech about causing the waters
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of Earth to recede after his election to see this manifested on the left.
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The right's constant worship of the ghost of Ronald Reagan and the numerous pictures of Trump
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being guided by the hand of Jesus Christ shows that this is not a one-sided
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When the left now invokes our sacred democracy, they're speaking to a real belief that people
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hold whether they realize it or not, and the validity of that belief must be protected
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Donald Trump now faces three counts of criminal conspiracy and one count of obstruction for
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repeatedly and publicly questioning the fairness of the 2020 election.
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It should be obvious that making it impossible to question the fairness of a political process
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through the exercise of an individual's First Amendment free speech protections ends any
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The alleged co-conspirators named in the Trump indictment were attorneys who were offering
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It's not just the ability to question electoral results that's being threatened, but core aspects
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of due process and freedom of speech that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
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Questioning the legitimacy of elections is a tradition as old as elections themselves.
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Voter fraud has and always will exist at some level, and the fervent denial of that basic
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The slogan, Vote Early and Vote Often, has been jokingly used to refer to the wildly corrupt
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machine politics of Tammany Hall in New York or various leaders in Chicago.
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The highly disputed election of 1877, which ended with the installation of Rutherford B.
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Hayes in the Oval Office, required a backroom congressional deal to keep the nation from
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American history is full of examples, but in general elections have conveyed legitimacy
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because individuals could exercise their right to free speech and raise questions if they
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felt that the process was in some way compromised.
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Coronations are about the rigid transfer of unquestioned authority.
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The first election to imprint itself on my political consciousness was the presidential
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contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore when I was in high school.
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As a native Floridian, it was impossible to ignore the fact that your home state was at
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the center of the most controversial election in living memory.
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I vividly remember college professors, media pundits, and Democratic politicians endlessly
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challenging the validity of the election in attacking Bush as an illegitimate president
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who stole the election throughout both of his terms in office.
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No charges were ever brought and no one went to jail for their assault on our sacred democracy.
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The ability of the other side to question the election didn't create an existential threat
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Since then, the losing side of each presidential election has never granted full legitimacy to
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A number of Republicans and conservative media personalities questioned Barack Obama's ability
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to hold office with the birth certificate scandal in 2008.
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Democrats lost their mind with the election of Donald Trump in 2016, calling for the destruction
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of everything from the Electoral College to the Senate before eventually settling on the
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Celebrities made endless and unbearable montage videos demanding the removal of the duly elected
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president, and Senator Kamala Harris claimed that voting machines had been hacked right in
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None of these people were threatened with criminal charges for questioning the validity of the election.
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There are, of course, blatant examples of election interference in our recent past, but no one in power
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The Democratic National Committee conspired with the Hillary Clinton campaign to rig the primary
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Sanders was a grifter and a coward who immediately sold his delusional supporters down the river
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for a pat on the head, so no one makes much of it now.
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But the subversion of democracy was obvious and no one has ever paid a price.
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Thanks to the Twitter files, we know that multiple divisions of the state security apparatus pressured
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social media companies to suppress or completely lie about critical information like the Hunter
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Biden laptop story in order to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 election.
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Time magazine even had the unimaginable hubris to print a victory lap article about the secret,
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We don't need to speculate about burst water pipes and magical ballot drops at 3 a.m.
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because progressive elites have been more than happy to brag about how they subverted
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the mechanics of the election through mail-in voting, media manipulation, and the direct
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Americans may be subjected to endless propaganda about how a corrupt dementia patient won the most
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votes ever in the most free and fair election in the nation's history, but the average person isn't
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An election so free and so fair that anyone who questions it is censored.
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An election so free and so fair that those who protested are indefinitely detained.
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An election so free and so fair that the political opposition must be federally charged and face years
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The last bits of regime legitimacy are being shredded by those who can no longer be bothered
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to maintain the clown show that has stood in for rule of law.
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Our elites are playing recklessly with the most fundamental myths of the nation, the rituals
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that grant their power validity in the first place, and once those spiritual ties between
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the rulers and the ruled have been broken, things get ugly.
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