Thursday, August 17, 2023

Irony Loves Company

 University College London associate professor for Global Politics, Brian Klaas, explained that it's part of an overarching strategy for the Republican Party "to describe crimes in the most anodyne terms, and hope that their voters aren't smart enough to see through it."

"I find the hardest thing about being an academic in this setting is I speak truth to power, or at least I try to, and I try to be intellectually honest, and so it's very hard to engage with folks who are just willfully ignorant of the reality," said Kreis when speaking to "The Hive."

Host Brian Stelter specifically cited pro-Trump media that is intentionally misleading viewers. Kreis said that it's difficult to break through media which isn't giving viewers "straight facts."

"Folks who are often, or seem to be the most critical of, the indictment against Donald Trump here in Fulton County — I can understand if they were coming at it from an intellectually honest place," said Kreis.

"To me one of the things that is so astonishing," Bower began, "is that actually consuming the legal documents themselves is something that no one in the Trump world seems to have done that I speak to. ...I talk to a lot of those folks and I ask have you read the indictment, have you read the allegations?

"And I have not heard a single one who is there outside the courthouse protesting who has said yes. They always say, 'No I don't need to' or 'No I don't want to.' So, I find that kind of astonishing."

She noted that all defendants should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, "but I think just in terms of people consuming news about this, it seems like it would be important to read the allegation."

Kreis also said that, as a voter for President Joe Biden, he feels like his constitutional rights are being infringed on by Republicans who want to take away his votes along with the other 2,473,632 voters in Georgia.

"Some justice needs to happen there," he said.

Judicial proceedings in Georgia are all done before cameras.  I understand even the delivery of the grand jury indictement to a state judge was broadcast.  And, of course, the indictment document itself is a click away on any cellphone in the world.  And yet....

I'm all for transparency, and frankly any lawyer who thinks he can win his case in court by preening and prancing for the cameras does not have his or her client's best interests at heart.  But court proceedings are dull.  I was just watching "The Lincoln Lawyer" on Netflix, a show which at least betrays some knowledge of court proceedings.  But no predicate was ever laid for the introduction and admission of evidence (it's a process; not a long one, but one you must follow correctly start to finish.  It's one of many procedural reasons why trials take days, and complex trials take weeks.), because that's TeeVee and real court practice is BORING!

Does anyone really imagine that people who consume whatever media they like (as I say, they sometimes bend around so far they touch each other, so I'm not picking on one in particular) are going to study the trial day after day on television (or the trials in D.C., Florida, Manhattan) and say:  "Oh, huh.  I guess I never realized what this was really about!"?  The jury will (that's their job, and jurors take it seriously); but people at home will wait for FoxNews or MSNBC or whoever, to tell them what they should think.

Thinking is hard!

Same as it ever was.*


*I am not discounting that, especially in Georgia where there will be cameras in the courtroom, that TeeVee will allow the majority of the public to be assured this is not a kangaroo court or a vicious political witch hunt with no basis in facts or law.  But it won't educate the numerlcal minority who don't want their faith in Trump and MAGA challenged by reality.  Honestly, chasing after them is a fool's game.  Like the man said:  you can't fix stupid.

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