JUNE 10, 2024 – One of my brothers-in-law reported recently that a cousin of his had excoriated our president; nothing specific, only that Biden had “Sucked the soul out of the American people.” Out of sheer curiosity, I’d like to have a conversation with the cousin, over a beer, perhaps, except I don’t drink beer. I have nothing against beer, and in fact on many occasions having a beer sounds like a great idea, but after a sip or two, I think better of it having been a good idea. So perhaps over a cup of coffee I’d have the conversation, or better yet, over a mango lassi.
I imagine the conversation going something like this:
ME: Hi, [Cousin]. I’m Eric, G’s bro-in-law.
[We’d then shake hands, or if prompted by the cousin, I’d gladly do a fist bump.]
COUSIN: Good to meet you.
ME: Thanks for getting together on such short notice.
COUSIN: Good of you to want to talk with me.
ME: Right back atcha. Your willingness to talk politics tells me a couple of good things about you.
COUSIN: How’s that?
ME: One, you take an interest in politics, which in my book is the mark of good citizenship. Two, you’re willing to talk to someone on the other side of the divide—in case you haven’t already assumed, I’m planning to vote for Biden.
COUSIN: I gathered that.
ME: So, diving right in, can I ask you a question?
COUSIN: Depends on the question.
ME: Hmmm. Fair enough, since I asked if I could ask a question. How ’bout I go ahead and ask and you decide whether the question was permitted?
COUSIN : Okay. Shoot.
ME: I understand that you think President Biden has sucked the soul out of the American people. Is that right? Did you say that?
COUSIN: Yep, and I’m standing by it.
ME: Fair enough, I guess, but here’s my ultimate question: what has Biden done, specifically, that leads you to believe he’s sucked the soul out of the American people?
COUSIN: He’s a radical extremist leftist Democrat.
ME: Is there any other kind of Democrat?
COUSIN: Pretty much not. All Democrats are out to destroy this country.
ME: Not to get too far ahead of myself, but do you really mean all Democrats?
COUSIN: Name me one Democrat who’s not out to destroy America.
ME: Well, my brother-in-law—your cousin—for one. His wife, for another. Me for a third and my wife for a fourth and a whole bunch of people I know very well, to name another . . . whole bunch. None of us is radical, extremist or leftist, at least by American standards. In a place like Finland we’d be considered center-right—no doubt about it—but here? There are plenty of people way to the left of us. One of G’s favorite past-times, in fact, is to grouse about progressives.
COUSIN: My cousin is a lost soul. I don’t know your wife or you, for that matter, or your wife or any of the people you know.
ME: Maybe not, but you asked me to name one Democrat who’s not out to destroy America, and I just identified a few after you insinuated that all Democrats are radical extremist leftists because all Democrats seek destruction of our country.
COUSIN: Whether you say you are or aren’t trying to destroy the country doesn’t mean anything. It’s what you Democrats stand for that shows you’re out to destroy America.
ME: Okay, but that’s kind of where I’m going with this. What do you think Democrats stand for?
COUSIN: A lot of bad things.
ME: But what bad things, exactly?
COUSIN: For starters, weaponization of the Department of Justice.
ME: Whew! I thought you were going to start with tax-and-spend policies going back to LBJ’s Great Society. But weaponization of the DOJ? I hear that term—“weaponization”—thrown around a lot, but I’m not sure what it means, exactly. To be honest, I don’t know if the people throwing the term around because everyone else throwing it around even know what it means.
COUSIN: It means Biden using the DOJ to persecute his political enemies.
ME: Hmmm. Let me stop right there for a moment and ask you a couple of questions.
COUSIN: Shoot.
ME: Do you understand the process by which a person is charged with a crime?
COUSIN: Well, yeah! Some lawyer in the DOJ is told to go after someone and charge them with a crime.
ME: Well, kinda, sorta, but first off, do you understand what a grand jury is and how it operates?
COUSIN: They’re rigged.
ME: By whom?
COUSIN: The whole system is rigged by Democrats.
ME: What do you mean by rigged?
COUSIN: Indictments have a pre-determined outcome as the result of political pressure.
ME: Wow! You’re kinda losing me here. Who exactly is exerting the pressure and how and when?
COUSIN: Democrats. Biden’s cronies inside and outside the White House put pressure on the prosecutors to rig the grand juries and rig the whole process.
ME: Is that a hunch, a standard hook-line on FoxNews, or an internet-generated conspiracy theory?
COUSIN: It’s true. Don’t you care about the truth?
ME: Well, yes, I do care about the truth, but more specifically, I care about evidence of sufficient credibility and materiality to lead to the truth. In my own experience I’ve found that truth tends to be elusive without verifiable facts backing it up. To accuse Democrats of “rigging the system” is a sweeping conclusion without supporting evidence. So, in short, where’s your evidence?
COUSIN: You want evidence? Just look at the number of charges that have been brought against Trump. No major presidential candidate has ever been accused of so much wrong-doing. What more evidence do you need to see that he’s being persecuted for political purposes, to keep him from running for president or keep him from winning?
ME: Wait a sec. Back up a couple of steps. Are you claiming Trump has been charged for crimes he didn’t commit or for things that aren’t crimes?
COUSIN: Both.
ME: Okay. In the case of being charged for crimes he didn’t commit, do you agree that under our rule of law, every suspect charged with a crime enjoys a presumption of innocence?
COUSIN: Not Trump, that’s for sure. In every case he’s presumed guilty the moment he’s been charged.
ME: By the prosecution, maybe, but that’s always the case. A case isn’t charged out if the prosecution doesn’t believe they can prove the defendant’s guilt. But to prove that guilt, the prosecution must convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.
COUSIN: The courts are corrupt.
ME: And juries too?
COUSIN: Yes. They’re part of the same system.
ME: Really? You believe that? Across the board? Where’s your evidence?
COUSIN: I told you—the fact Trump has been charged so many times and now convicted in one case.
ME: Really? A jury verdict of guilty proves the judge and jury were corrupt? I’d be less than candid if I said anything shy of “Yikes!” Besides, what good are Trump’s lawyers, then—the ones who’ve charged many millions of dollars in fees?
COUSIN: They get shut down by the corrupt judges.
ME: What about Judge Cannon in Florida—a Trump appointee—who has slammed the brakes on the Mar-A-Lago document case? And what about the appellate court in Georgia that has stepped in to delay the RICO case against Trump in state court—the one in which we’ve all heard the former president’s phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State in which Trump said, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” What about that one? (Oh, and by the way, the Secretary of State—a Republican—refused to go along with Trump’s request.)
And what on earth are we to make of the prosecution of Hunter Biden and the president’s statement that if his son is convicted, the president will respect the verdict and will not grant him a pardon?
COUSIN: At least there’s a glimmer of hope in some places. But in the case of Hunter Biden, he’s guilty as sin. We all know that. We don’t need a jury to tell us.
ME: Whoa! I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. So, anyway, back to the system being rigged. You believe the entire system isn’t rigged, as you claim?
COUSIN: Enough of it is rigged against Trump to amount to political persecution.
ME: Without credible evidence, there’s a downside to your conclusion.
COUSIN: What’s that?
ME: A general shattering of trust in the judicial system. Once that occurs, all bets are off.
COUSIN: But the system is rigged. I firmly believe that, just as Trump says it is.
ME: You know something, this is one instance in which enough people saying something enough times will, in fact, turn a falsehood into a reality. If too many people go around saying “the system is not to be trusted because it’s rigged”—a falsehood if it lacks adequate evidence to prove the proposition—then eventually the system will no longer be trusted and it will collapse into the equivalency of being rigged to fail.
COUSIN: [No comment.]
ME: Not to put words in your mouth, but is this political persecution, as you claim, part of the Democratic scheme driven by Biden that sucks the soul out of the American people?
COUSIN: That’s certainly one thing.
ME: Let me guess. Inflation is another.
COUSIN: Exactly. By big government spending, the Democrats, leading with Biden, are causing the worst inflation in our lifetime, eroding the American dream, destroying all hope for young people. None of my adult kids can afford their own home. Grocery bills are astronomical. Gas is . . .
ME: This week the average price of gasoline in the Twin Cities is off 27 cents from the average a year ago . . .
COUSIN: It doesn’t matter, it’s still too high.
ME: You do understand, don’t you, that the price of gasoline is a function of global energy markets, refinement capacity, and other factors beyond the control of Democrats or Republicans?
COUSIN: Not true. Republicans want to drill-drill-drill.
ME: That’s a little ironic since the radical extremist leftist Biden is taking heat from environmentalists for not setting higher limits on drilling. But in any event, since oil is a globally traded commodity, a drill-drill-drill policy won’t by itself appreciably affect the price of gas you pay at the pump. And besides, burning more fossil fuels—the natural consequence of “drill-drill-drill”—will accelerate climate change . . . but I know you probably don’t believe in climate change or that it’s caused by humankind’s insatiable energy consumption.
COUSIN: You’re right about that. With Trump we can get things back on track.
ME: But wait, can you address three things for me regarding inflation? First, establish by empirical evidence the causes of inflation—at the national level as well as globally. Second, for each cause, give me data showing the impact on over-all inflation. Third, identify for me the direct and indirect influences Biden has had and what impact he could have—within the limits of executive authority—on each of those causes of inflation.
COUSIN: You lost me. All I know is that my grocery bills are a lot higher today than they were four years ago.
ME: If you’re going by then vs. now, are you willing to cede some credit to Biden for today’s record job-creation, full employment, and public equities markets?
COUSIN: No. He’s had nothing to do with any of that. It was all Trump’s policies that kept the economy expanding.
ME: Nonetheless, the economy hasn’t tanked with three-and-a-half-years of radical extremist leftists in the White House.
COUSIN: But we’d be so much better off with Trump. Wages would be much higher under a second Trump term.
ME: Along with higher tariffs on Chinese imports—all imports, actually, if we take Trump’s words at face value.
COUSIN: Exactly.
ME: Exactly more inflation on all counts.
COUSIN: Trump would outlaw inflation.
ME: I’m sure he’d claim he could and I’m sure people would believe him.
COUSIN: He’d do whatever it took.
ME: Okay, okay. Enough of the dismal science. What else is Biden doing that’s sucking the soul out of the American people?
COUSIN: He’s allowing all those criminals to cross the border. It’s a disaster. Another four years of that and there will be nothing left of America.
ME: It’s a complicated problem, I’ll grant you that.
COUSIN: Not complicated at all. It’s really simple. Just build a wall.
ME: Hmmm. Tell that to all the farmers that depend on migrant labor. But in any event, I remember hearing a lot about that wall in 2015 and 2016, but I didn’t see much wall-construction from 2016 to 2020 when Trump was president. Now I’m hearing nothing from him about a wall. So what gives? Is he going to build a wall or isn’t he?
COUSIN: He’ll do everything that can be done to keep the illegals out and to round up the illegal aliens who are already here, murdering our women and children.
ME: Ooo. Ouch! Evidence? But yeah, I’ve heard Trump say he’ll get rough and tough with migrants, whether he has the executive authority or not. That’s what scares me. I’ve heard about his plans for the big round-up. Can’t quite imagine it, but what is he going to do to stem the tide—or more precisely, what can be done to reduce the flood (prompted by two factors: one – help wanted signs in America, and two – broken countries elsewhere), beyond what proposed Republican-supported legislation would have accomplished, before Trump signaled the House to torpedo it?
COUSIN: He’ll send in the troops.
ME: That’s what I’m afraid of. And the wall?
COUSIN: He’ll build that too.
ME: Do you have any idea what that would look like and how much it would cost? Does Trump?
COUSIN: It’s cheaper than handing the country over to drug dealers and terrorists.
ME: Sorry! [Dropping my drink; clutching my chest].
COUSIN: Oh no! What’s wrong?
ME: My soul. It’s hurting like hell. Like it’s being sucked right out of me.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
