• 17 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • In essence, that is what she did. Her letter, which is an excellent read if you like detail oriented logical takedowns of transparent corruption, only “offers” her resignation, conditional to the AG refusing to meet with her to discuss the issues she raises in the letter.

    She says that dismissing the charges would be, in the first place, unethical, as the prosecution is based upon an indictment rendered faithfully by a grand jury. Furthermore no one (including Adam’s defense counsel) has called into question the conduct of the prosecution. In addition, dismissing the case would also be illegal, as legal precedence states that a court may decline the Government’s request to dismiss charges in instances which run contrary to the public interest. She concludes that, in light of those points, she cannot and will not comply with the request. At that point, she offers her resignation.

    Despite really enjoying reading her arguments, I’m certainly no law expert. I would imagine that she would open herself up to some pretty serious charges from the Department of Justice if she refused to comply with their order. I mean, considering the brazenness of the corruption on display by the very order she is protesting here, it wouldn’t shock me if she’s wondering if they’d try to charge her with fucking treason or something, a crime which could result in the death penalty. Of course, something like that would only be plausible if there was demonstrated evidence of an authoritarian, Tammany Hall-style political machine situation developing at the federal level with the tacit approval of the judicial branch. Good thing there’s no evidence of that happening, right?

    Which is to say, I think the folks in here whining about how she isn’t doing enough to fight fascism should maybe get off their pedestals a bit and have a little empathy for the position she had forced upon her by the ACTUAL villains in this story.


  • You’re rephrasing the post as though you’re making a “gotcha!” statement, when it’s just the thing they said. Their argument is that the Dems needed to lose for any chance of party reform to occur, and they voted in a way that would encourage that outcome.

    It’s an argument that I find compelling, especially given the fact that the Democrat leadership seems to be actively trying to learn all the wrong lessons from their humiliation, where they are trying to learn anything at all. This indicates to me that, to some degree, OP is correct and there wasn’t even a snowball’s chance in hell that party leadership would have done anything significant had they coasted to victory based solely on being not-Nazis.

    To seat his logic in another context, where the Trump of it all is not a factor, it’s the same argument I’ve heard lefties trot out in a discussion about legal vs illegal protest tactics. Which is to say, effective protest is protest which forces people to engage with the issue being discussed, and legal protest is ineffective because, by design, it is easily ignored by both the public and the powers that be.

    All that being said, the argument is not so compelling as to convince me that any pain caused to the Dems in service of organizing an actual progressive wing is worth the pain Trump’s election is causing people, the environment, or the world in general. I don’t know anything about OP, so I don’t want to state this as fact, but, to me, it smacks of the privilege that comes with figuring they will make it through this period okay (if not particularly great). Therefore, it’s worth it to them to endure this inconvenience, in the hopes that it effects change in the Dems. Attack their argument on that front all you like, but you’re not contributing anything by saying “you helped elect Trump!” when that’s what they said they did and they’d do it again.




  • I watched Speed for the first time last night. I can’t explain why it has taken me so long to see it, considering how much I love action schlock. Hell, I’ve seen Speed 2 multiple times.

    It was great, though it had to win me over. Once Keanu boards the bus, I thought it found its stride, or maybe I finally settled into the movie’s vibe. The most surprising thing about my experience (to the extent that it was nearly the only thing I wrote about in my letterboxd diary) was how compelling I found Keanu. I suspect that I’m biased by his post-John Wick resurgence and Internet darling status, but I really thought he was, in his own way, implying a huge amount about his character’s interior life through his line readings and body language. As I understand it, that was not the consensus at the time.

    It very much convinced me that I should get my butt into gear when it comes to looking at other 90s action movies. I feel like the whole decade is just packed with other, similar blind spots. At the very least, I’m advancing Point Break to the top of my watchlist.









  • I guess I was hoping you would have an argument to make about Spielberg’s filmography, since “he hasn’t done anything good since Temple of Doom” is a nutty statement to me. I don’t see how you could hold that opinion, and I was asking for you to explain what it was about his post-1984 output that rubbed you the wrong way, in the hopes of possibly unlocking another angle by which to evaluate these movies.

    However, based upon your statement that you’re unsure of how to explain your opinion, I’m thinking I was barking up the wrong tree for that sort of discussion. If you don’t engage with film criticism in that way, we’ll just be talking past one another, I fear.