Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/01/24/adam-schiffs-closing-argumen.html
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Not ashamed to admit his impassioned pleas about right and truth moved me. It won’t shift the GOP, and that’s the most damning thing I can say about them right now.
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Bravo alright. Noticed a minor muddle at 5:41 where he mixes up Drumpf’s personal interest and national interest, accidentally asking if we can “have the iron-clad confidence” that he would put the former ahead of the latter. We absolutely can! But I think we want the reverse scenario.
Again though, bravo. (orson_welles_clapping.gif)
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Schiff is an oratory genius, that wowed the shit out’a me.
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In a better world, those words would have made a difference. But those in the senate who back our “dear leader” have the same mindset - they see nothing wrong with advancing their own interests ahead of the country’s. And because of the way our media has become siloed, the public that most needs to hear it won’t.
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“ But one thing is certain: We’re not getting any closer to the solution by expending our time and energy worrying about the Democrats. They’re not the real problem. ”
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Ladies and gentlemen that is what an orator sounds like and that is a fantastic and heartfelt argument.
If you want to convince someone of something yelling at them and crying shame will never make them listen to you.
Appealing to reason and Truth is the only way forward for a good argument.
Appealing to hate tribalism and a lot of other things works too but you’re never going to be in the right if you go that route
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i’m at the point where i’m fearing that in the future people will look back on this as a great speech that was ignored for political reasons, and that it’s where we had a chance do to the right thing and we didn’t.
…if the ruling government allows this to be seen at all.
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I was tempted to make a snarky #ThisTimeWe’veGotHim joke, but the Democrats have probably played their shitty hand here as well as they could have, and certainly better than most of us expected them to. They did the right thing knowing there was almost no hope of swaying the GOP, when it would have been much safer for them to sit back and whinge about how unfair everything was. Good for them, whatever the outcome.*
*spoiler alert: straight-line party vote with “moderates” like Collins/Romney/Murkowski tut-tutting all the Democrats who behaved in such an undignified manner on the precious Senate floor and telling us that we need to turn to the investigation of the Bidens now to root out the real corruption
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Here’s what one of my Senators said after the speech -
“This president is the one that provided lethal aid to Ukraine. When I begged President Obama to do it, he wouldn’t do it,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said after Thursday’s Senate session, referring to the Obama administration’s refusal to send congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in 2015.
Portman said that, although he did not believe Trump’s actions were appropriate, that was different from voting to remove him from office."
Portman is a total scum and needs to be tossed out of Ohio and the senate as soon as possible.
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One thing has become clear about the Republicans over the last 3 years. They are scared of Trump. None of them liked Trump when he was running against them in the primaries. They surely don’t like him now. However, their “billionaires first, working-class last” policies have alienated them from most voters. Trump, although lying and using xenophobia to do so, directly appealed to the working class in a number of critical states.
With Trump, the GOP has a small chance of keeping power 4 more years. Without him, they will lose the small amount of working-class support that he gained for them, and have almost no chance of keeping power.
Trump’s boast that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and get away with it is the truest thing he’s ever uttered.
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Not even out of the cloakroom.
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Sadly, it won’t mean shit.
A for effort though.
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This is a historic moment. It is a moment to look back on in a long lifetime. It should matter to everyone.
I would ask all of my fellow Americans: Can you put down your phones, your video games, your social media just long enough to listen to or watch this trial? Only 11 Boingboing readers responded to this incredible speech. What is everyone else doing? Why are we unable to stop, listen, and think?
It’s a strong argument. But Trump isn’t on trial here, the GOP is on trial, and they don’t care about anything else except getting reelected. They don’t care that Putin is helping Trump, they care about Putin helping them.
Crime pays.
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Can anyone explain the bit where he rambles about the “old countries”, where it apparently does not matter what is “right”?
here’s a link to that exact part
Is that just plain old American exceptionalism, or something else?
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I’m not an American, but like much of the rest of the world America’s direction matters whether we like it or not.
That said, I’ll offer a bit of dissent to the comments above. I didn’t find Schiff’s speech all that moving. Maybe that’s coloured by the depressing reality that the outcome of the trial is a foregone conclusion. Maybe it’s the fact he is a politician (I think it would have made more sense for an unelected lawyer present the arguments on behalf of the Dems).
It’s all bold-faced lying from the GOP, but nobody should be so naive to think the truth was ever going to matter here.
It was also the wrong horse to bet on. From everything I have seen, the outcomes of the Russia investigation would have been stronger grounds for impeachment and had more political impact, even if the outcome of a senate trial would have been similar. A few Republicans may have been willing to abandon Trump over Russia, but not Ukraine. A lot of Americans think America should be able to withold aid, that there is nothing wrong with quid pro quo.
America really is staring down a pivotal time in its history and I’m not sure it will be able to recover.
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Everyone else has put down their phones, games, etc. to do other things, like work. It’s the middle of a weekday in North America at least, where most Boingers reside.
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astounding that the republicans will meet this with lame excuses to keep a criminal in the white house.
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