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Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (115764)	3/26/2019 3:34:01 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 362509

I have never once said it is "no consequence." I have said it is of no LEGAL consequence. There is a difference. Indeed. What I have long been hearing from you wrt Trump's actions and trying to understand is that only the ones that amount to actionable crimes matter to you. You don't care what he's done--it's all OK with you--so long as it doesn't reach the threshold of conviction in a court of law. Which seems an extraordinarily low bar for a public servant. We've been discussing this on and off for years. I'm quite sure I didn't misunderstand. Not that it matters. The matter is only interesting to me up until such time as I have definitively figured it out and stuck it in a box. It is morally wrong...can you please explain where you are drawing the line? That's just it. I am not drawing a line for criminality. The criminality lines are already drawn for the most part. I have no interest in disrupting the legal system. But there is a sliding scale for behavior and personal characteristics. Lines are appropriately drawn in different places for different purposes, places other than the criminality line. Why do we have criminal law? Why are some things criminal or some degree of things criminal and others merely offensive or immoral? Things that we make crimes and the standards we set for conviction are things that are bad enough that we are prepared to go to the mat on them wrt resources, to punish the offenders, to deter potential offenders, to get the perpetrators out of society for our protection. For lesser offenses we rely on social opprobrium and informal penalties. Now, sometimes we set up systems and measures for one purpose and end up using them for another purpose that may or may not perfectly fit. SSN is an example of that. A seven day week is another. Or we may use a softball field for baseball or the converse even though the mound and the outfield fences are not quite in the right places because it's what is available and we can make do. Still, that's not optimal. A tailored field works better. So, what about our criminality standard. Do we use it for entrance into college? No, because the bar is too low. We expect college students to not only not be criminals but to be smart and diligent and motivated and cooperative, etc. Likewise, we, at least most of us, don't use the criminality standard for our government officials. We expect them to be much, much better than merely not criminals. And we draw a line even higher for marrying our sons and daughters, as I mentioned up-thread. Back to drawing lines and sliding scales. We have sliding scales of bad behavior. We draw the criminality line across the scale where we do for the purpose described above. We draw the college line and the public official and the son-in-law lines at other places along the continuum, places that suit that particular utilization. Using the criminality line as a threshold for supporting or not supporting a public official is seems not only not apt to me but positively bizarre.