{"id":10347,"date":"2021-01-08T19:14:39","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T00:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10347"},"modified":"2021-01-08T19:14:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-09T00:14:39","slug":"what-he-deserves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=10347","title":{"rendered":"What he deserves"},"content":{"rendered":"

In light of Trump’s Twitter suspension, my wife remarked: He deserved it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He certainly did, but I am still of two minds about this one. More importantly, I am not at all certain that it is wise to call for criminal prosecution against him after he leaves office.<\/p>\n

Not that he doesn’t deserve it. He deserves it a hundred times over.<\/p>\n

But asking what he deserves is the wrong question.<\/p>\n

Here is the right question: What will make the world, American democracy in particular, a better place years from now?<\/p>\n

Vindictively dealing with politicians, no matter how badly they deserve it, is unlikely to accomplish that. In fact, it may create a precedent that will make it that much harder to remove future miscreants from office, that much more likely that they’ll cling to power, through unlawful means if necessary.<\/p>\n

And make no mistake about it: the next wannabe despot will be a lot smarter, a lot more skillful than Trump.<\/p>\n

And for all we know, the next wannabe despot will be driven by a bigger-than-life ideology, a messianic complex, a desire to change the world, as opposed to mere narcissistic, infantile egocentrism. And that person will be a lot more dangerous than Trump has ever been.<\/p>\n<\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In light of Trump’s Twitter suspension, my wife remarked: He deserved it. He certainly did, but I am still of two minds about this one. More importantly, I am not at all certain that it is wise to call for criminal prosecution against him after he leaves office. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. He […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10349,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10347\/revisions\/10349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}