the discussion branches out (exchange with Paul/Daeguowl)

Four days ago, I wrote a post titled "BREAKING: 9-0, SCOTUS rules in favor of Trump's ballot eligibility." This prompted a response from occasional commenter Daeguowl/Paul, who claimed that my title was misleading and "ballot eligibility" wasn't the issue SCOTUS was dealing with. We had a civil exchange in the comments thread below the post, then Paul started to get a bit personal, questioning my life-choices. I thought the issues he brought up were worth dealing with in a fuller post, so I've copied Paul's latest comment and will respond point-by-point here in a new post. Paul's comments are in boldface.

Perhaps we are disagreeing over different things. Is he eligible to be voted for? Yes.

At least we agree here!

Is he eligible to stand? There is as yet no definitive ruling on that. 

I'm not sure what you mean by "stand" in this context. Stand for election?

Magaloons would say hell yeah, and plenty of others (including the state of Colorado would argue no.

And they're basing their argument on an absolutely insane interpretation of the Constitution. The SCOTUS ruling essentially points out that insanity.

I'll concede there's a rich irony here: conservatives cheering the ruling are essentially siding with the idea that a determination of "insurrection" has to happen at the federal level. Conservatives normally prefer to side with states' rights, not the federal government. I'm sure some rightie will read this and ding me for saying that.

To flip the switch, if we go back to the halcyon days of Obama, Trump is on record questioning whether Obama was eligible to run for President because he claimed he was born in Kenya or Indonesia or whatever. Obama ended up on the [ballot], so he was eligible to be voted for but the birther nuts would never (correct me if I'm wrong on this) acknowledge that he was technically eligible to run.

I don't know whether you mean "halcyon days with Obama" sarcastically or seriously. Very few on the right would call Obama's two terms the "halcyon days." Race relations deteriorated (see Trayvon Martin), as did the US's standing as a global power. You may recall how, when Obama visited China at the end of his second term, China couldn't even be bothered to send a color guard to greet him, such was the level of China's disrespect for the man. Obama's ACA (health-insurance policy), far from making things better for American patients, ended up costing millions of Americans several times more for their insurance premiums, and the country is still paying the price for that. I could go on and on, but—not "halcyon days."

As to the issue you raise—Birtherism—yes, Trump was (and maybe still is) a Birther, a position I find utterly ridiculous. Throw that one on the fire along with "Michelle Obama is a man," "Barack is a Muslim," "9/11 was an inside job," and any number of other truly stupid conspiracy theories. Trump was silly to bring the issue up, and I roundly condemn his stance.

Aside: we do have to distinguish, though, between conspiracy theories that are loony and ones that have been borne out by the evidence. The Wuhan lab-leak theory was originally dismissed as right-wing paranoia, but it is now accepted as the best working theory we have for COVID's origins (and it points, ironically, to America's own culpability in funding the development of the virus, making us significantly culpable for the pandemic—something I've written about several times on this blog). A lot about COVID turned out to be bullshit, from the shot's ability to prevent infection and spread to the supposed effectiveness of masking and lockdowns. Our authorities all owe us a big, groveling apology.

As to the larger issue of Trump's judgment: I think a lot of conservatives will at least quietly agree that Trump is a terrible judge of character given his staffing picks (he liked hiring ass-kissers), and the number of them who turned out to be Judases and left his administration in a dramatic huff, then wrote tell-all books (that mostly bombed). Trump also still bizarrely brags about Operation Warp Speed, which put out the COVID shots that most righties turned against (and the left won't credit him with). Many conservatives are nonplussed by how Trump continues to tout this as a triumph despite how much his voter base hated the shots—evidence Trump is in a truth-deflecting bubble of sorts. 

So Trump isn't perfect on every issue, even among righties. He's often wildly wrong, and he has the frustrating tendency never to admit when he's wrong (but—wake-up call—he's not unique in that regard). All that said, you can't fall into the trap of the single-issue voter who throws out the baby with the bath water. Trump's overall priorities don't seem unreasonable at all: a strong America on the global stage, strong borders, prioritizing your own country first, pushing back against woke and PC insanity in education and entertainment, a strong and less-regulated economy. As so many video clips on YouTube show, Trump's priorities were shared by the Democrats of yesteryear; far from being Hitler (as every GOP candidate gets labeled), Trump is a moderate milquetoast, and people get wild-eyed about him because of their own insane insecurities. Who's actually pushing us to the brink of World War III right now?

Even now with Biden, is he eligible to make decisions as President. Yes, he's signing things and whatever every day. Do Magaloons believe he is eligible to call himself President? No, because in their eyes there was voter fraud.

I might disagree with your phrasing, but essentially yes: conservatives refer to Biden as "the asterisk president" or "81millionvotesLOL" or any number of other labels. I myself sometimes refer to him merely as the "current occupant of the Oval Office." What the left can't seem to process is that there's a mass of evidence out there about electoral shenanigans—covered-up windows, rejection of the need for voter ID, poll watchers suddenly booted from their posts while the vote-count continued, the sudden arrival at 3 a.m. of truckloads of all-Biden votes, ballots apparently filled out by dead people, vote counts that were over 100% of the local voting population, etc., not to mention how the system was jiggered to allow for vote-counting to continue well past Election Day, which doesn't happen in most other countries. And all of this gets dismissed with a casual "LOL" and no substantive counterargument.

There are Trump-sympathetic people like Tim Pool who nevertheless believe that the 2020 election was legitimate because, as Pool put it, more people hated Trump, and that hatred was all it took to motivate people to vote. So Pool is now optimistic that, with Biden's shitty track record as president on full display, people will realize that Trump was and is easily the superior choice—in terms of policies if not in terms of his abrasive personality and character.

My original point related to your title, and I only picked you up on it because in all the years I've been reading your blog, you've always come across as a stickler for grammar and clear meaning. 

I say my title was perfectly clear, and that you're way overthinking this.

I admit I stole the phrasing from the Styx video in that post. Please watch the video. At the beginning of his spiel, Styx says this:

...SCOTUS finally releasing its decision with regards to Trump's ballot eligibility. This was a challenge against the Colorado State Supreme Court, in which they ruled that Donald Trump was not eligible to run for the presidency. Basically, their premise was "muh fee-fees"—their premise was quite literally, "Well, we feel that he participated in and fomented insurrection, so he's not allowed to run. Look at Section 3." The problem was that was never going to stand up before SCOTUS. There was always a near-100% chance SCOTUS was gonna rule in Trump's favor. What makes this ruling different is it was a unanimous decision. Yes—even hard-line, Biden-appointee, far-leftists on the Court like Ketanji ruled in Trump's favor, saying, "Yes, he is allowed to run." And the premise is quite simple, and I pointed it out long ago when the case first began: Donald Trump has never been found guilty of an insurrection. He has never been charged with insurrectionist activities. There was an impeachment in Congress that led to an acquittal in the Senate. Well, that's not meaningful. There was never any other court case... no duly incepted court ever tried him for insurrection, sedition, or anything like that. 

[I think Styx is using incepted incorrectly.]

Translation: Trump was accused of insurrection by Congress but never found guilty. Even if he had been found guilty, Congress is not a court of law—it's a legislative body—so there would have been no judicial precedent even if Congress had found Trump guilty.

Styx said the crucial phrase "ballot eligibility," I used it, so if you have a beef with the wording, you'll need to take it up with Styx. To be sure, his word choice seemed fine to me; I take responsibility for relaying what he said. My feeling is that Styx is phrasing the issue this way because this is how most Americans see the issue: it's about getting Trump on the ballot (i.e., making sure he's eligible to be voted for). And the practical effect of the decision was that Trump was put back on the ballot, and he won the Colorado primary, 66.3% to 33.4%. Would that have been possible had Trump been off the ballot? This was all about ballot eligibility.

So there's no question of misleading or unclear wording when people understand each other.

If this was one of those stupid questions on the 수능, where you are given a passage of text and asked to choose the title that best fits the passage, I would suggest the most appropriate title would be something like "Supreme Court denies Colorado's Petition to have Trump [excluded] from the [b]allot" rather than "Supreme Court affirms Trump's eligibility to stand". 

Again with the word "stand," which I think you're going to have to explain to me. Perhaps in your home culture, everyone knows exactly what you mean, but since we're talking cross-culturally, I don't get what you're saying (like in the context of cooking, when the Brits say "grill" when they mean "broiler"), so ironically, there's a clarity issue here. The issue isn't your fault, but it's making it hard for me to understand what, technically, you mean. I'm assuming "stand" means something like "appear on the ballot." Which is indeed what happened in the Colorado primary—Trump appeared on the ballot.

But please clarify.

Technically, you are right in that he is eligible to stand because the Supreme Court told Colorado to naff off, but I think the jury is still out on his eligibility vis à vis having committed insurrection. 

This is Styx's and other commentators' point: outside the congressional context of impeachment, Trump was neither charged with nor found guilty of insurrection, so on what grounds can Colorado make a ruling based on presumed guilt? They have nothing. It's a house built on sand. Hence the 9-0 decision that, to me, seems based purely on the illogic of the CO Supreme Court. SCOTUS found it obvious that Colorado had no argument.

On another note, I wonder if, from your position as an apparently right-leaning person, do you ever feel a dichotomy between your political views and your situation as a [Y]ank living in Korea, who is somewhat acclimated to life in Korea, but is definitely not Koreanized. 

We both enjoy favourable immigration regulations here. We both enjoy the benefits of free trade in being able to find goodies from home. We both enjoy the benefits of relatively cheap healthcare. (If you'd've had your stroke back home, you would probably have been completely fucked) etc. etc. 

I haven't taken the Political Compass survey in a while, but I have been creeping rightward for some time, especially with the American left having become as insane as it is. I still see myself, though, as close to being a centrist. Lefties, deep in their own delusions, see me as a frothing rightie who lies awake at night plotting the downfall of black people.

Yes, I probably would've been fucked because the US health care system is over-regulated and not nearly as free-market as the Korean system (see this post and scroll down to the part about Italy vs. Korea). Americans make do with insurance and the like, so it's not like the cartoonish stereotype that, if you're hit by a car while crossing the street in the US, you'll just have to die.

And to be fair, the Canadian system probably isn't as bad as US conservatives make it out to be, e.g., everyone with Stage 4 cancer has to wait six months to see a doctor. We're all comforted by our fantasies and stereotypes, I imagine. There's some truth to them, I'm sure, but maybe not as much as we'd like to believe.

On a personal note: the Korean system is far from perfect, as I've documented here.

Personally, I could never see myself voting Tory, because of the harsh immigration rules they've put in place against international couples that effectively leaves a lot of Brits with foreign spouses and children exiled from the UK, because they can't meet the ridiculously high financial requirements. Effectively, I see living as an expat long-term in one country is fairly incongruent with being a conservative voter. 

I imagine if the next President of Korea turns out to be a Trump clone, our lives here would take a turn for the worse. If you have any thoughts on this, I'd be interested to [hear] them.

I doubt Korea will ever see a Trump clone. Even the conservatives here seem to lean toward a strong government, and Korea will never legislate anything like the 2nd Amendment, so private ownership of firearms will never happen. Nor will Korea see anything like the Javier Milei phenomenon. The guy is an absolute bulldozer, dismantling government infrastructure left and right in an attempt to make Argentina's economy more viable. What Korean politician of either side would have the guts to do something like that, despite all of the rampant corruption here? It's going to be a while before we see a real reformist in Korea.

About that last part:

Effectively, I see living as an expat long-term in one country is fairly incongruent with being a conservative voter.

I've made all the wrong life-choices!

Well, first, I'm not as conservative as you might think I am. I am definitely leaning more and more rightward these days, as I get older and wiser (what's the quote about liberals, conservatives, hearts, and brains?). I also didn't choose to come to Korea based on my political orientation, but I admit that politics can definitely be a factor in where one ends up. Would I love life in quasi-socialist France? Or with England's freedoms drying up and withering in the face of mass immigration and governmental political correctness (see all those PJW and Konstantin Kisin videos I keep embedding), would I enjoy living in England? Or hey, how about the US? If I ever did go back to the States (and I know I've said this before), I'd head to a place like Wyoming: big, open, empty, and relatively free.

I complain about life in Korea all the time, but on balance, life here is stable and secure, certainly better than any Democrat-run shithole city in the US, and for me as an introvert, there are advantages to being an outsider (except when there aren't!), e.g., generally being left alone (except when the crazies occasionally seize upon you). As for "benefits of free trade"—no. Korea is generally anti-competitive (Über, fruits at the grocery) and does what it can to shut out cheaper foreign goods of equal quality. Free trade is not an accepted concept here. Granted, trade in South Korea is far freer than in North Korea (see the nighttime satellite pic of the peninsula), but that's not really saying much. Korea could go a lot further in terms of free trade, but it still seems, vestigially, to treasure its "hermit" status.

Will Korea curdle into a PC nightmare, and will I then be forced to leave? Korea has a deep demographic problem with birth rates right now, and I've been postmodernism creeping into Korean liberal-arts academe (thanks to English profs' papers that I've proofread in the past). I only just saw a poster for the rock musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"; I have to wonder how Koreans are going to like that. The musical's not going to tear down society by any means, but like a resisting giant clam, Korea is only grudgingly opening up to the world in some ways.

But as I once remarked to my boss, Korea now feels a lot like America in the 1980s—simpler, more orderly. Part of that, though, may admittedly come from my non-fluency in Korean: there might be a whole roiling moil out there that I'm just deaf to.

Where to move, then? And should "congruency" or "consistency" with my politics be my primary motivation? I didn't come to Korea because of politics, and even as political as I've become in recent years, I don't see myself as political first. That's why I'm always disappointed when a friend drops me as a friend because he's political first. To me, politics is important, but it's not as deep as, say, religion. I can get along fine with people of different political stripes, and it's a measure of my tolerance that I'm still here in Korea after two decades. Of course politics, as a criterion for determining where to move, can take center stage if you're considering a move to a place like, say, China. 

I had a coworker at my current job, a committed leftist, who decided the time had come to move to China. He said he was conversationally fluent in Chinese, and he'd been there before, so he moved. I give him credit for putting his money where his mouth is. But a lot of Westerners, even the lefties, come to realize China is only a step behind North Korea in terms of human rights and liberties, and sure enough, my coworker came back to Korea, although he couldn't admit why.

So it's a nuanced question as to whether the place you move to needs to be consistent with your politics. How much difference can you tolerate? I can tolerate a good measure, but my tolerance isn't infinite. I'm sorry if that's not a satisfactory response, but basically, it comes down to: can I exist here with a comfortable routine that I can depart from on occasion? For me, the answer is yes, and that's why I've been in Korea all this time. But who knows? Something might happen that sours me on the whole country, and I might turn into one of those expats who say, "Fuck Korea" and leave. You never know.

PS: Paul, FWIW, I think you're more aware of US politics than many Americans are. I also don't think your arguments are irrational; I think they come from a well-thought-out position. I simply happen to disagree. Two people say "bread" in their respective languages, and two radically different notions of bread appear in their skulls. These things happen. At least we can dialogue even if we come to no firm agreement. Agreement isn't always the goal of dialogue.