Kevin D. Williamson
"What’s Behind the Democrats’ Impeachment Gambit?"
"They think anytime a Republican is elected president, there must have been something 'illegitimate' going on."
National Review, September 26, 2019
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/trump-impeachment-inquiry-democrats-refuse-to-accept-republican-electoral-victory/
Kevin Williamson introduces his very first take on the Whistleblower scandal with contextually significant pieces of information about his own beliefs and biases about the current President of the United States. Following this, he takes a brief and objective look at the American structure of the Presidency and its varying public reactions. Despite the pure objectivity and neutrality that the concept of impeachment exhibits, however, Williamson turns it into a partisan attack on the Democrats for their actions and words as both a force in national politics and as a model for American democracy in the past 20 years. He does, however, make logical connections between the contexts of current events now and those of years past, as well as a reasonable political analysis that anyone who lives in a democracy should be able to understand. These applications of logos mostly compensate for the general turn-off of a piece of journalism that this would otherwise be, as it is safe to assume that most Americans are exhausted of the back-and-forth, empty ad hominem attacks that modern journalists rely on as a source of financial support and career experience. What Williamson fails to include, however, is a recognition of an opposing argument. He makes an implicit claim at the end of the text that boils down to a statement that Republicans will be likely to act in similar ways when placed in a similar situation as the Democrats are in now, but after just having denounced all of these tactics that the Democrats have employed, it seems Williamson fails to eliminate a possible hypocritical interpretation of his argument. Without having read his other articles and critiques, it is impossible for the reader to know that Williamson is also often critical of the Republican party for following in the Democrats' footsteps, and so the reader is left without sufficient information to draw positive conclusions about the validity of Williamson's argument.
"They think anytime a Republican is elected president, there must have been something 'illegitimate' going on."
National Review, September 26, 2019
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/trump-impeachment-inquiry-democrats-refuse-to-accept-republican-electoral-victory/
Kevin Williamson introduces his very first take on the Whistleblower scandal with contextually significant pieces of information about his own beliefs and biases about the current President of the United States. Following this, he takes a brief and objective look at the American structure of the Presidency and its varying public reactions. Despite the pure objectivity and neutrality that the concept of impeachment exhibits, however, Williamson turns it into a partisan attack on the Democrats for their actions and words as both a force in national politics and as a model for American democracy in the past 20 years. He does, however, make logical connections between the contexts of current events now and those of years past, as well as a reasonable political analysis that anyone who lives in a democracy should be able to understand. These applications of logos mostly compensate for the general turn-off of a piece of journalism that this would otherwise be, as it is safe to assume that most Americans are exhausted of the back-and-forth, empty ad hominem attacks that modern journalists rely on as a source of financial support and career experience. What Williamson fails to include, however, is a recognition of an opposing argument. He makes an implicit claim at the end of the text that boils down to a statement that Republicans will be likely to act in similar ways when placed in a similar situation as the Democrats are in now, but after just having denounced all of these tactics that the Democrats have employed, it seems Williamson fails to eliminate a possible hypocritical interpretation of his argument. Without having read his other articles and critiques, it is impossible for the reader to know that Williamson is also often critical of the Republican party for following in the Democrats' footsteps, and so the reader is left without sufficient information to draw positive conclusions about the validity of Williamson's argument.
It is disappointing to see that not just the Democrats, but both of our major forces and mediums of representation in national politics be more obsessed with political strategy than the interest of society. The author is right--the Democrats have indeed been recently fond of resorting to tactics like impeachment in order to establish more political power and ideological control, all of this under the disguise of "re-stabilizing" the country and the economy. The author is also right in respect to the Republicans' imitation of such tactics. If anyone today can confidently advocate for the impeachment of Trump under these circumstances, then they absolutely cannot also be opposed to the conviction of Bill Clinton unless they are without knowledge of the striking similarity in both criminal charges and national status.
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