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[sebastian_dangerfield]

It means that sometimes you pretend you are just describing what Trump says, but you also make clear that you believe it.

Nope. I'm guessing how Trump will react. Could not be a different thing.

For example, you repeatedly said Judge Berman Jackson was "supposed to" avoid saying the sorts of things judges commonly say after convictions about the perpetrator's crimes.

She is supposed to stick to the issues before her. But can she say whatever she likes? Absolutely. And if it incurs a response, she has to live what that response.

Let's be totally clear: There is no law, ethical standard, rule or any other precedent that says that Judge Berman Jackson shouldn't have said what she said.

Generally a judge sticks to what's before a judge and doesn't assume facts. But again, there is no rule requiring it.

What you really mean is, by saying something that Trump would object to in a public way, she was going to become the target of criticism by him and his followers.

Yup. As I said, I was anticipating what I'd do in Stone's or Trump's shoes. She left the door open.

"Supposed to" is not descriptive language -- it's normative.

This connection you're struggling to make is clever, but you can't build the bridge you need. That a judge is supposed to stick to issues before her and not opine as to facts she can't know is a normal concept. The suggestion it is a concept that Trump has invented and I am internalizing is bizarre.

Trump hasn't commented to my knowledge on Berman's use of "covering up" yet. Which kind of undoes your whole argument. If he does, and he does as I said he will, he'd be internalizing me rather than the other way around.

You said "supposed to" because you don't just describe his shit, you sometimes believe it.

Yes, I have internalized that which he's not said yet and might not say. Did you even think about linear time when you were authoring this post?

You have internalized it.

You have it all wrong. I am the puppet master. Watch how Trump says exactly what I said he'll say. He's internalizing me. (God that word is shite... I feel dumb using it.)

But you also are not one of Trump's supporters, so when you're pushed on it you back away from what you've said, and pretend that you're just a dispassionate observer, describing the follies of the age but not getting caught up in believing any of it.

That's exactly the point. But I'm not dispassionate. I'm interested in the entropy at hand. Trump's just a match on gas. The unraveling he's causing has been years in the making. The system is rotten and the discrediting of it helps to crash it so it can be rebooted. You seem to dread that for some strange reason. You're very conservative, defensive of the institutions.

The idea that politics is an amoral game with no rules is Trumpian.

No. It's reality. Anyone who's been near it at any point for the last 800 years has reached that conclusion. To call that an innovation of trump's is deeply insulting to billions of intuitive minds who've surmised politics as dressed up pretexts and games masking underlying grasps for and exertion of power by more often than not amoral actors.

Neoliberalism, the socioeconomic ethos of the age, is dressed up nihilism. What cave on Mars have you been hiding in for the past 40 years?

It's what people like Judge Berman Jackson oppose. If you believe this, then you're in the bag for Trump, just not self-aware enough to own it.

That's a swell civics lesson, Senator Smith. But I've believed its mostly that for a whole hell of a lot longer than Donald Trump has been in politics. So again, I guess I can assume Trump is internalizing me and the billions of people who think like me?

We're all lawyers, and we all get how the law is like a game. The idea that it's *just* a game is the sort of thing that is exciting to teenagers, but that most people grow out of. And you obviously don't believe it, for example when you talk about criminal justice reform. You just like the cynical pose.

The law isn't so much a game as one of various battlefields on which games of power are often played. Politics, commerce, military interventions... There are numerous arenas in which power is sought and exerted in amoral "games."

You focus on the law like its the pinnacle, the game trumping (god help me) all others. You seem to think it's the one that must be protected, beyond reproach, and not have its authority tested. I disagree. It's a system like any other, and if one can hack it, good on him.

My objection to criminal justice abuses reaches back to my earlier point about punching down. The man in the dock, even if he's rich, is up against the most amoral and vicious adversary in the world when the govt comes after him. He often barely stands a chance. A system that allows that isn't deserving of comparison to a game. It's more predatory... something else. Something really rotten, and deserving of being discredited.