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AlexaShyamaFirstEssay 4 - 24 May 2025 - Main.AlexaShyama
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< | Should We Be Calling Trump a Fascist? | >
> | Language: Its Leverage in Law | | | | |
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< | -- By AlexaShyama - 20 Feb 2025 | >
> | -- By AlexaShyama - 23 May 2025 | | | | |
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< | The Wikipedia definition of a fascist leader is of a far-right, dictatorial and ultra nationalist authority figure, who believes in militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, and a natural social hierarchy. | >
> | Coming into law school, I was already aware of the power of words to influence public discourse and private opinion. This course further taught me how this power could also have relevance to my professional life. Professor Moglen reminded us, through lectures and readings, not to be blinded by repetitive and pervasive language, but to use our powers of critical thinking and our resources of information to drill down to provable facts and discernible outcomes. | | | | |
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I'm not sure why this is the place to begin. "An encyclopedia defines X as Y" is not am obvious introduction to a question for us to think about together.
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> | Is it 'Fascism' or is it Greed? | | | | |
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> | In one of the earliest readings assigned for the course, Timothy Snyder presents a definition of fascism that seems created from a description of Donald Trump. The first defining feature is that a fascist does not need to attach meaning to his words, tell a coherent or consistent story, or even ensure that his stories fit external reality. Classic examples of Trump rhetoric include the depiction of USAID as the deep state, or the assertion that pets were being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Another trait of a fascist, is the need to name an enemy. The enemy need not have any basis in reality, but the idea should exploit vulnerabilities of the audience. Playing on public fears regarding rising unemployment and competition for college admissions and jobs, Trump’s declared enemies included the Haitian immigrants in Springfield or women and transgenders taking jobs from American men. Third, fascists preach that government is the source of all evil and seek to limit it. There is a purpose to this rhetoric, for weakened government cannot control oligarchs or institute progressive taxation to provide a welfare state.
Trump may indeed be a fascist, a despot, a rightwing nationalist, a racist, or all of these. However, by labelling and stereotyping Trump, or making fun of him, we run the risk of distracting from the venality of his actions. By focusing on the spectacle of the leader, rather than on the consequences of his actions, we ensure that our emotions of amusement, anger or fear do not go beyond the limited attention span required for a cartoon or its caption. It is easier to laugh or frown and click to forward, rather than to ask ourselves the question: Who is affected by this action and how? | | | | |
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< | In a reading assigned for the course, Timothy Snyder presents a definition of fascism that seems created from a description of Donald Trump. The first defining feature is that a fascist does not need to attach meaning to the words he uses. A fascist does not need to tell a coherent or consistent story, he does not even need to ensure that his stories fit external reality. This is clearly Trumpian – the classic examples being the depiction of USAID as the deep state, or the assertion that pets were being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Another trait of a fascist, is the need to name an enemy. Once again, the enemy need not have any basis in reality, but it should exploit vulnerabilities of the audience. Playing on increasing unemployment and competition for college admissions and jobs, Trump named the Haitian immigrants in Springfield as the enemy. Or the transgender immigrants stealing jobs from Americans.
Third, fascists and oligarchs preach that government is the source of all evil and seek to limit it. A weakened government can neither control the oligarchs nor provide sound infrastructure or a welfare state for the populace. In such conditions, one’s own neighbors become one’s enemy in the resultant competition for limited resources.
Trump may indeed by a fascist, or a despot, or a rightwing nationalist, or a racist. He may be all of these, as the classical definition runs. However, by labelling Trump, or stereotyping him, or even making fun of him, we run the risk of distracting from the venality of what he does. By focusing on the spectacle of the leader, rather than on his actions or on the consequences of his actions, we ensure that our emotions (amusement, anger, fear) do not go beyond the limited attention span required for a cartoon or its caption or a sound bite. It is easier to laugh or frown and to click to forward, rather than to ask ourselves the question: Who is affected by this action and how? | >
> | While Gen Z is busy flipping through their cell phones, chortling over memes of orange ducks and Hitlerian outfits, the world as they knew it from their lived experience and their constitutional law textbooks, is being changed by the day. Hard-won women's reproductive rights are being cut back, welfare departments and multilateral aid agencies are being stripped of funds, political opponents are being targeted by presidential orders, science and higher education is being reduced to dispensable luxuries. Unlike what the late night TV comedians would have us think, Trump is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Major policy decisions, almost every one of them with legal implications, are being translated into executive orders, and only a few of them are being challenged in court rooms. To see these orders as the actions of a fascist, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions. Equally misleading is the use of mockery, both of the social media and the Saturday Night Live variety, that reassures us that freedom of speech and opposition still exists in this country – because it tends to take away the need to reflect on the deception and inhumanity being translated into policy decisions around us. | | | | |
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I'm not sure why this follows, even as a "risk." We can limit our sentences to verbs and nouns, on the ground that every adjective and adverb "risks distracting" us from who is doing what to whom by describing how or what it looks and feels like. But so tight a distinction between essence and accident seems, well, reductive. doesn't it?
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> | Words: A Weapon and A Shield | | | | |
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< | Extraneous Effects of Trump's Decisions | >
> | But I note that courtroom proceedings, especially in jury trials, can sometimes play out quite like these political media circuses. Thus, strategies like grandstanding are just as usable by lawyers in courtrooms as by media content creators. The Goebbelsian concept of repeating a lie many times till it becomes the truth, has been used by fascist dictators and canny lawyers alike, and I have realised that if I accept and proceed with unproven statements without challenge, it could get to a point where it is difficult to parse out the facts from the fabrications because the truth has become so embroiled in assumptions. | | | | |
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< | Not even students on law school campuses are talking at any depth about how the world as they knew it from their lives and their constitutional law textbooks, is being changed by the day. Major policy decisions, almost every one of them with legal implications, are being translated into executive orders, and some of them are being challenged in court rooms, but there is no discussion in cafes or study rooms or library corners. | >
> | In my Criminal Law course, I read Professor Harcourt's paper on Imagery and Adjudication, where he discussed this very concept – that even in the courtroom, repeating age-old buzzwords and false claims can stick with juries and judges, even when there is no legal basis to them. I realize that while this strategy could be a weapon I employ myself when I go against adverse parties, I should be wary of the power that the language of others has on myself and my ways of thinking.
Countering challenges to the Constitution and democracy may require us to identify and sift out the non-factual statements and rhetoric and focus on their intent or their consequences instead of ridiculing them. Similarly, while humor and sarcasm can get the attention of judges and juries, it is the framing of the right questions and the careful and painstaking gathering of the evidence that will work to affect the desired outcome in a courtroom. | | | | |
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Are you sure? Seems to me I spend a couple of hours a day in conversations of this kind most days, not to mention what I'm writing....
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> | As Professor Moglen reminds us, it is easy to get influenced by the pervasive rhetoric - whether it is from corporate firms urging us to join them and defend Fortune 500 companies rather than do public interest law, or the school itself emphasizing how imperative it is to be part of exclusive organizations like Law Review, or our inner selves pushing us to achieve A pluses all the way, for fear that our legal careers would otherwise be doomed. Just like the witty captions and the black humor can blur the awareness of the damages being inflicted on ethical or constitutional governance in the country, these Macbethian choruses of advice can cloud my perception of my choices as I make decisions for my life as a lawyer. | | | | |
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< | On the other hand, Gen Z is busy flipping through their cell phones, chortling over memes of orange ducks and Hitlerian outfits.In September of last year, New York Governor Eric Adams was prosecuted for corruption. The charges against him included conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and accepting lavish travel perks from Turkish business leaders seeking to buy his influence. In December, Adams met with the President designate at the Mar-a-Lago resort and in January, he was skipping his scheduled city events to attend Trump’s inauguration. And by February, Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal defense team and the acting Deputy Attorney General, was asking prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. Bove wrote that the case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime”. Bove could well have dropped the charges himself. But he wanted someone else in the Justice Department to write their name on the motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Adams.
In view of the manner in which federal departments, media houses and even private law firms rushed to show greater loyalty to the Republican agenda than that of the President himself, this demand of Bove’s should have met with immediate obedience. But surprisingly, interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, of impeccable Republican credentials, refused to drop the charges, and resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. The assistant attorney who led the prosecution, Hagan Scotten, also resigned the next day, writing that the fact that Bove was asking for the charges to be dropped “without prejudice”, amounted to using a carrot (dismissing charges) and stick (threatening to bring the charges back again) approach to induce an elected official to support its objectives. Finally, after Bove threatened to fire all the prosecutors in the Public Integrity department, one of them stepped up to sign the motion.
What Are The Effects?
Perhaps the corruption saga of the New York Mayor affects less people and with less long-lasting consequence than the winding up of USAID. But in all these cases, what Trump is doing is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Behind the diktat in the Adams imbroglio, is what many people are calling “a deeply corrupt deal”. Trusted lieutenants were needed to carry out this deal, and that too, under their own names. To see this as a fascist in action, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions. Equally misleading is the use of mockery, both of the social media and the SNL variety, to reassure ourselves that freedom of speech and opposition still exists in the country - because it tends to take away the need to reflect on the deception and inhumanity being translated into policy decisions around us.
As I think we agreed in conversation, where you want to take this draft is more easily done without the Adams part, which intrudes more than it illuminates. I think we also gain from an effort to distinguish between the way we describe the political world around us in relation to history—that is, our understanding of the role of contingency (including human character) in social life—as opposed to reporting—that is, the establishing of a record of events sufficient to explain our decisions and states of present mind. What you do all day, as a student and a citizen, may not depend on whether you think of Donald Trump as a fascist, to be sure. But when you consider, from the other end of your career, the decisions that you made in starting out your professional life, what you thought on that subject now and how your views changed over the intervening years are likely to matter quite a bit.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
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AlexaShyamaFirstEssay 3 - 26 Apr 2025 - Main.EbenMoglen
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | Should We Be Calling Trump a Fascist? | | | The Wikipedia definition of a fascist leader is of a far-right, dictatorial and ultra nationalist authority figure, who believes in militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, and a natural social hierarchy. | |
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I'm not sure why this is the place to begin. "An encyclopedia defines X as Y" is not am obvious introduction to a question for us to think about together.
| | | In a reading assigned for the course, Timothy Snyder presents a definition of fascism that seems created from a description of Donald Trump. The first defining feature is that a fascist does not need to attach meaning to the words he uses. A fascist does not need to tell a coherent or consistent story, he does not even need to ensure that his stories fit external reality. This is clearly Trumpian – the classic examples being the depiction of USAID as the deep state, or the assertion that pets were being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Another trait of a fascist, is the need to name an enemy. Once again, the enemy need not have any basis in reality, but it should exploit vulnerabilities of the audience. Playing on increasing unemployment and competition for college admissions and jobs, Trump named the Haitian immigrants in Springfield as the enemy. Or the transgender immigrants stealing jobs from Americans.
Third, fascists and oligarchs preach that government is the source of all evil and seek to limit it. A weakened government can neither control the oligarchs nor provide sound infrastructure or a welfare state for the populace. In such conditions, one’s own neighbors become one’s enemy in the resultant competition for limited resources.
Trump may indeed by a fascist, or a despot, or a rightwing nationalist, or a racist. He may be all of these, as the classical definition runs. However, by labelling Trump, or stereotyping him, or even making fun of him, we run the risk of distracting from the venality of what he does. By focusing on the spectacle of the leader, rather than on his actions or on the consequences of his actions, we ensure that our emotions (amusement, anger, fear) do not go beyond the limited attention span required for a cartoon or its caption or a sound bite. It is easier to laugh or frown and to click to forward, rather than to ask ourselves the question: Who is affected by this action and how? | |
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I'm not sure why this follows, even as a "risk." We can limit our sentences to verbs and nouns, on the ground that every adjective and adverb "risks distracting" us from who is doing what to whom by describing how or what it looks and feels like. But so tight a distinction between essence and accident seems, well, reductive. doesn't it?
| | | Extraneous Effects of Trump's Decisions | |
<
< | Not even students on law school campuses are talking at any depth about how the world as they knew it from their lives and their constitutional law textbooks, is being changed by the day. Major policy decisions, almost every one of them with legal implications, are being translated into executive orders, and some of them are being challenged in court rooms, but there is no discussion in cafes or study rooms or library corners. On the other hand, Gen Z is busy flipping through their cell phones, chortling over memes of orange ducks and Hitlerian outfits.In September of last year, New York Governor Eric Adams was prosecuted for corruption. The charges against him included conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and accepting lavish travel perks from Turkish business leaders seeking to buy his influence. In December, Adams met with the President designate at the Mar-a-Lago resort and in January, he was skipping his scheduled city events to attend Trump’s inauguration. And by February, Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal defense team and the acting Deputy Attorney General, was asking prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. Bove wrote that the case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime”. Bove could well have dropped the charges himself. But he wanted someone else in the Justice Department to write their name on the motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Adams. | >
> | Not even students on law school campuses are talking at any depth about how the world as they knew it from their lives and their constitutional law textbooks, is being changed by the day. Major policy decisions, almost every one of them with legal implications, are being translated into executive orders, and some of them are being challenged in court rooms, but there is no discussion in cafes or study rooms or library corners.
Are you sure? Seems to me I spend a couple of hours a day in conversations of this kind most days, not to mention what I'm writing....
On the other hand, Gen Z is busy flipping through their cell phones, chortling over memes of orange ducks and Hitlerian outfits.In September of last year, New York Governor Eric Adams was prosecuted for corruption. The charges against him included conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and accepting lavish travel perks from Turkish business leaders seeking to buy his influence. In December, Adams met with the President designate at the Mar-a-Lago resort and in January, he was skipping his scheduled city events to attend Trump’s inauguration. And by February, Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal defense team and the acting Deputy Attorney General, was asking prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. Bove wrote that the case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime”. Bove could well have dropped the charges himself. But he wanted someone else in the Justice Department to write their name on the motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Adams. | | | In view of the manner in which federal departments, media houses and even private law firms rushed to show greater loyalty to the Republican agenda than that of the President himself, this demand of Bove’s should have met with immediate obedience. But surprisingly, interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, of impeccable Republican credentials, refused to drop the charges, and resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. The assistant attorney who led the prosecution, Hagan Scotten, also resigned the next day, writing that the fact that Bove was asking for the charges to be dropped “without prejudice”, amounted to using a carrot (dismissing charges) and stick (threatening to bring the charges back again) approach to induce an elected official to support its objectives. Finally, after Bove threatened to fire all the prosecutors in the Public Integrity department, one of them stepped up to sign the motion. | | | Perhaps the corruption saga of the New York Mayor affects less people and with less long-lasting consequence than the winding up of USAID. But in all these cases, what Trump is doing is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Behind the diktat in the Adams imbroglio, is what many people are calling “a deeply corrupt deal”. Trusted lieutenants were needed to carry out this deal, and that too, under their own names. To see this as a fascist in action, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions. Equally misleading is the use of mockery, both of the social media and the SNL variety, to reassure ourselves that freedom of speech and opposition still exists in the country - because it tends to take away the need to reflect on the deception and inhumanity being translated into policy decisions around us. | |
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As I think we agreed in conversation, where you want to take this draft is more easily done without the Adams part, which intrudes more than it illuminates. I think we also gain from an effort to distinguish between the way we describe the political world around us in relation to history—that is, our understanding of the role of contingency (including human character) in social life—as opposed to reporting—that is, the establishing of a record of events sufficient to explain our decisions and states of present mind. What you do all day, as a student and a citizen, may not depend on whether you think of Donald Trump as a fascist, to be sure. But when you consider, from the other end of your career, the decisions that you made in starting out your professional life, what you thought on that subject now and how your views changed over the intervening years are likely to matter quite a bit.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines: |
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AlexaShyamaFirstEssay 2 - 20 Feb 2025 - Main.AlexaShyama
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | What Are The Effects? | |
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< | Perhaps the corruption saga of the New York Mayor affects less people and with less long-lasting consequence than the winding up of USAID. But in all these cases, what Trump is doing is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Behind the diktat in the Adams imbroglio, is what many people are calling “a deeply corrupt deal”. Trusted lieutenants were needed to carry out this deal, and that too, under their own names. To see this as a fascist in action, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions. | >
> | Perhaps the corruption saga of the New York Mayor affects less people and with less long-lasting consequence than the winding up of USAID. But in all these cases, what Trump is doing is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Behind the diktat in the Adams imbroglio, is what many people are calling “a deeply corrupt deal”. Trusted lieutenants were needed to carry out this deal, and that too, under their own names. To see this as a fascist in action, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions. Equally misleading is the use of mockery, both of the social media and the SNL variety, to reassure ourselves that freedom of speech and opposition still exists in the country - because it tends to take away the need to reflect on the deception and inhumanity being translated into policy decisions around us. | | |
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AlexaShyamaFirstEssay 1 - 20 Feb 2025 - Main.AlexaShyama
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
Should We Be Calling Trump a Fascist?
-- By AlexaShyama - 20 Feb 2025
The Wikipedia definition of a fascist leader is of a far-right, dictatorial and ultra nationalist authority figure, who believes in militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, and a natural social hierarchy.
In a reading assigned for the course, Timothy Snyder presents a definition of fascism that seems created from a description of Donald Trump. The first defining feature is that a fascist does not need to attach meaning to the words he uses. A fascist does not need to tell a coherent or consistent story, he does not even need to ensure that his stories fit external reality. This is clearly Trumpian – the classic examples being the depiction of USAID as the deep state, or the assertion that pets were being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio.
Another trait of a fascist, is the need to name an enemy. Once again, the enemy need not have any basis in reality, but it should exploit vulnerabilities of the audience. Playing on increasing unemployment and competition for college admissions and jobs, Trump named the Haitian immigrants in Springfield as the enemy. Or the transgender immigrants stealing jobs from Americans.
Third, fascists and oligarchs preach that government is the source of all evil and seek to limit it. A weakened government can neither control the oligarchs nor provide sound infrastructure or a welfare state for the populace. In such conditions, one’s own neighbors become one’s enemy in the resultant competition for limited resources.
Trump may indeed by a fascist, or a despot, or a rightwing nationalist, or a racist. He may be all of these, as the classical definition runs. However, by labelling Trump, or stereotyping him, or even making fun of him, we run the risk of distracting from the venality of what he does. By focusing on the spectacle of the leader, rather than on his actions or on the consequences of his actions, we ensure that our emotions (amusement, anger, fear) do not go beyond the limited attention span required for a cartoon or its caption or a sound bite. It is easier to laugh or frown and to click to forward, rather than to ask ourselves the question: Who is affected by this action and how?
Extraneous Effects of Trump's Decisions
Not even students on law school campuses are talking at any depth about how the world as they knew it from their lives and their constitutional law textbooks, is being changed by the day. Major policy decisions, almost every one of them with legal implications, are being translated into executive orders, and some of them are being challenged in court rooms, but there is no discussion in cafes or study rooms or library corners. On the other hand, Gen Z is busy flipping through their cell phones, chortling over memes of orange ducks and Hitlerian outfits.In September of last year, New York Governor Eric Adams was prosecuted for corruption. The charges against him included conspiracy, wire fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions and accepting lavish travel perks from Turkish business leaders seeking to buy his influence. In December, Adams met with the President designate at the Mar-a-Lago resort and in January, he was skipping his scheduled city events to attend Trump’s inauguration. And by February, Emil Bove, a former member of Trump’s legal defense team and the acting Deputy Attorney General, was asking prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams. Bove wrote that the case had “unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to illegal immigration and violent crime”. Bove could well have dropped the charges himself. But he wanted someone else in the Justice Department to write their name on the motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Adams.
In view of the manner in which federal departments, media houses and even private law firms rushed to show greater loyalty to the Republican agenda than that of the President himself, this demand of Bove’s should have met with immediate obedience. But surprisingly, interim Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, of impeccable Republican credentials, refused to drop the charges, and resigned, along with five high-ranking Justice Department officials. The assistant attorney who led the prosecution, Hagan Scotten, also resigned the next day, writing that the fact that Bove was asking for the charges to be dropped “without prejudice”, amounted to using a carrot (dismissing charges) and stick (threatening to bring the charges back again) approach to induce an elected official to support its objectives. Finally, after Bove threatened to fire all the prosecutors in the Public Integrity department, one of them stepped up to sign the motion.
What Are The Effects?
Perhaps the corruption saga of the New York Mayor affects less people and with less long-lasting consequence than the winding up of USAID. But in all these cases, what Trump is doing is not just throwing a tantrum like a toddler in a toy store and demanding that people follow his diktats. Behind the diktat in the Adams imbroglio, is what many people are calling “a deeply corrupt deal”. Trusted lieutenants were needed to carry out this deal, and that too, under their own names. To see this as a fascist in action, is to paint Trump as a person deeply committed to a legitimate political ideology and to distract from the greed, venality and lawlessness underlying his actions.
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable.
To restrict access to your paper simply delete the "#" character on the next two lines:
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