Dan,
How do you imagine that the divide will be healed if people are not willing to engage? You said we have two different horizons (all that is held possible in a given world), and I think that is a good way, a phenomenological way, and a gestalt way of depicting the situation, a situation that is not just comprised of one world. One perspective. It seems to me that people have to be willing to try on the perspective of the other. Consider the data inherent to the other perspective.

You said you see no equivalence between Durham’s findings and Mueller’s.  You need to read the Durham report. Durham does not push back on Mueller; he praises his work.  And the two special counsels investigated two different things; so, I agree that they are not equal. But that is not the point. The point is that the FBI operated with a political bias and that bias was part of a resistance to a sitting and legally elected president.  Why this is not alarming to an entire political party, the one that used to champion free speech and felt victimized by the crew working for President Nixon, I cannot fathom.  How people on the left can whine about the threat to democracy in Trump but turn a blind eye to the actual subversion of democracy on an institutional level in the FBI blows my mind. Watergate was about the dirty tricks of a sitting president, but Durham shows that the dirty tricks of a political rival (Clinton) were magnified and utilized by an entire institution of our government, and one that has to be trusted to keep the blinders on the department of justice so that there is a level playing field and that people from diverse values and perspectives are treated fairly, evenly. To me it is a tragic irony that the party that is currently enamored of equity, has been so unjust.

Phil



> On May 18, 2023, at 11:44 AM, Dan Bloom <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> Phil:
> 
> I appreciate the care you took in preparing your response.  I trust your good faith.  You and are, however, approach the same set of facts from different horizons of perspectives and necessarily see and choose different things as figural.  
> 
> I don’ want to get into an exchange about all this here. But, I can say that I don’t see any equivalence between  Durham’s findings and Mueller’s or any of the findings of the two investigations that led to T’s impeachment.  I also see that the issue of T’s refusal to hand over  and hiding documents in National Archives matter a very serious matter.  
> 
> Of course I know you don’t want Trump to run. I knew that for a while. And I know you used to support DeSantis, a person who seems to be at war with values and freedoms I thought were foundational. You and I will never agree on politics or social issues, it seems.
> 
> But this list is not the place for politics, even though I can’t resist the bait.  It’s like those old holiday dinners my family used to have. We tried our best, but we always wound up shouting at one another across the table. 
> 
> Dan   
> 
>> On May 18, 2023, at 1:20 PM, Philip Brownell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Dan,
>> One side says the Durham report proves that the “conspiracy theories” are true. The other side says the Durham report is a “nothing burger.”  I decided to read it for myself rather than rely on Jake Tapper or Fox News.
>> 
>> From the executive summary at the beginning:
>> 
>> "These examples are also markedly different from the FBI' s actions
>> with respect to other highly significant intelligence it received from a trusted foreign source
>> pointing to a Clinton campaign plan to vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin so as to
>> divert attention from her own concerns relating to her use of a private email server. Unlike the
>> FBI's opening of a full investigation of unknown members of the Trump campaign based on raw,
>> uncorroborated information, in this separate matter involving a purported Clinton campaign plan,
>> the FBI never opened any type of inquiry, issued any taskings, employed any analytical
>> personnel, or produced any analytical products in connection with the information. This lack of
>> action was despite the fact that the significance of the Clinton plan intelligence was such as to
>> have prompted the Director of the CIA to brief the President, Vice President, Attorney General,
>> Director of the FBI, and other senior government officials about its content within days of its
>> receipt. It was also of enough importance for the CIA to send a formal written referral
>> memorandum to Director Corney and the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's
>> Counterintelligence Division, Peter Strzok, for their consideration and action."
>> 
>> It would appear that the FBI had become corrupted and that the FBI’s actions/inactions convey biased actions in favor of the Clinton campaign.  And the media were all complicit.  Some even received a Pulitzer for reporting that has since been proven bogus.
>> 
>> If you want to have a real conversation, then you have to look at the facts. I am willing to do that and to entertain anybody who wants to go beyond name calling, distraction, and denial.  And this is the reason why the base of Trump’s current campaign are now so committed and distrustful, so immune to reason. Trump and his base is a monster that the left leaning bureaucrats and media created. Trump’s base now points to people like Schiff who declared he had physical proof that Trump colluded, and the congress controlled by them went on to impeach Trump based on what? Their hatre—and the determination to obstruct Trump and prevent him from governing. It was NOT a peaceful transition of power; it was an insurgency. 
>> 
>> I do not want Trump to run again, but he is. I do not want him to win the nomination. He went off the rails after years of opposition.  He lost it in the 2020 election, and I don’t just mean the election.  He is stuck in time, traumatized and likely narcissistically wounded to the point where he has to prove he was right about the election. He lost the election. But given what happened from 2016 and beyond, I think the whole country lost ground, lost trust in government, and now is wandering in a wilderness.
>> 
>> Phil
>> ______________
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> 
> ______________
> Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.

______________
Gstalt-L is an independent eCommunity of people interested in gestalt therapy theory and its various applications. Its public archives can be found at http://listserv.icors.org/scripts/wa-ICORS.exe?A0=GSTALT-L, and subscriptions can be managed by clicking on "Subscriber's Corner," which is found at the archives.