Q&A Monday #3: Answering Questions from Readers of Culturcidal

Ukraine vs. Russia, impeachment, Trump's trials, the digital dollar

Back in the day, when I ran Right Wing News, I did over 100 Q&A Fridays. Those consisted of me giving the audience a chance to ask me just about anything they wanted to know and since people seemed to love asking questions back then, I thought I’d see if people enjoyed doing the same thing on Culturcidal.

After giving the audience a chance to ask questions yesterday, here are the ones I answered. If you enjoyed this and you want it to be a monthly thing on Culturcidal, let me know in the comments section. I love doing these and will keep it up as long as I think the audience is there.

PS: Loved the questions we got this time around, so there will definitely be another one of these next month.

“How do you think Ukraine-Russia will end?” -- Ann H.

It’s impossible to say for sure, but my best guess is…

1) It drags on and on.

2) The war loses public support in the West and the funding dries up.

3) The West essentially forces Ukraine to settle with Russia.

4) Russia and Ukraine sign a treaty to end the war that is on fairly favorable terms to Russia.

If I had a 2^nd guess, it would be that Russia swallows the whole country and Ukraine moves to guerrilla war, perhaps with the West continuing to finance it (since it would be much cheaper) long term.

That’s one of the reasons I thought they should have made much more of a real attempt to achieve peace when Ukraine was making some gains early on. The longer this goes on, the more we should probably be pessimistic about Ukraine’s chances:

"I would like to know why the GOP hasn't offered impeachment papers on Biden. There are certainly enough things he could be charged with. What would he be charged with and what evidence would you say exists?" -- Scott

Since impeachment is a political question, not a criminal question, Biden could conceivably be impeached for just about anything. Personally, at a minimum, I think he deserves to be impeached for deliberately leaving the border open and for what appears to be cooperation with foreign companies, allowing powers to bribe his son in order to influence him. There COULD BE enough votes to get Republicans in the House to potentially vote for Biden's impeachment related to what appears to be obvious bribes given to his son.

The flip side of that is under almost any circumstances imaginable at this point, very few people in the other party are going to help out with an impeachment whether it's deserved or not. That means the House could PROBABLY manage to impeach Biden, but given how small the GOP margin is, it's also possible an attempted impeachment could fail in the House. Even if did pass, even if Joe Biden were to come out and say, "Yeah, I took bribes. It was fun and easy. So what?," there’s still no chance an impeachment could pass the Senate.

Additionally, neither Clinton nor Trump seems to have been politically hurt by his impeachment. In fact, some people would argue that both of them were politically HELPED by being impeached because it made the other party look extremely partisan and helped emphasize that they accomplished nothing (because none of them really accomplish anything these days). In other words, what's the end game? What do you accomplish by doing it? Probably nothing at best and you help their reelection prospects at worst.

Personally, I'd rather see a Republican win the White House and assign a special prosecutor to dig into whether Joe Biden should be charged with bribery in a court of law. That carries prison time with it if it can be proven and I think if you had a special prosecutor with subpoena power who could dig into it, I think there's a decent chance it could be proven.

"What happened to 'Crop Circles'? They were in the news for years, some were debunked, but? Seems like they just all dried up. Am I missing news on them, or did they just end?" – TC Elwood

Crop circles were a fun little prank for a while, but I am guessing they lost most of their spooky cool allure once people learned how to make them on YouTube:

That being said, at a minimum, there are still some pranksters doing crop circles in Britain:

More than 40 football pitches’ worth of arable land has been affected by crop circles in England since 2018, according to an analysis carried out by the Guardian.

Farmers lost £30,000 in income between 2018 and 2022 as a result of 92 crop circles of varying sizes. The wheat and barley lost over the period could have made 300,000 loaves of bread, and the flattened rapeseed could have produced 600 litres of canola oil.

Crop circles have come under particular scrutiny this year for the unwelcome toll they are taking on farmers’ harvests at a time of global food crisis.

"I would love to see an honest, detailed assessment of the 4 indictments on Trump -- which are just pure political BS, and which indictments may have merit and why. So far, most on the right say they are all BS, and the left claims all are valid." -- Candace L. Thatcher

We'd basically need a book to go into real detail on all 4 of these cases (and it's worth noting there's an E. Jean Carroll defamation case out there that he will probably lose AND a pyramid scheme case that I haven't heard enough about to analyze -- SO FAR. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see more next year).

So, let me a give quick rundown of each case. 

The documents case (federal): I believe that Trump, Hillary, and Joe Biden were ALL guilty of deliberately mishandling classified documents. Unfortunately, Trump is the only one on trial for it. It does look like he deliberately took classified documents from the White House, refused to return them, stored them irresponsibly, and conspired to keep them from the government even though he knew he had no right to have them (and no, Trump can’t declassify documents just by thinking about it). He’s facing over 100 years in that case and yes, I do think he’ll probably be convicted on some of the charges and faces the possibility of doing real time in prison.

The Georgia election indictment (state): Would I have brought this case if I were a prosecutor in Georgia? No. That’s not because I don’t think Trump did anything wrong, but because I think, as he so often does, Trump walked as close to the line as possible but arguably didn’t step over it. That being said, I do think there’s a possibility that a reasonable person could interpret it differently and see Trump telling Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win multiple times as Trump asking him to commit fraud. The fact that there are a number of Trump officials being indicted here could complicate things because we could see some of them cut deals to avoid prosecution and testify against Trump.

If I absolutely had to lay down money on this, I’d bet Trump will skate on this eventually, but I am far from confident that will be the outcome. That is significant because this is a state case and even if a Republican won the presidency, he could not pardon him for this.

The 2020 “insurrection” case (federal): I think this case is a huge overreach because it blurs the line between insurrection and a politician protesting that his election result wasn’t honest. You can think that Trump behaved irresponsibly and far from admirably after the election without agreeing that he committed a federal crime by protesting his loss so vigorously. Ultimately, I expect Trump to be acquitted here, but we’ll see.

Covering up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels (state): Did Trump probably do this? Yes, it seems likely that he did, although I’ve seen multiple legal scholars say that the way he’s being charged here is legally dubious and arguably unprecedented in New York. Theoretically, Trump could get 4 years in this case for falsifying business records, but under normal circumstances, he probably would get a fine. This seems like an obviously politicized charge, and I don’t know how it will ultimately play out, but my best guess is that Trump will get clear of it or end up paying a fine for this eventually.

In the end, all of this is somewhat uncharted territory that could potentially play out over several years and it’s hard to predict how it will ultimately turn out. Although what I wrote above may be a decent guess, it is worth noting that everyone deserves the presumption of innocence, and you never can say what the final result will be until the trials are all over and the verdicts are rendered.

"Assuming the 2024 presidential election is Trump vs Biden, how do you think the result will play out?" -- Keith Cook

I think under the best of circumstances, Trump would have a difficult time winning. Trump maxes Democrat turnout, is wildly unpopular among Independents, and is so well known at this point, there are very, very few people he can “win over.” So, even though Biden is a very weak candidate, it would still be a big uphill battle for Trump:

Now, layer the ramifications of having 6 trials (so far!!!) going on in 2024 on top of that – which is something a lot of people don’t seem to have thought about. The headlines, every day, all year long will be about Trump’s trials and that’s an incredibly difficult environment for a candidate to run in. Doubly so for a candidate like Trump, who seems to feel compelled to litigate all these issues in public on a regular basis, which is just not a smart thing to do. A lot of Republicans seem to assume that because they are aware of these trials and don’t care about them, independents won’t care either. That is 100% incorrect. Even 45% of Republicans say they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he’s convicted and as I already noted earlier, he probably will be. On top of that, it’s entirely possible that because of these trials, Trump could be...

1) In jail by the end of the year.

2) Kicked off the ballot in multiple states, including perhaps swing states he needs to win.

3) Forced to spend months sitting in court instead of campaigning.

4) Hit with an order not allowing him to do rallies or social media if he says something that pisses off a judge (which, Trump being Trump, is entirely possible at any moment).

5) So consumed with all of these trials that he can’t run a real campaign.

Will all these things happen? Not necessarily. COULD all of these things happen? Oh, absolutely and every one of them would sink his campaign. Ironically, every case against Trump makes Republicans MORE LIKELY to choose him as the nominee, but each trial also makes it much less likely that Trump can win a general election. Personally, I don’t think that even a candidate much more popular than Trump could overcome the handicap of all these trials in an election year, so I think running Trump under these circumstances would almost be the equivalent of just conceding the presidential election to the Democrats.

"Also, one of the things about the MSM that makes me untrusting is that they only ever seem to demonize conservatives or conservative talking points. So many studies these days are politically motivated and it’s hard to know if what they claim is true (and from what I’ve observed, it’s not). Of course, I know conservative outlets have their biases too. But how do I actually know what to believe, especially with things that are covered so heavily one way or the other - and that pretty much everything conservative is labeled a conspiracy theory?" -- KC

One of the most difficult things about life in 2023 is that there are no credible, non-partisan news sources when it comes to political issues. Granted, some are better than others, but everyone has an agenda, and it distorts how they cover the news. You almost have to know what you're doing, look at multiple sources, and then try to piece together what's going on when it comes to anything political and very few people truly have the expertise to do it. This is really bad because in my experience, when people don't know who to trust, they don't trust no one… they actually might decide to trust ANYONE, which is even worse.

"Every day I get emails telling me that my savings in banks will become worthless because we will be going to a digital dollar instead of paper bills. The date of this happening keeps moving forward. I have many CDs and saving and checking accounts. My question is, should I close out all of these accounts? Is this really going to happen? If yes, how soon will it happen? I am very uneasy that this digital dollar scheme is going to violate my privacy and dictate how I will be able to use my hard-earned money." -- Shelley

I am very much NOT a fan of the digital dollar and have written a column about why it would be a disaster. This is something that every American absolutely should be very uneasy about. That being said, it’s not a done deal yet and even if it happens, you should have plenty of warning because it’s far from a technically simple change to make. So, there’s no need to close anything out because of it… yet.

Furthermore, if and when the time comes, it’s hard to say for sure at this early juncture what the best way will be to protect yourself. For now, I would say just keep your powder dry, keep making it clear that this is an issue that matters to you, and pay attention to any steps forward the government takes on this issue.

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