Two different worlds

So there seems to be a pretty wide chasm between the left and right as to how to gauge the effects of the news that both Manafort and Cohen will likely be doing significant stints in jail. Both sides make a point, and both sides probably believe that the "truth" is on their side.

But this is "really" what this country has come to. Millions of people who are intellectually ruled by combination of bias confirmation and cognitive dissonance. They will only see what it is that they want to see, and they will never see what it is that they do not want to see. It may have been bad at other points of time in this country, but under the Trump Presidency, the intellectual dishonesty is at feverish temperatures.

With the Mueller probe, I think there is a larger sense of dishonestly on the left. Obviously those who support Mueller are willing to concede that the Special Counsel appointment that was "supposed" to be about Russia and the election, was actually a design to provide a vast army of intelligence and law enforcement with free reign to simply reek whatever legal havoc they can on anyone associated with Donald Trump.

There is a overlying blanket of dishonestly that "must" be in place, to argue that decades old crimes committed by someone who worked with Trump for a matter of a few months, has something to do with Russia, or somehow proves that a special counsel probe into Russian influence is justified because of that. The only way this argument makes sense is to believe that the Mueller probe was never supposed to just be about Russia and the 2016 election. The only way that argument makes sense is to admit that the appointment was an excuse to go after Trump and his associates "in general".

But if that "is" the argument, then recent events certainly follow your script and proves your point. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen were obviously shady characters and both had ties to Trump. Toss in the fact that a couple other associates (Flynn and Papadopoulos) plead guilty to providing false statements, and you are arguing pattern. The argument (of course) is that somehow the President is guilty by association. At least one Democrat has already determined that the Manafort guilty verdict should be considered an article of impeachment.

The other argument is that the Special Counsel was in fact appointed to investigate the 2016 election and Russian influence, and that we should be willing to hold Special Counsel to that standard. Under that assumption, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen being charged is not only red herring but sure fire proof that Special Counsel has gone off script and that the original appointment was dishonest on it's face. It was never about Russia. It was just part of the ongoing attempt from those in the intelligence community to bring down Trump by any means.

Does that argument "ignore" or "underplay" the fact that several people have either plead or been found guilty of criminal activity? Sure it does. There is a pattern to some degree that doesn't necessarily "go away" because Robert Mueller has gone more than a little rogue. Now I believe that this pattern probably says as much about the "probe" as it does about the President and those who are associated with him, but it certainly "does" still say something about the President and those associated with him.

So at the end of the day, nobody is being completely honest here. Special Counsel has gone rogue (that is just a fact) and it's a matter of whether or not you believe that is a "good thing" or a "bad thing".  Obviously the left believes it's a good thing, while the right believes it's a bad thing. So certainly they will not agree to how things are going. They live in completely different worlds.