Scarecrow Needs Brains?

My friend made the following post that I made the following response.

C:  Dems are mad at Trump for “abusing” his pardon power.

Total Presidential pardons/sentence commutations: Carter: 566 Reagan: 406 H.W Bush: 77 Cigar Bill: 459 George W: 200 Obama: 1,927 Trump: 26 Please, by all means, educate me on abuse of power.

Me:  Yes it is abuse of power. You have set up a strawman and easily knocked him down. The argument was never about the president making pardons, isn’t that bad? The question is quite different.  No one criticizes him for making pardons. It’s the way he made the pardons and the reasons for those pardons.

How were his pardons different?  The process bypassed the formal procedures used by past presidents and was driven instead by friendship, fame, personal empathy and a shared sense of persecution. 

 Many of the pardons announced Tuesday were advocated by well-heeled friends of the president,

Here’s your education. The other presidents followed procedures including seeking recommendations and advice from the Justice Department before acting. Trump acted on the basis of money, power, and friendship. If that looks exactly the same to you as what the other presidents did there is no hope for educating you.

As the Scriptures ought to say: None are so blind as those who will not see; none are so deaf so those who will not hear; and none are so gullible as those who will not think.

Me:  Let me add some more thoughts.

Your argument is logically identical to the following. A man is arrested and sent to prison for driving drunk and killing three pedestrians in a hit-and-run accident as a result. You like him so you respond,  “Hey what about all those other people were driving? They were driving and even drove more miles than he did.  Why they are allowed to do it and he isn’t?”

The answer is that they weren’t drunk, didn’t kill anyone, and didn’t leave the scene of the accident.