Saturday
Aug032019
The Commentariat -- August 4, 2019
Afternoon Update:
Rebecca Klar of the Hill: "Federal authorities are treating the shooting at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that killed 20 people and wounded 26 more as a case of domestic terrorism and will pursue federal hate crime and firearm charges in connection with the massacre, officials said at a press conference Sunday. Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, was booked into El Paso County Jail early Sunday on capital murder charge, the El Paso Times reported. At the same Sunday morning press conference El Paso County District Attorney Jaime Esparza said his office would seek the death penalty." ...
... Caitlin Oprysko of Politico: Beto O'Rourke, "Cory Booker and Julián Castro, placed blame on Trump for his rhetoric [that encouraged the El Paso shooter]. Mrs. McC: I heard Rep. Tim O'Ryan on MSNBC do the same. I'm surprised & heartened that at least some Democrats are speaking truth to the racist-in-chief.
Trump: A Racist AND a Deadbeat. Kolten Parker of KSAT (San Antonio): "... El Paso officials have been critical of the president in recent months for his refusal to pay a $470,000 debt owed to the city for transportation and security services during his February campaign rally. For six months, the city has sent Trump's campaign invoices for services provided by city departments -- including police, buses, the health department and others -- but has not gotten a response, according to local media.... A local TV station reported two weeks before the shooting that Trump still hadn't paid the debt."
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Ben Collins of NBC News: "Investigators are examining a screed believed to have been posted online by the suspect in Saturday's fatal shooting at a Texas shopping mall an hour before the attack, senior law enforcement officials say. Investigators are 'reasonably confident' that the suspect, identified by police as Patrick Wood Crusius, 21, of Texas, posted the diatribe on the extremist online forum 8chan before the shooting.... The screed posted to an anonymous extremist message board railed against immigrants in Texas and pushed talking points about preserving European identity in America.... The writing presented itself as a low-cost, low preparation model for deadly attacks and envisioned the actions as part of a larger ideological war.... The author claimed to have developed those beliefs before Trump's presidency.... Law enforcement was already analyzing the document before the mass shooting began and had connected it to a person, but the writing didn't name a target, time, place, or use the suspect's name." ...
... Simon Romero, et al., of the New York Times: The authorities identified the gunman as Patrick Crusius, from a Dallas suburb. He was taken into custody after he surrendered to the police outside the Walmart. The authorities said they were investigating a manifesto Mr. Crusius, who is white, may have posted before the shooting, which described an attack in response to 'the Hispanic invasion of Texas.' 'Right now, we have a manifesto from this individual,' El Paso's police chief, Greg Allen, told reporters, though he said later that law enforcement officers were still not clear whether the gunman had posted the document. The manifesto the chief appeared to be referring to was an anti-immigrant online screed titled 'The Inconvenient Truth.' The post declares support for the gunman who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand; outlines fears about Hispanic people gaining power in the United States; and appears to discuss specific details about elements of the attack, including weapons.... 'Hispanics will take control of the local and state government of my beloved Texas, changing policy to better suit their needs,' the manifesto said. It added that politicians of both parties are to blame for the United States 'rotting from the inside out,' and that 'the heavy Hispanic population in Texas will make us a Democrat stronghold.'" ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Assuming investigators are right about the source of the screed, this mass murderer may or may not have harbored such ideas prior to 2015, but Trump certainly exacerbated the murderer's hate-filled belief system. Trump's fingerprints might not be on the rifle, but they're on Crusius' forehead. ...
... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "'We've had a rise in hate crimes every single one of the last three years, during an administration where you have a president who's called Mexicans rapists and criminals,' said the former Texas congressman and El Paso native [Beto O'Rourke]. 'He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country,' O'Rourke added. 'It does not just offend our sensibilities; it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence.'" Thanks to PD Pepe for the link. ...
... David Atkins of the Washington Monthly: "While offering the usual thoughts, prayers and condemnations of the violence itself, Republicans have for the most part been remarkably quiet not only about the crisis of gun violence but also about the motives of the shooter.... Fox News tried to blame video games.... But of course, the only Republican politician who really matters is the one whose name spelled in firearms the killer's twitter account allegedly liked in a tweet: ... Donald Trump.... Trump's ... latest tweet (before issuing the usual pabulum 'thoughts and prayers') is as follows: 'Today's shooting in El Paso, Texas, was not only tragic, it was an act of cowardice. I know that I stand with everyone in this Country to condemn today's hateful act. There are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify killing innocent people.' These are not the words of a man disgusted with the terrorist's motives. These are the words of a man disappointed in his tactics. No one says 'there are no reasons or excuses that will ever justify' unless they sympathize with the frustrations of the individual.... Moreover, it's pretty obvious that these aren't Trump's authentic words at all. When Trump actually cares about something, he tweets about it authentically and spontaneously, usually with bizarre random capitalization, grammar errors and misspellings." ...
... Richard Parker of El Paso in a New York Times op-ed: "... the El Paso massacre ... was the inevitable byproduct of the Trump era's anti-immigrant, and anti-Latino invective, which with its pervasive, vile racism has poisoned our nation.... The Trump era ... has brought us walls, internment camps and children in cages. The massacre is the outcome I have feared for years now, and I can't help but feel that its genesis lies with the president of the United States." ...
... There Was This. "The Remark Drew a Chuckle from the President"* William Cummings of USA Today, May 9: "... Donald Trump was tickled Wednesday when an audience member at a Florida rally suggested shooting migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump was bemoaning the legal protections afforded migrants and espousing the need for a border wall when he asked rhetorically, 'How do you stop these people?' 'Shoot them!' someone shouted from the Panama City Beach crowd.... The remark drew a chuckle from the president, who shook his head, pointed in the audience member's direction and said, 'Only in the Panhandle you can get away with that statement.' 'Only in the Panhandle,"' he repeated to laughs and cheers from the crowd." ...
... April Glaser of Slate: "The document [attributed to the El Paso shooter] had been uploaded to the notorious, unmoderated message board 8chan at 10:15 a.m. local time, and it included a request: 'Do your part and spread this brothers!'... Soon after it was first posted on 8chan, the manifesto could be found On 4chan, another message board with scant rules about what people can or cannot share. And not long after that, it was circulating as images on Twitter and Facebook and easily findable in a Google image search.... The involvement of 8chan is becoming a familiar detail in cases of white-supremacist violence. The El Paso shooting appears to be the second one since the Christchurch massacre to draw from that killer's playbook.... [The] shootings [in Christchurch, New Zealand, Poway, California, & El Paso] appeared to have been designed to go viral -- a horrific act would catch the world's attention, and a manifesto would deliver the hate-filled payload. An anonymous, meme-filled internet backwater, 8chan has long been a place for white supremacists to indoctrinate others -- mostly young white men -- into bigoted ideologies.... Whatever is too gruesome for 4chan finds a home on 8chan. That now includes enthusiasm for a white ethnostate.... Many people come to the politically incorrect boards of 4chan and 8chan from video-game communities, where players looking to laugh at an abasing joke or chat about violent games ... can find friends."
Cora Currier of The Intercept: "A principal goal of the Trump administration's policy at the U.S.-Mexico border -- and in Central America ... -- has been to get other governments to handle the increase in migrants seeking to enter the United States.... Another way to describe these efforts is what the U.S. security establishment has long referred to as 'pushing out the border.' It's not a project that's new to the Trump administration, and it's not one that's unique to the United States, as journalist Todd Miller expounds in his latest book, 'Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World.'" --s
This could be the headline of at least half the stories about Trump's tweets & chopper chatter: "Trump Defends His Recent Erratic Decision with Lies." Case in point: Tax Axelrod of the Hill reports on Trump's latest fantastical tweets defending his brilliant trade-war strategy against China. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: "Fox News' Neil Cavuto wasted no time in fact-checking ... Donald Trump's latest claims about the tariffs his administration has imposed (and has promised to ramp up) on products imported into the U.S. from China. Trump on Friday told White House reporters that 'the tariffs are not being paid for by our people' but 'by China' because 'of devaluation and because they're pumping money in.' 'Remember this, our country is taking in billions and billions of dollars from China,' the president added. 'We never took in 10 cents from China. And out of that many billions of dollars, we're taking a part of it and giving it to the farmers because they've been targeted by China. The farmers, they come out totally whole,' [Trump claimed.] 'I don't know where to begin here,' responded Cavuto.... 'But just to be clarifying, China isn't paying these tariffs. You are. You know, indirectly and sometimes directly,' he explained.... '... this latest round of tariffs that kick in on September 1, on $300 billion worth of goods at 10%, that will most directly be felt by consumers directly,' he added. 'Because that happens on almost entirely consumer items rather than industrial-related items.... Our governments don't pay these things, you do, one way or another.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Maureen Dowd: "White male privilege is out of fashion these days. Yet we are awash in nostalgia for it. Donald Trump has built a political ideology on nostalgia. And Quentin Tarantino has built a movie ideology on nostalgia. In The Los Angeles Times, Mary McNamara observed that the moral of Tarantino's new fairy tale, 'Once Upon A Time In -- Hollywood,' is, 'Who doesn't miss the good old days when cars had fins and white men were the heroes of everything?'... In The New Yorker, Richard Brody called the movie ... 'obscenely regressive,' a phrase that could easily be applied to the man in the Oval.... Both the Tarantino creation and the Trump creation feature scripted tough-guy dialogue, rough treatment of women and slurs against Mexicans. Trump's time machine is a vicious and vertiginous journey, all about punching down, pulpy fictions, making brown and black people scapegoats and casting women back into a crimped era of fewer reproductive rights. Trump has inverted all the old American ideals, soiling the image of our country in the world and reshaping it around his grievances and inadequacies. He is a faux tough guy who lets other people do the fighting for him, a needy brat who never accepts responsibility for his actions, an oaf with no trace of courage, class or chivalry." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: MoDo's attempts to find the nexus between cultural inflection points usually fall flat, but I think she got it right this time.
Another Embarrassing Trumpisode. In Which Trump Pretends He Has Black Friends. Linda Givetash of NBC News: "The U.S. government warned Sweden of 'negative consequences' as it advocated for rapper ASAP Rocky during his trial for assault charges in Stockholm this week, according to a pair of letters released by the Swedish Prosecution Authority. Rocky was released from jail on Friday pending the verdict, with ... Donald Trump celebrating the news on Twitter. 'It was a Rocky Week, get home ASAP A$AP!' Trump said. The rapper landed back on U.S. soil Saturday, leaving behind him the looming verdict in an episode that has led to unexpected tension between the U.S. and its European ally.... A final judgment in the case is expected to be reached Aug. 14."
Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "Interior Secretary David Bernhardt's ethics recusal will expire on Saturday. The ethics pledge banned Bernhardt from decisions involving his former firm's clients for two years. Bernhardt was also not able to meet with these companies, unless five or more other stakeholders were present and nothing relating specifically to the companies was discussed.... Prior to joining the Interior Department in 2017, Bernhardt worked as a lobbyist for the oil and gas industry.... He has so many potential conflicts of interest to avoid that he carries around a card listing all of them so he doesn't forget. A recent analysis by the Center for American Progress found that Bernhardt has more conflicts of interest than any other Trump Cabinet nominee." --s
Ole MacNunes Had a Farm, E-I-E-I-O. Julia Arciga of the Daily Beast: "Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-CA) campaign is suing a group of people who called him a 'fake farmer', claiming the defendants were coordinating with 'dark money' groups to hurt his campaign.... Prior to the lawsuit, the group claimed Nunes couldn't call himself a farmer since he no longer farms -- but a state judge ruled that the representative can continue to use the designation. The campaign also claimed the group was working with various political groups and The Fresno Bee's parent company, McClatchy, in a campaign against him.... The lawsuit, filed Thursday, comes after the representative sued a parody Twitter account claiming to be his cow, and McClatchy."
Presidential Race 2020
** Jonathan Chait: "Of all the institutions and norms of American government, none is more rickety than the voting process. The system's legitimacy hangs on the public's willingness to trust the accuracy of a system that is hardly a system at all.... Even more alarming than the implied weaknesses in the voting system is the political context in which they exist. President Trump has frequently either minimized or outright denied Russia's culpability in the 2016 email hacks (which Trump himself was exploiting at the time).... Republican indifference to the Russian threat gives an indication of how the party would respond in the event of a compromised election.... [Mitch McConnell] has already proved that he would prefer for his party to win with Russian help than to lose without it." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: You might think Chait is making a Chicken Little argument here, but he presents too much GOP history to dismiss his concerns. I would be horrified, but not completely surprised, if armed U.S. marshalls, by order of President Harris, had to storm the White House in late January 2021 & remove the fat bastard by force.
Matthew Choi of Politico: "Sen. Bernie Sanders defended his rival 2020 Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Friday after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) went after Warren for advocating a no-first-strike nuclear policy.... Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, lambasted Warren the following morning for her remarks.... 'Which American cities and how many American citizens are you willing to sacrifice with your policy of forcing the US to absorb a nuclear attack before we can strike back?' Cheney wrote Wednesday on Twitter. Friday afternoon, Sanders shot back at Cheney, sparking a heated back and forth. 'Taking national security advice from a Cheney has already caused irreparable damage to our country,' Sanders tweeted. 'We don't need any more, thanks.' Cheney responded by calling Sanders a 'commie' who "is ok with U.S. getting attacked first.'... Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also chimed in on Friday, tweeting a gif of her exasperated face and the message: [']My face when "*Liz Cheney* of all people tries to offer foreign policy takes, as if an entire generation hasn't lived through the Cheneys sending us into war since we were kids.'"
Marina Pitofsky of the Onion Hill: "Michael Avenatti is reportedly considering a White House bid after declaring that he would not join the slate of Democratic candidates running for president in 2020.... Earlier this year, Avenatti was arrested in New York for an alleged $20 million extortion scheme against Nike. In April, federal prosecutors in California indicted the lawyer on three dozen criminal counts, including allegedly stealing money from clients and lying about his income to regulators. Avenatti has pleaded not guilty to all charges." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Nancy Cook of the Onion Politico: "The Trump 2020 campaign has been quietly reaching out to prominent African Americans about joining its latest coalition, intended to boost Republican support in the black community. The effort comes just as the president capped off a month filled with racially divisive language and Twitter taunts aimed at House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and four freshman congresswomen of color." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Mrs. McCrabbie: We have never had an American president whose last name was difficult for English-readers to spell. The toughest might be Roosevelt (Dutch) & Eisenhower (anglicized German).
Presidential Races 2016 & 2020. Danielle McLean of ThinkProgress: "Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) claimed during Wednesday night's presidential debate that President Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 because Republicans and Russians worked to suppress the votes of African Americans. Election experts say he's onto something.... Trump won the state by 10,704 votes." --s
Steven Greenhouse in a New York Times op-ed: "... the United States suffers from what I call 'anti-worker exceptionalism.' Academics debate why American workers are in many ways worse off than their counterparts elsewhere, but there is overriding agreement on one reason: Labor unions are weaker in the United States than in other industrial nations.... In no other industrial nation do corporations fight so hard to keep out unions.... Numerous studies have found that an important cause of America's soaring income inequality is the decline of labor unions -- and the concomitant decline in workers' ability to extract more of the profit and prosperity from the corporations they work for.... The consequences are enormous, not only for wages and income inequality, but also for our politics and policymaking and for the many Americans who are mistreated at work.... The diminished power of unions and workers has skewed American politics, helping give billionaires and corporations inordinate sway over America's politics and policymaking." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Greenhouse doesn't mention the confederate Supremes, who exult in quashing union rights, making them the five old boys who have done the most to maintain income inequality.
Taylor Hatmaker of The Daily Beast: "As many tech giants grow skittish about cashing in on the surveillance boom, one company [Anduril Industries] helmed by an industry iconoclast [Palmer Luckey] seems custom-built for Big Brother. The 26-year-old is best known as the designer of the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset that shepherded the futuristic technology into the mainstream. In 2014, Luckey sold his 100-person virtual reality company to Facebook for $3 billion ... after The Daily Beast revealed that he was bankrolling an unofficial pro-Trump group dedicated to 'shitposting' and circulating anti-Clinton memes.... And far from shying away from politics post-Facebook, Luckey leaned into the #MAGA-friendly ideology -- donating big money to pro-Trump outfits, and meeting with Trump cabinet officials, all while his company quietly picks up military contracts and expands its work with border patrol." --s
Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "It was common knowledge that the founding nuns [of the Georgetown Visitation Convent school for girls in Washington, D.C.,] owned slaves, but school lore has held that the sisters allowed enslaved children to attend Saturday school and defied the law by teaching them how to read. The 65-page report, which the school has made available online, details the businesslike efficiency with which the nuns sold scores of enslaved people to pay off debts and fund new buildings. Georgetown Visitation sisters owned at least 107 enslaved people,including men, women and children, from a year after its founding until 1862, when the federal government made slavery illegal in the District, the report found.... News of the research and its findings was published Friday by New York University professor Rachel Swarns in an opinion piece for the New York Times. The Catholic Standard ran a story about the report in November." (Also linked yesterday.)
Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "Coal, oil and gas get more than $370bn (£305bn) a year in support, compared with $100bn for renewables, [an] International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) report found. Just 10-30% of the fossil fuel subsidies [switched to renewables] would pay for a global transition to clean energy, the IISD said.... 'Almost everywhere, renewables are so close to being competitive that [a 10-30% subsidy swap] tips the balance, and turns them from a technology that is slowly growing to one that is instantly the most viable and can replace really large amounts of generation,' said Richard Bridle of the IISD. 'It goes from being marginal to an absolute no-brainer.'" --s
You Too May Be an Unregistered Lobbyist. Vivan Wang of the New York Times: "When Kat Sullivan rented a billboard last year in upstate New York to call for stronger protections against child sex abusers, she believed she was engaging in the democratic process, using her own time and money to make her voice as an abuse survivor heard.So she was shocked when state regulators afterward sent her a letter ordering her to register as a lobbyist. New York State defines a lobbyist as, in part, someone who spends money to influence lawmakers. But Ms. Sullivan, a registered nurse, has argued that she was exercising her rights as a citizen.... The state's ethics commission ... has warned that she could be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined more than $40,000 if she continues to refuse to register.... Few unpaid advocates spend more than $5,000 on an issue, the annual threshold for registering as a lobbyist in New York. Ms. Sullivan has said that she spent $14,000 on three billboards, plus about $2,000 on a website.... Federal law defines lobbyists by the percentage of time that they spend contacting lawmakers; New York defines them by money earned and spent. Other states have lower or higher thresholds, or exclude volunteers.... 'Almost every jurisdiction I can think of is grappling at some level with how much is covered and at what threshold,' Beth Rotman, [of] Common Cause ... said...."
Way Beyond the Beltway
China. Nick Schager of The Daily Beast: "One Child Nation is a ... heartrending documentary [that] examines ... China's one-child policy, which functioned as a systematic attack on its female population -- and which resulted in collateral damage on an international scale. In effect from 1979 to 2015, China's policy placed strict guidelines on reproduction in order to curb population growth.... The law outlined strict punishment for non-compliance: the destruction of homes, forfeiture of property and valuables, and steep fines. Those who suffered those penalties, however, got off easy, since local Family Planning Officials -- empowered by the Nationalist Party -- also had the authority to abduct women, tie them up, and force them to undergo sterilizations and abortions as late as 8-9 months into their pregnancies." Attention: disturbing content. --s
Russia. AP: "Police cracked down hard on an unsanctioned demonstration in Moscow for a second weekend in a row, detaining about 600 people protesting the exclusion of some independent and opposition candidates from September city council elections. The issue taps growing dissatisfaction with a political environment dominated by the Kremlin-aligned United Russia party, in which dissenting voices are marginalized, ignored or repressed. An arrest-monitoring group, OVD-Info, said 685 people were detained Saturday. The Russian Interior Ministry said the number was about 600. The detentions came a week after authorities arrested nearly 1,400 people at a similar protest."
News Ledes
Mass Murder America. Guardian: "Nine people have been killed and at least 16 injured in a shooting early on Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, police have said. Police said the suspect was shot and killed by responding officers.... The shooting came hours after at least 20 people were killed in another mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas." --s ...
... According to CNN, which is liveblogging developments, the motive for this mass murder is still unknown. In later updates, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said the shooter was "a young, white male," & Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said police responded to the shooter "in less than one minute." Mrs. McC: So in less than a minute, this guy killed nine people & injured 27 others. There is no excuse for any civilian to have access to a weapon that can shoot 36 people in less than a minute. Update: "in 24 seconds." ...
... CNN Updates: "Authorities have found writings linked to Dayton, Ohio, shooting suspect Connor Betts that show he had an interest in killing people, two federal law enforcement sources told CNN. A preliminary assessment of the writings, found during the execution of a search warrant, did not indicate any racial or political motive, the sources said.... The City of Dayton has released the names of the nine deceased victims in the shooting early Sunday. Suspect Connor Betts' sister was identified as one of those killed."
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Reader Comments (17)
And if yesterday in El Paso wasn't enough, this morning we're learning of a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio.
Time to break out another "thoughts and prayers" script.
Yeah, Bobby, when I first saw this headline it didn't hit me that it was an entirely different shooting until early morning haze lifted and I realized they were talking about Dayton, Ohio not Texas–-good god! Another bloody shooting: so far article says we have had 250 mass shootings in the U.S in 2019. Can that be? Surely that number can't be right but if so could we conclude something is rotten in the belly of the beast––the one that is devouring its own kind with inimical glee?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shooting-dayton-ohio_n_5d467878e4b0aca3411eede9
The NYT is reporting that we have had 32 mass shootings in 2019.
@PD Pepe: Remember back in the good old days when we went to a public place, if we worried at all, it was about the weather or, horror of horrors, getting our pockets picked? Now we have to worry when we go to the movies or a concert or a shopping mall whether or not we'll come out in a body bag.
@Marie: Yes, I was thinking the exact thing and if I were the type to frequent large malls, festivals of mixed kinds, concerts, and so forth, I think I'd make out my will and get my house in order just in case I wouldn't return. But the horror of all this is even parents of school age children have terrible anxiety every day. These latest shootings, however, appear to be targeted at "others"–– white supremacists leaving their calling cards.
And here's O'Rourke who links "racist"Trump to El Paso shooting.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-thoughts-and-prayers-beto-orrourke-racist-link-el-paso-violence_n_5d4658f3e4b0acb57fcd9e8c
Trip to Seattle yesterday to attend a celebration of Social Security's 85th birthday (Medicare's 55th, I think) put on by a group of geezer activists here in the Northwest and attended by one of the nation's premier progressive Representatives, Seattle's Pramila Jayapal, and the executive director of the other Washington's Social Security Works, a national SS support and advocacy organization, both of them oratorical firecrackers.
Lots of sun, inspiring words, smiling faces there at MLK Memorial Park, tho' only about sixty in attendance. Always on the lookout for a new voice to shanghai for our radio program, I was a little disappointed. Did lasso one, and counted it a success. It wasn't until I was driving home, jammed twice in traffic, listening to the news on the radio that I heard this detail about the El Paso shooting, which I had caught a headline about before I left home:
The shooter was from Dallas, which led me to conclude he had traveled all the way to El Paso for a reason. I immediately thought: he was hunting brown people, and the image came to me of the college friend I visited in San Antonio back in the 60's who, as we were enjoying fried backstrap sandwiches in his family's kitchen, mentioned the ranch they had out in the Panhandle where they hunted deer in the Fall.
Creepy.
Get yourself under control, I said. Don't imagine things. We're close enough to a Pretender-fomented race war as it is. It makes sense that your thoughts go in that direction, but give reason a chance. This is not a time for jumping to conclusions.
Then the evening news of the social media posting confirming the worst parts of the imagination I tried to rein in.
It makes me sick.
Our politics can cure our ills. Witness the celebration of Social Security and Medicare and talk of expanding both, there in Seattle in a park in the middle of a beautiful day.
Or it can kill us, in a mall there in Texas.
This presidency dispenses death.
Owners of assault weapons are all sick. Since the high velocity weapons projectiles are deadly for over a thousand yards and through a homes walls, they are no good for home protection.
Assault weapons are good for killing people.
Hopefully, most of the ten or eleven million owners of these rifles are not planning to kill any one.
They are the pretenders that fire these weapons at targets of their imagined foes; black politicians, Russian invaders, Trumps enemies or the invaders from the black helicopters.
Curing this illness would save lives. Ridicule might help. Assault weapon registration would help. Freezing assault weapons in place and making any transporting the weapons illegal would help. Huge fines and incarceration for failure to register and or transporting would help.
Public outcry broad and loud and using the media to at least equal the pressure of the NRA on the cowardly politicos would be the greatest help.
It is past time for action.
It's all of a piece.
Sent this comment to today's Krugman (monkish) column on the tariff "quagmire."
"It would be a comfort to think that Mr. Trump's approach to trade is based on some semblance of reason, that he is merely mistaken in his assumptions about how international economics works, but I don't believe that's the case.
For Mr. Trump (and has it has long been for the entire Republican Party) everything is about and us vs. them view of the world, a perspective that leads Mr. Trump's childishly ego-driven behavior of acting as if all problems can be solved by first personalizing them and then in one way or another beating your opponent down.
Sue them. Sic your phalanx of lawyers on them. Call them names. Lie about them. Coax your supporters to demean them with mass chants. Threaten. Talk tough. Drop casual remarks about the nuclear annihilation of Syrian or Afghanistan. Blow up the Iran nuclear deal. Sanction Iran for not adhering to the deal you blew up. Impose tariffs. Huff and puff. Impose more tariffs.
In short, because international economics is not reducible to a simple us vs. them analysis, and that's the only view Mr. Trump (and many of his current advisors) can grasp, with this administration we'll surely see stupidity piled on stupidity, more lies told about how it's all working so well, and more anger expressed when the lies aren't enough."
I could have added: "Or just shoot 'em."
I haven't been following the recent "No First Use" issue but apparently Sen. Warren is sponsoring a bill in which the US would promise to not be the first to use nuclear weapons; Rep Cheney asked which US cities we would be willing to lose before using; and Sen. Sanders backed up Sen. Warren.
I don't know where Warren & Sanders got their advice on this, but they are really wrong. "No First Use" pledges are in fact de-stabilizing, meaning they make the world less safe. So I hate to admit that Cheney is on better ground here, although of course exploiting it in a loathsome way.
The policy here has been settled for decades (the US will not pledge no first use), but it sort of "feels wrong" to people who don't deal in the probabilities of nuclear war -- which admittedly can drive some folks insane. So, when someone in the US pushes "no first use" it appears that they are going for the moral high ground and international parity (Say ... Russia and China have taken the pledge, why won't the US?), but in fact they have either not done their homework or are trying to gin up "feelings" rather than establish effective policy. So ... I hope W&S can slide away from this topic, because it is a loser. If you take the right position (Cheney's) you look like .... a Cheney. If you take the wrong one and become prez, you are really required to announce that you no longer observe that pledge .... because you can't allow that destabilization to persist.
Mamas don't let you kids grow up to be nuclear strategists. It warps your whole worldview. (By the way, I ain't one but used to work around them decades ago.)
Ken mentioned a race war. But it’s not really a war, is it? A war (a shooting war, anyway) typically involves combatants on two (or more) sides. That’s not what’s happening here.
Here we have white nationalist Trump supporters murdering people of color (and in at least one case, sending pipe bombs to Trump’s perceived enemies). Black and brown people, immigrants or citizens, are not shooting white people, Trump voters. Were that the case, you would see an instant response, from the military, Congress, gun knobbers, every right wing group you can think of. The media would descend like vultures to tear into black or brown communities for not getting control of their violent “warriors”. There would then be an all out race war.
Trump has so ratcheted up tensions, for his own personal advantage, that an incident like the El Paso killings, but with a Latino shooter, could ignite a white nationalist fire storm. And no amount of thoughts and prayers would fix things. And every single confederate leader or pundit who cheerleads Trump’s racist outbursts or sits quietly by pretending it’s not really his fault (or theirs) are guilty of complicity in these shootings.
It’s not a race war. Right now, it’s mass murder. But it could be. White shooters can continue their rampage from now until rapture and no one on the right will say “boo”. But let black and brown people start responding in kind (just imagine the outrage had the Las Vegas shooter been black or brown) and you could see the beginnings of complete disintegration of what remains of our tattered social fabric, shredded further every day by the gleeful, vicious hatred of Trump and his white supremacist supporters and the tacit support of obsequious (and racist) cowards in congress and right wing media.
@Patrick: Some time when you have time, it would be great if you could explain your rationale for not have a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons. Do you subscribe to Nixon's "madman theory"? I would anticipate that any nuclear power whom we hit first -- assuming that country didn't have such a limited capability that one of our nukes would incapacitate all of their nukes -- would hit back hard.
The NRA is in complete meltdown over Wayne LaPierre's expensive suits, and still not a finger will be lifted over the latest mass murders. I became permanently numb to these mass murders after Sandy Hook. If 28 dead innocent children couldn't move Congress to act, little to nothing will. Certainly not some random people in Wal-Mart. Fuck, the Las Vegas mass shooting was insanity on an infinite scale, killing 58 souls, not including the POS shooter, raining down automatic fire on a packed music concert.
Nothing happened.
The last time major legislation moved was when Reagan himself got targeted. In today's virulent political environment, it'd take a major Republican candidate to get shot at to even take a look at legislation (I don't think Republicans would act if a major Dem got shot. Look at the pipe bomb whacko and Republicans said nothing), but even that might not overcome the absolute cowardice of conservative MoC. The NRA has held their extremist view for so long, gun legislation has morphed from a purely business motive to a deep-seeded culture war, and a fair amount of the 30-some% of gun owners are ready and willing to shoot people for their cause.
I recently saw a study that, as of 2019, almost half the population has either been shot at (3%) or knows someone who has (44%, either intentionally or unintentionally). Once this number hits around 80% of the total population, maybe real change will occur.
Stats are on pg. 17, PDF
https://7gxsl10eqdj9anba1k3swtoo-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Report-_-Gun-Violence-and-Human-Rights-Harris-Institute-Report-FINAL-1.18.19-SSRN.pdf
@ Akhilleus
Point taken. Word choice too loose, perhaps.
But as I mention in my Krugman post, the Pretender is certainly combative. I'm sure he sees his belligerence as portraying masculine strength, which is why it's always his first (and second and...) option(s).
That (acting the schoolyard bully with a nuclear arsenal at hand) in itself may not qualify as war, but it is certainly inviting one.
@safari: I hate to say it, but what might get the NRA to change its views would be heavily-armed blacks or Hispanics marching around capitol buildings in open-carry states. California allowed open-carry until 1967, when Reagan, then governor, saw well-armed Black Panthers gathering on the steps of the California capitol building. And you're right about the Brady bill; even with Reagan's support, it passed the House by only two votes. Of course I'm not sure even that would work today; after Steve Scalise, the Klan-loving House whip, was shot within an inch of his life (he might have died had not a fellow House member, who was a doctor, performed triage), he still opposed even mild gun legislation.
For all of our supposed superior education, we remain one of the dumbest countries on Earth. And the NRA sure does play its part in keeping us stupid. Good point about their getting all upset about LaPierre's pricey suits & swim trunks.
Bea: No, I don't subscribe to the Nixon Madman Theory, and that has never been incorporated in U.S. defense policy.
Despite DiJiT's beliefs in the value of unpredictability, the USG has always tried to allow adversaries to see our nuclear posture and use doctrine (but not, of course, targeting and command/control) to be predictable and observable. One of the objects of nuclear planning is to remove as much ambiguity as possible. Things that introduce ambiguity are "destabilizing" and can cause serious misjudgments.
So, books have been written (maybe even read!) about all this stuff, but the bottom line on non-first use is that you can never believe anyone who assures you that they will not shoot first. Such a claim by others does not actually create ambiguity for us (because our doctrine says don't believe 'em), but if the US were to offer such an assurance, everyone in the security affairs business would know that it is an empty promise, and it would hurt our reputation. And our reputation is an important factor when the DEFCON numbers start to move. Hard to believe but true.
Take a deep breath. Hasn't Trump totally destroyed our reputation? We don't know. We can only hope that professionals around the world will think that he, in fact, can't give launch orders without "adult" collaboration. Because we KNOW that he hasn't studied US policy and doctrine. He, in his person, is a "significant destabilizing factor." Which is a slight digression, except that you can easily see that if Trump issued a non-first use pledge, or even signed such a bill, it would be taken by other nations as a facial lie, and make the world even more dangerous.
Nuclear weapons policy is pretty consistent across the decades; most of the senior policy and operations people know how it works and how to do that business (Hey! 74 years without a nuclear exchange!). However, the consequences of a significant error are so unthinkably horrible that assumptions are reviewed all the time and people who work on that stuff are constantly reminded of the dangers of complacency.
People who don't work on that stuff by and large have absolutely no clue how horrible mistakes would be -- even "best case" minimal use. And I have come to believe that is good, a case where blissful ignorance allows people to get through their days.
@Patrick: Thank you. What you write makes sense. And, as you say, so far it's working.