Monday
Nov062017
The Commentariat -- November 7, 2017
Afternoon Update:
David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday asserted that tougher gun laws would not have stopped the mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Tex., last weekend and that 'hundreds more' would have died had another man not been able to 'neutralize' the alleged killer with a gun of his own. Asked during a news conference here whether he would entertain 'extreme vetting' on guns, Trump appeared irritated by the question and suggested it was not appropriate to talk about 'in the heart of South Korea.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: As many have pointed out, Trump's NRA rationale works only if you ignore the fact that the U.S. has more guns per person & more gun deaths than any other country. These are not two unrelated stats.
Moscow on the Potomac. Lorraine Woellert, et al., of Politico: "A top adviser to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross served on the board of Navigator Holdings, a shipping company whose clients include a Russian energy company with Kremlin ties, while she was working in the Trump administration. Wendy Teramoto retained her seat on Navigator's board after joining Commerce in mid-March as a part-time adviser to Ross.... She also continued to serve as an executive of Ross's private equity firm WL Ross & Co. after becoming a government employee. Teramoto didn't resign her seat on Navigator’s board until July 17, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. She left WL Ross that same month. On Aug. 1, she was formally named Ross's chief of staff. Her role with Navigator is notable because Ross has come under scrutiny after the release of a cache of documents ... that showed him profiting from investments in Navigator, which does significant business with Sibur, an energy company partly owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin's son-in-law."
Kyle Cheney & Elana Schor of Politico: "Attorney General Jeff Sessions will appear before the House Judiciary Committee next week, and Democrats said Tuesday they're prepared to pepper him with questions about a campaign adviser who attempted to broker a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I hope the House members practice up on the pronunciation of "Papadopoulos," because so far on-air personalities have had difficulty -- I keep hearing "Poppolopolis," which sounds like candy on a stick. Anyway, should be some fun clips. Watch for the Elf's studied outrage.
*****
Election Day. Steven Shepard of Politico: "Gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia might be the marquee contests on ballots across the country on Tuesday, but there are plenty of other high-impact elections and referenda across the country with national implications. There are key big-city mayoral races, pivotal state legislative contests and even a special congressional election, all of them providing some degree of insight into the political climate in the first Election Day of Donald Trump's presidency." ...
... ** "Anniversary of the Apocalypse." Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times writes a "who would have believed?" column that reads like articles of impeachment. Mrs. McC: Goldberg is shocking in her bluntness. And it is an indictment of the Republican Congress, which has accepted and exploited the circumstance. ...
... Paul Krugman points to the reason for the party's reluctance to rid itself of Trump -- he's ruder and cruder, but otherwise not much different from other Republicans. Krugman looks for proof to the House tax bill which caters to the rich more than any before it & to Ed Gillespie, a Bush insider who is running for governor of Virginia on the KKK ticket. ...
... Benjamin Wallace-Wells of the New Yorker: Ed "Gillespie's closing messages have all taken up Trumpian themes. In late October, his campaign released an ad focussed entirely on Confederate monuments. 'I'm for keeping 'em up, and he's for takin' 'em down, and that's a big difference,' Gillespie said of [his opponent Ralph] Northam, in the ad. A direct-mail campaign featured images of football players kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial inequality. 'You'd never take a knee,' it read. 'So take a stand on Election Day. These things have widely been seen as marking a capitulation -- Republicans further embracing racial resentment. But how new are these tactics, really?" Wallace-Wells recalls elements of Dubya's dirty campaigns. Then supporters of Northam ran an equally incendiary ad.
David Montgomery, et al., of the New York Times: "A day after a gunman massacred parishioners in a small Texas church, the Air Force admitted on Monday that it had failed to enter the man's domestic violence court-martial into a federal database that could have blocked him from buying the rifle he used to kill 26 people. 'The Air Force has launched a review of how the service handled the criminal records of former Airman Devin P. Kelley following his 2012 domestic violence conviction,' the Air Force said in a statement. 'Federal law prohibited him from buying or possessing firearms after this conviction.'" ...
... David Philipps & Richard Oppel of the New York Times: "Before a gunman entered a rural Texas church with a ballistic vest and a military-style rifle, killing at least 26 people on Sunday, he was convicted of assaulting his wife and breaking his infant stepson's skull.... 'He assaulted his stepson severely enough that he fractured his skull, and he also assaulted his wife,' said Don Christensen, a retired colonel who was the chief prosecutor for the Air Force. 'He pled to intentionally doing it.'" ...
... Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "President Trump declared that the shooting in Sutherland Springs, Tex., that left at least 26 people dead was not 'a guns situation,' saying instead he believed that 'mental health' was the problem. Trump's comments came at a news conference in Tokyo, when he was asked about the shooting at a South Texas church and if stricter gun laws were the answer.... Though the alleged shooter has been identified as Devin Kelley, 26, the full mental state of Kelley has yet to be determined. Kelley, a Texas man who enlisted in the Air Force in 2010, was court-martialed in 2012 for assaulting his wife and child, and received a bad conduct discharge from the military in 2014." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... David Leonhardt, et al., of the New York Times: The top ten Senate & top ten House recipients of NRA campaign funding all sent their thoughts & prayers (or some slight variation thereof) to the Sutherland Springs shooting victims & their loved ones -- except six of them, who couldn't be bothered with so much as a tweet. Mrs. McC: As contributor Marvin S.'s daughter wrote, "'Thoughts and prayers' is possibly the most mindless, laziest and hypocritical string of words ever assembled into a phrase."
Jack Holmes of Esquire: "... this president's ability to distinguish himself in the eyes of our Eastern allies is so potent he could start getting the job done before he even arrived. And so it emerged in The Japan Times, that nation's oldest English-language newspaper, that Trump has some intriguing views on the relationship between Japanese feudal history and North Korean ballistic missiles. '... Threats from North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile development programs were set to be high on the agenda in his talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday.... The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said....' Many have already sunk the slam-dunk snark-shot that katanas are a non-ideal weapon against cruise missiles." Do see Akhilleus' commentary below. (Also linked yesterday.)
L'état, C'est Moi. Jonathan Swan of Axios recounts a June 2017 meeting in which President Trump told Native American tribal leaders how to cut the red tape that accompanies energy exploration on their lands: 'Chief, chief, what are they going to do? Once you get it out of the ground are they going to make you put it back in there? I mean, once it's out of the ground it can't go back in there. You've just got to do it. I'm telling you, chief, you've just got to do it.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Our Far-Flung Adventures. Jeet Heer of the New Republic: "Last weekend, Jared Kushner, in his capacity as his father-in-law's viceroy in the Middle East, made an unexpected visit to Saudi Arabia and spent time with the country's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 'The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy,' David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post, noting that the prince is 'emboldened by strong support from President Trump and his inner circle' and it 'was probably no accident' that this intimate meeting took place shortly before the prince arrested his political rivals in a sweeping effort to consolidate power.... Congress has oversight power on U.S. foreign policy. If the Republicans were responsible enough to exercise it, they'd be scheduling hearings on Saudi Arabia right now." Mrs. McC: BTW, where's Rex? ...
... Irony Alert! David Smith of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has thrown his weight behind an anti-corruption crackdown in Saudi Arabia, claiming that its targets have been 'milking' the kingdom for years.... 'I have great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, they know exactly what they are doing,' the US president, who is travelling in Asia, posted on Twitter. 'Some of those they are harshly treating have been 'milking' their country for years!'" --safari...
** Junior Promised Russian Lawyer Tit-for-Tat. Irina Reznik & Henry Meyer of Bloomberg: "A Russian lawyer who met with ... Donald Trump's oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went to Hillary Clinton's campaign. The lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in a two-and-a-half-hour interview in Moscow that she would tell these and other things to the Senate Judiciary Committee on condition that her answers be made public, something it hasn't agreed to.... 'Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,' Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. 'I understand our side may have messed up, but it'll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,' he added, according to her. Veselnitskaya also said Trump Jr. requested financial documents showing that money that allegedly evaded U.S. taxes had gone to Clinton's campaign." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Greg Sargent: “We know now as a matter of fact ... that the June 2016 meeting was held for the explicit purpose of getting a dump-truck's worth of Russian 'dirt' on Clinton — Donald Trump Jr.'s email chain confirms it. And let's not forget, as The Post has reported, that Trump himself helped dictate an initial statement from Donald Trump Jr. that misleadingly claimed the meeting was 'primarily' about Russian adoptions. This was later proven false, which means Trump himself has been directly implicated in an effort to mislead the country about his own top campaign officials' eagerness to benefit from help from the Russian government. Whatever legal conclusions Mueller ends up reaching, we now know that Trump's top campaign officials were eager to collude with Russia to help him win the election and that Trump himself helped to cover that up." Sargent reminds us that Veselnitskaya is not the most reliable witness. But still. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly reminds us of how the Jared/Russia/social-media triangle worked during the campaign: "... Jared Kushner's major role in the campaign was to manage messaging on social media via data-mining and micro-targeting. All of those efforts are now under investigation by the Mueller team, especially the involvement of Cambridge Analytica. This latest report shows that a business partner of Kushner's, Yuri Milner, played a role in Russian investment in Twitter and Facebook, the social media giants that Russia used so effectively to spread divisions during the campaign.... Even the most cursory look at these stories tells us that there are deep connections between Russia and almost everyone associated with Donald Trump. It is impossible to imagine that it is all simply a coincidence." ...
Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to President Trump's campaign... whose visit to Moscow during the election has drawn scrutiny, sent an email to fellow Trump aides during his trip describing 'a private conversation' with a senior Russian official who spoke favorably of the Republican candidate, according to records released late Monday by congressional investigators.... Page's email was read aloud by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) when Page met behind closed doors last week with the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 president election. The committee released the transcript of the seven-hour session late Monday.... In a statement Monday, Schiff said that Page had failed to produce the email to the committee before his interview, despite receiving a subpoena for documents." ...
... Kyle Cheney & Randy Lemmerman of Politico summarize highlights of Page's testimony before the committee. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: All righty then. We've found another Nixon Connection. Stand aside, Roger Stone. Page testified, according to the Politico summary, that "the man who first connected him was New York State GOP Chairman Ed Cox." Ed Cox is Richard Nixon's son-in-law.
More from the Paradise Papers. Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "Bank of Utah has that all-American feel. Founded in the 1950s by a veteran of both world wars, it offers affordable mortgages and savings accounts, sponsors children's festivals and collects coats for the poor. But in addition to its mom-and-pop customers, the bank has a lesser-known clientele that includes Russia's richest oligarch, Leonid Mikhelson, an ally of the country's president, Vladimir V. Putin. The bank served as a stand-in so Mr. Mikhelson could secretly register a private jet in the United States, which requires American citizenship or residency. The work on behalf of Mr. Mikhelson, whose gas company is under United States sanctions, is part of a discreet niche business for Bank of Utah that allows wealthy foreigners to legally obtain American registrations for their aircraft while shielding their identities from public view. The bank does this through trust accounts, in its own name, that take the place of owners on plane registration records."...
... Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Leaked documents and newly obtained public filings show how the billionaire Mercer family built a $60m war chest for conservative causes inside their family foundation by using an offshore investment vehicle to avoid US tax.... Mercer, 71, appears as a director of eight Bermuda companies in the Paradise Papers.... Mercer's foundation is barred from intervening in election campaigns. But over the past decade, it has given out $62m to conservative research groups and thinktanks.... From 2013 to 2015, the Mercer foundation gave $4.7m to [Steve] Bannon's Government Accountability Institute -- more than half its total funding in that time.... Bannon founded GAI in Florida in 2012 with Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of Clinton Cash.... Rebekah Mercer was a director of the group until 2014. It has continued assailing liberals since Trump's victory and says exposing the 'misuse of taxpayer monies' is central to its mission." --safari
All the Best People, Ctd. Dan Alexander of Forbes: Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is a well-known fraud & liar. For one thing, he greatly inflated his assets in order to enhance business opportunities, then stiffed many of his investors. Hmm, that sounds familiar.
The New American Gilded Age
Darius Dixon & Eric Wolff of Politico: "A proposal by Energy Secretary Rick Perry to alter the nation's electricity markets would provide a windfall for a small group of companies -- most strikingly one owned by coal magnate Bob Murray, a prominent backer of ... Donald Trump. Perry's plan would force consumers to subsidize ailing coal-fired and nuclear power plants with billions of dollars, in what he calls an effort to ensure that the nation's power network can withstand threats like terrorist attacks or severe weather. But his narrowly written proposal would mostly affect plants in a stretch of the Midwest and Northeast where Murray's mining company, Murray Energy, is the predominant supplier...." ...
... ** Corporations Are Better People Than You Are, My Friend. Dana Milbank: "Room 1100 of the Longworth Building, with its ionic columns, gilt-fringed curtains and eagle-topped frieze, has for 80 years been the home of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. But perhaps never before have corporations wielded their power as openly as they have here this week. As the panel moves to approve the Republican tax plan, this is the room ... where the rich will get richer, where everybody else will be forced to shoulder a greater share of the tax burden, and where a trillion dollars of tax breaks for corporations are being passed by lawmakers who work for these very corporations." Read on. The "quiz" Rep. Susan DelBene (D-Wash.) gave a tax expert present at the bill's mark-up is one for the ages. ...
... Heather Long of the Washington Post: "The Tax Policy Center on Monday retracted its assessment of House Republicans' tax bill after discovering an error in its model, a mistake that could complicate the effort to evaluate the legislation by an organization that has long enjoyed broad, bipartisan credibility."...
...John Larson (D-Conn.) minces no words in blasting the GOP's tax shenanigans. --safari
... David Dayen, in the New Republic: Republicans have slipped "chained CPI" into their tax "reform" bill to substantially reduce Social Security benefits ($230 billion over ten years) AND increase taxes on the working poor ($128BB over the next ten years & another $500BB in the next ten-year period). Whether or not you buy the argument that chained CPI is more accurate than the Consumer Price Index, the effect of applying chained CPI to determine the rate of inflation is fairly certain. And Republicans are counting on it to screw ordinary Americans.
Kasie Hunt & Dartunorro Clark of NBC News: "Disagreement between Rand Paul and his neighbor [Rene Boucher] over the senator's politics and his property line were possible motives in the attack that left the Kentucky lawmaker with five broken ribs, a source told NBC News on Monday." The neighbor's attorney denies there was a political motive. "Paul was wearing headphones while mowing his lawn in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when he was attacked from behind by Rene Boucher, 59, on Friday, two sources said.... The FBI is investigating the incident; assaulting a member of Congress is a federal crime." ...
... Charles Pierce thinks the story is weird. Mrs. McC: So do I. I think we're going to find out Boucher thought Paul was screwing his (Boucher's) wife. Or something like that. When civilized people have a property dispute, they either work it out or get lawyers to work it out. Our neighbor (who is a lawyer) accidentally had a treehouse built for her kids on our property. Medlar & I are concerned about liability in case some kid is injured on our lot. We're working it out with nobody getting in a huff. ...
... Update: Nicholas Fandos, et al., of the New York Times are on the case! They came upon some vague suggestions that Paul disregards neighborhood regulations in his gated community & spreads a lot of compost around. Mrs. McC: Well, that fits. Also, something about Randy's Great Pumpkin Patch. P.S. Paul was not pushing a lawnmower; he was just getting off his riding mower.
Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker: "In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women. He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations.... The explicit goal of the investigations ... was to stop the publication of the abuse allegations against Weinstein that eventually emerged in the New York Times and The New Yorker. Over the course of a year, Weinstein had the agencies 'target,' or collect information on, dozens of individuals, and compile psychological profiles that sometimes focussed on their personal or sexual histories.... In some cases, the investigative effort was run through Weinstein's lawyers, including David Boies, a celebrated attorney who represented Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential-election dispute and argued for marriage equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies personally signed the contract directing [the agency] Black Cube to attempt to uncover information that would stop the publication of a Times story about Weinstein's abuses, while his firm was also representing the Times...."
Patricia Dvorak of the Washington Post: "It was the middle-finger salute seen around the world. Juli Briskman's protest aimed at the presidential motorcade that roared past her while she was on her cycling path in Northern Virginia last month became an instantly viral photo. Turns out it has now cost the 50-year-old marketing executive her job. On Halloween, after Briskman gave her bosses at Akima LLC, a government contracting firm, a heads-up that she was the unidentified cyclist in the photo, they took her into a room and fired her, she said, escorting her out of the building with a box of her things." Read on. Briskman did not ID her employer. It appears that if Briskman had been a man, the company would not have fired her. (Also linked yesterday.)
Civil War Revisionists: The brainwashing of generations --safari
Way Beyond the Beltway
David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times: "Saudi Arabia charged Monday that a missile fired at its capital from Yemen over the weekend was an 'act of war' by Iran, in the sharpest escalation in nearly three decades of mounting hostility between the two regional rivals."
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Reader Comments (19)
I just finished reading about the meeting Trump had with Native Americans ( see above) who were complaining about the red tape that accompanies energy exploration on their land. Under normal circumstances this would be a huge story–-the president advising these Americans to sabotage laws that govern their land. I thought I had become immune to new fresh hells, but this I find shocking. It's almost as if Trump envisions the "red tape" to be actual red tape––"yeah, chief, ya just go in there, take hold, rip it outa the ground–-they (and who is this they?) aren't gonna make you put it back."
The more I think about the message here the more I despair. Now–-on to the other news of the day.
The Vox video safari posted on the United Daughters of the Confederacy explains a lot about my education I did not understand. Like why I was asked in my first day as a second grader if I was a Yankee or a Rebel (I didn't know). Like why we learned the state song "Swanee River" in its original fake "Neegra" vernacular. Like why my high-school history textbook didn't include slavery among the "six causes of the Civil War." Like why so many girls in my high school wore ante-bellum dresses to the proms. Like why one of my best friends said in class that I needed "psychological help" because I thought the schools should racially integrate.
These effects were not the works of a bunch of ignorant redneck yokels. Rather, they came about through the Southern "re-education camps" -- otherwise known as public schools -- promoted by evah-so-propah socialites and their "uptown Klan" Citizens' Council husbands.
Dere's wha my heart is turning ebber, etc.
Marie
@PD Pepe: Wait till you read Michelle Goldberg's column. But, like Krugman & Jeet Heer, I see the problem as pre-Trumpian. It goes back a long way, but the real crisis bubbled up when Grassley & McConnell accused President Obama in 2013 of “packing the courts” by filling ordinary vacancies. It came to a head – a true Constitutional crisis which I think has been vastly underrated – when these two refused to allow Obama to fill a Supreme Court seat.
The media have settled on calling this “partisan politics,” but it's much more than that. Their actions – or inactions – were nothing less than open rebellion against their Constitutional duties & they set up the seditious movement that Trump rode to the White House & is carrying out every day. No wonder the House doesn't impeach Trump; he's one of them -- Newt Gingrich in a better, if more ill-fitting, suit.
Speaking of brainwashing, one guy I work with, during a break room discussion about Confederate statues, said slavery was a made up issue. A few people had slaves, but so did northerners. And those slaves were all treated well. But Yankees made it into something it wasn't. All the southern states wanted to do was enjoy their states' rights, then the north started the war. I mentioned that the north didn't bomb themselves at Fort Sumter. He said that the whole Fort Sumter thing is a northern lie made up after the war to pin the blame on Confederates.
I had to leave the room.
Rep Paul Ryan just now at a press conference responded to a Q on the Texas church massacre, saying that the problem was that the laws on the books aren't being enforced, the Air Force did not report the shooter's conviction which would have barred weapon purchases.
Not a word about the "other problem" which was that the shooter acquired a semi-automatic .556 people-killer and expended 15 magazines of 30 rounds each, within minutes. On people trapped in a small box.
I don't know the answer, but it's not "enforce the laws already on the books." In Texas, the law allows you to open-carry that .556 right up to the church door, and you don't have to display a carry license to do so (unlike, for example, my state requiring you to display your hunting license if you are walking in the woods with a rifle.)
Jeanne's comment yesterday about becoming numb to it all is profound. It is what happens to people (survivors) in war zones. And this year it's not just guns, it is a shit-load of trauma to the body politic. We've got to figure out how to turn this around.
Oops. Should be 5.56.
Ak - re your break room buddy - do you ever get the feeling that they are just yanking your chain and cannot possibly be so stupid?
Our rear view mirror.
Currently in the stack on the old nightstand is AJP Taylor's history of the Habsburg Monarchy. I'm reading it because, well, Taylor, and the Habsburgs (those crazy hemophiliacs). It's also the sort of historical work you don't find anymore, and in that respect, it's refreshing in a kind of retro manner. But Marie's comment today about the Rise of the Trump Monster reminded me of another of Taylor's works, a much more controversial book, when it came out, at any rate.
In the early 60's Taylor wrote "The Origins of the Second World War" and his primary thesis was held in great contempt by those who had already firmly decided upon the source of all evil in the world for the decade from 1935 to the end of the war: Adolf Hitler. Taylor thought differently. If you do a search for this book you're likely, still, to find scandalized sputtering about how Taylor was an apologist for Hitler. I won't get into all of that, but I did see how some of his thoughts about the origins of that war make sense when considering the Trump Monster.
Taylor's thesis was that Hitler was not some unique demonic force who had the entire war pre-planned in his head. This sort of thinking basically frees up everyone else. The entire blame is pinned on one guy. Was Hitler an evil maniac? Sure. But it's not as if he didn't get help along the way. The conditions for the rise of someone like Hitler were forged from many sources. Trying to say that the German people were duped and the various social institutions in place at the time were largely blameless seems to want to make Hitler a god like (or Satan like) figure of immense power.
Likewise for Trump. He has become an avatar of Confederate perfidy, greed, lies, and hatred, but those seeds were planted as far back as Goldwater. Thomas Kuhn in his book on the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" posits that paradigm shifts don't come in predictable ways, or follow straight lines across historical fields. It only looks that way at a later date. The rise of the New Confederacy predated Trump by decades. Republicans were working the plows while Trump was still jerking off to teenagers. Trump, far less than a figure like Hitler, is no great plotter of world historical events. He is an opportunistic demagogic creep who is enjoying the fruits of many laborers' work.
It has been said (this may be a Taylor quote too...I forget) that the past is used to support the prejudices of the present. In the case of the Confederacy, they use--conveniently--an invented past to do that. Their history is steeped in slights and victimhood, combined with an overly ripe sense of inevitable superiority and final victory, blessed by god, over all their many enemies.
You're all familiar, more or less, with revenge narratives. "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a seminal example. With one huge difference between Dumas and contemporary followers. Even though he exacts some revenge for past outrages (and they WERE pretty fucking outrageous), Edmund Dantes stops short of enacting the most violent retribution. His remembrance of his past love for the woman who was stolen from him saves the day. He himself, is rescued from the clutches of a lifetime of unfulfilled hatred, which in a way, is the best ending.
Revenge stories have gone downhill since.
Today, in most filmic settings, what used to be called B movies, the hero, beset and besieged, is usually ill used and left for dead. He (or she) comes back and exacts terrible vengeance. And here's the trick. In order for the "hero" to really go to town on the villain(s), the original transgression has to be pretty fucking awful. I mean, the guy has to be beaten like a rented mule, set on fire, eyes poked out, children sold into slavery, wife raped and murdered...you get the idea. This gives the author free rein to let the guy go full Mel Gibson later on. He can pour molten lava down the bad guy's throat and everyone cheers. They don't really care what laws are broken, what kind of morality such narrative structures support, how unethical, inhumane, or downright savage the outcome. As long as their guy wins.
And this is what's going on today.
Confederate invented history has, for so long, painted liberals as soft, immoral, evil, godless Bible burners and baby killers that the worst reprisal is suitable, no matter how psychotic.
Enter the Donald.
They don't care how corrupt, how ignorant, how dangerous, how mendacious he is, as long as their enemies (us, for example) suffer at his (tiny) hands. As long as he can stick it to liberals and their nee-groe president, it's all good. He can dismantle centuries of American institutions, piss on the Constitution, break laws, lie, cheat, threaten nuclear destruction. They.Don't.Care. In fact, they love it.
So invented history, years of setting up the conditions that can attack democratic principles and norms with no blowback, a ferocious sense of outrage, hatred, and paranoia, plus an opportunistic, racist con man, and there you have it.
As Goldberg says toward the end of her excellent, if hellaciously dismal column, it would be justice itself if, several years hence, we could read a history of the Trump Era, enjoying the return of social and democratic norms while the perpetrators and crooks rot in prison. But that ain't gonna happen.
This doesn't mean things can't change, but I don't think there's going to be a return to the way things were, because the way things were have been changing for a long time. We just haven't been able to see it quite as clearly.
History isn't a straight line, but you can certainly see those lines converging in the rear view mirror. It ain't a pretty picture.
Patrick,
I doubt it. Not this guy. He's not smart enough to engage in chain pulling. And even if he were, he'd have to be pretty good at it to make it work. No. This is what he really believes. And worse? A lot of the people around him, who are smart enough not to say those sorts of things in a public setting at work, are with him on a lot of his beliefs. It really is a different world. Very few would admit, for instance, to racist tendencies, even that guy, but you should see their faces when they see a video of Obama or, even worse, his wife. The reactions range from bemused annoyance to downright hatred.
The USA: special, extraordinary and totally unique.
NYT
Syria Joins Paris Climate Accord, Leaving Only U.S. Opposed
So the entire world is wrong.
Bea:
Won't dispute your identification of the crucial moment in our slide to oligarchy. Though other tipping points might vie for "the moment," (our recent history offers many choices), what is beyond doubt is the direction in which the country is heading, eagerly propelled by Republicans who have clearly allied themselves with both national and international oligarchic interests.
Democracy? How quaint!
Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here" (the title anyway; I haven't read it) comes to mind.
Yes, it can...and it is.
@Ken Winkes: I don't know that that was the moment that defined our “slide to oligarchy,” but it was the moment where the Republican-led Senate abandoned the Constitution – made it obsolete. From there, the country could have gone in some other direction: say, an actual populist dictatorship or a junta of “the generals,” or something else.
But Mitch McConnell & Chuck Grassley cast the die. They knowingly & openly threw the Constitution out the window, and none of their colleagues objected. Sure, a few Senate Republicans said they would give Garland an up-or-down vote if given the opportunity, but that's hardly the same as rising up against McConnell, removing him & Grassley from their leadership positions, then proceeding to carry out their Constitutional responsibilities. This was not just Mitch & Chuck's excellent adventure. The rest of their caucus rode along on the bus. That's what was so important about it. This wasn't the ignorance of Tom Cotton & Richard Shelby talking; this was every Senate Republican engaging in a grand conspiracy to undermine the Constitution. By comparison, Russian meddling is small potatoes.
Once again, Pogo got it right.
Some days, or rather too many days one is given to ranting, beating one's chest in despair as one damn un-f**king, unbelievable thing occurs after another. Yes, Michelle Goldberg's writing in the NYTimes that the 'once unthinkable becomes the numbing..." is surely true. That we are becoming inured to each unfolding outrage is correct. We become exhausted from protesting, marching, signing petitions, commenting and commenting with little impact or progress to show.
There are days that I wearily read one front story after another and feel too spent to vent. Thank god for Häagen-Dazs!
But, amidst my morning desperation came the latest issue of the AARP.org's monthly bulletin. I paged through, scanned here and there from "How Safe Are Our Nursing Homes?" to "Selecting the right auto insurance," when I got to the inside back page. There is one of the most hilarious cartoons I've ever come across. Worthy of the New Yorker! There on the psychiatrist's couch is a small, lonely, very sad clam.
The caption reads: "I'm not happy."
Boy, that sums things up for me. And, makes me laugh with every glance.
@MAG
Thank you for the humor in these troubling times. With all the hyperbole around, consider this old cartoon from the New Yorker, where a very large dog lies on its back on the proverbial couch and laments to a note taking psychiatrist: "I am only a good Dane....."
@AK: "As long as he can stick it to liberals and their nee-groe president, it's all good. He can dismantle centuries of American institutions, piss on the Constitution, break laws, lie, cheat, threaten nuclear destruction. They.Don't.Care. In fact, they love it."
Joy-Ann Reid mentioned on one of her shows a while back (can't dig up the link) about Republican voters and she landed on your same thesis: All the energized conservatives pushing the GOP forward seem to care about is one thing and one thing only: Sticking it to liberals. This can really be the only explications of the reality that Republican voters are still supporting Trump at a rate upwards of 80%. He's nosediving in all other categories, but the one that matters for them saving their delicate bottoms from the cold boot is sticking keeps them sticking firm to their man.
I feel like a very significant shift in voting patterns is underway that I don't think we've really come to terms with yet. A ThinkProgress article I was reading lays out just one case study of this steady transformation of previously career-ending gaffes or stances that are now openly celebrated and revered: the early political exit of Rep. Sen. George Allen, a potential presidential candidate in 2008 who went down in flames in 2006 by saying "macaca" (didn't even know this racial epithet against African Americans). Shortly after publicly uttering this word, his support tempered away and he lost reelection. He disappeared thereafter. And now we compare that to Ed Gillespie's campaign based solely on racism and white grievances. All the talking heads are saying this election is the Democrats' to lose, but I wouldn't be surprised in the least if a super racially-charged, Confederate-adoring campaign riles up the deplorables to put the GOP over the top.
I know progress isn't a straight line, and with successes come failures. But as we've mentioned in this thread already about the decades of foundation stone laid to come to this moment, I don't see how this "fever breaks", as Obama once alluded to, anytime soon. With the inevitable "browning" of America through our history of immigration, mixed-couple relationships, and relative lack of white babies proportionally, I knew the population who use their "white" identification as an object of power would eventually lash out, but I didn't think it would come so early and so fast.
On another point, after the Georgia case wiping clean the voting machines when investigators started getting too close (a similar event occurred in Kansas, but Kobach just stonewalled and refused to hand over the data), sprinkled with gerrymandering, and topped with the renewed proliferation of voter repression laws, I've frankly lost confidence in free and fair elections. Not saying they'll steal them all, but I'm sure Trump's Voter Commission is cooking up ways to do just that. Sheesh!
https://thinkprogress.org/racism-ballot-virginia-gillespie-84db1f3192a8/
Working as an election officer in an admittedly very diverse, very blue precinct in Virginia. Good turnout on a cold, rainy day - LOTS of the diverse voters that make up the Dem coalition. Expect Northam to do very well here. Downstate (AKA Alabama), however, will be another matter.
Rockygirl,
Thanks, you've made my day. As Safari indicates, the haters go at these sorts of things hammer and tong and Democrats do not, so it's good to hear about a solid turnout for the good guys despite bad weather.
The downstate voters will do what they do. Strange fruit indeed. I read an account today of historical lynchings in Virginia. The writers congratulate their fellow Virginians in only lynching an average of a bit fewer than two black citizens a year from 1880 to 1920. Gee. Congrats. Good going. I suppose it's better than three a week for fifty years in Alabama and Georgia.
No wonder KKK Ed Gillespie has such a following. I don't know if Gillespie is a genuine racist (I don't really fucking care) but his catering to racists puts him smack dab in the middle of Bigoted Pig Land, like most Republicans. Because, you know what? I don't care if Paul Ryan or Mitchy McConnell or any other swingin' dick in that slimy party protests their being called racists (because they have a black friend or two--the guys who mow their lawn). If you support a racist pig president, you're no better than Bull Connor siccing his dogs on black Americans and attacking them with fire hoses and billy clubs. You don't get to say, as President* KKK does, that "All the 'blacks' really like me". You're a resident of Dante's rings. So fuck you, the horse you rode in on, and all your friends and family who think you're a good guy. And that aunt who sends you a Christmas card every year wishing you a "White" Christmas? Fuck her too.
If Democrats could just get it together and take this shit as seriously as the haters and the irredeemable pricks, I'd be a whooooole helluva lot happier. Instead of group-wanking over this Donna Brazile bullshit, how 'bout we get together, show up at the polls and help to vote these cancerous anal cysts out of office?
Marie,
Pogo IS right. But were he to run for office, Fox would attack him as an anti-'merican rabble rouser and preternaturally trouble-making possum. Mitchy McConnell would rip him for not doing what he's supposed to do, lie on the forest floor and play dead when predators like him show up.
They'd prefer the alligator (forget his name) who is as self-aggrandizing as they are.
Comic strip characters, all.
But still the enemy.
albert alligator.
i liked churchy better than pogo.
Latest Li’l Randy lie.
According the Littlest Asshole, he has no clue why he was assaulted by his horrible neighbor. Not a scintilla of a clue. But he thinks he was attacked because this horrible person was incensed that he—regular guy, average patriotic ‘merican Randy—was cutting his own grass and not paying landscapers to do it! Horrors!
This bull gets shittier and shittier.