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Book report: Evil Geniuses

Saturday, August 29, 2020

This past Sunday the New York Times Book Review featured Evil Geniuses by Kurt Andersen. It sounded good so I ordered the e-book (I use a Kobo so I can buy through my local bookstore. I avoid Amazon as much as I can) and I’ve been reading it over the last couple of days. I highly recommend it.

The book documents the growth of the vast right wing conspiracy to which Hillary so famously referred. It really does exist, though it’s pretty much out in the open, as Andersen documents.

There’s a reason why inequality has increased in America since the 1970s. It didn’t just happen and it isn’t a natural outgrowth of economic laws over which we have no control. It was a matter of policy on a large number of fronts, including legislative enactments, regulatory changes, legal rulings, and the wholesale takeover of the Republican Party, which actually once had honorable people in its ranks. All brought to you by a movement funded by folks like the Koch Brothers following game plans by people like Lewis Powell. Speaking of Amazon, which I mentioned above, it is only because our anti-trust laws are no longer enforced that it has become the worker exploiting virtual monopoly it has become.

I’ve mentioned on this blog before that the right plays the long game, and Andersen documents it rather completely in his book. When I read the Times review I hesitated to buy the book, as it sounded like it was merely a litany of all the things I already knew, and that’s partly true. None of it surprises me, but it’s valuable to have it all in one place and there are a host of little factoids of which I wasn’t aware, though none of them are surprising. If you were paying attention and alive from 1970 to the present, you had to be at least vaguely aware that there were forces out there that were changing our society and skewing things toward the rich, though of course, they were not covered well by our media. Just as one small example, the role of the Federalist Society in warping our judiciary is hardly noticed even today, and it is rare that the financial backers of said Society are mentioned when this right wing horror show is mentioned.

This book should be required reading for young people born after the right achieved so many of the subtle and under the radar victories that brought us to where we are today. They need to know that this country once had a fairly egalitarian society; how it came to be so unequal; and who is responsible. It should also be required reading for Democratic politicians, as, should they take control, a lot could be achieved by simply reversing the legislative and regulatory changes Andersen documents. Remaking the judiciary is another matter of course.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of Andersen’s conclusions about why the country was ready to accept the changes these people brought about. I think he overemphasizes the nostalgic yearning for days of yore that he says arose in the 1970s, but he’s got a point worth pondering.

The one chink in the right’s armor, from my point of view (I haven’t gotten to Andersen’s conclusion on this score) is that in order to maintain control and implement their agenda, they still have to win elections, which means they have to get a substantial number of people to vote against their own interests. They no doubt believed that they could manipulate their base voters forever, appealing to their racism and anxieties, while controlling the process sufficiently so that they could nominate people who would appeal to a broader spectrum of voters, often referred to as the low information voters. Just as a for instance, they surely figured that they could appeal to racists forever with deniable dog whistles, but they failed to see that the base would demand the real thing. In other words, they never expected the loonies to actually take charge, but that may be what’s happening. They certainly never expected to end up with someone like Trump, since they definitely prefer reliable alleged moderate Republicans like Mitt Romney.

Anyway, consider picking up the book. It’s well worth a read.

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It’s perfectly normal when the right does it

Thursday, August 27, 2020

We often read about both siderism in our media: the insistence by the punditocracy and many reporters that both sides are equally responsible for the rot in our political system. But there’s often something more pernicious going on: an absurd emphasis on something when one political party does it (that would be the party beginning with “D” or someone affiliated with that party) while worse transgressions by the other side are ignored or minimized. A good example of that phenomenon here, at Eric Boehlert’s excellent blog, Press Run, which documents both siderism almost as well as Driftglass, without th colorful language.

The phenomenon appears to have a more generalized left-right existence. We are fed a constant diet of stories about anti-police protestors being violent, when often those episodes are fairly trivial or, and this goes mainly unspoken, fomented by right wing “outside agitators”, like the teenager who just murdered two people and whose right wing connections are being soft pedaled as I write. At the same time, things like this go unreported or consigned to the back pages:

The far right in Idaho—which seemingly now includes its state Legislature—has a rule: Free speech for me, none for thee. Protesters from the right are welcome with open arms, but protesters from the left get thrown in jail.

That became manifest Monday in Boise when a horde of anti-COVID-19 restriction activists led by antigovernment figure Ammon Bundy broke into the chambers of the Statehouse, shoving their way past state troopers, pounding on doors, shouting and breaking doors and windows along the way, and then invading committee hearing rooms. But not only was no one arrested, state officials decided to accommodate them. It starkly contrasted with the scene a few years ago, when peaceful protesters seeking equal rights for LGBTQ people were arrested en masse for standing silently in the halls of the building.

…

Bundy—who has been the primary figure in the far-right resistance in Idaho to pandemic-related measures—led the crowd of entirely maskless protesters at the Statehouse steps, who began chanting “Let us in!” after access to the gallery seating in both Senate and House chambers was restricted to half-capacity and seats quickly filled up. First they shoved their way past Idaho State Police troopers standing guard, then they banged on doors and windows demanding entry past the gallery doors on the fourth floor. One of the men, according to the Associated Press, was carrying an assault-style rifle.

Rather than enforce the rules and eject the protesters, Republican House Speaker Scott Bedke chose to allow the gallery to fully open. Lawmakers on the floor pleaded with the protesters to stop the chants and be respectful. Eventually, the crowd quieted down after all the seats had filled to capacity.

So a crowd of angry white men, some armed, physically attacked police officers and invaded a state capitol and legislative session. Not only did the police do nothing, even when the white folks physically accosted them, but the Republicans surrendered to them, which, I suppose, was entirely predictable. Predictable also was the press response to this outrage, which is a far greater threat to our political system than anything street protestors may have done. Something like this should be a front page story in every newspaper. Needless to say, it hasn’t been. Imagine what we’d be reading in our papers and seeing on our televisions if a gang of black men did precisely the same thing. The press is not just normalizing Trump, it is normalizing all right wing criminality. All of this is unlikely to end well.

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Trump admits guilt

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

One thing that’s little remarked among the punditry, perhaps because it’s so hard to make a both siderist case about it, is the Republican habit of projection. If they’re doing it, they’re loudly accusing the Democrats of doing it. They even had the chutzpah to claim that the Democrats were trying to destroy Medicare. They claim that voter suppression is all about stopping rampant voter fraud when the only recent cases of voter fraud involved Republican operatives (See this, for example).

So it’s not surprising that no one among the pundit class or in the reportorial ranks is pointing out that Trump is loudly proclaiming his intent to steal the election. He is doing so in the usual way, by accusing the Democrats of trying to do it. This is from the on-line edition of the linked article.

The president also continued his monthslong assault on voting by mail and repeated unfounded accusations that it was part of a plot by Democrats to hand the election to Mr. Biden.

But this, from the print edition we got this morning, which has apparently been “updated” and which I can’t find online, is more to the point:

President Trump was formally nominated for a second term on Monday, and immediately accused Democrats of leveraging the coronavirus crisis “to steal the election” using the first day of the Republican convention to level the sort of inflammatory, and often misleading charges he has increasingly turned to as he tries to make up ground against Joseph R. Biden.

So, we’ll definitely be seeing at least attempted robbery. Whether it will be successful is another question.

By the way, notice that despite the mostly negative tone of the article in the Times, they won’t go near the “L” word when it comes to Trump and his enablers. “Misleading” or “unfounded accusations” will have to do.

Update: Looks like the theft has begun. The Trump folks are trying to create fraudulent voters.

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A simple solution

Saturday, August 22, 2020

This should come as no surprise:

In an apparent effort to make his daily news conferences even more like campaign events than they already are, the White House press office has been packing the briefing room with supporters of President Donald Trump from far-right media outlets who can be relied on to toss him softball questions and initiate attacks on his political rivals.

Full details at the link above.

The article notes:

Unlike the original, freewheeling coronavirus task force briefings — which came to a sudden halt in April when Trump mused that doctors should “check” to see if injecting patients suffering from Covid-19 with bleach or isopropyl alcohol, or exposing them to ultraviolet light, might cure them — the president’s current news conferences are much shorter and seem designed mainly to get his lengthy, written opening statements on the air and get him out of the briefing room after taking just a handful of questions.

There is actually a very obvious solution to this perversion of the press conference: the major media should simply stop attending. If Trump wants to continue getting softball questions from conspiracy theorists, he can continue holding them, but if they are only covered by Fox, they will be doing him no good.

For the most part, Trump’s 2020 campaign has been mainly playing to the base, as if he needs only their votes to win. In fact, it could be easily argued that he’s gone out of his way to alienate whatever fence sitters may be out there. It’s an odd strategy that only a mentally ill person ands/or someone planning on stealing an election would employ. Should the major media refuse to cover these “press conferences” they will be facilitating that strategy, which, under the circumstances, is a good thing. It’s not at all clear that Trump can successfully steal the election, given the fact that the military, and even the courts, are unlikely to render assistance. As things stand now, the media, despite what the linked article says is its irritation at having these press conferences invaded by whackos, is simply giving these people credibility by putting them on the air on an even keel with actual journalists.

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Thanks for the memories, internet

Thursday, August 20, 2020

One of the things about the Trump regime is that there are so many atrocities that any particular atrocity is down the memory hole in no time. I may have mentioned that I try to document those atrocities day by day in a journal I keep, but it only skims the surface. By the way, do you recall that on this day two years ago Rudy Giuliani let it be known that “Truth isn’t Truth”?

Anyway, on to my main point.

Steve Bannon has been arrested for defrauding true believer Trumpers. What a surprise! I guess grifters just have to grift. This morning the genius said that he, himself, was against the “We Build the Wall” project from the start. Since he lies all the time any rational person would have concluded, based on said denial, that he was in on it too, but it’s always nice to have evidence.

So it’s good to have the internet, because whenever Trump lies, there’s alway someone who remembers a relevant atrocity, and here’s one that’s relevant to Trump’s claim that he was against the “We Build the Wall” project from the start:

Donald Trump’s former longtime henchman Steve Bannon was arrested this morning for raising millions of dollars for an imaginary “We Build the Wall” border wall project and allegedly pocketing the money. Trump then claimed during a press conference that he had always disapproved of Bannon’s project. But the money trail says otherwise.

Last December the Washington Post reported that the Donald Trump administration had steered a $400 million government contract toward a firm which had “partnered with right-wing activist group We Build the Wall to construct fencing on private land with millions of dollars raised through online donations.”

This was an ugly enough scandal at the time, but it fell by the wayside as other scandals grabbed the headlines. But after the news today that “We Build the Wall” was nothing more than a phony scam, multiple people across social media dup [sic] up the old WaPo article…

Don, Jr. is implicated as well, and it would be ever so nice to see him join Steve on the docket, along with the general counsel Kris Kobach and advisory board members Erik Prince, former CO congressman Tom Tancredo, Sheriff Dave Clarke and former pitcher Curt Schilling.

Just as a side note, it is interesting that these grifters can’t seem to be discreet about things. If you’ve promised to plow every nickel you raise into building a wall, it just doesn’t seem like such a good idea to skim millions of dollars and then spend a million of it on a yacht that all the world can see.

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Sounds familiar

Thursday, August 20, 2020

I’m currently reading a book Alaric the Goth, An Outsider’s History of the Fall of Rome, by Douglas Boin, a history professor at Saint Louis University. It’s a history of the sack of Rome from the Goth’s point of view, and is, of necessity, somewhat speculative in the details, though what I’m about to pass on is apparently fairly well documented.

It seems that in response to various pressures on their society, the Goths congregated at the Roman borderland near the Danube, not to conquer, but to avoid those pressures. The Romans responded. In or about 377 the “border patrol began indiscriminately separating Gothic boys from their parents”. “The young Gothic boys were identified, processed, and sorted, the impersonal nature of the border guards tasks little different from the inhumanity of the colonial-era Dacian slave trade.” Then:

State resources were soon allocated to implement the border separation policy in full. An office of the Roman government was set up to oversee the relocation program, and a military appointee received a government salary to manage it. The rugged plateaus and cities beyond the Taurus mountains were identified as suitable holding pens for the children. Gothic children were forced to say good-bye not only to a familiar landscape of childhood memories but to their actual parents, grandparents, and siblings. No documentation was ever kept, as far as historians know, that would have identified the children or helped reunite them with their families. An obvious paper trail, in fact, is quite likely what the Roman government wanted to avoid. Cruelty was the intention. Many Gothic parents never saw their sons again.

We here in America can be proud that our border separation policy is not sexist like the Roman. So far as I’m aware, we separate the girls too. Beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be a lot to distinguish the two, except, of course, that our policy was implemented by a devout Christian (according to our evangelical brethren) rather than a pagan.

The book was written this year, so one must assume that the current situation on our border was very much on Boin’s mind when he wrote the words I’ve quoted above.

One thing I’d like to see, if Trump doesn’t steal the election, is for Joe Biden, or better yet, Kamala Harris, to bring the press to one of our concentration camps on January 21st, and open it up to full public display. We have to be confronted with the full ugliness if we’re going to put a stop to it, not just now, but forever.

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Bruce chips in for Biden

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

My wife sent me a link to this video, which I thought was great.

One of the things that Republicans are good at is hitting Democrats in their strong spots and making many of them believe that they have to back away from a source of strength. For instance, the Republicans have often attacked Democrats because they have lots of support in Hollywood and the entertainment industry generally. As a perverse result, Democrats have sometimes de-emphasized their Hollywood support. Meanwhile, the Republicans do all they can to take whatever advantage they can of the few entertainers who support them, but there’s only so much mileage you can get out of people like Ted Nugent, Scott Baio, or Dennis Miller. Let’s face it, all the good guys support us.

So it’s good to see that the Biden campaign has put Bruce front and center. I told my wife recently that I thought the Democrats should turn their convention into a rock concert, with big name acts in between the speeches. Lots of folks would tune in. Also, it would get the genius apoplectic, which would be fun.

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I miss the good old days

Saturday, August 15, 2020

I am now in the midst of my 71st summer, which would be a depressing thought even if there were no pandemic and/or the White House was not occupied by a blithering idiot. But there are advantages to everything, and in this case my march toward senility gives me the right to pontificate about how much better were the olden days. And, for once, I’m not just talking about the fact that our music was so much better than the dreck being produced today, though that remains as true as ever.

In the olden days, politicians of both parties pretended that they stood four square for basic democratic principles, except, of course, for Southern politicians who had to patiently explain that said principles only applied to the white race, and anyway, black people in the South were happy as they were and weren’t interested in equal rights, voting, or any of those other privileges properly reserved to the descendants of Confederate traitors.But we must put that caveat aside, as it undermines my basic thesis.

In the olden days, many politicians would have been happy to engage in voter suppression or in ballot fraud, but they would have pretended to believe that the right to vote was sacred, every ballot should be counted, and every effort should be made to allow eligible voters to cast ballots.

In these modern times, the pretense has been totally abandoned! The person referred to in the press as the President of the United States (never so referenced at this humble blog) has admitted that he is destroying the Post Office in order to suppress the vote. Criminal presidents of the past would never have come right out and said such a thing. Richard Nixon would have used much more subtle and deniable techniques, like, for instance, breaking into his opponent’s campaign headquarters. To cite another example, who knows if Mayor Daley actually stole the election for JFK? If he did, he was principled enough to do it on the QT. That was the American way.

Yes, those were the days.

We’ve seen the present situation coming for a while, though fessing up to election tampering in real time is still unprecedented. For instance, while W and his gang publicly stole the 2000 election from Gore, they got Scalia and the gang to give that theft a veneer of legality, and we’ll probably never know what went on in Ohio in 2004, for even in 2004, the Republicans, who by that time had monopolized election theft, were still observing the proprieties and covering their tracks.

Alas, no more. The irony is that the man who lies about everything else is also the first politician to admit that he intends to steal an election. That would never have been possible in the good old days. In the good old days politicians of both parties would have been aghast at such an admission, particularly those that were stealing elections themselves. They would have presented a united front against such a person, regardless of party, while vociferously proclaiming their own fealty to truth, justice, and the American Way. Today, the boldest (not quite sure that adjective is appropriate) of Republicans tells us she is concerned, while the rest hold their tongues.

In the olden days, election thieves knew what they were doing. They targeted the voters for the other guy. Nowadays, it’s not even clear that preventing vote by mail will benefit the party doing the preventing.

In the olden days a politician might very much want to suppress the opposition vote, but in order to keep up appearances, that same politician might likely vote for bills making voting or voter registration easier. Now, in these days of decline, without suffering any adverse consequences, Republican politicians can be completely upfront about the fact that they have no interest in streamlining the voting process.

I say, when it comes to election tampering, lets bring back hypocrisy.

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The real reason for getting rid of the payroll tax

Thursday, August 13, 2020

I just finished reading this article, which demonstrates that Trump’s desire to get rid of the payroll tax and fund social security from general revenues is not feasible.

The article demonstrates once again that those of us on the left often, almost always, fail to appreciate that Republicans take the long view of things.

This blog actually started in reaction to W’s attempt to destroy social security, by converting it to a private account system. That didn’t fly.

Getting rid of the payroll tax and using general revenues to pay social security would accomplish more than just making the program financially unstable, and this is something that goes unremarked by most commentators.

Franklin Roosevelt recognized, when he started the program, that funding it by a special tax gave recipients the ability, indeed the right, to claim that they were owed their benefits, that the money in the trust fund was, in fact, their money. If the program were paid out of general revenue it would become a welfare program, and it would immediately be attacked as such by the Republicans, whose Holy Grail has been the destruction of the program since the day it was enacted. W actually thought he could do it, but he was deluded. Only Joe Lieberman, of all the “Democrats”, was willing to consider it. Trump thinks he can do it too. If he’s reelected, he will probably become a dictator, so maybe he will, but I’m inclined to think that he won’t be able to pull off a coup. In any event, that’s the point of getting rid of the payroll tax: to convert the program into a “welfare” program that can be attacked on that basis. Always keep in mind that policy is not Trump’s thing; someone is whispering in his ear about this, and he’s decided he likes the idea. He may be unaware of the long term strategy behind such a conversion, but the propaganda value of converting it to a “welfare” system is a big part of it.

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Who could have predicted the need for this?!

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

The ACLU has called for the Dismantling of the Department of Homeland Security.

Some people sort of thought from the beginning that if you give something an Orwellian name it would probably start doing Orwellian things. Of course the people saying that were the people to whom the Very Serious People never listen.

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