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Another book report

Friday, September 6, 2019

I just finished reading a book.

Actually, I am always reading at least one book, but I’m going to write about this one, as it involves current events, something I usually avoid in books. The book is called A Lot of People are Saying; the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, written by Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum. I hesitated about buying it, as I thought there was a better than even chance that it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. My mind harkened back to Dog Whistle Politics, by Ian Haney Lopez, a book that exhaustively documents the racist basis of the present day Republican Party, which I put aside since, despite it’s merits, as it told me nothing I didn’t already know.

People are Sayingis different, if only that it illuminates some corners of the Republican/conspiratorial mind into which I have not glanced heretofore. I should state up front that so far there is no phony both siderism here, though they come near to it once, oddly enough when discussing the same or a similar poll that led me to direct my umbrage at Steven Pinker.

They make the not so obvious (though it seems obvious, once they make it) point that today’s conspiracists are not like yesterday’s. Today’s conspiracists feel no need to prove their conspiracy theories, it is good enough that they are theoretically possible, even if astoundingly improbable. Those who believed Kennedy was not shot by Oswald alone went to great lengths to marshal their evidence. Today’s conspiracists do nothing of the sort. It is sufficient, for example, if it is possiblethat Hillary Clinton and John Podesta ran a child sex ring out of a pizza joint. Actual truth is wholly optional and the fabricators are mostly upfront about that.

They also point out that unlike the classic conspiracists, today’s conspiracists seek only to delegitimate:

The new conspiracists are not talking about legitimacy in the philosophic sense. they have neither a theory of government nor of justice that would tell us what kind of regime is worthy of support. The new conspiracism drains the sense that democratic government is legitimate without supplying any alternative standard.

Which is true, though, at the hazard of engaging in conspiracist thought, I’d suggest that the people who originate these conspiracy theories, or at least some of them, know precisely what they want, they are just careful not to be upfront about it.

Also at the hazard of engaging in conspiracist thought, I’d suggest that some of the conspiracies they cite are in fact happening, except it’s the accusers that are engaging in them. They cite Trump’s oft repeated claim that there were three million illegal votes in 2016 (all of whom voted for Hillary) as an example, and it is, of an evidence free conspiratorial assertion. But this claim of electoral rigging by Democrats, often made by Republicans, may also be a case, as is so often the case when Trump accuses others of misdeeds, of one side accusing the other of what it is doing itself. Stacey Abrams might have a thing or two to say about rigged elections, as might the people of North Carolina. This doesn’t undermine the book’s basic thesis, but I do think that it’s part of the motivation behind the creation of these memes. If their charge of X is baseless and evidence free, that automatically renders a similar charge from the other side baseless and evidence free, even when that’s not the case.

I’m not sure their proposed solution is feasible, as, at least in part, it would require the existence of principled Republicans, which are in extremely short supply. Anyway, I recommend the book, as it certainly casts a good deal of light on what is a new variant of an old phenomenon. There have, after all, always been conspiracy theories and scapegoats.

I do take issue with one point they make. They rightfully point out that “[t]he new conspiracism feeds off and in turn fuels a tribal mode of politics”, but lose their way when they allege that it is “akin to Boston Red Sox fans’ belief that ‘Yankees suck’. Such an assertion is not an affirmation of a proposition that is meant to correspond to facts in the real world.” It absolutely isan assertion about facts in the real world. The Yankees do suck. There are no two ways about it. A lot of people agree with me about that.

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Joe Biden tends to remember things that never happened

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

Back in the days of yore, before I retired, most of my legal practice was in the area of Social Security Disability. Mental impairments are graded (so to speak) on a continuum: Mild, Moderate, Marked, Extreme. 

Before he was even inaugurated I diagnosed Trump’s impairment as extreme, and I think (too lazy to find the numerous links) most professionals who have ventured an opinion agree with me. Not only is he seriously ill, the nature of his mental illness is probably the worst imaginable for a national leader. A bit of depression (e.g., Abraham Lincoln) wouldn’t be disqualifying, but raging narcissism combined with his other symptoms (inveterate lying, total lack of empathy, etc.) are disqualifying in the extreme.

But this post is not about Trump’s extreme mental illness, it’s about Joe Biden’s mild to moderate problem. Recently Joe made it clear that he has no reason to run except to stop Trump, which might be fine if he weren’t the most vulnerable of the possible candidates to Trump’s schoolyard bullying tactics. He might still win, but his is not an attitude designed to rally the base, or anyone else.

But Biden’s problems run deeper. He is a liar. His problem is mild to moderate compared to Trump, but lets face it, we can expect from the press exactly what we’ve seen in the past. Hearken back to those days of yesteryear, in this case the year 2000, when Gore’s alleged untruths (and most of them weren’t even untruths) got endless press while Bush got a free pass. It will happen again in 2020 if Biden is nominated, for after all, we’ve already processed the fact that Trump lies about everything so there’s no reason to write about that, but every stretcher Biden tells will be endlessly magnified. It has been an uneven playing field for years, and that will continue in 2020. Individual members of the press may loathe Trump, but they can’t break free of the unwritten rules that give greater leeway to Republicans than Democrats.

Which brings us to the latest.

Biden has claimed that, although he voted for the Iraq war, he quickly turned against it. Read the entire linked article, but this caught my attention:

“[Bush] looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program,” Biden told NPR. “He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’”

Bush spokesperson Freddy Ford denied Biden’s chain of events, telling NPR, “While I’m sure it’s just an innocent mistake of memory, but this recollection is flat wrong.”

As the linked article demonstrates, this statement conflicts with the historical record, since long after shock and awe (July of 2003) Biden said: “Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today.”

The story about looking Bush in the eye is reminiscent of Biden’s lie about pinning a medal on a Navy captain. Charitably speaking, it was an amalgam of stories, in none of which Biden played a prominent part. In reality, it was either a lie or the product of a deteriorating mind. This is not a new thing with Biden, he has a history of fabrications, nothing like Trump’s, but see above.

Of all the possible nominees, Biden gives Democratic leaning voters the most reason to stay home in 2020. If he beats Trump, which is a big if, we are guaranteed to lose both houses in 2022 and the presidency in 2024, and the winner that year may be worse than Trump. After all, we all thought no one could possibly be worse than W.

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Vermont sightseeing

Friday, August 30, 2019

We are on vacation here in Vermont and for that reason I have not been gifting my insights to the world this week, though I have been following the fairly rapid mental decline of that fellow in the White House, as well as the determined efforts of the national Democrats to do what they can to lose the next election.

But this post is not about politics. I am simply passing along an observation.

If we New Englanders are familiar with nothing else, we are familiar with stone walls. We have one on our own property and they are fairly ubiquitous in our town, as they are here in Vermont.

Yesterday, as we traversed the road from Weston Vermont (having loaded up with licorice and other goodies) toward Landgrove, a trip we have made hundreds of times in the past, we noticed, for the first time, the most unusual stone wall any of us had ever seen. On our way back we stopped to take a picture.

Here’s the wall from a bit of a distance.

Here’s a closer view.

 

I’ve never seen one like it. The work involved in making it must have far exceeded that normally involved in building a stone wall, which in any event would be an arduous task. Getting those stones to stand on their ends like that must have been a real difficult feat. It all makes for one of the most beautiful stone walls I’ve every seen.

Anyway, that’s how I spent my summer vacation.

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It may not be much, but it’s the best we can do

Saturday, August 24, 2019

This is rather amazing:

If Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani is to be believed, the U.S. State Department aided his efforts to pressure a foreign government to dig up dirt on Trump’s political enemies, according to a report from ABC News on Thursday.

Giuliani claimed the State Department put Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak “in contact with me.” Giuliani insisted it was the State Department that helped him reach out to Yermak, “Not the other way around.”

…

Giuliani was trying to persuade Ukrainian prosecutors to dig up dirt to use against both the Democratic National Committee and former Vice President Joe Biden. The entire effort was intended to help Trump’s 2020 election effort, according to a May report from the New York Times.

Later that month, Giuliani was forced to cancel a planned trip to the Ukraine where he had planned on more collusion.

“This is the first instance of which I am aware in which a private lawyer for the president of the United States has, in his own words, ‘meddled’ in a foreign criminal investigation of a third party in order to politically benefit the president,” Tim Meyer, an international law expert at Vanderbilt University, told the Washington Post in May. “Mr. Giuliani’s actions undermine the long-standing U.S. foreign policy of promoting the rule of law in Ukraine generally and in the Ukrainian general prosecutor’s office specifically.”

Of course we can’t expect the “Justice” Department to do anything about this, but it would seem to me that a public confession of criminal activity ought to be sufficient grounds for New York State to disbar him. Clinton lost his license to practice for far less. It’s imperative that state and local officials step into the breach now that the “Justice” Department has become fully politicized. Disbarment isn’t jail, but it’s something.

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My most modest proposal to date

Thursday, August 22, 2019

The genius is all a-twitterbecause Denmark won’t sell Greenland. Everyone seems to think it’s a crazy idea. Even I did until I started thinking about it, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m sure that it’s time for another Modest Proposal, for I’ve got an idea that I’m sure will gather bi-partisan support here and might even appeal to the Danes.

No one has discussed the purchase price for Greenland. What I suggest is a swap, New England for Greenland (with a bit extra added by the genius). The Republicans will love it, because it gets rid of 11 (soon to be 12 when Collins goes down) Democratic Senators and a huge number of Democratic Congresspeople. We here in New England would love it, because we’d become an autonomous nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, the happiest nation on Earth. We’d get neat stuff, like a government health care system that works (Needless to say, there are numerous other advantages, which I lack the time and space to enumerate). Denmark would love it because it is subsidizing Greenland to the tune of $700 million dollars a year, but we could more than pay our own way. And of course, the genius would love it because he really wants to build some golf courses in Greenland as soon as all the ice melts.

I know what you’re thinking. What about the poor people of Greenland, who would be deprived of their sovereignty and put under the thumb of the Orange monster and his even more-empowered-by-the-deal Republican enablers? First of all, remember what Jeremy Bentham taught us: we should be looking to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and there’s more of us than them. There’s only about 55,000 of them, so we could easily absorb any that want to escape. We could even offer them free housing by seizing the property of New England Republicans (like we did to the Tories after the revolution) and giving it to the good refugees from Greenland.

You’re probably also thinking: What about the people in the other blue states who will now be at the mercy of the fascist Republican Party? Okay, that’s a tough one. Maybe they can sell themselves to other countries. Maybe the fascists will be happy to see them join up with us. You can’t have everything.

Of course there’s some minor details to work out. I like getting my social security check every month, so the deal would have to include our share of the trust fund. Also, we’d have to be clear on who would pay for the wall on the New England border with the United States. Personally, I think that should be part of the purchase price paid by the U.S. We won’t need one on the Canadian border, but, lets face it, we’ll need one to our west to stave off the tsunami of illegal immigrants we can expect from that direction. Of course we’ll let some in, but we have to settle on a workable criteria on who to accept. Just off the top of my head: Proof that the immigrant was a registered Democrat since he or she turned eighteen or for the previous five years, whichever period is less. We’ll have to house any Republicans who try to sneak into our country in concentration camps, but I’m not sure we can expect the U.S. to pay for those. I’m sure other issues will crop up, but we can work them out. All in all, I think it’s a great idea. I mean, really, what could go wrong?

Postscript: I only just now re-read the article from the Times to which I linked above, and this time I went almost all the way to the end, and was aghast to learn that the genius almost anticipated my brilliant idea:

At one point last year, according to a former official who heard him, he even joked in a meeting about trading Puerto Rico for Greenland — happy to rid himself of an American territory whose leadership he has feuded with repeatedly.

I admit that the people of Puerto Rico could make a great case for the proposition that they deserve to get in on the trade more than we in New England. But I’m a New Englander born and bred, so I’ll stick with my original idea. I think the Danes would prefer New England anyway, as they wouldn’t have to rebuild our electrical system.

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Let the Math be With You

Monday, August 19, 2019

Gee, it turns out that appealing to Republicans is not the sure road to successthat establishment Democrats and some Democratic presidential candidates (hint: one rhymes with Ride Em) think it is.

Rachel Bitecofer’s prediction on the 2018 “blue wave” was “numerically close to perfect,” writes Paul Rosenberg in an interview for Salon. The assistant director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia estimated Democrats would gain 42 seats. The do-over election in NC-9 scheduled for September 10 could make Democrats’ final count 41. On August 6, Bitcofer released a preliminary list of 18 House seats that with the right campaigns Democrats could pick up in 2020.

Her explanation for the size of the tsunami contrasts with conventional wisdom still on display among Democrats in Washington.

Bitecofer tells Salon, “I don’t know why Nancy Pelosi, the DCCC or many of these moderate members are convinced that moderate Republicans crossed over and voted for them. I have the data for some of these districts and the data tells a very different, very clear story: If Republicans voted in huge numbers, they voted for Republicans.”

And Republicans did turn out in large numbers. Turnout among Democrats and independents was simply higher. What made them turn out was not health care, but negative partisanship. It was Trump, Inc. By Bitecofer’s reckoning, not understanding the effects of that on turnout may have cost Democrats an additional half dozen seats they may have successfully contested in 2018.

Who would have thunk it? 

According to Biden and the establishment Democrats, the way to turn out those folks is by selling yourself as Republican-lite. That ought to do the trick.

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No one wants what Democratic “moderates” are selling

Friday, August 16, 2019

Arriving in yesterday’s mail, a fundraising letter from Steve Bullock, the envelope emblazoned with this stirring message:

I’m the only candidate who’s won a Trump state.
I can beat Trump all across America!

If you’ve heard of Bullock at all, you no doubt know of him as the man who should be running for the Senate from Montana instead of wasting his time and supporters’ (if there are any) money running for President. We can only hope that he follows Hickenlooper into the sunset.

Bullock is one of many Democratic candidates running as Republicans-lite; one of those Warren so effectively put down when she remarked that she couldn’t quite understand why anyone would run for president talking about what they can’t do.

The declaration on Bullock’s envelope got me thinking.

Let’s step back a bit and remind ourselves of the Republican formula for success. The Republicans agendais simple: it is to further the interests of the plutocrats. Every day, as Trump distracts, they advance this agenda. For instance,we learned yesterday that they are going to endanger us all by allowing sleepy truck drivers on the road. Good for trucking companies (who cares if a couple of truckers get killed), but not so good for the rest of us. Climate change? It can be safely ignored, as the plutocrats want, so long as you keep the rubes scared of the [insert racial, ethnic or religious slur here].

The actual Republican agenda is deeply unpopular, whereas even the “radical” ideas (Medicare for all! Just like in every other advanced nation!) of progressive Democrats poll well. How do the Republicans win? By distracting, with the help of Fox News, from their real agenda by playing to, and inciting, racism and other base and despicable forms of bigotry.There is no disputing this fact, it is out in plain sight. Only Washington based pundits are unable to see it.

So, in the face of this, what do Democratic “moderates” propose? They propose to eschew the racism that sells and embrace a lite version of the deeply unpopular Republican plutocratic agenda that the Republicans take such pains to hide. Not for them popular “socialistic” programs like Medicare for All or free college (why isn’t free high school socialism?). Better to assure those corporate donors that they have nothing to fear and in fact much to anticipate from a government administered by Mr. or Ms. Moderate Democrat.And by all means, continue to ignore climate change, while not going full denier when asked. Comfort the comfortable, while afflicting the afflicted slightly less than the Republicans.

To the extent Trump voters can be converted, this is not the message that will get them. If it were, the Republicans would not have had to go full on racist to begin with. What it can do is turn off Democratic leaning voters, who are looking for a government that will do something about wealth inequality, climate change, and the rise of the radical right. It is also worth remembering that Trump ran to the left of his opponents on economic issues. He was going to protect social security and give us great medical coverage, much better than Obamacare. Of course he was lying, but he was telling his deplorables what they wanted to hear.

None of the Bullocks have taken off. One can argue that Biden is of that ilk, and he is, and he is leading the pack. (Well, he was leading the pack) But he is the choice of the folks whose first priority is beating Trump, who have, at least for the moment, been successfully propagandized into believing a real Democrat can’t win. It looks more and more like the more people see of him the less they want him, though they still haven’t quite ditched the Beltway wisdom with which they’ve been vaccinated.

Properly packaged, our message sells. We have some good salespeople; what we need is for the establishment party to back them up and we need for the party to push back against the both siderism that compels the media to treat ideas like Medicare for All as if they were what Republicans claim they are. 

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Hey Joe! Listen to Harry

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The last time I checked (actually, I never checked, but I’m pretty sure I’m right) Harry Reid is even older than Joe Biden, yet Harry seems fully capable, even in his senescence, of figuring out which way the wind is blowing. He has an Op-Ed piecein this morning’s New York Times advocating for an end to the filibuster. 

One thing Harry doesn’t point out, though it is there by implication, is that the filibuster has only been an effective tool for the Republicans, because for one reason or another, Democrats have failed to use it when they are in the minority. All the Republicans need do is lament about how unfair it is that their latest attempt to do damage is not at least getting a vote, and the Democrats, pressured by a compliant media (to which we must also add the Fox propaganda media), fold. When Bush was president, there was, in principle, a filibuster rule that the Democrats could have used to block judicial appointments, but for one reason or another they let Roberts and Alito get through with scarcely a whimper, while when Obama was president the Republicans blocked almost every judicial appointment until Reid abolished the filibuster for judicial appointments (excepting the Supreme Court). That largely didn’t work because Leahy, being the good accomodating Senator that he was, maintained the blue slip rule, that allowed any Senator to block a nominee from his or her state or circuitwhich Grassley promptly ditchedafter the Republicans took back the White House. That resulted in the appointment, by Obama, of some embarrassingly conservative judges.

Joe Biden, who is physically present in the 21st century, but whose mind dwells in the eighth decade of the 20th, feels it would be a dangerous move to end the filibuster. If a miracle occurs, and the Democrats manage to overcome their own ineptitude and the both-siderism of the media to take not only the White House, but the Senate, they will gain nothing if the filibuster is maintained. The Republicans will surge back to power by pointing to the fact that the Democrats have once again, (see, e.g. Obama kissing Susan Collin’s ass to get a weak stimulus package) failed to effectively address the horrible situation they inherited from the Republicans. 

As a side note, part of the both-siderism I’m talking about is the media’s interest in Joe Biden’s gaffes, which they are beginning to pound away at. Those gaffes will not be forgotten, whereas Trump’s racist statements, and those revealing the extent of his mental illness, will be reported once and then consigned to the memory hole. This is not new. See, e.g., the press coverage of Al Gore, in 2000, and also see, e.g., Hillary’s emails as opposed to Trump’s blatant criminality, in 2016. This is all of a piece with the treatment the Democrats received when they even breathed the possibility that they would filibuster something major. Immediately we learned how they were endangering the democratic process. With Republicans—well, that’s what they do, so where’s the news?

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Utterly delusional

Friday, August 9, 2019

We can all agree that the present occupant of the White House is seriously mentally ill, and that he suffers from a mental illness that puts the rest of us at risk.

But what does it say about the state of our nation that his possible (we can only hope) successor is also mentally ill, though in a way that would normally be fairly harmless.

There is an old saw that insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Another old saw warns us that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There is truth in both of these saws.

Are you listening, Joe?

Joe Biden, touring Iowa, told reporters, in so many words, that his plan is to have an ineffectual, failed presidency. Or, as Biden put it more pithily, “Ending the filibuster is a very dangerous move.”

…

Biden has clung to this conviction in the face of overwhelming evidence, including eight years in an administration in which opposing party senators followed a strategy of scorched-earth opposition and were rewarded for it.

The prospective concern with Biden is not that he would somehow revive the old Dixiecrat coalition, but that he is nostalgically trapped in the bygone world of his youth, unable to grasp the tectonic changes that have reshaped American politics. Biden’s nostalgia for the villains of his political youth, and his belief that the institution can be restored to its bygone manners, is a symptom of a more profound disorder that you might call “Senatitis.”

If Biden wins, which I don’t think he can do, he will deliver 4 years of nothing. By 2022 whatever majority we may have in either House will be swept away, and in 2024 he’ll be replaced by someone possibly worse than Trump. I know that sounds impossible, but who would have thought they could come up with someone worse that W, who was, after all, the worst in history when he left office. In his own way, Biden is a clear and present danger to the survival of the Republic.

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The Gray Lady Retreats and the Democrats attack

Tuesday, August 6, 2019

This morning a contrast between the Globe and the Times gave me cause to rant. Each ran the same article by Times reporters Michael Crowley and (ugh) Maggie Haberman on their front page. For each it was the headline story. It was about Trump’s pro forma speech about the Trump inspired massacre in El Paso and the so far unattributed massacre in Toledo. At least Toledo is where the “I don’t really care, do you?”, Trump put the second massacre, though some people say it was in Dayton.

Anyway, back to the rant.

Here’s the NYT’s headline: “Trump urges unity vs. racism”.

That set me off ranting even before I saw the Globe’s headline for the very same piece: “Trump urges action,skips details” followed by a prominent sub-headline (is that what they’re called?): “He condemns racism,after months of incendiary remarks; Democrats demand gun laws”.

It is beyond doubt that the El Paso shooter was inspired in part by Trump’s racist rhetoric, given the fact that he parroted many of Trump’s talking points. The Times headline implies that Trump was a) doing the right thing, and b) sincere when he attempted to read a series of platitudes from a teleprompter.

I note, by the way, that the Times headline provoked a tweet from ctblogger, of which I heartily approve.

 

It is yet another sign of hope that the Times actually changed the headline, in response, at least in part, to criticism from a host of Democratic presidential candidates and other Democrats. Can it be that the Democrats are learning how to play the ref the way the Republicans have for years?

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