First Presidential Debate 2024

 I know it's pointless to add my voice to the cacophony of hot takes and bedwetting, hand wringing, fear, and despair. And if it wasn't so important I would have stayed in hibernation. But it is important, important to slap a little sanity into my fellow Democrats. We're professional pessimists, the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and by extension on President Joe Biden's shoulders. So when a professional liar and convicted felon was given carte blanche by CNN to rhetorically punch our president in the face for 90 minutes, we feel the same hurt. A hell of a lot of Democrats feel disappointed. Professional havers-of-opinions fret and rend their garments because it feels at this moment in time that we blew it, we backed the wrong horse, and now democracy is going to fall to the most monstrous scumbag ever to crawl onto the political stage.

But it won't. Tell me, who changed their minds last night? Who is suddenly now excited at the prospect of a return and doubling down of the corruption and debasement of society? Who now longs for Project 2025? Who actually watched that farce last night where Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who were probably under threat of career suicide if they disobeyed orders from on high, seemed completely indifferent to Doughface Donny's firehose of lies and disregard of the questions asked, even thanking him for lying to them? Of those, who actually watched the debacle and changed their minds? Who, of those, will even remember anything about it a month from now? 

No, Democrats, through the performance of President Joe Biden, looked bad for 90 minutes. He had a cold, he wasn't on top of his game. The guardrails we thought could contain Doughface Donny's delusions and yelling, no audience and muted mics when not his turn, were not enough. Donny said whatever he felt like saying, I didn't hear one thing that even partially aligned with truth or the real world but that is the art of the con. Just lie with conviction and authority and the marks will fall in line. The beauty of having no responsibility, of acting in bad faith with impunity, having no morals or shame, is that you always have the advantage over those who do have responsibility. Being president is an incredible responsibility and it weighs on any decent individual occupying that office. It is the first and foremost reason we don't want an irresponsible, vicious liar to have that office. 

Which is why being a grown up is hard. And why being a responsible statesman is so difficult, when you care about something you are vulnerable to evil men who only care about hurting you. President Biden cares deeply about this country and the American people, he has shown that he will do his best to defend us from evil men like Doughface Donny. That is why, cold or no cold, he was at a disadvantage. CNN's executives care about tax cuts and scoring enough points to survive to get those tax cuts. They care about ratings, not journalism; spectacle, not truth. So those executives pushed Tapper and Bash onto the firing line and tied their hands behind their backs as a sacrifice. We aren't allowed to see behind the curtain of motivations at CNN or any giant corporation. Noam Chomsky used to say that media is a self-selecting chain of filtration, if you internalize the values you rise in the profession. If you maintain some standards and conscience, you do not get on screen. 

We, all of us who feel some responsibility and care about the full litany of democracy and rule of law, have to persevere despite all of these handicaps. It was 90 minutes of looking bad, that's all. We can recover. President Biden can get this done, he's the only one who can at this time. 

Cut the damn cord already!

 Is cable news really the most important thing in America right now? At the end of the day, how much do Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon et. al. actually impact our lives? CNN, MSNBC, and Fox have become institutions unto themselves and made themselves into the center of the story. Not just mediums of information but power centers that say everything about what the elite want America to be. Fox has always been GOP TV, that was Roger Ailes' explicit lodestar in pitching the idea in 1996, based on a strategy he came up with as an operative in the Nixon administration. Tell fairy tales of grievance to the poorly-educated masses and directly communicate right-wing talking points to the base. It is the strategy of every subversive institution since, whether trump himself, or wingnuts trying to make it big. Social media is therefore just a slightly more interactive form of propaganda, more insidious because sock puppets and 'bots can make an incredibly bad take look more popular than it is. One way media like talk radio and cable news can only sound as big as the confidence level of the host or anchor talking. 

Things aren't any better at the other two cable news channels, CNN has very consciously moved right and is now a parody of itself. While MSNBC is trapped by the balance police, to put it most charitably, making sure there are two hours of conservative talk to every one of center left. These people running the networks are not friends of democracy or freedom, but FOX has always been the problem. Tucker, whom I used to laugh at as the bowtie frat boy squealing on Crossfire all those years ago, evolved into the most dangerous of propagandists. The one who deals in straight ideology and not individual personalities. Just like the phrase "conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed" Tucker laundered neo-Nazi bullshit through his patrician idiom to make the right wing authoritarian followers feel more confident in their eliminationist beliefs. Not better, not more acceptable but validated for sheeplike followers who are actually constantly seething with rage. Getting him off the air and making eliminationism just a little less respectable will lower the temperature on rising American fascism.

Until the next one steps into that vacuum that is. Only about three million people watched his white power hour on Fox, less than one percent of Americans, yet his reach was far greater because the medium is the message and endlessly echoed by others. By making that message about ideology and eternal grievance, and not about and individual leader, Tucker's propaganda left a wide opening for whomever can grab his mantle. Who knew at the time that this whiny, petulant heir to the Swanson foods fortune with the million silly faces could step into Bill O'Reilly's spot and take his audience to even darker places? It had everything to do with the confident impunity that pushed the boundaries of acceptable speech. Individual leaders can be shrugged off when they no longer serve the march to fascism, see Bush, George W. Trump will go the same way, most of the republican base is losing faith in the constant individual grievances that Doughface Donny gives them. The authoritarian followers want to hear about kicking ass on the poor, immigrants, and liberals, not how mean this or that district attorney has been to poor Donny.

Which is why Carlson's firing was a big story. The public had barely absorbed the news of the Dominion settlement when Tucker made all the elite journalists whiplash away from that settlement's implications. As I understand it, that $787 million or whatever is barely half a year of revenue for Fox, most of it will be paid by insurance and the rest will be written off of their taxes. As Keith Olbermann said, "we are subsidizing Fox's punishment". So this is not going to be some great deterrent for the next Big Lie. Neither will that money go toward anything productive, unless the hedge fund that acquired Dominion for a song decides that it must surrender some of it to a pro-democracy nonprofit or something for PR purposes but most will just end up in the pockets of the same elite buccaneers who have ruined so much of American democracy already. 

Will Carlson's firing actually impact Fox's ratings or share price for more than a day? It will be the question of the news cycle unfortunately. Gotta have something to fill that 24 hours of air time each day. And too many people will be caught up in it that could be doing something more constructive. The question I am looking forward to hearing about is whether or not these troubles will impact Fox's negotiations with cable companies for increased "carriage fees" for the network's lies. Did you know that every cable subscriber subsidizes all these rotten channels that nobody watches? I didn't. Though I cut the cable cord over a decade ago and never looked back, I consider it one of the better decisions I have ever made. 

We Americans are at war, or more accurately are having war waged against us, by the fascist movement. Thankfully it is not a full shooting war (although the relentless string of mass shootings is starting to be noticed as an actual military campaign, finally) it is definitely an information war. Cutting the cable cord should be considered a patriotic act. Roger Ailes sold Rupert on Fox as a niche channel for exactly this reason, it isn't even advertisers that make up the bulk of Fox News' revenue but these damn carriage fees. Olbermann has harped on this angle a lot but it bears repeating, Fox has three million regular viewers, there are about ninety million cable subscribers in America so eighty seven million subsidize the poison being fed to the three million. Advertising boycotts make a good story but don't do nearly as much as depriving all these thieves of carriage fees for programs and channels you don't even watch. 

"Broke into the Speaker's house and all I got was excommunication from the people I was trying to impress" It's not easy being Depape

 The first story I read about the home invasion and attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was from NPR via Twitter. The details in story were still a little shaky but the outline was pretty clear, a disturbed white man broke into the Pelosi house and demanded to see the carbon unit designated Nancy for the purposes of tying her up and interrogating her. When the police arrived the home invader struck the 82 year old man in the head with a hammer. Thankfully Paul Pelosi was taken to the hospital immediately and looks to be making a good recovery. But this should not have been necessary in the first place. I put on my HazMat suit (they are expensive in sea monster size) and opened the replies. Yup, Twitter is still awful. But it was the direction that the vitriol went that caught my attention.

Since Brother Charlie Pierce shared the criminal complaint against the suspected attacker, David Depape, to try and get a look into his mind via the dry, legalistic "cop speak" as he put it, I should contrast the observations with what I saw in those comments on Twitter. "It is as good a look as we may get into the pure MAGA mind."

It’s all there. A mind, made soft by hours of conservative media saturation, weirdly dehumanizing the speaker of the House into an ideological doppelgänger named “Nancy,” spoken of with a false familiarity bred by his inability to see her as anything beyond a target for invective and, it turns out, even worse.

The complaint itself is only 8 pages long, I'm not sure why I didn't find it as interesting at Charles P. Pierce but I don't spend much time reading court documents. His take on this idea of the caricature or doppelgänger of Nancy Pelosi brought to mind V'ger from the first Star Trek movie. How little propaganda did it take to dehumanize the person into a monster in Depape's soft mind? Two hours of fox news? Two days? A side of Michael Savage spitting venom into his microphone? There are many books to be written on the self-brainwashing of lone wolves at the hands of stochastic terrorists.

I didn't think it was even in doubt that Depape was an extremist right-winger but the Tweets were just adamant about how he was actually a nudist gay prostitute who lived in a house with BLM signs and rainbow flags so he was totally a lefty. And an illegal immigrant (that code word is enough right? Doesn't matter one wit that he was a white guy from Canada). I had never before seen the authoritarian mob on Twitter work so feverishly to distract with false information, or try so hard to disown a guy who actually went out and did what they all want to do. It was almost like some tinge of conscience was prickling. But where did the uniformity of talking points come from? Was it just monkey see monkey do? Did someone feed a 'botnet the talking points and they went forth to search and destroy? And was it really just to "own the libs"? The truth came out almost immediately and as you can see from the court filing there was nothing about it being a lover's spat, drug deal gone wrong, underwear, or any of the crazy things getting flung against the wall.

So, the republican noise machine radicalized some random guy in San Francisco to attack Nancy Pelosi's house, broke in and assaulted her husband. At once threatening and intimidating anyone daring to oppose the fascist takeover. And now it's practically crickets, a thirty second update on nightly news. A probable assassination attempt on one of the most prominent Democrats in the country, right before the midterms and nothing is going to come of it. Another example that basically sailed through the mainstream media is how fascists in MTG's district drove her opponent out of the race with intimidation and death threats. Despite her being such a disgrace and being such an onmipresent reminder of the danger this fact is barely ever mentioned. I wish her opponent this time good luck and pray for his safety. But the only way to stop this is to trounce all republicans in the elections tomorrow.

Bad Faith Polling and Inflation

 As clogged with lies and misinformation as the interwebs are these days, it still only takes a few intrepid reporters or representatives to get the truth out. Every morning I try to turn on the news, usually on ABC, while making lunches and helping get the clan out the door and on with their days to get a bit of what's going on. And for days it was nothing but "polls are tightening," "GOP surges," and the omnipresent bugbear of 2022 "inflation skyrocketing." 

First, I hate that mainstream media now uses GOP adjectives to poison discourse the way Newt Gingrich taught republican candidates in the '90s. Second, that the mainstream media repeats the same poisonous GOP talking points without context. Third, that any real counterpoint to the BS is shut out. In this case, Rep. Katie Porter gave a master class on inflation and corporate greed that maybe got five seconds of play on the networks. ABC uses terms like skyrocketing, massive, unprecedented, and horrific to categorize inflation but never do they actually define what inflation is. No context as in how inflation is present around the world and actually lower in the US than many other countries. The simple answer to what inflation is is rising prices, businesses raise prices in hopes of inflating their profits. Yes, it really is that simple, nothing about wages and nothing about the cost of labor or any other explanation that then rationalizes crushing workers to squeeze out inflation. Once upon a time there was competition between businesses that could restrain them from raising prices with reckless abandon but there are very few checks on that greed today. 

I have more to say about inflation but I'm trying to be brief.

What I really wanted to nail is the panic about polls. It is in media's interest to have a tight horserace on elections because they can then ignore actual problems and solutions. For instance, what is the GOP plan to fight inflation? Climate change? Healthcare? Sure, we know all about critical race theory now and how republicans all vow to ban it from elementary school (even though it doesn't exist there and is just thinly coded racism). But how would having republicans control Congress hold down inflation? Anyone? No? But hey, Hershel Walker has paid for many abortions of his own children, how can republicans still be supporting him? Look at how close the polls are! We need a 20 minute, carefully controlled panel discussion on why Senator Warnock is failing to pull ahead!

So you have contextless polling data driving discussion and speculation about why Democrats are failing to contest the conventional wisdom that of course republicans are going to sweep the midterms. Because the out of power party always gains. What if, those polls are being manipulated?

Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors posted a clip on Crooks and Liars of Joy Reid hosting New Democratic Network's Simon Rosenberg. An expert who knows how to read polls and give context to a host who is willing to listen? Banish the thought. Imagine if real discussion and debate were a value that network and cable news shows universally shared instead of the occasional nuggets that feel almost seditious compared with regular broadcasting. Rosenberg reported that poll aggregators like Real Clear Politics and 538.com are inundated with partisan republican polls, which then skew the numbers of polling firms who really are trying to reach people and report accurately. Getting a really representative sample of voters is really difficult, I know I don't answer the phone for unknown numbers. So good faith polling is facing real challenges and losing credibility for the same reason as every other problem and challenge America faces: Republicans.

This is the same thing they do with any liberal book, TV show, film. Flood the review sections with trolling, bad faith, negative reviews to bring down the average of good faith reviewers. Amazon tries to combat this with the "confirmed purchase" icon and other sites try to combat the deluge in other ways. But as I recently read in a book about changing police culture, leaders can make as many rules as they want but if the prevailing culture does not accept them then it will not change. We don't get in-depth coverage of republican training camps and online courses teaching fascists how to most effectively troll and destroy the status quo. And this flood of fake and bad faith polling results from partisan start ups is the latest gambit by fascists to wreck the institutions of democracy. James Burnham wrote about bad faith extremists wrecking democracy all the way back in 1964, it is sad that this sabotage is now the primary platform of his party.

But once you understand that polling is now misinformation because of republican sabotage, you can be less worried about it. The main goal of this particular bout of ratfckery might be to contest the Democratic victories next week and fuel further brownshirt republican violence about rigged elections. There won't be a grain of truth to it.

So, most of the inflation is caused by corporate greed, no one on the networks or cable will ever ask the obvious question: what is the republican plan to fight inflation? Or better yet, why do voters believe republicans have any interest in fighting inflation? Instead they will continue flogging bad polling data all the way to election day. You, dear reader, do not have to sit back and let this continue. Share the links in this post, tweet about it, talk to neighbors. Find credible sources of your own. 

A Spark of Life from the Depths

 So... uh... what's new?

I apologize for my long absence. There is no excuse I suppose but it just seemed like the narrative was outrunning my ability to keep up. If anything, democracy and what we like to believe America actually represents is slipping away faster and faster. I realized that not only was I not able to stem the tide in even the tiniest way I thought I was before but that I don't really have anything novel or useful to add. In short, I am out of practice for any kind of meaningful writing. It is so easy to slip into despair at the powerlessness of individuals to make any impact on political discourse. Or at least what was once known as the "liberal blogosphere" that I tried to be part of. What place can a guy writing under a pseudonym about history's effects on the present have in 2022? I'm not a Youtuber, a Tiktoker, or even particularly good at Twitter or any platform people are using and actually paying attention to. It seemed like spending time with my family or my hobbies was a more productive use of the limited time we have on Earth. My "output" such as it was, dwindled even on Facebook where it was comparatively easy to post a news story with a reaction. What difference did it make?

Then, my father died suddenly in early 2021 and I just completely gave up. He left almost nothing behind of his experiences, ideas, or opinions. Nothing in writing anyway. Over seven decades on Earth and in a moment, all of those things disappeared. I really took that hard. What is the point? Why bother? We're all worm food in the end anyway and very few of us humans will leave any kind of lasting mark. My goal, once upon a time, was to make a difference in even just one person's thinking on what this great experiment in self-government means in the long story of human history. But what difference could it make if I gave even dozens of people tools to fight against this horrible self-delusion of millions on a collision course with fascism? A few more people aware of the crushing wave of organized money and manipulation of masses of stupid people? In times of great evil, maybe ignorance is better. Better not to be aware of how bad it is, how a minority of cruel, self-serving scum will rule over the majority that couldn't fight back and never had a chance.

Reinhold Niebuhr used to say that nothing is inevitable, that wars can be stopped. Tyrants can be prevented from taking over. One of his books was called Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic where he dealt with the disillusionment of whole-heartedly supporting the US war effort in WW1 only to feel betrayed by the cynical exploitation and oppression used to suppress dissent. The fight against evil was not only "over there" but it had to be taken up in domestic politics as well. What was the point of defending democracy with anti-democratic methods? So while the rest of the country partied to jazz and bootleg liquor while cruising in their Model T's, Niebuhr was trying to make peace with the imperfect ways men must use to combat evil on Earth. I don't know where I lie on the spectrum of cynicism, perhaps I am just too weak and cowardly to confront the trolls and too tired to motivate the apathetic. But, in the same way Niebuhr came to realize that despite all the apathy and cynicism, war is not inevitable. The midterms are not a foregone conclusion and there is still a chance to save democracy.

At least, when I go, my children will know where there old man stood. That's enough reason to get back up and try.

Party like it's 1931

 When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a bible. ~Sinclair Lewis

 

MOUNT JULIET: Desperate for attention, MAGA Grifter “Pastor” Greg Locke just held a literal book burning📚

(We were torn on posting, but feels like y’all should see how low a guy who calls the pandemic “fake” as his own congregants die and says Trump is still president can go) pic.twitter.com/o7Oek204Cg

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) February 3, 2022

Gosh I feel owned.

This is really all they have anymore. As if we needed constant reminders that there are real nazis in America doing real nazi things. I don't know what's actually going on in this video, it just looks like a drunken bonfire of broken pallets and screaming idiots throwing bags of something on it. Are they really books? Or is this juvenile display of pyromania and cult behavior just pretending? After all books cost money. So, if they are burning their own books well that's no different than when the magas were burning coolers and sneakers that they spent real money (that could have ended up in doughfacedonny's pocket, so there's that) to buy. So what, anything mass-market can presumably be reprinted. What is a book burning ritual circa 2022 supposed to accomplish?

Honestly, this is the same superstitious display of "savages" dancing naked around a false idol. It has more in common with a witches' sabbath than anything I recognize of Christianity. 

Either they are burning books or some other thing they own, in which case they paid for it so who cares. Or these are library books or stolen items, in which case they are guilty of actual crimes. And it will depend on the local Tennessee authorities to arrest and prosecute them. Facial recognition software should have little difficulty in identifying these cultists right? These are definitely the kind of people who beta-tested the NSA's facial recognition software masquerading at Facebook games right?

There are midterm elections coming up and this "pastor" just gave the Democrats a free campaign ad. These book burners are supporting the republican, are you with them or are you with America?

Knights and Barbarians in Feudalist American Politics: California Recall Landslide Edition

 Thankfully, Larry Elder is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. I admit I was sweating the astroturf recall in California probably more than was necessary. These kinds of anti-democratic shenanigans are the worst kind really because the best possible outcome is that nothing changes. We liberals can hope that California Democrats will now reform their recall laws to make it harder for right-wing authoritarians to force the state to waste $300 million and reinforce their big lie about fraud, but more likely they will just go back to complacency about the inevitable demographic destiny about winning without delivering.

While Gavin Newsom is no prize, Jello Biafra once talked about him being prominent in "Democrats for Bush" back in the dubya tyranny, his repulse of the latest republican chevauchee gives me a chance to revisit a hypothesis made after doughfacedonny stole the presidency. Namely, that elected Democrats are knights in feudalist America. Republicans are the barbarians at the gates, who reject civilization and are only interested in the power to dominate and oppress. While those two components are readily apparent in a White hat/Black hat sort of dichotomy, the other layers of feudalism in America line up less neatly but I still think knights and barbarians are a better comparison than cowboys and cattle rustlers or Old West outlaws and lawmen. 

What are the practical effects of Newsom maintaining his seat? The It Can Happen Here Podcast did a fairly good summary of where California is and will continue to be now that the recall is over recently, especially concerning wildfires and other environmental issues. Just having a grown up in charge of state efforts is a start IMO. Not to go back to the Jello well again but he is the foremost California leftist that I know, he summed up the republican desire pretty well in his spoken-word piece "The Last Big Gulp" where republicans (mainly boomers) want to use up everything on their way out to preserve their selfish, decadent lifestyles of consumption and waste, fck everyone else. Elder would have thrown open the spigots and depleted the freshwater supply drastically while taking even modest controls off of developers to turn green spaces into strip malls and McMansions. Efforts to help people would all be channeled into militarized security forces to keep white boomers safe from poor people. As the Talking Post Memo article from the top said, "negative partisanship worked in this election" telling people how awful republicans are and reminding them of how badly republicans govern can do a lot. 

It is a bit like the hypothesis I also have used in the past to say that half of half a loaf is better than a boot stamping on a human face for all eternity. Which, if you paid attention to the destruction wrought by Dubya and doughfacedonny, along with all the teabag and MAGA governors basically speaks for itself. The problem was that Democrats did not take the problem of republican barbarism seriously when they held power. Eight years of Dubya running roughshod over the constitution after stealing the presidency on a technicality and no action on reforming the Electoral College during Obama's administration. They wasted valuable legislating time debating republicans and letting them hang poison pill amendments on the ACA while doing almost nothing to counter the teabagger's racism and mobs at townhalls. Democrats acted during those years like demographic destiny had arrived and they could rest on their laurels... then losing a thousand legislative seats over the next series of elections. 

Still, I one hundred percent prefer Democrats in office over republicans. Despite their flaws Democrats are the only political party in the country, the other being a death cult of human suffering that is so dedicated to the ends of power they will sacrifice their own members to make Joe Biden look bad and simply reject democracy when they are so toxic that no one will vote for them. It would be a catastrophe if the lessons of 2010 disappear down the memory hole and we wake up to a republican congress. Recently I heard leftist activists complain that the Democratic Party is a fundraising machine and little else, which pigeonholes into the comparison I wanted to make about medieval knights. If I could contribute even a little bit to bolstering morale and encouraging Democrats to show up to vote and stay involved by reaching with an imperfect analogy then let's go.

To Be Continued...