Is it easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission?

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once wrote, as he was wont to do, about presidential history in times of crisis. In particular he cited Abraham Lincoln and the extraordinary measures he took during the opening months of the Civil War. That was a real state of emergency, the slave states organized with incredible speed and moved quickly to steal Federal buildings and property. Slave power propagandists in the border states printed wildly seditious stories about the North and the newly elected president. It was not a time for careful deliberation and the slow wheels of government to take action. Schlesinger wrote that it was easier for Lincoln to do what needed to be done and explain his actions later.

Other presidents have taken questionable actions in times of crisis as well, Andrew Jackson's bank war and Indian removal, John Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, Wilson's roundups and deportations of revolutionary aliens, and so on. In each case, it appeared to much of the public to be a real crisis. Okay, maybe not with Jackson because he was just an asshole, but most of the time action was at least perceived to be necessary. The constitution was bypassed, the crisis resolved and officials took responsibility for their actions, most of the time anyway. It was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. This idea isn't limited to presidents, military commanders, police chiefs, businessmen, and even parents who need to take their children to the doctor all occasionally take action and answer for it later. This has also been a core tenet of all the torture porn films and television shows, "do we torture the shit out of the guy with the location of the bomb now and take our chances on punishment later?"

I'm no leader and I hate these kind of hypotheticals but we are rapidly approaching a turning point in American democracy. Another republican president is about to declare an emergency to get some awful thing they want, as has happened at least informally, for the last half century. Let's think about a few. Nixon's operatives went on their merry way bugging opponents, blackmailing and intimidating activists, planting provocateurs in anti-war groups and others, and generally acting above the law until they finally got caught. And even then,they would have walked away laughing had it not been for the courage of democracy's defenders holding their feet to the fire. Reagan's basement conspiracy in Iran-Contra likewise just ran their clandestine operation to sell arms to one enemy so they could supply an army of terrorists in Nicaragua. A few of them got caught and did their time as just the cost of doing business. Most just laughed all the way to the bank though, including the doddering old man himself. The list of authoritarian monstrosities of George W. Bush's administration is incredibly long and would make for many posts and book fodder. Sure, there was a real attack on America, although in hindsight it is fairly clear that it could have been foiled if that band of republican hacks had tried. But the cynical opportunism of denouncing opponents as traitors, and blasting out terror warnings that most likely were exaggerated in the extreme to fearmonger and drown out news of their myriad failures certainly fits this pattern.

Doughfacedonny is widely expected to declare a state of national emergency as outlined in an Act passed by Congress after Watergate that was and is supposed to stop the pattern of doing this very thing during his TV time tonight. Why the networks are still falling for his shit is a mystery we will never fully know the answer to. No one in their right mind would give this orange disgrace permission to do anything, or forgive him afterwards. Not that he would care. He already stole the presidency with the help of monsters at home and abroad. He stole two supreme court seats now and blew up the deficit with his corporate welfare tax giveaway. Has he asked for forgiveness for any of those things? No, of course not. He and Mitch McConnell have not asked permission to reopen the damn government that they run and aren't exactly trying very hard to be forgiven for the latest mess they caused.

It has made the rounds, in liberal commentary circles anyway, the idea of a Reichstag Fire moment coming from this crowd of traitors and imbeciles. And as the meme so often points out, "it's no longer whether trump has any decency, but whether we do." Are the networks, "the enemy of the people" as doughfacedonny so often calls them, really going to go along with this? Maybe he will just go out and feebly rant and lie about immigration and walls and other such nonsense. Nothing will come of it and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled resistance. There certainly is a national emergency but it's not on the border with Mexico. It isn't a legitimacy crisis, all the evidence of Russian meddling has rendered the occupant of the Oval Office illegitimate. It isn't an economic crisis either, the stock market is tanking because of the real crisis though. It is that one major political party in the United States is a death cult of human suffering and that about 40% of the electorate supports that cult.

There may come a time when the American people are finally pushed so hard that they must collectively ask whether it is easier to ask forgiveness for destroying the death cult after the fact, or whether we sit back and civilly wait for permission from the Democrats to defeat them. If doughfacedonny does indeed declare a national emergency and fumble around stealing enough money to build the stupid wall, it won't stop there. I suck at predicting the future, I really expected death squads on day one, but this time might prove more dangerous. Donny's back is against the wall, it is no longer a whisper that he should resign and bolt while he still can. The previous crises of Republican malice gave the criminal-in-chief a path out of danger, therefore they left when their time came but will donny? You can almost trace a line in the escalation of authoritarianism in republican governance since the late 1960s, pushing but never quite closing the door on democracy. Tonight the trap might spring shut. Stay tuned.

Is Soledad O'Brien part of a trend?

There seems to be some evidence that the media, mainstream objective outlets, are turning away from simply conveying information and talking points presented to them by politicians. Instead of uncritical reporting of both sides under a "false equivalence" fallacy, there are small budding instances where fact checking is making a comeback. In a false equivalence scenario, each side (supposedly) has the opportunity to present it's case and criticise the other side's case. The immediate problem with this method of journalism is that it provides no accountability for blatant lying and treats conservative propaganda as somehow rooted in reality. Then leaves all the responsibility for calling out that lying on Democrats, who at best are treated as simply partisans smearing their opposition, and usually just left speechless at each upping of the ante on deception and manipulation.

James Fallows at the Atlantic wrote that "the realities of modern 'post-truth' politics will sooner or later force the press out of its preferred, comfortable pose of "balance," if it is to come close to doing its fundamental job of describing reality. When some people in public life are willing to lie, and to keep on lying even when the bald falseness is exposed, the press should take on an affirmative responsibility to remind readers what the 'truth' is."

Fallows cites a few instances that, along with Soledad's continuing smackdown of liars, has the potential to reshape what Americans think about mainstream media. Of course, the "Liberal Media" assertion will be shouted even louder but how likely is it that more people than now will believe it? There is little hope of reclaiming the ignorant fishbowl-dwelling conservatives who believe what they believe no matter what and only seek to have their closed-minded non-thinking reinforced by their side. But this still leaves perhaps 75% of Americans who have no interest in being lied to by anyone.

What happens when any republican going on CNN is not granted plutocratic deference and actually has to account for discrepancies between their talking points and that annoying thing called "reality?" Will my new sweetheart keep the fact-checking up? This would be an unprecedented turn of events if the public perception of republicans finally switches from bullies to whining little babies.

The circuit could close with plutocratic liars and the prostitutes who service them really talking only to themselves. A clear delineation of objective media willing to fact check claims made by either side from partisan media, like this example of the all-too-common game of "bash the poor," is essential. Too much of the authoritarian bullying in our society has come from the fact that there is no referee, no one or institution capable of saying "Enough!"

Reason #3924 why hannity is a tool

I have a bad habit of turning on am radio from time to time and listening to whichever Goebbels wannabe happens to be yelling at that moment. And there was a doosy yesterday, sean hannity the Irish ape/college dropout, was getting all holy about Michael Jackson's funeral ceremony. It was an interesting tack, the "liberal" media was being horrible by covering it and not the deaths of American servicemen in Afghanistan that day. I agree, only I was also concerned about that years ago right through yesterday. All during that time hannity would baselessly attack the same media outlets for trying to read the names of fallen soldiers on the air, you see, because it was a propaganda stunt then to try and turn the squishy Americans against the war.

You know, we are at war with East Asia, and allied with Eurasia, we have always been at war with East Asia and always been allied with Eurasia.

It is a political show, but how is it that every event somehow can be molded to fit hannity's strange worldview that the media (of which he is regrettably a part of, and prominent at that) wants to destroy "his" America. Apparently this is such a minor smear that Media Matters for America doesn't have a entry for it. But I feel that a man who savaged John Kerry for "flip-flops" really should be called on this, shameless and contradictory attempt to grandstand on a funeral. I mean, at this point the half-dozen or so fans he still has will believe he can fly if he proclaims it on our airwaves. But it is more likely this is simply cynical propaganda to keep up the lie of hannity's "watchdog" status, at least in his own mind. Thank God we have this honest and intellectually forthright champion of the truth to do our thinking for us.

I suppose hannity would play the victim at this point and whine with self-righteous fury about the big, bad gloomy historian bullying him. LOL. It must be asked though, how do the die-hard conservatives who eat up his every word deal with a case of doublethink this blatent?

The truth of course is that at some point in the recent past, stories about the war dropped procipitously. I think most people are just exhausted, especially people who opposed invading Iraq and/or Afghanistan from the beginning (like me) and tuned out. The fighting continues, blood and treasure are still being wasted upon the sand but it seems so far away and unconnected from our daily lives. I wish we could get the same kind of large-scale, coordinated protests against the war today as there were when bush dismissed them as "focus groups", that might get the Obama Administration moving on actually withdrawing.

MJ's demise

I wanted to post about the different realms of media coverage yesterday when the networks picked up the story the Michael Jackson was sick but now the focus shifted because of his death. This blogging thing is gonna be hard, I can only imagine how many holier than thou types started ragging about how irrelevant he was and then boom, he's dead. I will start off by saying that MJ's music was a big part of my life as a kid and while I agree he got weirder and weirder as time went on, I am not convinced he really was the serial molester the media made him out to be. Suddenly, the butt of all kinds of jokes is remembered as a ground-breaking musician and activist for social justice at a time (the '80's) when nearly 100% of the zeitgeist was about greed and screwing everybody for a percentage.

Guys my age will probably need to ask our dads what all the hubbub was about Farrah Fawcett, I heard Mark Belling talk a little about her yesterday and he gave some insight about it. And in surprisingly tasteful terms too, the way I understood it she was this enormous sex symbol in the '70's epitomized by that poster but Belling glossed over the cruder aspects of that. It was the first time I actually cared what that guy had to say.

What I really wanted to talk about though was the overload of media coverage in general. News seems to be broken down into well, three categories: important things that actually affect our lives, complete distractions and something that can be best described as "oh, that's interesting". These are quite arbitrary and what ends up in one column for one person goes into a different one for someone else. I don't religiously watch the news but I try to keep up so here are my categories for the week.

Important: President Obama's weak and watered down health-care reforms and the frantic attempts by insurance companies and their conservative commentator flunkies to suck as much substance out of it as possible.

Distraction: This Sanford clown who traipsed off to Argentina to get laid or something while pretending to be hiking. This isn't worth our time for two reasons, one: most of us don't live in South Carolina and two: no matter how many instances of Republican officials in sex scandals rise up like swamp gas out of the bog it will never break the frame of how "moral" and "family-values orientated" they are.

"That's interesting" or trivia goes to the celebrity deaths, and I'd have to posit the Iranian protests because even the most hard-core neocon has to come to grips with the fact that we're not going to invade that country. And there may be just the slightest admission by the elite that we do not have the right to interfere with other countries' business. These things will be an "oh yeah, I remember that" but little else. Like a sports event, it happens, we notice and then move on. Does it really matter who won a game last year? But it does matter that we're shedding half a million jobs a month and so forth.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna watch some more MJ video clips.