The Media. Everyone complains about it in some way or another it seems, especially "other" people in media. I wish there were a way to distinguish "the media" from "sources of news and information" because the term has certainly taken on a definition that is far removed from the original meaning. We can definitely dismiss any media criticism from the right, which consists almost exclusively of "working the refs" to gain advantage and intimidate reporters and editors. Especially the "jump the shark" quality of the Trump campaign's whining about the "liberal media" and how unfair they are. The eminent Driftglass discusses a phenomenon on his blog called "republican detachment disorder" whereas conservatives with an inexplicable job for life perch on cable news talk as though they are not part of the problem. No, you see, the problem is with those other republicans, over there. There seems to be a similar disorder among members of the media at large, even in the publication I am about to rail against, where they, the speaker/writer, is never part of "the media" and can therefore use this conduit of transmission of news and information that they occupy to criticise those other inhabitants of the conduits for transmission of news and information, over there. I am certainly not qualified to judge or even analyze "the media" at large and probably will not do a very good job of looking at this one publication, but damnit they have been getting under my skin lately and I want to take a few minutes of your time to stomp my feet about it. I speak of Politico, specifically their podcast called the 2016 Nerdcast.
It was almost a whim that brought me to this podcast, I was in the market for a mainstream view on national politics and the presidential election. Politico is less a "mainstream" publication as an "inside the beltway village" publication, which is why Brother Charlie Pierce of Esquire commonly refers to them as Tiger Beat on the Potomac. This magazine and whatever else it spills forth as "media products" rarely is interested in ideas or intellectual study of the American republic as far as I can tell and mainly concerns itself with people. Which is, as Eleanor Roosevelt said, the domain of small minds. TBotP has a reputation for being People Magazine for the people that matter inside our nation's capital. I was first introduced to the eye-rollingly and cringe-worthy superficial style of the magazine and principal operators in the book This Town by Mark Liebovich, who did an in-depth analysis of the personalities involved.
Anyway, the Nerdcast, as they call it, is a collection of writers and editors for the magazine from managing editor Kristin Roberts to senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian and a collection of simple-minded stooges who seem to approach all aspects of American governance and elections as a team sport where they are critical and indispensable insiders solely and uniquely able to discern what matters for all of us proles watching from the outside. Kristin, according to her bio page is a qualified and experienced journalist, has a pompous style as the boss of this rogue's gallery that makes her basically insufferable to listen to. The one that really bothers me is Kenneth Vogel, for both his sweeping style of inconsequential and unnecessary generalizations about the nature of candidates for office, the American electorate, and the process of elections; and his god awful annoying voice which I know he can't really help but combined with the aforementioned hollow pronouncements of prognostication approaches the level of a backpfeifengesicht, or face in need of a fist.
I have tuned in for a few months now and heard this crew fawn about Donald Trump "what are his chances? What does it say about the nature of Washington (you know the one we help define and shape on a day to day basis) that so many people voted for him in the primaries?" And, "can he come back from this series of gaffes and crass insults?" I listened to them speculate beyond reason about "the tea party" as though it were a real thing and not an astroturf invention of republicans looking to shake the shame of having voted for GWB twice and backed his greed-soaked blunders to the end. They have done a real service to all the professional ratfuckers out there looking to tarnish and delegitimize Hillary Clinton as a candidate and leader by accepting the frame of said ratfuckers and endlessly repeat them. This all from a supposedly "neutral" and "objective" source of media commentary. Charlie especially displays such a lack of self-awareness as he prattles on about the role of political media in the ascension of He, Trump to fascist leader status while ignoring the role he and his publication play in that ascension.
This is the "mainstream" of political opinion and analysis in America, rightfully dismissed by those of us in the real world as a fawning teeny-bopper spectacle (for those of us too young to remember Tiger Beat, think MTV when they stopped playing music videos in favor of "reality" programming). This is the way to be fair in American media, there can be only one way of perceiving any developing story or existing reality; both sides are relatively equal and bad. Therefore they need to kneecap Democrats whenever they can and elevate Republicans by dismissing or looking the other way in spite of continuous deplorable behavior and lies from the GOP. It is a model that does not work and rightfully earns the scorn of everyday Americans outside of the beltway. It took the "pussy-grabbing" incident to finally earn Trump the designation of being in "freefall" and much of the episode is hand-wringing and worrying about the state of political analysis when their preferred "both sides" model has finally been exposed like a scabbed over rat bite being ripped off to reveal the septic pus-filled abscess of lies they have been covering for all the previous months of this campaign.
Yes, the media, with Politico in the lead, has propped up Donald Trump since the beginning. But what kind of pushed me over the edge in terms of even taking them with a grain of salt as the saying goes was their new sponsor. In this election season of deplorables, alt-right racists, pearl clutching about emails, and a carnival barker con man masquerading as a fascist dictator, during the last debate laughingly moderated by fact-check averse Chris Wallace there were a couple of questions out of right field about the "debt and entitlement crisis" and how would each candidate cut benefits to "save" Social Security and Medicare. These questions seemed out of place in a race not defined by formerly "serious" questions that frame conservative economic and class war orthodoxy as received conventional wisdom, but they were inserted by an outfit that has been obnoxiously inserting itself into every political nook and cranny with it's own pet issue of fear mongering on the federal debt and how we must cut Social Security and Medicare in order to save the nation and those programs out of a misplaced sense of virtue. But of course the answer is never asking the rich, who have siphoned off so much of our national wealth for themselves, to pay a penny more. No, you, average American, must suffer because previous (Republican) leaders in America squandered fiscal responsibility on the altar of trickle down, supply side tax cuts... that will unleash unprecedented economic growth... any day now.
Anyway, this committee for a responsible federal budget started sponsoring the Nerdcast. So now, to listen to the drivel meant as serious commentary and analysis you first have to listen to the drivel about how serious the national debt is and unless we cut [social] spending to the bone we will suffer complete collapse. And that, fair readers, is the Fonzie jumping the shark episode that has pushed me from tolerance to outright derision on this podcast. It may be unfair to Politico but fuck it, we should demand better from the supposed wise journalists who form the basis of our outlook on our government. At least I didn't have to pay to subscribe to this 'cast.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
Monday, October 24, 2016
He, Trump, Wept.
It is all falling apart. This charade of a presidential campaign is finally disintegrating as it should have before it ever started. I would like to direct your attention to Ed's post at Gin and Tacos entitled Salt The Earth on the topic of what happens when a vulgar talking yam comes to realize the depth of his failure and in the end, there are simply not enough dummies in the American electorate to buy his confidence scheme through to victory. In other words, Trump is a loser. Now that he finally seems to realize that he is going to lose, what happens next?
So much spewing from the pie hole about the game being rigged, as though democratic governance were a game. So much arrogant posturing that He, Trump could only lose if every fiber of "the establishment" were against him and conspiring to ensure his defeat and humiliation. It is the voice of privilege speaking that brags so loudly about his ability and greatness in spite of the many failures of Trump. It is the voice of sociopathy that can bray about the personal failures of his opponent without the slightest quiver of shame or conscience amidst the mewling. The oft-repeated labels of narcissist, bully, racist, sexist apply in spades, also that of confidence man. It takes an absolute sense of self-confidence to sell fascism to the deplorable masses as though it were as American as apple pie.
So much spewing from the pie hole about the game being rigged, as though democratic governance were a game. So much arrogant posturing that He, Trump could only lose if every fiber of "the establishment" were against him and conspiring to ensure his defeat and humiliation. It is the voice of privilege speaking that brags so loudly about his ability and greatness in spite of the many failures of Trump. It is the voice of sociopathy that can bray about the personal failures of his opponent without the slightest quiver of shame or conscience amidst the mewling. The oft-repeated labels of narcissist, bully, racist, sexist apply in spades, also that of confidence man. It takes an absolute sense of self-confidence to sell fascism to the deplorable masses as though it were as American as apple pie.
With one tweet, the Republican nominee for president essentially kicked off a month of what promises to be pure scorched Earth politics. If he can't win, then causing as much misery and destruction as possible on his way to the losers' podium is the next best thing. I still expect this to culminate with an insistence shortly before Election Day – timing the announcement to cause maximum damage to the GOP he now hates as much as the Democrats – that his supporters shouldn't bother voting, that he never really wanted to be president anyway, and that he's come to the conclusion that America does not deserve his genius. He's been laying the groundwork for his post-defeat narrative since the summer, creating a "Stab in the Back" legend before the ballots even had his name printed on them.He, Trump was never more than a callow opportunist, sweeping up that basket of deplorables built up over the last two decades or more by hate radio and fox news. The perennial lament from loyal "conservatives" I know, or knew, or overheard in bars or taking up space at McDonald's was why is it that every time they voted for republican candidates to stick it to poor brown and black people, all they got was pandering to big business and religious groups. Trump says out loud what used to be preceded by a glance over each shoulder.
Now that the bragging, self-congratulatory con is over, since Hillary Clinton took Trump apart in the debates we move to, as G&T so aptly puts it, "the scorched Earth" phase of the campaign. What happens now is anyone's guess really. Historians can try to predict, as Ed did in this post, what could happen based on what we know about the past. But this election season has been, not to put it in too cliched terms, unprecedented.
Trump weeps for himself. The last debate performance was barely a whimper. It remains to be seen how well Democrats can tag their opponents down ballot with this utter loser or how many of the Trump republicans will decide to stay home but the first step for any of us is to register and vote. Run up the score, don't get complacent. A landslide will (hopefully) suck some of the oxygen out of their "movement" and they will tuck tail and shuffle home instead of patrolling polling places while armed. I have my fingers crossed that this whole ugly episode will soon be behind us and we can look forward to prying the tea partiers out of their obstructionist place in government at all levels to finally get something done in this country.
I do not for a moment relish the opportunity to see "unshackled" Donald Trump. If this has been him behaving, trying to appear likable, attempting to play within some kind of set of rules, then it strains the imagination to think of how much worse he can get.Well, it can really go in two different directions, or probably many more. One is the republican mouth-breathing authoritarian followers who foisted Donald Trump on us will become disillusioned and move to more local acts of brutality and anti-social awfulness. The other is that the real "Werewolf" movement of violence, intimidation, and terror will arise from the dead-enders. It could be a combination of these, with some really fun attacks on the internet from hackers, including state-directed hackers.
Trump weeps for himself. The last debate performance was barely a whimper. It remains to be seen how well Democrats can tag their opponents down ballot with this utter loser or how many of the Trump republicans will decide to stay home but the first step for any of us is to register and vote. Run up the score, don't get complacent. A landslide will (hopefully) suck some of the oxygen out of their "movement" and they will tuck tail and shuffle home instead of patrolling polling places while armed. I have my fingers crossed that this whole ugly episode will soon be behind us and we can look forward to prying the tea partiers out of their obstructionist place in government at all levels to finally get something done in this country.
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Vulgar Without Precedent
In light of Trump's latest sexist comments coming into the public consciousness, a friend asked if there has ever been a worse or as bad candidate for president from a major party in the United States. It is more difficult to answer this than is first apparent because the traditions of acceptable behavior have evolved along with the technological ability to capture people at their worst. The ever-lengthening list of vulgarity, narcissism, and barbarity from Trump has made it difficult to keep up. But for this one I'm going to give it a shot.
On what criteria can we judge the epic and unprecedented awfulness of the Trump candidacy? As a human being he is the worst example of unprincipled power, lacking in every conception of decency or ability. As a candidate for chief executive of the United States there is no question that he is the worst. But over more than two centuries of nominating presidents there have been a few who came close to equaling Trump in one category or another. How to begin?
A few political figures sprang to mind immediately. However, the line of counterfactual history is tenuous at best. There were several candidates who embodied deplorable personality traits, there were others who demonstrated awfulness in office, but no one has ascended to the presidency who combined evil, vulgarity, narcissism, criminality, bigotry, or the absolute lack of self-control that Trump exhibits. One word of caution though, this is the inevitable result of the concerted effort by the republican party and the larger conservative movement. Trump merely seized the opportunity to put himself at the head of the out and out fascism stirred up in this country, on purpose, through a campaign of lies and hate going back decades.
The first figure is Strom Thurmond, a diehard segregationist who happened to have an out of wedlock love child with his African-American domestic servant. Thurmond ran for president against Harry Truman and Henry A. Wallace within the Democratic Party as well as Thomas Dewey from the GOP. He represented the privileged aristocratic feudalism of the South, and embodied all of that region's worst tendencies but Thurmond was nowhere near Trump in awfulness. It is a low bar to consider but Thurmond had political experience and was representing a tradition, not fascism. Nor was he threatening nuclear war. And he kept his indiscretions private instead of broadcasting it. Strom Thurmond was bad, but not Trump bad and he never made it as a nominee for president of a national party. The Dixiecrats had little appeal to those outside the Deep South.
The second figure in recent American political history is Barry Goldwater. The senator from Arizona did capture the GOP nomination with support from a passionate, determined, but extremist minority within the party. He did campaign as a national candidate with national, albeit limited, appeal. And he was extreme for his time, but Goldwater did, along with his campaign staff, reject the support of the basket of deplorables from that time, the John Birch Society. Goldwater had a famously bad temperament, and would have been a particularly bad successor for JFK when considering the high stakes of foreign relations and the Cold War. He supported a more aggressive posture with America's nuclear arsenal and was no fan of immigration, but he stopped short of anything like deporting millions or banning an entire religion from the country. Goldwater was an extremist ideologue, but he was not the opportunistic narcissist with no core values that Trump has repeatedly displayed.
Third is Woodrow Wilson, or more accurately his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, though Wilson had his faults. He was famously racist and campaigned for reelection on a peace platform but soon became a hawk. Palmer however, used the pretext of scary immigrants and revolution in Russia to make his name by rounding up hundreds, if not thousands of recent arrivals who might have been Bolsheviks, socialists, or against the war. Though Palmer never made it to the top of any ticket for president, his example shows what an unprincipled opportunist can do with the power to command law enforcement. Wilson suffered a stroke through his nonstop work to ratify the Versailles Treaty and force the isolationist Republican Senate to accept American entry into the League of Nations, Palmer was one of many members of government who saw a chance to shine over the stricken chief executive.
The man who actually succeeded Wilson shared much of Trump's, well, laziness. Warren Harding was also a man who played fast and loose with women and fidelity, times were different though so his mistresses were not in the public memory. The corruption and scandals of his administration were however, and we should remember the last time we elected a man who put his drinking buddies in charge of huge executive departments; foxes guarding the henhouse comes to mind. Also, Harding ran for president basically from his front porch, recalling how Trump has basically phoned in so much of his campaign with the media.
Trump has convinced many of his mouth breathing supporters that he is such a successful businessman that he is uniquely qualified to be president despite never having held elected or even appointed office. We elected two businessmen as president, neither proved to be worth a damn. Herbert Hoover gets something of a bad rap, he was a successful businessman and self made, unlike Trump. Hoover made his own fortune through intelligence, hard work, and skill; three attributes no one who really knows about Trump's record of failure, laziness, incompetence, and stiffing people who worked for him will ever ascribe to the vulgar talking yam. Hoover saved the people of Belgium from starvation during WWI, Trump would have extorted them as hard as he could and pocketed the money. The other businessman, the "MBA president", well do we even need to bring him up? This country will be cleaning up Dubya's mess for generations.
Bringing us to another president who started a war for empire, James K. Polk. However many Nineteenth Century awful presidents we examine, Polk has to win a prize. Dubya really is the only one who could identify with using the bully pulpit to launch a war of conquest for the benefit of special interests. Instead of committing the entire national resources of the USA to a far away land rich in oil, then turning over the spoils to cronies and oil companies, Polk stood by while Americans took over Texas from Mexico and provoked a war to conquer half of our southern neighbor for his slave-owning friends. The planters turned on him when he would not give over California to the slave power, just as the Republican establishment turned on Trump by and large for blowing their game of slow-moving authoritarianism.
"Grabbing them by the pussy" good grief, if that is what finally ends up sinking Trump in this election it will be a pathetic testament to how vulgar and awful the Republican electorate really is. After all the racism, misogyny, laziness, unpreparedness, vulgarity, lies have revealed almost half of our country to be willing collaborators with madness. Trump is the symptom, the disease is how stupid and sympathetic to fascism the Republican primary voters are. Before fox news and the right wing hate machine turned these people into blithering and bloodthirsty idiots, America would never have allowed someone this awful, this vulgar to become a major party candidate for president.
We haven't exactly lit up the world as a shining example of self-government, but this vulgar talking yam is the brightest stop sign ever to grace the top of a major party ticket. Everyone should be able to say without reservation that Trump doesn't belong there and should never be president, he is the worst candidate ever to threaten our experiment in democracy. The fact that we even need to seriously ask if he is the worst says volumes about how far our expectations for good governance have fallen in the age of Republicans putting party ahead of country.
By all means, comment to further this examination, I am sure I have missed many examples.
On what criteria can we judge the epic and unprecedented awfulness of the Trump candidacy? As a human being he is the worst example of unprincipled power, lacking in every conception of decency or ability. As a candidate for chief executive of the United States there is no question that he is the worst. But over more than two centuries of nominating presidents there have been a few who came close to equaling Trump in one category or another. How to begin?
A few political figures sprang to mind immediately. However, the line of counterfactual history is tenuous at best. There were several candidates who embodied deplorable personality traits, there were others who demonstrated awfulness in office, but no one has ascended to the presidency who combined evil, vulgarity, narcissism, criminality, bigotry, or the absolute lack of self-control that Trump exhibits. One word of caution though, this is the inevitable result of the concerted effort by the republican party and the larger conservative movement. Trump merely seized the opportunity to put himself at the head of the out and out fascism stirred up in this country, on purpose, through a campaign of lies and hate going back decades.
The first figure is Strom Thurmond, a diehard segregationist who happened to have an out of wedlock love child with his African-American domestic servant. Thurmond ran for president against Harry Truman and Henry A. Wallace within the Democratic Party as well as Thomas Dewey from the GOP. He represented the privileged aristocratic feudalism of the South, and embodied all of that region's worst tendencies but Thurmond was nowhere near Trump in awfulness. It is a low bar to consider but Thurmond had political experience and was representing a tradition, not fascism. Nor was he threatening nuclear war. And he kept his indiscretions private instead of broadcasting it. Strom Thurmond was bad, but not Trump bad and he never made it as a nominee for president of a national party. The Dixiecrats had little appeal to those outside the Deep South.
The second figure in recent American political history is Barry Goldwater. The senator from Arizona did capture the GOP nomination with support from a passionate, determined, but extremist minority within the party. He did campaign as a national candidate with national, albeit limited, appeal. And he was extreme for his time, but Goldwater did, along with his campaign staff, reject the support of the basket of deplorables from that time, the John Birch Society. Goldwater had a famously bad temperament, and would have been a particularly bad successor for JFK when considering the high stakes of foreign relations and the Cold War. He supported a more aggressive posture with America's nuclear arsenal and was no fan of immigration, but he stopped short of anything like deporting millions or banning an entire religion from the country. Goldwater was an extremist ideologue, but he was not the opportunistic narcissist with no core values that Trump has repeatedly displayed.
Third is Woodrow Wilson, or more accurately his Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, though Wilson had his faults. He was famously racist and campaigned for reelection on a peace platform but soon became a hawk. Palmer however, used the pretext of scary immigrants and revolution in Russia to make his name by rounding up hundreds, if not thousands of recent arrivals who might have been Bolsheviks, socialists, or against the war. Though Palmer never made it to the top of any ticket for president, his example shows what an unprincipled opportunist can do with the power to command law enforcement. Wilson suffered a stroke through his nonstop work to ratify the Versailles Treaty and force the isolationist Republican Senate to accept American entry into the League of Nations, Palmer was one of many members of government who saw a chance to shine over the stricken chief executive.
The man who actually succeeded Wilson shared much of Trump's, well, laziness. Warren Harding was also a man who played fast and loose with women and fidelity, times were different though so his mistresses were not in the public memory. The corruption and scandals of his administration were however, and we should remember the last time we elected a man who put his drinking buddies in charge of huge executive departments; foxes guarding the henhouse comes to mind. Also, Harding ran for president basically from his front porch, recalling how Trump has basically phoned in so much of his campaign with the media.
Trump has convinced many of his mouth breathing supporters that he is such a successful businessman that he is uniquely qualified to be president despite never having held elected or even appointed office. We elected two businessmen as president, neither proved to be worth a damn. Herbert Hoover gets something of a bad rap, he was a successful businessman and self made, unlike Trump. Hoover made his own fortune through intelligence, hard work, and skill; three attributes no one who really knows about Trump's record of failure, laziness, incompetence, and stiffing people who worked for him will ever ascribe to the vulgar talking yam. Hoover saved the people of Belgium from starvation during WWI, Trump would have extorted them as hard as he could and pocketed the money. The other businessman, the "MBA president", well do we even need to bring him up? This country will be cleaning up Dubya's mess for generations.
Bringing us to another president who started a war for empire, James K. Polk. However many Nineteenth Century awful presidents we examine, Polk has to win a prize. Dubya really is the only one who could identify with using the bully pulpit to launch a war of conquest for the benefit of special interests. Instead of committing the entire national resources of the USA to a far away land rich in oil, then turning over the spoils to cronies and oil companies, Polk stood by while Americans took over Texas from Mexico and provoked a war to conquer half of our southern neighbor for his slave-owning friends. The planters turned on him when he would not give over California to the slave power, just as the Republican establishment turned on Trump by and large for blowing their game of slow-moving authoritarianism.
"Grabbing them by the pussy" good grief, if that is what finally ends up sinking Trump in this election it will be a pathetic testament to how vulgar and awful the Republican electorate really is. After all the racism, misogyny, laziness, unpreparedness, vulgarity, lies have revealed almost half of our country to be willing collaborators with madness. Trump is the symptom, the disease is how stupid and sympathetic to fascism the Republican primary voters are. Before fox news and the right wing hate machine turned these people into blithering and bloodthirsty idiots, America would never have allowed someone this awful, this vulgar to become a major party candidate for president.
We haven't exactly lit up the world as a shining example of self-government, but this vulgar talking yam is the brightest stop sign ever to grace the top of a major party ticket. Everyone should be able to say without reservation that Trump doesn't belong there and should never be president, he is the worst candidate ever to threaten our experiment in democracy. The fact that we even need to seriously ask if he is the worst says volumes about how far our expectations for good governance have fallen in the age of Republicans putting party ahead of country.
By all means, comment to further this examination, I am sure I have missed many examples.
Friday, October 7, 2016
The Scam of the Century
Of course, the election season started out with the usual claptrap about religious liberty, the zika virus, and *shock and horror* transgendered men using the ladies room to [something, something] little girls. Then Trump came in and sprinkled some populist economic rhetoric about trade into the spicy brew of racism, sexism, and islamophobia so popular among the white bumpkins who have finally put away their tea bags. Thus completely upending the Koch/Rove formula of riling up those deplorables with code words and getting them to vote for conventional deplorable republicans that will deliver the tax cuts and other goodies favored by the parasitic 1%. Oops, now the perfect script of resentment over the first black president not fixing everything from the last three decades (in spite of perfect obstruction by the same people who fucked things up in the first place) has to be rewritten for the scam to continue.
The kind of ad-hoc coalition of activists and unions pushing for a strong minimum wage increase were being handled by corporate media in the usual way for some time before Hanauer gave them a real voice within the establishment. The demonstrations were framed by corporate media as disruptive and demonstrators as "whiners looking for a handout" among the standard free market replies. Perhaps they have finally gone too far after years of demonizing teachers and other state workers, it is too soon to tell, but Americans seem to finally be reaching their breaking point over stagnant wages and workplace concessions.
"Minimum wage opponents continue to deride every proposed increase as a surefire job killer, while reporters and pundits reliably characterize the passage of every minimum wage ordinance and statute as a dangerous experiment that threatens to harm the very people it’s intended to help."This is how Hanauer characterizes the thesis of his article, the claim that "if wages go up, jobs go down isn’t a description of reality at all. It is a negotiating strategy used by employers to keep wages down and profits high."
"But the confidence of the doomsayers and the anxiety of the pundits might make more sense to me if they hadn’t been making the same dire predictions since the minimum wage was invented 78 years ago — or if at least some of these dire predictions had actually managed to come true. In fact, contrary to the cautionary headlines, there is nothing “experimental” about raising the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage has been raised 22 times since it was first established in 1938 (state and local minimum wages have been raised hundreds of times), sometimes by as much as 87.5 percent in a single year — far more than the annual increases $15 advocates propose. So if the minimum wage opponents were correct, it should be incredibly easy to find overwhelming empirical evidence that minimum wage hikes cause the job losses they always predict"HOLY SHIT! YOU MEAN THERE IS ACTUALLY SOME KIND OF RECORD WE COULD LOOK AT ABOUT THE PAST THAT COULD EXPLAIN WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?!? WHAT COULD THIS POSSIBLY MEAN!!!!
Yes, OMG there actually is a way to look at not only the doomsayers' predictions and actual results. Economic and labor historians that actually study these things are a pretty resigned bunch, I don't know many but they all kind of hang their heads and mumble a lot because there's no way in hell they'll ever get on the magic teevee machine to tell the American public that yes, every time there is an effort to raise wages or legalize unions or in some way address the staggering economic inequality the capitalists and their mouthpieces in media go into full court press mode to decry the falling of the sky. Hanauer cites a letter sent to our political leaders and signed by 600 economists who studied the actual, empirical evidence regarding raising the minimum wage who conclude that it does not affect employment. Did you ever hear about this letter? Did it ever make it onto the nightly news or cable news? Not that I recall, yet it is all there. We just have an entire class of oligarchs, businessmen, media types, and others who have a vested interest in making sure that the truth about their scam never reaches the public.
I wish we could say that the democratizing intertubes have made it an easier proposition to get the truth out there, but man, is there any truth out there that everyone agrees on? Donald Trump claims during the debate that millions of jobs are being outsourced every day and millions of illegal immigrants are coming in to steal our jobs every day... and his blinded idiot supporters believe it. There is no one source that can unify what constitutes reality anymore. No one face that everyone can believe. But if there is ever going to be progress, we who want that progress towards social and economic justice have to start somewhere. In any event Nick Hanauer's efforts are important in showing that there is no uniformity in class efforts either, we can have a billionaire on our side instead of at our throats. That's a good place to start.
It is a crazy year, the culture warriors used to have a focused plan, whether it was guns, or God, or gays they could reliably change the conversation against making the tax code more progressive, regulating what companies can do to their workers, customers, and the environment, or God forbid actually raise the minimum wage or expand the social safety net. Now with Trump's scatterbrained bigotry spinning the script out of control there is a small window to get a national conversation going about the bread and butter issues on the economy that doesn't involve starting a trade war.
Friday, September 23, 2016
A Good List
A former coworker posted this picture, it is as good a reason as any to vote for the Democratic nominee if you are not a fan of Hillary Clinton. I for one, am voting for her but I understand a lot of people are still feeling hurt that Bernie Sanders did not win. But look at this list, none of these things are baked in, none are explicitly in the constitution but all of them are important. The items on this list are the legacy of responsible, pragmatic citizens and statesmen who cared enough to create them. And every one of those items are there because the central tenet of Republican orthodoxy, the big lie that informs all the rest, is garbage. The "free market" is a myth, a lie, that only serves the interest of the powerful. People are not angels, went the framer's argument for our constitution, therefore checks and balances on power are critical to the success of a republic because neither will leaders and politicians be angels.
So many obstacles are in place in the United States to keep an asshole like Trump out of power. Why do they seem to keep failing? As the inexorable slog to election day continues, we keep getting back to the essential question of how is this even a race? The first comment I saw under the picture went like this:
"Trump won't eliminate this stuff. He just keep the wankers looking for freebies out"And I remembered. There are a lot of really dumb people in this country. Not simply "low information" or "unable to think critically" but stupid and viciously mean-spirited. And these dummies are able to project their meanest and dumbest desires onto this reality TV star who is conning them. And then I remembered why I had given up writing about this election; it is utterly pointless. I have reached the point where the lies have piled up so high that I can't pick one to analyze. Have reached that point where the only comments I see are either like the above, nonsensical assertions of bigoted crap, or whatever the Bernieorbust people have morphed into sniping Hillary Clinton as being just as bad as Trump.
When it comes down to Republicans who claim that Trump is great and openly tout how awesome it will be when he really kicks ass on the poor (nonwhite) "wankers" and the "I told you so" type finger-wavers who were probably never going to vote Democratic in the first place, what is the point of even trying? Then I look at that list and remember that the knuckle-dragging pig people opposed all of those items, and the far left wailers always said that none of it was good enough. But you know what? It is real and it is good, and the American people have accomplished a lot in spite of all of it. And we Americans of today can do more good, we can fix problems, we can put hate and bigotry and mindless ignorance back in its box, we can stand up the the money power elite and the legions of deplorable morons they manipulate.
We do not have to convince the wanker commenter that Trump is a con man and lies to him, we have to turn out the dozen people he knows who aren't that dense and gullible to vote. We have to make sure that Trump loses so badly that the pig people go home and think about their lives and whether all that hate has ever made a positive difference for them. It is not the wanker that needs to be convinced there are no freebies to be had, that ship sailed a long time ago, but the hard-working people exposed to him.
It's a good list and needs to be added to. The people who built those things were not angels, neither is Hillary Clinton but the choice is pretty stark. I never want to find out what a President Trump would do in office, we still have a chance to make sure that doesn't happen. The free market is a lie, Trump knows this, every other lie that comes out of his or any other Republican's mouth is meant to obscure that fact. Putting Republicans in office will be like the last time they controlled everything, did the pig people cheer for all the things that did get defunded or eliminated then? How about all the great new jobs they were able to get because GWB kept all the wankers out? Republicans will always put the needs of not you first, they will always make sure your boss can fire you and the bank can seize your house before they even think of building the wall or whatever fascist wet dream the wanker commenter wants.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Gaffes, incompetence, and severe threats to national security
Good grief the list is long, the Trump campaign is almost comical at this moment in time. Whether Bob and Chez are correct that this is the short-fingered vulgarian's way of setting up a big comeback in the greatest reality show his incurious, lazy mind can dream up so the media will have a story for their "Trump rebound" narrative, or they really are the incompetent neophytes they look like is almost irrelevant. I hope beyond hope that it is the latter and the trend until election day really is American voters coming to their senses but if it isn't then we are in real danger. I speak of course about Russia.
American history has basically been the story of what happens when a nation is removed from serious outside threats from hostile nation-states. Our bloodiest war has been with ourselves and since The War of 1812 the U.S. has not been invaded by a major power. America has subjected other neighboring states to invasion, intimidation, or other interventions but the shoe has never really been on the other foot. Americans cannot understand, by and large, what it means to have your way of life threatened by a hostile power. Nuclear annihilation was a possibility but that is too big for anyone to really comprehend. The attacks of 9/11 gave us a glimpse into the reality other nations face and what could happen, but now that fifteen years have passed is not a living threat.
In a superpower with no real rivals, Hollywood has had to invent a North Korea that could invade the U.S. We are so far removed from imagining ourselves attacked, invaded, occupied, and actually losing our freedoms to a foreign power that Trump felt comfortable in acting as though his friend Vladimir Putin is a viable ally in his quest for the presidency. Whether calling for Russia to hack his opponent was just another childish bully taunt or Trump really is a captive or even willing vassal of Russian oligarchs and under orders from their president, the man is a menace and cannot be allowed near the oval office.
Jane Meyer wrote of the frustration many of us feel, while bloggers like me usually feel left out and powerless when watching events unfold after Trump made his plea to Russia to "find [Hillary's] emails" even sitting Democratic Senators were left wringing their hands in futility. Was this gaffe simply a "wild serve" that is either "so wild it was hard to tell if it was a mistake or a deliberate attempt to destabilize all of the accepted rules of the game". We mere citizens will probably never know. Even if American intelligence agencies actually find out the depth of collusion between Trump and Putin they are unlikely to tell us.
But now that the pandora's box of potential treason is open due to Trump's blab, no one can afford to ignore what this potential fascist dictator could do. I noticed several #NeverHillary types who have now thrown their hero under the bus refuse to admit even the possibility that Russian intelligence was behind the hack of DNC servers. They were far more interested in the content of the handful of emails that showed some staffers not warming up to Bernie Sanders, because, again they just couldn't drop their partisanship for the good of the country. The hacking isn't proven as yet, though the experts report that the possibility is very strong. The #Bernieorbust people were spoiled little children before, now that they side with Russia de facto in order to smear Hillary Clinton they have disqualified themselves from ever being taken seriously again. Ignoring such an attack on our sovereignty because you are too stupid to see past the three decade smear campaign against Secretary Clinton is a grave breach of ethics.
After this gaffe, the ties Paul Manafort of Trump's campaign has to Russia, the fact that Trump refuses to release his tax returns become not simply incompetence or the kind of bullying hypocritical behavior that says this candidate is above the law but evidence that the whole Trump campaign is an attempt to put a Russian puppet in the White House. What limit could there be to Trump's treachery? He would certainly bankrupt the federal government, waste military resources on futile adventures, open us to radical Islamic terrorism, and severely disrupt the economy. What else could a hostile power want? The open declaration of betraying allies? Oops, that box is checked too. Jane Meyer should interview Thomas Madden for more precedents of when an Empire of Trust begins to crack at its foundations. The ancient Romans may not have understood cyber warfare, but they definitely understood treason, political polarization, the threats that undermining alliances entailed, and how upstart populist demagogues can sweep the imaginations of the angry dispossessed masses into power.
Sunday, August 7, 2016
The Bully in Chief
Let's be frank, Donald Trump is just another average Republican voter who happens to have property and wealth. He is ignorant, lazy, incurious, immature, paranoid and gullible, and thinks he is the most important thing in the universe. I don't know about you but I have met hundreds of these guys in my travels, combining the worst aspects of white supremacists with ignorant and superstitious peasants. They are quick to anger, irrational in action, and capable of believing anything as long as it confirms their biases. Trump was able to play King Dick among the bullies, beating down all challengers who tried straddling service to the economic elite with pandering to those same peasants by simply being who he is. He is one of them and that is why the peasants found him so attractive, therefore it is no wonder that Trump was the last one standing. But just as when rural folk come to the big city, now that Trump is in the general election it was inevitable that his bluster and hard-ass act would falter.
It only takes one trip to the big city for Joe Sixpack to realize that he is insignificant and the tough guy act does not work. An average redneck (just synonyms for peasant) may experience doubt and shame, then realize that he needs to tone it down and learn how things really work. Not Trump, first of all he was in the big city all of his life and has never butted up against reality. Never got his ass kicked figuratively or literally, never had to serve in the military (which also makes you a little fish in a big pond of other tough guys), or sacrifice anything. If a country boy tries to keep up the act in the big city the chances he gets killed, injured, or humiliated are pretty high. Now that Trump is not comfortably bullying everyone around him, he is experiencing doubts about his own power. Instead of shutting up and sitting down though, he is doubling down on the bullying and it has finally jumped the shark.
Which came first, calling on an even bigger bully to do the dirty work for him (Russian and her president/dictator Vladimir Putin), mocking and attacking Gold Star Parents, throwing a baby out of his rally, or claiming that the election is already rigged? It doesn't really matter, they are all symptoms of his recognition of limits to his power. In each instance, he or a surrogate did not admit a mistake or even just let the backfire go, they doubled down. You can read the work of psychologists that have written how everything Trump does is a dominance exercise, but anyone who has seen a bully work knows it when they see it. It drives him berserk when someone refuses to be scared, it will expose him as a fraud. Trump tried to be a bully with the Washington Post when he pulled their access, hoping the newspaper would roll over and beg for forgiveness but something interesting happened when they didn't. The Washington Post has simply kept writing about Trump unencumbered by the need to bend the knee or suck up to He, Trump. Consequently the Post's reporting on the race has become less sycophantic and that is a good thing.
Trump beat the other Republican contenders by threatening to blow their game. The Republican voters just want to beat on the poor, nonwhite, non-Christian, and non-conservative Americans. They want a bully who will do that, not cut taxes on the rich and make it easier for their boss to ship their jobs overseas. Which is what Republicans do, that is their nature, they just use the peasants to get into power. Trump dispensed with all the free market mythology, made his platform undisguised herrenvolk democracy, and was rewarded with the undying loyalty of every small town bully in America. Within the alienated, atomized bubble these bullies live in, anything is possible.
Luckily, outside that bubble people are starting to realize what a dope Trump really is. Beyond the hard core of bullies for Trump, enough people are questioning whether He, Trump really has their interests at heart or is just another con man trying to swindle them. To those of us paying attention it has always been an act performed by a reality TV star, the big lie confidence scam. But within that bubble the peasants eat up every word and believe that He, Trump will really kick ass on undocumented immigrants and ban Muslims, treat BLM like a terrorist group and bring their jobs back from China. The rest of us see a peasant, a rich one for sure, but still an incompetent buffoon. However dangerous his followers may be if organized, they will grow fewer in number with each passing day because peasants are not famous for their longevity.
We are likely to go through this ritual every four years now. There is simply not enough of a constituency for what the GOP is selling on the national stage and it will be increasingly hard to disguise the free market fundamentalism with wedge issues. It is also highly unlikely that, now that the bully lobby has had a taste of what fascism can do for them, the peasants will settle for lip service on their white supremacist issues from the likes of Scott Walker or Ted Cruz. The danger is that the next demagogue won't be as much of a peasant at Trump, or will be able to hire smart people to disguise it better.
In any case, Hillary Clinton and Democrats down the ticket have to run up the score. We need to turn out as many people to vote against Republicans as possible. Only by overwhelmingly defeating the small town bully peasants can we ever hope to make them get tired of politics to the point that they will only attack those few victims near them and leave us alone to fix their mess.
It only takes one trip to the big city for Joe Sixpack to realize that he is insignificant and the tough guy act does not work. An average redneck (just synonyms for peasant) may experience doubt and shame, then realize that he needs to tone it down and learn how things really work. Not Trump, first of all he was in the big city all of his life and has never butted up against reality. Never got his ass kicked figuratively or literally, never had to serve in the military (which also makes you a little fish in a big pond of other tough guys), or sacrifice anything. If a country boy tries to keep up the act in the big city the chances he gets killed, injured, or humiliated are pretty high. Now that Trump is not comfortably bullying everyone around him, he is experiencing doubts about his own power. Instead of shutting up and sitting down though, he is doubling down on the bullying and it has finally jumped the shark.
Which came first, calling on an even bigger bully to do the dirty work for him (Russian and her president/dictator Vladimir Putin), mocking and attacking Gold Star Parents, throwing a baby out of his rally, or claiming that the election is already rigged? It doesn't really matter, they are all symptoms of his recognition of limits to his power. In each instance, he or a surrogate did not admit a mistake or even just let the backfire go, they doubled down. You can read the work of psychologists that have written how everything Trump does is a dominance exercise, but anyone who has seen a bully work knows it when they see it. It drives him berserk when someone refuses to be scared, it will expose him as a fraud. Trump tried to be a bully with the Washington Post when he pulled their access, hoping the newspaper would roll over and beg for forgiveness but something interesting happened when they didn't. The Washington Post has simply kept writing about Trump unencumbered by the need to bend the knee or suck up to He, Trump. Consequently the Post's reporting on the race has become less sycophantic and that is a good thing.
Trump beat the other Republican contenders by threatening to blow their game. The Republican voters just want to beat on the poor, nonwhite, non-Christian, and non-conservative Americans. They want a bully who will do that, not cut taxes on the rich and make it easier for their boss to ship their jobs overseas. Which is what Republicans do, that is their nature, they just use the peasants to get into power. Trump dispensed with all the free market mythology, made his platform undisguised herrenvolk democracy, and was rewarded with the undying loyalty of every small town bully in America. Within the alienated, atomized bubble these bullies live in, anything is possible.
Luckily, outside that bubble people are starting to realize what a dope Trump really is. Beyond the hard core of bullies for Trump, enough people are questioning whether He, Trump really has their interests at heart or is just another con man trying to swindle them. To those of us paying attention it has always been an act performed by a reality TV star, the big lie confidence scam. But within that bubble the peasants eat up every word and believe that He, Trump will really kick ass on undocumented immigrants and ban Muslims, treat BLM like a terrorist group and bring their jobs back from China. The rest of us see a peasant, a rich one for sure, but still an incompetent buffoon. However dangerous his followers may be if organized, they will grow fewer in number with each passing day because peasants are not famous for their longevity.
We are likely to go through this ritual every four years now. There is simply not enough of a constituency for what the GOP is selling on the national stage and it will be increasingly hard to disguise the free market fundamentalism with wedge issues. It is also highly unlikely that, now that the bully lobby has had a taste of what fascism can do for them, the peasants will settle for lip service on their white supremacist issues from the likes of Scott Walker or Ted Cruz. The danger is that the next demagogue won't be as much of a peasant at Trump, or will be able to hire smart people to disguise it better.
In any case, Hillary Clinton and Democrats down the ticket have to run up the score. We need to turn out as many people to vote against Republicans as possible. Only by overwhelmingly defeating the small town bully peasants can we ever hope to make them get tired of politics to the point that they will only attack those few victims near them and leave us alone to fix their mess.
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