Disillusionment

It should not have been this close.

Although it took a few days to count them all, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump once all the votes came in. A lot of people predicted that this is what would happen, so this part's not a surprise. What is a surprise is that Trump did so well.

In a sane world, this election would have been a thorough repudiation of Trump. His incompetence, his cruelty, his corruption, his racism, his stupidity. All of it. It should have been a landslide, both in the popular vote and the electoral college. Instead, Trump got several million more votes than he did in 2016, and until the early/mail-in votes started getting counted, it appeared that Trump could win. Nearly 70,000,000 voters looked at his behavior and decided another four years of that seemed good.

Additionally, a cluster of newly-elected Republican candidates are bringing their unique brand of crazy to the table. Two QAnon-spouting wingnuts were elected - Lauren Boebert in CO and Marjorie Taylor Greene in GA, plus a suspected racist/sexual predator in North Carolina. Yes, there have been racists and wingnuts in Congress before, but it's hard to dispute the claim that they wouldn't be there if Trump hadn't paved the way.

Trump has poisoned the country's political process. Not that it was perfect before, but he made it exponentially worse. He co-opted one of the two major political parties and dialed everything repugnant about it up to 1,000. He allowed the Republican Party to unapologetically embrace its worst behaviors. He weakened multiple democratic safeguards against abuse of power, which will make it harder to block the next Trump-like figure from coming along. It will take a decade or more to undo the damage that Trump has inflicted on the country. 

There's no justification for voting for him a second time, not after the last four years. 2016 can be partly excused, because everything bad about Trump was mostly theoretical. He had never held office, so voters didn't have a track record to judge him on. And the media did the country a disservice by playing up his most sensational failings while refusing to dig too deeply into the most unseemly parts of his life. We don't have that now. Trump has been an absolute failure and will go down in history as one of the worst presidents in the country's history.

Yet roughly one-fifth of the country saw that as a net positive. They were comfortable with Trump's many moral failings, so much so that they deemed him worthy to run the country for another four years. They were okay with the racism, the willful ignorance, the pettiness, the lying, the divisive rhetoric. Some explained it away, some ignored it, and some applauded it. 

 I feel like this election revealed the true character of a giant swath of the country.

And it breaks my heart.

Proportionality

"They attacked *me*!"

"They threw a cowpie at you, so you decided to kill them all! They're starving, you fool - all because of a war you started!" 

     -- Joffrey and Tyrion

 

I started with a snippet of dialog from Game of Thrones because I think it contains a lot of insight about the appropriate use of force when restoring order--questions that are especially relevant given recent real-world events.  I also used it because Tyrion slaps Joffrey about two seconds later, and who doesn't love seeing that, right?

 

I could watch this all day

But I'm getting sidetracked.  Here's the question I was getting at: when is it appropriate to use force to combat crime? To answer this question, you have to ask a bunch of other questions: What kind of crime? How much force, and gets to wield it? What do you mean by "combat" - are you using force after the crime has occurred, or is it a preventive measure? Are there other methods you could use? 

Think hard about those questions. 

Now, think about them in the context of the recent mass shooting in Kenosha, WI.  Here's a quick overview: there's been several days of civil unrest there, a teenager named Kyle Rittenhouse traveled there from Illinois with an AR he somehow (!) acquired, then he murdered several alleged looters.  That's the short summary.

We still don't know what crimes made Rittenhouse travel to Kenosha - looting, vandalism, or something else - but I suspect we'll find out shortly.  But based on what we know, Rittenhouse was responding to a property crime of some sort.  So now the question becomes, is it okay to use force in response to a property crime?

But what kind of property crime? That's a pretty broad term, covering everything from arson to vandalism.  So let's start with arson.  It's a pretty serious crime, after all.  It can cause up to several thousand dollars in damage, and possibly kill people unfortunate enough to be in whatever building the arsonist targets.  I guess an argument could be made.  On the other hand, does killing an arsonist put the fire out? Does it repair the damage the fire caused? Obviously not.  So let's leave arson as "I don't know" for right now.

Now let's move on to less serious forms of property crime.  How about vandalism - is it okay to shoot someone for throwing a cinder block through a window? Spray-painting the front of a building? Does that seem like a justified response?

How about theft? Taking anything that belongs to someone else seems like a property crime.  Is it okay to shoot a looter? Let me phrase the question another way.  Are people more important than property? Because I can't think of many things valuable enough to justify the use of lethal force in response to their theft. Maybe items that could be used to destroy property or kill people, like, say, explosives.  Or a tank - remember that guy in San Diego a couple decades ago? I could see lethal force being justified in that situation.  But the stuff that you see on most store shelves in malls, business districts, or downtown shopping areas? No.  To my mind, none of that is valuable enough to justify killing someone over.
 

No, this doesn't mean I'm saying the thieves and looters should be let off the hook.  There's a lot of space between saying "kill them" on one side of the spectrum and "let them walk free" on the other side.

So what is the solution? Well, for me, that old saying about letting the punishment fit the crime is a pretty good guideline. If you steal or destroy property or merchandise that doesn't belong to you, then you should be penalized financially in proportion to the value of what you stole or destroyed.  And if the damages run into the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a burned-out building might, then you pay that bill off with your time.  I.E., prison.  

 

Yes, I recognize this system isn't perfect.  Sometimes people can't pay, or maybe police can't identify the guilty parties, or this incentivizes repeat offenses.  I don't have an answer for those things, and it's definitely not fair to the business owners or the insurance companies to absorb the costs of stolen merchandise or damaged property.  Regardless, I'd rather see it this way than have someone lose their life over a $75 microwave or a shattered $200 store window.

Now, a fair number of people might call this too lenient.  I don't know what percentage of the population they represent, but it seems like a decent-sized one.  I see them in Youtube comments and overhear them in public places, making offhand remarks about how looters deserve to be shot.  "It's one way to prevent repeat offenses." "They were tearing the place up, they deserved it." "When the looting starts, the shooting starts." There's a certain percentage of Americans that thrill to that tough-guy talk.  If you look at American pop culture over the years, it's a recurring theme: Dirty Harry, The Punisher, The "Death Wish" movies, Robocop.  Personally, I think it's the attitude you have when you're a testosterone-fueled (because it's usually guys) teenager and think every problem can be solved by the application of force. People usually grow out of that mindset once they realize the world is more nuanced, but I guess some of them hang on to it well into adulthood.  "Law and order" sounds great - we all want that, right? To be able to walk to our cars without being jumped and leave our doors unlocked at night, right? That legitimately sounds great. I'm all for it.  But thinking you can punch or shoot it into existence is a simple and inaccurate way of looking at the problem.

But then you have professional assholes like Tucker Carlson stoking that vigilante mindset by defending Kyle Rittenhouse, casting a brainwashed teenager who traveled hundreds of miles with murder on his mind as some sort of hero who fought to restore order when Kenosha's elected officials wouldn't.  

 

Let's be clear: Rittenhouse is a murderer, not a hero.  Period, full stop.

Carlson is smart enough to realize this, but he's also savvy enough to know his audience.  He knows he's tapping into the desire to be the "noble outlaw" that his viewers all possess.  The ones holding the line against the legions of monsters and barbarians hellbent on raping and pillaging and destroying society.  I'll bet any amount of money that Tucker's broadcast (the one I linked to) has got at least two dozen or so of his viewers fantasizing about doing the same thing.  They're probably at a gun store right now, looking over the rack of ARs and deciding which one they want.  Carlson is flicking lit matches at a stack of tinder, and it's a decent bet that one of them will eventually ignite the pile.

I started this piece with a Game of Thrones quote, and I'm going to end with another one, because it seems appropriate.

"The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die."

Rights, Risks, and Responsibilities

I've been seeing a lot of news reports about anti-quarantine protests in several states, and truthfully, I don't see a lot of daylight between most of the people attending these protests and spoiled children screaming "You can't tell me what to do!"

Look.  I get that these sheltering-in-place measures are hurting a lot of people economically.  A lot of small businesses are teetering on the precipice of going out of business, and the income they're losing might mean not being able to put food on the table or pay for essential medicine or save for retirement or a kid's college fund.  If you're protesting because your economic livelihood is at stake, I sympathize and I understand.

But if you're protesting because you're tired of being cooped up and you miss your favorite sports bar - too bad.  Suck it up and act like an adult.

And if you're piggy-backing on the protest to promote your pet cause--like these guys, who appear to be celebrating the right to bear arms, even though these quarantine measures have nothing to do with the 2nd Amendment. . .

. . .you're a dumbass.

And if you're waving around a sign like this to express your political beliefs:

. . .punch yourself in the face. You fail at life.

"But the 1st Amendment says people can gather in public."

That's true.  It's right there: "Congress shall make no law. . .of the right of the people peaceably to assemble. . ."

But here's the thing about rights: NONE of them are universally absolute.

There's a certain tolerance for risk built into the Constitution. One of the potential negative consequences of living in a free society is that someone will misuse that freedom, and we're constantly struggling to balance preventing people or groups from exercising their Constitutional freedoms in malicious ways with protecting the average person's rights.  For example, free speech isn't really free if it only protects banal topics of discussion like sports or TV shows.  If it doesn't protect controversial speech such as protesting the government or even making public speeches that advocate the violent overthrow of the government (aka sedition), the 1st Amendment is meaningless.  There's a certain level of tolerance for rebellious anti-government speech baked into the 1st Amendment.

But that risk tolerance for malevolent abuses of one's Constitutional rights only goes so far.  If you commit a violent felony, and your 2nd Amendment right is curtailed. It's right there on ATF Form 4473--Question 11c. You use your 1st Amendment right of free speech to spread malicious lies about someone, and you're open to criminal or civil liability.  You're not protected by the 4th Amendment in certain ways if law enforcement has probable cause that you're committing a crime. And so on. Even the right to peaceably assemble comes with caveats: ever heard of maximum occupancy regulations?

I'm no Constitutional scholar, but the general rule seems to be that a person starts losing their rights the moment they misuse them in a way that's harmful to others, whether maliciously or recklessly.

"But I'm not hurting anybody! I'm just showing up and protesting!"

Are you sure? Do you know for certain you're not a Covid vector? Infectees take up to two weeks to exhibit symptoms, so maybe you feel fine today, but you could have been exposed and you just don't know it. And even if you haven't been exposed, what about the ten people standing next to you? The country's infection rate has kept rising for several weeks, so there are a whole lot of someones unknowingly spreading the virus. And since the US still doesn't have enough detection tests or PPE. (Side note: I don't think it's a coincidence that nobody seems to be protesting that, even though it's where most of the blame lies. But I'll address that in a bit.), we have to do what we can with what we have. Which is making people stay at home.

Of course, there are certainly some officials who are taking it too far and venturing into draconian territory, and that undermines the ability to enact sensible measures.  And history isn't too kind to people who overreact in these situations. Some of America's most shameful moments sprung out of a panic-driven compulsion to infringe on people's rights in the name of safety and security: the Japanese internment camps, COINTELPRO, the NSA's bulk data collection, to name a few.  Once the dust settles and the inevitable lawsuits are resolved, we'll have a handful of elected officials to hold up as examples of what NOT to do, as well as a better understanding of how to handle a crisis like this in the future.

So, the legality of these "stay at home" measures will probably be decided in a future courtroom.  But for now, here's a little test. Replace "go out in public" with "get drunk and drive as fast as I want" and see if you sound at least a little irresponsibly stupid.

Now remember where I rhetorically asked why there aren't any protests over the lack of testing kits & PPE? That's because these protests are partly an "astroturf movement". They're being bankrolled, organized, and publicized to a decent degree by the GOP and right-wing media in order to remain in power in 2020.  They want the economy back open because bad economies hurt reelection efforts, possibly more than any other issue.  And they're using words and phrases like "freedom", "violation of our rights", and "Unconstitutional" because they know those terms resonate with some people.  That's all there is to it.  They're pushing so hard to reopen the economy because they want to get Trump reelected, not because they're so concerned about America's values or about the mom & pop businesses at risk of folding or the thousands of people who may go broke because of this quarantine.

They don't give a rat's ass about the American public.

And they're hypocrites. You can see for yourself: go back through their social media posts, their press releases, and their legislative records.  You'll find that their stances about public protests were markedly different when those protests were about the Dakota Access Pipeline or Black Lives Matter.

Weird, huh?

So do me a favor: stop listening to bad-faith pundits, politicians, and "experts" who are using you as pawns. Think before you exercise your rights in a reckless, potentially harmful way.  And unless you have a legitimate reason, park yourself on your couch and stay home. The more people who break the "stay at home" guidance, the longer the Coronavirus will keep circulating among the population.

You're adults. Act like it.

The Carnival Barker President vs the Coronavirus

I've said this on social media several times: the office of the President of the United States, and the person occupying that office, carry a high level of seriousness.  The responsibilities of the President demand a high degree of seriousness.  The President is not just another average citizen, like Bob the bartender or Joe at the local diner.  His (since all the presidents to date have been men) words wield substantial influence: they can either avert or pave the way to war, they can influence the stock market, they can determine the outcome of an election, or they can shape foreign policy.  A considerable number of people hang on the President's (any president's) every syllable like they were the Words of God themselves.

So when the current President of the United States calls efforts to raise alarms about a potentially global pandemic a politicized hoax, I get more than a little angry.

Here's Donald Trump at a rally in South Carolina last night (Feb 28, 2020), doing his usual disjointed rambling thing: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. . .they're politicizing it.  We did one of the great jobs - you say, 'How's President Trump doing?' They go, 'Oh, not good, not good'. . .and this is their new hoax. . ."

And here he is on Twitter: "Anti-Trump Network @CNN doing whatever it can to stoke a national Coronavirus panic. The far left Network pretty much ignoring anyone who they interview who doesn't blame President Trump." @trish_regan @FoxNews Media refuses to discuss the great job our professionals are doing!"

Now, you can interpret those remarks any one of several different ways, but the most generous interpretation is that Trump is calling any criticism of his response to the virus and/or attempts to warn the public about its severity a hoax meant to weaken him politically.

Here are some Coronavirus facts:

• It's already infected somewhere around 80,000 people worldwide
• China, South Korea, Iran, and Italy have all reported outbreaks of varying sizes
• In the past 48 hours, there have been four cases of unknown origin (meaning, none of the victims had recently returned from a country where there was a Coronavirus outbreak) reported in the United States
• One of those four victims has died 

Does this sound like a hoax to you? Or does it sound like something that should be taken seriously?

Trump's "hoax" comments might be believable if he didn't already hamstring America's ability to respond to the Coronavirus by making deep cuts to the CDC, slashing its global disease response budget by 80% and disbanding its global health security team in 2018.  And if he wasn't already getting bipartisan pushback from Congress over these budget cuts.  See, the possibility of a global pandemic has already been on the radar for a while - even the most clueless members of Congress have been aware of that.

But not Trump, evidently.

Here's what could very well happen, thanks to Trump's irresponsibly stupid comments: some people - probably some of Trump's followers -  will believe him when he says the virus is a hoax, so will ignore or mock all the information from public health officials.  They won't practice any of the suggested preventive measures, and we'll have several what should have been easily-preventable cases of Coronavirus in the United States. This isn't that farfetched, when you consider that Trump's "hoax" remarks are being amplified and repeated by the likes of Laura Ingraham, Fox & Friends and Rush Limbaugh, or sitting US Senators are repeating debunked conspiracy theories.

And it's already shaping people's reactions:

What's going to happen if (possibly when) people start getting infected in large numbers? The most optimistic scenario forecasts dozens of infectees and a 1-2% fatality rate. That's a lot of victims.  What about the potential economic hits due to missed work, disrupted global supply chains, the strain on the country's health care network?  We've already seen the effect the Coronavirus is having on the stock market.

Do you feel better about Trump's lackluster approach to tackling the disease, his disdain for many essential government programs and services, or his uninformed, seat-of-the-pants approach to running the country now? I sure as hell don't.

This is why a buffoon like Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near the White House.  The job of President of the United States is no place for the mediocre, the lazy, or the willfully ignorant.  Unfortunately, Trump is all of these things. And if you try to say "We couldn't have known," I'm calling bullshit.  We did know.  After five seconds of hearing Trump give a speech or respond in a debate, we knew.  It was obvious. Trump was thoroughly unfit to be president.

And the inadequate preparation for/response to the Coronavirus is yet another example of his unfitness on display to the entire world.

The Wanna-Be American King

The concept of accountability has gone missing in Washington DC.

Donald Trump was never going to be held accountable.  He's probably never been held accountable in his entire life.  Certainly not since being sworn in as president.  The day after Robert Mueller testified in Congress about his involvement with the Russian government in the 2016 election (in which he only escaped being indicted due to DoJ guidelines), Trump was putting pressure on the Ukrainian government to uncover (or fabricate) "dirt" on the man who he assumed would be his opponent in the 2020 election.  Where a normal person might choose to lay low after such a close call, Trump decided to double down on his corrupt behavior.  He never made a secret of it.  Hell, he openly talked about it in televised interviews.  None of Trump's aides, advisors, or cabinet officials have been able to restrain his worst impulses except around the edges.

And Congress? The co-equal branch of government specifically designed in many ways to act as a check on the Executive branch? The House of Representatives took its responsibility seriously and impeached the president. But the Senate is refusing to do its job.  It ignored the evidence, refused to hear witness testimony, and will very likely acquit Trump in a speedy sham trial a few days from now.  The Senate didn't just fail to hold Trump accountable, it - specifically Senate Republicans - flat-out refused to do so.

So Trump will face zero punishment for attempting to interfere with the 2020 presidential election.  Sure, he's been impeached, and that will be a stain on his legacy forever.  But as far as him suffering any immediate consequences that will prevent him from trying to rig it in his favor?

Zip. Zero. Nada.

Of course, there's the 2020 election itself.  Vote him out of office, right? That is, vote him out of office through the election he's actively trying to cheat in? Sure, piece of cake.

Now, I'm not telling anyone to give up in despair and not vote.  For god's sake, VOTE.  Because this election is probably the most important one in your lifetime.  But don't expect it the Trump campaign to play fair.  Don't be surprised by the traditional Republican tactics like voter suppression, selective voter ID measures, and limited polling sites in Dem-leaning districts.  Don't be surprised if Trump pulls out all the stops - like, say, deploying ICE to polling sites for the purpose of intimidating voters to stay home.  Or worse.

Additionally, Trump will probably do a whole bunch of idiotic, amoral, and illegal stuff between now and November.  And if the past has taught us anything, it's that Trump's antics will push his previous fiasco out of the public consciousness.  It's a well-established pattern at this point: Trump generates a controversy, it dominates the news cycle for a couple days, and is promptly forgotten once Trump makes another bonehead mistake.

Here's an example: have you heard anyone mention Trump's drone assassination of the Iranian general in the last 2-3 days? Trump nearly blundered the United States into a war, and hardly anyone is talking about it now.

Acquitting Trump will be giving him a green light to do whatever he wants, without consequences.  And given some of the things Trump has shown himself to be okay with doing (roughing up protestors, declaring martial law, curtailing the First Amendment, jailing his political opponents) make me extremely nervous.

I'm not saying it's certain that any of these things will happen.  But the chances that they do are a lot further away from zero than they should be.

So. . .thanks, Senate Republicans.

Speaking of that pack of worthless, unprincipled weasels - guess who else won't be held accountable?

Yeah, yeah, I know there's a lot of pent-up anger at the Senate over the impeachment trial's likely outcome.  There sure was after the Senate voted to not allow witnesses, therefore paving the way for the acquittal.  But will that translate to meaningful results at the ballot box? I'm not so sure.  First, there was a lot of anger in the 2018 midterms, too; but despite Democrats making significant gains (the much-hyped "blue wave"), Republicans managed to pick up two seats in the Senate.  They're probably counting on maintaining, if not increasing, their lead in the Senate.

Because despite all the angry phone calls and emails, and the op-eds rightly calling them cowards and worse, they have pollsters who have gauged the public's sentiment and know how their constituents feel.  They've known for a while, which is why they voted the way they did.  So aside from a few vulnerable Senators, they're not sweating reelection.  And if they do unexpectedly lose, they're not worried.  They can find a pundit gig, or a position on a consulting firm, or even just retire.  And in eight or twelve years, "Republican" won't be a dirty word anymore and they can reemerge from the political wilderness.  And Republicans have some experience being the minority party.  If Democrats do retake the Senate, they'll just go into opposition mode and make it incredibly difficult for the Senate (and the White House, if a Democrat gets elected) to do its job.

No, the only thing they're worried about is being excluded from the Big Club, and that only happens if they defy Trump.  Mitt Romney and John Bolton are quickly becoming cautionary tales.

So, to sum up, we've got a president who's unaccountable because his subordinates can't keep him in check, and the Senate simply won't; and fifty-three Senators who are unaccountable because they know the worst outcome for them is the unlikely chance that they don't get reelected.

Where does that leave the country going forward? Well, if Trump loses in 2020 (and that's a big "if" for multiple reasons), expect Republicans to "suddenly" rediscover all the principles and ideals they've been uniformly ignoring since January 2017.  And that creates a dilemma.

A Democrat president (and/or Senate) acting the way Trump has done will further erode the concept of presidential accountability and co-equal branches of government, so the right thing to do would be to heed those calls for accountability.  However, to anyone who remembers Republican behavior throughout the Obama administration knows that Republicans aren't making good faith arguments.  They only care about accountability to the extent they can use it to weaken Democrats and get themselves back into power. Consequently, there's a strong, justifiable argument for telling Republicans to sit down and shut up.  Additionally, if Republicans obstruct simply for the sole purpose of denying Democrats a legislative victory (it was Mitch McConnell's entire strategy from 2010 - 2016), a Democratic president may have to act unilaterally just to keep the government functioning.  It's happened before.

Thus, the Democrats' (and America's) predicament.

Of course, this all depends on the election's outcome.  If Trump gets reelected, it could very well mean the end of Constitutional democracy in America.  And that's not a dramatic exaggeration.  He's already been sent a message that he won't be held accountable no matter what he does.

How far do you think he'll run with that if he gets another four years?

Choose wisely this November.  Because a president that's not accountable to anyone is a king.

The Price of Intellectual Laziness

Donald Trump just kicked a hornet's nest in the Middle East.

A few days ago, the United States, via a drone strike, assassinated the head of the Iranian military's Quds Force.  To understand the significance of this, imagine if a hostile foreign nation assassinated a high-ranking US general or admiral.  Not only that, but one who was deeply admired and respected by the public.  The Iranian government is predictably pissed off about this, and is sure to respond.  How exactly it will do that is unknown, but Iran has a lot of possibilities, ranging from a cyber attack to disrupting the global oil supply by choking off the Strait of Hormuz to terrorist attacks against US overseas installations.  But there's sure to be some form of retaliation, and even a restrained Iranian response could inflict significant damage.  Perhaps even a war.

And this was all set in motion by a man with no long-term strategy, no contingency plans for what might happen next, no national security staff in place to handle the crisis, and no interest or understanding of the world around him.

This is why a president doesn't make seat-of-the-pants decisions.  A good president, anyway.  The job of leading the nation is unimaginably complex, and in reality a president has very little power. There's very little room to maneuver on just about any issue without nudging something else off in a direction you don't want it to go. Sure, a lot of those concerns turn out to be overblown - many of the worst-case "what ifs" the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations had about America supporting France/getting directly involved in Vietnam ended up not coming to pass, and the chances of them occurring were far less likely than any of those presidents believed them to be.  But presidents don't have a crystal ball, though, so it's important to carefully consider the consequences of any given decision.

(For example: Saudi Arabia. We all know eleven of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers came from that country, and there's good reason to believe that the Saudi Royal Family had advance knowledge of the plot.  Maybe they even provided logistical support.  So if anybody deserves an American ass-kicking, it's probably them. But what happens next? Say the US finally does target Saudi Arabia. Really bombs the shit out of it, to the point that we even wipe out the rats and cockroaches. Where does that leave our country? America still depends a lot on Saudi oil, despite efforts over the past few years to develop alternatives. That oil supply dries up if we attack them, which would harm our economy and our day-to-day lives in a big way.  And that's why the US hasn't attacked Saudi Arabia in retaliation for 9/11.)

Of course, maybe nothing bad will happen.  Maybe cooler heads will somehow prevail, and aside from a little chest-thumping rhetoric from both sides, things will revert to the status quo.  Maybe.  I don't have a crystal ball either.

Regardless, Trump's impulsive decision-making process isn't reassuring. At all. He's easily provoked and is more concerned about what kinds of headlines his policies and actions generate than the effects of those policies and decisions.

Not to mention the optics of trying to be a strong, decisive leader is a good way to distract from his impeachment.

And that's why you don't vote for a narcissistic, stubborn, willfully ignorant man-child to serve as president.

When Feudal Fealty Meets Democracy

Quick question.  Who remembers who Eric Shinseki was?

(. . .pause. . .)

Anyone?

(. . .longer pause. . .)

Really? Nobody? *sigh*

Okay, quick recap. Shinseki was an Army general who served from the mid-1960s until 2003.  He had a fairly distinguished career - three Bronze Stars, a pair of Purple Hearts, a handful of combat tours, along with the prerequisites needed to attain the rank of four-star General - but I'm bringing him up because of something that happened at the tail end of his career.

See, Shinseki's final assignment before he retired was Chief of Staff of the Army. For those not familiar with the military's organizational structure, that made him the Army's representative on the Joint Chiefs - which means Shinseki had a fair amount of interaction with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, and the President.  And for the back half of Shinseki's term as Chief of Staff, those three individuals were Richard Myers, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W Bush.

Shinseki and Rumsfeld had a disagreement over a little event known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. Specifically, the number of troops that should have comprised the initial invasion force. Rumsfeld thought it should have been between 100K - 150K troops, while Shinseki believed the mission would require several hundred thousand troops.  History eventually vindicated Shinseki, but contradicting Rumsfeld (before Congress, no less) ended up putting him on Rumsfeld's bad side: from then onward, Shinseki was persona non grata with Rumsfeld and the cabal within the Bush Administration who were eager to invade Iraq. Besides making Shinseki a "lame duck," Rumsfeld's very public rebuke had the effect of cowing other senior officers who might have disagreed with one of Rumsfeld's policies, or have given him advice he didn't want to hear.

Okay, you all still with me? You in the back: wake up!

Questions? Oh, you want to know why I'm bringing all this up.  Right, I was just getting to that.

I brought that incident up for two reasons.  First, to illustrate the consequences of politicizing the military.  By undercutting Shinseki, Rumsfeld made it more likely that people would give him advice he wanted to hear, rather than what they believed would work. Look at what happened as a result: the U.S. invaded Iraq with far fewer troops than necessary.  Combined with a handful of other bad decisions, such as bypassing weapons caches and ignoring widespread looting, this meant that the United States lost control of the situation very early on.  Had Rumsfeld gone with Shinseki's recommended troop levels, the U.S. could have had enough personnel to prevent many foreign insurgents from sneaking across the border or maintain civil order.  Now, it's not certain that the additional troops Shinseki recommended would have been enough to contain Iraq, but those troops would have made success more likely. Yet Rumsfeld rejected Shinseki's advice, and that decision came back to haunt the military throughout OIF.  Thousands of people died as a result.

The second reason I brought this up was to tie it to a recent event that probably hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserved.  In the aftermath of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher's court martial for murdering a civilian (quick recap of those events here), President Trump announced on Twitter that he would be instructing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind Navy Achievement Medals for two Navy JAG officers who prosecuted Gallagher's case.

(Quick tangent: before I get to my main point, I want to detour briefly for reasons that will become obvious very quickly.  It looked pretty clear to me that Gallagher used excessive force against an unarmed noncombatant - if I were a juror, I would've voted to convict him - but here's the important part: I think the rumors of excessive force swirling around the case were what caught Trump's attention.  I'm speculating, but based on Trump's past behavior, I think he heard about the case and thought, "That's how we need to start treating enemy combatants. None of this PC, Geneva Conventions bullshit. Brutalize them, kill them, torture them - they're subhuman anyway!")

[Reminder: This is what I think Trump believes. Definitely NOT what I believe.  For an interesting piece on the thought process of people like Trump, click here.]

Okay, now to my main point.  I hope you're all still with me.

It is wildly inappropriate for the president to involve himself with this case, especially by directing the Secretary of the Navy to rescind the prosecutors' awards, which were likely earned for something unrelated to the Gallagher case.  Besides the very blatant micromanaging and flagrant pettiness, it sends a signal to the armed forces: "You get your awards thanks to my generosity.  Make me unhappy, and I'll take them away."

What's that? You think I'm reading too much into this?

I don't think so.  Consider the following:

• Trump's meeting just a few months after his term began, in which the members of his cabinet took turns praising him
• He has a habit of firing any appointee who disagrees with him (Dan Coats) or makes him look bad (Ryan Zinke)
• He's expressed the belief that the heads of government agencies - most notably the Attorney General - exist to serve him, not the country or the agency they oversee
• The USS John McCain incident 

So, if Trump can get away with revoking the awards of someone who displeases him, what's to stop him from doing the same with a promotion or a career-boosting assignment? What's to stop him from meddling with official doctrine or overruling a commander's battlefield decision? What about adding his name to the oath of enlistment, right after the "bear true faith and allegiance to" section?

Trump is under the impression that the armed forces belong to him, not the country or the office of the president.  He's thought so for a long time, and while there's nothing wrong with thinking that, his recent actions subtly bring that thought closer to reality.  It's another tiny crack he's made in the country's democratic foundation - namely, that the military belongs to the office, not to the person occupying it.

So to sum up: yes, I think Trump is gradually trying to make the military loyal to him and him alone. No, I don't think that's a fringe idea anymore.

Class dismissed.

Torching the Rulebook

I'm starting to think Donald Trump really could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and get away with it entirely.  Not only would he not lose any voters, he'd escape any legal consequences as well.

Once I sat down and listed them all, the number of crimes and ethical transgressions he's survived unscathed is staggering.  Professionally, he screwed over American farmers with his trade war, disregarded co-equal branches of government and the concept of separation of powers, tapped his unqualified, un-appointed kids to perform government duties they have no business doing, shared highly-classified intelligence with Russian government officials (Note: as president, he has declassification authority and can legally share whatever he wants with whoever he wants; that doesn't make it a good idea, though), sparked a crisis with Iran, praised multiple dictators and authoritarian-leaning leaders, ignored the Saudi government's murder of an American journalist, obstructed justice by interfering with the Mueller probe, sanctioned the abuse & mistreatment of children, and attacked the free press. 

In his personal life - before and outside of the presidency - he's the subject of double-digit credible accusations of rape and sexual assault (including raping a teenager), accepted assistance from the Russian government during his campaign, raided the government coffers for his golf junkets, and has a track record of racism and sexism.

And those are just the scandals I could remember off the top of my head.  So where are the people and institutions that are supposed to hold him accountable? Well. . .

On one side of the aisle, the GOP is largely enabling him (and has been from the first day of his presidency). Republicans in Congress are reinforcing Trump's lies by repeating them in the media, creating lies of their own, undermining and attempting to derail legitimate investigations into Trump's crimes, shielding Trump and his appointees from oversight and repercussions, blocking attempts to exercise Congressional oversight.  And why? What does the GOP get out of this? The answer is conservative judges in lifetime appointments and continued support from its base.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are well-meaning but timid and ineffective. Based on my observation, they seem to be giving up too easy ("Oh shucks, the Trump administration ignored our subpoena.  Well, we tried.") or refuse to play hardball.  I get they impression they expect this whole mess to work itself out without their influence - that this will all blow over and things will return to normal.  And maybe it will.  I've never made a secret of how much I despise Trump, so maybe my resentment is clouding my judgment. Maybe I'm worrying for nothing about Trump refusing to leave the White House in 2021 or 2025. 

Then again, he's checking off a lot of boxes on the "making yourself a king" list: showing disdain for the separation of powers, grooming his kids as a potential successor, hinting at a possible 3rd term or rejecting an election's outcome if it's unfavorable. (Yes, he might have been joking, but it's telling that he keeps going back to that theme and a lot of humor is spoken in jest.) In just two and a half years, he's made Americans more accepting of undemocratic practices.  His base (somewhere around 35% of the country) supports whatever he does, and the rest are becoming numb to his antics. (Think I'm exaggerating? Less than two weeks ago, a woman came forward with a credible accusation that Trump raped her a few decades ago, and the story has already vanished from the headlines.  Think about that: someone accused the president of a violent crime, and it's already been forgotten.  I'm not the only one to notice this, by the way.) 

So if the public has become inured to that, what else is it downplaying? Unfounded allegations of voter fraud? Baseless criticism of law enforcement? Nepotism? Defying the Constitution and putting himself above the rule of law? Because Trump has done ALL of those things. Now, do I think we're going to wake up the day after the 2020 elections to find MRAPs and M4-toting police officers on every street corner? No. For his many faults, Trump seems adverse to bloodshed. That's what makes me believe he doesn't plan to declare martial law or anything radical like that.  But his conduct is paving the way for a more unscrupulous version of Trump down the road, someone politically savvier and less reserved about using force.  Maybe that's when we DO see the MRAPs and the rifle-carrying cops show up.

What people tolerate, they get more of, and Trump has shown that Americans will tolerate quite a lot. 

And here's another thing: whether you think Trump is an empty gasbag or an American Mussolini, his influence on government will take a long time to go away.  He's reshaped the country's political norms, and not in a good way.  He's made lying more acceptable, he's made bipartisan compromise less likely, and he's shattered future expectations of civility.

We've already seen what that looks like over the past two years - do we really want to see the "on steroids" version of that? I don't think any of us could call that a good thing. So if we want to avoid that fate, we need to fight back.  Hard. 

Even if that means breaking a few rules ourselves.  Because the Democrats need to stop "playing nice." They need to stop believing (or pretending) the GOP is acting in good faith. They need to get a bit more ruthless themselves, inflicting a few metaphorical broken bones and shattered reputations if necessary.  Steamroll over the GOP. If you wonder why I'm focusing on the Democrats instead of the Republicans, it's because the GOP's enabling of Trump has shown it's unfit to govern many times over. (Quick aside: I would not be bothered if the next Democratic president drew inspiration from Reconstruction, and instituted harsh measures like stripping GOP Senators of voting privileges, until such time that it becomes fit to govern again. Because, yes, the modern GOP is that bad.)

Because what we do now will affect what type of government we have over the next 20-30 years.

Russian Roulette

Tick-tick-tick--click! Tick-tick-tick--click! Tick-tick-tick--click!

Imagine you're living in a major European city in the summer of 1914.  Paris, Vienna, Belgrade, Sofia - it doesn't really matter which one.  How would you react to news about the Archduke's assassination? Would you immediately start preparing for the coming war, or would you keep going about your daily life as usual? It seems counter-intuitive now, based on how inevitable World War I looks in hindsight, but at the time, a lot of people weren't concerned about the assassination setting in motion the events it did - partially because there had already been a handful of crises already, and they ultimately ended civilly, without a larger war breaking out.

* In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexed part of Bosnia, Russia then menaced Austria-Hungary, and Germany menaced Russia in response.

Tick-tick-tick--click!

* In 1912, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia teamed up to acquire territory from the Ottoman Empire.


Tick-tick-tick--click!

* In 1913, Serbia and Greece turned on their former ally Bulgaria, in a dispute over the spoils of their victory from the previous year.


Tick-tick-tick--click!

* Then, in 1914. . .tick-tick-tick--BANG!

Treating the Archduke's assassination as an unimportant event seems more understandable now, doesn't it? That's the tricky thing about historically significant events: you usually don't know which ones will end up being minor tremors and which ones will blow up into unmanageable crises until later.  Maybe much later.  And even when times are uneventful and dull, there are always multiple parts of the system at risk of careening out of control.  Think of it like driving an old, high-mileage car. It's been through a lot of wear-and-tear, so because of its advanced age, there are multiple potential points of failure.  A belt at risk of snapping, a frayed wire, a leaky gasket.  Every time you drive it somewhere, you're adding stress to an already strained system.

Nations are like that.  There are countless moving pieces, and at any given time, one of them could break down with catastrophic consequences.  A crop failure.  A terrorist attack.  A natural disaster.  A financial collapse.  There's a constant undercurrent of chaos flowing through a seemingly calm and orderly facade.  So it's natural for people to ignore or downplay the potential for chaos constantly unfolding around them.  The people who can't or won't exhaust themselves, mentally and emotionally.  (They also irritate everyone around them with their constant "The end is nigh" pronouncements - or so I'm told.)  There's a danger in that complacency, though.  It leads people to assume that because they survived a past crisis, they will also survive the current one.




We're living in one of those uncertain moments right now.  Right-wing authoritarianism is on the rise multiple areas throughout the world.  Brazil just elected a far-right politician as president.  In Germany, a far-right movement is gaining popularity, and Angela Merkel's retirement signals an uncertain future.  There's also a far-right resurgence in other parts of Europe.  And America, which has long held the title of "Leader of the Free World," is seeing its democratic institutions being eroded from within.  Will this be a temporary uptick, or will it lead to a long-term erosion of democracy? Will the international order that has been responsible for over seventy years of relative peace endure, or will we call these "the inter-war years" someday? We can't know for sure, because we're in the middle of these events. But there's no doubt that the storm clouds are gathering.

Tick-tick-tick. . .

Civility From Thee, But Not From Me

Civility.

There's been a lot of calls for more of it in political discourse lately, with very good reason.  In the past several days, someone targeted about a dozen prominent political figures with homemade bombs.  As far as political violence goes, that's a huge damn deal.  Civility seems like a pretty important commodity right now, don't you think? Who would be against that?

Who, indeed? Well, as it turns out, it's some of the people being the loudest in calling for more civility.

Every political ideology has a certain percentage of adherents that see violence as a legitimate tool for achieving their goals or expressing their beliefs, whether it's pounding a metal rod in a tree due to be logged, blowing up an abortion clinic, shooting up a Congressional softball game, or sending homemade bombs through the mail.  They fall all along the political spectrum, and no amount of civil discourse will temper their fanaticism because they don't possess a radical thought process.

Traditional political rhetoric reaches these people in a different way.  Where a rational person hears a politican's call to action as a cue to volunteer, contact their elected officials, or some other form of political activism, these people interpret the message as a command to destroy property or harm people. That's an unintended consequence of political rhetoric, and there's not much that can be done about it.

However, one of America's two major political parties has been issuing increasingly incendiary rhetoric for months now.  From subtle dog whistles like "globalist" and "placeholder" to obvious phrases like "left-wing mob" to ridiculous conspiracy theories.  And it's having a measurable effect. Yet if the response to the homemade bombs is any indication, that party doesn't show any signs of changing its rhetoric.  President Trump's response to a reporter's question about whether he planned to tone down his rhetoric in the wake of the attempted bombings was basically "LOL, nah." So was Sean Hannity's. Tucker Carlson spun a false equivalency fairy tale. Meanwhile, some right-wing pundits have been aggressively promoting a "false flag" narrative, that the Democrats are behind the homemade bombs.

To put it mildly, this is a disgrace.

Do we need more civility in our political discourse? Someone just tried to assassinate a dozen or so political figures with homemade bombs, so hell yes we do. But I'm sick of hearing any calls for civility coming from the GOP or anyone in the right-wing media. They've been fanning the flames of paranoia and hostility literally for years.  With Birtherism. With Benghazi. With Clinton's emails.  With Pizzagate. With Seth Rich and Vince Foster conspiracy theories. With discriminatory and needlessly cruel policies.  All the while, they cast themselves as the victims and refused to take responsibility for their rhetoric or their actions. To them, "civility" is a unilateral cease-fire, where the other side shuts up and they get to say whatever they want.

I'll take Republican calls for civility seriously when Trump, his minions, and all of Fox News get their own houses in order. When they stop peddling conspiracy theories and outright lies, and stop spewing inflammatory rhetoric that demonizes their political opposition. Their hateful rhetoric is already responsible for one person's death, and there's a good chance we'll see more bloodshed if this continues.  As long as they keep fanning the flames, I'll respond to their calls for "civility" with a polite but firm "Go fuck yourselves."

If they want civility, they can show a little first.

The Blogger Who Cried "Wolf"

What if I'm wrong? That question has crossed my mind more than once.  Suppose all my fears about Trump's authoritarianism turn out to be unfounded, and it turns out to be part of his shtick all this time - to "own the libs," or whatever.  Man, won't I look foolish, what with all the squawking I've done about how he's a wanna-be autocrat, how he's a threat to democracy, and so on.

It's not like this is unprecedented, after all. Nixon privately wished he could assassinate a nosy journalist, and Obama aggressively prosecuted whistle-blowers and their journalist sources.  The US government has done business with undemocratic regimes in the past, on several occasions. Government crackdowns on protests in the 1960s were significantly more frequent and brutal.  Yet the US hasn't slid into authoritarianism itself, despite having frequent brushes with other authoritarian nations, and even our own elected officials who possess anti-democratic leanings.

And honestly, how much has life changed for the average person since January 2017? Probably not much, for most people.  We still have a free press.  We don't have to worry about the FBI showing up at our door because we participated in a march or voiced our opinion on social media.  We can still vote.  (And yes, there are many cases of voter suppression, but - and I'm not trying to downplay it here - it's another thing that has been going on for years, if not decades.)

So maybe I'm overreacting, and the things I've been pointing out are just "politics as usual." Maybe 2021 arrives, and my worst fear about Trump not stepping down turns out to be unfounded.  If that's the case, my credibility takes a big hit. Not only was I wrong in a big way, I panicked over nothing. I might have even made a handful of other people panic.  If I do end up being wrong, I'll dial back how much I talk about politics and current events substantially. (I'll never shut up completely, though. You're all stuck with me.) I'll also take a hard look at my preconceived notions, to figure out how and why I was so wrong.

But the way I see it, we're not "fine" even if the worst-case scenario never happens.  I compare it to a patient who refuses to make lifestyle changes after a major health scare.  Even if Trump's actions turn out to be an act for whatever reason, they still had the effect of chipping away at the country's democratic institutions.  It will take time and effort to repair them.  And that's the best-case scenario.  What if we don't get that best-case scenario? I'd rather overreact and be wrong, because prevention is easier than reversing the process.









I guess we'll find out in a few years.  In the meantime, I'll keep squawking about it, loudly and often.

The Emperor Has No Clothes - and We've All Known for a While

So . . . The Op-Ed.

The latest act in the Trump Administration's 3-ring circus took place a few days ago, when the New York Times published an op-ed by an alleged "senior official in the Trump administration" which basically confirmed what everyone already knows: Trump's presidency is a absolute fiasco and Trump himself is thoroughly unfit to govern. The op-ed lays out a laundry list of flaws, portraying the president as inconsistent, prone to fits of pique, impulsive, lacking any intellectual curiosity . . . things that were abundantly clear to anyone who was paying attention during the presidential campaign. So, none of Trump's character defects are really a shocking revelation.

Seriously, if they weren't obvious to you, you are a very poor judge of character.

What I found interesting, and maybe a tiny amount irksome, was that the op-ed writer claims to be one of many administration officials actively seeking to thwart Trump's most disastrous policy ideas. The op-ed doesn't mention any specific incidents, but Bob Woodward's book corroborates much of it while also providing specific details. Including (assuming the story is true) removing official papers from the president's desk to prevent him from signing them into policy.

For sure, every president butts heads with his cabinet members, advisors, or other senior officials. It would be naive to think otherwise. In a similar vein, there's often a disconnect between what the president wants and the career bureaucrats charged with making it happen.  Maybe the intent gets lost in communication. (Remember that "telephone" game?) Maybe an agency's office in a rural area doesn't have the resources to adequately implement the directive the way the president envisioned.  Maybe the president's idea is unworkable or runs into conflict with existing policies.  The US government is a big, sprawling bureaucracy, and problems are bound to arise in the process of translating the president's general directives into specific legal or regulatory policy.

There's a difference between problems that typically arise in a presidential principal-agent relationship, and what's going on in the Trump administration.  As much as I'd probably cheer if I knew just what ill-conceived policy ideas Trump's senior officials have derailed, I'm just a bit displeased about how they went about doing it.

And before you think I'm heading there - no.  NO. This is NOT a coup. Here's a good explanation on why it isn't.  Basically, it comes down to the fact that these officials still agree with a large portion of Trump's agenda, and want to keep him in power to see that agenda through. So let's nip that idea in the bud.

But just because it's not a coup doesn't make it okay, though.  Neither does the fact that they're containing one of the worst presidents this country's ever had.  These senior officials, even if they're doing what's right for the country, are still usurping part of the president's authority.  Authority they were never meant to have.  They may have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but they never ran for election.  Nobody voted them into office.  Nobody knows what positions they have on certain issues - which might tell us what criteria they're using to grade proposed policies.  So what metrics are they using to decide what policies are too awful to be made official? This administration is okay with breaking up families and keeping kids in cages, so it's clearly okay with a lot.  If that policy was approved, how bad must the ones we're not seeing be?

And if Trump is so bad at being president, why don't these officials use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office? Because he's still politically useful.  Here's the best take I've read about the anonymous op-ed so far.  It makes quite a bit of sense, and I happen to agree with almost all of it.

I've said several times that Trump is the predictable outcome of roughly twenty-five years of the GOP's poisoning of American political discourse: science-deniers like Rick Scott and Jim Inhofe, bumbling idiots like Sarah Palin, Louie Gohmert, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Michele Bachmann, and opportunistic partisan obstructionists like Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan.  They all created this monster and now it's rampaging across the countryside.  Only they can't put it down, because now they need it.  Trump demolished fifteen other GOP primary candidates, some of them experienced and capable politicians.  Which means that he is what the GOP base wanted.  Trump redefined what's considered acceptable political conduct, he inspired others like Jim Jordan and Roy Moore to adopt his methods, and now the GOP needs to fall in line behind him if they want to keep winning elections.

Trump is unfit for office, we all knew that.  And in the process of displaying his absolute unfitness, he's removed the last shred of doubt that the GOP is a morally bankrupt political party, equally unfit to govern, and also that the entire right-wing media establishment is a farcical propaganda-peddling machine.  And since the party's leaders are unwilling or unable to develop some political courage and begin the process of  removing Trump from office, the country will continue to watch a reckless, incompetent president crash from one fiasco to the next.

The 3-ring circus continues.

Turbulent Seas

There's never a shortage of contemporary Cassandras who forecast America's doom based on a collection of trends and statistical indicators.  I'm sure every powerful nation-state going back to ancient Babylon has had its share of them.  But sooner or later, one of them ends up getting something right.  Like this one.  Here's an excerpt from Ed Luce's 2012 book, Time to Start Thinking:

Fast-forward six years, and Luce's analysis turned out to be dead-on.  It's not difficult to understand why voters feel disconnected from the two major parties. Consider the major events and trends of the past ten to fifteen years.  The 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Wall Street bailout. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party.  The outsourcing/automation of manufacturing jobs and stagnant wages.  Government shut-downs and political brinkmanship.  The "Retail Apocalypse." Two quagmire wars.  It doesn't take an expert social scientist to understand that a whole lot of people are increasingly uncertain about their futures, and that they view Washington and Wall Street elites as unhelpful and indifferent.  It's a simple equation: economic distress + frustration with current system = openness to demagoguery.  Just to make things interesting, add a healthy amount of simmering racial resentment.

And so, enter Donald Trump.  If you wonder why I rail against him so vocally, it's because he ascended to the presidency at a really bad time.  And I'm not just talking about the portion of the population worried about their futures. The day he took office, the NSA was engaging in bulk data collection of Americans' communications, dozens of police forces across the country were utilizing military-grade equipment, the precedent of launching drone strikes against American citizens without due process had been established, and our civil liberties were being eroded in the name of fighting terrorism.   It was a farfetched, extreme worst-case scenario, but taken together those things would provide an aspiring autocrat all the tools they needed.  So when Trump said things like he'd only acknowledge the election results "if he won," I got a bit nervous. 

I'm sure there are many, many servicemembers, police officers, intelligence analysts, and other government workers who refuse to carry out unconstitutional, and potentially, authoritarian-type orders - like spying on citizens because of their political views or anti-Trump activism.  There are many public servants who understand the Constitution, who know their history, and who recognize the potential of these programs being used toward undemocratic ends.  However, there would still be a significant number who would carry out those orders, and one only needs to look at the past fifty or so years of US history to find examples.  Look at Abu Ghraib, COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, the Chicago PD "black sites," and several other incidents, to see how easy it is for things to go off the rails.

Meanwhile, nothing is being done to fix any of this.  Now maybe there's no easy solution for the economic anxiety stuff, but I'm sure there are ways to alleviate the distress: job retraining programs, government investment in developing industries like nanotechnology and solar energy, etc. But the government could be doing a much better job of cleaning its own house: terminating the bulk collection program, making police forces get rid of the military hardware, strengthening Constitutional protections and curbing Executive power.  Yet to nobody's surprise, it's not. 

I'm a natural pessimist, but I don't see this ending well unless the political and business classes start acting to make Americans' lives better.  The path is wide open for a genuine autocrat to show up, and that person probably won't be as incompetent as Trump has been.

Heroes - When it's Convenient

The latest chapter of the Colin Kaepernick kneeling saga began a few days ago, when Nike made him the face of its latest ad campaign.  If you haven't seen the ad in question, here's a link where you can take a look.  Predictably, the ad sparked a backlash, signs of which you could see in the news and on social media: photos and videos of people destroying their Nike merchandise, the standard amount of anti-Kaepernick vitriol, and so on.  It was a new twist on a familiar tune: Kaepernick is being unpatriotic and disrespectful to the troops and the flag by kneeling, etc etc etc. Basically the same old stuff. 

For the sake of argument, let's assume that it is disrespectful (I don't think it is, but I don't presume to speak for all military personnel). If kneeling during the national anthem gets people angry enough to torch their Nike shoes, how angry would they get over the government suppressing a report about contaminated drinking water on military bases? Or appallingly poor medical care at VA clinics? Homeless veterans? Deep cuts to educational benefits? Or how about the biggest one in recent memory: the Bush Administration's unnecessary and completely botched war in Iraq? Even if you believe the WMD intelligence was legitimate (hint: it wasn't), Bush and his team screwed up every significant decision at the start of the war, from ignoring the looting to not sending enough troops to secure the country to the Ba'athist purges.

So if someone cared about the troops not being disrespected, there are much bigger things to get angry about. Yet I'd speculate that there's not a huge amount of overlap in the Venn Diagram of "people who are angry about what Kaepernick's doing" and "people who are angry about all that other stuff."

Curious, isn't it? It's as if some people only care about "the troops" to use them as a political prop, and then forget all about them when it comes to things that really matter.

Like I said, I don't presume to speak for all military personnel.  But I'll just give my $.02.  At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I'll say that I detest shallow patriotism, and that people angry about Kaepernick and the Nike ad campaign are a classic example of that. Caring about the troops is about more than a coupon at a restaurant or priority boarding at the airport, or flashy parades and magnetic yellow ribbons. It's about taking the time to read up on the challenges they face: the far-flung corners of the world they're sent to, the various missions they're made to undertake, and the difficulties they face when they eventually re-enter the civilian world.

And it is definitely not about allowing the military and the flag to be used as a rhetorical club to hit a particular segment of society. If that's your idea of patriotism, you have a lot to learn.

On Statesmen, National Myths, and Reality

In the days following Senator John McCain's death, I noticed a recurring theme in the news and on social media (particularly Twitter.) A lot of outside-the-mainstream media outlets and private individuals were aiming some harsh criticism at both the late Senator for actions he took during his career, as well as mainstream outlets for "whitewashing" McCain's career immediately following his passing.  The timing of that criticism left a bad taste in my mouth, because there's a proper time and place for it, and right after someone passes away is not that time. 

Still, McCain made his share of shameful decisions throughout his tenure, like choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate for the 2008 presidential election or running interference for Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses.  Those things need to be brought out into the open, because we as citizens are not doing ourselves any favors by pretending they never happened.  At some point, it's appropriate, even necessary, to discuss McCain's record honestly and fairly.  Seeing the entire picture - the good, the bad, and the ugly - helps us make better choices when we're selecting our elected officials or exercising any other form of political expression.  Democratic forms of government like ours endow more decision-making power upon the citizens, and like any other form of  power, it comes with certain responsibilities. One such responsibility is doing the research to make an informed decision.

Here's the uncomfortable truth about many of the shameful deeds that tend to get whitewashed, though: they're often necessary evils. For example, one of FDR's more detestable decisions was brokering a deal with Stalin in order to get the Soviet Union's help with defeating Nazi Germany, and a condition of that deal was essentially throwing Poland to the wolves.  Stalin already had an established reputation as a mass-murderer, and FDR surely knew what evil fate was in store for Poland.  Yet would the Allies have been able to defeat the Nazis without Stalin's troops? We don't have any way of knowing, but the best case scenario would be the European part of World War II drags on for another few years.  Or maybe the US decides to drop an atomic bomb on Berlin. Or maybe without the Soviets tying up millions of German troops to the east, the Allies are outnumbered and either collapse or are defeated. Or, to bring up a contemporary example, how about America's relationship with Saudi Arabia? I'm no fan of the way our government turns a blind eye to Saudi's many atrocities, but once you realize how important oil is to our day-to-day lives, it becomes clear that Saudi Arabia has a lot of leverage on us. The situation is getting better, but taking a hard stance would trigger a huge economic hit.  And by the way, they've known this since the 1970s.

My point here is that it's easy to be the armchair quarterback when you're not the one making these kinds of important decisions, but it's important to remember two things.  First, people are imperfect.  I don't think anybody over the age of about fifteen thinks our elected officials are noble, virtuous, and pure.  Even the ones we've seemingly transformed into legends. That would be considered hugely gullible. For instance, the Founding Fathers.  They did some great things, but also their fair share of disgraceful ones.  It's extremely rare that a politician is either all good or all bad.  Second, the decisions the elected officials make are usually messy with no good answers.  A few of them will probably trigger nightmares for years or even decades. People who are expecting perfect candidates and perfect decisions might as well be wishing for unicorns. They have the luxury of not bearing the weight of making those decisions.  So, a decent portion of criticism needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Of course, it's also very likely that some of those so-called agonizing decisions are made with personal gain in mind.  Maybe it's a reliable campaign donor, or a lucrative private sector job once a politician's term is over.  Or maybe the UAVs Saudi Arabia uses against Yemeni rebels are manufactured in a candidate's home district, meaning a few hundred jobs, meaning a dependable voting bloc. A person would be naive to not consider that.  Well, that's where being informed comes into play, and why knowing what unsavory actions a candidate takes matters.

An informed citizenry is important to a democracy, and while focusing on McCain's more shameful deeds right after his death was classless, it still serves the function of informing the public.  It was how the Founders anticipated the media acting as a check on the political class.  This kind of adversarial journalism keeps the voters informed and the politicians in check.  Frankly, we could use a lot more of it.

Fix the timing and delivery, though.

Why I Don't Care about Alex Jones Getting Dropped from Facebook, iTunes, and YouTube

In the wake of Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify (and possibly others) banning Alex Jones from their platforms and purging all of his content, I'm seeing a handful of people (some of whom have fairly large audiences) criticizing the social media companies for what they are calling corporate censorship.  The main thrust of this argument seems to be that in allowing the social media companies to ban Alex Jones, we have granted a handful of tech CEOs the power to "determine what 'content' should and should not be available for public consumption", to use one person's phrasing.  While a handful of companies wielding disproportionate control over the media, with little transparency or accountability, is certainly something we should worry about almost as much as government censorship, what happened to Alex Jones is not a particularly good example of it.

I want to emphasize that none of these people are defending Alex Jones.  None.  What they are taking issue with is the social media platforms censoring a content creator without any apparent transparency, accountability, or due process.   However, that complaint is baseless, for a number of reasons.

First, the obvious point: the First Amendment only restricts what the government can do. It doesn't give citizens any protection from private businesses.  Facebook and the other platforms can ban someone at any time for violating their Terms of Service. Users acknowledge that and implicitly agree when they sign up to use the site and check "okay" on the ToS button.  These platforms have had the authority to ban Alex Jones the entire time he's been using their service, they just chose not to exercise it until now.

Second, the near-simultaneous decision by multiple platforms to drop Alex Jones gives the impression that the decision was sudden and arbitrary.  It wasn't. Alex Jones has been a controversy magnet for years.  He has repeatedly labeled survivors of the Sandy Hook school shooting, as well as relatives and friends of the victims, "crisis actors." In fact, he's dwelled on this point so much that the parents of one victim have had to move seven times, and he is currently on trial for defamation, in a lawsuit brought by families of the victims. So lest you think this came out of nowhere, it has been building for a long time.

Additionally, the social media CEOs were not acting (entirely) on their own initiative.  They were responding to public pressure to remove Jones' videos, etc, from their platforms.  That means it's hardly a decision made in isolation.  In fact, given Jones' track record of controversy, it's a bit surprising he has lasted as long as he has.

Third, Alex Jones was an outlier. Some content providers are worried about the precedent this might set, but unless you're harassing victims of a mass shooting, it's safe to say that you won't end up on YouTube's/Spotify's/Facebook's radar.  So relax, nobody is coming to boot you off their platform.

Fourth, the barriers to entry on any of these sites is nonexistent.  Now, iTunes requires a little bit of technical know-how as far as recording, editing, and uploading a podcast; but that's pretty much as far as it goes.  For the most part, all you have to do is know how to create an account and upload content.  So the idea that we're all suddenly at the "tech overlords' mercy" is laughable.  They won't even care unless your content draws a lot of complaints, and even then that's not a given.  Hell, I see more people complaining about the lack of policing on social media.

Fifth, James Gunn.  He's been in the news lately, so the name probably sounds familiar.  The reason he's in the news is Disney fired him because of a handful of inappropriate tweets he posted a few years back. Not even close to the level of the bile Alex Jones spews, but still inappropriate.  Here's why I'm bringing him up.  Gunn certainly needs to be held accountable for those, but the difference between Gunn and Jones is that Gunn grew and changed, and now he contributes something meaningful to society.  He eventually cleaned up his act, got better at his craft, and went on to deliver some top-notch work.  (Seriously.  Guardians of the Galaxy is an awesome film.) These days, Gunn is also widely respected by the actors and film crews he works with, and has a growing movement dedicated to getting him reinstated because of his artistic contributions.  The point is that you contribute something to society, your fans and peers will back you up.  Can anyone argue in good faith that Alex Jones has made a meaningful contribution?

Now, people should be worried when news outlets gradually morph into an increasingly-consolidated oligarch-like structure (for example, the "Big Six Media" or the current Sinclair Broadcast Group situation.) But social media is not like that.  It's opened the door to a multitude of news and information outlets.  Take Twitter: because of it, I've been able to follow literally dozens of news agencies from around the world: Balkan Insight, Der Spiegel, Euronews, to list a few.  And thanks to iTunes, I can find a podcast covering just about any niche topic I find interesting.  So good, independent sources of news are out there, and social media has helped make that possible.

So, to everyone getting worked up about Alex Jones getting sent packing: relax.  It's not - repeat, not - going to usher in some new era of censorship.

An Unorthodox Proposal

First off, a nod to Jonathan Swift for providing the inspiration for this post's title.  Now, on with the show.

Alright, look. It's obvious that America's current system of choosing a president isn't working.  320 million people, and one of the final two candidates we could come up with - the one who went on to win* - was Donald Trump? That was the best we could do? Really, America?!?

You'll notice I didn't mention Hillary Clinton in the above paragraph. That was intentional.  I didn't want to lump her in with Trump.  Sure, Hillary Clinton had a fair amount of political baggage.  Some of it was deserved and of her own doing, but the overwhelming majority of it turned out to be baseless accusations peddled by the right-wing smear machine.  But she was also the most qualified candidate, by far, and she was certainly miles ahead of the walking, breathing dumpster fire currently occupying the White House.

Whoops, I got distracted and went off on a tangent there.

Back to my main point, which is that the current process for electing a president is in desperate need of reform. I don't want to get too into the weeds talking about how the institutional mechanisms in place need to be modified, although I will say that the Electoral College needs to be revamped, the Voting Rights Act needs to be restored, and alternative ideas like ranked-choice voting and holding primaries on weekends (when more people can participate) need to be at least looked at.

No, the change I propose is more tonal than structural.  Here's my idea.  Instead of the current handful of campaign debates, which are nearly worthless spectacles, we have each party's candidate (it would have to be after the primaries, because in the past couple presidential elections there would be too many candidates for this to work) undergo some kind of exam by a select panel of experts in various relevant areas.

For example, say we want to evaluate a candidate's knowledge on foreign policy. We gather a team of experts in all the areas foreign policy could be expected to cover: economics & trade, science, military strategy, and so on.  Then these experts ask the candidates a bunch of questions, to gauge their knowledge. Now, the questions could take any kind of format - I'm not too choosy.  It could be an in-person panel, like a job interview; or it could be like a college-level exam. 

The point - and this is the important part - is that the results of the Q & A are made public, to see just how much a certain candidate knows (or doesn't know.) If it's a panel interview, record it and play it on all the news networks later.  If it's a written test, publish it in a special insert in every major newspaper, and post it online. Also, just like any other test (which is essentially what this is), the candidate's performance is scored.  1 - 100, just like most tests.  Any candidate who scores too low is disqualified from running.

And that's it.  We wouldn't change anything else about how votes are cast or counted, we'd just replace debates with a process that (hopefully) prevented the country from electing a complete idiot.

I don't expect this to be adopted, of course.  It's pretty much got a snowball's chance in hell.  But I don't think anyone will dispute that elections have become way too much like a popularity contest - a certain level of that is always expected, but it's getting ridiculous. 

Anyway, I was just throwing this idea out there.

* Russia helped Trump win