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 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.

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.

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 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.

Trump's Helsinki Fiasco

Since Donald Trump became president, I've often reacted to news stories with disgust, anger, frustration, fear, or a combination of the four; but I've only been distressed over current events to the point of losing sleep twice.  November 9, 2016 - the night Trump won the election - was one.  Last night was another.  I have a Chicken Little-type tendency to assume the worst and engage in panicked hyperbole at the earliest sign of bad news, and it's a reflex that I have to work hard to keep in check.  However, in light of recent events, I don't think it's a big stretch to say that the United States is in a bad spot.

On July 16th, in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Trump rejected the United States intelligence community's conclusion that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, instead choosing to take Russian President Putin at his word.  Trump's refusal to acknowledge this conclusion is significant for two reasons.  First, it wasn't one or two intelligence agencies making that claim, it was the entire intelligence community's unanimous assessment.  Second, on June 13, Special Counsel Mueller had indicted a dozen GRU agents for hacking into the DNC's computer networks (among other targets) to acquire information it intended to use to interfere with the 2016 elections.  That second reason is particularly significant because any case that's going to be made in court requires hard, tangible evidence.  This case, especially.  Mueller is accusing foreign nationals of committing a cyber-crime against US government-affiliated institutions.  Even though the best-case scenario is that the dozen GRU agents will be tried in absentia - if there's a trial at all - Mueller's case needs to be as close to airtight as possible, because of the stakes involved.

Taken together, the intelligence community's assessment and Mueller's indictments mean that the conclusion is pretty conclusive: Russia interfered in the 2016 election.  Yet the President of the United States chose to disregard his own intelligence apparatus' conclusion.

Why did he do that? Or, to ask the question another way, why is Trump so quick to believe Putin? Well, there are a couple of different possibilities.  One is that Trump's ego is driving all of this.  If he had to acknowledge that Russia's interference contributed to his victory, it takes some of the glow off of his win.  That would be a crushing blow to his pride.  Another possibility is Trump's well-documented affinity for dictators and strongmen.  Putin isn't the only authoritarian who Trump has fawned over, but he does seem to hold the place of honor in Trump's hall of heroes.  Yet another possibility is that Trump has a relationship with the Russian government that goes back decades.  Jonathan Chait's recent piece about this has been making the rounds, but Sarah Kendzior has a one-year lead on him.  I'd stop short of calling Trump a Russian "asset" (that word has certain HUMINT connotations), but I think "useful idiot" is more fitting.  I think the Russian government saw Trump as an easy-to-manipulate pawn, and they played him like a fiddle. 

And if the Helsinki presser is any indication, Russia is still playing him.  That is about as terrifying as it gets.  It tells all of America's allies that the President of the United States can't be trusted.  It tells hostile nations that the United States won't push back if another cyber-attack happens.  It tells the world that Trump won't do anything to protect America's national security.  And it tells Russia it has unlimited license to do what it wants.  Trump's performance in Helsinki also adds credibility to long-running suspicions that his loyalty is to Russia.

And while Trump has been enabling Russia, the GOP has been running interference for him.  A handful of its key leaders had a reasonable suspicion in mid-2016 that Trump had an allegiance to Russia, but they kept it a secret.  Its Senate majority leader knew that Russia hacked the DNC, but he refused to publicly confirm that information.  The GOP has tried to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation at every turn - by holding dog-and-pony shows like the Strzok hearings; by spreading falsehoods in the news and on social media; and by refusing to act in response to a growing mountain of evidence that Russia tampered with the 2016 election results, and that the Trump campaign was involved in that effort.

So why is the GOP so committed to helping Trump?

Because the party's future has been tied to Trump since 2015, and it will continue to need him for the next few years.  He helped the GOP win it the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016, establishing a fast-track for the GOP's legislative agenda.  (Although there have been a handful of self-inflicted injuries.) He appointed ideologically sympathetic judges to several courts, including two (pending Kavanaugh's confirmation) Supreme Court Justices, allowing conservatives to interpret the law for a generation.  And possibly most important of all, he brought a political party that looked like it was dying back to life, by hitting all the right notes that resonate with the conservative base: a tough stance on immigration; a strong, fearsome military; law and order with a draconian flavor; pro-business; anti-regulation - all the things they want to hear.  The fact that his actual track record is pretty dismal is irrelevant.  Trump has hit upon a winning political formula that will keep the GOP in the game for several more election cycles.  And all they have to do is turn a blind eye to someone who never bothered to hide his disdain for American and democratic institutions and ideals.


Which is something they will gladly do, if current events are any indication.  That makes them complicit in Trump's war on American security and well-being.  Putting party over country in normal circumstances is, well, politics.  Putting party over country in the wake of a cyber-attack that most likely influenced the outcome of a presidential election is dereliction of duty.  Trump's conduct in Helsinki shows that he represents a danger to the United States, and he has far exceeded the threshold for being removed from office.  And his enablers in Congress - McConnell, Ryan, Nunes, all of them - I don't know if what they did is considered a crime, but if it is, they should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

It won't be enough to simply vote them out of office.  Simply voting them out means they become the objects of scorn for a few years, and that's pretty much it. That can't be allowed to happen.  They need to be made into examples, to discourage future of politicians from doing the same thing.  Trials need to be held.  Prison sentences need to be handed down. Safeguards need to be put into place to keep it from happening again. 

Because none of this will simply revert back to normal the day after Trump leaves office.  The damage being done - to our relationships with our allies, to our global reputation, to our citizens' faith in government - will take years to be repaired.  And the longer it goes on, the worse the damage will be. 

American Values in the Trump Era

I saw a Facebook post over the weekend, containing the line "What the fuck happened, America?" The post's author didn't specifically state what it was written in response to, but it's not hard to guess.  Over the weekend, the story broke that the Trump administration had directed Customs and Border Patrol to specifically begin splitting up families that cross into America's southern border.  The children are housed in Spartan detention camps, while the parents are presumably deported.

Read that again.  The Trump administration ordered CBP to split up families who cross into the United States from the south.  CBP went right along with it, without hesitation.  And many of his followers rationalized what the administration was doing.  Some even cheered.

"What the fuck happened," indeed.

This policy (it is absolutely NOT a law, and don't believe otherwise) is intentionally cruel and appalling; and if you're not shocked by it, you need to recalibrate your moral compass.  But the truth is, it didn't just come out of nowhere - in more ways than one.  First, the United States government has been party to other inhumane practices, both large and small throughout its history.  You probably know of some of the bigger ones: slavery, the Tuskeegee Experiments, interning Japanese-American citizens in WWII, and the Trail of Tears, to name a few.  As for the smaller ones, the ones that immediately come to mind tend to be more recent.  Camp X-Ray, rendition, and "enhanced interrogation" (AKA torture) desensitized us to the government treating non-Americans cruelly.  The TSA enacted increasingly invasive and unnecessary security measures while providing no mechanisms for recourse or accountability for abuses of authority, and many people shrugged their shoulders and accepted its infringements on all of our rights.  Ditto with the NSA and its bulk data collection.  We largely ignored the Pentagon's 1033 Program, which supplied surplus military hardware to police forces across the nation; and just as the old saying about "when all you have is a hammer..." goes, those police units began adopting more aggressive attitudes and tactics.

The CBP's separation of families is a convergence of all the things I just described: the TSA's lack of accountability, police forces' aggressive posture, and Camp X-Ray's barbaric treatment of non-Americans.  And we - American citizens - kind of let it happen by abandoning our civic responsibilities.  The more often we turned a blind eye, or halfheartedly protested, the more these practices became entrenched.  Acceptable.  Widespread.

But that's only part of it.  Another huge factor, as I'm sure you can guess, is President Trump.  The Trump administration's policy of separating families should not be a surprise, if you paid attention to what Trump said and who he surrounded himself with on the campaign trail.  Remember when Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists? That was almost three years ago to the day.  Trump has never bothered to hide his hatred for Latino immigrants or his racism, and now he's pushing policy in line with his attitudes.


As much as Trump is at the center of this, it's not just about him, though.  The family separation policy may have been in the planning for a while, but it was only rolled out recently.  Did you notice how quickly CBP fell in line, though? I don't see many people talking about that, except tangentially.  I've seen a few articles about how indifferent, even cruel, the CBP officers have acted toward the detained children, but AFAIK nobody has asked how they got that way.  Institutional cultures don't shift so radically in such a short time, which means that the CBP behavior we're seeing has been there for a while, just below the surface.  Trump's policies may have drawn that cruelty out, but it didn't create it from scratch.  Regardless, curbing the CBP excesses will be one of many problems this country faces after Trump leaves office.

I often claim that Trump unleashed this country's ugly side.  All the racism, the misogyny, the anti-intellectualism, the corruption and the lying, the obnoxious boasting, and the "burn it all down" style of governing - it didn't originate with Trump.  Like the CBP agents, there were a lot of shitbags who Trump has emboldened.  They will still be here after Trump is gone, and they won't go quietly. The fallout from the Trump administration will shape politics for decades.

Because this is about a lot more than the family separation policy.  It's about Trump's entire worldview, something that informs everything he thinks, says, and does.  Think back to Trump's comments about immigrants being criminals and rapists, and how those comments relate to this current family separation policy.  Now think about other things Trump said during his campaign.  Remember all of his racist and misogynist dog whistles? Remember when he said he'd only acknowledge the election results if he won? Or how he popularized a slogan calling for a political rival to be jailed - and still uses it at rallies and speeches?

Does this mean I think we're on the march toward genocide or a dictatorship? That Trump's going to seize control of the government and declare himself emperor or something, or that we'll be herding immigrants, Muslims, and who knows who else into camps? I honestly don't know, but I'm giving both non-zero possibilities at this point.  I may very well be overreacting, and there's certainly a significant chance I'm wrong.  However, there have been a lot of indicators that Trump wants to do so.  He's installed family members in key posts, centralized the decision-making process, made targeting minorities and other protected classes a common theme of his policies, and fawned over more than one totalitarian despot.  At the same time, the institutional checks meant to keep a president from seizing power are weakened.  The GOP-controlled congress won't stand up to him, because of either cowardice or opportunism - I can't figure out which; and the Democrats suck as an opposition party, because they won't come up with a coherent platform.

They need to, quickly; and they need to fight to win with everything they've got. (Everything legal, of course.) Because if the Trump administration is separating immigrant families today, what will it be doing tomorrow? Will it move on to some other group next after it's done with immigrants, Muslims, or transgender people? As I already said, I don't know.  Nobody can predict the future.  But that's why it's important to smack down any authoritarian policies early, because by the time people are getting marched to the gas chambers, it's too late.

This isn't a debate about policy any more, it's about morality.  Right and wrong.  Trump, the members of his administration, his Republican enablers in Congress, and his supporters - they're all embracing a very immoral and un-American set of values.  History will someday judge them as villains - IF the rest of us do something about it.  Vote, protest, call your elected reps.  Do what you can to render the Party of Trump ineffective as a political movement.  There should be no place for their ideas and policies in American society.

Because history will judge you too.

Shutdown Winners & Losers

The US government has shut down for who knows how long, so I thought I'd do a post-shutdown recap of the last 24-48 hours.  I'll look at the key parties one by one, and give my $.02 on how they fared.

President Trump: Trump would have gotten a boost if he had allowed Congress to do its job, but (like he has before) he shot himself in the foot.  He nearly had a bipartisan deal ready to go, but his "shithole" fiasco threw a wrench into that.  Now, instead of a modest legislative victory and a probable popularity boost, Trump has a shutdown taking place on his watch.  He also has done very little to resolve this issue, other than rant on Twitter. So this becomes another item on his list of failures and screw-ups as President, but it won't cost him much in terms of popularity: he's gone about as low as he possibly can, and his remaining supporters are unshakeable.

House of Representatives: On one hand, the House passed the measures necessary to keep the government running.  That's a plus.  On the other hand, House Republicans tried to force a choice between CHIP (health insurance for children) and DACA (a provision allowing children of immigrants to remain in the United States.) There's a special place in hell for any group of politicians who try to force this kind of Sophie's Choice.  People don't expect much from House Reps anymore, though.  The House lost a bit of prestige, but not much.

Senate Republicans: Moderate losses for the Senate GOP over this shutdown.  They, along with Trump, precipitated this crisis - first, by defunding CHIP in September for use as a bargaining chip in the future, and spiking the pre-shutdown negotiations by adding several last-minute provisions to the deal. Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be occupying that perch in hell, next to the House Republicans. Besides being unspeakably immoral, it was also bad politics on McConnell's part.  He tried to create a false dilemma that would cause the Democrats to fold, and it backfired badly.  Maybe he should have been tending to his own party members, because four Senate Republicans voted against the bill; those four would not have been enough to pass the bill, but they do make it harder for Trump and the GOP to lay blame entirely on the Democrats.  Harder, but not impossible - because they are already making that case in the court of public opinion. It's not entirely unexpected, since they tried it before when public opinion turned against them after the last shutdown. However, they do have an easy time framing negative stories in ways that cast them in a positive light.

Democrats: They aren't entirely blameless because they were playing a game of brinkmanship over DACA; however, as I already stated, it takes two to tango.  The GOP is culpable for how they framed the DACA vote, and Trump takes some responsibility for derailing a bipartisan deal.  While I personally approve of renewing both CHIP and DACA, I don't approve of the Democratic Party's methods; they're doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.  And while I would like to see the Dems play hardball more often, I think what they're doing now sets a bad precedent.  We already have one major party that obstructs and employs scorched earth tactics.  We don't need two.

In the final analysis, I put the bulk of the blame on Trump and the GOP.  I think 70% to them, and 30% to the Democrats is a fair distribution.  A lot of this hinges on whose policies are taking a hit.  As I already stated, I support both DACA and CHIP, so part of me wants to see the Dems dig in and fight.  I also don't agree with how the GOP has governed, so I enjoy seeing them be on the receiving end of the same tactics they used.  I know it's corrosive for the country in the long run, though. The 2013 shutdown cost the country a lot, in terms of both treasure and prestige.  This one could do the same if it continues for very long, and at this point it's anyone's guess as to how it ends.  It also makes undoing the climate of hyper-polarization harder.

What Goes Around. . .

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell recently stated he anticipates more bipartisan cooperation in 2018.  That's right, Mitch McConnell said that.  The same Mitch McConnell who bragged about stonewalling former President Obama's Supreme Court nominee in Obama's final year in office.  The same McConnell who was an integral part of the opposition party's obstructionist strategy.  It doesn't take an expert pundit to figure out what's going on here: McConnell knows the GOP will get crushed in next year's midterms, so he's suddenly realized the value of cooperation so he can extract some favorable legislation before his political capital expires.  So now he wants to play nice - how convenient.  There are probably countless members of the Democratic Party, both voters and elected officials, who don't feel McConnell and the GOP deserve any quarter whatsoever, and who have no intention of cutting them even a millimeter of slack; and given Republicans' conduct during the last eight years, who could blame them?

Here's the thing, though: as gratifying as telling the GOP to get stuffed sounds, it's a bad idea - for a combination of obvious and not-so-obvious reasons.  (Quick note: I'm referring almost entirely to the obscure Congressional rules in this post, not any policy positions; as far as I'm concerned, the GOP is on the wrong side of history on many contemporary social issues - civil rights, environmental protections, education, the church/state separation, among others - and they don't deserve any consideration on these points.  History and sociological research have already rendered verdicts, and it's time for the GOP's policy stances to be thrown onto the pile of failed ideas.  Okay - tangent over.) For one thing, neither party manages to hold a majority forever, so any procedural changes a party makes to the will eventually get passed along to the other party; and when that happens, you're giving the opposition better tools to push its agenda and undo your accomplishments.  It's foolishly shortsighted to behave as if you'll be the party in power for more than a few years, and that the changes you make won't come back to haunt you.  For another, some politicians have long memories and vindictive attitudes; so any Democratic politicians' pettiness or slights will get filed away in the "what goes around, comes around" cabinet.

Something needs to be done, though, because the GOP went beyond an opposition party to sabotaging the government with their obstructionist tactics.  Here's a baseball analogy: have you ever watched a game where the batter steps out of the box over and over, to frustrate the pitcher and get him to do something dumb? It's technically within the rules, but it's an unsportsmanlike exploitation of a loophole.  That's exactly what the GOP did with Merrick Garland: the Constitution says the Senate gives "advice and consent" over SCOTUS nominees, so the Senate had no obligation to give Garland a nomination hearing.

Someone might ask why Congress doesn't just rewrite the rules so there aren't loopholes for any party to exploit.  It's a pretty obvious solution, after all; but saying it would be difficult is like saying the sun is kind of warm.  Let's take a look at the possible ways of going about it, and all the obstacles in the way.

• The White House/Supreme Court intervenes.  Nope, awful idea.  Congress is, in many ways, a self-policing organization, and that's by design according to the principles of separation of powers and checks & balances.  Letting it write its own procedural rules leads to some disastrous results, as anyone who pays attention to government knows; but designating the Executive or Judicial Branch to manage it means Congress ceases to exist as a coequal branch of government.  Additionally, reforming Congress is outside the scope of either of the other two governmental branches.  This might solve the problem of Congressional mismanagement, but creates a far bigger one.
• Congress reforms itself.  Good luck making this happen.  Neither of the two parties truly wants to close any of those procedural loopholes.  As I already explained, the majority party likes having those little "cheat codes" while they're in power, and the minority party knows it will have its own turn sooner or later.  (For example, the Garland nomination fiasco: Mitch McConnell rightly accused the Democratic Party of hypocrisy, noting that it had done nearly the same thing during the Bush II Administration.) Those little political machinations also provide good material for reelection ads: "The other party did X, Y, and Z. Send me back to Washington and I'll clean up its mess." Which they might, but not in a way that solves the underlying issue or that can't be reversed within a few election cycles.  Senators and Representatives like those procedural tricks, and the only way to put a stop to it would be to "reboot" Congress: send every single member packing (What, you think they all came in knowing how to manipulate the processes? Someone more experienced taught them.), and strip away all those arcane rules that accumulated over the decades.
• An outside oversight agency.  There are risks involved, such as the agency being co-opted or supplanted by political insiders, and its mission distorted and turned into a partisan weapon.  Case in point: between 1976 and 1988, the League of Women Voters organized and hosted presidential debates; unfortunately, the League relinquished the task to the Commission on Presidential Debates, an organization established by the two major parties that has drawn criticism for allegedly working to exclude 3rd-party candidates.  Even if the agency was not co-opted, it would still add another layer of bureaucracy to the federal government.  
• Grassroots efforts (ballot initiatives, etc.).  It has potential, especially as people have gotten more politically active during Trump's administration; but there's no guarantee that the momentum will sustain itself.  Some Americans also possess more zeal than knowledge, and that's a moderate problem with this approach.

Those are some pretty big challenges to overcome, so the likelihood of forging a cooperative set of rules is very slim.  Not impossible, but very unlikely.  There's one other thing to consider: the risk of going too far.  I've already given my take, which is that the GOP is going beyond acting like a minority party; but many of those "cheat codes" serve an important purpose in a democracy.  A minority party needs some protections, to keep the majority from imposing its will at every turn.  This creates a lot of watered-down and unpopular compromises, but hey, that's democracy.  The GOP's obstructionism could provoke a predictable overreaction that sweeps away many important safeguards against the tyranny of the majority.  That cure would be worse than the disease.

Bottom line: I think we're stuck with what we have now.  The likely outcome is that nothing changes, and the best case scenario is a very modest improvement.  That's not very rose-colored, but it is what it is.

How America Got Its Mind Back

So, Roy Moore lost the special Alabama Senate race.  A creepy old man whose public image flaunts so many of the characteristics a lot of Alabamans love (a love of guns, racism and bigotry, pseudo-Christianity, ignorance as a virtue) was decisively beaten by Democrat Doug Jones.  That's a pretty big deal, since Alabama is part of the deep red South, a state where "Democrat" is a 4-letter word in many rural and smaller urban areas.  It's a big deal since Alabama is casually open when it comes to implementing voter suppression measures specifically targeting POC, and those POC still turned out in droves to cast ballots for Doug Jones.  That's what democracy looks like.  Also, huge "thank you" to all those POC for pulling this off - the Jones victory wouldn't have been possible without them.

Add tonight's election outcome to the results of the November 7 elections, and it's clear there's a trend emerging.  There were several elections that day, so here are a few of the important ones.  Ralph Northam defeated Ed Gillespie in the Virginia gubernatorial race.  Also in Virginia, Danica Roem became the first transgender candidate to serve in the VA legislature.  Maine residents passed a Medicaid expansion initiative.  St. Paul, MN, elected its first black mayor (Melvin Carter) and Seattle elected its first lesbian mayor (Jenny Durkan).  In many ways, the November 7 elections were a repudiation of Trump's first year in office.

A lot seems to have changed in a year.  In November of 2016, American citizens let their guards down, got complacent, bored, and disinterested, and let a raving racist moron sneak into the White House.  That was our dead serious, "Oh shit, we need to reexamine our lives" moment, and we've had a lot of time to clean up and ditch the destructive behaviors in the year and change since.  The results of November's and tonight's elections tells me that America might have learned a thing or two.

There's still a lot of work to be done, though. First, not electing a racist and accused pedophile isn't a high bar to clear for democracy - there shouldn't have ever been any doubt that a candidate with that baggage would lose.   So, we all need to keep taking that hard look in the mirror.  Second, the institutional corruption still runs deep throughout our government, at all levels.  Trump just brought it to our attention because he was so brazen and clumsy about it - like when a nagging ache becomes so excruciating that you can't put off seeing a doctor any longer.  Let's not pretend that replacing Republicans with Democrats solves some of the most pressing problems, like military interventionism or unsustainable spending; but putting the Democrats back in power is a repudiation of what Trump and the modern GOP stand for - which are some of the worst parts of human nature: intolerance, greed, cruelty and selfishness.

America's realized it has a problem, and has taken the first baby steps to correct it.

Party Before Country, No Matter What

So at the moment, both major political parties are dealing with their own sexual misconduct scandals.  The GOP's is Alabama Senator Roy Moore, who just over two weeks away from a special election in his home state, the winner of which fills a vacant United States Senate seat.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are dealing with a growing number of allegations against Minnesota's comedian-turned-Senator Al Franken, as well as Michigan Representative John Conyers, who also happens to sit on the fairly important House Judiciary Committee.  Or, he used to, anyway; on November 26th, Conyers stepped down from that committee as part of the investigation into the allegations against him. 

Amazingly (to me, anyway; Congress' complete lack of morality still shocks me, despite everything I've seen), key leaders from both parties found ways to excuse their colleagues' misdeeds - probably while contemplating the overall agenda.  On one side of the aisle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell contemplated the idea of urging Luther Strange (Alabama's temporarily appointed Senator) to resign, as a way of avoiding the state's upcoming special election.  On the other side, Nancy Pelosi waffled and refused to mete out a harsher punishment than some stern language toward Conyers.

That's sad and disgraceful, especially by the Democrats.  Franken and Conyers's disgusting actions are nowhere near as bad as Moore's vile pedophilia, but neither of the two Democrats appear to be squeaky clean either.  Their punishments should be more severe, given the apparent patterns of misbehavior on both their parts.  I've long since given up expecting even the slightest shred of decency from the GOP - why would I think a party that condones Trump's behavior, associates with Nazi sympathizers like Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, and panders to the worst parts of society, like racists and science deniers? The GOP is a lost cause.

But the Democrats want to take back Congress next year, and the Presidency in 2020.  A lot of Americans want them to, also.  But why should the country vote them back in, if this is the standard for acceptable conduct they're setting? Now, some of the rank-and-file Congressmen have known Franken and Conyers for years.  They've probably played together for Congressional softball games, or gone on "fact-finding" junkets together, or shot the breeze at weekend BBQs or after-work dinners at DC's finest restaurants.  Pelosi is not a rank-and-file Democrat, though.  She's in a leadership position, which means two things.  First, she's not there to be anybody's friend; her job is to take responsibility for problems and fix them.  Second, her colleagues and constituents look to her to set the standard for acceptable conduct, and she just told them all that bad behavior will still be acceptable, unless you really get out of control.

Unlike Kay Ivey, Pelosi is smart enough to not publicly state her reasons, but she's letting Conyers off with a light punishment for the same reason that the GOP won't abandon Moore: both parties consider keeping Congress full of their members crucially important.  And yes, it is important.  Trump and the GOP are pushing a lot of destructive policies: the tax plan, the ACA mandate repeal, judicial nominees.  Given those things, isn't keeping Franken and Conyers in play a necessary evil?

No.  NO.  This is bigger than the GOP's horrible governance.  Americans need elected officials to stop the GOP cold, but they (we) also need those same officials to start regaining our trust.  Part of what made the 2016 election stand out was that a large portion of the electorate rejected the status quo.  Voters sent a loud, powerful signal to Washington, and just over a year later, it doesn't seem like Washington got that message.  If the Democrats would clean out their own house, it would be a sign that they're hearing us.  The GOP legislation will hurt, but abandoning all sense of ethics to score a legislative win will hurt more in the long run, by further eroding Americans' trust in governmental institutions.  This isn't war, and the stakes aren't so high that you need to collaborate with the devil like FDR did, in order to win.

The Democrats have a choice.  They can cross any lines, abandon any morals, do whatever it takes to push back against the GOP, and probably gain some short-term victories.  Or they can act with honor, integrity, and decency, and show the American public they are fit to govern.  They can put the country ahead of a legislative "win" for their party.  They can help make Americans proud of their elected officials again, instead of being embarrassed of the current pack of miscreants and dirtbags.  That's worth more than a few legislative victories.

The Times, They Are A'Changing. . .

I want to start this post with a simple thought experiment, but before I do that, I want to mention an article I read earlier that inspired this post. This morning, I stumbled across an opinion piece by Leonard Pitts Jr articulating the direction he thinks the Democratic Party should take in response to  Donald Trump and the modern GOP.  That direction, in Pitts' opinion, should be a hard left.  I would probably mangle Pitts' main point if I tried paraphrasing it, so I will just quote directly from the article:

"What if Democrats were as bold and definitive as he, but for universal healthcare, sane immigration reform, a living wage, fixing the broken justice system, jobs training and day care for families on public assistance, addressing climate change, and not blowing up the world in manhood-measuring contests with Asian dictators? What if they were pugnacious and uncompromising in the service of simple decency? Of inclusion and compassion? Of just treating people right?"

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article178599721.html#storylink=cpy

Sounds more than a bit Bernie Sanders-ish, doesn't it? I'll come back to the quote later; now, let's perform that thought experiment.  Ask yourself a question: what do you think the founding fathers would do if we were somehow able to bring them to the present and give them the task of redesigning the government they had built? Do you think the government they would come up with would resemble the one they originally created? If so, how? Assume that we were somehow able to bring them up to date on the important events and advances that had happened in the roughly 250 years since they had founded the United States: the Civil War, the moon landing, the Great Depression, both World Wars, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, 9/11, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, airplanes, the internet, radio and television, automobiles, antibiotics, the interstate highway system, and indoor plumbing. Those are the major ones I could remember off the top of my head.  I'm sure there are many others.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so let me also illustrate my point visually.  Here is the USS Constellation. The one on the left was commissioned in 1855; it still exists as a tourist attraction in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  The one on the right was commissioned approximately 100 years later, and was retired in 2003.
 

Quite a difference a century (give or take a few years) makes, wouldn't you say? Circling back to my thought experiment, what do you think the founders would think if they saw this side-by-side comparison? This image is a microcosm of how the United States, and also a great part of the world, has changed since the day that the ink on the Constitution dried.

And that is the heart of the issue, right there. The founders championed the concept of small government, as one way of safeguarding individual liberty (another principle they championed quite heavily). Here are a couple quotes to reinforce that point.

"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood." – John Adams, 1765

The logic went that a small government would consist of fewer laws and regulations to stifle its citizens, and also lack the means to impose its will on them. There is certainly something to be said in support of that reasoning.  Let's use the National Security Agency as an example, because it's an obvious and important one. We all know from the Snowden documents that the NSA has been collecting and storing virtually all of our digital communications: phone calls, text messages, emails, social media posts - basically everything it could get its hands on. The NSA is "big government" in terms of its mission and capabilities, not really its size (it *probably* has fewer employees than the IRS, but more than the EPA), because its ability to access our digital communications is a very potent capability. Now, is the NSA a tool of oppression? As it stands now, not really. Five minutes ago, I Googled "How many employees does the NSA have?" so I could include a specific number in this blog post, before I decided I didn't need to. I'm not going to have some secret police agents show up at midnight because of that Google search, and to my knowledge no other American citizen has either. However, it's not difficult to imagine that it could happen some day (if you don't think it could, read up on Germany's history from 1920 to 1945), which is why the founders thought it was a good idea to remove the potential for such abuses of power, by keeping government small and also crafting a set of protections against oppressive government.

Now let's look at a more mundane category of big government: arbitrary and excessive regulations.  I've linked to a couple examples here, here, here, here, and here.  There are probably hundreds more out there.  Everybody has a story or a hundred about some frustrating and ridiculous government regulation in our everyday lives.  Want to start your own business? You'll probably need to get a few permits.  Want to build a garage on your property? You'll need permits for that too.  They rob us of hard-earned money and time, and the implication is often that we're not competent enough to run our own lives.  And more than that, they inhibit economic growth in a variety of ways.  Big government is also a self-reinforcing problem, since government agencies constantly look for ways to maintain and expand their mandates, so they can get bigger budgets year after year. And then, there's taxes, which are another source of irritation for a lot of people. (That's nothing new, remember the Boston Tea Party?)

So yes, a big, bloated government gets a lot of flack - which it deserves.  But here's the other side of it. Remember that picture of the two ships? Small governments don't build ships like that aircraft carrier. Small governments don't build cross-country interstates, air traffic control networks, university networks, or other things that help a country flourish. The concept of small government as it existed 200-some years ago is obsolete. No country that tried to operate that way would do well - there have been far too many significant technological changes.

In addition to technology, there's another key factor: population.  See the graph right above this? There are now approximately 320 million people in the United States. What do we do with them all? Those people need certain necessities to live: food & water, shelter, medicine, clothing. Forget everything else: cars, TVs, higher education (in fact, I'd like to see fewer people go to college; but that's another post in itself). People need the absolute basics so that they're not dying in the streets.  It's not just "unicorns and rainbows" generosity, either.  When enough people start having to go without, especially when they can remember better economic times, social unrest is just around the corner. There's a saying I've heard a few times that captures the concept pretty well: "Any society is only three meals away from revolution." So at minimum, the population needs to have safety nets in place to catch people who hit on hard times; and that falls on the government, since absolutely no other part of society has the resources or the responsibility to perform this task.  And if a country wants to do more than just get by, it needs to make investments in its citizens: quality education, health & disease prevention programs, environmental safety, and so on.

Of course, there are legitimate questions about limited resources and long-term costs. If the population keeps growing like it has, eventually it will break the bank or use up all the resources. It has to hit a peak sometime, because nothing can continue indefinitely. Then we're really in a bad spot. Certainly, we'll have to make some hard decisions in the future (maybe even the near future.)  But right now, I've got good reason to be skeptical of politicians raising those questions, because nearly all of them are not being honest about it.  The ACA, for example, was attacked because of its massive cost (among other reasons), but so far, efforts to dismantle or undo it have been shown to cost more than leaving it alone would have.  Also, recent proposed legislation included provisions that would have slashed tax revenue or tacked on billions in additional spending.  I have also heard very little about halting production on the F-35 program. These inconvenient facts make me question the urgency of "starving the beast." Maybe they're right, though. But I have trouble believing them when their priorities are so warped.

To circle back to my thought experiment from the beginning, I don't presume to know what the founding fathers would have done, because I could point to many primary sources that support my claim just as someone else could point to ones that refute it.  There are a lot of areas where big government has grown out of control, in potentially dangerous ways like the NSA's mass surveillance program, and in irritating ways like overzealous regulators and nonsensical rules.  But despite these drawbacks, Americans are still free in more ways than they are not, and the benefits we receive outweigh the costs.  Leonard Pitts' vision for the Democrats seems like a good one, one that will help America flourish.

Charlottesville: Hate, Fear, and Ignorance in America

This is going to be a different blog post than the ones I've done so far.  It doesn't fit into any of the major themes I had intended to write about when I started this blog, but I'm writing it to get a few things off of my chest.  It will also have a different style to it - less like an academic research paper and more like an opinion piece.  So here goes. . .

Everyone knows what happened in Charlottesville on Friday night and yesterday afternoon, so I won't spend much time on those events.  I want to talk about some people's reactions to it and how those reactions pave the way for the Friday/Saturday race riot (I'm calling it a race riot because that's what it was; tough shit if you don't like it).  The reaction in question is a shrug of the shoulders and a casual endorsement for the Nazis and the white supremacists.  The way I remember it - I'm fuzzy on the details, but I recall the gist of it - was an implication that minorities brought this on themselves because of the various protests over the past several years.  Movements like BLM, Gay Pride, Women's Rights, and so on were just "whining" and the minority protesters should just "suck it up and get over it".  It's this attitude I want to talk about.  The way I see it, it develops when someone possesses these three traits: a lack of knowledge, no sense of intellectual curiosity, and an inability to empathize.

Let's use a real-world example to explain my hypothesis.  The Black Lives Matter movement is as good as any.  Someone with the aforementioned attitude probably doesn't know about the racial disparities when it comes to sentencing and incarceration for comparable crimes, or about practices like "DWB", or how the GOP routinely makes it difficult for minorities to participate in the electoral process.  Maybe this person has never heard of Philando Castile or Eric Garner.  That doesn't make someone a bad person in and of itself - maybe this person doesn't watch much news.  That's pretty implausible with the 24-hour news networks and the internet news saturation, but I suppose it's possible.  It's the other two traits that really create this attitude, though.

First, the absence of intellectual curiosity.  A lot of people go through life accepting what they're told without questioning it or applying any critical thought.  That's just human nature.  The vast majority of people don't have the time, the knowledge, the desire, or the mental bandwidth to critically evaluate every piece of knowledge that gets thrown at them.  People are also psychologically predisposed to screen and reject information that doesn't fit with our core beliefs or opinions.  So we're all guilty of intellectual laziness to some degree.  But like any sampling distribution, some data points fall on the high end of the spectrum, meaning that a certain percentage of people are indifferent when it comes to critical thinking.  Here's how this plays out in the real-world example.  Suppose a person got most of their news from the Fox network, which is hardly a friend to minorities.  How would that person view BLM, which has some very real and very serious grievances? They're going to downplay it, of course.  Here's the curious part, though.  This person is almost certainly aware of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.  Maybe they only read about in a history textbook, so they only see it as an abstract concept, devoid of the emotional resonance; but maybe they lived during that time, and saw the real-life images on TV and in the newspapers.  The protesters getting sprayed with fire hoses.  The balcony where MLK was standing when he was assassinated.  The burning crosses and bombed-out churches.  The Civil Rights struggle probably had more of an impression to people who were alive when it happened, but either way, how does someone reconcile that movement with everything that happened since then? With what's going on now? Aren't they able to make the connection?

That last one is the one that drives me bonkers.  They don't have the intellectual capacity to conceive that racism hasn't ended.  To them, the Civil Rights movement ended things, like it was a sporting event where time ran out, the ref blew the whistle, and that was that.  They're surely aware that racists still exist, but the fact that those racists actively seek to undo the Civil Rights era reforms, and that those racists comprise an appallingly influential political bloc, evidently escapes them.  That's the kind of shallow thinking that leads to some deeply contradictory behaviors and beliefs, such as flying an American flag and going to church every week while condoning a movement that represents the opposite of the ideals their religion and their nation embody.  People like this don't realize that the Confederacy's secession was by definition a treasonous act, or that slavery has had a legacy that still resonates today.  "What's the big deal?", they say when someone points these things out.  "That was a long time ago, why does it still matter?" Unbelievable.  This sort of lazy thinking manifests itself in many, many other ways, but those are outside the scope of this post.

Now, let's look at the third and final component: the lack of empathy.  These people can't relate to minorities, because they've never experienced the myriad forms of discrimination.  Nor do they know many people who have.  They'll never have to worry about police assuming they're guilty by default or politicians disenfranchising them.  Their resumes won't go straight into the trash because of their name.  They won't be denied various legal protections and privileges simply because of who they are, so they take those things for granted.  And because they don't have any frame of reference, they dismiss the complaints of people who do experience these problems.  More than that, they make statements that imply minorities don't deserve these things, often without fully understanding what they're saying.  Things like "Why do they have to push their agenda on us?" or "Aren't they happy with what they have now?" There's a sub-context that the victim's grievances are just whiny complaints or overblown exaggerations.

By now, you might have noticed that I'm a bit worked up and angry.  Yep.  This stuff is a "button pusher" topic, and here's why.  I have a low tolerance for people who live in intellectual bubbles.  It's hard to stay informed, I get that.  And it's harder to see past your own mental blind spots.  That's partly human nature, and I'm as guilty as anyone.  When I'm faced with contradictory information, my natural reaction is to dig in my heels.  But at some point, a person crosses over from a normal confirmation bias to burying their head in the sand.  That infuriates me.  The sky isn't neon green no matter how much you believe it is.  On top of that, I have a default tendency to side with the underdog.  Maybe it's because I disagreed with the aforementioned attitude so strongly that I moved pretty far to the opposite end of the spectrum - I dunno, that's a question for the psychoanalysts.  However it came about, I'm kinda like Tyrion Lannister; we both have a soft spot for "cripples, bastards, and broken things." Automatically siding with the marginalized is one of my mental blind spots.  So maybe I'm getting too dramatic about Charlottesville, but I don't think anyone can deny America has a racism problem now.

Typically, the actual racists are only a small portion of any population.  It's the mentally shallow people are the ones who allow racism to flourish.  They are the ones who turn a blind eye to the insidious spread of racist groups/movements or invent rationalizations to dismiss it.  The ones I spent most of this blog post describing.  They are indifferent to the reality of the situation, and indifferent people usually comprise the vast majority of a given population.  They need to be pulled down off the fence and be made to understand the reality of the situation, because staying in their bubble allows the problem to grow.