Reality Check

I want you to watch a video, then I want you to look at a graph.

You might have seen the video already, because it's been making the rounds on social media.  It's a speech Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Stoneman Douglas HS shooting, gave to news outlets.  It's powerful and it hits like a gut punch. 

Now, the graph.

 

Image courtesy of Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com

Nate Silver says the students speaking out is having an effect, and I believe he's correct.  The Stoneman Douglas HS students could be the catalyst that finally gets some heavily-supported gun control measures implemented.  Now, it's great to see teenagers get involved in activism, defying the "lazy, apathetic slacker" label adults apply to them.  But think about what's going on here for a second.

These teenagers speaking out seems to be what's making a difference.  It's not kids and teenagers dying that's tipping the scales, because we already had Sandy Hook, Columbine, and Virginia Tech, and none of them led to meaningful change.  No, the teenagers had to make their voices heard, loudly and often, to shake up the status quo even a tiny bit.  Instead of doing normal teenager things like going to prom and playing sports, these students are spearheading the latest movement for stricter gun control legislation.  What does that say about us as a country? 

It shouldn't take a band of high school students invoking their murdered classmates to produce meaningful change.  That's a job for older adults: parents, community leaders, legislators.  Adults are the ones old enough to vote, to contribute to candidates, and to run for office, so we are responsible for operating the institution of government.  And yet, we've failed to even have a discussion about mass shootings.  It should not be this way.  We, as a nation, have failed our children.

What's more, our politicians have failed us.  Instead of even engaging in thoughtful debate over gun legislation, they have repeatedly ducked the issue.  Now, maybe the research would show that no form of gun control could make a difference (I seriously doubt that), but the point is to at least address the issue.  The politicians' refusal to do so shows how little they think of us, or how out of touch they are.  Or a combination of the two.

On top of that, it exposes a deeper problem afflicting our government: money in politics.  Emma Gonzalez and others have rightly pointed out the causal relationship between a politician's refusal to discuss the issue and the sizeable check he or she gets from the NRA.  Like Marco Rubio, who is one of the students' two Senators.  Rubio doesn't think the days following a massacre that left seventeen of his constituents dead is a good time to discuss gun violence; could it be because he's the NRA's third-highest recipient? Any government that prioritizes keeping the moneyed donors happy over tackling problems that are literally killing people is a deeply broken and dysfunctional government.

It's frustrating and shameful that our country is so unable to achieve meaningful change, and that our politicians are so unresponsive.  But it's a damn disgrace that it takes teenagers, a demographic that is legally prohibited from wielding many forms of political power, to nudge the system even an iota.  Something is deeply, systemically wrong when it comes to that.  

Our politicians are failing us, but we are also failing, as citizens and as responsible adults.  

It's time to do better.

Fabricated Memos and Credibility Problems

The much-hyped Nunes memo became public a few days ago, and I've been noticing a very interesting reaction to it in various corners of the internet; specifically, a lot of people are buying into it, lock, stock, and barrel.  Now, the memo is obviously a steaming poo pile, but here's the thing: there are a lot of people who believe the memo to be true have a plausible argument for that belief.  I don't mean the hardcore Trump supporters; at this point Trump could tell them he can walk through walls and they'd believe him.  The people I'm thinking of are the ones who have been holding a long-standing suspicion of the government.  All the government.  Because the truth is, there is plenty of good cause for suspicion.

The assorted government agencies tasked with protecting America and its citizens - from TSA to the FBI to the DEA to NSA to CIA - have a credibility problem of their own making.  It's not enough to say they all dropped the ball at one time or another, because "dropping the ball" implies that they failed because of something like bad luck or an innocent mistake.  That's not the case at all.  The credibility problem stems from the fact that these agencies misused their authority in a variety of unsavory ways.  Two successive presidents and countless members of Congress told us we had to accept infringements to our Constitutional rights to combat an amorphous terrorist threat.  The Director of National Intelligence perjured himself.  Police forces began to resemble military units and no-knock SWAT raids became more common.  An intelligence failure allowed an al-Qaida bomber onto a US-bound flight from Ghana through the Netherlands.  And those are only a handful of post-9/11 examples.  Do some digging, and there are many other historical ones: COINTELPRO, Watergate, the McCarthy hearings, the Pentagon Papers, the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and countless coups and covert wars. And all the documentation gets hidden behind a "TOP SECRET/NOFORN" label, nobody gets punished, and nothing changes.  Given these organizations' history of past transgressions, it's natural to be skeptical of the FBI.

So does that mean the Nunes memo is correct? No, absolutely not.  First, consider the source: Nunes, Trump, the GOP leadership.  They've all discredited themselves long before this memo became public.  Nunes was already caught trying to cheat on Trump's behalf once; and Trump's accusations fall short when you factor in that two individuals have already pleaded guilty for crimes pertaining to the Russia investigation, that there is a documented paper trail between Trump campaign officials and representatives of the Russian government, and, of course, there was a meeting at Trump Tower in June of 2016.  And those are just the things we all know about.  Add to that Trump and many of his cronies are well-known serial liars and conspiracy-theory peddlers.  Finally, remember that as president, Trump has the authority and the resources to expose any illegal spying if he chooses.  He can declassify NSA intercepts that targeted him, if they exist; he can order the Department of Justice to review the FISA warrants for impropriety.  Occam's Razor says the simplest explanation is more likely to be true.  Ask yourself: is it more likely that the investigation is legitimate and substantive or that the FBI is playing a central role in a broad "deep state" conspiracy against the small group of people in Trump's orbit?

Because that's what this is being packaged as: a deep, sinister conspiracy.  The people pushing this idea performed a very subtle sleight-of-hand, one that's easy to overlook if you're not paying attention.  They shifted the narrative from a claim that the government (in particular, the NSA) is collecting all Americans' communications (true) to an accusation that the government mobilized the resources of the entire intelligence/law enforcement community against the Trump clan in an unlawful attempt to neutralize it (horseshit.)  We're witnessing the birth of a conspiracy theory on par with "9/11 was an inside job" right before our eyes.  This "echo chamber" groupthink would normally be an object of ridicule, except that similar conspiracy theories have already driven people on the extreme fringes to violence not long ago.  That's not something to take lightly.

If we could trust our institutions, there wouldn't be an issue; but our politicians and political appointees have squandered that trust for decades.  Now we're reaping the bitter fruits of that wastefulness.  The agencies, and their civilian overseers, have misused and abused their authority so badly, that now many people reflexively think they're lying and choose to believe con artists like Nunes and Trump instead.  They're the spies who cried wolf, and just like the old fable goes, we're ignoring them at the very time when we should be believing them.

There needs to be serious reform once Trump is no longer president.  He's only the byproduct of some deeper issues, and we need system-wide reform.  He's a complete shit-show, so maybe he'll be the impetus that motivates the people in Washington to finally implement some long-overdue reforms.