Rights, Risks, and Responsibilities

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

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

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

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

. . .you're a dumbass.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weird, huh?

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

You're adults. Act like it.

The Carnival Barker President vs the Coronavirus

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some Coronavirus facts:

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

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

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

But not Trump, evidently.

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

And it's already shaping people's reactions:

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

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

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

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

The Wanna-Be American King

The concept of accountability has gone missing in Washington DC.

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

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

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

Zip. Zero. Nada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So. . .thanks, Senate Republicans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Price of Intellectual Laziness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Feudal Fealty Meets Democracy

Quick question.  Who remembers who Eric Shinseki was?

(. . .pause. . .)

Anyone?

(. . .longer pause. . .)

Really? Nobody? *sigh*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't think so.  Consider the following:

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

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

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

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

Class dismissed.

Torching the Rulebook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Russian Roulette

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

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

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

Tick-tick-tick--click!

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


Tick-tick-tick--click!

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


Tick-tick-tick--click!

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

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

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




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

Tick-tick-tick. . .