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

So . . . The Op-Ed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 3-ring circus continues.

Turbulent Seas

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heroes - When it's Convenient

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Statesmen, National Myths, and Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fix the timing and delivery, though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Unorthodox Proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, I was just throwing this idea out there.

* Russia helped Trump win

New Developments (Maybe) in Afghanistan

Some interesting news coming out of Afghanistan. It looks like US troops are pulling back from the countryside and focusing on the cities. Additionally, the mission seems to be shifting to a defensive one: pulling security and protecting the troops vs clearing/holding territory and expanding outward. Meanwhile, our government has reportedly negotiated directly with the Taliban in Qatar.
I'm no Clausewitz, but it looks to me like the US is starting to wind down, and may be in the early stages of withdrawing from Afghanistan.
I'm not a fan of leaving the Afghan government out of the negotiations. It's their country, after all. But somehow, I think it'll be okay. I'm betting that a lot of Afghan gov't officials and military personnel will strike deals with the Taliban the day after we leave. Hell, I bet a lot of them are closet members of the Taliban, or some other militia, already.
Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to rationalize the US leaving a weak & fragile frenemy government in the lurch.
I'm not a fan of cutting the Afghan government out of the negotiations. Some of them genuinely put their faith in us, have worked with us toward building a stable & safe Afghanistan, and a few have even fought, bled, and died to make that vision a reality. Excluding them is a slap in the face, and is a cowardly move.
However, so is leaving. Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware of that. But here's the thing. The way we were going, we are not any closer to success now than we were in 2002. We have troops controlling every piece of the country, from one end to the other. We have the most technologically-advanced military on the planet, with some of the most fearsome weaponry invented. But none of that matters, because Afghanistan is about as unconquerable as it gets. The last person who came close was Alexander the Great. Just about every nation since then has eventually been chased out in defeat.

The US will likely be no different. No matter if we stay another year, another five years, or another fifty years. Now, maybe if we had gone about it differently - maybe if we had established an overwhelming humanitarian presence in 2001/02, instead of letting combat ops largely drive the mission - we could have succeeded. Maybe if we had brought in State and USAID, had invested billions in rebuilding the country's infrastructure, had put locals to work demining, planting crops, building roads, a power grid, water treatment facilities, and schools. Maybe that would have transformed Afghanistan into a success story. 
Maybe.
But that's a lot of water under the bridge, and we'll never know how it turned out. 2001/02 was arguably our one shot at that, because with everything that happened afterward - Iraq, the financial crisis, the ACA - we never had the money or manpower or political will to try again.
And some seventeen years later, it's long past time to cut our losses. All the money we've spent on Afghanistan, in one form or another, might as well have been put in a pile and set on fire, for all the return on investment that the US got. To say nothing of the thousands of dead and crippled Americans and Afghans the war has produced. 
I would hate it if Afghanistan became another example of blowback - if our ostensible allies today become our enemies in a decade or two. It wouldn't be the first time that's happened, not even the first time in Afghanistan. 
So while I am really, really dismayed and disgusted that we're leaving the Afghan government twisting in the wind, I support the decision to wind things down and leave - if that indeed turns out to be the case.

PS: Before someone asks, I realize that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, if it happens, will likely be on Trump's watch. Meaning that I have to give him credit for something. I'm okay with that. Now, it remains to be seen whether he screws it up somehow, like he has just about everything else. It's also worth asking whether he's doing this on Russia's behalf, for some reason we're not yet aware of. (Paranoid? Sure. But given his past actions, it's a question worth raising.) But ultimately, I agree with what he's doing here. It doesn't even come close to cancelling out all the disastrous decisions he's made, but it is a pretty big item on the plus side of the ledger.