Monday, September 24, 2018

Voiceless

NO SIFT NEXT WEEK. THE NEXT NEW ARTICLES WILL APPEAR OCTOBER 8.

Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
- Abigail Adams Letter to John Adams, 3-31-1776

This week's featured post is "Two Ways Brett Kavanaugh Could Be a Hero". That sounds crazy, but here's the basic idea: In a difficult situation, the hero is somebody who steps up to take the risk or pay the price. Heroes don't shove burdens off on other people. If you happen to be in west central Illinois next weekend, you can hear me discuss "Men and #MeToo" at the Unitarian Church of Quincy, Illinois on Sunday morning at 10:45.

This week everybody was talking about Brett Kavanaugh


The dust is still swirling from the second accusation that came out in The New Yorker yesterday. The second accuser is a Yale classmate, and apparently was picked out for victimization because she was drunker than the other women at the party. So her account is correspondingly muddled. She would have made a terrible first accuser, but her story does bolster Christine Blasey Ford's.

This morning, other news outlets are still trying to figure out what to do with the second accusation. As of 9:30, the New York Times still wasn't headlining it, but referred to it in an article about Diane Feinstein's call for a delay. Otherwise, the committee will interview Dr. Blasey Ford on Thursday. (I predict Kavanaugh will withdraw before then.)

One constant in Republican defenses of Kavanaugh is that he is a "man of integrity" and "one of the finest human beings you will have the privilege of knowing". But what exactly are they talking about?

I'm not aware of him working with Mother Theresa, making a major career sacrifice for a principle, rescuing people from burning buildings, winning a Medal of Honor, or doing anything else that rises above the kinds of things that ordinary decent people do. He drives other people's kids in a carpool; he coaches girls basketball; a lot of women say he has treated them well. Good for him, but don't we all know people we could say similar things about? I don't think any of that should qualify him for sainthood.

To me, this sterling reputation looks like a benefit of privilege: He's a straight white male Christian conservative from an upscale family, so he is presumed to be a man with a high sense of honor. No actual supporting evidence is needed.

When Kavanaugh was nominated, here's the first thing he said:
Mr. President, thank you. Throughout this process, I have witnessed firsthand your appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.
It may not have seemed like a big deal at the time, but that was a brazen, obvious lie.

Trump picked Kavanaugh off a list of 25 names that was given to him by the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo, a straight white male Catholic conservative from an Ivy League school. So Trump conspicuously didn't consult widely or seek input from large numbers of people from diverse backgrounds. On the contrary, together with the Neil Gorsuch search process, the Kavanaugh process was probably the least rigorous search in recent American history. That was public knowledge, and Kavanaugh surely knew it too.

In other words, whatever Kavanaugh's version of "integrity" entails, he's not above telling a big public lie to flatter someone important. He's not above introducing himself to the American people by telling a big, obvious lie.

So now he needs us to believe him rather than the women who accuse him of misconduct. Why exactly should we do that?

This picture of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Republican majority (posted by Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii) is worth contemplating. How small a slice of America do they really represent? If you were accusing an over-50 well-to-do Christian white man of something, is the group you'd want to judge your credibility?



TPM has the backstory on how Democrats on the Judiciary Committee handled the Blasey Ford accusation.

Some very unconvincing arguments are being made in Kavanaugh's defense. The NYT's Bret Stephens offers:
I believe human memory is imperfect. I believe it deteriorates over time. I believe most of us have had the experience of thinking we remember something clearly, only to discover we got important details wrong.
I know there are studies showing that spouses often remember very different facts about important moments, like their wedding or honeymoon or how they met. I myself sometimes notice that I remember an event happening in a room that didn't exist at the time. But I very much doubt that ordinary human memory drift extends as far as "Wait, maybe it was the other guy who tried to rape me."

A number of defenders have put forward some version of the he-was-just-17 argument. You know who's not convinced by this? 17-year-olds.
“They just keep saying ‘He was in high school—boys will be boys,’” says Maurielle, a 17-year-old from Houston. “But I’m in high school—I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Making up stuff about Blasey Ford shows lack of faith that the truth is on your side. No, she isn't poorly reviewed as a professor, she doesn't carry a grudge against Kavanaugh's mother, she didn't accuse Neil Gorsuch of anything, she's not a big Democratic donor, and her brother has no connection to the Trump/Russia investigation.

Flatly misstating Blasey Ford's account is not convincing either. Here's Franklin Graham (whose Dad apparently forgot to warn him about bearing false witness):
Asked by the CBN interviewer what kind of message his remarks send to sexual abuse victims, Graham replied: “Well, there wasn’t a crime that was committed. These are two teenagers and it’s obvious that she said no and he respected it and walked away.”
Kavanaugh "respected" her refusal, according Blasey Ford, after groping her, trying to pull off her swimsuit, and holding his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. And he didn't "walk away"; she escaped after Kavanaugh drunkenly fell off her.

Two related items of interest: Following the lead of actress Alyssa Milano, many women have responded to Trump's tweet
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents.
by telling their own stories under the #WhyIDidntReport hashtag.

Or if you want to sum it all up with one story, look at "What Do We Owe Her Now?" in The Washington Post. When Elizabeth Bruenig was a sophomore in high school, a junior cheerleader reported a rape and became an outcast. The physical evidence supported her claims, but the authorities never filed charges, leading to the local rumor that she had made the whole thing up. When Bruenig grew up and became a journalist, she decided to investigate.

Nate Silver tweets that Kavanaugh is polling worse than any previous nominee who got confirmed. And that was before the latest charges.

and Rod Rosenstein

The New York Times is reporting that Rosenstein will lose his job today, either by resigning or being fired.
If Mr. Rosenstein exits, Noel Francisco, the solicitor general, would assume oversight of the Russia investigation, according to a Justice Department official. The acting deputy attorney general would be Matthew G. Whitaker, the chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, an unusual move.
This follow an NYT story earlier in the week, which claimed that Rosenstein felt misused after his memo gave Trump cover to fire Jim Comey. Reportedly, he discussed the 25th Amendment (through which Trump could be removed without impeachment) and suggested taping Trump secretly. Rosenstein denies those reports. Vox sees problems ahead for Bob Mueller:
Rosenstein’s departure strikes at the heart of the Trump-Russia investigation because Mueller had to run major investigative decisions past the deputy attorney general. Rosenstein’s temporary replacement, Solicitor General Noel Francisco, could simply refuse to approve Mueller’s requests, effectively slowing the whole investigation to a crawl — or even fire Mueller outright if he felt there was a reason to do so.
So the long-anticipated constitutional crisis could be upon us.

and the midterm elections

We're about six weeks out from the election, and everything the Republicans expect to turn the tide in their favor keeps backfiring. Kavanaugh was supposed to work for them, and several candidates have been running attack ads against Democratic senators for not supporting Kavanaugh. That now looks like wasted money. Nate Silver's model now gives the Democrats a 4 out of 5 chance of gaining control of the House and a 3 in 10 chance of winning the Senate.

and the consequences of Hurricane Florence

A lot of North Carolina wasn't built with this kind of flooding in mind. (In fact, in 2012 the legislature banned state agencies from basing plans on a study that predicted rising sea level from climate change.) So toxic coal ash is entering the Cape Fear River and the waste pools from hog farms are also a problem.

Grist explores the side issue of why massive hog farms are in North Carolina to begin with. Hog farms should be in places that raise massive amounts of hog feed, like Iowa. Then the manure can fertilize the fields rather than build up in toxic pools.
If North Carolina wants to end the pattern of water pollution, it has to find a way to spread out the livestock or treat their waste. And the state needs to face the fact that once-in-a-lifetime floods are now hitting more than once a decade.

In this week's episode of "What's Wrong With That Man?", President Trump toured hurricane-ravaged North Carolina. Talking to someone whose house was damaged by a storm-driven boat (and was having trouble getting his insurance company to cover it), Trump commented, "At least you got a nice boat out of the deal." On the same trip, he also handed a box lunch to another victim, telling him to "Have a good time."

It's hard to know what to do with comments reflecting such a basic lack of human empathy. Stephen Colbert decided to turn them into a children's book

but you have to see this political ad

It's not often you can get six of your opponent's siblings to make an ad for you.

BuzzFeed tells how this ad came about. Six of Gosar's nine siblings appear in the ad and two others support it. But their 85-year-old mother is still on Rep. Paul Gosar's side. This should make for a lovely Thanksgiving.

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Congress is currently working on appropriation bills for the fiscal year that starts next Monday. Current bills don't include the funding Trump wants for the Mexican wall, so he is talking about a veto, possibly shutting down the government or some large part of it.

This is a time when major proposals can get swept into a bill without much fanfare. One such is in the House's version of the appropriation bill for Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education: It would "cut 15% of federal adoption funding to states and localities that penalize adoption agencies that refuse to place children in families that conflict with the agency’s 'sincerely held religious beliefs or convictions'" and also bar "the federal government from refusing to work with adoption agencies that discriminate."

Once again, Christians would get the special right to ignore discrimination laws, and gays and lesbians would lose the "equal protection of the laws" promised in the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

If you're going to give huge tax cuts to rich people and big corporations, you have to crack down somewhere. How about on young people who have trouble repaying their student loans?
The proposal unveiled Monday would sharply curtail income-based loan repayment plans, scratch the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, embolden the government to go after students who don't pay their loans and cut funding for federal work study in half.
... The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is eliminated in the proposed budget. This program allows former students who fulfill certain public service positions — such as public school teachers or health researchers — to have their loans erased after 10 years of on-time payments. Nearly two-thirds of student loan borrowers who've shown interest in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness earn less than $50,000 a year.
... People whose loans fall into delinquency would be subject to more stringent enforcement as the proposal also calls to "streamline the Department of Education's ability to verify applicants' income data held by the Internal Revenue Service."

A new round of tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect today. These tariffs are 10%, and will automatically rise to 25% in 2019 if no new deal is negotiated. China is retaliating, and there's no end in sight.

I'm slowly making my way through Bob Woodward's Fear. I recently hit the point where Trump is reviewing a proposed speech on the economy and writes in the margin "Trade is bad."

Apple has warned that tariffs on Chinese imports will raise the cost of its products to American consumers. Trump has responded that Apple should just make its iPhones in the US. Vox takes a look at how practical that is. Not very, as it turns out.
The issue is not so much cost of putting an iPhone together, or even the cost per part on paper. The issue is skill, scale, expertise, and infrastructure — all of which require money, time and long-term investment. Unlike other manufacturing jobs that have migrated from the United States, Apple wouldn’t be bringing them “back” so much as starting from scratch. The cost would come in attempting to build a system that’s never been in the US, but has been built over decades abroad.
China has these jobs because it has put together the right combination of "craftsman-like skill, sophisticated robotics, and computer science".
“There’s a confusion about China,” [Apple CEO Tim] Cook said. “The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I’m not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low labor-cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is.”
If Apple could do it, making iPhones in America would raise the price anywhere from $16 to $100, depending on what "Made in America" means to you: If the US plant would just assemble parts made elsewhere, you get the lower number. If you want all the parts made here too, you get the higher number.

For similar reasons, the official statistics exaggerate how big a dent iPhones make in our trade balance with China: China is reaping about $8 from each iPhone, but a tariff would fall on the full import price of around $240.

Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate DeSantis has run into another racial controversy (his fifth since winning the primary a month ago).
A Republican activist who donated more than $20,000 to Ron DeSantis and lined up a speech for him at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club recently called President Barack Obama a “F---- MUSLIM N----” on Twitter, in addition to making other inflammatory remarks.
Steven M. Alembik told POLITICO on Wednesday he wrote the Obama tweet in anger, that he’s “absolutely not” a racist and that he understood that DeSantis’ campaign for governor would need to distance itself from the comments — which the campaign promptly did.
Of course Alembik isn't a racist. I'm sure lots of non-racists tweet about F---- MUSLIM N----s every day. Nonetheless, Paul Waldman raises the question: "Why do all these racists keep joining the GOP?"
DeSantis may have been embroiled in an unusual number of these controversies, but it’s what every Republican candidate worries about these days. What if some supporter of mine says something shockingly racist? What if that guy who introduced me at that rally turns out to be a klansman? What if I get endorsed by some neo-Nazi group?
But you know who doesn’t have to worry about getting endorsed by neo-Nazis, white nationalists and racists? People who don’t give neo-Nazis, white nationals and racists any reason to believe that they share their views.

and let's close with something awesome

A bridge through Vietnam's Ba Na Hills, held up by stone hands.

Monday, September 17, 2018

To Speak or Stay Silent?

It is upsetting to discuss sexual assault and its repercussions, yet I felt guilty and compelled as a citizen about the idea of not saying anything.

- Christine Blasey Ford

This week's featured post is "10 Years After: the Post-Recovery Economy".

This week everybody was talking about hurricanes

Early in the week, it was thought that Hurricane Florence might make landfall as Category 4 or even 5. But it spread out, slowed, and weakened, hitting North Carolina as Category 1. It's now down to a tropical depression, but its cloud-field still covers a huge chunk of the Southeastern seaboard. Swansboro, NC has gotten over 30 inches of rain.


Meanwhile, Super Typhoon Mangkhut hit China's Guangdong province (south of Hong Kong) yesterday.

The decision to evacuate towns and cities in southern China came as Hong Kong was left reeling by ferocious winds of up to 173 kilometers per hour (107 miles per hour) and gusts of up to 223 kph (138 mph).

Before getting to China, Mangkhut ravaged the Philippines, killing 54 people.


The series of huge storms we've seen in recent years is either an enormously improbable coincidence, or it's evidence of global warming. But it's not just that the administration doesn't want to do anything about climate change, it's actively been undoing what little Obama managed to get done.

In its latest retreat from federal action on climate change, the Trump administration on Tuesday proposed to lift rules on the leaking and uncontrolled release of the potent greenhouse gas methane from oil and natural gas operations.

Methane is such a potent greenhouse gas that (depending on your estimate of how much methane gets leaked between the well and the consumer), it might make natural gas less climate-friendly than coal. Environmental Defense Fund writes:

Whether natural gas has lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than coal and oil depends on the assumed leakage rate, the global warming potential of methane over different time frames, the energy conversion efficiency, and other factors. ... Technologies are available to reduce much of the leaking methane, but deploying such technology would require new policies and investments.

In particular, government regulation is needed to make energy companies care about the methane they leak. Trump's EPA is making sure they have no reason to care.


Florence is drawing attention back to the complete botch of the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year. The NY Post reports:

Hundreds of thousands of water bottles meant for victims of Hurricane Maria are still sitting at a Puerto Rico airport — nearly a year after the deadly storm


Trump, of course, denies everything. The federal response to Maria was "one of the best jobs that's ever been done with respect to what this is all about". And the 3,000 excess deaths? Fake news, made up "by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible".

It's important to realize just how not-normal this is. George W. Bush was known to spin and dissemble (that's how he got the Iraq War started), but it's impossible to imagine him claiming that Katrina only killed a few dozen people, and that stories about more than a thousand deaths were just Democratic inventions meant to make him look bad. Literally NO previous president has ever been this dishonest, or willing to insult the public intelligence to this degree.

Jennifer Rubin draws the inescapable conclusion:

Trump’s outburst should remind us of several troubling facts. First, whether he is lying (or is simply a victim of his own self-delusion that he is incapable of error) is beside the point. He’s not functioning as a president or any other officeholder should. He cannot comprehend facts, process them and take appropriate action. He is, in a word, non-functional.

... Republicans’ inability to check or challenge the president and their insistence on rubber-stamping his decisions while ignoring his outbursts pose more than a constitutional and moral challenge. They, too, are responsible for confirmed Cabinet officials who are incompetent or corrupt, for lack of serious governance, for failure to hold officials accountable, and for the suffering and deaths (e.g. separated families, dead Puerto Ricans) that come about by virtue of a president who is never forced to confront reality.

and Paul Manafort

On Friday, Trump's former campaign manager pleaded guilty and accepted a plea deal that involves him cooperating with the Justice Department. He also will forfeit ill-gotten assets that might be worth as much as $46 million. That means that the Mueller investigation could making money for the government. I have been unable to track down where I heard this line, but it's not mine: "Trump will be impeached, and Russia will pay for it."

There's a big guessing game going on concerning what Manafort might be able to testify about, but nobody outside the investigation really knows. Noah Bookbinder, Barry Berke and Norman Eisen  wrote in the NYT:

According to prosecutors, Mr. Manafort has already participated in a so-called proffer session, in which he described information that investigators deemed valuable. Mr. Manafort’s agreement will also require him to give further interviews without the presence of his own counsel, turn over documents and testify in other proceedings. His surrender is complete.

Even if you're a die-hard MAGA-hatter, you have to be wondering where this stops. With Flynn, Cohen, and Manafort all cooperating, the only bigger fish to go after are in the Trump family.

and Brett Kavanaugh

Last week, my comment about the hearings on Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court was "nothing matters". Was Kavanaugh's paper trail being covered up? Did he lie under oath in previous confirmation hearings? Would he gut abortion rights and grant conservative Christians the special right to ignore discrimination laws? Was he so pro-business that he was anti-consumer and anti-worker? It didn't matter. Even an anonymous accusation of sexual assault (which became publicly known on Wednesday and which Kavanaugh denied) wasn't worth taking the time to investigate. The Republicans have the majority in the Senate and were determined to push Kavanaugh through as fast as possible.

But now, finally, a few Republican senators are asking to slow this train down. The difference is that the anonymous accuser came forward yesterday. She's Christine Blasey Ford,

a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.

At WaPo's "The Fix", Amber Phillips assesses:

As far as tracing decades-old sexual harassment allegations go, Ford’s story is remarkably credible. Ford is speaking on the record about her experience. She passed a polygraph test, the results of which The Post reviewed. She told other people about the alleged attack years before Kavanaugh was a Supreme Court nominee. She allowed her records from a therapy session about it to be reviewed by The Post. She says she didn’t want to come forward and decided to do so only after her story was leaked to news outlets.

Will the presence of an actual accuser, a woman willing to stand up and watch her life be shredded by right-wing media outlets (as it inevitably will be), make a difference? Maybe. Republican Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker have both called for Thursday's vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee to be delayed. Flake's view is particularly important here, since he is on the Judiciary Committee, and could be a swing vote against Kavanaugh if his doubts are not addressed. "We can't vote until we hear more," he said.

So what happens after Republican senators "hear more", assuming they do? I can't guess.


Jeet Heer:

I want a venn diagram of people willing to argue "Give Kavanaugh a break, he was only 17" and "Trayvon Martin got what he deserved."


The accusations are about events that happened a long time ago, but Kavanaugh's response to those accusations is happening now. We'll see how that unfolds, and what it tells us about his character. Matt Yglesias:

There’s a good case for forgiving teenage misconduct but to receive forgiveness you have to seek it, not call the victim a liar and participate in a smear campaign against her.


Here's the text of the letter Ford wrote to Senator Feinstein in July.


Other Kavanaugh issues: Kavanaugh's previous Senate testimony under oath appears to not entirely correspond to the truth. But the legal scholars Vox consulted say the case falls short of criminal perjury.

Senator Kamala Harris showed a clip in which Kavanaugh appears to characterize contraceptives as "abortion-inducing drugs", an extreme claim by religious-right groups that the science doesn't support. If true, that would be disturbing, because a lot of court cases hang on whether or not a judge takes seriously some fantastic unscientific claim. But a longer version of the clip makes it clear that Kavanaugh was summarizing the position of one side of the case, not stating his own opinion. Politifact rated Harris' charge false.

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Thursday evening, dozens of fires broke out in the Boston suburbs of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover. The cause hasn't been officially identified, but the most likely speculation is that Columbia Gas overpressurized a gas main, resulting in multiple gas leaks.


The Trump administration is taking in many fewer refugees than the U.S. has in recent years. But one group's numbers are up: white Evangelicals from the former Soviet Union.


Jonathan Chait's take on Elizabeth Warren  is pretty similar to the one I gave a few weeks ago.

The Massachusetts senator has made a series of unusually early moves that, taken together, suggest a well-designed strategy to compete across the spectrum of the Democratic Party without risking her viability in a general election. ... She is building a national profile to position herself to win a primary and a general election, without sacrificing one for the sake of the other.

Earlier this year, I often told people I had no idea at all who would win the Democratic nomination. In a potentially huge field, it is still impossible to predict the outcome with much confidence. But at this point, Warren’s early moves position her as a clear front-runner.


NRATV hit a new low last week: The September 7 edition of "Relentless", hosted by Dana Loesch, closed by ridiculing the Thomas the Tank Engine TV show, which has made the trainyard more diverse by bringing in girl trains, including one from Kenya. Loesch rejected the idea that the trains had ever had races before, and showed this parody image, which presumably is how liberals saw the show before the new characters were introduced.


The Atlantic's Adam Serwer explores the NRA's perverse attitude towards police violence against blacks.

When armed black men are shot by the police, the NRA says nothing about the rights of gun owners; when unarmed black men are shot, its spokesperson says they should have been armed. ... If innocent unarmed black men like [Botham] Jean are shot, it’s because they lack firearms; if innocent black men who are armed like [Fernando] Castile or [Alton] Sterling are shot, it’s because they had a gun. Heads, you’re dead, tails, you’re also dead.

He also notes that in recent years the NRA has become much more of an across-the-board right-wing organization, as the Thomas example above illustrates.

In recent years, the NRA has made frequent forays into culture-war disputes that have little to do with gun rights per se.

His explanation is that the NRA is primarily about selling guns, not defending gun-owners' rights. (It's funding comes primarily from gun manufacturers.) And its current why-you-should-be-armed message is a right-wing dystopian fantasy.

NRATV tells its viewers that they are under assault from liberals, black people, undocumented immigrants, and Muslims and that they might one day need to kill them—in self defense, of course. Like the president, the NRA has correctly divined that fomenting and exploiting white people’s fears and hatreds is an effective sales strategy. If marketing murder fantasies is what it takes to move the product, then so be it.


A Kansas woman who was born at home, rather than at a clinic or hospital, was denied a passport.

[S]he received a letter from the federal division of the U.S. Passport Agency out of Houston, TX, telling her the application was denied and required further documentation. ... The letter stated, because her birth certificate was not issued at a institution or hospital, it was not considered proof enough of her citizenship.

She received a letter asking her to submit any number of the listed additional documents. “Border crossing card or green card for your parents issued prior to your birth? My parents were born in the United States….Early religious records? We don’t have any. Family Bible? They won’t accept a birth certificate but they will accept a family Bible?” Barbara said.

Eventually her senator intervened, and the passport came through.


If you live in Arizona (or are thinking of moving there), you should be aware that a young-Earth creationist was on the special committee that reviewed the state's science curriculum standards on evolution. The outgoing Arizona Secretary of Education appointed Joseph Kezele, who teaches at Arizona Christian University and is president of the Arizona Origin Science Association.

He advocates for a literal interpretation of the history presented in the Bible, and claimed that all land animals, including humans and dinosaurs, were created on the sixth day when God created the universe. Adolescent dinosaurs were present on Noah's Ark because adult dinosaurs would have been too big, Kezele said. "Plenty of space on the Ark for dinosaurs – no problem," Kezele said.

and let's close with something to make people look twice

Imagine flying this radio-controlled version of Snoopy's dog house around your neighborhood.

Monday, September 10, 2018

Complicity

The thing about autocracies, or budding autocracies, is that they present citizens with only bad choices. At a certain point, one has to stop trying to find the right solution and has to look, instead, for a course of action that avoids complicity.

- Masha Gessen, "The Anonymous New York Times Op-Ed
and the Trumpian Corruption of Language and the Media"

The New Yorker, 9-6-2018

The officials who enable the Trump administration to maintain some veneer of normalcy, rather than resigning and loudly proclaiming that the president is unfit, are not “resisters.” They are enablers.

- Adam Serwer,
"There's No Coup Against Trump"
The Atlantic, 9-6-2018

This week's featured post is "What should we make of Anonymous?"

This week everybody was talking about "resistance" inside the Trump administration

See the featured post. Short version: Yes, Trump is unfit to be president. But setting up a government-within-the-government to thwart him is not the right solution.

and Brett Kavanaugh

I've had a hard time making myself pay attention to the Kavanaugh hearings, because as best I can tell nothing matters. This is a power play, and Republicans have the power to force it through.

Various Republican senators are posturing in various ways. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski pretend not to know that Kavanaugh will be the deciding vote to reverse Roe v Wade. (Nothing Collins takes as reassuring is interpreted as disturbing by the religious right; they know what Kavanaugh will do.) Mitch McConnell pretends not to know that Trump nominated Kavanaugh precisely so he would be a pro-executive-power vote when the Court has to decide whether Trump can be subpoenaed or indicted. Chuck Grassley pretends nothing is hidden in all those Kavanaugh papers we aren't allowed to see. And all the Republicans avert their eyes so as not to see that Kavanaugh lied in his previous confirmation hearings.

All the Republicans will vote for him because they just will. Nothing matters. Collins continues to describe herself as undecided, but nothing she has said is laying the groundwork for a No vote.


I agree whole-heartedly with Katherine Stewart's article "Whose Religious Liberty Is It Anyway?". She notes Kavanaugh's endorsement of "religious liberty", and explores what that really means: Christian supremacy (as I've been claiming since 2013). Stewart writes:

Let’s call it by its true name: religious privilege, not religious liberty. Today’s Christian nationalists want the ability to override the law where it conflicts with their religious beliefs, and thus to withdraw from the social contract that binds the rest of us together as a nation.

... Religious privilege of this sort was never intended for all belief systems, but rather for one type of religion. Sure, its advocates will on occasion rope in representatives of non-Christian faiths to lend the illusion of principle to their cause. But the real aim and effect of the religious liberty movement is to advance their idea of religion at the expense of everyone else.

If your religion or deeply held moral beliefs include the view that all people should be treated with equal dignity, then this religious liberty won’t do anything for you. If you’re a taxpayer who helps to fund your local hospital, a patient who keeps it in business, or a professional who works there, then your sincerely held religious and moral conviction that all people are entitled to equal access to the best medicine that science can provide and the law permits won’t stand a chance against a Catholic bishop’s conviction that some procedures are forbidden by a higher authority.

Today’s Christian nationalists will insist they are the only victims here. But that is as false as it is lacking in compassion. The terribly real effect of the kind of religious supremacy they seek is to target specific groups of people as legitimate objects of contempt.

and Nike

Nike unveiled the full version of its ad narrated by Colin Kaepernick yesterday. (It also includes footage of Serena Williams, LeBron James, and a lot of other amazing athletes.) Nike is intentionally thumbing its nose at Trump here, and taking the side of players like the Miami Dolphins' Kenny Stills, who is carrying forward the protest Kaepernick started.

Vice News explains the business reality pretty well: Conservative old white guys may love Trump, hate Colin Kaepernick, and now hate Nike as well. But how many top-of-the-line athletic shoes are they going to buy this year? And how many younger people want to be like them? Nike showed how much it worries about the shoe-burning protesters with this ad:

The shoe-burnings practically parody themselves. But Brent Terhune pushed it a little farther.

and Barack Obama

President Obama went to the University of Illinois to receive an award Friday, and gave the students there the kind of speech ex-presidents rarely give: a serious one that went right at the problems of the current moment. If you have the time, it's worth watching or reading in its entirety.

The overarching theme of the speech is that, in the long run, America makes progress towards the dreams it was founded on: equal rights for everyone, government of the people, and so on. But that progress isn't steady; it doesn't advance like clockwork, year in, year out. Instead, whenever we make progress, the forces of inequality and special privilege regroup and counterattack.

The status quo pushes back. Sometimes the backlash comes from people who are genuinely, if wrongly, fearful of change. More often it’s manufactured by the powerful and the privileged who want to keep us divided and keep us angry and keep us cynical because it helps them maintain the status quo and keep their power and keep their privilege. And you happen to be coming of age during one of those moments.

... Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us or don’t sound like us or don’t pray like we do, that’s an old playbook. It’s as old as time.

And in a healthy democracy, it doesn’t work. Our antibodies kick in, and people of goodwill from across the political spectrum call out the bigots and the fear mongers and work to compromise and get things done and promote the better angels of our nature.

But when there’s a vacuum in our democracy, when we don’t vote, when we take our basic rights and freedoms for granted, when we turn away and stop paying attention and stop engaging and stop believing and look for the newest diversion, the electronic versions of bread and circuses, then other voices fill the void.

He goes on to summarize what Republicans are doing and what Democrats want to do instead. And then he tells the students to vote.

and you also might be interested in ...

The Atlantic has an article about "zombie small business": small businesses that are entirely under the thumb of the large businesses who control their pipeline to the consumer. The prime example is chicken growing: A handful of companies control just about the entire chicken market, and each works with "tied-and-bound contractors—so controlled by their agreements with giant food corporations that they no longer act like independent entities."

The big company provides the chicks. The contract farmer raises them into chickens. The big company slaughters them for meat. It packages and brands that meat under one of dozens of labels. And it sells it cheap to the American consumer. ... These big operations do not act like department stores, choosing goods from a broad variety of vendors and fostering competition and innovation. They instead act like a lord with serfs, or a landowner with sharecroppers.

The article quotes the head of a poultry-growers association:

I’ll list what they tell you: what time to pick up the chickens, what time to run the feed, what time to turn the lights off and on, every move that you make. Then, they say we’re not an employee—we are employees, but they won’t let us have any kind of benefits or insurance.

But it's not just chickens:

The top four beef producers account for more than 80 percent of the market. The top four hog processors account for more than half. Much the same is true across the economy. The top four players account for more than 90 percent of overall revenue in a wide variety of market sectors and for a wide variety of consumer goods: web search, toilet paper, wireless services, arcade operations, soda, light bulbs, tires.

We're used to thinking about the danger of monopolies, companies that can charge what they want for their product, because they are the only ones selling it. We need to think more about monopsonies, companies that can dictate to their suppliers, because they are the only buyers.

A monopsony-dominated economy is not a good place to achieve economic equality. Starting your own small business has traditionally been a way to get ahead in America. But if being a small businessman just means that you take orders in a different way, and your sole customer dictates how much money you get to make, then that avenue is shut off.

and let's close with something awesome

Brightside collects the "100 best photographs taken without Photoshop". It's hard to chose just one, but I think I like the first one best: what it looks like to toss hot tea into the air in the Arctic.