A study published in PNAS uses a computer model to point out a particular danger of increasing political and cultural polarization--
the existence of a tipping point beyond which the activation of shared interests can no longer bring warring factions together, even in the face of a common threat.
If the external strong signal does not unite people, we are in danger of getting into this irreversible polarization. In a divided society, it's of course very difficult to maintain that democracy which requires agreements of all people and the people who win elections and lose elections.
In the Global State of Democracy report, Dear Leader finally gets the recognition he deserves.
Disputes about electoral outcomes are on the rise, including in established democracies. A historic turning point came in 2020–2021 when [the former guy] questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results in the United States. Baseless allegations of electoral fraud and related disinformation undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process, which culminated in the storming of the US Capitol building in January 2021.
[These] baseless allegations ... have had spillover effects, including in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar and Peru, among others.
Update (December 27): Andrew O'Hehir ponders whether we truly understand the nature of "democracy" vs. "fascism" as a characterization of our political crisis.
The democracy that Americans have been taught to venerate, and that many of us now seek to defend, is a limited and specific historical phenomenon, which has been on a downward trajectory of slow decay and creeping paralysis for at least 30 years. One core problem that the Democratic Party and many people in the political and media castes have been unwilling to confront directly is that defending institutions that patently do not work is a position of pathetic weakness, not to mention near-certain defeat.
As for the homegrown authoritarian movement some of us designate as fascism, it is rather like an opportunistic infection. The [Fuckface] insurgency did not cause the crisis of democratic legitimacy, and could not have taken hold or spread so rapidly in an actually functioning democracy.
Update (January 17, 2022): Richard Eckersley "draws on people's profound disquiet about life in America" to suggest that deeper issues are overlooked by the traditional political discourse.
Take, as an example, materialism and individualism, two defining qualities of modern Western culture. The research literature suggests that, when taken together and too far, they reduce social integration, self-worth, moral clarity and existential confidence and certainty. There is a shift from intrinsic to extrinsic values and goals; from self-transcendence to self-enhancement; from doing things for their own sake to doing things in the hope or expectation of other rewards, such as status, money and recognition. The result is an increasing focus on our own lives and an unrelenting need to make the most of life. Frustration, disappointment and failure become more likely; loneliness, anger, depression and anxiety are a greater risk.
[T]he official future is one constructed around notions of continuing material progress and economic growth, and scientific and technological advances, with the aim of providing an ever-rising standard of living. It is increasingly being challenged by sustainable development as a framework for thinking about human betterment. Authentic sustainable development does not give economic growth overriding priority. Instead, it seeks a better balance and integration of social, environmental and economic goals and objectives to produce a high, equitable and enduring quality of life.
The evidence shows that the political systems of the United States and other Western liberal democracies are failing, unable to deal with the nature and scale of 21st-century realities. Blinkered by their cultures, most politicians and journalists do not see the extent of this failure. Without a transformational change in the cultures of politics and journalism, we will not and cannot "look outward" far enough or "look inward" deeply enough to address the two types of existential threat humankind confronts: the extrinsic, environmental and other tangible problems that pose a threat to human civilization and survival; and the intrinsic, intangible problems of finding meaning and belonging in today's world. This should be the most fundamental layer of political discourse, one which remains largely missing.
Update (January 20, 2022): Travis Waldron and Paul Blumenthal wonder whether U.S. political institutions are broken beyond repair.
The uniquely anti-democratic structures of the American political system have historically thwarted any effort to make the United States a more representative nation, especially for its Black, Latino, Native American and other marginalized populations. Now they have done so again, at a crucial crossroads for the country’s democracy.
The [recently defeated voting rights] bills were an attempt to arrest a decade-long anti-democratic spiral brought about by the GOP’s steady radicalization and legal assaults on the right to vote. Their failure shows that the spiral is nowhere near its bottom yet — and that the institutions that could end it may be completely incapable of doing so.
President Biden thinks there will be a second chance to get this done. I think we're fucked.
More Republicans than Democrats feel democracy is currently under attack, according to a September CNN poll. Independent voters, meanwhile, are roughly split between which party poses the bigger threat, a November survey from Marist University found.
Experts widely consider the Republican Party a major threat to democracy, but a GOP that faces no legislative response or blowback — and, in fact, prospers politically — from its assaults on democracy and institutional advantages is not likely to reverse course.
The sort of drastic reforms that would quickly reshape that kind of landscape into one that could produce a more representative and democratic government are all but impossible under the current political system. And now, the more modest changes Democrats sought to make are dead too. Barring massive shifts between now and next January, it may be years before they have another chance — if it ever comes again.
Update (January 30, 2022): Paul Rosenberg quotes Ian Hughes on why conventional centrism isn't functioning in our political system.
[W]ith climate change, the impacts of the vast inequalities we have created, the hollowing out of our democracies, all of these neglected issues are rushing in from the background and crashing in upon us, destroying our cozy narratives. In such circumstances we need new "extremists" — visionaries who can see the world as it could be, activists whose lives are devoted to common good and not private wealth, agitators who remind us that our current systems of economics, politics, gender, militarism are deeply broken. We need, first and foremost, to recognize that the systems that make up our current civilization are finished. Only then can we start to build back better.
Update (January 31, 2022): In a stunning speech, Fuckface von Clownstick makes it very clear he wanted Vice President Pence to overturn the 2020 election. He also called on his supporters to rise up in massive, possibly violent protests should he charged with crimes. He further promised to pardon those involved with violence should he return to office.
Amanda Marcotte says Dear Leader is doing everything he can to manipulate public opinion.
[His] boldness in trying to rewrite the history of January 6 is horrific, but not shocking. The man has never failed to press an advantage. He has a huge one when it comes to gaining control of the narrative of January 6: There's no one really out there stopping him. The mainstream media is falling behind on the job, failing to treat [the former guy's] downright criminal aggression on this front with the gravity it deserves. Meanwhile, Democrats who ostensibly control Congress and the White House are too slow-moving and cautious in their response, giving [Fuckface] the opening to go all-out with his valorization of January 6 and efforts to stoke further attacks on democracy.
Update (February 3, 2022): More stories emerge on how much effort was made to subvert democracy in the 2020 presidential election. Heather Digby Parton says these actions were worse than what Nixon did to try to block investigations into Watergate.
[Dear Leader] tried to use the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security (and for all we know the CIA and the Department of Education too) to overturn a legal election that he lost. And his party shrugs. Worse than that he is the front runner for the nomination in the next presidential election.
Update (February 6, 2022): The Republican National Committee had the gall to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for "participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse". The National Review blasted the move.
The action of the mob on January 6 was an indefensible disgrace. It is deserving of both political accountability and criminal prosecution. Aspects of it are also fit subjects for a properly conducted congressional inquiry. It is wrong to minimize or excuse what happened that day.
Update (February 8, 2022): In an interview with Marc Lamont Hill, Noam Chomsky says the Republican Party is now committed to overthrowing representative democracy.
[Dear Leader] has managed to mobilize a popular cult of (worshipping) followers. Anything he does, they support — and they've basically taken over the Republican Party, or what used to be the Republican Party. Republican leaders are groveling at his feet, afraid to offend him in any way. [Fuckface] has made it very clear — more clear in the last few days — that he does not believe that the United States should have a functioning democracy. He's said explicitly that the vice president, Mike Pence, could have overturned the election and failed to do it — it was Pence's failure, his fault that the election was not overturned and handed over to [von Clownstick]. He said it quite explicitly.
Under pressure to accomplish something, the Progressive Caucus gave Biden his win on the infrastructure bill with the vote on Build Back Better now delayed. Proposed at $6 trillion and most commonly listed at $3.5 trillion, BBB has already been whittled down to $1.75 trillion and still might not get past a nominally Democratic controlled Senate.
Of course, pragmatists are fine with this--"half a loaf" and all that (more like one-seventh?). Democrats hope infrastructure alone can be a winning issue. Meanwhile, the few Republicans who dared to vote for a non-controversial bill are receiving death threats. Brian Karem is hopeful for a return to sanity in the "bipartisan" effort even as he quotes Joe Walsh:
If you are pro-vaccine, anti-insurrection, and you state the truth that Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, you have no future as a Republican. Just think about that.
A whole lot of Democrats are hopelessly pinioned between the corporate donor class they have lovingly cultivated and the increasingly restless "progressive base," and must also reckon with the fact that in our deeply undemocratic system their fragile majority literally rides on a few thousand randos in exurban "swing districts" and "purple states," who are entirely likely to vote based on the price of gas or whether the Amazon guy was a dick or some half-processed fragment of COVID misinformation.
Historic patterns are against us next year (not to mention deliberate undermining) and a Restoration is not out of the question for 2024.
Yeah, that could definitely happen, and it would be bad news. Will it mean the end of democracy forever? No, of course not. Will it suck? Yes. ... But to pretend that the deeply offensive and moronic (and evil) prospect of a [Fuckface] 2.0 regime will mean the end of history and the end of politics ... is insulting and untrue. Why do we think we're special? In almost every European nation, not to mention the nations of the developing world, there are living people who have survived periods of fascistic or autocratic rule and come out the other side. Millions of people live under such regimes right now. It might just be our time to get schooled by history.
O'Hehir argues it's time to rebuild a party from the ground up while searching for answers--but perhaps only after "a period of real danger and possible violence and almost certain trauma, which will require courage and patience and sacrifice, and whose ending is uncertain". So, good thing there's no civilization-threatening catastrophes in the making.
Update (November 19): The House of Representatives passed a watered down version of Build Back Better on a party line vote.
An article published in Rolling Stone names members of Congress and the former Administration directly involved with planning the January 6 rally that turned violent.
Two sources, according to their story, revealed that Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) were all present on "dozens" of calls with organizers of the group. [Additionally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was mentioned prominently by the organizer.]
The former president also spoke to the group, saying that they were going to march to the U.S. Capitol and tell the members of Congress that they needed to hand [him] the election. He promised that he would lead them and walk with them, but that never happened.
Shouldn't expulsion from Congress be expected at the very least?
Update (December 14): A slew of text messages to and from Mark Meadows shows the White House was fully aware of the extent of the insurrection at the Capitol and chose to do nothing in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1505:
Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law ... shall be fined ... imprisoned ... or both.
Also, Jon Skolnik summarizes the growing mountain of documents related to the coup attempt.
So far, the evidence suggests that [Fuckface] and his allies coordinated a far-reaching campaign of lies – spanning multiple agencies and branches – to cast doubt over the results of President Biden's win.
Update (December 15): Heather Digby Parton calls it a bad week for von Clownstick.
[W]hen you look at the evidence it's clear that [Fuckface] spent weeks planning to [obstruct an official proceeding] and when his followers resorted to violence to accomplish it, he sat on his hands for hours and watched them do it.
I am not particularly optimistic that any of these cases will come to fruition. But [Dear Leader] and his henchmen are feeling the heat right now for what his long-time fixer Michael Cohen always calls "his dirty deeds" and maybe that's the best we can hope for.
Update (January 2, 2022): Representative Liz Cheney argues Dear Leader could be charged with dereliction of duty.
The [Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol] has firsthand testimony now that [Fuckface] was sitting in the dining room next to the Oval Office watching the attack on television as the assault on the Capitol occurred.
[He] could have at any moment walked [a] few steps into the briefing room, gone on live television and told his supporters who were assaulting the Capitol to stop, he could have told them to stand down, he could have told them to go home and he failed to do so.
Update (January 4, 2022): Barbara McQuade explains a range of possibilities:
There is a crime making it illegal to corruptly impede or obstruct an official proceeding, which includes proceedings before Congress. If [Fuckface] had the power to stop that riot from happening and to permit the vote to go forward, his failure to do that could be that effort to corruptly obstruct the official proceeding.
I think we could also look at conspiracy to defraud the United States — that just means trying to impede the normal functioning of government — all the way up to seditious conspiracy, which is a conspiracy to oppose by force the authority of the United States.
I think all of those potential crimes are in play.
Update (March 6, 2022): U.S. District Court Judge David Carter dismissed John Eastman's claim of attorney-client privilege for withholding emails that may implicate Dear Leader in crimes. Chair Bennie Thompson and Co-chair Liz Cheney had argued that the Select Committee "has a good-faith basis for concluding that the [former] President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States".
We believe evidence in our possession justifies review of these documents. The facts we've gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman's emails may show that he helped [Fuckface von Clownstick] advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.
Did Manbaby really believe the election was fraudulent? According to testimony from Richard Donoghue, the former guy's reaction when confronted with the lack of evidence was to ask
If I do this, what do I have to lose?
Update (March 10, 2022): Amanda Marcotte says the conviction of Guy Reffitt on five felony charges is a good start.
[P]olling and focus group data show there's a massive mushy middle of Americans who don't approve of January 6, but also have been impacted by right-wing propaganda so they don't understand how coordinated, purposeful, and violent the insurrection actually was.
[I]f the DOJ wants these charges to stick, they would be wise to prosecute [Dear Leader]. Otherwise, he has a very good chance of installing himself as president and issuing the mass pardons he has already promised. If only to save their own work product, the DOJ needs to seriously consider charging [Fuckface] for some of his many, many crimes. A public record is nice. Actual consequences for trying to overthrow democracy are better.
Update (March 29, 2022): Judge Carter rules that Eastman must turn over documents to the Select Committee.
Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that [Fuckface von Clownstick] corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.
Meanwhile, there are details about coordination between Senator Ted Cruz and John Eastman as well as the revelation of a 7 hour 37 minute gap in White House phone records for January 6.
Update (March 30, 2022):At least one phone call from the White House was made during that seven hour gap in the call log. That is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.
Update (April 11, 2022): Representative Liz Cheney says the Select Committee has enough evidence to refer Dear Leader for criminal charges.
I think what we have seen is a massive and well organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election.
[Those involved in planning the events of Jan. 6] knew that they were going to attempt to use violence to stop the transfer of power.
That is the definition of an insurrection.
Chauncey DeVega, in an interview with Hugo Lowell, also summarizes the Committee's findings.
The attack on the Capitol by thousands of [von Clownstick's] followers on Jan. 6, 2021, was not a spontaneous or random event. We now know from Department of Justice filings and other evidence — and what may be the most documented crime scene in American history — that the attack was wholly predictable if not premeditated, and that the goal of [his] followers, which included various right-wing paramilitary groups, was to stop the certification of the election in Joe Biden's favor. In total, the Capitol assault was an integral part of the plot to keep [Fuckface] in power.
Lowell adds:
I believe that [von Clownstick] knew by mid-December. His operatives were putting together a plan, or several plans, to put him back in office. He knew by the start of January about the plan to violate the Electoral Count Act, which was unlawful, and to have Pence insert himself into the certification process to return him the presidency. In total, [the former guy] knew weeks before Jan. 6 the broad brushstrokes of what was going to happen. Closer to Jan. 6, I also believe that [Fuckface] knew of the violence or the potential disruption by force of the certification. I do believe that the committee has reached that conclusion.
[W]hat everyone has to remember is that [Dear Leader] lost the election. [He] wanted to return to office at any cost. If it meant the end of democracy, it meant the end of democracy. That's small change to [him]. He doesn't care.
Update (April 27, 2022): Heather Digby Parton summarizes the accummulating evidence.
We know that [Fuckface] went to great lengths in the days and weeks after the election to bully,coerce,strong arm and intimidate local and state officials in all the battleground states to illegally overturn the election results.
Throughout this period, various conspiracy nuts, hucksters, crackpots and grifters were running in and out of the White House with ludicrous schemes, pushing conspiracy theories.
GOP leadership knew exactly what [the former guy] did that day and there was a moment in time when they thought it was the end of him — and they were happy about it.
We know everything we need to know. There can be no more doubt in anyone's mind who is paying attention that a coup was plotted and very nearly successful. The only question is if enough people care that American democracy is on life support to keep the people who planned it (or stood by while it was happening) from regaining power in spite of it.
And Amanda Marcotte notes that the fascist cult knows they are lying.
It's telling how right-wingers will ping pong from one conspiracy theory to another, depending entirely on whether it's useful in the moment, and indifferent to whether or not it flatly contradicts the lie they were claiming to believe five minutes ago. ... Being wrong never bothers them, because they think concepts like "true" and "false" have no value at all.
[L]ike their leaders, the Republican base simply doesn't care what's true and, frankly, finds truth to be an annoying obstacle on their way to power. So they're happy to do their part to lay waste to the idea that truth has any value at all.
Truth simply doesn't matter to [Dear Leader] and his followers. All that matters is power, and they will say or do whatever it takes to get it.
As we learn more about the plot to overthrow the 2020 election, Chauncey DeVega notes that Hillary Clinton's warning from 2016 was understated.
Today's Republican Party is in fact a right-wing extremist organization, and fascist in all but name. Its followers and voters embrace and act upon those values and beliefs. To claim that there is some other Republican Party, somehow separate and distinct from right-wing extremism — as too many commentators and political observers do — is to assert a difference that does not substantively exist. Ultimately, Hillary Clinton's [recent] Guardian interview makes clear that she too fails to consistently and accurately describe the party that she warned us about five years ago.
DeVega is not optimistic that the press and political class will respond adequately.
American political insiders are deeply invested in the familiar, nostalgia-colored mores of American politics. To acknowledge the existential threat of the Jim Crow Republicans and the [fascist] movement is too traumatic and terrifying for the political class to properly contemplate. Indifference, fantasy and soothing lies about how everything will inevitably be OK in America appear to offer a much easier path than doing the difficult and dangerous work required to save American democracy.
An editorial published in over 200 medical journals calls for worldwide efforts to halt climate change.
We are united in recognising that only fundamental and equitable changes to societies will reverse our current trajectory.
The risks to health of increases above 1.5°C are now well established. Indeed, no temperature rise is "safe".
Thriving ecosystems are essential to human health, and the widespread destruction of nature, including habitats and species, is eroding water and food security and increasing the chance of pandemics.
The consequences of the environmental crisis fall disproportionately on those countries and communities that have contributed least to the problem and are least able to mitigate the harms.
[G]overnments must make fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organised and how we live.
Update (October 21): A report published by The Lancet warns about a health crisis.
There is no safe global temperature rise from a health perspective, and additional warming will affect every U.S. region. Today’s adverse health impacts of climate change are varied and widespread. All of us have been or likely will be affected by climate change, with some hazards more easily recognizable than others. Climate change is worsening heat waves, amplifying droughts, intensifying wildfires, supercharging hurricanes, and fueling flood risk through increased heavy rainfall events and rising sea levels.
Despite nearly 50 years of precedent, the Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to stand that essentially overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The new law, Senate Bill 8, effectively bans abortions at six weeks, when many women don't yet realize they're pregnant. It also deputizes private citizens who can receive bounties of up to $10,000 for suing anyone accused of "aiding and abetting" patients who seek an abortion in Texas.
[T]his support for the Texas law is an open invitation to every state legislature run by woman-hating Bible thumpers to pass versions of their own. Accompanying the law will be more dehumanizing rhetoric, treating women as livestock who can't be trusted to make decisions, or even acknowledged as capable of making decisions. Because debasing women has always been what the anti-choice movement is about. Now Americans will start to see the real life damage such hatred can wreak in women's lives.
Hopefully, David Frum is correct when he warns the GOP may face a major backlash from voters.
Texas Republicans have just bet their political future in a rapidly diversifying and urbanizing state on a gambit: cultural reaction plus voter suppression. The eyes of Texas will be upon them indeed. The eyes of the nation will be upon them too.
Update (September 8): Amanda Marcotte warns us not to let Republicans off the hook for seemingly saying dumb things.
The Texas abortion ban isn't something that idiot anti-choicers stumbled into by accident. It was carefully crafted by highly educated, intelligent people who spent years researching ways to overturn Roe v. Wade while pretending that's not what they did. They are manipulative and diabolical, and have had incredible success, despite holding views that are wildly unpopular. It may feel good to write such people off as "ignorant," but that is the last thing they are. They're smart as hell, and that is why they're so dangerous.
Update (September 21): The legal challenges have begun.
As U.S. troops continue to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Taliban are on the verge of reclaiming control of the country. This comes about in a matter of days after nearly 20 years of U.S. involvement. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and $2 trillion wasted that could have been spent much more productively. Lindsey German:
The whole war on terror has proved a terrible failure and this should be admitted. We should also consider how the lives of Afghanis would have been improved if only a fraction of the money committed to this war ... had gone into improving their lives through investment in infrastructure, housing, education, agriculture. That was an opportunity that could have been taken but was ignored in favor of military solutions. And those have brought us to where we are today.
Update (August 17): Derek Davidson (via Luke O'Neil) notes that the Washington Post exposed 18 years of government lies about the progress of the war--but there's little attention paid to that.
Whatever form the war apologia takes you can be sure that it will be heavily cloaked in claims of deep concern for the Afghan people.
But you shouldn’t for a second suppose that the people who cheerled endless war and occupation in Afghanistan ever did so out of concern for the Afghan people. If the United States were really concerned for the Afghan people it wouldn’t have spent well over a decade ignoring the evidence that its nation building efforts were failing.
And Thom Hartmann offers these reminders for just how much American presidents cared about the Afghan people.
After 9/11 the Taliban offered to arrest Bin Laden, but Bush turned them down because he wanted to be a "wartime president" to have a "successful presidency." ... With that decision not to arrest and try Bin Laden for his crime but instead to go to war, George W. Bush set the US and Afghanistan on a direct path to today.
More recently, [Dear Leader] and [Mike] Pompeo gave the Taliban everything they wanted — power, legitimacy and the release of 5,000 of their worst war criminals — over the strong objections of the Afghan government in 2019 so [the Orange Turd] could falsely claim, heading into the 2020 election, that he'd "negotiated peace" in Afghanistan when in fact he'd set up this week's debacle.
Update (August 18): Heather Digby Parton places the greatest blame for the failure on George W. Bush.
[P]erhaps the most cynical of all the rationales they offered in those early days before they pivoted to Iraq and pretty much put Afghanistan on cruise control was the unctuous, insincere, marketing campaign they launched to convince the American people that they were fighting the war on behalf of Afghan women. On November 17, 2001, just a few weeks after the attacks, they sent out First Lady Laura Bush to make a speech about the repressive Taliban regime's treatment of women, all of which was true but was clearly designed to make the war into something nobler than the crude act of vengeance it really was. ... There was zero interest in the issue on the right until the Bush administration decided to make it a central rationale for the war in Afghanistan.
Update (August 30): The U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete.
It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.
Human activities are responsible for about 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming since the late 19th century and warming will likely exceed 1.5 degrees within 20 years.
But it is not just about temperature. Climate change is bringing multiple different changes in different regions – which will all increase with further warming. These include changes to wetness and dryness, to winds, snow and ice, coastal areas and oceans. For example:
Climate change is intensifying the water cycle. This brings more intense rainfall and associated flooding, as well as more intense drought in many regions.
Climate change is affecting rainfall patterns. In high latitudes, precipitation is likely to increase, while it is projected to decrease over large parts of the subtropics. Changes to monsoon precipitation are expected, which will vary by region.
Coastal areas will see continued sea level rise throughout the 21st century, contributing to more frequent and severe coastal flooding in low-lying areas and coastal erosion. Extreme sea level events that previously occurred once in 100 years could happen every year by the end of this century.
Further warming will amplify permafrost thawing, and the loss of seasonal snow cover, melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and loss of summer Arctic sea ice.
Changes to the ocean, including warming, more frequent marine heatwaves, ocean acidification, and reduced oxygen levels have been clearly linked to human influence. These changes affect both ocean ecosystems and the people that rely on them, and they will continue throughout at least the rest of this century.
For cities, some aspects of climate change may be amplified, including heat (since urban areas are usually warmer than their surroundings), flooding from heavy precipitation events and sea level rise in coastal cities.
Update (August 20): Brian Tokar summarizes key points from the IPCC report.
The report affirms much of what we already knew about the state of the global climate, but does so with considerably more clarity and precision than earlier reports. It removes several elements of uncertainty from the climate picture, including some that have wrongly served to reassure powerful interests and the wider public that things may not be as bad as we thought. The IPCC’s latest conclusions reinforce and significantly strengthen all the most urgent warnings that have emerged from the past 30 to 40 years of climate science.
As the world literally burns, the Guardian reports on Russian efforts to subvert American politics.
Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” [Fuckface von Clownstick] in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
And five years after that Kremlin meeting, reporting from Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig shows how close we are to the brink of authoritarianism.
General Mark Milley, was so concerned the outgoing president would try to stage a military coup he warned the heads of the U.S. Military branches, did daily "check-in" calls with the White House Chief of Staff, and likened the Commander in Chief's efforts to retain power to Adolf Hitler.
"They may try, but they’re not going to fucking succeed," Milley told his deputies.
[I]f I was going to do a coup, one of the last people I would want to do it with is General Mark Milley.
So who did he have in mind to help with the coup?
Update (July 16): Chaucey DeVega notes that military leaders preparing to defy civilian rule sets a dangerous precedent.
Any "democracy" where such decisions become normalized — and are welcomed by the public — is in practice an autocracy, or eventually a military dictatorship.
America's political institutions did not "hold" in the face of the [Fuckface] regime's many assaults. If anything, [Dear Leader's] attempt to overthrow American democracy was sabotaged by his own incompetence and stopped by a few courageous individuals.
[O]ne thing is certain: if there are no severe consequences for the [Orangeman] regime's ongoing assault on American democracy, or for its other crimes, that will offer both permission and a blueprint for future fascists and other types of demagogues. They will learn from the [von Clownstick] regime's tactical and strategic errors, and will not repeat them.
it's very unnerving to see a general in this position, working with others to thwart the will of the civilian leadership. That is NOT how it's supposed to work.
Parton adds a further detail from Rucker and Leonnig that Vice President Pence refused to get into a car with Secret Service on January 6. She quotes Nicolle Wallace:
[S]omeone familiar with this reporting tells me that Pence feared a conspiracy. He feared that the Secret Service would aid [Dear Leader] in his ultimate aims that day.
Update (July 20): Chauncey DeVega discusses the Guardian report.
Whatever one concludes about the authenticity of these Kremlin papers, one conclusion is obvious: Their observations about [Fuckface von Clownstick], and about the vulnerability of American society to disinformation and subversion, are correct.
Both Robert Mueller's report and the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the 2016 election (the latter completed under Republican leadership) have conclusively shown that Russia interfered to help [Dear Leader] win as a way of advancing its strategic goals. Moreover, it is a matter of public record that [Manbaby's] inner circle included at least one Russian agent.
Russia's strategy would prove to be brilliant: [Fuckface] left the White House with the U.S. a weakened world power, gripped by a plague that has killed at least 600,000 people, along with a neofascist insurgency that shows no signs of dying out. Right-wing terrorism and other violence is escalating, and the nation has become irreparably polarized by the increasing radicalism of Republicans and the right.
It seems astonishing that anyone with a functioning brain could claim that a door-to-door vaccination initiative could give the government an opportunity to "take your guns, take your Bibles". I mean, we wouldn't want public health to be a top concern of government--what if people start expecting action to improve their lives?
Charles Holden notes there's a long tradition of conservatives attacking expertise in pursuit of their agenda.
[T]he goal was not to win a debate ... ; it was to stop social change they objected to.
[A]ttempts by "the experts" to set the record straight will most likely be seen as more proof that the world is out to get them.
Even the notion of "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" is just more ideological nonsense argues Greta Christina.
You can't separate fiscal issues from social issues. They're deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm.
[I]t lends credibility to the idea that conservatism is reasonable, if only people would do it right.
But the real crazy shit comes from the growing far right. In an interview with David Masciotra, Alexander Laban Hinton discusses the threat of genocide in the United States.
If we look at Jan. 6, it is almost remarkable that there wasn't a lot more violence. If there had been, it would have sparked more violence across the country.
So, moving forward, Biden comes in. We have a strengthening of the buffers, the pandemic is improving and the economy is improving. That takes things down from the rapid simmer, but what is worse is the lingering polarization and the belief that Biden is illegitimate. This overlaps with the GOP now having white grievance as its default issue.
At the time of Charlottesville, it is a small group of extremists. They are savvy on social media, but appear as if they are on the fringe. By the time we get to January of 2021, the white nationalist movement is millions and millions strong.
If [Dear Leader] can return to a dynamic social media platform, or if his former campaign strategist, Jason Miller, can succeed with the social media platform that he has created, that is the ingredient that can escalate the crisis.
Update (July 12): In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Annette Gordon-Reed ties the insurection to the ongoing resistance to multiracial democracy in the U.S.
[T]here are people right now here in the United States who do not take [the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments] of the Constitution seriously. They are imagined as "true" Americans, and are given the benefit of the doubt when, for example, they attack the Capitol building.
[Muslim or Black attackers] would have been mowed down. They would not have gotten inside the Capitol building. Historians cannot predict the future, but Jan. 6 is going to be looked at as potentially a turning point in the country's history. If there is no proper reckoning, then the United States is facing serious problems. The whole concept of democracy and the republic are at stake.
Update (July 28): Amanda Marcotte calls out the GOP as cowards for gaslighting the public over election "integrity". They pretend their criticism of the January 6 investigation isn't about the fact they actually support the attempted coup.
All these Republicans are betting that [Dear Leader] will soon ascend to the dictatorial powers he aspires to, and they want a piece of the pie when that happens.
This is really one of those rare moments in life where there's no nuanced middle ground. Continuing to support [Fuckface] means supporting fascist insurrection, and no rhetorical games played by Republicans can change that.
Update (July 29): John Stoehr thinks Republicans are pushing people into becoming "partisans for the United States" when they refuse to take the January 6 investigation seriously.
[B]eing an American is so politicized there are now two sides to the controversy. One side is for democracy. One side is against it. One is for the Constitution and the principles it enshrines. One is for the GOP and its fuhrer. One side honors duty and sacrifice. One side belittles them. One side sees selfishness, disloyalty and betrayal as fair game. One side has unvarnished contempt for treason.
Update (August 9): In an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Michael Bang Petersen argues that the spread of false beliefs and conspiracy theories isn't about ignorance.
[A] lot of beliefs don't really exist for navigating the world. They exist for social reasons, because they allow us to accomplish certain socially important phenomena, such as mobilizing our group or signaling that we're loyal members of the group. This means that because the function of the beliefs is not to represent reality, their veracity or truth value is not really an important feature.
Petersen mentions research finding that ethnic massacres are typically preceded by a period of rumor-sharing.
[I]f you look at the content of the rumors, that's not so much predicted by what the other group has done to you or to your group. It's really predicted by what you are planning to do to the other group. So the brutality of the content of these rumors is, in a sense, part of the coordination about what we're going to do to them when we get the action going — which also suggests that the function of these rumors is not to represent reality, but to serve social functions.
Those kinds of rumors are similar "to the kind of misinformation that is being circulated on social media".
This suggests that a lot of what is going on in social media is also not driven by ignorance, but by these social functions.
There may be an evolutionary pressure underlying the value of such misinformation.
[T]hese false beliefs don't just exist to make you feel good about yourself, but exist in order to enable you to make changes in the world, to mobilize your group and get help from other group members. I think that's an important point to think more about: What it is that certain kinds of beliefs enable people to accomplish, and not just how it makes them feel.
In a partisan 6 to 3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld voting restrictions in Arizona. Justice Elena Kagan argues that the decision rewrites the intent of Congress for Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The language of Section 2 is as broad as broad can be. It applies to any policy that "results in" disparate voting opportunities for minority citizens. It prohibits, without any need to show bad motive, even facially neutral laws that make voting harder for members of one race than of another, given their differing life circumstances. That is the expansive statute Congress wrote, and that our prior decisions have recognized.
Update (July 2): Heather Digby Parton doesn't see much room for optimism.
This decision, which endorses the idea that states can restrict voting because of (non-existent) voter fraud is solely a Republican Party project. This decision makes it clear that while this court may throw a bone to the left once in a while, when it comes down to securing power for the Republican Party, their allegiance is clear. Mitch McConnell must have strained a muscle patting himself on the back for his efforts to make that happen.
At this point, the entire Republican establishment, which includes the Supreme Court majority, is working together to take advantage of the opening [Dear Leader's] Big Lie has given them. The party strategically targeted the states that Biden won closely and is feverishly passing laws to disenfranchise Democratic voters there. At the same time they are assiduously working to disempower any form of non-partisan oversight of the election apparatus. In fact, they are using every lever of power at their disposal, from legislative control in the states, to the filibuster and the Supreme Court.
She notes the pundits are convinced the Democrats have accepted their fate in the name of "bipartisanship".
That's right. The party that controls the House, the Senate and the White House apparently believes it is impotent to protect American democracy from a bunch of right-wing crazies who worship [Fuckface von Clownstick] so they're planning to give some speeches instead.
If this cynical consensus is right (and I fervently hope it isn't) all I can say is that it's a good thing we have an empathetic mourner-in-chief in Joe Biden to comfort us when our democracy finally dies. Unfortunately, we probably won't be able to hear his consoling words over the giddy laughter of [Manbaby] and the Republicans. They couldn't have dreamed the Democrats would go down so easily.
Update (August 2): Paul Blumenthal explains why laws like the For the People Act are necessary.
Without the passage of that law, the strategy of out-organizing voter suppression would need to include out-organizing laws that make it harder to vote, harder to organize, and allow partisan Republicans to change the result in the end anyway. And this out-organizing won’t be limited to 2022, but to every future election where these laws remain on the books.
We are facing a miserable forecast as record-strong high pressure creates a "heat dome" in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S.
Heat waves like this are one of the clearest manifestations of human-caused global warming, with studies showing that climate change boosts the odds of their occurrence and heightens their severity. Some recent studies, in fact, have shown that certain extreme heat events could not have occurred without an added boost from human-caused warming.
Update (June 28): Several all-time record highs were recorded on June 27. (And this is just mainly in Oregon!)
Also, Robert Hunziker points to a report published in Geophysical Research Letters that finds the Earth's energy imbalance has approximately doubled from 2005 to 20019.
Update (June 30): I'm hoping this is the worst of it.
The temperature at the Yakima Air Terminal weather station hit 113 on Tuesday afternoon, comfortably topping the all-time record of 110 degrees reached there on Aug. 10, 1971.
Also, Anne Mulkern explains why this is happening with help fromOregon state climatologist Larry O’Neill.
The high temperatures came as the result of a high-pressure system over Oregon and Washington. Climate change played a role in that system, said O’Neill.
One of the mechanisms for the formation of a high-pressure system is tropical cyclone activity in the western Pacific Ocean. Those are the West Coast equivalent of hurricanes. And like hurricanes, they are strengthened by warmer ocean temperatures.
Update (July 2): Jeffrey St. Clair recounts this week's heat wave.
[T]he "heat dome" shouldn't have caught any of use by surprise. The new normal is yesterday's abnormal. The surprises and anomalies come and go, but only in one direction. The hotter they come, the hotter the records fall. It’s time to stop calling the PNW heat wave "unprecedented" and start calling it the precedent for a future that has already arrived.
Portland's high temperature [of 116F on Monday] was 40 degrees above normal, 4.5 standard deviations from the mean, making it the most severe heatwave ever recorded in North America, the kind of event only expected to happen every 400 years. But these kinds of wild fluctuations usually happen in fall and spring, almost never in summer. Portand's deviation from the norm would be like Dallas hitting 134F.
On Sunday afternoon, Lytton, British Columbia, broke the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded in Canada with a measurement of 46.6C (116F). Then it broke that record again on Monday. And again on Tuesday with a high of 49.6C (121F), shattering the old heat record set 84-years ago by 4.6C (8F)!
Update (July 4): Actual high temperatures for the past two weeks. From June 26 through June 30, records were either tied or broken.
Update (July 8):From a study published by World Weather Attribution:
[A]n event such as the Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave is still rare or extremely rare in today’s climate, yet would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.
Looking into the future, in a world with 2°C of global warming (0.8°C warmer than today which at current emission levels would be reached as early as the 2040s), this event would have been another degree hotter. An event like this – currently estimated to occur only once every 1000 years, would occur roughly every 5 to 10 years.
Update (July 16): A short video made from satellite images shows the loss of snow pack on Mt. Adams during the heat wave. Mt. Rainier lost 30 percent of its snow pack from June 26 to July 11.
Update (July 18): Peter Reiners explains why "wet bulb" temperature matters more than record highs.
The closer wet bulb temperature gets to our body temperature, the less heat is lost. ... [Anything] higher than 88 °F (31 °C) make it impossible to do physical labor, and a wet bulb temperature of 95 °F (35 °C) kills healthy humans within a few hours.
Update (July 26): In an interview with Zoya Teirstein, Daniel Swain discusses extreme weather events.
I'm less convinced that recent events tell us that things are moving faster than projections have suggested. But I am increasingly convinced that we've underestimated the impacts of some of the changes that were actually fairly well predicted.
Climate models aren't intended to capture the fine details of transient events. Weather forecasts turned out to be fairly accurate--a forecast of 113 vs the actual 114 for that record-breaking day.
[T]his just keeps coming back to this notion that a degree or two of global warming doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a tremendous shift in the system. But that's not intuitively obvious to really anyone except for folks who really understand the dynamics of these nonlinear Earth systems interactions.
Update (June 14, 2022): This year, over 100 million people in the U.S. are facing record-breaking heat at the start of summer.
Update (August 1, 2022): There's just no escaping--this year's record breaking week for Yakima:
I believe the 27th through the 30th were all new record highs. This week saw the first 100 degree day of the year.
Update (August 20, 2022): Last month set the record for the highest nightly low temperature.
The average low temperature for the Lower 48 states in July was 63.6 degrees (17.6 Celsius), which beat the previous record set in 2011 by a few hundredths of a degree. ... July’s nighttime low was more than 3 degrees (1.7 Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average.
Update (August 27, 2022): China has been enduring a two-month heat wave that Maximiliano Herrera calls the most severe recorded anywhere.
This combines the most extreme intensity with the most extreme length with an incredibly huge area all at the same time. There is nothing in world climatic history which is even minimally comparable.
A joint report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services addresses the links between two crises.
Climate change impacts and biodiversity loss are two of the most important challenges and risks for human societies; at the same time climate and biodiversity are intertwined through mechanistic links and feedbacks. Climate change exacerbates risks to biodiversity and natural and managed habitats; at the same time, natural and managed ecosystems and their biodiversity play a key role in the fluxes of greenhouse gases, as well as in supporting climate adaptation.
A series of reports from ProPublica uses secretly obtained tax records to illustrate how little income tax the rich typically pay.
Our analysis of tax data for the 25 richest Americans quantifies just how unfair the system has become.
By the end of 2018, the 25 were worth $1.1 trillion.
For comparison, it would take 14.3 million ordinary American wage earners put together to equal that same amount of wealth.
The personal federal tax bill for the top 25 in 2018: $1.9 billion.
The bill for the wage earners: $143 billion.
Update (June 16):More about the mechanisms by which the rich avoid transparency and taxes.
Today’s tax code incentivizes the nation’s billionaires to plow as much of their money as possible into investments in … family funds, further amplifying their wealth.
Update (June 21): A report published by the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org finds that "dynastic" wealth has exaccerbated political inequality in the U.S.
The 27 families who were on the Forbes 400 list in 1983 had a median increase in their net worth, adjusted for inflation, of 904 percent over those 37 years. In contrast, between 1989 and 2019—the most recent year available—the wealth of the typical family in the U.S. increased by just 93 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The five wealthiest dynastic families in the US have seen their wealth increase by a median 2,484 percent from 1983 to 2020.
Update (June 28): John Stoehr reacts to ProPublica report.
Unlike normal people, whose income is what they earn with their labor, the very obscenely rich's "income" is what their assets earn with their asset's "labor".
None of this would be a BFD if the very obscenely rich paid their fair share. They do not. Yes, they pay income tax on income. But, again, the vast bulk of the money coming into their households is not taxable.
Unsaid in the ProPublica report, but worth saying clearly, repeatedly and loudly, is that the US tax system encourages idleness while discouraging actual work.
Update (July 13): Sarah Anderson, Brian Wakamo, and Justin Campos discuss tax inequality.
The raging debate over public investment financing has created a huge opening for long overdue fair tax reforms. Without drastic changes in the tax code, we will continue to see those at the top accumulate ever more obscene levels of wealth and power while our physical and human infrastructure crumbles and low-income Americans, particularly people of color, get left behind.
Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.
Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations should Democrats win more votes. They are seeking to restrict access to the ballot, the most basic principle underlying the right of all adult American citizens to participate in our democracy. They are also putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators. State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting. Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the “purity” and “quality” of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.
In future elections, these laws politicizing the administration and certification of elections could enable some state legislatures or partisan election officials to do what they failed to do in 2020: reverse the outcome of a free and fair election. Further, these laws could entrench extended minority rule, violating the basic and longstanding democratic principle that parties that get the most votes should win elections.
[T]hese actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy.
Update (June 2): Amanda Marcotte notes that Democrats could choose to do a lot to preserve democracy if only the Senate would do away with the filibuster. Unfortunately, two members continue to want to believe in the fairy tale of bipartisanship.
[The] turn towards public shame is a sign of Democratic desperation, no doubt. The only real hope that it works lays in the fact that Manchin and Sinema have spent months getting attention for being the holdouts. This likely means they can no longer bask in the ego boost from having the president and others cajole and plead for them to do the right thing. They don't get to be the belles of the ball anymore, but the choice of whether to be hated villains of history is up to them.
Will it work?
Only time will tell. But it's a troubling sign that Democrats are at the end of the line, seemingly short on strategies to save American democracy. Everything now depends on two people, both who seem unbelievably pigheaded and egotistical, to grow up and start acting like they care about the people who got them elected.
Update (June 3): Senator Kyrsten Sinema explains her support of the filibuster.
It is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation. Rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies, the idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before to create comity and to encourage bipartisanship and work together.
Update (June 4): Heather Digby Parton's comments make me think getting rid of the filibuster isn't really what matters--let's get rid of the whole fucking Senate.
Our federalist system that gives Wyoming the same number of senators
as California simply doesn't work in an age of partisan polarization, particularly when one of the parties is batshit insane and its party establishment is willing to win by any means necessary. Getting rid of the filibuster is absolutely necessary for the survival of our democracy. But it isn't a panacea and I don't see any way to fix the rest of it unless the Republicans come to their senses. What are the odds of that happening?
Update (June 14): Heather Digby Parton names the Republican tactic designed to truly undermine democracy.
Voter suppression is sadly familiar in American political life. Vote nullification, however, is not. And that's what all these new laws and regulations are designed to do. If the vote doesn't go their way, they are putting mechanisms in place to simply nullify the results through a complex set of "legal" maneuvers.
Update (June 16): In an interview with C.J. Polychroniou, Noam Chomsky sees an opposition where "[t]he party leadership is dedicated to the obstructionist strategy of sacrificing the interests of the country in order to regain power".
Your term "neoliberal proto-fascism" seems to me quite an accurate characterization of the current Republican organization — I’m hesitant to call them a "Party" because that might suggest that they have some interest in participating honestly in normal parliamentary politics. More fitting, I think, is the judgment of American Enterprise Institute political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that the modern Republican Party has transformed to a "radical insurgency" with disdain for democratic participation.
Update (June 18): Senator Joe Manchin thinks he has a clever compromise for a voting rights bill, but Amanda Marcotte is willing to explain reality to him.
The strategy that Republicans are using to hoodwink Manchin is the same they have used for decades to hoodwink Democrats: Pretend to be interested in a "compromise," mire the Democrats in endless negotiations, and run out the clock until elections. Then Republicans will run on a platform of accusing Democrats of getting nothing done, while ignoring the fact that Republican bad faith is why Democrats got nothing done.
Update (June 23): It's not surprise that all 50 Republicans voted against cloture on voting rights legislation. Heather Digby Parton quotes Senator Rafael Warnock.
What could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to protect minority rights in the society?
Patrick Cockburn says the most dangerous threat to the world is the transformation of the party into a fascist movement.
It was only this year that the final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.
Two strategies, though never entirely absent from Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence against their opponents, something that became notorious during the invasion of the Capitol by pro-[Orange] rioters on 6 January.
The other change among Republicans is much less commented on, but is more sinister and significant. This is the systematic Republican takeover of the electoral machinery that oversees elections and makes sure that they are fair. Minor officials in charge of them have suddenly become vital to the future of American democracy. Remember that it was only the refusal of these functionaries to cave in to [Dear Leader's] threats and blandishments that stopped him from stealing the presidential election last November.
It is worth listing the chief characteristics of fascist movements in order to assess how far they are now shared by the Republicans. Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is probably the most universal feature of fascism. Others include a demagogic leader with a cult of personality who makes messianic but vague promises to deliver a golden future; appeals to law-and-order but a practical contempt for legality; the use, manipulation and ultimate marginalisation of democratic procedures; a willingness to use physical force; demonising the educated elite – and the media in particular; shady relations with plutocrats seeking profit from regime change.
One by one these boxes have been ticked by the Republicans until the list is complete.
Update (June 29): Chauncey DeVega warns that the risk is real and the threats haven't gone away.
Also, a great summary of how the Republicans do nothing except create distractions over non-existant problems as they subvert democracy and yet, somehow, the Democrats can do nothing about it.
Update (July 7): Democracy is at risk when the truth doesn't matter to large numbers of citizens. Amanda Marcotte notices how many Republicans insist on denying reality.
Do proponents of the Big Lie or insurrection revisionism actually believe their own nonsense? That's beside the point. Truth simply has no value to these folks. All that matters is power — and one way to exert power is to force the official narrative into the shape of a lie, untouched by even well-documented facts.
In a sense, this is nothing new. The right has long had an interest in replacing facts with its own bellicose myth-making.
Update (August 2): Paul Rosenberg points to mainstream reporting for enabling the Republican assault on responsible government.
Bad faith has long since become pervasive throughout the GOP, and completely normalized by the press.
Bad faith can be found in Republican claims to be "the party of life" as they cheerfully spread COVID disinformation. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be "the party of law and order," while they heap contempt on the officers who defended the Capitol and want them to get to the bottom of that attack. Bad faith can be found in their claims to be the party of patriotism, as they defend Confederate monuments and defend the Jan. 6 insurrectionists from scrutiny or consequences, paving the way for the next attempted overthrow of government.
When journalists cannot honestly report what is happening, when they normalize the ongoing destruction of democracy, they become complicit in it. When their posture of balance makes the world more illegible, so that democratic self-governance becomes all but impossible, they're no longer journalists. They have become propagandists.
Update (August 4): Chauncey DeVega agrees the mainstream press doesn't present a clear picture of the threat we face.
Reporting on [Dear Leader's] crimes and putting them in full context as part of a larger attempt to protect democracy is not a high priority in the 24/7 news cycle. Instead, too many of the leading media outlets thrive on false equivalencies between Republicans and Democrats through the obsolete habit of "both sides" journalism. Even faced with one party (and its associated political movement) that poses an existential threat to American democracy, the mainstream media is still, for the most part, afraid to state that plain truth for fear of being labeled as "liberal" and "biased".
It's become far too easy to deny the implications of what Fuckface told the Department of Justice in December.
Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Congressmen.
Update (August 6): Heather Digby Parton recounts revelations about the thwarted coup.
It's easy to say now that "the system worked" but it was a very close thing, entirely dependent on the good-faith actions of certain members of the government. ... It's clear they were serious about [overturning the election results in six states], and it's even clearer that this inane notion of state legislators rejecting the will of the voters has seriously gained currency on the right. This is not the last we will hear of it.
Update (August 11): Lucian Truscott says reckless, desperate actions prevented the coup from succeeding. It's still a question whether anyone will be held accountable.
Practically every move [Orange Turd] made in December and January in advance of Jan. 6 was a crime. Pressuring Jeffrey Rosen to misuse the Department of Justice to support his private lawsuits was a crime. Conspiring with Jeffrey Clark to fire Rosen so Clark could send the letter to the Georgia legislature was a crime. Calling Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp and pressuring them to "find" votes and use the legislature to overturn the election was a crime. Meeting with his own White House staff and outside advisers to plan the rally on the Ellipse at which he would incite the assault on the Capitol was a crime.
[His] problem, to put it frankly, was that he didn't start committing crimes early enough. The crimes he committed in December and January were largely impulsive, not carefully planned or focused.
The evidence keeps piling up--Byung Pak, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, testified to the Senate Judicary Committtee that he resigned January 4 because he expected to be fired for refusing to support claims of massive voter fraud in the state. Ron Filipkowski reacts:
[The Department of Justice] has no choice now, they must open a criminal investigation on [von Clownstick].
The report is damning. The president of the United States tried for weeks to get the Attorney General to overturn the election. That is the definition of an attempted coup.
Parton suggests Republican leaders believe
that if [Fuckface] gets back in power, it will be perfectly fine if he behaves exactly the same way as he did during those insane final weeks of his term. This is how pathetically corrupt and compromised the GOP's moral reasoning has become. According to one of the major political parties in the country, attempted coups are now normal politics in America.
Update (October 11): Ruth Ben-Ghiat takes the neofascist threat very seriously.
[T]he way that [Dear Leader] has already acted is straight out of the authoritarian playbook. And if we look at what he did between November and January, this was all a trial run. So, he tried to get a military intervention, but that didn't work because General Milley wouldn't go along. He tried to do what autocrats already do in Turkey and Hungary and Russia, which was to fix the election machinery.
We are in the middle of an onslaught, on a massive scale, to neutralize our entire election apparatus. Because today, you don't suspend elections except in maybe communist dictatorships. Today, you hold them, but you make sure the results are what you need them to be.
