Not Surprised by Poll

I only became dimly aware of this crisis a couple days ago.

Twenty million people are at risk of starving to death in the crisis-afflicted countries of Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.

A staggering 85 percent of Americans don’t know that, or are only dimly aware.

Iceberg

An iceberg nearly the size of Delaware broke off the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica.

Update (July 30):  This is an infrared photograph of the new iceberg from NASA.

Update (October 15):  Robert Hunziker makes a connection between record-breaking icebergs and a record-breaking stock market.

Unimaginable?

David Wallace-Wells takes a long look at what climate change may have in store for us.

[W]hen it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination. The reasons for that are many: the timid language of scientific probabilities, which the climatologist James Hansen once called “scientific reticence” in a paper chastising scientists for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was; the fact that the country is dominated by a group of technocrats who believe any problem can be solved and an opposing culture that doesn’t even see warming as a problem worth addressing; the way that climate denialism has made scientists even more cautious in offering speculative warnings; the simple speed of change and, also, its slowness, such that we are only seeing effects now of warming from decades past; our uncertainty about uncertainty, which the climate writer Naomi Oreskes in particular has suggested stops us from preparing as though anything worse than a median outcome were even possible; the way we assume climate change will hit hardest elsewhere, not everywhere; the smallness (two degrees) and largeness (1.8 trillion tons) and abstractness (400 parts per million) of the numbers; the discomfort of considering a problem that is very difficult, if not impossible, to solve; the altogether incomprehensible scale of that problem, which amounts to the prospect of our own annihilation; simple fear.

Is it obligatory to inject some sense of optimism?

[C]limate scientists have a strange kind of faith: We will find a way to forestall radical warming, they say, because we must.

But the eight implications discussed are overwhelming:  heat death comes from the combination of higher temperatures and humidity that make a region uninhabitable; the end of food refers to shifting climate zones where heat and drought reduce productivity; climate plagues come from reanimated ancient micro-organisms; unbreathable air is a result of particulate pollution and shifting wind patterns; perpetual war from the social stress associated with climate refugees; permanent economic collapse due to the end of value-adding fossil fuel consumption; poisoned oceans as a result of acidification; and last, the great filter as a philosophical perspective.

What lies in store for us is more like what the Victorian anthropologists identified as “dreamtime,” or “everywhen”: the semi-mythical experience, described by Aboriginal Australians, of encountering, in the present moment, an out-of-time past, when ancestors, heroes, and demigods crowded an epic stage. You can find it already watching footage of an iceberg collapsing into the sea — a feeling of history happening all at once.

Several of the scientists I spoke with proposed global warming as the solution to Fermi’s famous paradox, which asks, If the universe is so big, then why haven’t we encountered any other intelligent life in it? The answer, they suggested, is that the natural life span of a civilization may be only several thousand years, and the life span of an industrial civilization perhaps only several hundred. In a universe that is many billions of years old, with star systems separated as much by time as by space, civilizations might emerge and develop and burn themselves up simply too fast to ever find one another.

Update (July 14):  More ways to stay awake at night.

Update (July 24):  Robert Hunziker describes the climate wake-up call.

Update (July 28):  A Chatham House report called "Chokepoints and Vulnerabilities in Global Food Trade" describes how trade in the four major crops--corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans--depends on just 14 critical transportation junctures.

Imagine the following frightening-yet-plausible scenario: What if the next time Russia’s wheat harvest is devastated by drought, other major food producers are also facing struggles with severe weather and wrecked harvests? In the United States, that could mean a freak flood season that wipes out inland waterways or overwhelms coastal ports.

Brazil, the world’s other heavy-hitter, accounts for 17 percent of global wheat, maize, rice and soybean exports. But its road network is crumbling. Extreme rainfall could knock out a major transport route. If this happened together with a U.S. flood and a Russian drought, there would be global food shortages, riots and political instability, starvation in areas that are heavily dependent on imports, and recessions everywhere else.

Update (December 24, 2019):  David Wallace-Wells tries to clarify what is meant by a "business as usual" emissions scenario suggesting that one frequently used relies on an unrealistic coal consumption projection and so amounts to more of a worst case scenario. But it's a kind of good news/bad news situation. While the worst case is looking to be less likely, we are also using up the carbon budget that would keep warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The math — ten years left at current emissions — is actually bleaker than it might seem at first, since running through ten years at the current rate would only land us at 1.5 degrees if, immediately thereafter, we went all the way to zero, never again emitting another ounce of carbon, let alone a gigaton, of which we are today producing, from industrial processes and fossil-fuel burning, 37 each year. A gigaton is, keep in mind, a billion tons. Which makes not just 1.5 degrees but, I think, 2 degrees, for all practical purposes out of reach. As a reminder, this is a level of warming that the IPCC has called "catastrophic" and the island nations of the world have described as "genocide".

Downward Cycle

Maia Szalavitz examines "how rising inequality increases physical and geographical segregation by class, which then reduces cross-class contact and decreases the ability to interact and empathize. Less empathy then fosters greater political polarization and justification of inequality, which in turn causes the cycle to repeat."

It all starts with the psychology concept known as the “fundamental attribution error”. This is a natural tendency to see the behavior of others as being determined by their character – while excusing our own behavior based on circumstances.

For example, if an unexpected medical emergency bankrupts you, you view yourself as a victim of bad fortune – while seeing other bankruptcy court clients as spendthrifts who carelessly had too many lattes. Or, if you’re unemployed, you recognize the hard effort you put into seeking work – but view others in the same situation as useless slackers. Their history and circumstances are invisible from your perspective.

The result is a clear trend for the so-called American Dream.

[H]ard work and a good education used to be a sure bet for upward mobility in the US – at least among some groups of people. Americans born in the 1940s had a 90% chance of doing better economically than their parents did – but those born in the 1980s have only 50/50 odds of doing so.

Update (July 12):  David Brooks discovers structural inequality. (Spoiler--he's no Thomas Merton.)

Update (July 13):  Donald Jeffries says that inequality doesn't just happen.

There is a class war going on all right, and it’s been going on for a long, long time. It’s been a one-sided war, with those being relentlessly attacked apparently unaware that there is a war. Sure, they might wonder why annual raises are no longer part of what we are told is the “new normal.” Neither are pensions, vacation and sick leave, or any other traditional perks for an increasing number of workers. They also may grumble, among themselves, about the huge bonuses their bosses are getting, and perhaps even notice how seldom they seem to be doing anything at all to justify their outrageous salaries. But while they scratch their heads in confusion, they appear reluctant to identify the enemy who is waging war on them as surely as any military force ever has. This class war is being waged by the wealthy, against the rest of us.

The Pain of Politics

Republican populism is essentially an oxymoron. One way I see the distinction between the politics of left and right is the difference between understanding the world accurately for the improvement of people's lives versus defending existing power and privilege.

The Republican genius for winning elections amounts to creating a "culture war" using populist language against "elites" and removing any sense of economics from the notion of class. The failure of the Democrats comes from ceding too much to the neoliberal agenda to be a genuine voice for the working classes. Forty-five percent of the electorate saw no reason to vote last November. Mocking the right may only make them stronger. Something is seriously wrong and we don't have a clue.

But winning elections is not the same as knowing how to govern. Heather Digby Parton points out the difficult votes Republicans face in Congress on healthcare, the budget, even raising the debt ceiling.

All these votes ahead, and there will be many of them, will be misery for the GOP Congress and its leadership in particular. They only have themselves to blame for that. Republicans have spent years building a majority full of extremists and obstructionists and they just helped elect a man who has no idea how government works and seems to have no capacity to learn. What did they expect?

Update (July 9):  There is a sense that "liberals" downplay economic issues in favor of "identity politics".  Yet, economic distress wasn't really the deciding factor in the election. Atima Omara points to the demons of U.S. politics.

[Those] demons are racism, sexism, and xenophobia. They reared their ugly heads like the awful, spindly creature that emerged from an unsuspecting human’s body in the original 1979 “Alien.” We set out to defeat them, except in 2016, the scary demons emerged from America’s history to win. They had never been truly vanquished.

Still, there are issues of contention between what a friend used to call "mushy tushy liberals" versus "hard ass radicals". Conor Lynch argues that "left-wing critiques of liberalism have only grown more urgent and necessary in the age of [von Clownstick], as it is the failures of liberalism that led us here in the first place" while being careful to make a distinction.

[R]ight-wingers tend to focus almost exclusively on cultural and social factors in their criticisms, for the very reason that their economic policies are even more favorable to the “elite” than the policies of the “liberal elite” they disparage, who at least pay lip service to addressing problems like inequality and inadequate health care.

Left-wingers, on the other hand, see the cultural elitism of liberals as the manifestation of a larger problem — namely, the abandonment of class politics and radical thinking.

Update (July 15):  Conor Lynch reminds us that American democracy was in trouble before the election and that Russia isn't the biggest threat.

[A]fter more than a century of progress and democratic reforms the country has reversed course in recent decades. Big money has flooded the political arena, voter suppression has been restored across the country, and gerrymandering has grown so extreme that politicians can almost literally choose their constituents (rather than voters choosing their representatives). All of this was made possible under the political system that our democracy-averse founders created more than two centuries ago.

Update (July 21):  Sebastian Friedrich and Gabriel Kuhn offer a perspective on the meaning of "class" in progressive politics.

Unveiling and attacking the ideologies of sexism, racism, and nationalism are mandatory for a new class politics.

[These] are more than just tools to divide the working class. They are ideologies deeply ingrained in capitalist history.

To play different social groups off against each other is not worthy any left-wing project. Only fools question that social movements fighting for the rights of those who do not conform to the norm of the white, heterosexual, cisgendered male help make the world a better place.

And Reza Fiyouzat argues that there's space for a new political party.

There is a lesson to be learned from a situation in which billionaires are panicking to an extent that they are pushing the Democratic leaders to line up behind Sanders’ platform (just in rhetoric, in my opinion). Socialists must take this as a sign that the ruling class is deeply worried about the actual possibility of a third party of the real left putting an end to the Democratic Party’s charade, by exposing on a massively public scale Democrats’ main function: to act as a stop, as a buffer, as a deflection device against any organized popular oppositional force.

Update (July 29):  Senator Schumer has proposed "A Better Deal" which received mixed reaction. When it seems like the only uncertainty is the timing and intensity of collapse, I understand the need to seek out some optimism. Despite the chaos of national politics, impeachment remains unlikely and there's no reason to think re-election isn't a strong possibility. As Gary Leupp notes:

Caligula and Nero were, after all, both popular among the Roman masses; they gave them games in the Colosseum, with lots of bloody spectacles, and infrastructure projects like public baths. You can be cruel and mentally ill and still maintain your political base.

Conor Lynch contends the problem with Democrats is not messaging but politics. He cites Kevin Phillips' depiction as “history’s second-most enthusiastic capitalist party" and concludes:

Only when the party gets serious about adopting a set of principles and a political program that confronts the excesses of capitalism head-on will it deserve popular support from an electorate that now overwhelmingly backs the economic agenda of America’s most famous democratic socialist.

Update (August 5):  Conor Lynch notes that progressives won't be silent in the 2020 Democratic nomination battle.

This distinction [of authentic populism versus populist rhetoric] reveals the underlying conflict between leftists and liberals. While the former reject the status quo and believe that a system that produces billionaires and historic levels of inequality must be completely restructured, the latter generally accept the status quo as fixed, and advocate piecemeal reform. If to be a “radical” is to “grasp things by the root,” as Karl Marx once put it, then to be a liberal, one might say, is to look only at the surface of things.

Needless to say, a neoliberal like Cory Booker, who is beloved by Wall Street donors and pharmaceutical companies, is not likely to challenge the economic status quo, since he is a product of it. One can expect leftists to continue criticizing prospective candidates who embody the status quo, irrespective of their ethnicity or gender.

Update (September 3):  Anis Shivani argues that white nationalism is a consequence of the liberal "obsession" with identity politics. Among several points:

[W]hen you fight for identity, you’re giving up politics in favor of culture. And that’s exactly where neoliberalism wants you, fighting for your culture (or what you imagine is your culture), rather than the arena of policies, where the real consequences occur. You may gain some recognition of your identity, but you may also have to pay the price of losing everything else that makes life worth living.

When the focus isn't on policies that impact economic and power relations, something like white nationalism becomes just another form of identity.

Liberals have been on a relentless mission to transform people’s souls — to rid them of impure ideas about race and sexuality — for exactly the period of time that neoliberalism has deprived them of actual power to do anything about class inequality. The neo-Nazis are latecomers to this game; they have only recently adopted the cultural techniques that have already been mastered by the liberals.

And so I have to agree with his conclusion that we're at a political dead end. Von Clownstick is a spectacular failure, but that doesn't mean he won't be re-elected in a landslide.

This depoliticization has gone on so long now, about 30 years, that breaking out of it is inconceivable, since the discourse to do so is no longer accessible.

Update (September 5):  In a focus group, one Republican voter explained their decision this way:

 I didn't want more of what we already had.

There is a frustration there and I suppose one could argue that the election really did stir things up. Will we get the change we need from a negative reaction to this president?

Josh Silver says that Democrats have failed to make necessary reforms when they had the chance.

Our broken and corrupt political system has rendered government unable to address ... pressing issues. This rigged system gives us mediocre and polarized politicians stuck in gridlock and beholden to special interests.

The problem is, the majority of progressives and Democratic operatives with the money and influence to fuel reform are trapped in a broken paradigm. Most will once again go all-in on the next election with limited success. And those who embrace system reform largely remain locked in a partisan, us-versus-them framework that, if unchanged, will guarantee their continued failure on that front as well.

[U]nrigging the system is a different animal than most other political issues and requires a different approach than most other issues. Until there’s a serious change of strategy — a real willingness to work with non-progressives on the issues that matter to all of us — we should expect efforts to unrig our political system to disappoint. If we want to get serious about reform, it’s time to move past partisanship and rigid political orthodoxy. Progressives cannot and will not prevail on their own.

OK, but then who has a motivation to "unrig" the system? Not whoever is in power. If Democrats have no chance to regain control of Congress, why would Republicans want to change anything?

Update (September 9):  Anis Shivani knows that terminology sets the bounds of debate.

Both alt-right and alt-left are variants of the same dystopian mindset; [the Fuckface coalition] and neoliberal Democrats, the two sides that ran against each other in 2016, would rather not include the rational left in the discussion. Already, both [von Clownstick] and neoliberal Democrats are equally eager to paint the rational side as paranoids, in order to pull off another sleight of hand so they may have a clear electoral field in 2020, as they finally managed to do in 2016. That’s what’s at stake in defining the alt-left.

Update (September 17):  Ted Morgan is concise.

This is where we find our politics today, in a partisan divide between neo-fascism on the right and corporate centrism masquerading as the left.

Update (September 18):  In a depressing sign of the times, anti-fascist activists track down and punch a white supremacist, police chant "whose streets, our streets" after a protest, and hate crimes are on the rise.

Update (September 20):  Yoav Litvin argues that defensive violence against bigotry is sometimes necessary. Sure. But it's tracking the person that bothers me. I don't want assholes tracking me down because they have a beef with me.

Update (September 24):  Conor Lynch argues that "economic justice is social justice".

Update (October 9):  Joy-Ann Reid reports on the emotional toll of our political milieu.

[E]xperts on authoritarianism warn that over time it settles on the spirit, fed by exhaustion in hope that fatigue morphs into apathy and finally, acceptance.

And how crazy is it for von Clownstick to be defended by a supporter who said he's

showing the American people that they do not have to be ruled by … the ‘effete snobs’ and the ‘ideological eunuchs and nattering nabobs of negativism’ who seem to have been in charge of America’s identity and direction for many years. [Von Clownstick's] calling is to encourage ‘we the people’ to rise up and show the ruling class who really rules.

He's leading a revolt of the masses? He's pissing off parts of the establishment because he doesn't know what he's doing, but they were happy to try to use him to push their own agenda.

Update (October 21):  In a discussion with Wallace Shawn about the current situation, Noam Chomsky does point to some good news.

I think if you take a look at the last election the outcome in many ways is extremely optimistic. And the reason is the quite remarkable success of the Sanders campaign. Which remember, is a break, a sharp break of at least 100 years of American political history.

Sanders totally broke it, no funding, enormous success, now he’s the most popular candidate in the country. What does that tell you about the electorate? If somebody could approach people with policies that mean something to them, those… working people who voted for Obama and were disillusioned, don’t have to be disillusioned. There are policies, very sensible policies that could meet their perfectly justified hopes and aspirations. It doesn’t look like to me a hopeless situation—it seems to be a dysfunctional political and economic system which can be changed…The fact that it is a very free country, gives us the opportunities, just have to grasp them.

Update (October 29):  Peter Coyote promotes some good ideas:

1. TV news should be non-profit subdivisions of their networks in return for access to public airways.
2. Public funding of elections.
3. The end of gerrymandering.
4. Prohibiting corporations from spending their treasure to influence public policy for the benefit of their shareholders.

But we're in a quandary.

Failing core changes like these, I perceive little chance of any consequential change for the better in our public life. Such changes will have to be fueled by public demand, since I cannot imagine a scenario where the political class will voluntarily remove their snouts from the feeding troughs.

Update (November 25):  Conor Lynch notes that the Senate tax "reform" bill actually raises taxes on the working poor while cutting taxes for the rich.

Time will tell whether the president and his Republican allies can continue to openly wage a class war against 99 percent of the population while claiming to represent “the people.” As long as they are allowed to define who the "people” and the "elite” are, they can define what populism is too.

Update (December 25):  Amanda Marcotte knows that the dark days won't soon be over and urges us to "love the fight".

On top of the sheer terror of what Republicans are doing to the country, liberals must also deal with the unbelievably depressing reality that so much of what we hold dear is being destroyed out of spite. For decades, conservative media has aimed a propaganda firehose at a huge swath of white Americans, portraying white Democratic voters as a decadent and smug elite and people of color as a lazy, criminal underclass eager to destroy the country. It worked. Now conservative voters have decided that destroying the economy, wrecking the environment, creating massive income inequality and undermining our democracy is all fine, because it makes liberals cry.

Update (December 30):  Conor Lynch rejects "a false dichotomy between 'class politics' and 'identity politics,' which implies that progressives must choose between economic populism and social liberalism". But he urges the left "stand up to this reactionary economic agenda" and "adopt class politics once again and offer a serious critique of capitalism".

The new tax bill is a gift to the richest of Americans, but it is also an opportunity for the left to start playing offense in the class war that is currently being waged by the richest and most powerful people in our society.

Update (February 7, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton suggests that we'll be lucky just to get a public record of this administration's criminality. She quotes Elizabeth Drew:

It turns out that, under the political conditions we currently find ourselves in, the American system of government does not have the means to remove an unfit president from office ... all we can do is to try to survive [Fuckface's] presidency.

Update (February 14, 2018):  Paul Blest criticizes a new organization called United States of Care. Blest argues that a banal slogan like "healthcare over politics" is an attempt to sidestep the difficult work of organizing people.

Even a cursory glance at the approval ratings of Congress or the president will tell you how dissatisfied the American people are with their government. That doesn’t mean they’re frustrated with the idea of politics as a concept, but the way ours operate—specifically their failure to improve people's material lives. And as long as the dominant strain in the Democratic Party continues to push for bipartisanship, even as the Republican Party drifts ever farther to the right, the Democrats will struggle to convince apathetic voters that they're worth voting for.

Update (March 26, 2018):  Ed Dolan describes a proposal called "Medicare Extra" which is supposed to appeal to liberals and conservatives.  Also, Paul Rosenberg responds to a column by Ryan Cooper and they both put forward ideas for a progressive agenda for when Democrats are running the government again.

And I'm all for the discussion, though it presumes the other side shares the value of government as a means of actually trying to solve problems. What's amazing to me is how Rosenberg starts off his reply and still sees any reason to continue.

On political reform, [Cooper] offers three proposals, starting with statehood for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico and ending the filibuster, both of which strike me as no-brainers. If we don’t ditch the filibuster, there’s not much reason to even try doing anything else.

Democrats didn't do it when they were in power and Republicans are smart enough to know not to do it. Things could change, but meanwhile . . .

Update (March 28, 2018):  Keith Spencer discusses a paper by Thomas Piketty. If Western political parties on the left and right are now captured by "high-education" and "high-income" elites, then

shifting the Democratic Party platform more to the left is actually a winning electoral strategy that can help bring back disenfranchised working-class voters and less educated voters who currently may not vote at all or identify with right-wing populism.

Update (March 29, 2018):  Robert Kosuth argues that the fight is much bigger than Fuckface von Clownstick.

Both Hillary Clinton’s primary nomination as well as [Dear Leader's] electoral college victory illustrated once again how the whole system is deeply flawed, but despite discontent and periodic uprisings, it persists, and Sanders notwithstanding, we are still a long way from real alternatives. Why is that so? I suggest that the deeper reason is the underlying values and attitudes--established parameters--that still exist and percolate through a very large segment of the general population, enough to keep the game going. ... In the final analysis the established parties, the contented middle class, and [Orangeman] are on the same page when it comes to the following:

Capitalism.
Racism.
Sexism.
Social Class.
Militarism.
Gun Violence.
Nationalism.
The Ideal System.
Individualism.
Media/Propaganda.

As Camus’ novel The Plague demonstrates, reactions to plague vary from denial to apathy to solidarity and resistance. Fighting the plague is a constant struggle and the outcome is always uncertain but fight on we must.

Update (April 29, 2018):  A study by Diana Mutz finds that fearing loss of status rather than economic anxiety motivated many voters in 2016.

It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white, Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened.

Meanwhile, about two-thirds of those eligible won't vote this year. Among the top reasons is the belief that voting won't make a difference.

[Poll] responses suggest a deep and possibly growing mistrust of American politics as a whole. About two-thirds of the unregistered and unlikely voters agreed with the statement that “I don’t pay much attention to politics because it is so corrupt,” up from 54 percent who said the same in 2012. More than 60 percent in the recent poll agreed that they tuned out because politics is "a bunch of empty promises."

Update (June 20, 2018):  Oren Segal reminds us the alt-right isn't going anywhere soon.

Though some of the movement’s mouthpieces have fallen on hard times, the forces and racist people behind the movement have not collectively vanished. They still feel that they have a battle to wage in America.

Meanwhile, the lies proliferate.

Two major issues have prompted a deluge of new falsehoods from the president: the FBI inspector general report on Hillary Clinton's email investigation, and the administration's policy of separating immigrant families at the border.

Henry Giroux explains the mindset.

Authoritarianism creates a predatory class of unethical zombies who produce dead zones of the imagination that even Orwell could not have envisioned, while using an unchecked language of lying to wage a fierce fight against the possibilities of a democratic future.

And in an interview with Paul Rosenberg, Alan Abramowitz argues that deep racial, ideological, and cultural divisions in the American electorate have been developing for some time. Von Clownstick won by exploiting those divisions. Creating a false reality seems to reinforce that strategy.

Update (July 6, 2018):  Jill Richardson has some advice for the long slog. I don't really do much at all expect obsess over things I read.

If you’re watching the news, ask yourself if you’re making yourself more or less able to act by watching it. If you find yourself simply getting more and more upset and less able to function, turn it off.

Update (August 13, 2018):  Heather Digby Parton recounts the sordid history of the Clinton impeachment and explains why some people see witch hunts now.

[D]evious machination is what Republicans see happening with Robert Mueller's investigation into [von Clownstick's] campaign dealings with Russians. Why wouldn't they perceive it that way? After all, that's what they did. They assume everyone behaves as they do.

Update (December 1, 2018):  Andrew O'Hehir sheds no tears for the end of Paul Ryan's political career. Out of step with his own party, he can point to no lasting legacy.

In retrospect, the fact that the Romney-Ryan ticket was a bust, at a moment when Republicans believed they had channeled a current of Tea Party-fueled, anti-Obama populist outrage, was telling. That was an upside-down early indicator of gathering [Fuckface]itude, and of something more fundamental that none of us quite grasped at the time: The American conservative movement, as it had perceived itself for 50 or 60 years, had run out of gas.

Culture-war politics had previously been seen as the glue that stuck together a disparate coalition of voters behind a party whose real agenda was to support big business, “law and order,” low taxes on the rich and expansionist foreign policy. But as Pat Buchanan astutely perceived way back in 1992 (in a truly terrifying speech I witnessed in person), ground-level Republican voters only wanted the culture war and barely tolerated that other stuff. In fact, except for unleashing cops against poor people, they actively disliked it: They were totally fine with government spending for programs they actually used, as long as the money could be steered away from black people and immigrants.

Update (January 8, 2019):  Chris Hedges bemoans the coming election cycle--"The circus, with its freaks, con artists and clowns, is open for business." The media have their own agenda.

Politicians who are good entertainers do well. The poor entertainers do badly. The networks seek to attract viewers and increase profits, not disseminate information about political issues.

Update (February 3, 2019):  Andrew O'Hehir leads me to the thought that we have to get it right in the next election. Yet he seems leery of internal Democratic battles that just might be needed to see who can make the stronger case to the electorate.

[I]t would be logical to expect a charismatic opposition leader to emerge who represents or embodies a coherent alternative vision of the nation’s future.

But there is no such coherent alternative vision, and no such opposition leader. I don’t know whether this campaign will end in redemption or disaster or just more unsatisfactory muddling-through. I do know it will be like no other in American political history, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Which is why everybody is acting so crazy.

Update (February 4, 2019):  A survey from Monmouth University finds that by a margin of 56 to 33 percent Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want a candidate who can defeat Fuckface more than someone they personally agree with on most issues.

Update (February 5, 2019):  Bob Cesca argues that while Steve Schmidt talks a good anti-Fuckface game, his action of signing on with Howard Schultz's independent presidential campaign is likely to damage Democratic chances in 2020.

Schmidt ... told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that he’s working for Schultz because the former Starbucks CEO will disrupt the two-party system. His exact words were, "The hour of disruption may be at hand." Given the tragic and grotesque reality of our current disruption president, why the hell do we need another billionaire disruptor?

Update (March 3, 2019):  Republicans are afraid of their base and in the wake of Michael Cohen's testimony against Dear Leader, Andrew O'Hehir expects few minds to be changed.

In the current Republican worldview, there are no facts worth knowing and no principles worth upholding. As has become abundantly clear after the [Fuckfacian] insurgency that turned the GOP inside out, there is also no ideology and no core beliefs. There is only the struggle for power, conducted by any means necessary.

Update (June 30, 2019):  Paul Thacker describes how "barbarians" are destroying government regulation. Zach Carter reports on the helplessness of Democrats. And even in Oregon, Republicans simply fled the state to avoid a vote on a cap-and-trade bill--that's how strongly they felt about not trying to do anything about climate change.

Update (January 5, 2020):  Rob Urie on how politics really works.

[U]nderstanding power is more important to predicting the winners and losers of neoliberal economic policies than knowing the economics. ... [W]hat else are establishment politicians referring to when they claim that wildly popular policies in the public interest can’t be gotten through congress? If the people elect representatives to do the people’s bidding, but the representatives do the bidding of business interests, then where does the power lie?

Voter Suppression 2

As a former Wisconsin state Senator expresses regret over restrictions passed there, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a letter to several states that seems to lay the groundwork to further suppress voting rights.

The DOJ sent the letter to 44 states last Wednesday, the same day the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter controversially requesting personal voter information. The DOJ letter requests that election officials respond by detailing their compliance with a section of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which covers 44 states and was enacted to help people register to vote, but also specifies when voters may be kicked off the rolls.

Former Justice Department officials say that while there’s nothing notable about seeking information about compliance with the NVRA, it is unusual for the department to send out such a broad inquiry to so many states seeking information. Such a wide probe could signal the department is broadly fishing for cases of non-compliance to bring suits aimed at purging the voter rolls.

Update (July 7):  Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has a plan.

Election insiders who have warily watched him for years have been saying this latest nationwide data-grab gambit may be a masterful version of three-card Monte. That is, Kobach knew he wouldn’t get anywhere, but baited the election law establishment to create a vacuum where Republicans could claim states need to take new steps to protect the vote, police the process and pass newly restrictive measures.

Steven Rosenfeld explains why.

What’s really going on is darker and needs to be watched beyond the buffoonish politics of the moment and the presidential panel’s clumsy opening steps. Kobach and a handful of other Republican statewide election managers and lawyers—the same crew that were running federal election oversight under George W. Bush—have found weaknesses or ambiguities in federal election laws and are trying to exploit them to restrict who can vote. Their motive is simple. They know the Republican’s white and aging base is a shrinking minority in a diversifying nation. Philosophically, this ilk believe fewer but better qualified voters is perfectly acceptable and even wise.

Update (July 9):  Working hard to solve the non-existent voter fraud problem.

Update (July 15):  Worried about how the "Voter Fraud" Commission might use personal information they collect from states? Don't send them an e-mail.

While many of the emails released on Thursday accused the commission of attempting to build a national database that could be used for targeted voter suppression and potentially leave sensitive information vulnerable to theft, the White House saw fit to release complaints containing such information from hundreds of Americans.

Update (July 19):  Rick Hasen doesn't mince words describing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

[I]t is hard to imagine a list of people less credible on the issue of the extent of voter fraud in the United States, and who have done more to raise the scourge of voter fraud as a means to advocate for laws to make it harder for people to register and to vote.

Update (September 11):  Kristen Clarke also has some criticism.

By stacking the deck with an all-white and male cast of panelists, the Commission has created an echo chamber to support Kris Kobach’s baseless claims of voter fraud.

 Also, the commission chair says that poll taxes and literacy tests would raise turnout.

But more interesting is the ploy Breitbart used to deflect attention from Russia immediately after the election.

Russian meddling, the hijacking of Facebook and Twitter accounts to create and enlarge hyper-partisan echo chambers, and similarities between how the [von Clownstick] campaign and Russian agents operated, are complex stories to report.

Having Kobach change the subject from Russian meddling to illegal electioneering by 5,000-plus people who he falsely accuses of illegally voting in New Hampshire is not merely recycling voter fraud clichés that would appeal to [von Clownstick's] base (accusing their critics of cheating) and inflame moderates and the left (by besmirching legal voters). It’s a deft tactic in the pro-[Fuckface] propaganda war that Bannon promised.

Update (September 13):  Heather Digby Parton sums up our post-truth world.

[O]ur election campaign was clearly tampered with by a foreign country. The president of the United States may or may not have been in on it, but he’s certainly been active in trying to cover it up. Meanwhile he’s convened a commission that’s completely lacking in credibility to investigate election fraud that doesn’t exist.

Update (October 1):  Voter fraud is non-existent but Wisconsin's voter ID law prevented as many as 45,000 people from voting in 2016 in a state carried by Republicans by about 22,000 votes.

Update (October 20):  Ari Berman investigates the Wisconsin voter ID law.

[A] year later, interviews with voters, organizers, and election officials reveal that, in Wisconsin and beyond, voter suppression played a much larger role than is commonly understood.

Todd Allbaugh, a former chief of staff for state Sen. Dale Schultz, a moderate Republican, described the discussions preceding the law’s passage. ... Schultz expressed concern about disenfranchising African American and younger voters, but Glenn Grothman, then a state senator and now a member of Congress, cut him off: “What I’m concerned about is winning. We better get this done while we have the opportunity.”

Update (November 5):  A member of Congress suggests that a special election in Georgia may have been stolen.

Update (December 20):  The latest suppression tactic:

GOP-authored voter restrictions continue to pile up, and increasingly Republicans are branching beyond such familiar tools as voter ID rules to an even more aggressive suppression tactic: Voter purges that wipe voters from the rolls altogether. Done in the name of combating fraud, such purges have stripped hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and elsewhere, prompting a rash of lawsuits by voting rights advocates who say eligible voters are being disenfranchised.

Update (January 1, 2018):  There is an initiative effort in Florida to restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies who have served their time.  "So long, Republicans!"

Update (January 3, 2018):  By executive order, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity has been suddenly disbanded.

Alan King:

I never believed that this commission would be able to produce evidence or testimony to support the claim of a widespread conspiracy of voter fraud in the United States.

Jason Kander:

[Fuckface von Clownstick] created his sham voting commission to substantiate a lie he told about voter fraud in the 2016 election. When he couldn’t come up with any fake evidence, and under relentless pressure, he had no choice but to disband his un-American commission.

Update (January 5, 2018):  Somehow, the Department of Homeland Security is taking over the commission's work.

Update (January 6, 2018):  But the commission will not be turning over voter information to DHS.

Update (January 9, 2018):  Good news against gerrymandering:

A panel of three federal judges in North Carolina struck down North Carolina’s congressional map Tuesday, saying it went so far to benefit Republicans that it violated the U.S. Constitution.

Update (January 11, 2018):  Mandy Velez explains how suppression tactics create greater obstacles for women voters.

Update (January 14, 2018):  Senate Democrats warn against further Russian interference in U.S. elections. And a U.S. District Court decision reversed a previous court order against "caging".

GOP operatives would send postcards to voters in blue epicenters. Those returned as undeliverable would then be used by pro-GOP election officials to purge thousands of otherwise legal voters, ignoring a 1993 federal law laying out how to clean up voter rolls. When those citizens showed up to vote, they were told they could not vote; they had to re-register and wait until the next election.

Steven Rosenfeld further reports that the Supreme Court will decide a case where the Ohio Secretary of State targeted disproportionately Democratic voters for purging.

The specifics concern Husted’s purge of at least 144,000 legal but infrequent voters between 2012 and 2016. At the heart of the case is an ambiguity in the wording of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 that Husted shrewdly exploited. The NVRA said no voter could be purged in the four years after they register. But it also said efforts to contact infrequent voters—such as those who only vote in presidential years—can be used to identify voters to be removed after that initial four-year period. (That contact effort is where the use of postcards comes in, as caging operatives use mail posing as an official NVRA contact.)      

Update (January 19, 2018):  The Supreme Court put a stay on the order to redraw North Carolina's congressional districts.

Update (January 22, 2018):  More good news against gerrymandering:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the state’s congressional map went so far to benefit Republicans that it “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state constitution.

Update (February 2, 2018):  Florida's ban on allowing former felons to vote has been ruled unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court has yet to rule on voter purging.

Update (February 4, 2018):  In a book excerpt, Steven Rosenfeld illustrates how controlling the recount process for an election also serves as a means of voter suppression.

Update (February 19, 2018):  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued a new congressional map for the state.

And Paul Rosenberg explains how Republican state legislators are fighting back against court rulings not in their favor.

Update (February 21, 2018):  No one can stop Pennsylvania Republicans from impeaching state supreme judges for doing their job.

Update (March 10, 2018):  A Kansas law that requires residents to prove they are citizens before they can register to vote is on trial.

Update (March 11, 2018):  Sarah Okeson explains how a Supreme Court decision that weakened the Voting Rights Act continues to contribute to voter suppression.

Update (March 16, 2018):  Sam Levine explains how Republicans went too far with their zest for gerrymandering. He quotes Jeffrey Wice.

You can draw a plan to benefit a party, but do so in a fair way through a more transparent, objective process that follows criteria. If politicians weren’t as greedy and secretive, then we wouldn’t be seeing as many challenges to plans for the egregious overreaching in the last round.

Update (March 19, 2018):  The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the new Pennsylvania congressional map.

Update (March 21, 2018):  Pennsylvania Republicans are seriously pursuing impeachment.

Update (March 22, 2018):  The Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court criticizes his own party.

I am very concerned by the reported filing of impeachment resolutions against Justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania related to the Court’s decision about congressional redistricting. Threats of impeachment directed against Justices because of their decision in a particular case are an attack upon an independent judiciary, which is an essential component of our constitutional plan of government.

Update (March 28, 2018):  Jacob Sugarman explains how hard it will be for Democrats to win control of the House of Representatives this year.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the GOP could lose the popular vote by as much as 10 percentage points and still hold both chambers of Congress thanks to partisan redistricting. As Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress notes, "congressional races are so heavily rigged in favor of Republicans that the United States can barely be described as a democratic republic."

Update (April 7, 2018):  What if everyone voted?

Update (April 25, 2018):  Florida gets more time to figure out a new way to restore voting rights to ex-felons.

Update (June 11, 2018):  The Supreme Court makes it easier for states to purge voter registration rolls by upholding a law in Ohio.

In Ohio, officials send anyone who doesn’t vote for two consecutive years a notice in the mail to determine whether they’ve moved. If someone fails to respond to the notice and then doesn’t vote for four consecutive years, the state removes them from its voter rolls.

Update (June 25, 2018):  The Court seems to support gerrymandered districts in Texas.

Update (August 5, 2018):  Matt Dunlap was one of four Democrats serving on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

I have reviewed the commission documents made available to me and they do not contain evidence of widespread voter fraud. Indeed, while staff prepared drafts of a report to be issued to the commission, the sections on evidence of voter fraud are glaringly empty. That the commission predicted it would find widespread evidence of fraud ... reveals a troubling bias.

Update (August 9, 2018):  Sam Levine has the story of how the disbanded commission was much more interested in non-existent voter fraud than all-too-real voter intimidation.

Update (October 10, 2018):  The Republican Georgia Secretary of State who is also running for governor against a black woman had the gall to purge thousands of black voters right before the election. And the Supreme Court let stand a strict ID law that makes it harder for Native Americans in North Dakota to vote. Oh, is there a Democratic Senator running re-election there?

Update (October 28, 2018):  Greg Palast argues voter suppression tactics have already doomed some Democrats this year.

Update (November 2, 2018):  Court orders in Ohio and Georgia are blocking some suppression efforts.

Update (November 16, 2018):  Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith at a campaign stop:

[T]hey remind me that there’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.

Update (December 20, 2018):  The person being investigated for stealing absentee ballots in North Carolina this year is also suspected of a similar scheme in 2016.

Update (January 29, 2019):  House Democrats are prioritizing reforms. And so, naturally, we get a headline like this:

Republicans Claim Democrats' Voting Rights Bill Is Just A Play To Steal Elections

Update (January 30, 2019):  Senator McConnell calls this plan a "political power grab".

Create an "Election Day" holiday to make it easier for voters to get to the polls
Launch an automatic voter registration database, requiring people to opt out rather than opt in
Force super PACs and political groups that rely on "dark money" to reveal their funders
Require social media platforms to reveal the sources of their political advertisements
Use government matching funds to enhance the power of individual donors' contributions to presidential and congressional campaigns
Recruit more poll workers to reduce long lines at polling places
Enhance election security

Meanwhile, Texas is asking nearly 100,000 voters to prove citizenship.

Update (January 31, 2019):  Turns out most of those Texans are citizens.

Update (February 2, 2019):  Exaggerating voter fraud is just part of the strategy.

Update (February 3, 2019):  Here come the Texas lawsuits.

A group of Latino voters is suing top state officials who they allege unlawfully conspired to violate their constitutional rights by singling them out for investigation and removal from the voter rolls because they are foreign-born.

Update (February 16, 2019):  No illegal Texas voters, but let's purge them anyway.

Update (February 18, 2019):  Actual election fraud.

The executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections revealed Monday that state officials had uncovered a "coordinated" and "unlawful" effort to collect absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate in the November election.

Update (February 21, 2019):  The North Carolina Board of Elections is calling for a new election in that Congressional district.

Update (March 1, 2019):  U.S. District Judge Fred Biery has ordered the Texas Secretary of State not to remove anyone from the voter registration list without the court's approval.

Update (April 26, 2019):  Texas has halted its effort to purge voter registration rolls.

Update (May 13, 2019):  Dana Liebelson and Sam Levine quote Anthony Gutierrez on election fraud in Texas.

You have a state that’s going out of its way to find people to prosecute so they can trump up this voter fraud bogeyman, so they can use that for all kinds of political purposes.

The party in charge very clearly has no interest in addressing the pitiful levels of political participation in Texas. They clearly love voter roll purges and any prosecution that provides however tenuous an opportunity to say 'voter fraud' in a press release.

Update (August 11, 2019):  It just seems bizarre certain states are obsessed with this.

At least 17 million people were removed from the voter rolls between the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms, according to a new report published by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Update (December 19, 2019):  More voter purges in Georgia and Wisconsin.

Wisconsin and Georgia have a history of voter suppression that has affected the outcome of recent elections. Wisconsin’s strict voter ID law kept tens of thousands from the polls in 2016. ... [B]lack voters were three times more likely than whites to cite the ID law as a reason they did not cast a ballot in the presidential race.

Georgia placed more than 50,000 voters on a suspended registration list before the 2018 election, 80 percent of them voters of color; saw four-hour lines on Election Day in some heavily black precincts; and closed 214 polling places from 2012 to 2018.

Update (December 21, 2019):  Republican campaign official Justin Clark suggests in an audio recording that voter suppression in 2020 is "going to be a much bigger program, a much more aggressive program, a much better-funded program".

Culture of Cruelty

Are Americans unique in the pleasure we derive from telling other people to "fuck off"? Maybe unique in basing our whole political discourse on that notion.

Henry Giroux identifies a political shift in the U.S. over the past 40 years--"one in which entire populations are considered disposable, refuse, excess, and consigned to fend for themselves".

Evidence of such expulsions and social homelessness, whether referring to poor African-Americans, Mexican immigrants, Muslims or Syrian refugees, constitute a new and accelerated level of oppression under casino capitalism. Moreover, buttressed by a hyper-market-driven appeal to a radical individualism, a distrust of all social bonds, a survival-of-the-fittest ethic, and a willingness to separate economic activity from social costs, neoliberal policies are now enacted in which public services are underfunded, bad schools become the norm, health care as a social provision is abandoned, child care is viewed as an individual responsibility and social assistance is viewed with disdain. Evil now appears not merely in the overt oppression of the state but as a widespread refusal on the part of many Americans to react to the suffering of others, which is all too often viewed as self-inflicted.

[W]hat is unique about the contemporary politics of disposability is how it has become official policy, normalized in the discourse of the market, democracy, freedom and a right-wing contempt for human life, if not the planet itself. The moral and social sanctions for greed and avarice that emerged during the Reagan presidency now proliferate unapologetically, if not with glee.

With the rise of the new authoritarianism dressed up in the language of freedom and choice, the state no longer feels obligated to provide a safety net or any measures to prevent human suffering, hardship and death.

Freedom in this limited ideological sense generally means freedom from government interference, which translates into a call for lower taxes for the rich and deregulation of the marketplace. This right-wing reduction of freedom to a limited notion of personal liberty is perfectly suited to mobilizing a notion of personal injury largely based on the fear of others. What it does not do is expand the notion of fear from the personal to the social, thus ignoring a broader notion: Freedom from want, misery and poverty. This is a damaged notion of freedom divorced from social and economic rights.