Border Crisis?

Orangeman heard some story on FOX and is now ordering the deployment of the National Guard to help with border security. He's even blaming NAFTA for the current "crisis".

Ironically, Noam Chomsky wrote about this years ago.

Mexican economist Carlos Salas reviews data showing that after a steady rise until 1993, agricultural employment began to decline when NAFTA came into force, primarily among corn producers — a direct consequence of NAFTA, he and other economists conclude. One-sixth of the Mexican agricultural work force has been displaced in the NAFTA years, a process that is continuing, depressing wages in other sectors of the economy and impelling emigration to the United States.

It is, presumably, more than coincidental that President Clinton militarised the Mexican border, previously quite open, in 1994, along with implementation of NAFTA.

Chomsky notes that Mexico suffers more from the agreement than the U.S.

The “free trade” regime drives Mexico from self-sufficiency in food towards dependency on US exports.

Tamara Pearson reports on how the traditional Mexican diet is being replaced by American junk food.

This Coca-Cola and mass-junk food distribution was facilitated by NAFTA, an agreement that came into effect in 1994. It allows the U.S. to send its junk food here, while the U.S. imports tomatoes, chilies, cucumbers, limes, avocados, mangoes, and more from Mexico. In the 1990s, NAFTA meant that Mexican family farms couldn't compete with the U.S. agricultural giants, and five million Mexican farmers were displaced into the cities. It was a forced conversion of sorts, where U.S. fast food restaurants and corporations that specialize in selling cheap poison in pretty packets were given even more room to take Mexican resources and run the show.

If this is a crisis, could it be we brought it on ourselves?

Update (May 13):  Sophia Tesfaye writes that with 24/7 attention on Dear Leader's criminal activities, Jeff Sessions has cover to work his evil.

Out of the spotlight, obscured by [Fuckface's] other sidekicks and their latest scandals, Sessions has succeeded in centering immigration as the nation’s top law enforcement priority and at prioritizing criminal proceedings over their impact on crime. He’s quietly instructed prosecutors to go after low-level offenders and removed Department of Justice grants to study criminal justice reform. If his increasingly aggressive rhetoric is any indication, however, Sessions is eager to get credit for this crackdown on the most vulnerable people in our society.

Update (June 8):  Heather Digby Parton explains how cruel U.S. immigration policy has become.

The whole point of this is to make examples of these mothers and children and to deter asylum-seekers from even attempting to come here. And this is in spite of both domestic and international laws governing the rights of refugees. Apparently, those laws are no longer operative in the United States.

Update (June 15):  Over six weeks this spring, nearly 50 children per day were separated from their families at the U.S. border. Alicia Menendez forcefully criticizes this disgraceful policy.

I think it's just so important that we remember that this does not require legislation to be fixed. This could be handled by DHS by reversing this policy. And it is a crisis of America's own invention. It is taxing a system that was never meant to handle this type of overflow of children.

Update (June 18):  The DHS Secretary says "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." Roque Planas explains that

DHS policy ... is to refer 100 percent of illegal border crossings for criminal prosecution ― a step that previous administrations had refused to take. The logic undergirding Nielsen’s contention is that family separation is not the goal; attaining a 100 percent rate of prosecution for immigration violations is.

But von Clownstick continues to blame Democrats who have no power in Congress. Senator Lindsay Graham says Fuckface could stop it with a phone call. Even Laura Bush (not to mention Amnesty International) is critical of the administration's tactics.

I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.

Planas refutes all the excuses made for why this is happening.

The only charitable explanation for systematically peddling these falsehoods is that the officials charged with carrying out this policy, along with prominent Republicans who don’t want to share the blame for it, simply have no idea what they’ve done.

But the simplest answer is the most plausible: ... Republicans seeking to deflect the blame over family separations at the border know exactly what they’re doing, and they know it’s unpopular. And to shield themselves, they’ve resorted to flagrant dishonesty and cast themselves as victims of the press.

Update (June 19):  Amanda Marcotte points out that most Republicans support the separation policy even while moral human beings do not. So, there's a lot of field-testing with various lies.

What [Fuckface] needs, in order to get even stronger Republican support behind him, is a story -- a narrative that allows voters to support this inhumane policy while maintaining the claim that they aren't bad people for doing so. The story doesn't have to make much sense or have any basis in truth. It just needs to be something supporters can roll out to sound halfway rational if challenged by friends or relatives about their support for this policy.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers recall the issues that drive migration in the first place.

Immigration ... is tied into issues of corporate trade agreements, regime change, US Empire, the drug war and capitalism. These issues are forcing a race to the bottom for worker rights and wages and destruction of the environment. They are driving a growing security state, militarization of law enforcement and mass incarceration. Border patrols lock people into countries where they face poverty, pollution and violence with little chance of escape.

Immigrants are the scapegoats, but it is the systems that are driving migration. Most people would prefer to remain in their home countries where they have roots, family and communities. Extreme conditions drive people to abandon everything and endure harsh and dangerous travel in hope of finding safety and the means of survival.

And Heather Digby Parton notes Laura Ingraham's fear that immigration will change "the electoral and cultural landscape of the United States forever". Conservatives feel threatened.

The nativism we are seeing play out right now is cruel and inhumane. It's born of an ugly strain of white nationalism that forms the core of the Republican Party under [von Clownstick]. But the conservative movement is still working feverishly on their own projects, using [Fuckface] and his demagoguery to serve their long-term goals. They know that keeping Latinos from voting and shutting down immigration, both legal and illegal, is necessary to their political survival as a movement and a party.

Update (June 20):  Parton suggests it's all about the wall.

He is holding all those kids at the border for ransom.

And if modern conservative politics is mostly about making liberals cry, then torturing children certainly does the trick.

And just like that, problem solved!

Lock up immigrant parents and their children together, indefinitely.

Oops.

But there’s no evidence that [Dear Leader] has the legal authority to make his wish reality. His plan, issued in an executive order on Wednesday, conflicts with a 2015 court ruling that required the government to release child migrants from detention after 20 days. [Fuckface] can’t dismiss federal judges’ rulings by decree. So his executive order will trigger a massive showdown between his administration and human rights activists in court.

The Young Turks views the executive order as pretty much a cave by von Clownstick, but also argue that the ultimate goal is to greatly curtail even legal immigration by enacting multiple restrictions. More non-white voters is bad news for Republicans.

Update (June 21):  Kenn Orphan dismisses justifications of the treatment of refugees based on the "rule of law".

Such a rationale only exists in the minds of those whose humanity has long been gutted. It’s one that has been used generously by scoundrels throughout time to ignore their complicity in creating the turmoil in the first place, and then defending the cruelest of policies against the human beings affected by that misery.

Heather Digby Parton points out that illegal border crossings are at a 46 year low. She quotes Chris Hayes:

Before [the zero-tolerance] policy roughly 90% of prosecutions in McAllen federal court were of detained immigrants with criminal records. Since the new policy it’s flipped!

90% of those being prosecuted have no record and are facing misdemeanor charges for first time entry.

Parton explains that these refugees "are far more afraid of what they've left behind them than what lies ahead" which is why this intent on deterrence gets so dangerous. Hayes again:

What that ends up being is you get into a kind of bidding war with the cartels about who can be more monstrous. . . . You end up having to do monstrous things so that the judgment tips in your favor.

Update (June 22):  It's a good thing we have a successful businessman in charge.

[Von Clownstick] has created a crisis involving three separate federal departments while clashing with the two other branches of government. The administration hasn't even been able to keep its communications staffers and agency heads on the same page, so there's likely to be even more misinterpretations up and down the chain of command than those we're seeing play out in the press.

In short, it's not clear there is any concerted effort to clean up the disaster that has already occurred, and there's no consensus within the government about how to keep the disaster from getting worse.

Parton isn't surprised.

He is just as incompetent today as he was the day after his inauguration, when he sent out Sean Spicer in an ill-fitting suit to defend his preposterous claim that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama's. In fact, he has actually gotten worse at the job instead of better.

Update (June 24):  "Misstatements" in this administration can't ever be corrected (Germany's crime rate is up due to immigrants) because that would undermine the justification for their policies. Andrew O'Hehir argues it doesn't matter whether von Clownstick believes everything he says or knowingly lies.

[Dear Leader] airs out his outrageous statements and “believes” them for a while — insofar as he believes anything — as long as the adulation keeps on pouring in from his fans, who also “believe” them. Then he discards them without a moment’s thought when they stop working.

The dangerous part is the foundational lie O'Hehir says has been consistent and coherent throughout Fuckface's career.

America is under assault from black and brown savages who want to destroy our culture and ravage our women; only one man, if given unlimited power, can stop them.

Update (June 27):  A U.S. District Court judge has ordered that the children separated from their parents due to the "zero-tolerance" policy be reunited with their families within 30 days.

Update (June 30):  Hundreds of demonstrations against Fuckface immigration policy.

Update (July 6):  Dawn Stover suggests the increase in asylum applications from Central America are due in part to drought and crop losses. These are tied to more frequent El Nino events which are tied to climate change. It's not hard to imagine increasing numbers of climate refugees which will exacerbate conflicts over immigration.

Update (July 15):  Jane Regan wants to restore context to reportage about immigration.

In today’s world, with its borders and customs agents and walls and razor wire, freedom of movement has become detached from the rest of the liberal philosophy that underpinned our revolutionary generation. Why not give those in the Americas who were born—as Jefferson put it—into a country which “chance, not choice, has placed them” the opportunity to go “in quest of new habitations”? Perhaps resurrecting freedom of movement as a “natural right” would at least partly make up for the centuries of pillage and invasion.

Update (July 22):  Molly Redden reminds us that many refugees are fleeing violence prompted by U.S. foreign policy.

For many decades, but particularly in the 1980s, the United States funneled billions of dollars in military aid to authoritarian Central American governments with the stated goal of combating communism. The funding, equipment and training transformed civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador into conflicts of exceptional brutality.

Update (August 10):  Heather Digby Parton explains how the Right, lead by Laura Ingraham, really really hate all immigrants. Unless they're the First Lady's parents.

Update (October 23):  Republicans are trying stir up fear over a "caravan" of refugees heading up toward the U.S. from Central America. But this is how one independent voter on FOX responded to the "crisis":

This is the mightiest country on the planet, I think we can handle a caravan of people, unarmed, coming to this country.

I'm saying to process them properly.

Update (November 26):  Refugees seeking asylum found a closed port of entry this weekend. So who's really breaking the law here?

[Dear Leader] authorized shooting tear gas late Sunday afternoon from the U.S. border into Mexico against hundreds of migrants, including pregnant women, and children in diapers.

Update (December 4):  Todd Miller explains that most refugees from Central America are fleeing drought. Of course, the most anti-immigrant people in the U.S. are also likely to be climate change deniers as well.

Update (December 10):  I guess this is what "fair and balanced" looks like:

Prime-time Fox News programs used the words "invasion" or "invaders" to describe migrants and asylum-seekers more times in the 30 days leading up to the Nov. 6 election than they did during all of 2015, 2016 and 2017 combined.

Update (December 14):  Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen responds to the death of a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl from dehydration while in U.S. custody.

You know, this is just a very sad example of the dangers of this journey. This family chose to cross illegally.

Update (December 25):  An eight-year-old Guatemalan boy has died while in U.S. custody.

Update (December 26):  Kirstjen Nielsen doubles down.

Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders. Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north.

Update (January 8, 2019):  Yeah, we all make mistakes. Or lie through our teeth.

The ... administration has claimed that U.S. border officials detained "nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists" last year at the Mexican border. But figures from the federal government’s Department of Customs and Border Protection reveal that only six people on a security watchlist were detained over a six-month period, NBC reports.

A real national emergency.

Update (February 5, 2019):  There might have been thousands more family separations at the border in 2017 and the administration says it would take too much effort to reunite them.

Update (February 6, 2019):  Oops--this quote shows that Fuckface my have forgotten his base doesn't like any kind of immigrant.

Legal immigrants enrich our nation and strengthen our society in countless ways. I want people to come into our country in the largest numbers ever, but they have to come in legally.

Update (February 11, 2019):  Fuckface spews more immigration lies.

Gallup Poll: "Open Borders will potentially attract 42 million Latin Americans." This would be a disaster for the U.S. We need the Wall now!

Heather Digby Parton breaks it down:  No one calls for open borders. It's a disaster only if you believe all of Latin American is a "shithole". The number comes from a blog post by the Gallup chairman--of 450 million Latin Americans, 27 percent would like to move to another country and 35 percent would like to go to the U.S. But many in the United States would like to immigrate themselves yet few actually do.

People say they'd like to move to another country all the time. It doesn't mean they're likely to do it. In the case of the migrant "caravans," we have a humanitarian crisis in Central America that's driving people to seek asylum in the U.S. The vast majority of them are just seeking safety and some kind of security. They certainly aren't coming here for the warm welcome and generous hospitality.

Update (May 22, 2019):  You'd think this alone would be enough grounds for impeachment.

A 16-year-old migrant boy was found dead Monday after being taken into Border Patrol custody, making him the fifth minor since December to die shortly after being detained in a government processing facility. Given the arduous journey many children take to get to the U.S. and the unsanitary conditions in Border Patrol centers, medical experts and immigrant rights advocates warn these deaths are likely to continue.

Update (June 5, 2019):  Border apprehensions are up--does this mean there is a crisis?

May was the third month in a row that border detentions topped 100,000, led by record-breaking levels of illegal crossings by Guatemalan and Honduran parents bringing children.

But does Fuckface know how to handle it?

[T]ariffs are supposed to force Mexico to interdict more people before the cross the border into America, but that’s only the latest desperate move from the White House. So far, all attempts to deter people from making the effort have had no effect.

Update (June 10, 2019):  Amanda Marcotte explains just how stupid Dear Leader is.

[His] assumption that illegal immigration from Mexico is a significant issue, which like most of his ideas was forged in the 1980s, is flatly false. In fact, there's been a dramatic decline both in undocumented immigrants and Mexicans illegally crossing the border. Instead, the pressing immigration issue right now is that large numbers of Central Americans are seeking political asylum in the U.S., as is their right under international law.

Predictably unwilling to admit he was wrong, [Fuckface] has been desperately trying to find a way to blame Mexico anyway. So he landed on this idea of holding Mexico responsible for Central American immigrants, employing the super-racist logic that Mexico, a Spanish-speaking country, has more responsibility to deal with Central Americans than the U.S. does. So, in one of his racist bro-downs with [Stephen] Miller, he came up with this idea of "punishing" Mexico for immigrants who aren't actually from Mexico.

Update (June 23, 2019):  While Chuck Todd professes shock at the use of the words "concentration camps" by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there seems to be no equivalent outrage over Dear Leader's (now delayed) plan to deport "millions" of immigrants. Cody Fenwick notes:

It’s not close to feasible that [Fuckface] will be able to achieve that scale of arrests, of course, but part of the purpose seems to be to terrify the immigrant population, so exaggeration is a feature, not a bug.

Update (July 1, 2019):  His publisher says Michael de Adder was not fired for this cartoon.

He should be ashamed of himself for being so rude!

Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas on Monday and posted a vulgar illustration depicting Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged in oral sex with a detained migrant.

Representative Judy Chu:

What we saw was appalling and disgusting.

Update (July 3, 2019):  A crisis of our own making.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General found "dangerous overcrowding," prolonged detention and health risks to migrants at multiple Border Patrol facilities in South Texas, according to a report the agency watchdog released Tuesday.

One official at a Border Patrol facility told investigators that the migrant crisis is a "ticking time bomb."

State Media

Deadspin created this video:

Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns more than 170 U.S. TV stations, has ordered local news anchors across the country to read a script decrying “some media outlets” for “false news” and “fake stories.”

“This is extremely dangerous to a democracy,” the script reads.

The editing is clever. Maybe it's just me, but one women seems to gesture in a way that says, "This right here, what we're doing now, is extremely dangerous to our democracy".

Dear Leader has no problem with it, but Dan Rather differs.

News anchors looking into camera and reading a script handed down by a corporate overlord, words meant to obscure the truth not elucidate it, isn't journalism. It's propaganda. It's Orwellian. A slippery slope to how despots wrest power, silence dissent, and oppress the masses.

A former Sinclair news director says employees signed multi-year contracts and were penalized for leaving their contract early.

Sinclair knows its strongest asset is the credibility of its local anchors. They’re trusted voices in their communities, and they have often been on the air for decades before Sinclair purchased their stations.

Sinclair forces those trusted local journalists to lend their credibility to shoddy reporting and commentary that, if it ran in other countries, we would rightly dismiss as state propaganda.

During my time with Sinclair, while on a conference call with other news directors, someone asked if we could ever run local commentary during newscasts. The answer was a firm “no.” The only opinions Sinclair allows on air are the opinions that come out of headquarters, because the company will not risk giving local audiences a dissenting view.

That “no” was telling. Being afraid of a variety of viewpoints is, in the words of Sinclair’s now-infamous “must-run,” extremely dangerous to a democracy.

Update (April 3):  Bloomberg has documentation on those Sinclair employee contracts.

According to copies of two employment contracts reviewed by Bloomberg, some Sinclair employees were subject to a liquidated damages clause for leaving before the term of their agreement was up: one that requires they pay as much as 40 percent of their annual compensation to the company.

Young Turks claims damages were paid whether an employee quit or was fired.

Update (April 4):  Another Sinclair employee speaks out.

That thing ran twice a day every day last week, and we got not one complaint about it. It wasn’t until Deadspin put this video together that everyone freaked out about it. It’s been brutal. We got about 60 emails ― hateful emails ― yesterday, dozens of phone calls, people yelling profanity at us. I have people yelling at me, saying I’m a zombie, that I’m soulless, that I’ve sold my integrity, which is not nice to hear. So yeah, it sucks.

If you want to make a difference, lobby your lawmakers to have them stop the Tribune deal from going through, because that is what is dangerous about this. It’s dangerous for any company to own as many stations as Sinclair does.

Update (April 14):  Sophia McClennen explains how Sinclair takes advantage of the fact more people trust their local news.

[T]he big story here is the way that Sinclair is setting itself up to control the political narrative in local TV markets.

A new study by Gregory J. Martin and Josh McCrain shows that stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.

Update (June 24):  Pam Vogel quotes Boris Epshteyn in another Sinclair "must run" commentary.

Many members of the media and opponents of the president have seized on [the zero tolerance] issue to make it seem as if those who are tough on immigration are somehow monsters. Let’s be honest: While some of the concern is real, a lot of it is politically driven by the liberals in politics and the media.

The Real World

In an interview with Lynn Parramore, Noam Chomsky points to papers by Thomas Ferguson, Paul Jorgensen,and Jie Chen. Their work used patterns of campaign contributions to gain an understanding of how money functions in politics.

[The idea of Russian influence is] very hard to take seriously for a number of reasons. One reason is the work of Thomas Ferguson and his colleagues [“How Money Won [von Clownstick] the White House”]. There really is manipulation of elections, but it’s not coming from the Russians. It’s coming from the people who buy the elections. Take his study of the 2016 election [“Industrial Structure and Party Competition in an Age of Hunger Games: [Fuckface von Clownstick] and the 2016 Presidential Election”]. That’s how you interfere with elections. Or the pretty spectacular study that he and his colleagues did about a year ago on Congress “How Money Drives US Congressional Elections,” where you just get a straight line [correlation between money and major party votes in Congress]. You rarely see results like that in the social sciences. That’s massive manipulation. Compared with that, what the Russians might be doing is minuscule. Quite aside from the fact that the U.S. does it all the time in other countries.

Chomsky continues to drive home his contention on the biggest threats we face.

Climate change and nuclear war. These are really existential threats. And what’s happening now is just astonishing. If media were functioning seriously, every day the lead headline would be this amazing fact—that in the entire world, every country is trying or committed to doing at least something. One country—one!—the most powerful country in history—is committed to trying to destroy the climate. Not just pulling out of the efforts of others, but maximizing the use of the most destructive means.

There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing.

Update (July 7):  Another interview with Chomsky in which he reiterates how big donors were the ones who really interfered in the 2016 election with massive last-minute contributions to Republicans.

Red and Blue

Barack Obama became famous for saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America". But the partisan divide has only hardened in the years since.

The latest World Happiness Report has America dropping four places to eighteenth.

Data suggest it’s no coincidence that relative unhappiness in the U.S. coincides with the election .... A June 2017 Gallup poll found that 25 percent of Americans listed the government as the most important problem facing the country, up from only 8 percent in October 2016.

Anand Giridharadas hopes that "Woke America" and "Great America" can somehow learn from each other.

Everyone is offended all the time, on both sides of the political divide. Taking offense is, in fact, one of the few things that brings us together. A Hollywood award show, a thermoplastic restroom sign, a visiting lecturer in a cardigan, a question about where one is from, a claim that black or blue or white or all lives matter — anything is fodder for the great American war of offense.

Woke America and Great America have lost the habit of genuinely arguing with each other. It takes a certain curiosity about, and hope for, other people to argue with them, and we seem to have fallen out of both those things.

There is a fine line between saying “this is why you’ll never understand me” and “here is what you’d see if you were me.” The intellectual underpinning is the same; the mission differs.

And Melanie McFarland points out how a handful of TV shows have tried to create dialog across this divide.

But Conor Lynch argues that a neoliberal consensus does broadly exist and that itself is a problem.

Though bipartisan politics is often hailed as responsible and respectable, there is nothing inherently good about compromise, especially when it ends up serving the economic elite and going against what the majority of Americans want, as is often the case in Washington today when Republicans and Democrats come together.

Lynch notes the widespread support for the economic agenda of Bernie Sanders and writes, "while the red-state/blue-state divide is real and deeply entrenched in American politics, the divide between economic elites and everyone else may be even more consequential in our populist age." Lynch reports that at a recent rally in Texas Sanders "rejected the hyper-partisan politics that have come to dominate our current era" and quotes him:

I've never believed in this blue-state, red-state nonsense. Yes, Lubbock voted overwhelmingly [Republican]. But any county in this country, which has people who are struggling, can and must become a progressive county.

Update:  A voter study finds that "[t]he number of voters who cast a ballot for Obama in 2012 and did not vote in 2016, or voted for a third-party candidate, outnumbered those Obama voters who pulled the lever for [the Republican]". They are generally non-white, younger, and lower income but not necessarily the most liberal.

Update (March 19):  Paul Rosenberg discusses the concept of "asymmetric polarization". He refers to the paper “Asymmetric Constitutional Hardball,” by Joseph Fishkin and David Pozen.

[K]ey conservative political actors — from the Federalist Society to the Koch brothers' network — have long been intensely focused on just this sort of political struggle. Progressives cannot be expected to win battles in which they do not even show up, or at best bring a yogurt spoon to a nuclear war. And well-meaning “good government” types repeatedly do more harm than good as they reinforce a situation of one-sided disarmament.

Update (March 26):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt discuss the future of U.S. democracy. Ziblatt:

The Republican Party is desperate. It fears that it is not going to be able to win elections, so bending and breaking rules to cheat their way into electoral victories becomes a preferred strategy. The rules that 30-plus state legislatures in the United States have adopted over the last decade have made it harder for people who are, by and large, lower-income nonwhite voters to register and to vote. That is deeply undemocratic. As long as the Republican Party is an overwhelmingly white and Christian party in a society as diverse as the United States, it is going to be prone to this kind of white-nationalist extremism. The Republicans must become a more diverse party.

Levitsky:

If in the fall of 2018 or in 2020 there is a shift to the Democrats, this, in principle, could prompt a reevaluation on the side of the Republicans to "refound" the party. Looking at cases around the world, in countries like Germany after World War II or Chile after Pinochet there have been efforts, after major catastrophes, for groups to reorganize themselves. It is difficult, but we don't really have any other options. It's probably naïve to think about going back to the norms that we had before. Probably we'll evolve in some forward direction, but it certainly did not have to be this sort of no-holds-barred partisan warfare that we've seen in the last couple of decades. If our democracy is going to remain even minimally healthy we need to develop a set of norms that allow our political parties to work through institutions.

It's very hard, really it's impossible, for me to think of a democracy in the world that survived an ethnic majority making a transition to minority status. There really has not been a successful experiment with multiethnic democracy in the world, and that's why the growing diversification of Western democracies is a real challenge. Looking at the reaction of the Republican Party over the last 10 or 20 years to these trends scares me a lot.

What gives me some room for optimism, and what makes me think that the United States has a shot to be the first successful multiethnic democracy, is that our democratic institutions are in fact quite strong. I think we did -- helped a lot by World War II -- a pretty decent job as a society of integrating immigrant groups that arrived in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was pretty nasty, it was hardly a model, but we did it. So as a society, we have much more experience with dealing with diversity and with integration than do other Western societies. That's how I put myself to sleep at night.

Update (April 1):  A Pew Research Center study finds a growing education attainment gap between Democrats and Republicans. And, an on-line survey finds that supporters share a number of traits with Dear Leader: selfishness, a desire for power over others, preoccupation with money, and a preference for social traditions.

Also, a paper by lead author Andrew Whitehead shows that "greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for" von Clownstick. Paul Rosenberg explains.

When push comes to shove, the more vicious the leader, the better. The moral restraints of the deeply pious are the last thing you want for the job. Hence, [Fuckface's] impious leadership makes perfect sense, once you realize what’s at stake. It’s a feature, not a bug. And evangelical voters, Whitehead argues, know it.

Update (April 2):  Elizabeth Mika in an interview with Chauncey DeVega.

Having no conscience, [von Clownstick] does not experience guilt or shame or remorse, so he can say whatever pleases him at the moment to get people to do whatever he wants or needs of them.

People fell for this because they want what he has to offer. Ultimately, [Fuckface] embodies values that people do not necessarily want to admit to.

Update (April 8):  In an interview with David Letterman, Jay Z had an interesting thought about the current administration.

I think it’s actually a great thing, and here's why.

What he’s forcing people to do is have a conversation ... and work together. Like, you can't really address something that’s not revealed.

He's bringing out an ugly side of America that we wanted to believe was gone .... And we still gotta deal with it. We have to have tough conversations. We have to talk about the N-word, and we have to talk about why white men are so privileged in this country.

Update (April 15):  Conor Lynch argues that populism needn't be a threat to democracy.

Over the past several years, it has become clear that young people are embracing political and economic alternatives to the status quo, but this hardly means they are rejecting democracy. Indeed, it would be more accurate to say that they are rejecting capitalism. ... [I]t seems likely that we are headed into a populist age. The task for the left, then, is to shape this populist age by offering a credible and convincing alternative to the defeated and ineffective neoliberal agenda.

Update (April 29):  Paul Rosenberg explains a state level legislative initiative called "Project Blitz".

The agenda underlying these bills is not merely about Christian nationalism, a term that describes an Old Testament-based worldview fusing Christian and American identities, and meant to sharpen the divide between those who belong to those groups and those who are excluded. It’s also ultimately "dominionist," meaning that it doubles down on the historically false notion of America as a “Christian nation” to insist that a particular sectarian view of God should control every aspect of life, through all manner of human institutions.

Update (May 6):  This is how far apart Americans are.

According to [an] NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 76 percent of Republicans believe [Dear Leader] tells the truth “most of the time.”

[But] 94 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners—and 76 percent of independents polled—[said] they believe [Fuckface] tells the truth “only some of the time or even less frequently.”

Update (May 12):  Conor Lynch discusses how "aggrieved entitlement" leads angry, young white men to reactionary politics.

Ultimately the same thing that has driven left-wing populism has driven this politics of reaction: a legitimate feeling of discontent with the status quo. There are plenty of valid reasons to be disillusioned with the modern world, of course, but this dissatisfaction can lead one to embrace either a reactionary politics that fetishizes the past, or a progressive politics that aims to create a better future.

Update (May 13):  When Sam Haselby says it's time to question American patriotism, I think he's referring to what is called nationalism in other countries.

The sacred status of American patriotism in the US indicates only an ideological strength, not moral or intellectual soundness.

Sarah Silverman made a distinction between "we're number one" versus "we are one".

Update (December 17):  Paul Rosenberg follows up on Project Blitz strategy and progressive efforts to fight back.

Against Reason?

In a review of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, Simon McCarthy-Jones argues that the dictates of reason can conflict with the need for autonomy.

For example, imagine there is a political candidate or option being widely portrayed as the obvious and perhaps only sane choice. Could this drive some voters to vote for the alternative (potentially even against their own rational self-interests) in order to feel they are choosing freely?

And Elizabeth Preza reports on a study that found fear to be a more effective factor in recent elections.

According to University of Austin psychology professor Sam Gosling—one of the study’s co-authors—of the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), "regions highest on neuroticism are particularly receptive to political campaigns that emphasize danger and loss and that previous campaigns have not tapped into these themes as strongly as we saw in 2016".

Chauncey DeVega makes the connection between that appeal to fear and a growing sense of unhappiness.

A public that is miserable and in pain will often withdraw from politics and communal life. As seen with Republicans' high levels of support among precisely those voters who are most likely to be hurt by their policies, political sadism can be used as a type of fuel for racism, prejudice and white supremacy. There the pain and anger of White America is directed at some enemy Other who is black or brown, an immigrant or a Muslim, instead of at the corporate elites and gangster capitalists who drive the Republican agenda.

Conor Lynch takes issue with how Pinker overlooks the problems stemming from the Enlightenment.

[I]n Pinker’s account, what he calls “progressophobia” is not just prevalent on the right, where reactionaries long for the “good old days” and reject modernity out of hand, but on the left, where pessimistic progressives constantly deny or ignore much of the progress of the 20th century.

Being ruthlessly critical of the modern world does not make one anti-modern, just as being critical of American foreign policy does not make one anti-American. Modernity is a mixed and often contradictory affair, and acknowledging that does not make one a pessimist, a postmodernist or a “progressophobe.” In fact, it is necessary for any true progressive.

DeVega agrees that quietism is not the same as optimism.

While they are often easy vulnerable prey for demagogues, a public that is in misery and pain is also one which can be mobilized for radical, forward-thinking social and political change that can reinvigorate our democracy.

Update (January 26, 2019):  Phil Torres is not kind to Steven Pinker's book.

Mined quotes, cherry-picked data, false dichotomies, misrepresented research, misleading statements and outright false assertions on nearly every page.

Update (October 20, 2019):  Torres is generally annoyed with white, male "intellectuals".

Pinker and his ilk don't acknowledge errors when they make them; they are ideologues rather than truth-seekers, willing to bend the facts, launch personal attacks and censor critics to "win" debates. At exactly the moment in history when we need true intellectual leadership, people who exemplify intellectual honesty and integrity, the most, we get stubborn tribespeople.

Income Inequality Still Growing

Alex Henderson notes that the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is going to make inequality worse in the U.S. and quotes Warren Buffett.

[T]he wealth of the 400 [richest people in America] increased 29-fold—from $93 billion to $2.7 trillion—while many millions of hardworking citizens remained stuck on an economic treadmill. During this period, the tsunami of wealth didn’t trickle down. It surged upward.

The U.S. compares unfavorably to Europe.

The 2018 World Inequality Report ... paints a troubling picture of the United States' wealth distribution. According to the study, the top 1 percent of wage earners went from owning 11 percent of the national income in 1980 to 20 percent in 2016. The bottom 50 percent's share of the national income dropped from 21 to 13 percent over the same time period. In Western Europe, the 1 percent's control of national incomes has risen from 10 to 12 percent, while the bottom 50 percent's share has held steady at 23 percent—undesirable, perhaps, but decidedly more equal.

Update (February 16, 2019):  How bad does it have to be if Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says income inequality is the country's biggest challenge? He notes that income growth for most people has decreased while "growth at the top has been very strong".

Strike

Amid the on-going teachers strike in West Virginia, now Oklahoma teachers are considering a strike over the failure to raise salaries.

Oklahoma is ranked 49th in the nation in teacher salaries, according to a 2016 study by the National Education Association. The average elementary school teacher makes $41,150, middle school teachers earn $42,380 and high school teachers make $42,460, according to a 2016 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The last time teachers were given a raise was 2008, the Oklahoma Education Association says. On top of that, the education budget has been cut by about 28% over the last 10 years.

Update:  Just today, the Governor of West Virginia signed a bill giving a 5 percent raise to teachers and state employees. The strike is over, but the state will pay for the raises with budget cuts in other areas.

Update (March 15):  More about the implications of the strike. Amy Traub:

Faced with jobs that don’t pay enough to make ends meet, health-care costs that break the budget, and public services exposed to countless rounds of cutbacks despite a growing economy, working people will push back.

Update (March 29):  Even though the Oklahoma Legislature passed the first tax increase since 1990, teachers there say it doesn't make up for ten years of neglect and plan to go on strike.

Update (March 30):  Oklahoma is on the verge and Kentucky has had some school closures.

Update (April 2):  Oklahoma is now on strike. And a rally in Kentucky.

Thousands of teachers and public workers from across Kentucky flocked to the state Capitol on Monday morning to protest potential budget cuts to public education and the passage, last week, of a controversial package of changes to the state’s public pension system that teachers had opposed.

Update (April 4):  Oklahoma Republicans aren't happy.

Update (April 8):  Arizona could be next.

Also, Dave Jamieson and Travis Waldron look at the history of teacher strikes.

There’s a short explanation for why these low-tax, GOP-controlled states are now facing rebellion: They have slashed public school funding significantly since the Great Recession, while also pursuing many tax cuts that have benefited businesses and the wealthy. The budget shortfalls that austerity has created have left no money to pump into schools or salaries, leading to teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and even four-day school weeks in Oklahoma. Teachers forced to take on second or third jobs have finally decided they’ve had enough.

But the longer explanation stretches back a full generation, to when teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky last walked off the job.

The work stoppages led to meaningful raises and investment at the time. But the promise they held eventually lost out to the anti-tax ideology of both legislators and voters.

Update (April 26):  Walkouts today in Arizona.

Update (May 11):  Nicole Braun notes that adjunct instructors don't necessarily get as much attention as striking public school teachers.

Update (May 16):  North Carolina teachers held a large protest.

Update (June 10):  Henry Giroux writes in support of striking teachers.

Under the current era of neoliberal fascism, education is especially dangerous when it does the bridging work between schools and the wider society, between the self and others, and allows students to translate private troubles into broader systemic considerations. Schools are dangerous because they exemplify Richard J. Bernstein’s idea in "The Abuse of Evil" that “democracy is ‘a way of life,’ an ethical ideal that demands active and constant attention. And if we fail to work at creating and re-creating democracy, there is no guarantee that it will survive.”

... 

Rejecting the idea that education is a commodity to be bought and sold, teachers and students across the country are reclaiming education as a public good and a human right, a protective space that should be free of violence and open to critical teaching and learning. Not only is it a place to think, engage in critical dialogue, encourage human potential and contribute to the vibrancy of a democratic polity, it is also a place in which the social flourishes, in that students and teachers learn to think and act together.

Update (January 14, 2019):  United Teachers Los Angeles rejected a contract offer last Friday and now over 30,000 union members are on strike for the first time in 30 years.

The union’s demand for reduced class sizes (some classes have more than 40 students) and more support staff are at the heart of the negotiations. The union also seeks a 6.5-percent raise, but union leaders say salary is only one piece of a puzzle. They also point to such shortfalls as elementary schools only having a school nurse one or two days a week, which the union says risks children’s safety.

Update (January 16, 2019):  Glenn Sacks reports on the Los Angeles teacher's strike.

One of the best things about the LA teacher revolt is the way it has helped wake the country up about the charter scam. Many articles in recent days have debunked the myth that charters are better and have detailed the way they’ve damaged traditional schools.

It was especially satisfying today at our massive rally outside the offices of the California Charter Schools Association’s offices downtown. The CCSA bought the LA School Board (in what was the most expensive school board election in US history) and the boardmembers they bankrolled installed Beutner as superintendent. Today the ladies and gentlemen of the CCSA no doubt looked out their office windows and realized that they’d been made.

Update (January 22, 2019):  The UTLA has reached an agreement that will end the strike after six school days.

Update (February 6, 2019):  Today marks 100 years since the Seattle General Strike. Steven Beda sees an important lesson even though the strike failed.

For today’s workers tired of decades of wage stagnation and fleeting benefits in the gig economy, the Seattle General Strike offers an important lesson about the power of organized laborers: When united, workers can take on the most powerful foes.

Update (February 11, 2019):  Denver teachers are on strike for the first time in 25 years.

Update (February 18, 2019):  West Virginia teachers announce another strike over charter schools.

Update (February 21, 2019):  With the charter school bill tabled, the West Virginia strike has ended. And now Oakland teachers are on strike.

Update (March 1, 2019):  The Oakland strike has ended with a significant raise and smaller classes.

Update (October 16, 2019):  Chicago teachers are going on strike.

Update (November 2, 2019):  The Chicago Teachers Union has reached a settlement.