Weekend Update (Updated): American Armageddon

The Maskless Sea of Whiteness

Sunday Update: But by Sunday there was a different tune.  An ABC poll showed Trump's favorability down a point and Biden's up a point after the RNC, though both within error margin.  So Trump did not get a bump there.  Further, CNN analysis says there haven't been new "horserace" polls it trusts but the trusted average, including some polls taken during the RNC, show the race essentially unchanged, with Biden ahead by 8 points and change.  Analysts emphasized that Trump needs a big bump, as elected incumbents seldom see the needle move after their convention.  As for Kenosha, the Biden people apparently want to see if Trump hurts himself by his visit there.  Late Sunday, the governor and attorney general of Wisconsin asked Trump not to go to Kenosha, because it would only incite more violence.  The White House said the trip was on.  Biden's speech tomorrow will be in southwestern PA, though the exact location wasn't announced. On Sunday he condemned Trump for inciting violence.
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Late Saturday Update: A couple of new polls show Biden ahead by 6 points instead of 10 or more (though he is at 50%), so it appears so far that Trump got a post-convention bounce.  Predictably, the coverage followed with positive stories about the R convention and campaign, and lots of fears about the election and the statistics suggesting Trump could be ahead on election night, before mail ballots are counted.  The White House announced that Trump would go to Kenosha on Tuesday, something that Biden has been urged to do.  Biden is making a speech on violence on Monday, but has not announced from where.  If he doesn't go to Kenosha, especially before Trump, it will be a loss to his campaign.

And add this to the illegal outrages of the R convention: convention organizers approached the legal representatives of Leonard Cohen's estate for permission to use his song, "Hallelujah."  Permission was denied.  Nevertheless, the RNC used it--twice.


If there was ever any doubt of the impeached apprentice dictator's intentions to become an actual dictator, they were dispelled in a series of shocks to the American system of government this year, and exhibited most openly and shamelessly in the guise of the Republican party convention this past week.

Let us please remember that Hitler was at first elected.

The pointed destruction of American norms of this past week may have functionally begun with Mrs. Trump's destruction of the Rose Garden.  As former Republican operative Steve Schmidt observed, she presided over the rooting out of every rose planted by every prior First Lady, and the cutting down of the cherry trees--all (according to Schmidt) to provide better camera angles for her approach to the Rose Garden for her convention speech, or, as reporter Howard Fineman tweeted, a "neo-Fascist parade ground."

The multiple events at the White House politicized those grounds as never before.  The use of public buildings (including Fort McHenry)--of a piece with Trump's similar use of the Lincoln Memorial, the Gettysburg battlefield and Mount Rushmore--claimed them as the property of one political party, but even more, of one man.

Participating in this illegal use of federal public property, as well as the officeholders like the Secretary of State who are forbidden by law to make the political speeches they made--all violate the Hatch Act.  When asked about this, the White House Chief of Staff said, "Nobody cares."  There is no more potent statement of dictatorship than that.

Another conspicuous symbol was the parading of the Trump faux royal family--comprised of as yet unindicted criminals who (should the Republic survive) will face investigations and charges for the rest of their lives. But then, the Republic can't be allowed to survive for just this reason.

Then there were the live addresses with audiences, especially Trump's one hour plus acceptance speech (in which nearly everything he said about Joe Biden was false), with 1500 to 2000 people crowded together maskless, in what Peter Nicholas in the Atlantic called a "White House petri dish."  Joy Reid is right when she calls the AlwaysTrumpers a death cult.

Meanwhile, Covid infected at least four participants in the Charlotte part of the convention, and the virus has decimated the Secret Service.

Like most dictatorships, this one is hopelessly corrupt.  It was previously reported that the Washington Trump hotel doubled and tripled its room rates for convention week.  The Washington Post discovered that the federal government itself has paid some $900,000 to the Trump Organization, just for costs associated with the Secret Service protection details.

What else do dictatorships do?  Oh yeah, they "collect dossiers" on reporters who report on this corruption, as the Trump government actually announced it was doing on the Washington Post reporters who wrote that story.

The convention program was a series of lies and deceptions.  Even the set pieces were dishonest--the participants in the naturalization ceremony were not told they were being shown as part of the convention, nor were four public housing tenants interviews, which moreover were shot by a Trump-appointed government official on government time for a party convention, another illegal act.

A number of speakers tried to portray Trump as a caring person (also a dictatorship favorite) while Miles Taylor, "the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Daily Beast that President Trump imagined “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants coming across the border, rip families apart, “maim,” and even gas them. Said Taylor: “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever."

The RNC planners got something they probably wanted out of the real world, when another police shooting of a black man in the back led to demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  The major violence there was perpetrated by a young white police supporter illegally and openly carrying a semiautomatic weapon, who killed two demonstrators and wounded others.  He has since became a darling of the AlwaysTrumpers extremists (including the so-called Christian right) and white supremacists: a moment that writer Joshua Shanes calls "American fascism reaches a tipping point."

Early numbers don't suggest the RNC was particularly effective.  Network television ratings were lower than for the DNC, and Biden's speech was watched by more network viewers than Trump's. Tracking polls taken at least partly during the convention showed Biden maintained his double digit lead, and one online poll (not considered the most reliable form) showed Trump's favorability actually went down slightly (though up among some minorities.)

I've learned the hard way never to underestimate the hoodwinkability of the American public, so we await more polls and analysis of them to suggest if many minds were changed by the RNC unreality show.

But now that both conventions are over, we can be awed by the picture that emerges. The cartoon-like extremes of our politics suggest how extreme the choice is in this election.

 Both conventions called this election the most important in American history, and for once this is not hyperbole in that the very existence of the American form of government is on the ballot.  It's one things for Democrats--even the scrupulously honest and most respected like Barack and Michelle Obama--to say this.  It's more haunting that so many Republicans, including former officials of the Trump administration, former staffers for previous Republican presidents and presidential candidates, also say the same thing: that reelecting Trump will be the end of American democracy.

Trump has already caused the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands, and the economic and psychological trauma of millions. The signs that White gun violence will be part of this election are out there, especially as the Black Lives Matters movement continues.   This is an election right out of the Old Testament: it is the American Armageddon, to be played out between now and January 20, 2021.

March on Washington 2020

The March on Washington 2020--held on the 57th anniversary of the historic 1963--had different emphases.  In 1963, it was a march "for jobs and freedom" in the Civil Rights era.  As such, it was for voting rights.  In 2020, it was against rampant and open police violence against Black people, and promoted the exercise of those voting rights in the 2020 election.  And of course, the most conspicuous difference--the social distancing and the masks of the covid crisis.

But this march was also conscious of its predecessor, right down to the design of the some of the signs (like the one above) which is the same design as signs in the 1963 march.  Mostly this continuity was expressed by young people who consciously see themselves as heirs to the struggle.  That includes one of its very impressive speakers, Ayanna Pressley, Representative from Massachusetts, but even younger activists and supporters.

I was 17 when I marched in the 1963 March on Washington.  If someone asked me today if I'd ever had a religious experience, that day would be the first candidate that comes to mind.  It gladdens me to see a new generation both taking on these responsibilities and maintaining this connection.

Poetry Thursday Extra: A Modern Ecstacy

Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself! It cannot
Be call'd our mother, but our grave. Where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air,
Are made, not mark'd; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy.

William Shakespeare
Macbeth

Lines uttered by the Thane of Ross, which means I said them on stage in our college production in 1966.  Posted in honor of the Republican National Convention.

Poetry Monday: A Walk

A Walk

My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has its inner light, even from a distance--

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

--Rainer Marie Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

Weekend Update: Covid Goes To College and Big Talk Leads to No Relief

We can open colleges safely and defeat Covid by executive order!

One of a number of stories over the weekend with similar facts and conclusions concerning the covid crisis and colleges--this one a lead story for The Hill--begins:

"Colleges and universities are already shifting from in-person instruction to online classes after hundreds of students on campuses across the country tested positive for COVID-19, throwing cold water on hopes for the fall semester.

In the past week, big-name schools such as Notre Dame, Michigan State and University of North Carolina have moved classes online after briefly resuming in-person instruction, and other universities are likely to do the same in the coming weeks as the explosion of cases continues.

Clusters have also been identified at other universities that remain open, threatening to spill over into the college towns and cities across America. But as cases continue to rise in these communities, experts warn that in-person instruction at universities will most likely prove infeasible in the middle of a pandemic.

College-aged students and young adults are the main demographic currently spreading the disease, according to recent data. This fact puts the student population, faculty, staff and the communities they reside in at risk."

"This crisis was not only predictable; it was predicted," notes another article in The Atlantic. "And yet even now, many other public universities across the country appear to be holding to the same plans, praying that the plague of COVID-19 will pass them over."

This article analyzes the reasons, mostly financial, why state universities are insisting on opening despite the health consequences.  It spreads the blame--government and voters as well as business-oriented administrators--with remedies too late for the covid crisis.

One of the places where this outcome was predicted (besides here) was an Inside Higher Ed article in July titled: Flimflam: Colleges in 2020.

When the Trump administration scuttled talks with Congressional leaders to relieve financial and health burdens in another pandemic rescue package, the apprentice dictator made a big show of taking care of it all with executive actions, trusting that the results won't be publicized to the same extent.

But there's been at least one follow-up, if only in a tweet republished by New York Magazine, and as usual, the big talk has led nowhere:

Two weeks after Trump's executive actions, only one state is paying new jobless benefits, few evictions have been paused, and leading employers have made clear workers will not benefit from the payroll tax deferral.

There were a few first statistical outcomes of the Democratic Unconventional: according to the Biden campaign (via CNN):  they estimate that 122 million people watched the Unconventional live (85.1 m on TV, 35.5 m. livestream.)  The campaign took in some $70 million during the course of it.

The first polls show Joe Biden maintaining his double digit lead while increasing his favorability rating, up between 5 and 10 points, putting him over 50% in that category, and in the latest CBS poll, over 50% in votes.