Heil Fire

 Let's just say what every MAGA minion knows and applauds: General Charles Brown, Jr. was fired as chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because he is black, just as Admiral Lisa Franchetti was fired as Chief of Naval Operations because she is a woman, just as Admiral Linda Fagan was previously fired as head of the Coast Guard because she is a woman.

These firings begin to create the opportunity that every dictator needs--refashioning the military to be only and absolutely loyal to the dictator. But whatever contributing factors are involved, these specific firings are about judging people on the basis of their race and gender.  

It is obviously not about competence, especially since the people making the decisions are without it.  All of these officers had long and varied experience, and long and distinguished records.  Like many of the changes being made, the appointment of the named replacement as chair of the Joint Chiefs is on its face illegal.

The current Chaos administration seems guided by some familiar principles: racism, imperialism and crony capitalism.  Its methods include lies (both Big and little), absolute loyalty, bullying, arrogance and inducing chaos.

A familiar pattern, though it is ahistorical in this sense: this was a country at peace, a country that was measurably prosperous, and a country that was working pretty well, with problems of a scale that democratic processes should be able to address.  In other words, unlike the onset of most tyrannical dictatorships, there was no extreme crisis that precipitated the kind of extreme changes that are still being implemented. 

The plans to do all this were open to public knowledge.  I knew them, Kamala Harris talked about them (though apparently not enough.)  There may be a certain amount of buyers' remorse out there now, and we are all in shock, but nobody should be surprised.  Project 2025 published their plans.  These people made speeches.  

Things weren't perfect but there were just two people running, and one of them was always going to do this, and--despite some general denials--pretty much said so.  Only ignorance--much of it willful ignorance-- led to the apparent results of the 2024 presidential election, and likely its influence on other elections, particularly for the Senate.  Ignorance, and a background of unacknowledged fear and denial.

King Chaos

This was the Time cover in January 2021,
an artist's acid rendition of the chaos
Homegrown Hitler left behind. This
December 2024, Time named him
Man of the Year.

After the election there was talk of a Resistance but what we've seen so far is the opposite.   Late in the campaign  Jeff Bezos was accused of "anticipatory obedience" in caving in to Chaos by dumping the Washington Post's planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.  It's the historical lesson that wannabe dictators consolidate power when people not only fail to resist but rush their compliance without being asked, let alone forced.

Now even some of the people who warned of anticipatory obedience are openly engaging in it.  More than that, they are among those fawning all over him.

  Billionaires like Bezos and Zuckerberg were first in line, the owner of the LA Times quashed another editorial criticizing Chaotic cabinet choices, and of course Elon is relishing his power over the federal money that supports his ventures (he just wants to deny that money to anyone else, not only the aforementioned Bezos and Zuckerberg, but the poor, the sick and the old.  Just about everyone. And he sure doesn't want to pay any of the tax money he's eager to spend.)  Elon himself has made over 90 billion dollars since the election, without lifting a finger.  That's billions with a B.  Update: Make that 200 billion new dollars.  My apologies for shortchanging him.

CEOs including Tim Cook of Apple are lining up behind them to genuflect, as banks and billionaires produce millions in donations for the inaugural party.  They're apparently hoping to be part of an oligarchy, with or without a dictatorship.

 Meanwhile in Washington, instead of making Chaos fire them, FBI director Wray and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith are quitting. The federal cases have already gone away, the 34 felonies are to be swept under the rug in New York, and ABC has settled a Chaos suit against them, blowing off the First Amendment.

And on the day that Wall Street invited him to do their ceremonial opening or closing or whatever it was, Time Magazine named him Man of the Year.  It's his second stint with that designation, which equals the number of times he was impeached.

And where is the Resistance?  Whose voice is raised in opposition?  None other than Mitch McConnell, the embodiment of evil who helped enable the rise of Chaos, no longer leading the Senate but still in it, loudly opposing Chaos foreign policy (namely the surrender of Ukraine to Russia and the dismantling of NATO) and the Chaotic proposal (for Chaos now includes not only the man but those he empowers) to deny approval to polio vaccines.  

So what's the problem?  Well, let's start with hypocrisy.  Either people really believed that Chaos is an unparalleled danger to democracy, to the American people and to the future, or they didn't, and don't.  And it's not that Chaos is repudiating much from his campaign.  He's still bent on mass deportations, tariffs that will spike inflation, taking an ax to health care, Medicare and Social Security; he's said again that he believes everyone on the commission that investigated the invasion of the U.S. Capitol and his role in it should be jailed, and that's a message that his attorney-general is not going to miss.  He's already started the lawsuits against opponents, his congressional puppets are smelling investigations of Liz Cheney.

He's busy appointing far right ideologies and incompetents to wreak havoc on every function of the federal government that materially affect every last person in the United States, not to mention a drunk to run the Pentagon--what could go wrong there? And a history of at least allegations of sex offenses appears to be a qualification.

So apart from hypocrisy--not exactly unknown in politics--what's the problem?  Isn't it fair to just wait and see?  Well, we're going to.  But in larger terms, this all goes beyond normalization towards valorization, and only increases the power of Chaos.  He doesn't have to wait to be inaugurated President--he's fawned over like a king.

And therefore that power eases the possibilities of the next steps.  If Chaos actually aspires to dictatorship that goes beyond four little years, those steps include empowering armed supporters and taking control of the military. 

Take his FBI appointment for a start. Appointing someone whose chief qualification is his loyalty to Chaos already corrupts justice. Doubtless attention will focus on the use of the FBI and Justice Departments to go after the enemies of Chaos.  But there's something else: appointing someone who says he wants to cripple the FBI may well have the function of releasing the right wing militias, the armed hate groups and white supremacists from the efforts of the FBI to restrain them.  I wouldn't be surprised to see them marching at the Inauguration.  Given enough encouragement, they are the natural candidates to become the equivalent of Hitler's brownshirts.  And of course there are those insurrectionists who will be pardoned out of jail.

But control of the military is the most important, and Chaotic supporters are out to rid the Pentagon of anyone who might oppose them.  A purge may be in the offing.  It will be worth watching out for--because it's the Chaos style to say a lot of outrageous things and do a lot at once, misdirection by publicity and exhausted attention.  

That's the dictatorship playbook: neutralize opposition (or just watch the opposition neutralize itself), create chaos, get control of the engines of force, which includes the law and power over lives that depend on Social Security, Obamacare, and the work of a thousand agencies, but definitely includes stacking Justice, the FBI, IRS and other punitive agencies, and the military with far right ideologies and just plain lackeys.

Chaos may be too chaotic to pull this off, but this anticipatory coronation isn't going to help stop it. It only makes it more possible.  

People who have to deal with him have to deal with him, but symbolic resistance is necessary at this point to encourage the real kind when chaos really gets started.  Democrats, including the President and Vice-President, staying away from the Inauguration would say something big.  Some congressional Democrats are reportedly already organizing such a boycott.

And it's not like Chaos has any respect for norms. Does anyone remember how Homegrown Hitler treated President-elect Biden?  He did not invite him to the White House, he subverted the transition and he did not attend Biden's Inauguration.

 President Biden may want to show that he's a better man, and of course he is.  But let's not continue normalizing Chaos. For one thing, any Democrats (should they be invited) who attends the inauguration of Chaos are doing just that.  This is the time to stop normalizing.  This is not normal.

Thanksgiving 2024

 The Thanksgiving dinner I'm thinking of this particular year is the one in the 2021 movie Don't Look Up.  Leonardo DiCaprio plays a midwestern university astronomer whose graduate student (Jennifer Lawrence) discovered a new comet. When he realizes the comet is on a collision course with Earth, and its impact would kill most life on the planet, he tries to warn everyone. 

It's a serious subject, a kind of updated remake of the 1951 movie When World's Collide, but it's also a political satire very much akin to Dr. Strangelove.  The President (played by Meryl Streep) is a female Trump, and in an suddenly more accurate addition, her right hand man is the tech billionaire (Mark Rylance) modelled mostly on Elon Musk.  

The astronomers try to persuade the authorities to take the extinction threat of the comet seriously.  At first they don't (nor does the news media) but when they need a political distraction, they pretend to address it--until the tech billionaire convinces the president that he has a way to divert the comet and still exploit its mineral riches.  (Spoiler: he doesn't.) Eventually the President makes ignoring the comet into a political fetish. She whips up her adoring rally crowd, adorned in a baseball cap with her motto, "Don't Look Up."  It's already visible but if you don't look up to see it, the comet won't be there. It won't be real.  Instead, look down and check your Black Friday deals.

One analogue to the comet is the Covid pandemic, but mostly it's climate distortion. Climate distortion is the comet that will destroy civilization and life as we know it on Earth.

Eventually the comet crashes into Earth, but by that time the president and her billionaire have left the building, though their prospects on a distant planet appear dubious.  Still, the point is made: the super rich and the ideologues who serve them, fuck things up and let everyone else suffer the consequences.  As usual.

The dinner is at the astronomer's middle class home. It may not actually be Thanksgiving Day, but it seems like that kind of meal.  Gathered around the table are his family, and the strays that became a family in trying to save the Earth.  They've finished the meal, and are praising the quality of the coffee, when the DiCaprio character looks around and says, "We really did have everything, didn't we?"  And the next moment the table shakes and the walls implode.

In comparison, our apocalypse is in slower motion, but it is underway.  Due in part to the short time left, when squandering four years could be fatal, the chances of doing much about climate distortion as a society, as a global community, have just about disappeared. That's thanks to the results of a corrupted election, bent by illegal foreign interference by Putin and others, and Musk's money and power over a major information medium, and perhaps a lot more than that. 

With a Harris presidency we had a chance of a useful approach to the inexorable effects of climate disruption, and prospects for humanity in the farther future.  For one thing, Kamala Harris as v.p. is the only official I've ever heard speak of the crisis in terms of causes and effects. She knows her stuff. She had the potential of finally articulating the known dimensions and the tasks ahead.  

 We don't know for sure but it's likely that we are almost out of time to do much even about the far future.  We still had a chance to get ahead of the effects in the nearer future--and the present we're ignoring by not looking up--instead of trying to only deal with each disaster as it occurs. Those effects are certainly coming.  But on the federal level and in many states, addressing and anticipating those effects isn't likely to happen either.

It seemed that this slow- motion apocalypse presented opportunities to address its effects and its causes.  But the fact that it was a slow-motion apocalypse also made it easier for some people to ignore what is really happening.  Now the institutions that we would depend on to clarify what needs to be done, and to organize our resilience, are going to be bled dry if not completely destroyed.  The stability and strength necessary to deal with the international problems that are already happening--such as the pressures of climate migration--may be willfully and needlessly destroyed.  What would have been chaotic may now become chaos.

For the past 40 years or so, each Republican administration that screwed the economy and weakened government's ability to meet needs of the people was followed by a Democratic administration that spent 4 to 8 years undoing as much of the damage as it could.  But that's going to be much harder this time, even if the growing electoral college disadvantage (and the Supreme Court) can be overcome.  

Because--enter Chaos, formerly known around here as Homegrown Hitler, and more generally as the Orange One.  The extent of the destruction his administration is already planning for the federal government would take a long time to restore, and might never be undone.  The place of America in the world-- economically and politically (as a great power, but also a beacon to the world for its stability and the rule of law)--may be ended.  We'll be lucky if in four years America is not a client state of Russia. 

The last time Homegrown Hitler was elected, some had the excuse of not knowing what he would do.  This time everybody who cared to listen knew what he planned to do. Severe damage to this country and to many other countries in the world will be self-inflicted, and hard to forgive or forget. America might never live down the humiliation of electing a wannabe dictator and what amounts to a criminal organization to run the country.  A lot of other things this country has never experienced suddenly could be possible, like a dictatorship, and then even a military coup or a revolution.

Apparently there were enough voters in the swing states to elect a criminal, a sexual predator and de facto rapist and de facto traitor, who is appointing a government led by other criminals, sexual predators, de facto rapists and de facto traitors--a group notable for truly alarming ignorance as well as suicidal ideology.  Those voters effectively voted against democracy, and as Margaret Atwood said, now we'll see how they like it.

So good luck to those voters in Georgia and North Carolina the next time there's a hurricane and they sit in the rubble of their homes for months before they see a FEMA representative throw them a roll of paper towels. Good luck to them in Arizona and Nevada when they can't get fresh fruit and vegetables from Mexico. Good luck to them in Wisconsin and Michigan if the inevitable next pandemic hits soon and the federal government does not permit a vaccine. Good luck to them in Pennsylvania and all the swing states when prices go up, and then unemployment, and the economy hits the danger zone again, with no one in power with the sense to do anything but make it worse.  And therefore, good luck to us all.

 And good luck to those voters in PA and Ohio when they feel the effects of losing seniority and savvy in the Senate, and in Montana they watch a senator who knows nothing about their state and cares less, or in Texas they endure another six years of a coward co-conspirator in insurrection, interested only in his own power and comfort.

Good luck to the small dying cities revived by immigrants who see their lifeblood drained, and to an America that thinks highly of itself as good and humane, as families are torn apart and more women die for lack of medical care that is standing there, too afraid to act.  Good luck to an America that thinks itself peaceful and well-ordered by law and not racist at all when the high tech hobnail boots come to their towns and cities and drag people from their homes.  Then we'll see how well this philosophy serves them: don't look up. Don't look at reality.  Keep your eyes on your lying phones.  

Taken all together, it's hard not to conclude that the apocalypse timetable has been sped up.  It may turn out to be more like collision with a comet that it seemed it would just a month ago.

So this Thanksgiving we can savor what we have now, and what we've had.  Probably no generations since the Pleistocene had it better, especially materially, than those who lived in America after World War II until now.  Despite a rough ride through those decades, we really did have everything.  

Happy Thanksgiving.

Been Here Before, Sort Of (Ending with a Joke)

 

In a personal sense, obviously I've been here before.  An incomprehensible election result, anticipation of at least four years of consternation and despair.  

This one of course is incomprehensible on steroids, as are the likely consequences. (And what suggests itself as comprehensible is almost too ugly to contemplate.) 

But the consequences are yet to come, and the task now is to tamp down the adrenal panic, and proceed prudently.  Part of the panic is not knowing how to protect ourselves.  There doesn't seem to be much we can do, especially at our age.  Flight means different sets of difficulties, for few places on Earth are going to be untouched.  We're vulnerable, but so are many, many others, including those far more vulnerable than we.

So now it's just occupying ourselves, attending to the moment at home while at same time living for awhile in other worlds in books etc.  When I've been out this week--walking, at the nearest grocery, a hike up Trinidad Head--people have been unfailingly gentle, polite and kind.  It may be the last calm before the onslaught of storms, and since we suspect it is, it has a sense of unreality that goes with life going on as before.

There are maybe two things different about it this time.  The first is about the country and therefore the world, which is that this is a more thorough catastrophe.  Maybe the nation will be so fucked up that in four years the Democrats take power again, but...they'll have to reinvent themselves first.  Everything about politics and elections--political operatives and campaign theorists, pollsters and media--are all utterly discredited.  That's even just assuming that what just happened is political in that sense.  It feels more societal, and that doesn't bode well for change.  In fact, given the pressures on our system that nature will provide, as well as wily dictators, it bodes well for chaos.  From what little news I've allowed myself to see, that's already begun.  But it may take some time to reach critical mass.

The second, since I'm taking a personal perspective here, is age.  The aging life is likely to make its own demands on my time and attention, forcing its priorities.  What's going on in the outside world probably won't help, may materially hurt, but eventually it all becomes part of the same thing: living in time.

So if I'm fortunate I can find the inner and outer resources to complete the work I want to do, the final acts of witness to the world I've experienced, a world now almost totally gone.  And live partly in those alternate worlds of story, of memory, of my remaining capabilities. 

But for now it's one day at a time.  Or one hour, as I deal with sleep and other physical issues, the day is seldom predictable.  I'm also finding that shorting out the anxiety during the day seems to simply move it to when I'm asleep.  I can feel it strongly then, making sleep lighter and more broken at best.

 As I cast about for things to occupy me away from all this, I was provided with the sight of a book on a shelf I didn't remember putting there, in plain sight of where I walk by several times a day.  It was an account of Paul Newman directing a film version of The Glass Menagerie in the early 1980s.  I'd not read it before.  And also, when looking for something  I didn't find, I saw that I had a film version of this play on VHS I'd never watched, a library discard.  It's the same Paul Newman directed film.  So I'm now reading the book, and then I'll watch the film.

Margaret suggested I also look at film comedies I have that I like (and mostly that she doesn't); the Marx Brothers and so on.  So far I've reveled in some Rocky and Bullwinkle (the administration of Whatsamatta University is meeting because the school is going broke.  "Why don't we give Daddy Warbucks an honorary degree?"  "Daddy Warbucks is a fictional character," the president scoffs.  The guy who suggested it looks stricken.  "You mean we're real?")

I've also got DVDs of a great unheralded Italian comedy, "Big Deal on Madonna Street," and a package of 1980s comedies including "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun."  And the Marx Brothers, of course.

Margaret also learned a joke going around now, likely in European circles:

Q. What borders on Stupidity?

A. Canada and Mexico.

Kamala's Call

2025

 “Beings are owners of their actions, heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, have their actions as their refuge.”

Majjima Nikaya, 

Buddhist teaching

There is nothing about this election I understand, except its very dire consequences.  

I guess I'm not alone in this.  Half the country seems to be having a nervous breakdown today.

For me, I realize that this hasn't been the world I've known for some time, but now it is a truly alien country.

America is in disgrace today.  Our system has failed, beginning with the judiciary, that sent hundreds to jail for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, but failed to bring its leader to justice.  The result is we have a man who was impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors, who is guilty of 34 felonies and charged with what amounts  to multiple treasonous acts, handed fateful power again.  Now everyone is endangered (except perhaps a few billionaires), including the selfish saps who voted for Chaos.

2025 was always shaping up to be a fateful year.  For the international effort to address the climate crisis through the Paris Agreements, 2025 is a benchmark year. Several targets for that year are almost certainly going to be missed.  Needless to say, the new US government will officially not care. Meanwhile the emission of the main greenhouse gases reached record levels in 2023, after one of the highest one year increases from 2022 despite international commitments to lower emissions.

In all the campaign fuss, a few relevant news items were obscured, such as the latest UN climate conference which called for "no more hot air" instead of action, and a "quantum leap in ambition" if the goals of limiting greenhouse gases sufficiently is to be attained.

 And the story that half a million people around the world were killed since 2004 in natural disasters made worse by climate distortion--more deaths than caused by wars, terrorism and malnutrition combined.  The predicted expansion of formerly tropical diseases has also begun, with outbreaks of malaria, cholera and dengue in new regions.

Now of course we've elected to have multiple other very dangerous crises and soon.  Perhaps even before the US commits economic suicide with global consequences, we've learned that Russia is enlisting North Korean troops to fight Ukraine, coupled with the kowtowing to Putin by Musk and of course Chaos himself, threatening Ukraine's existence, the western alliance and eventually the sovereignty of the United States.

I could go on but who's listening? I haven't slept since Monday night.  Every time I started to fall asleep, another terrible consequence would attack me.

 On November 6 the sun came up on the beginning of a very different world, for everyone.  And really really really, not in a good way. 

Numbers V. The Vibe

 The day has come.  My impression of it as the voting begins is the stark difference between the so-called numbers and the vibe.

The numbers people, the data people, parse what they continue to call an extremely close race.  Ace NYT numbers guy Nate Cohn worries aloud that the polls may underestimate Chaos again, and ace NYT numbers guy Nate Silver sees the Chaos shadow everywhere.  No momentum for Kamala, a dour razor thin election.

But out there on the campaign trail for the past week or more the contrast has been almost mythic.  The Harris campaign is exuberant, expansive, joyful.  She sounds like a winning candidate talking to the electorate that will soon be her constituency.  Chaos sounded broken, dazed and depressed.  She sounds like a winner.  He sounded like a loser.

 The Harris campaign, fusing Democrats, Republicans and the unaffiliated, is unified.  The federal and state Republican organizations are detached, the Chaos campaign itself is riven with public infighting.  

The momentum has been visible, palpable. Kamala Harris drew ever-increasing crowds.  Huge crowds everywhere--20,000 was not unusual.  75,000 in Washington.  The sprawling crowd for her last event in Philadelphia may have been upwards of 30,000.  The last Chaos rallies showed empty seats, people leaving.  

The numbers people say it's a tossup.  The vibe says that America is finally done with him.

To be sure, there's plenty of good news in the numbers for Harris.  The final Marist poll puts her national numbers at 51% to Chaos 47%, which has been the number that has sounded right to me this week. (Reading between the lines, I think the Harris campaign is figuring on a 50/48% split.)  The NYT & some other big polls are tied nationally, and the swing states very close.  But even in the NYT poll, Harris is ahead in more of those states.  The same in other polls, though it's not always the same states.  Then there's that surprising Iowa poll with Harris ahead there, which may suggest layers and movement that other polls aren't picking up. 

And there are the other numbers: the number of Harris staff and volunteers, the number of calls they're making and doors they're knocking on, vs. the conspicuous absence of Chaos workers.  A superior get out the vote effort is worth at least half a percentage point, they say.  Once again, these numbers suggest the vibe--the enthusiasm that is motivating, that could create the bandwagon effect of an obviously winning campaign.

And it seems that nobody but maybe Nate Siler and Nate Cohn believe Chaos will win.  Observers as different as Michael Moore and Bill Kristol not only foresee a Harris victory, but one that will be clear by midnight tonight, though a lot of votes will likely still be uncounted.

What to expect?  The first crucial results will probably be Georgia and North Carolina, either or both of which are expected to have definitive results by say 9 or 10 p. EST.  If Harris wins one, the most direct path to victory for Chaos has been severed, and it's time to put the champagne in the fridge.  If she wins them both, then something big is happening. 

Michigan and Wisconsin may also report enough votes by say 11 p. to show the shape of votes to come.  If she wins those as well as Georgia and North Carolina, it's time to to pop the cork.  If she has won one, then it may take awhile for her to officially get the two votes she needs.

If results are mixed, then the wait for Pennsylvania returns, which could be late Wednesday or Thursday.  Nevada and Arizona could take a week or even two to complete their count.  Any or all of them could be projected by the networks before the night is out. But if margins are truly razor thin, the suspense will continue past the weekend.  

But the vibe says no.  It says that women--including a healthy minority of Republican women, a plurality of unaffiliated women, have not forgotten the abortion bans.  It says that young voters are excited, Black and Latino voters are motivated, older voters are disgusted with and alarmed by Chaos, so they will turn out to vote for Harris.   It says that many former Chaos voters may be like Chaos campaign staffers who would be glad if he just goes away. They may stay home. At his last events, it was clear that if Chaos was trying to appeal to anyone, it was right wing conspiracy fringe.

The vibe says Texas and Florida may not be out of reach.  And yes, Iowa.  It says that the Dems may squeak out a Senate and House majority.  

Even some of the numbers people suggest that the polls aren't picking up late registrants, their models might not work anymore anyway,  and in an election with a coalition of Ds and Rs (and a Generation Z that prefers to register unaffiliated), how people will actually vote based on registration is even more unpredictable than usual.  The vibe says that even if the numbers are even, there are enough ways to "overperform" them to win.

The vibes were all on display on Monday night. They say President Harris.

If you haven't voted, vote.  Be grateful you experienced the Harris campaign.   Soon we learn our fate. Let's hope the vibes are right.  Because what's at stake is the future.  Possibly all of it.   

Harrison Ford Adds His Voice

one of the two campaign ads Harrison Ford made for Kamala Harris.  It's how he says it, right?

Freedom 2024

 On Friday October 25, Kamala Harris held an impassioned rally in Houston that focused entirely on the issues involving reproductive rights.  The next night, in Kalamazoo, Michigan (temporarily renamed Kamalazoo), Michelle Obama spoke for 40 minutes before Harris, also focusing on women's health issues.  These were powerful events, on an issue that thanks to what's happened as a result of the Chaotic supreme court decision erasing the rights affirmed in the Roe v. Wade case decades before, has assumed great importance. 

If Chaos was not threatening to trash the Constitution and fully become Homemade Hitler, it would easily qualify as the issue of paramount importance.  Even with this, it's right up there.  Because it is about so much more than a woman's right to choose.  It's about a woman's right to live.

This was revealed earlier in the campaign with the report confirming that two women had died in Georgia because they were not given medical care by doctors terrified of arrest and incarceration under one set of the extreme laws passed by a number of states that criminalize medical care.  It was further emphasized in the days following these speeches with the confirmation of a similar--and similarly heartbreaking--case in Texas in which an otherwise health young woman in distress was left by doctors to suffer and die.  This woman did not enter the hospital to have an abortion; she was there to give birth.  But there were tragic complications that required procedures that had essentially been outlawed.

That this is happening in America should shock every American, and every American should demand that these cruel laws be abolished.  Reproductive rights for all women is at the center of this, but because of these laws, the danger goes far beyond restricting abortion.  Women who get pregnant with the intention of bearing the child can suffer from miscarriages.  That is tragic enough, but add to it the denial of care that has been routinely offered for as long as it has existed, because of these laws.  It has led to young women bleeding to death, alone and afraid.

Michelle Obama was eloquent also on the ripple effects of the Chaos abortion bans.  They are driving women's health facilities out of business, and so denying routine care to millions of women, including preventive care and early diagnosis of cancers and other life-threatening ailments.  They are discouraging doctors from specializing in women's care, and medical students from learning it.  

As both women emphasized, this is an issue not just for women but for men who have women in their lives--including their mothers and sisters and daughters.  It is in fact a human rights issue.  This is an abrogation of human dignity in America that is morally on the level of slavery.

The solution is the return of reproductive rights as guaranteed under the Roe decision, but this time written into federal law so that no corrupt court or repulsive legislature can deny them.  That can be accomplished by electing Kamala Harris to the presidency, and Democrats to both houses of Congress. 

  Among the avalanche of revealing statements that Chaos is making in the last week or so of this campaign was his assertion that he would be the protector of women "whether the women like it or not."  Spoken like a true sexual predator and supreme misogynist.  There are signs that this issue as well as others are driving women to the polls in record numbers.  That includes Republican women and the many primarily younger women who register to vote as unaffiliated to any party.  There are so many issues of such great importance that this one has slipped to the background in media coverage and analysis.  On November 5, that may really change, big time.  

Haunted by 2016

As we careen closer to Halloween and a fateful election day, I'm not the only one who is haunted by the specter of 2016. 

 I have the advantage--if you can call it that--of this blog, which was very active during the 2016 campaign.  My 199 posts speak of shock and outrage and disgust at the lying and vitriol of the Republican candidate's campaign--a figure who I soon began to call Homegrown Hitler, a dictator wannabe.  

But Hillary Clinton remained comfortably ahead in the polls, and it seemed inconceivable that she would lose against a so clearly unqualified, unfit and utterly vile opponent.  And there's plenty of other resemblances to this year's campaign.  There were warnings of the dangers he posed.  Towards the end of the campaign, amid big rally appearances by Barack and Michelle Obama and, yes, Bruce Springsteen, Hillary told voters, "I'm all that stands between you and the apocalypse."

Pollsters and their ilk began to offer percentages of probability on the outcome.  Hillary was touted as having a 90% chance of winning.  One site--was it the Huffington Post?--gave her a 100% probability.

I was so disgusted and disheartened by the tawdriness of the campaign and the media coverage of it that I began to post videos of various versions of the song, "On the Sunny Side of the Street,": everybody from Gale Storm to Willie Nelson with Tony Bennett, and Esperanda Spalding's performance of it at the Obama White House.

So I sang that song to myself as I walked to my polling place, encouraged by the actual sunny day, and I voted (as it turned out, for the last time in person on Election Day as I had for every election before it since 1972.)

That night I started out on my computer staring at the New York Times now infamous needle of probability.  The evening began with Hillary having more than an 80% chance of being elected President.  Then it began to slip away.  Suddenly it was at 50%.  Then it fell to the other side of the dial, never to return.

To call that night and the subsequent weeks traumatic is to suggest why I am still haunted (and as I mentioned in my Halloween origins post, haunted means to be inhabited by.  These days we say "lives rent free in my head", which does not quite evoke the same emotional weight.  Haunted says it better.)

So much is different in 2024, and yet so much is repeated.  The candidate I now refer to as Chaos is even more openly running for tyrant, even more obviously unhinged and vile, with no limit to the ugly pernicious lies.  His opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, is saying, though in different words, that this time she really is all that stands between us and the apocalypse, and with overwhelming evidence that this time it may be literally true.

Commentators may say that we're in the classic campaign mode of Republicans being overconfident and Democrats dizzy with worry.  Maybe so, but once traumatized, twice shy.  Haunted by 2016, we anxiously examine any evidence that we're for an even worse shock this time. 

 In conventional political terms, by every measure, there has never been a worse candidate than Chaos.  But the conventional wisdom is that the election is still up for grabs, and at the moment, I detect the sense of the New York Times, for instance, and other mainstream media outlets that Chaos is more likely to win.  It may be that after stories about the women's vote and abortion, the youth vote, the absolutely unprecedented flood of Republican former officeholders and even current officeholders continuing to come out for Kamala, their reporters have rediscovered working class discontent, now (perhaps) moving beyond white men.  Or they think they know something.

That impression is bolstered by the utter cowardice exhibited by the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times--and especially their billionaire owners--in preventing planned endorsements of Kamala Harris and suddenly deciding not to endorse for President (despite endorsing for other offices.)

 Think about the ignominy of this.  Who in this world risks less in speaking their minds than multi-billionaires?  There are Republican politicians who have seriously risked their careers by endorsing Harris.  There are women who have risked retribution by telling their stories of the deadly effects of abortion bans, and publicly endorsed Harris.  Yet these billionaires who fear that regulation, taxes, investigations might cut into their profits when they already have obscene amounts of money, don't want to offend Chaos more than they have. They dishonor the traditionally great newspapers they own in the bargain. But their cowardice also looks like an indicator that they believe Chaos has a good chance of winning. 

There are more conventional issues that could go against Harris. I've written before that in my lifetime the one economic phenomenon that most upsets voters has always been higher prices.  Grocery prices, housing, fast food prices-- there are going to be voters for whom this is paramount in voting against somebody that is associated with somebody they think is responsible.  Such issues link up with latent misogyny and overall resentment.  And it's true that a society that continues to operate with the very rich getter immeasurably richer and everyone else sliding down is going to face a reckoning sooner or later.  That this is precisely the wrong way to express it--that it will only make matters worse and further empower the very rich--is a true thought, but not a feeling.

At the Atlantic, Tom Nichols argues a variation on this: he writes that some of this resentment is so strong that anything that Chaos says that outrages those perceived as better off pleases them, and makes Chaos more attractive.  It's the old "owning the libs" refrain, but extended.  He loves Hitler?  He says he'll send armed soldiers after television personalities who criticize him?  That's taking it to them.  The more chaos that Chaos creates the better--that is, until prices go up 20% and recession hits, Social Security goes broke with a 30% cut in current benefits, all results of announced Chaos policies economists predict.  

Chaos pushes his extremist lies about immigrants, but Democrats only ignore these statements and their effects.  They talk about Chaos as a fascist.  But judging from his huge Madison Square Garden rally, right out of the Hitler playbook, there is a market for fascism.

They don't even need to be a majority.  We're forced to accept the reality that this election is going to be determined in a few swing states, and therefore by a minority.  The last Republican candidate for President to win the popular vote was GW Bush in 2004 (and he didn't win it in 2000.)  Hillary won the most total votes for President.  But it didn't matter.  (I should add that this year, there is some possibility that another state or two beyond the designated swing states could turn out to be surprising and decisive.)

Now most political analysts still feel Harris will win, but until recently, people like Nichols and Nate Silver haven't said out loud that they feel it will be Chaos.  So it's time to listen to somebody like Simon Rosenberg. 

 He's a numbers guy and veteran of nearly 40 years of Democratic campaigns.  He warns against the flood of specious Republican sponsored polls that are again trying to screw with expectations.  He says that a real pollster for the Republican party recently told him he sees the race shifting back to Harris.  Some analysts see evidence in recent polls of a late break towards Harris. Rosenberg also notes that Chaos got fewer votes than his opinion polls suggested he would in nearly all of his primaries--which means that this flood of Republican support for Harris has some political basis among Republican voters.  

Rosenberg touts the Democratic ground game, money for ads, Harris being seen as more likeable than Chaos, her drawing even on the economy, and the massive enthusiasm for the Harris campaign that has the potential of bringing in new voters and motivate them to vote.  That's in addition to the expected power of women voting especially on the abortion issue, as evidenced in virtually every actual election that's been held since the deep-sixing of Roe v. Wade freedoms.  He praises the Harris campaign as the most skillful and savvy in modern history (as do others.)  Harris held the largest Arizona rally in that state's history, and the latest in Atlanta was 23,000.

While the folks Nichols references are happy with unhinged Chaos, Rosenberg cites focus groups that show other voters are increasingly disturbed by Chaos rhetoric and behavior.  He believes--as the Harris campaign evidently believes--that this is a winning issue, especially with Republican voters who can no longer stomach Chaos.  (The Harris campaign is also hammering the issue of reproductive freedom, which I'll expand on in a later post.)

 To me Rosenberg is a little less persuasive in talking of the Harris campaign money advantage, especially for ads, because Hillary had a similar advantage, and there's a huge amount of dark money being spent on Chaos.  But undoubtedly the bulge of official contributions to Harris financed hiring staff for sophisticated voter outreach, organizing events in swing states that go way beyond the big rallies and so on. Getting out the vote is not necessarily going to show up in polls (although the latest national poll, by ABC, shows a Harris surge.)  But closing strong is the key to the Harris campaign strategy.

 Rosenberg is a persuasive and articulate voice--he even advises on how to survive the negative noise, and maybe even the haunting of 2016.  (Like don't dwell on it, as I've just done.) "Worry less, do more" is his closing mantra. In addition to his videos he has a campaign news site called the Hopium Chronicles, which I'm certainly going to be checking.  

I've voted by mail, and my vote has been confirmed and is on the books here in California.  I've contributed to the campaign.  All of my eligible family members in western PA are voting Kamala. I'm getting "President Harris" on repeat in my head. Despite my 2016 haunting, I'm daring to once again direct my feet to the sunny side of the street. 

We're Not Going Back

Already it has disappeared into the American amnesia, but it was a little less than four years ago: Inauguration Day 2021.  This is what it looked like.  

Before that day, Chaos had reigned for four years.  Covid-19 was an unchecked epidemic, the American economy was in shambles, as was the western alliance of the US and Europe. Remember?

We remember the world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Iraq wars and Afghanistan.  We remember the history of the Civil War, in which more Americans died than in all of those wars put together.  We do not remember the year of Covid, in which more Americans died than in the Civil War, which took four years.  Maybe the trauma is too fresh, maybe we're snowed under with so-called information.  But, you know, it happened.

Under pressure, President Chaos did allow government financing of a crash program to develop a vaccine, though he later repudiated it.  He advised American to drink bleach instead.  

Then came the elections of 2020.  Chaos could not abide the outcome, and fomented chaotic violence that came to a head on January 6, 2021, with the trashing of the US Capitol, endangering the lives of the country's highest legislative officials.

So for the Inauguration in 2020, there was no parade, just as there had been no rallies during the campaign, because of the danger of Covid infection.  For the Inauguration itself, the principals (as in the photo above) wore protective masks.  

Because of January 6, there were also at least 20,000 National Guard troops in Washington, probably more.  They were no longer sleeping on the floors of the Capitol building to protect it; they were guarding the Inaugural against the forces of Chaos.

But on January 20, 2021, after Joseph R. Biden was sworn in as President, and Kamala Harris as Vice-President, the following happened:

The U.S. rejoined the Paris Accords, the global effort to address the global climate crisis.

 The U.S. rejoined the WHO in a global effort to address the global covid crisis.

 Laws to prevent evictions and to delay student loan payments during the covid crisis were extended.

 The Keystone pipeline permits were withdrawn, among other reversals of anti-environment policies and regulations, including a moratorium on fossil fuel leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

 Masks and social distancing on federal property, by federal employees, and on airplanes and other interstate travel were mandated by federal law.

 DACA was bolstered. The “Muslim ban” on travel was ended. Diversity training returned, anti-discrimination policies in the federal government were strengthened, and the notorious far right 1776 Commission disbanded.

 All of the Chaos cabinet had resigned, and several of the worst sub-cabinet officials were fired, including the guy who turned the Voice of America into a MAGA shill factory.  Competent and experienced career public servants were appointed to run the various departments until cabinet officers were confirmed.

Joe Biden took over the Oval Office, where he pointedly installed a portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt directly across the room from his desk.

Because Americans had also elected a Democratic majority House of Representatives and (with the election of the first black Senator and first Jewish Senator in Georgia history) a Democratic majority in the US Senate, President Biden was able to enact the American Rescue Plan, which funded the initial distribution of Covid vaccine and additional measures to combat Covid as well as measures to re-start the US economy, especially with the first of several direct payments to citizens, known as "stimulus checks."

These payments worked better than anyone had even hoped. With further legislation and executive efforts over the next four years, and despite a nasty round of inflation caused chiefly by supply chain issues and the usual opportunistic greed,  the Biden administration fostered an American economy which last week the Economist magazine called "the envy of the world," with the lowest unemployment, lower inflation, and lower interest rates in years, along with the highest stock market closings in history.

Also last week, the Wall Street Journal published the results of an annual survey of economists, in which a majority (often a large majority) forecast a better economy, lower inflation, higher employment, more American manufacturing and higher incomes under a Harris administration than under a return to Chaos.

The western alliance is healthy again, and stands together defending the sovereign nation of Ukraine against Russian invasion.  Bob Woodward's new book credits Biden and his cabinet and other officials with the most competent handling of world affairs he's seen, and counsels that Chaos was the worst President in history--far worse than Nixon--and is not fit to take power again.

Those are today's judgments.  But try priming your memory of what is was like long ago--from 2017 to 2021--along with the growing evidence of how much worse it would be if Chaos reigns again.

Voting is beginning.

October Surmise

 With big rallies designed to both demonstrate and create enthusiasm while signing up new volunteers, candidate Kamala Harris has also been introducing herself to swing state voters through local media coverage.  She's made several speeches on her approach to economic issues to business and labor audiences, and a speech at the southern border on immigration issues.  These have been excellent events.

Now that early voting and mail voting is beginning, she's said to be honing in on describing the dangers of electing Chaos to a second (non-consecutive) term.  He and his VP candidate are providing examples daily.  Their baseless charges have upended lives in a small Ohio town, and are complicating relief efforts in areas hard hit by hurricane Helene.  Relief to these people should be non-partisan, but in this election it provides a positive example of what the federal government can do for people--regardless of party--need this kind and scale of help.  If Harris is not elected, Chaos will rule in these situations as well as everything else.

The polls continue to show prospects for very close results.  How can this possibly be?  One answer is that it isn't really going to be that close, and there's a sense of that, even among those darkly citing the polls.  But assuming it is very close, it has to be because (in addition to those who vote out of racism, sexism and utter ignorance) a substantial number of people believe the country is worse off than it demonstrably is.  They believe the lies.  And Chaos and Vance are doing nothing but lying and lying and lying.  

Why are they believed?  Playing to prejudices is an ancient and still successful strategy, sometimes.  But the answer to how they can boldly tell obvious lies, easily disproven lies, is that people are used to being boldly lied to, many times a day, by commercials.  The same broadcasts that carry the lies of politicians, carry the absurd exaggerations and outright lies of commercials.  This is even worse on the Internet, especially on You Tube.

The second element in commercials is relentless repetition, and Chaos quite consciously employs this technique, often upping the ante slightly to make the repetition "news" so it is again reported.  News media fall for this every time. 

The lies that Chaos tells support the notion that--as the poll question puts it--America is on the wrong track.  The number of those who say it is continues to be high, and this is disquieting.  Harris addresses this by positioning herself as a change candidate, a New Way Forward--and so a positive change.  Chaos promises stark solutions that clearly invite chaos and disaster.  And the problems he says he will solve mostly don't exist, at least not in the way he speaks about them.

I continue to believe that at bottom what Americans fear so much they can't talk about it is climate distortion.  So far the Harris campaign is strategically avoiding this issue.  It is imperative that she wins, so as a short term strategy I hope it works, and doesn't lock her into policies that make climate prospects worse.  But this is likely to be the last election in which this strategy will be possible.

As if the prospects of Chaos being elected aren't terrifying enough, there is J.D. Vance.  Chaos is looking like a soon to be spent force. Some in the psychiatric profession say that he is showing classic early signs of dementia.  Can a President Vance be too far behind?

Voting ends in about a month, and Chaos is seeing his best chance in creating weeks and months of chaos beginning that day.  So enjoy the enthusiasm and the hope of the Harris campaign, vote and encourage others to vote, and hope for the best.

Breaking News: Breaking Addiction

 So the reporters, the commentators and pundits were nearly unanimous in providing the wish-fulfillment headline: Harris Destroyed Trump in their debate. Some said it was the greatest performance in presidential debate history.  The instant polls said Kamala Harris won by a lot, and the first audience figures said a lot of people watched.  

So the next day, whose picture do we see on front pages above the fold?  In the NY Times it was Trump. In the Washington Post it was...J.D. Vance.  No politican made it atop the San Francisco Chronicle.  Whose picture did we not see? The unanimous winner of the debate the night before, Kamala Harris.  She earned the moment to let people see her with new eyes, to get used to the idea that this might be the next President.  Just not on the front page, apparently.  (These are the online front pages, late in the day, the only ones I can access.)

It's more than the predictable bait and switch of the new media.  On her post-debate podcast, WPost columnist Jennifer Rubin nailed it: after pumping up the significance of the debate for a week, the story the next day would be that it may not matter all that much.  That conclusion may be prudent--but the contrast with the preceding hype is stark and totally predictable.  

And it's not even the usual ego first.  Like Thomas Friedman writing that there are 23 words that Harris has to say to be assured of winning.  And by writing them, making it impossible for her to say them.

No, what I see is the continuing knee-jerk addiction to pictures of Trump.  Between the Harris triumph at the Democratic Convention and the debate, it was Trump's face on the front page way more often than hers.  ("way more often" being a technical term in statistics.)  These outlets are so used to using Trump to sell papers and attract clicks that it's become mindless second nature, and an addiction that's hard to kick.     

And much of the time, the story highlights something awful that Trump has said or done.  Even the leftish Guardian does it regularly.  The day after the debate they did have a photo of people watching the debate with a split-screen of the two candidates.  But the only solo photo above the fold was...Trump.  And that's pretty typical of the Guardian.   

Why is this potentially important?  Because after his thoroughly discrediting debate, Trump and his campaign are going to go on the attack with new and more scurrilous lies, probably about Kamala Harris personally.  The question is: will the news media give them prominence, or are they finished pretending that Trump's outrageous lies--so clearly untrue and vicious from the start--need to be aired and evaluated, like the charges by a normal candidate?  They've always done it.  Will they keep doing it?

The few instances of fact-checking during the ABC debate were a heartening precedent.  The general refusal so far to repeat some of the ugliest assertions Trump is making at his rallies is also hopeful.  But Trump's Big Lies attract eyes, they sell papers, they get clicks.  It's the media version of a high.

Apart from reviving latent racism and sexism we'd hoped wasn't there anymore, Trump won in 2016 by successfully making Hillary Clinton the issue.  (The director of the FBI helped alot with his late campaign announcement of a re-investigation of Clinton that quickly exonerated her, again, but too late.)  His only chance now, other than suppressing votes and causing chaos at the polls and afterwards, is to make Harris the issue.  

Nobody knows what's going to happen; they don't even know what's happening now.  The polls are so full of different methods and political skewing that even an average is not reliable. The "undecided" voters interviewed on TV are professionally undecided--it's the only way they can get anyone to pay attention to them. So they don't represent anyone.  We can be pretty sure that there's a core of voters who could watch Trump eat a dog and a cat on television and still vote for him.  On the other hand, I don't think Harris loses a swing state where there's a choice amendment on the ballot.  Apart from Taylor Swift, I think Harris is going to have to talk about climate distortion to win the youth vote big.  In general she's making it easier for people to take a chance on her.

The Democrats look focused, and the campaign is well-funded.  There's enthusiasm on the ground.   Trump will be aided by Putin's army of trolls, which is why Trump won't publicly support Ukraine.  He wants Putin to be sure that supporting him is the easiest way to win that war. 

 But things happen in a campaign, and exactly what they will be is always unknown until they happen. The news media has said before that they've learned from their mistakes (Willy Horton, the Swift Boat, etc.) but then they do it again.  If this election is as close as everyone says it is (which may be as reliable as the 90% chance that H. Clinton would win in 2016) even the news media could make the difference.

The Miracle Convention

 It was a political miracle the likes of which I've never seen, that Democrats even arrived in Chicago for their convention absolutely united on a nominee, different from the one they had a month before.  Perhaps it was a necessary miracle, if there was to be any chance that the dictator in waiting could be stopped.

But the convention itself, with one amazing speech and speaker after another, with the joy and enthusiasm in the hall, was itself a miracle.  It redefined the Democratic party and marginalized the Trump cult.  Those were happy warriors who returned to their states, ready to fight and win. 

The final miracle was Kamala Harris meeting the moment at exactly the right time.  Her acceptance speech was all but flawless in its content and delivery.  She was every inch a President.

  Among much that was remarkable were the Republicans who stood on that stage in her behalf, and what they said to their fellow Republicans: "You're not voting for a Democrat--you're voting for democracy. You're not betraying our party, you're standing up for our country."

There were two themes that were in fact one theme.  "We're moving forward"--that's a familiar political theme, aspirational but hard to prove.  The flip side is less common, and this year is certainly potent: "We're not going back."   

I was troubled by a few things: that everyone continues to act as if Covid doesn't exist anymore, and that there was not a full sentence out of anyone's mouth I heard about the greatest threat to the planetary and human future, the climate crisis.  Once again, other seemingly more proximate threats took precedence.  

But even that can partially be accounted for by all the time absorbed in stating truths and values that have so lately been lost.  This was the "You'd do the same for me" convention, reaffirming basic human compacts.  It was beautiful, but so sad that it was so necessary.  

That and the general tenor of this miracle convention made me realize just how demoralized we've become.  The idea that someone like Trump could take over the government, and together with this Supreme Court could rule us into an inhuman theocratic autocracy for the very wealthy, had us in the grip of such discouragement that we could hardly even notice how depressed we were.

That part is over.  The threat must still be stopped, but now we know we aren't alone, and we know what our committments are.  That has value in itself.  Now the campaign begins.  It could not have begun better.  

There's likely to be tough days ahead.  Voter suppression tactics are already in place in key states.  There's a lot to be overcome.  But go ahead and say it: we shall overcome.

I offer a bit of political analysis you're not going to see anywhere else.  As highlighted by Paul Shepard, primatologist Michael R.A. Chance suggested that one of two mental modes in primate brain structures  govern social relations: in the rhesus monkey, its structure favored aggression and submission. High tension, the importance of rank and sex symbolizing power are characteristics.  He calls this the Agonic mode.

The other, which he called the Hedonic, is typical of chimpanzee society.  It favors mutual dependence and problem solving without real violence. There is more equality. Disputes can end in "reconciliation and reunion."  "The group has a strong general sense of unity," Shepard writes, "even though it may appear in disarray to an outsider."  

Humans are among those primates who have the potential for both the Agonic and Hedonic modes.  This bimodality is part of our basic nature.  Which one predominates in normal times depends on "the social system that cues us and to which we apply its logic." 

It is striking how our politics is now so clearly divided between the Agonic cult surrounding Trump, and the Hedonic Democrats, who now are clearly trying to represent everyone else. Over four days, the miracle convention articulated in words and faces, in individuals and families and groups, the conscious committment to this Hedonic mode.  It is the kind of society we want, the ideal America--the true American dream, not of striving and succeeding, but of  empathy, justice, generosity, compassion, love. In practical terms, the America of "You'd do the same for me."        

Declaration Cancelled, King Returns

In accepting a National Book Foundation medal in 2014, eminent writer Ursula K Le Guin gave a short speech that has come to be both prophetic and defining.  It was published later (in her last collection of essays, Words Are My Business) under the title of "Freedom."  I applied its main points to events in 2021 in this post, also called "Freedom," which I still stand behind.  But there was one line of the speech that came back to me this past week.

"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable," she said, and paused.  "But then, so did the divine right of kings."  

You could hear the audience catch its breath, anticipating her next sentence, "Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."  And indeed, the divine right of kings to rule absolutely was opposed at various times and places over centuries--including very successfully here in the United States, beginning with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It finally died in Europe in the ashes of World War I.  Though it lived on in other forms, and arguably still does in some parts of the world, it became so obsolete that even the concept is mostly unfamiliar.

And so, in 2014, the audience knew it was antique, and as a reality, unthinkable.  Maybe capitalism that is killing the Earth we know could also be made so obsolete.

But forget capitalism.  It turns out that the divine right of kings is back.

 After the Supreme Court decision announced on July 1, the divine right of the king has been retroactively enshrined in the United States.  It is a repudiation of the very Declaration celebrated today.

It is true that the Declaration itself doesn't address it directly, and there were those who wanted to crown George Washington as king after the American Revolution, but all the values supported by the words of the Declaration are against it.  

A corrupt Supreme Court has institutionalized corruption in the presidency.  Equal under the law now means some people are more equal than others according to the law, namely the Supreme Court justices and a President they like (for they did retain some power to decide against Presidents they don't like.)   

When scholars describe where the theory supporting this decision came from, I'm fairly sure it will involve institutions of the far right, and specifically those supporting (and supported by) Christian nationalism, which I posted about recently.  It's a different wrinkle on the concept maybe, but describing this as the divine right of kings has that dimension.  

So this Independence Day we also have the candidate currently leading in the polls who will embrace those rights, and that concept.  The monarch ordering "off with their heads!" may soon not be so funny. Among other things, malice and hatred have been empowered.  We know who is just waiting for that power.

Meanwhile, the most overpowering fact of this Independence Day is the overpowering climate--the intense heat, fires, storms, flooding--that are causing celebrations to be cancelled, or just otherwise dangerous.  Yet here in the United States of Denial, we talk about everything but, most markedly in our politics and policy.

With God on Their Side

 I don't plan to make a habit of this--commenting on the politics of the day--anymore, but I did start with Jung on the hysteria of Nazi Germany latching on to a magnetic hysteric.  Jung implies that the eruptions of the unconscious are fairly frequent in mass society, and I admit I still don't understand what's going on--maybe mass delusion and hysteria are the default positions for mass civilization.

 In my last post I postponed consideration of the church as a cultural counterweight to mass hysteria, as Jung proposed, and I haven't read further in Jung's writings to work out more exactly what he meant.  But though it may make intuitive sense, that seems to be quite the opposite of what's happening now.  The culture is being pushed to hysteria by the loudest voices claiming religion as their central belief.

On this I defer to a contemporary experts, constitutional separation of church and state watchdog Rachel Laser and author Katherine Stewart, in conversation with Dahlia Lithwick at Slate.  It's also a podcast, and the introductory article itself is illuminating.  I've added bold to some sections below.

From the podcast:

Katherine Stewart: "Let’s talk about what Christian nationalism is and what it isn’t. Christian nationalism is not a religion—it’s not Christianity. I think of it as a mindset, and also a machine. The mindset is this ideology, the idea of America as essentially a Christian theocracy or a Christian nation whose laws should be based on the Bible, and a very reactionary reading of the Bible. It’s also a political movement that exploits religion in this organized quest for power. As a political movement, it is leadership-driven and it’s organization-driven. It has this deeply networked organizational infrastructure that is really the key to its power. There has been five decades of investment in this infrastructure, and it’s the leaders of this network who are really calling the shots."

 Dahlia mentions some of the prominent players in Congress (like House Speaker Mike Johnson) and of course a certain candidate for President and his possible vp nominees, but she asks specifically about  influence on the courts.  (Another Slate article warns we very well could see a number of Supreme Court decisions this month that reflect the hegemony of far right and Christian nationalist ideas on the Court.)

Laser and Stewart trace the political history, beginning in the 1980s, of a patient legal strategy to "sideline and in some cases obliterate" the Constitutional prohibition against the establishment of a national religion. Besides gaining more taxpayer money for explicitly religious institutions, these efforts focused on abortion.

Stewart talks in more detail about their successful efforts to complicate and ban abortion, with ambitions to limit birth control and criminalize medical efforts to save women having miscarriages.  In doing so, they've actually gotten their particular language into the law. Then Stewart talks more about tactics, and this is especially illuminating:

"In the last 15 years, the rhetoric of violence has become more extreme... the calls for dominion, the calls for total domination, have become louder and more explicit. And part of that is a consequence of the rise of a spirit-warrior style of religion..."

Stewart traces the "theology" of the righteous taking over the "Seven Mountains" of culture, which include government, media, education and business.  Adherents of "Seven Mountain Dominion" include not only evangelical Christian nationalists but professed Catholics like Mike Flynn and Roger Stone, and one would guess, several of the Catholics on the Supreme Court, notably Samuel Alito.  

Outsiders don't understand the meaning of the "Appeal to Heaven" flag that flew over an Alito home, and that's displayed at Speaker Johnson's office.  "So when they fly it, they’ve reinterpreted it as taking a stand for the idea of America as a Christian theocratic nation rather than a pluralistic democracy. They see it as a call for profound, and even violent, revolution."

Laser adds: "PRRI [Public Religion Research Institute] did a poll on Christian nationalists, and they found Christian nationalists are about twice as likely as the rest of us to believe in political violence. That’s what we saw on Jan. 6 with the parading “Appeal to Heaven” flags that were at the insurrection. I think another important point to make here is the authoritarian nature of this Christian nationalist movement. This movement is rooted in the belief that America is a country given to European Christians, and that our laws and policies must reflect the same. If you believe that, you are antidemocratic, because democracy is rooted in equality. So the end goal of this Christian nationalist movement has to be the toppling of democracy to achieve their goal."

There is little question about what hysteric this movement follows, especially when "the former president screens a video called “God Made Trump” at his rallies..."

This may seem to be a mostly political exercise by cynical politicians and their consultants, whether or not they are true believers.  That's obviously part of it--can anybody really believe Trump is motivated by faith?  But leaders need followers, and Stewart says that established churches, their leaders and congregations are involved:

 "Another feature of this movement that is often overlooked is the pastor networks like Watchmen on the Wall and Church United, or groups like Faith Wins, that draw together and then mobilize tens of thousands of conservative or conservative-leaning pastors as movement leaders. If you can get the pastors, you can get their congregations. Often pastors are the most trusted voices in their congregations."

Of course escaping theocratic rule was a major reason those Europeans came to America, though quite often they were escaping rule by theocrats other than their own.  The ambitions of this theocracy-in-process is also reminiscent of how the Catholic Church ruled in Europe when it was the only Christian game in town and even monarchs feared opposing it, because the Church's word was the word of God, anything else was heresy, with beheading and burning at the stake not infrequent consequences for the slightest perceived deviations.  The divine right of kings, on the comeback trail!

Today in America we already have everyday banning of thousands of books in public schools, due almost exclusively to these Christian nationalist activists, however they disguise themselves without really fooling anyone.  And of course we have laws beyond abortion bans, governing medical care of women based on their theology, again disguised without fooling anyone.

This Christian right dominion movement is fueled by what has traditionally been called religious fervor and righteousness, but in this context it seems another form of mass hysteria.  Though these experts don't discuss it, that hysteria may extend to a different kind of denial of climate distortion: the notion (which surfaces after major disasters) that hurricanes, floods, fires, etc. and other climate distortion effects are God's punishment for the paramount sins as defined by the reactionary right (abortion, "diversity" etc.) and that the only way to prevent these effects is to follow the Christian Nationalist program.   There are variations of this kind of belief in many religious traditions.

So perhaps it is not religious institutions but the institutions of the American civil religion as embodied in the Constitution that is our counterweight.  Laser may be promoting her own organization with her final comment, but it pertains:

" The antidote to Christian nationalism is the separation of church and state, because it refuses to let Christian privilege into the law, it refuses to let conservative Christianity be the guiding principle in America. It insists that America keep to its promises that are embedded in our Constitution, of religious freedom as a basic human right. And that’s why Christian nationalists have gone after the separation of church and state, and that’s why their allies at the Supreme Court are on a crusade to eradicate church–state separation—because they are in lockstep with a movement that must get rid of church–state separation in order to accomplish its goals."

A Bitter Revenge

A former President of the United States was convicted of 34 felonies by a unanimous jury in criminal court, and most commentators I read or heard said that this will have little or no effect on his very good chances to be elected to that office again in November.  When in American history has something like this been even a remote possibility? 

 Yet, despite a jury trial with no procedural glitches, Republican Congressional and other elected government officials lined up against the judicial process.  Trump referred to the judge as “the devil,” and some of his supporters threatened retribution against the judge, prosecutors and the jury.  What other word is there for all this but hysteria?  

 The premise of this post and the two previous in this series (part 1 here, part 2 here) is simple: there seems to be no rational explanation for the current political situation in the United States, especially pertaining to the upcoming presidential election.  Attempts have been made to explain it in economic, political, cultural, even demographic terms, but none is sufficient.  Journalists are left to find new ways to say the situation is unprecedented, that it defies logic and certainly previous political norms.

 So it seems to me we need to broaden (and deepen) our exploration for answers, especially in the area that the modern West knows as the psychological.  The phenomena being manifested however has been well known to other ages and other cultures, dealt with under what we would call (but not all of them call) religion, and earlier definitions of philosophy.

 Since the rise of our current dictator-in-waiting, I’ve tried to account for these phenomena.  I found some  relevance in cult behavior, but this may be insufficient.  I recently turned to the essays of Carl Jung before and after World War II, analyzing the most notorious twentieth century outbreak of a thirst for authoritarian leadership in Germany and Hitler.  Jung applied a psychological term not much in use today: hysteria.  I find it very evocative.  It clearly bypasses rationality and reference to consensus reality.  And it fits the rise of Trump to a chilling extent.

 Jung writes of these phenomena in terms of the human unconscious, which is partly personal and partly collective, and its relationship to the conscious mind.  As a rule, an eruption from the unconscious that infects consciousness but is not recognized or evaluated by it, is dangerous to the individual, and when it is part of a mass phenomenon, to society as a whole.  This is particularly true when the eruptions come primarily from the darker unconscious, also known as the shadow.  

 Mass hysteria is galvanized and defined by the hysteric that demands it, and so in addition to image etc. this individual becomes a symbol.  How else to explain a person holding such sway whose speeches and so-called press conferences are largely incoherent? Especially one who has gone from “I alone can fix it” to “I am your retribution.”    

 One sign of being ruled by the unconscious is what Jung called one-sidedness, in which simplistic certainties dripping with self-righteousness replace the recognition of complexities. From denial, projection, etc. comes stereotypes of the Other as objects of hate. This is currently manifest on both sides of the American political divide, but most rabidly on the right, now quickly forming the American Reich.  Their hysteria is defined by their eagerness to override the procedures of the government of all.

 It is a sign of the extremes of the current situation that the American Reich routinely denies realities which pass all rational tests: even of the violent events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, caught by cameras and witnessed by millions on television.  Though not identical, this is related to the pathological lying that Jung identified as part of a particular kind of hysteric personality, such as Hitler’s.

 How have we gotten here?  We have individual responsibilities to look to ourselves, as well as to represent a conscious evaluation of our politics and society.  But Jung also identifies culture as a bulwark against rule by the dark unconscious, and that aspect is the subject of this post.

 Our American past is not free of eruptions of irrational violence, even if our histories gloss over them.  The country began with an invasion and cultural as well as physical genocide.  We still suffer effects from a century or more of the slavery of African Americans,.  There have been other periods and episodes of racial violence that erupted in various places.

 Our politics also has had episodes of violence and conspiracy, and of the urge (even in high places) towards authoritarian rule.  But we can also cite a political culture that was established with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and created a civic stability that became the envy of the world.  America had political and legal norms.  The rule of law under the Constitution was sacrosanct, the equivalent of a secular religion.

While attitudes and behavior we now define as racist and sexist, etc. were embedded in the culture, they were not essential to the founding principles, and therefore its culture.  In fact progress was made partly by repeatedly invoking those principles.

 The culture enforced rules on political behavior not completely enshrined in law, through the consensual behavior we call tradition.  There was always jockeying for advantage, but all parties were forced to obey rules enforced by the political system itself, and the public will behind it.  The Supreme Court became the final arbiter, and its interpretations of the Constitution at times may have been met with consternation by some, but they were accepted.

 So for example, duly confirmed vote totals were accepted by losers as well as winners.  The presidency was a high moral as well as political office, and though the office was held by men of questionable ethics, even the hint of criminal behavior would doom a candidate from the start.

 More broadly, there was a consensus reality accepted by all (or nearly all), and an accepted set of tests that said what was a fact and what was not.  And there was plenty of fierce debate within these strictures and structures.

 So what the hell happened?  People with a longer memory or deeper knowledge of history may point to prior precedents, but in my lifetime, the Vietnam War era exposed falsehoods and corruption in government and related institutions that damaged the sense of legitimacy.

 Trusted elements of the federal government (supported by large businesses and elements of academia with a common self-interest) were found to be lying, when they were not simply ignoring facts.  The cost was paid in blood and resources.  War protesters challenged their legitimacy, both in themselves and in contrast to the cultural principles everyone said they believed in.

 This war protest all began with conscious use of the research of facts, of applying ethical standards and of analyzing and speculating on structures that were responsible.  But as time went on darker elements of the unconscious joined in, as some became more desperate to end the war, and transform society. There were excesses resulting in violence, and visions of conspiracies that might have been fruitful speculation but were characterized more by the emotional power of unjustified certainty.  Recognizing complexity and ambiguity just wasn’t very satisfying.

 It is important to note that for all its challenges to the legitimacy of the three branches of government, the antiwar movement mostly respected the established norms of process—of elections and judicial decisions. And from the beginning, it dealt in facts as well as interpretations of their meaning.

 I’m not going to even try to follow the ramifications over the decades, but it’s pretty clear that in 2024 that politically both sides have in startling ways become their opposites.  The previously conservative right, that defended the establishment against the hippies and leftists, has become the insurrectionist, conspiracy-pushing antiestablishment totalitarian hysterics (maintaining however a still pious regard for wealth), more extreme than all but the fringe of the New Left ever was.

 The flip is sometimes remarkable.  Conservative America and the medical establishment once could only scoff and stare when hippie lefty types droned on about health food and organic processes, plant-based medicine and foreign techniques like acupuncture, meditation and massage.  Now that elements of these radical practices are fairly standard in establishment medicine, advocates, practitioners and “influencers” on YouTube promote supposed natural remedies, and turn out to be among the right wing deniers of Covid vaccines, absorbed as a convenient article of faith on the new right.

  

The answer to the why question is probably in the area suggested last time: in the conflict between what they know has been done to their lives that’s not directly their fault, and the deep shame (however unjustified) and various inferiority feelings they nevertheless have and desperately repress, even from their own consciousness, as well as undifferentiated anger at their plight as perceived victims of injustice or a national turn towards "evil."

 Judging from what this segment is visibly eager to suppress or reverse, they feel particularly threatened by cultural changes that get grouped under the term of diversity. This trend that has been going on in fits and starts for generations has sometimes been accompanied by conflict and violence, but now it is met by political power.  The difference is that this power embraces non-democratic means, which in itself for Americans indicates a dangerous eruption from the unconscious, an increasingly organized hysteria.

 Probably none of this would have emerged so strongly had not they had real grievances that were ignored or belittled, and real basis for feeling shamed and excluded. Or if instead of being cowed by them and trying to avoid controversy, politicians had shown some vision and conviction, especially when they weren’t facing an immediate election. Those in other political niches have their own shadow problems, and until they (or we) deal with those, this won’t get better.

  To some extent, we all feel threatened by change.  How we evaluate those feelings in consciousness makes the difference.  Whether we project, or on the other hand, feel empathy; whether we act out, or act to accommodate change.

 That’s some of the “why.”  The answer to “how” is partly, and I would still say greatly, in their self-created Internet-linked cult, in which they find mutual support, outlets and forms for their repressed rage, even a special language, and a drug-like feeling of power which lifts them from a knowing helplessness.  Radio made Hitler and television made Trump, but the membership of the American Reich is being made via the Internet, its social media and its algorithms.  This is dangerous for any group, who must remain conscious of what all this evokes in them.

 In dynamic back and forth, Trump and opportunists of the Internet (with lots of help from Russian and Chinese trolls) define for their passionate if quickly substituted beliefs, cobbled together from confronting new situations with hysterical interpretations of old doctrine and the grimmest hits of the past, plus fantasies of rebellious early America and the bluster common to dictatorships and organized crime.

 The Internet links huge numbers of people who may be otherwise isolated, and the speed and intensity of the communication can take hold at a level below consciousness, urging people to more extreme views as their unstated membership fee.  Cult behavior is even more personal—members who deviate can become immediate exiles.

 Add to the more active hysteria the “low information voter” (who may or may not eventually vote) who has little basis for choice other than feelings, which are usually negative, emerging without filter from the shadow of the unconscious. They see Trump as the champion of their own shadow, now liberated to express itself without the effective cautions of institutional culture.  (Low information voters also used to vote based on party loyalty, but as party and other supporting mechanisms fade, there seems to be less of this.) 

 This feeling of shared beliefs and truths, of belonging, becomes more important when other sources of identity (like the steady job in a community of intact families) are failing.  There is also the rush of battling common cause and a common enemy that must always be renewed.  It’s similar to the pumped-up “outrage” that some on the opposite side can get from demonstrations etc. as well as internal group sessions.

 So in a broad political historical sense, the mostly justified distrust of political institutions in the 1960s and 70s may have set the template for those who wish to take over if not destroy those institutions, not to expand democracy and diversity (as the 60s radicals advocated) but to establish White authoritarian rule dominated by a certain, mostly dark kind of Christianity.  The American Reich is still a minority, but seems dangerously close to taking power in a more significant way.

 Responding to this distrust of those who defend these institutions, new standards has been applied to electing officials, so that today there are more members of Congress and Senators who are ideologically rigid and otherwise more ignorant, added to those whose moral sense stops at what is good for their party.  They are representatives of the shadow.  This ideological fervor and partisanship has most alarmingly infect the Supreme Court, now effectively corrupted and politicized in ways that clearly benefit the American Reich.

 However it is worth saying that while the culture of American civic institutions has been badly eroded, it has not been eradicated.  The New York jury that convicted Trump on the evidence presented is an example of it, as are the many election officials throughout the country that have stood up to the bullying of the American Reich.

  

In the 1950s, Jung expanded on the dynamics of culture, the individual and mass society, especially in the writings that were translated and published in the US as a book in 1958, The Undiscovered Self.  Jung’s discussion of religion as a cultural counterbalance raises too many complicated issues to address here, especially in view of how much has changed since then, and the different context of the US.  Here, the civic religion of Constitutional freedom and democracy was strong, and for at least much of my lifetime, pretty much in tandem with the ethical teachings of institutional religion. But now both are divisive and often at odds, especially as civic education itself has been weakened.

 Particularly when established religion is no longer the basis of a cultural consensus, Jung writes, it is up to the individual to do the work of confronting the unconscious with personal religious experience.  The individual, he writes “needs the evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.”

 Jung believed that modern people are susceptible to mass suggestion also because they tend to be insufficiently grounded in nature.  Beyond a mention or two in his 1946 essay, he elaborates on this in other parts of his work, and again, the topic is too complex and fraught with a different contemporary significance to be more than just mentioned here.

 Jung realized that the intellectual tenor of the time made a certain kind of rationalism the standard of validity, and that all this talk of the unconscious and so on was likely to fall on deaf and perhaps embarrassed ears.  So his outlook for the future wasn’t optimistic: “The underestimation of the psychological factor is likely to take a bitter revenge.”

  We may want or need to ignore the insanity of what’s going on—it makes for clickable sensationalism, but it fits into the everyday decadence on the rest of the front page.  Most of the time we have to ignore it to stay sane.  But that very insanity ought to be telling us that there’s more going on here than can be explained in newspaper columns and cable television roundtables.

 Jung believed that the possibility of the destructive contents of the unconscious expressing themselves in a “collective possession” is always present in society, even in our supposedly enlightened, rational times.  Nuclear arsenals made this possibility infinitely more dangerous even in his time, and now, we can add climate distortion.

 In the best of times, he speculates, it is held back by “the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population.”  He suggests an optimistic estimate of its upper limit is “about forty percent of the electorate.”

 Perhaps ordinary political strategies and voting patterns will result in at least holding back this hysteria from power in the next election.  But it may take more than that—it may require some scrutiny from a different perspective, a wider view of what is relevant, as well as what is at stake.