This Week in American Fascism

 Culled from Political Wire in the past week or so:

“Federal prosecutors have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigation to examine the possible culpability of a broad range of figures involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” the New York Times reports. “The investigation now encompasses the possible involvement of other government officials in Mr. Trump’s attempts to obstruct the certification of President Biden’s Electoral College victory and the push by some Trump allies to promote slates of fake electors..”

“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is threatening telecommunications and social media companies that comply with a request by the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, declaring that Republicans ‘will not forget’ their actions,” the Washington Post reports.

Former CBS News correspondent and current Fox Nation host Lara Logan said that “the theory of evolution is the result of a wealthy Jewish family paying Charles Darwin to devise an explanation for what gave rise to humanity,” Rolling Stone reports.

Robert Foster (R), a former Mississippi House lawmaker who lost a 2019 bid for governor, called for the execution of those who support the rights of transgender people, the Mississippi Free Press reports.  Said Foster: “The law should be changed so that anyone trying to sexually groom children and/or advocating to put men pretending to be women in locker rooms and bathrooms with young women should receive the death penalty by firing squad.”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Should Texas punish abortions by putting teenage girls and women to death? Or not?”  “That’s the current debate in the Republican Party of Texas, where outlawing abortion is no longer a question of ‘if’ or ‘when’ but a question of whether to kill women for getting one.”

"Quote of the Day"

“Do not concede. It takes time for the army who is gathering for his back”— Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, quoted by the Washington Post, after the presidential election on Nov. 6, 2020.

And one from TPM:

In public remarks, leading Republicans have almost casually and with little fear of political recrimination begun to relitigate same-sex marriage, contraception and interracial marriage. With a robust 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the GOP’s ambition to rework the privacy jurisprudence underlying many of the civil rights gains of the last 60 years isn’t idle aspiration but a very real threat. 

Madeleine Albright Dared Call It Fascism

 When elders die, they take with them years of experiences and the stories they derived from them.  Sometimes they take perspective and even wisdom.  Perspective and wisdom are not restricted to old age, but when they arise from experiences and years, it would be wise to respect them, and at least consider them. 

It is a lamentable commonplace that by the time elders have stories to tell, the young are not attuned to listen to them (except perhaps in cultures that honor such a tradition.)  When they were young, elders probably didn't extend their imaginations to their elders either, or wonder what their lives were like and what they learned from them.  

So it isn't surprising that the response to the death of Madeleine Albright is to honor her as the first woman to be the US Secretary of State, and discuss her accomplishments and typically mixed record in the 1990s.  (Although an elder's perspective would temper the temptation to call her--as some have--the first powerful woman in Washington.  FDR's Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins was the first woman cabinet member in history, and a major architect of the New Deal.  Halle Flanagan changed the arts in America from the 1930s to now as head of the Federal Theatre Project.  And in the 1930s and 1940s, Eleanor Roosevelt was vastly influential unofficially on matters within the US, and then officially she was a vital architect of the UN.)  

But Albright's accomplishments should not obscure the authority of her more recent work, and we would do well to take her more recent words seriously.  Yet we seldom do that for elders.  Upon her death, Jane Jacobs was justly lauded for The Death and Life of American Cities and other groundbreaking and standard-setting works on life in urban settings.  But her last book, of larger scope, was largely ignored. It was Dark Age Ahead.  It should have been read and taken seriously more than it has been.  It still can be.  The same is true of Jerome Kagan's final books on contemporary psychology.  And so on.

Madeleine Albright's 2018 book Fascism: A Warning was not ignored at the time, which was while Homemade Hitler was in the White House.  But I didn't see it more than mentioned in stories about her death and legacy, as if it no longer pertained.

But it does pertain, and not just to Putin in Russia or Xi in China, or the other regimes and parties in almost every country of the world.  Albright showed how fascism is based on unprincipled leaders, spewing lies they hope are popular, denying facts, feeding prejudices, willing to use violence to get and keep power, dealing with the world ego-manically, with absolute loyalty as the only test.  

This week the disgraceful Judiciary committee hearings in the US Senate fully illustrated all this and more. Righteously bellowed lies, complete contempt for norms of fairness within the committee, a scandalous lack of respect for a Black woman nominee, and particular support to the book-banning Know Nothing impulse of the fearful.  Right now the Republican party is the American Fascist Party.

We aren't there yet, Albright said in 2018.  But if these Republicans take over Congress beginning next year, and continue to create the conditions for unfair elections and right wing violence in the states, the US will be there: a Fascist nation.  

Albright's articulate and thoughtful words can't help but urge us to imagine what the current highly volatile situation in the world,  trembling on the edge of nuclear war, would be like if Homemade Hitler or any of his Cruz control twins were in the White House now.  Yet polls indicate that's what we're in for in 2024.

A lot can happen in two plus years, and even (one hopes) in the months before November 2022.  But heed Albright.  Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham may be Washington's greatest senior assholes, and Mitch McConnell remains the epitome of evil, but the American Fascist Party formerly known as Republicans now have a deep bench of fascistic zealots jockeying for attention by trying to outdo each other in crudity and cruelty.

Albright's voice and buoyant spirit are stilled now, and may she rest in peace.  But her words still echo, and they still live in the work she left behind.

To observe the rise of "authoritarianism" in the world, or "right-wing" and even "conservative" zealotry does not provide the proper perspective.  Madeleine Albright called it fascism, because she'd seen that, she'd learned from her elders, and she knew what it looks like.  And that's what it is.      

Politics 2021

 I don't write much about politics here anymore.  Why warn of what everyone knows is happening?  Just because the Rabid Right misuses Nazi analogies, doesn't mean they don't apply.  We are Germany in the early 1930s.  Our march to 21st century virtual reality fascism seems inexorable, if not inevitable.  

How many times did political pundits declared the Republican party discredited, disreputable and dead as they crossed one normative line after another?  But Republicans either quit or got with the fascist program, or else were punished and purged.  Now they are all but officially the American White Supremacist Fascist Party, even if many of their officeholders have zero integrity or commitment to democracy or even an ideology, and are only interested in retaining personal political power at any cost and the open taps of certain corporate supporters.

But the clincher is Covid.  Republican officeholders are creating conditions for more people to get sick and die so they can blame it on Biden.  They are sacrificing actual real lives (though mostly old people) for political gain.  Usually politicians don't do this so blatantly.  But is the American public alarmed and outraged?  Nearly 800,000 deaths officially--half a million people over 65-- and certainly many more than are officially counted, apparently aren't enough to matter.  How many lives will it take till we know that too many people have died?  The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Whatever the historical analogies of our current rigid political and cultural divisions, the mutual disdain and distrust in any government (or science or anything else) by what seems like a substantial proportion of the population--this polititcization of everything--offers gloomy prospects for effective response to future national challenges, including the foreseeable effects of climate distortion.  And that's regardless of any electoral outcomes.   

The electorate in 2021 seems composed of one-quarter Rabid Right fascists and one-quarter surly and impulsive voters, unable or unwilling to absorb or judge crucial information, whose voting patterns is little more than acting out.  Because of them (and Democrats who didn't vote), Republicans successfully market-tested their fascism in this year's elections.  Who would have believed that fulminating members of a party that says what everybody saw happen on January 6 didn't happen, would actually win the next elections. (We will see if these elections were won on national issues or local issues plus the respective candidates.  Less publicized were some recent local elections that Democrats unexpectedly swept.)

The other half of the electorate broadly agree with one another, but obsess on what fractures them from the others.   They can be coalesced around a candidate like Obama, or to oppose a Trump.  But in 2021 no Obama is apparent. 

 President Joe Biden is fearless and a smart political operator--he knew enough to ask for more than he expected to get, and he still may wind up with several multi-trillion dollar changes for the better.  But the default position of the American media and public is to listen to very little of what a President says.  Even a politician with the skills of an FDR would find it difficult to get through.  Homegrown Hitler did, but being the Troll-in-Chief only gets you attention and a cult of personality --it can't get bring a country together around a vision or a program.  Demagogues have the advantage of evoking the violent dark side; it's harder to guide the light.  

Making a speech while standing in front of a broken bridge or a sparkling solar panel doesn't get you more than a sound bite that comes and goes.  Not since JFK and LBJ has there been a Democrat who could command attention over the noise, at least enough.  Whatever it takes to "communicate" these days, Democrats haven't yet figured it out.  In 2021, it's hard to see where that skill or voice will come from.  It's also not clear who will replace Biden and Nancy Pelosi--the Last American Hero--in effective legislating.

President Biden is less than one-fourth into his term. Things can change (though I wouldn't count on the egregious abortion/choice issue, to do it.)  Whether or not voting rights legislation is possible or can come soon enough to govern the rules for 2022 or 2024 is one of the big questions for the coming year.

But Biden will still be President for both those elections.  In the coming year--and certainly by 24--the White House should be seriously gaming out federal responses to various alarming possibilities, just as if they were the Pentagon preparing for various war scenarios.  For it seems that if the Republicans haven't gerrymandered themselves into power, they will try to negate elections and elect themselves at the state level.  And if that doesn't work, armed insurrection is next on the menu. 

 Before January 6, 2021, that might have seemed like paranoia.  Not now. So what will the federal response be to an insurrection taking over the government of Georgia?  Of Michigan?  Of reversing the outcome of federal elections?  Some folks need to be thinking about this now, and getting reliable resources ready. For the United States has enemies, foreign and domestic--and the most obvious right now are the domestic.

Remember Wisconsin

Wisconsin Republican state legislators, backed by Republican majority courts on the state and national level, forced Wisconsin citizens into a deadly and unnecessary decision: risk your life or give up your vote.

They did this for the recent primary election when they refused to call off in-person voting and extend voting by mail, basically to suppress the vote so that the Republican incumbent of the state supreme court would win reelection.  His vote would make it all but certain that the court would uphold throwing thousands of Wisconsin voters off the rolls for the November election.

With the state on covid 19 lockdown, many of the predominantly elderly poll workers would understandably not work.  So over a hundred of polling places in Milwaukee, where much of the black and poor populations reside, were cut down to two.  Polling places in affluent and white areas were pretty much unaffected.

Trying to manipulate the vote for political advantage is hardly unknown in American history.  But not until now has there been a major political party that is openly obstructing the exercise of the vote for potential voters they believe will vote the other way.  Nor has there been a party, or a President, who openly announced that this was a strategy to ensure party dominance.  With easier voting, the apprentice dictator said, no Republican might ever be elected again.

But then came election day, and despite the danger, despite rain and sleet, and hours in long lines, Wisconsin voters who could not get their mail-in or absentee ballots in time, came out and voted.  Turnout was 34%, high for a spring election, and on par with the last presidential nomination spring of 2016.

Interviews with voters on the day told a story that the results announced on Monday confirmed.  Voters were determined to vote no matter what.  And they were angry they were forced into this choice.  And they knew who was responsible.

Among those interviewed by various news media, African American voters in particular were insistent.  They knew of the sacrifices made by their grandparents and great-grandparents, and the deadly obstacles to voting in the South of their heritage.

In elective offices, the Democrats did very well.  Especially in the supreme court election, in which the challenger won handily, only the second to oust an incumbent judge in the past 50 years.  And she won by a lot.  Last year a supreme court seat was decided by a margin of 6,000 votes.  Jill Karofsky won by 163,000.

Joe Biden won the Democratic primary handily, and the next day Bernie Sanders strongly endorsed him, and Tuesday President Barack Obama endorsed him as well, in a video that begins with a truly presidential message on the Covid crisis.

But thousands were disenfranchised in Wisconsin, by the Republican insistence on voting during a pandemic, and by various others means that are becoming all too familiar.

Now Trump and Republicans are engaged in a stealth attack, and an even greater challenge to the November elections.  They not only oppose extending voting by mail, they seek to make it impossible by ending the mail altogether.

The US Postal Service, hit hard by the pandemic and its economics, is in financial trouble.  Trump announced he would veto any pandemic relief bill that included funds to keep the Postal Service in operation.  (This despite a multi-billion dollar bailout of the airline industry.)

Voting by mail is of course impossible without the mail.  And that seems to be what this is about.  The CDC is predicting a second wave of  covid19 epidemic in the fall.  Republicans want to force an entire nation to risk their lives to vote.

The Republican party knows no shame.  Remember Wisconsin, and its unsung heroes who would not be stopped from voting.

Krugman on Climate and Politics: Origins and Ends

It may seem that the US government's persistent failure to address the climate emergency with the required urgency, and in particular the Republican party's intransigence, is a byproduct of larger political forces.  After all, it is extremely rare to see this threat to the survival of civilization and life on Earth as we know it as the subject of the top story of the day.  At best, it is an afterthought.  So it must be a low priority politically as well as in the real world.

But economist and columnist Paul Krugman sees the Republican response to the climate crisis as central and generative--as how this all started.

There is no one writing today who thinks and writes with such clarity as Krugman, so I can do no better than to quote his most recent column at length.  It begins:

The most terrifying aspect of the U.S. political drama isn’t the revelation that the president has abused his power for personal gain. If you didn’t see that coming from the day Donald Trump was elected, you weren’t paying attention.

No, the real revelation has been the utter depravity of the Republican Party. Essentially every elected or appointed official in that party has chosen to defend Trump by buying into crazy, debunked conspiracy theories. That is, one of America’s two major parties is beyond redemption; given that, it’s hard to see how democracy can long endure, even if Trump is defeated."

Then in two paragraphs, Krugman summarizes the latest data and implications of it that has escaped the big headlines this week (go to the column itself for the relevant links):

However, the scariest reporting I’ve seen recently has been about science, not politics. A new federal report finds that climate change in the Arctic is accelerating, matching what used to be considered worst-case scenarios. And there are indications that Arctic warming may be turning into a self-reinforcing spiral, as the thawing tundra itself releases vast quantities of greenhouse gases.

Catastrophic sea-level rise, heat waves that make major population centers uninhabitable, and more are now looking more likely than not, and sooner rather than later."

He notes that taking action to address the climate crisis "was never going to be easy," but that the chief barrier has been extremist (which has become its mainstream) Republican denial.  He reiterates that this is not a byproduct but historically an origin of current Republican decadence:

"As I’ve written in the past, climate denial was in many ways the crucible for Trumpism. Long before the cries of “fake news,” Republicans were refusing to accept science that contradicted their prejudices. Long before Republicans began attributing every negative development to the machinations of the “deep state,” they were insisting that global warming was a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a vast global cabal of corrupt scientists.

And long before Trump began weaponizing the power of the presidency for political gain, Republicans were using their political power to harass climate scientists and, where possible, criminalize the practice of science itself."

Krugman points out that many of the architects of this extremist strategy have been rewarded with high federal and White House positions and influence.  In addressing why Republicans have gone down this road, he points to the enormous political contribution to the Rs by huge fossil fuel corporations, and to the "halo effect" that accompanies doing something good, like addressing the climate crisis. If that happened, then this might make addressing other problems more popular, but Rs oppose any progressive or liberal programs.  So they must oppose them all, especially one so comprehensive.

But he also admits that:

The truth is that even now I don’t fully understand how things got this bad. But the reality is clear: Modern Republicans are irredeemable, devoid of principle or shame. And there is, as I said, no reason to believe that this will change even if Trump is defeated next year.

Krugman concludes:

The only way that either American democracy or a livable planet can survive is if the Republican Party as it now exists is effectively dismantled and replaced with something better — maybe with a party that has the same name, but completely different values. This may sound like an impossible dream. But it’s the only hope we have.

Masters of Deceit

In the late 1950s, notorious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover published a book that sold in the millions called Masters of Deceit.  It purported to describe the nefarious activities of the Soviet Union in the US by way of the American Communist Party.

Most of what Hoover described was specious, a holdover from McCarthyism and the discredited HUAC.  But he did mention Soviet espionage and its favorite techniques, including blackmail and threats of exposure.  He emphasized the insidious and especially the deceptive methods that the Soviets employed.  The Russians would do anything to undermine democracy in America.

The most virulent Red-baiting anticommunists of that and succeeding decades were Republicans.  They went after any Democrat who appeared too liberal, who was too insistent on racial equality (which Hoover linked to communist subversion), and anyone pointing out the insanity of the nuclear balance of terror as "soft on Communism."

Today it appears the Russians are Republicans' best friends.  There is a picture emerging of Russian money being laundered through the National Rifle Association and ending up in the Republican campaign for President or even the RNC bank account of the president-elect.  This past week, further evidence emerged of multiple pathways for Russian influence exerted on behalf of a candidate in Republican primaries who successfully became the Republican candidate for President in 2016.

This past week we saw more damning evidence of direct financial motivation for allowing the Russian government to interfere with the US election of 2016, influence or dictate policy proposals in the campaign, and possibly influence or dictate actual policy out of the White House.  This is a piece with the corruption in plain sight that this administration has so far gotten away with.  But its initial effect was to defraud voters and the election process, the basis for constitutional government.

Greed may furnish the dots, but they are connected with lies. The evidence emerges out of systematic lies that continue today.  Today's Masters of Deceit run the White House and, in perhaps different ways, the U.S. Senate.

Meanwhile the Republican party begins to mirror the Russian autocracy.  The first blatant example was the Republican Senate ignoring their constitutional responsibilities to advise and consent on the President's appointment to the Supreme Court in 2011.  They got away with that, so Republicans engage in even bolder efforts to undermine democracy in several states--notably Wisconsin and Michigan--to contravene the results of democratic elections.

Not content with completely blatant efforts to limit voting and cynically deny voting rights to entire segments of the public they can't persuade to vote for them, it's now pretty clear that Republicans in at least one congressional district in North Carolina actually destroyed or changed ballots, or both.  It wasn't the first time--at least the third time in that district.  I'm not convinced it didn't happen in Ohio in the 2004 presidential election.

All in all the Republican party is moving quickly towards becoming as close to an American Fascist political party as this country has ever seen.

Present: Hoping for Hope

When Michelle Obama's portrait was unveiled at the National Gallery last month (along with President Obama's), she suggested that girls of color "will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the walls of this great American institution. ... And I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives because I was one of those girls."

Another one of those girls was 2 year old Parker Curry.  When a passing photographer snapped a picture of her transfixed before the portrait (her mother kept asking her to turn around for her own photo but she was rapt) and posted it, it went viral and First Lady Michelle saw it.  That led to a visit to the girl in her Washington home, and a dance.

The portrait itself, by the way, led to this interesting essay/analysis in the New Yorker, which I'm glad I found the opportunity to point out.

Then on Friday several online outlets ran stories of a rumor that both Obamas are talking with Netflik about producing programs for that TV streaming network.  Apparently the New York Times started it all, quoting a source saying that the content might focus on "inspirational stories."  The New York coverage ends with the exhortation "Cross your fingers for Hope TV, everyone." Amen.

                                               *

And there was even a little hope in the news this past week.  The Parkland students got something like a win when the Florida legislature passed and its NRA-beholden governor signed a law that...well, doesn't do a lot, but does something in the gun control area.  Even if the bad stuff outweighs the good in practice, it is significant for doing anything at all.  It's the first defeat of the aggressive absolutism of the NRA, which of course is suing to stop it.

Meanwhile, first evidence shows that the new tax cut law is (1)causing chaos because it's so badly written and (2) having precisely the effect that Democratic opponents said it would: instead of  corporations using the money for raises and more hiring they are buying back their own stock to further enrich themselves.  So no surprise that February numbers show wages going down.

But polling evidence suggests that Republicans are not getting any political benefit from the tiny short-term bump in paychecks the law mandated.  After a brief bump in the polls, the law is now less popular than before it was passed--and it was not very popular then.

Present: Labor's Love Lost

Update: At the Atlantic, Garrett Eps (I will take the credit for starting his career as a journalist by publishing him in Washington Newsworks so very long ago when I was its editor) shows why this case is playing out at the Supreme Court as a complete partisan scam, with the Republicans offering no facts whatsoever in challenging current law.

These days, being guided by past experience can be dangerous.  Too many things have changed.  But I remember when labor unions were strong, and they were the most vital supporters of Democratic candidates and the Democratic agenda. Moreover, despite some corrupt leadership, they moved America towards justice and equality.

But it seems that very soon the last remnant of this relationship is going to be destroyed by the Supreme Court, and today's hip commentators are unanimous that the Democrats are going to pay a huge price.

In a Slate piece titled Labor Lost, Sean McElwee and Mark Joseph Stern summarize the situation: the Supreme Court is about to decide whether public employees must pay dues to their union.  In its previous decision on the subject, the Court said yes, because all members benefit from the contracts the union negotiates on their behalf.

But with the cover of dubious constitutional arguments, the partisan Republican Court is about to decide the opposite, thus weakening if not destroying public employee unions.  The real reason will be: because that's what the Republican party wants.

Like suppressing voters, Russian interference and gerrymandering when GOPer legislatures do it, Republicans justify everything that gives them an unfair advantage.  Unions have long been a target, which is why Ronald Reagan and the 1980s Republican party did all they could to get rid of them, including the encouraging of jobs moving offshore to places where unions wouldn't be a problem for them.

Since then, public sector unions have been the last bastion and mainstay for Democrats.  Now the Supreme Court Republicans are about to take care of that, in a very likely 5-4 decision.

 This decision will go down in history along with Citizens United, Bush v. Gore and whatever case it was that sanctified opposition to all gun regulations because the Second Amendment was given a literal interpretation which parallels an interpretation of Genesis as officially naming creation day as October 23, 4004 BC.  All of these "decisions" twisted the Constitution in order to blatantly favor the Republican Party.

This comes at a time when one of the Democrat's new hopes, Conor Lamb, who making a race of it for Congress in a western PA district that went heavily for Trump, is advising that Democrats return to their union roots.  Ella Neilsen in Vox summarizes: Focused on recapturing blue-collar workers, Lamb’s campaign represents one school of thought — going back to labor-liberal economic values and working with unions to retake territory in Midwest and Rust Belt states that voted for Donald Trump in 2016."

But Democrats also have themselves to blame, for meekly accepting the decline of unions and the party's relationships with union leadership and members.  As Eric Levitz in New York succinctly put it last month: "The GOP understands how important labor unions are to the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, historically, has not."

When Levitz says "historically" he means in recent decades.  From FDR to JFK and LBJ, the party certainly understood this.  In the elections I was part of, the party and the political committees of the unions were partners.  And this was in western Pennsylvania, which was reliably Democratic as long as those relationships were maintained.  Unions educated their members on issues, and represented their members' needs and wants to the party, and to its elected officials.

Unions were crucial as well to the Civil Rights movement.  They were in the leadership and in the crowd at the March on Washington.  They were progressives of the time.

That much of their white membership has grown so dismally right wing may well be partly if not largely due to weak or vanished unions, and the Democrats not responding to union issues as much anymore.  Levitz shows how much Democrats lost from a weakened union movement, and more importantly, what American society lost because of it, in laws that weren't passed and programs not enacted.  Including universal healthcare and a non-political national response to global heating, with enough time to save the future.

The survival of public sector unions to this point is due almost entirely to the past Supreme Court clarity on the right to organize.  But even some who support that right (or pretend to) question whether unions are compatible with public sector service.  That apparently includes conservative Republican justice Anthony Kennedy, considered a moderate or swing justice on at least some subjects, who made two blistering speeches on the first day of oral arguments on this matter on Monday, questioning the public sector unions right to exist.

It's no coincidence that public sector unions are largely comprised of minority and women.  Many public sector jobs are on the basis of exams or degrees, and rigorously color and gender blind.  That minorities and women tend to support Democrats because they agree with them on issues doesn't much matter to Republicans.  They see these unions as political entities opposed to them.

It used to be that once in awhile a Republican might suggest that the way to disengage unions from their historic ties with Democrats might be for Republicans to represent the interests of their members.  But that never got very far, and would be soundly booed at CPAC today, if not the cause of guns coming out of holsters and full scale riot.

  The Slate piece quotes research that suggests weakened unions will drive down voting.  It may not be so pronounced, or fatal to Democrats.  But then again, it might.  Regardless it's a big partisan win for Republicans, and for their very open brand of political corruption.

The great grandparents of many in the industrial areas of America literally bled and starved so that their unions could deliver a living wage and some just return on their labor.  Few tell that story anymore, or why unions--for all their faults--are still essential, and could do so much more that needs to be done if they were stronger.

  Some Democrats, like President Obama, have told this story, but not often enough.  And as Levitz shows, they haven't backed it up with legislation in recent decades.

And so Republicans will get away with this without the kind of public clamor that could make it a political liability.  Because the Democratic Party has forgotten its union roots.

Fast and Furious

The furor over the forthcoming--and later today, officially published book--Fire and Fury is still raging, so it's fruitless to even summarize what's happened so far. Republicans are roiling, not only from the open war declared by the anti-president and his enablers on Bannon, the revelations on Russia, White House dysfunction and the anti-president's incompetence, but what this book adds to the ongoing concerns on his peculiar mental state, and of course what this all means politically.

But for the rest of the country and the world it is the increasing worry over his grasp of reality, and impulse control.  His tweet on his bigger nuclear button is part of this context.  In this regard, Eric Levitz writes that the signs are there for everyone to see.  He disputes the idea that the anti-president has to be examined by a psychologist or whatever before a diagnosis is made:

"That argument has always struck me as nuts.There is no diagnostic blood test or brain scan for narcissistic personality disorder; there’s just a list of observable traits. A mental-health professional simply studies a patient’s modes of reasoning and patterns of behavior, and assesses whether they fit the checklist of symptoms for NPD. It’s absurd to believe that a psychiatrist who has spent a couple of hours talking to a patient in an office is qualified to make this diagnosis — but one with access to hundreds of hours of a patient’s interviews and improvisatory remarks, along with a small library’s worth of biographical information and testimonials from his closest confidants — is not. To insist otherwise is to mystify psychiatric practice; it’s to pretend that there is some shamanistic knowledge that mental-health professionals can only access once you provide them with a co-pay."

At least some psychologists who have studied the public record are deeply concerned, and as Levitz reports, one of them has briefed members of Congress.  That's enough to be convincing, but whether it's enough to pass a legal or constitutional test is another question.  It would seem that an actual examination is the minimum for that.

Yet The Fire and Fury excerpts widely published by Thursday only add to the evidence of mental instability or worse.  It's not just the individual statements and incidents, it's the weight of them.  One of the most troubling is this:

"At Mar-a-Lago, just before the new year, a heavily made-up Trump failed to recognize a succession of old friends."

To the usual personality disorders suggested, Levitz adds the possibility of dementia (or senility.)  At least some of this may be actual brain damage or dysfunction.  I was surprised when he slurred his words and had to use two hands to grip a glass that no one in the media I saw mentioned the possibility of a mini-stroke, which is the first thing I thought of.  It's transitory but it can be damaging.

If something like that has happened and it shows up in a real physical (as has been promised for this month), then invoking the 25th amendment becomes easier.

 Republicans invoking it is also made easier because the sacred tax cut is law, and that's likely to be all the Rs will get out of this Congress.  They keep circling the wagons until they don't.  They need to be convinced this guy has no future, and with him neither do they.  Or sufficiently scared out of their own minds by that finger on the nuclear button.

The other red flag in this regard reported in this book is that the anti-president made the decision to fire Comey alone.  Although aides had weighed in on the pros and cons, he made and announced the decision without telling anyone first.  That does not bode well when it's also being reported that he's becoming obsessed with North Korea and war.

In any case I forewarned a fateful year, and it's off to a fast and furious start.

Senator Jones

A Democrat wins in Alabama, and there's plenty of credit to go around.

 Nominating Doug Jones, with an appealing and admirable track record, well-known in the state, and bold enough to be pro-choice in the deep red South.

The party's commitment in cash and star power, with Obama robocalls and appearances by Cory Booker and other black leaders all weekend.  That may well have helped African American turnout, comparable to the Obama victories--pretty impressive in a special election on an unfamiliar voting day a few weeks before Christmas.

A big gender gap, which may or may not have a lot to do with the substantial allegations against Moore for predatory sexual behavior and worse.  Some interpretations of exit polls say it was a big influence, but others say that most voters had made up their mind before the allegations were made.  In any case, Jones won the female vote by a bigger margin than Moore won the male.

Republican dissatisfaction with Moore probably contributed to the number of votes for write-in candidates that about equals Jones' winning margin.  And while not as numerically significant, the lopsided youth vote (which went to Jones by more than 30 points) suggests this may not be the last Democratic victory.

The media are universally calling this a major blow to the anti-president and the Republican majority.  We'll see if it has any immediate influence on Senate votes for the rejiggered tax bill, which sounds worse and worse for the economy. Senator Jones likely won't be seated for the final vote, which the now universally unpopular Mitch McConnell is continuing to rush towards.  So it looks like the next Democratic administration will spend most of its time trying to repair the worst of the destruction left by the Republicans, just like the last two Democratic administrations did.

This election result becomes one weighty element among others in the continuing drama, as the Mueller investigation continues and the ongoing revolution over behavior towards women suddenly circles the anti-president, as no fewer than six Senators on Tuesday (before the vote count in Alabama) called for his resignation.

Suicide of a Nation (with Update)

December second, 2017--a day that will live in infamy.

Senate Republicans voted to increase the federal deficit by one trillion dollars in order to give tax breaks to billionaires.  The bill repeals the individual mandate for Obamacare, predicted to result in 13 million people losing healthcare.  Other provisions within it cripple education from K to college, state and local governments and a lot more.  It will effectively raise taxes on most Americans.  And for no related reason, it allows oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

If this bill becomes law, which is all but certain, remember what it was like on December 1: nearly full employment, low inflation; a deficit and debt greatly reduced by 8 years of the Obama administration, an almost full recovery from the Great Recession of 2008, and a robust economy, with manufacturing--particularly green energy production--robust and still growing.

How like Utopia that will likely look in the near future, as a result of this shameful legislation, accomplished in a manner that violates every Congressional norm.  Without a single public hearing, and with language inserted by lobbyists, it was passed in a partisan rush in the dead of night. For Congress it is its most shameful hour since World War II. This is the moment most feared, when this administration commits the nation to a kind of suicide.

And as has been reported--and Senator Sanders just said--this is only the beginning.  To make up for this massive giveaway, Republicans will be coming for Social Security, Medicare and all other social programs that help people who aren't billionaires or measly millionaires.

Every Republican but one voted for it, and no Democrats  A similar bill had already passed the House with Republican votes.

Thanks, chumps.

It's a temporarily great day for oligarchs.  And for everyone who wants a weakened America--like, I don't know, Russia?

An optimistic update: Jonathan Chiat: Of all the horrors Donald Trump has (and has yet to) inflict upon the republic, a huge tax cut for the rich was the most inevitable. But it is also the most easily reversible. Lifetime court appointments, carbon pollution, the degrading of democratic norms — all of these will prove difficult or impossible to undo, and leave costs deep into the future. The Trump tax cuts will not."

But that works only if and when the Dems take back control of Congress, not nearly a sure thing.  But Chiat is certainly right that Dems should make a major issue of this terrible and also unpopular bill, relentlessly next year.  Meanwhile the damage and suffering will begin.

Washington Week: Unhealthcare on Life Support

Many people, including Republicans, may have forgotten that Senator John McCain was once their candidate for President.  I don't think McCain has forgotten it.

Senator McCain announced his opposition to the latest GOP unhealthcare bill, which likely has doomed it.  Although this particular zombie proposal has come back to life so many times, nobody will count on its death until the September 30 deadline drives a stake into its heart.

McCain is again one of the heroes of the opposition.  The other--which I'm sure no Republicans nor anyone else saw coming--was talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel.  This description/analysis of his series of devastating monologues and their influence is the best I've run across.

As for the unhealthcare bill itself, the best single description of its nature I've seen is in the New Yorker, by Atul Gawande, a staff writer and cancer surgeon.  It begins:

"The fundamental thing to understand about Senate Republicans’ latest attempt to repeal Obamacare is that the bill under consideration would not just undo the Affordable Care Act—it would also end Medicaid as we know it and our federal government’s half-century commitment to closing the country’s yawning gaps in health coverage. And it would do so without putting in place any credible resources or policies to replace the system it is overturning. If our country enacts this bill, it would be an act of mass suicide."

Why would congressional Republicans insist on a such an extreme, lunatic and suicidal bill opposed by nearly every healthcare institution and organization, and a majority of the citizenry?  The usual excuse that Republican voters demand an end to Obamacare doesn't wash (since the numbers don't bear it out), according to Eric Levitz in New York Magazine.  Only a small number of people actively support the bill, and nearly all of them are billionaire GOP donors--principally the Koch brothers.  This whole exercise is further evidence that 48 United States Senators are bought on a continuing basis.

Such is one result of extreme income inequality.  Another was quantified this week in how much income most people have lost so that the very few can become horribly wealthy.

The unhealthcare bill fight dominated this week's Washington frenzy but there were notable additions to what's known about the progress of the Russian interference investigation, helpfully summarized by Ryan Lizza.

Heroes and Villains

Senator John McCain's week is already becoming legendary.  Diagnosed with brain cancer, he made a dramatic reappearance in the Senate, and was the deciding vote to take up the Republican unhealthcare bills.  He promptly made a speech castigating the secret, cynical and increasingly corrupt process led by Mitch McConnell and maintained by his fellow Republicans.

 He reminded them that matters of this weight and complexity require the regular committee process and open discussion, and that matters that involve virtually every American and a significant chunk of the economy require at least an attempt at bipartisan legislation.  Then he stunned his colleagues by being the deciding vote that brought down the last Republican unhealthcare plan, and ended this particular long nightmare for the time being.

McCain's first vote should not have been a surprise.  When asked earlier if he would vote to take up the bill he replied "I always do."  That's part of the regular order of how Senate business is conducted.  His vote against the plan mostly supported what he said in his speech, which Andrew Sullivan considers was significant in itself:

"And I wonder if historians will one day look back and see Senator John McCain’s speech last Tuesday as some kind of turning point. Diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer, McCain nonetheless returned to give one of the best-scripted speeches of his career. Excoriating the chaotic process by which repeal of the ACA was being forced through the Senate, McCain reminded his fellows that they are the president’s equals in the government of this country and not his subordinates. He appealed for a bipartisan fix for a national problem, and for a return to regular order. He spoke for a mere 15 minutes, but they remain worth watching several days later. He seemed for a few moments like an actual voice of authority in a capital where all such authority has withered into mere positioning or cowardice. And in the early hours of Friday morning, McCain appropriately provided the critical vote to kill the skinny repeal of the ACA. It was, in some ways, his finest hour."

(Parenthetically, I find myself agreeing with Sullivan, the former conservative, not only on the Republicans but on excesses of the left, particularly the stifling of free speech, and on Democratic failures.  His column from two weeks ago merits serious consideration.)

But lost in all the attention on McCain was the courage of Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who defied actual and meaningful threats from the Sec. of Interior and backed by the apprentice dictator in the White House, threatening to screw the state of Alaska if she didn't play ball on unhealthcare.  It was no small threat.  Interior essentially runs more than half the state.

Murkowski, who in 2010 fell in the primary to a far right fellow Republican but spectacularly won on a write-in vote, cast an essential no vote on unhealthcare anyway, when fellow Republican Senators who knew better took the coward's way out.

It's significant that the threat got big play in Alaska itself, and worth noting that administration outrages make the local press, too, in areas where the apprentice dictator looks for his constituency, as in Long Island Newday's coverage of the a.d.'s encouraging police brutality.

He also made a lot of waves in middle America with his bizarre speech to a gathering of Boy Scouts, where scouting and its traditions are as close to sacred as anything secular.  The Borowitz satire that the Girls Scouts obtained a restraining order preventing the a.d. from coming within 300 feet of their gatherings, had the unfortunate ring of an actual news story.  As did the tweet he imagined the a.d. issuing in response:“Failing Girl Scouts bad (or sick) guys,” Trump wrote. “Mints, cookies terrible. Sad!”

As for villains in this unhealthcare saga there are at least 49, but the most pernicious needs to be named: Mitch McConnell, who now holds the record for the most evil perpetrated by an American over the past nine years.  Even without formidable ongoing competition in the White House, let's hope he's done his worst.

Obamacare Lives

The last ditch, post-midnight effort by Republicans ended in failure when Senator John McCain joined the only other Republican Senators with an ounce of courage: Senator Susan Collins and Senator Lisa Murkowski in voting no on the last gasp version of a Republican unhealthcare bill.

The vote was viewed with triumph and optimism by Jonathan Chait, so since that's pretty rare these days I'm passing on excerpts:

"I remember where I was and how it felt when the House of Representatives held the deciding vote to establish the Affordable Care Act. It was a feeling of elation, but, sitting in my living room by myself, an oddly solitary one. I ran out into the street of my residential neighborhood, half-expecting jubilant V-J Day-style crowds. But it wasn’t just that my neighbors were at work. The months and months of legislative grinding had cast a pall of depression over even many enthusiastic Obama-voting liberals, who saw the health care law as hardly worth celebrating.

The death of Obamacare repeal, in the early morning hours of Friday, July 28, was a very different experience. “Nothing in life is so exhilarating,” as Churchill is reputed to have said, “as to be shot at without result.” Obamacare has gained not only positive approval in broad opinion polls but a genuine mass following. Hundreds of thousands of Americans rallied to its defense, making its repeal impossibly painful for the Republican government that had once assumed it would sweep the law away in a January lightning strike."

Republicans in power will weaken Obamacare, Chait cautions, but America will never go back to the way things were done before Obamacare became law of the land.

"The desire on the right to destroy Obamacare will probably never disappear. In 2005, 70 years after the establishment of Social Security, confident Republicans sought to privatize the hallowed program. That, too, was a painful failure. And there is a lesson in this. While elections swing back and forth between right and left, there is a reason that the United States is more humane place today than it was 25 or 50 years ago. Social Security, civil rights, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare have survived. Legalized child labor, supply-side economics, and unlimited pollution have withered. Ideas that bring real improvement to peoples’ lives have more staying power than ideas that do not.

Obamacare has brought life-changing access to modern medical care to 20 million Americans. It will endure."

Yet there is that other reality to face, and it becomes starker every day.  Check out this remarkable opening to Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column this morning:

"The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.

I wish that were hyperbole. The problem is not just that President Trump is selfish, insecure, egotistical, ignorant and unserious. It is that he neither fully grasps nor minimally respects the concept of honor, without which our governing system falls apart. He believes “honorable” means “obsequious in the service of Trump.” He believes everyone else’s motives are as base as his.

The Trump administration is, indeed, like the court of some accidental monarch who is tragically unsuited for the duties of his throne. However long it persists, we must never allow ourselves to think of the Trump White House as anything but aberrant. We must fight for the norms of American governance lest we forget them in their absence."

Notes on a Scandal

The revelations surrounding a meeting of members of the apprentice dictator's family and campaign with a Russian government representative who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton still reverberate, as the scandal grows.  But just before this news began to surface, there was that meeting between the a.d. of the US and the actual dictator of Russia.  Here's one evaluation of it by
Molly McKew in Politico:

"Donald Trump needed to accomplish two things this week during his visits to Poland and the G-20 Summit in Hamburg. First, he needed to reassure America’s allies that he was committed to collective defense and the core set of values and principles that bind us together. Second, he needed to demonstrate that he understands that the greatest threat to that alliance, those values, and our security is the Kremlin.

Trump delivered neither of these. In very concrete terms, through speech and action, the president signaled a willingness to align the United States with Vladimir Putin’s worldview, and took steps to advance this realignment. He endorsed, nearly in its totality, the narrative the Russian leader has worked so meticulously to construct."

This is one even darker side of the scandal, that American interests will be sacrificed and Russian interests advanced, for which there was already some evidence--and there has been more since.  If anything like this had happened a decade or two ago, some prominent Republican would be making angry speeches accusing the president of selling the country out to the Russians, which this one may be doing quite literally.

Another darker side or consequence of denial is vulnerability of our election system to further Russian interference.  The alarm has again been sounded by Richard Clarke.

As to the possible cooperation between the R campaign and Russian efforts to throw the election their way, the leaking of information obtained by Russian operatives to the campaign may well violate campaign finance laws and other statutes, but the whole area is too murky for most voters to see it as a major transgression.

Something perhaps more serious and maybe even more resonating has once again surfaced in a McClatchy report that: "Investigators at the House and Senate Intelligence committees and the Justice Department are examining whether the Trump campaign’s digital operation – overseen by Jared Kushner – helped guide Russia’s sophisticated voter targeting and fake news attacks on Hillary Clinton in 2016."  This would require more detailed and continuous cooperation between elements of the campaign and Russian operatives.

As to where the scandal is leading politically, many look to the precedent of Watergate.  I suggested some context in this regard simply from my recollections, but at New York, my former editor Frank Rich has gone back and refreshed his memory with contemporaneous readings.  He wrote about it in a magazine piece, and has commented a couple of times in interview form.

As I did, Rich cautioned that it took a long time for the investigative and impeachment process and especially for the public to pay attention and see the matter as serious.  He notes that the White House then claimed loudly that media reports were the equivalent of "fake news."  In subsequent interviews he emphasized that even as he resigned, Nixon kept his core support, which was around 22%.  And because there were powerful southerners still in the Democratic party back then, the fact that the Dems controlled Congress was not so important as we might suppose.

Though some of us remember courageous Republicans, Rich says that they were mostly just as partisan and resistant to the emerging facts.  But he says that this time around,  Republicans will be looking hard at the a.d.'s support as the 2018 election season rolls around.  And even though they haven't won high profile special elections, the Dems have overperformed in them and others.  Meanwhile the Dem Senators in states that went overwhelmingly R in 2016 are all pretty popular.

Meanwhile, the scandal just gets uglier and darker.  Now there's an unnatural death--an apparent suicide in the mold of both conspiracy theories and the way the Russians are known to operate.

Devilish Details

Sometimes the devilish details are small but irksome.  Nevertheless they change or obscure meanings, and that always means something.

A little verbal sloppiness seems to intrude more often on Internet posts than they used to in print.  I wonder if this is part of some weird Internet ethic that says you can't have editors or editing.  There is this tradition now that every time a post is changed, the change has to be noted.  Why?  I edit posts for clarity any number of times. As I believe I should.

The esteemed Jonathan Chait is trenchant as usual in his column on the week's major revelation about the Russian connection.  But near the beginning there's this sentence:

That line of defense is likely to disappear now that The Wall Street Journal has reported that Peter Smith, a Republican opposition researcher who said he was working for Michael Flynn, colluded with Russian hackers to try to obtain stolen emails from Hillary Clinton.

But that Flynn "colluded with Russian hackers to try to obtain stolen emails from Hillary Clinton" is not what he meant--at least I don't think so. If I'm correct, they didn't try to obtain anything from Hillary Clinton.  They tried to obtain emails that were stolen from Hillary Clinton. There's a big difference, and while his meaning may be eventually clear in context, the sentence is needlessly confusing.  It stopped me cold anyway.  (And Chiat wasn't the only one to make this mistake.)

Or the group of moderate Republicans that issued an important statement on the R budget, as reported by Politico.  They concluded: “[A]bsent such a bipartisan, bicameral agreement, we are reticent to support any budget resolution on the House floor,” the letter reads.

"Reticent" is an odd word to use, since it usually means not inclined to speak.  While not speaking in favor of the resolution is part of the meaning, the more accurate word to describe what they mean is "reluctant."  They are reluctant to support the budget resolution.  That's plenty mealy-mouth for politicians without being bewildering as well.

But devilish details can also be quite big.  For instance, a lot of verbiage can obscure some important numbers.

In an eloquent column on the Republican healthcare proposals, Paul Krugman provides a broad if shocking understanding of the basic cruelty at the heart of Republican policy.  But several numbers he uses to make his case deserve to stand alone, especially as they are not usually included in stories about the Senate bill.

The numbers are these:

Percentage of tax cuts in this bill that will go to Americans with incomes of over $1 million:  40%

Percentage their income will rise due to these tax cuts: 2%

Estimate of the number of otherwise preventable deaths that will be caused by provisions of this bill:  200,000