When More Knowledge Feels Like Less Power

Like a lot of other people, I've been trying to keep abreast of all the news about Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.  The more you learn, the uglier it gets: the recklessness of the Russians embarking on a course of action that one could argue is tantamount to an attack on our country; the inept FBI response in alerting victims of the hacking; the collective shrug the Republican Party is giving at the news that a foreign power intervened to help their candidate win; questions over whether President Obama acted properly in responding to these Russian attempts, and in alerting the public to them.  As with the election as a whole, a dizzying darkness seems to lie over what has transpired, in part because everything seems to be so interconnected and yet so irresolvable; greater knowledge leads not to empowerment, but to a growing sense of helplessness.  

One example, the biggie: did Russian intervention tip the election in Donald Trump's favor?  From one perspective, it's impossible to know, only to speculate - how could we ever get hard numbers to determine this?  We do know that Donald Trump won the electoral college through a very narrow popular vote win in a handful of states, and it's within the realm of possibility that his margin of victory was secured by those voters who chose Trump over Clinton because of the hacked emails.  But then what of the effect of James Comey's announcement in late October that new emails had been discovered, or his "clearing" of her just days before the election?  There's also evidence that this casting of aspersions on Clinton swayed some voters against her in the election's final days.  And what about reports we are seeing about how very badly the Clinton campaign was conducted in upper Midwest states like Michigan - didn't the campaign's leaders make errors that badly hurt Clinton's prospects?  And how did Trump become the Republican nominee, anyway - wasn't it in part because of a massive failure of the media to concentrate on the right questions, and because Trump was provided with literally millions of dollars of free advertising through their coverage of him?  And let's not forget the whole thing about him losing the popular vote by 3 million votes and just squeaking into an electoral college victory?  And of course, another layer of the dizziness is that we knew about the hacking months ago, so that something that was at first only strange and vaguely threatening has gradually grown more nightmarish.

So the Russian factor is dizzying because we're not totally sure if it mattered, even though we can very easily surmise how it could have; and beyond this, there's the basic fact there have already been so many outside-the-box moments in this campaign - how could there be even more at this point?  The mind boggles.  It's not too much to say that for many of us, our sense of what is normal has been completely upended.

And here's one more aspect of the dizziness that grows out of the the new normal - oh, heck, let's just call it the new reality: this new reality is one that distinctly reveals our own powerlessness every step of the way.  Whether it's something simple, like not understanding how our fellow Americans would even consider voting for Donald Trump, to the idea that our election might plausibly be tilted by Russian machinations.  At the center of this disorientation is of course Donald Trump himself, a candidate who broke so many norms and basic decencies of American politics and society.  And now it's obvious that this breaking of norms is fully embraced by the Republican Party as a whole, as numerous Republican politicians treat Russian meddling in the election as a partisan issue in which the only relevant fact is that it screwed their political opponents - advantage GOP!

And now that Trump's president-elect, the disorientation simply continues, as he fills his cabinet with a rogue's gallery of billionaires, incompetents, and warmongers, and accuses the Democratic Party of massive fraud when he tweets about the millions of illegal voters who cost him the popular vote.  

There's much, much more to be said on the subjects of disorientation and this new reality, but for now I offer a couple of observations.  First, I think things seem particularly crapulent right now because the Trump presidency exists in a state of pure potential: in a lot of ways, we have a sense that we can't stop him because a) he just won the election despite many people's work towards a different outcome and b) he is not actually president yet and there really are no traditional political levers to oppose him until he is - we are in an unpleasant, threatening limbo state.

Second, learning that the Russians were specifically backing Trump's campaign, and that Donald Trump seems to have no problem with this, doesn't change the fundamental perilous crossroads our country has arrived at.  His authoritarian attitudes and undemocratic notions have been on broad display for a very long time at this point; certainly after all his fawning praise of Vladimir Putin, it isn't surprising that he'd welcome that autocrat's interference in the presidential election.  There is more than enough evidence to conclude that we're in an unprecedented political situation, in which the Republicans are relying on increasingly undemocratic means to seize and hold power in our country, with the added bonus of a president uniquely unqualified to hold that office.  In a very real sense, the Russians could not have had the influence they did if our media and the Republican Party had not been so broken and venal, respectively; instead, both these institutions worked to amplify the meddling.  The central question before us remains the same: what do we make of the fact that the ruling party in America is resorting to increasingly authoritarians means, and what do we do to oppose and ultimately defeat it?

Hatred of Muslims as the Logical Outcome of the Unending War on Terror

Many, many people have been rightly incensed over the past year by Donald Trump's slanders and threats against American Muslims and Muslims more generally.  But it's important to think about how we've gotten to the point that a presidential candidate of a major political party was able to denigrate a major religious group and strike a chord with millions of fellow bigots.  The context is so obvious as to be almost invisible at this point: the U.S.' deeply flawed, self-defeating response to Islamic terrorism over the last decade and a half.  If Americans feel emboldened to express hatred of Muslims, it's in large part because the United States itself has for many years now been engaging in a de facto war against the Muslim world, from our unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq to the current regime of drone strikes that exclusively find their targets in Muslim countries.  It doesn't matter that the United States officially says we aren't at war with Islam; the repeated message the American public has gotten is that we are indeed at war with Islamic terrorists in multiple countries around the world, and we've got the wars to prove it.  How can this not have seeped into the consciousness of millions of Americans, poisoning them against fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim, not to mention Muslims more generally?  Religious freedom in our country is becoming yet another piece of collateral damage in a deranged war on terror that has treated a mainly political challenge as a mainly military one.

If you're not questioning the endless, unwinnable war on terror, then excuse me if I don't take you seriously when you act like you care about the rights of American Muslims.  The one is the curse of the other.

Preserving, Protecting and Defending the Donald

Over the past few days, we have learned how the C.I.A. has become quite certain that Russian hacking efforts during the past U.S. election cycle were intended not just to interfere with the process, but to aid Donald Trump's candidacy.  In response, President Obama has ordered further inquiry into the matter, and elected officials from both parties are calling for investigations.

It is hard to think of allegations more serious than that a hostile foreign power has worked to undermine our democracy and support its preferred candidate in an election; but the allegations are that serious.  

Yet in an interview with Fox News Sunday, Donald Trump completely dismissed this possibility, and called the reports of Russian actions to benefit him "ridiculous."  What is in fact "ridiculous" is for a president-elect to dismiss out of hand, without any engagement with the facts of the case, charges as deadly serious as these.  And as if dismissing the issue weren't bad enough, Trump suggests that these reports are being promulgated by sore-loser Democrats, which would mean that Democrats, not Russians, are actively working to undermine the election results.  In fact, this would in turn suggest a conspiracy between the Democratic Party and the CIA to subvert our democracy.

Do we need any clearer evidence that this man is unfit for the presidency?  Not simply not taking seriously an incredibly troubling issue, but slandering the opposition in an obvious attempt to protect himself?  In declining to take the accusations seriously, he fails the oath of office he is soon to take, which will call for him to "preserve, protect and defend" the U.S. Constitution.  The fact that he has such an obvious self-interest in dismissing the allegations, and has chosen self-interest over the national interest, should also be clear to anyone paying attention to this issue.  We see an enormous blind spot threatening to engulf his presidency even before it begins: any threats to the U.S. will be ignored if handling them presents a threat to Donald Trump.

Going All In

The ever-incisive Joan Walsh has just laid out an essential part of the reality facing Democrats right now, and the appropriate way to respond.  In filling his roster of cabinet picks with a gang of millionaire-billionaire insiders, Donald Trump has presented the Democrats with an embarrassment of riches to choose among as the Senate begins to debate the nominees.  As she notes, "Not only will it be the richest [cabinet], ever; it features plutocrats who've presided over the hollowing out of the working class Trump pretended to care about."  Beyond picking one or two nominees to oppose, she suggests highlighting the basic starkness of Trump's collective choice, and notes that "right now, Democrats are missing an opportunity to brand the president-elect as a man who's betraying his base, right out of the gate."

It is in fact not just disappointing, but deeply unsettling, that the Democrats are not yet doing a better job of connecting the dots and offering a broad critique of Trump's direction so far, particularly when he's giving them such a gift-wrapped package of Cabinet choices.  This was not a normal election, Trump is not a normal president, and this is not a time of normal politics.  Frankly, I don't know how we get back to the old normal, as crapulent as it was.  But the first rule in fighting the dark forces of Trump and right-wing Republicanism is understanding that going big is part of the solution.  Fighting hard against one or two Trump nominees might or might not manage to block those appointments; but the more important effort is to make all possible efforts to show that the overall direction Trump and the Republicans want to take the country is opposed by a solid majority of our population, and to provide an alternate vision that would benefit this majority.

Whether it's a Labor Secretary pick who opposes workers' rights and minimum wage increases, or the repeal and non-replacement of Obamacare, or the unfolding project to kill Medicare and gut Social Security, Republicans are working to implement highly unpopular ideas that also happen to fly in the face to the promises Trump made to disaffected white working class voters who pushed him over the top of the electoral college.  More than this: they're working to implement legislations that wouldn't just hurt millions of middle- and working-class Americans, but fundamentally change what sort of country we are - from one where we use democracy to advance our common interests and help all move forward, to one where government is used as a cudgel to strip the vast majority of the country of hard-won gains in order to empower the uppermost classes of our country.  In this context, an across-the-board opposition makes more sense politically for the opposition party.  It's not normal politics for one party to attempt to decimate the basic framework of social support for the American people; and the opposition can't act like it is, particularly when the media is doing such a bad job of framing the conflict.

I keep thinking back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and its slow, terrible build-up that reeked of manipulation and lies.  President Bush chose a catastrophic course of action that Democrats should have opposed unanimously; instead, too many went along, giving it a bipartisan sheen that makes it difficult for Democrats to fully criticize to this very day.  I feel we're now at an analogous crossroads.  There is no great mystery about what Trump is doing: he's going full-core right-wing and pro-1%, with a bit of populist window dressing like the Carrier deal thrown in to make people think he cares about the working class.  

Once again, we find that the application of the term "conservative" to the modern Republican party is a misnomer.  Conservative would be protecting the generations-old programs of Social Security and Medicare.  Conservative would be making sure people have at least the basics of life covered, like health insurance.  Conservative would be protecting our planet for future generations.  What we're seeing instead is free market zealotry, a pitiless agenda of siphoning wealth to the upper reaches, and frankly a heartlessness that leaves me chilled to the bone; a more proper word for these people is "radical."  They are indeed going to the root of things, looking to extirpate from our society basic notions of public good, collective endeavor, economic security.  It's not too complicated to see where this comes from: they're protecting the interests of the richest among us, and an ownership class that sees the vast majority of Americans not as equal citizens embarked on a common enterprise, but as raw labor and consumers to be exploited, conned, and ripped off.

Trump seemed to offer the possibility of an off-kilter check on these traits - after all, he made no mention of Medicare or Social Security cuts during the elections, and his emphasis of unfair free trade deals suggests he may still surprise us with pro-worker moves - but at this point, given the company he keeps and the inclinations of the Republican Congress, this theoretical moderation is not nearly sufficient.  Besides, he's all on board with the other key part of the Republican agenda: increasingly targeting the fictional crime of voting while Democrat.  

What is in fact needed is for the Democrats to get off their duffs and start fighting back like their political lives depended on it, because they do.  What Trump and the Republicans have in store represents an obliteration of the best things the Democratic Party has stood for since the age of Roosevelt, an unraveling of the remaining Great Society and New Deal advances.  A party that doesn't recognize an existential threat to its reason for existence doesn't deserve to be a party.

This is not normal politics. These are not normal times.  Whether or not people are willing to recognize it, we are in a state of profound crisis. 

Gabbard Gabbard Hey!

I wanted to share and amplify this Talking Points Memo post about some recent comments by Congressperson Tulsi Gabbard.  The issue of civilian control over the U.S. military has been rising to the foreground lately in light of Donald Trump's multiple appointments of former generals to various government posts, including a cabinet-level position in the case of his Defense Secretary nominee.  I totally agree with Josh Marshall that Gabbard's suggestion that military leaders are more patriotic and more attuned to the national interest than civilians is deeply unsettling, and is indeed the sort of talk you'd expect to hear in a banana republic.

Donald Trump's selection of so many military leaders to guide his national security policy should worry us in the first place because it suggests that militaristic approaches to the world will be favored over other approaches.  U.S. foreign policy is already far, far too militarized, and it's troubling to think that this could get even worse.  This is also a major problem to see given Donald Trump's existing ignorance of foreign and military affairs.  It's not like he has his own strong base of knowledge to bring to the mix, and surrounding himself with military men means he'll be given a smaller range of options around how to form policy.

The two points I've just made are pretty broad.  But more important than both of these to understanding the problem of Trump's overreliance on generals for guidance is the specific context in which Trump is making this choice.  Since 9/11, the United States has been engaged in an ceaseless, victory-less war around the world against terrorism.  A strong, and I believe overwhelming, case can be made that the United States has amplified the Islamic terrorist threat through its militarized and often incompetent response to 9/11; the central piece of evidence is the invasion of Iraq, a country not linked to 9/11 and barely linked to terrorism, and whose botched occupation resulted in a supercharging of terrorist recruiting efforts and the destabilization of a major chunk of the Middle East.   In both Iraq and many, many other place we have spent a decade and a half basically proving, beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, that there is no military solution to mitigating or theoretically ending terrorist threats to the United States.

Central to the bloody, unnecessary proving of this obvious point has been a broad deference to the military brass to run our wars, particularly in the age of Obama.  But the overwhelming fact of our situation is that military solutions have failed; or rather, if there are military solutions, they are too bloody and expensive for us to contemplate, or to find popular support to implement.

And so we have long been caught in an unhealthy cycle, in which a disengaged public lauds the military for doing its dangerous work and keeping the country safe, to the point that polls of the most trusted government institutions regularly show the military at the top of the list.  I very specifically am calling this cycle unhealthy because it is partly based on a relief in the U.S. population that someone else is out there risking their lives for our country.  This combination of admiration and guilt has in turn made it difficult to contemplate any criticism of the military.  How could we dare, when they're the ones risking their lives.  And of course there is a lot of good reason for this admiration; the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who have served our country and fought in our wars are in truth performing selflessly.  To a lesser extent, this syndrome of guilt and gratitude has also confused people on the basic point that you can support the troops while also being critical of a militarized foreign policy; in fact, holding both these things to be true, and not in contradiction, is essential to a healthily-functioning democracy.

But something subtler has also happened, and this is where I will link things back to Representative Gabbard's comments: while the adulation of the military, through honest thankfulness and unacknowledged guilty, has in reality been earned by the rank and file of the military, those who do the fighting and the dying, the military leadership has indirectly gathered status and approbation through this worshipful attitude.  I'll try to say this a little more directly: the generals and admirals who have often misdirected our recent wars and other military action have to a great sense been able to escape public criticism, because they're buffered by a broad public admiration of front-line soldiers.

Tulsi Gabbard's comments only strengthen my sense that something untoward is going on in Americans' attitudes to the military, something that she draws from and builds on in her comments.  There is no doubt that members of the military are admirably patriotic; but who's to say they're more patriotic than firefighters, or nurses, or teachers?  Gabbard seems to suggest that risking your life is the ultimate gauge of patriotism.  But even if that were the case, it's not the generals who have put their lives on the line; it's the men and women under their commands.

Let's not forget what the purpose of the military is: to win wars and kill people.  To confuse this specific skill set with a broader competence, whether through an honest admiration of the military's patriotism or camaraderie, is a dangerous delusion for a democracy.  And for Donald Trump to be overly reliant on a group of men whose ultimate profession is the exercise of violence, rather than a more holistic approach to maintaining U.S. security, is a very bad sign indeed.

Thunder in the Distance

Donald Trump's precedent-smashing phone call with the leader of Taiwan a few days ago makes me think that the political meltdown that so many feared would happen in the event of his election is coming to pass, and much more quickly than most people would have thought.  I've already put my (insignificant) personal cards on the table: based on various disqualifying qualities and actions, I think Trump needs to be removed from the presidency.  He's clearly not going to resign, so all other democratic means need to be pursued to accomplish this.  But here's my food for thought for today: what happens when, for instance, Donald Trump starts fumbling us into a war with China, or Russia?  What are each of us going to do, and what are we going to do acting collectively, to save our country from gross and unacceptable incompetence?  It is horrifying that we're in a position to have to consider this question, but we are, and we must.

Assessing Obama's Role in the Rise of Trump

I think something that we will be reckoning with more, both in the coming months and however many years in the future it takes to start getting better perspective on our present moment, is the role of President Obama's presidency in establishing the groundwork for making Donald Trump's election possible.  I'm not talking about blaming Obama for what's happened; but I keep coming back to the Obama administration's response to the financial crisis, and to the Great Recession and its aftermath.  The administration acted to keep the crisis from spiraling into another Great Depression; but time and again, the overall effort was intended to restore us to the status quo that existed before the meltdown.  Banks are too still to big to fail; some are even bigger than ever.  But beyond this, the Obama administration declined to take the side of citizens over corporate interests.  The housing and default crisis was fed by banking and mortgage lender corruption at a nearly-incomprehensible, pinch-me-to-make-sure-I-didn't-just-dream-this scale; yet the government never decisively threw its support behind the millions of people who lost their homes to foreclosures driven by illegal and immoral banking practices.  Banks were bailed out at taxpayer expense.  And just as ordinary citizens did not find that the government had their backs, the Obama administration declined to pursue criminal charges, or at least a broad public airing, of who the true malefactors in the whole mess were.  We needed a socio-economic sea change in our societal attitude to an immoral greed that nearly took down the world economy; instead, we got a general message that a lot of homeowners were just moochers and slackers, and ultimately deserved to lose their houses, as if a home were like any other good and not the bedrock of middle class existence for millions of people.

I am thinking about the links between Obama's shortcomings and the rise of Trump in particular because of the nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Donald Trump's Secretary of the Treasury.  This is a man without any experience in government, and who's a former employee of Goldman Sachs, a company near the center of the financial crisis and which journalist Matt Taibbi memorably and amusingly described as "a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity."  Mnuchin, it also happens, also bought a distressed mortgage company during the financial crisis.  This is a company that was subsequently accused of foreclosing too quickly on homeowners.  Now, I don't know whether Mnuchin's mortgage company did nor did not actually foreclose on homeowners without proper procedures.  I do know, though, that the fact that a person so closely associated with this toxic fraudulent business has been nominated as Treasury Secretary, and this nomination was not immediately and roundly laughed to oblivion less than a decade after the financial crisis, is a sign that the Obama and the Democrats did not begin to do an acceptable job of re-orienting the public discourse to a pro-consumer, anti-Wall Street direction.  Political writer Thomas Frank has noted how the Democrats failed to hang the burden of the financial crisis around the necks of George Bush and the Republican party, so that they would be discredited for a generation like the Republicans were by the Great Depression.  What we are seeing with the Mnuchin nomination is a perfect sign of the failure Frank describes.  We needed a sea change in our socio-economic direction after the Great Recession; Mnuchin's nomination shows that we are dangerously close to a full return to more of the shitty same.

Beyond this specific nomination, you can see this election not just as a semi-rejection of Hillary Clinton, but of President Obama's guidance of the economy in the wake of the Great Recession.  The continued erosion of our industrial base was not treated as a crisis immiserating tens of thousands and requiring a decisive response; instead, the Obama administration viewed it as just the way things are, an inevitable part of globalization.  The wealth gap between the upper percentiles and everyone else has continued to widen; and yet the Obama administration has not treated this with nearly enough urgency.  Obama, and, yes, the Democrats more generally, have adopted a "good-enough" attitude, when in fact the groundwork was being laid for the catastrophic rise of Donald Trump, as too many Americans continued to feel the ground give way beneath their feet.  Trump has exploited the all-too-obvious gap between mainstream rhetoric and the real, lived economic existences of millions of citizens; he has at least acted as if the enduring crisis is a crisis, even if he's potentially the least qualified person on the political stage to actually solve it.

General Reservations

The New York Times editorial board has been doing a mixed job of taking on Trump, and unfortunately their semi-endorsement of retired Marine General James Mattis as Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense falls on the weaker end of the spectrum. The title, "An Experienced Leader at the Pentagon," is bland and reassuring, but unfortunately the case presented in the article is anything but. Praising a potential government official for opposing torture seems to be setting the bar awfully low; isn't that like saying someone's an awesome pick because they believe that every citizen deserves a right to vote? You don't get extra credit for simply voicing support of basic American values. The tenor of this editorial suggests that the NYT thinks playing defense with Trump cabinet members is the way to go; the board seems to think that since Mattis is not a retrograde billionaire, he'll exert some sort of moderating influence on Trump's foreign policy.

But in fact, half the endorsement is a critique of General Mattis, over his difficulty understanding that all Americans are capable of serving in the military regardless of the upper ranks' prejudice and his statements in support of indefinite detentions in the Orwellian war on terror.

Interestingly, if you happen to be a citizen of the United States who gives a flying fig about democracy, our nation saw fit to pass a law years ago that requires the Secretary of Defense position not be filled by anyone who has served in the military in the past seven years. This might seem a quaint effort to preserve the principle of civilian control of the military, but in fact this guideline has been followed for the last 60 years. The last time this guideline wasn't followed was in the 1950's, when a waiver was sought and received for George C. Marshall to serve as Defense Secretary. This is the exception that proves the rule, as Marshall was a singular figure of that era, having served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army during WWII and subsequently serving as Secretary of State. But now, on the humble request of Donald Trump, James "Mad Dog" Mattis should also get a waiver, more than half a century later?

The reasoning of the NYT editorial board is fundamentally flawed. Sure, they have said, Donald Trump is shaping up to be a deeply problematic president. If we just waive a requirement that has only been waived once in 60 years, and let Donald Trump appoint a former general whose nickname is "Mad Dog" as Secretary of Defense, he'll bring his experience to bear and offer a restraint on the president. But Donald Trump is in fact exactly the sort of extremely unqualified, authoritarian-tending president who should invigorate the supposedly abstract idea of civilian control over the military. We managed to find qualified Defense Secretaries throughout the Cold War and beyond who weren't so close to the military. Surely we can, and should, do that again.

Stripped Down

So Trump's tweets have for now moved from lies about how he actually won the popular vote - lies that, given his new position of power and responsibility, are a direct attack on our democracy, lies that sow doubt about our basic democratic procedures, lies so reprehensible that they disqualify him from the presidency - to a seemingly new subject: the proper punishment for flag-burners.

Intriguingly, this fresh topic naturally invites a broader discussion of what political activities should be considered so outrageous, so far beyond the pale, such an insult and danger to our traditions, that the perpetrator should actually be stripped of citizenship, and presumably exiled into the foreign-tongued hellhole that is the rest of planet Earth.

In Trump's eyes, flag-burning qualifies as one such taboo behavior. For him, it's an assault on the sacred symbol of the United States, and is literally unforgivable. To attack the idea of America in this way means you're no longer fit for political participation or inclusion.

Somewhat surprisingly, I have to say that I agree with Donald Trump: there ARE some activities that are such a violation of our democratic norms that the perpetrator should face significant punishment, as a way to preserve the integrity of our political union. Personally, I think political violence is one of these activities; I also happen to think that attempts to deny the vote to American citizens based on race is another, but, hey, that's just me! But the big one, the one that really leaps out at me, is when a political figure makes repeated, direct attacks on the basic foundations of our democracy, whether by lying about the outcome of an election or - well, actually, I'll stop there. That's the one that's really bugging me right now.

Here's my modest proposal, in the name of finding common ground, defusing tensions, and all that jazz. While I'm NOT going to agree to stripping citizenship from one of these taboo-violaters, be they a hippie flag-burner or a president-elect with authoritarian tendencies who lies about the popular vote being stolen from him, I do agree there need to be consequences for violating essential democratic norms. So let's make it simple: let's say that in both cases - stinky hippie flag-burner and politician attacking actual foundation of democracy - that person is disqualified from holding political office. You're still a citizen, you can still talk about politics (although who's going to listen to what YOU say, drugged-out stinky hippie flag-burner? Go back to the 60's, dude!) -- but hold a position of power in our country? No way, Jorge! You're too divisive, and just don't get what democracy is all about. But hey, look on the bright side - you can always RENOUNCE your citizenship and move somewhere else that fits your politics better - perhaps Flagburnatopia (it borders Shredtheconstitutionstan), or Putin's Russia? You'll probably fit right in - best of luck to you both!

Such a Nasty Donald

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally" - President-elect Donald Trump

For me, after weeks of hellish, flaming hay bales of undemocratic shit falling out of an eerie Trump-orange sky, this is the proverbial straw that has broken the camel's back.  The president-elect has voiced an enormous, hideous self-serving lie whose core message is that our democracy is a lie; that you can't trust the verified vote tallies; that evil unnamed (but probably Democratic and likely dark-skinned) forces have conspired to rob him and his supporters of the popular vote, if not his electoral college victory.  For a lot of us, the lie is transparent and self-serving; but for millions of others, those who supported Trump and voted for him, the lie carries the weight of his authority, and is believed.  It's a lie guaranteed to sow division and chaos.

No one remotely fit to be president would ever utter such a lie.  Whether the lie was issued casually, without concern for its implications, or with a full understanding of its dark weight, makes no difference.  At best, the president is utterly incompetent; at worst, he's knowingly pushing our country to a dangerous point of resentment, disbelief, and mutually exclusive realities.  Unable to handle the fact that Hillary Clinton has beaten him soundly in the popular vote, he would rather risk burning down our collective house than admit a harsh truth (a harsh truth, remember, that still leaves him with an electoral college win).

So for me, these words, on top of all the evidence we've seen already, from his un-American aspersions against the Muslim religion, to his slander of the Hispanic community, to his enormous conflicts of interest as owner of an international business, definitively mark the president-elect as completely unfit for office, and the point at which his opponents need to purse all legal paths to block him from assuming power, to remove him should he assume it, and to defeat any and all anti-democratic moves so long as he remains president.

I'm sure this sounds overwrought to some, but I don't know how else to express my sense of what's happening to our country.  I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one thinking this, and I want to give voice to our common sentiment.  So much of what Trump has said is outrageous and disqualifying, but for me this is the final break.  I am saying this to encourage others to recognize the danger we face, and to begin acting like it.  It doesn't matter what Trump says or does from this point forward.  The only question every citizen needs to ask him- or herself is, what do I do, as an individual and in concert with my fellow Americans, to counter the influence of this man and what he represents, and to revive and advance our democracy so that in the future, someone like Trump, or someone even worse, is rendered unthinkable and impossible?

I'm convinced more than ever that the answer to this authoritarian threat is a tsunami of democratic action and involvement - neighbors reaching out to neighbors, citizens demanding accountability from their elected representatives (whether Republicans or Democrats), everyone refusing to be satisfied with a political and economic status quo that has brought us the disaster of Trump, a man whose presidency seems guaranteed to benefit only him and his immediate circle, as if the United States were some banana republic.  As Trump's words and actions encourage anger and potentially violence among his supporters, his opponents need to engage countervailing qualities: among these, I suggest an unswerving adherence to democratic practices; respect for our fellow citizens, no matter how much we might disagree with them; and an absolute commitment to nonviolence, along with an absolute intolerance of any violence committed by Trump supporters.  

My vote for the next couple months is to kneecap Trump's presidency before he even takes his oath of office; to expose and publicize his illiberal views, his conflicts of interest, his attempts to institutionalize racism in the Oval Office and Department of Justice, his plans to screw working-class and middle-class folks out of their Medicare, the fraudulence of his infrastructure plans.  

I understand that many people are furious at how this country has treated them, or how they feel it has betrayed their beliefs, and that this has caused them to support Trump.  But I also know this: Trump is a cure worse than any disease we are thought to suffer from.  Trump is the medicine that kills the patient.  As a democracy, we can and should argue about policies and values, economics and equality; but a Trump presidency threatens our ability to have this argument in the first place.

I also know how disoriented and helpless so many people feel in the face of Trump's narrow win.  I've been feeling this myself.  But even now, in our disarray, the opposition holds a far stronger hand than most people realize.  Trump lost the popular vote; his political team is filled with hacks and in-fighting; rather than doing easy, obvious things to defuse his opposition, he has continued to remind us of all the reasons he should never have been elected in the first place.  There's a reason why no politician has taken such extreme positions before - because there's an enormous potential risk.  Trump is scary, but he's also profoundly flawed as a politician.  Trump, and the Republican Party that has embraced him, are clearly writing off vast swathes of the electorate in future elections; you don't need to look any further than the centrality of voter suppression to the GOP and the incoming Trump administration to see how fully they understand this reality.  I am betting that just as Trump has helped unleash and embody authoritarian forces that have lurked in potential beneath the surface of American politics, he's also helping to unleash a withering democratic backlash.  

A lot of very smart and savvy people have been providing insight and advice on what to do in the face of this crisis, and I've included some of these stories below.  The Ezra Klein article from Sunday does a really good job of exploring the implications of the tweet that prompted this post.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/27/13758538/donald-trump-vote-illegally-tweet

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/donald-trump-media-coverage-new-rules-214485

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-voter-fraud-claims-disgraceful-231896

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-president-elect-is-an-internet-troll

The Short Con

Two interrelated phenomena are emerging.  First, we have multiple reports of Trump already using his election to advance his business interests, including from Trump himself in his meeting with New York Times editors and writers.  Second, as Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo points out, other business benefits are beginning accrue to him as a matter of course, as if he were the luckiest man in the world and things were working out for him, as foreign actors seek to curry favor with the president-elect.  

I think it's fair to say that in any previous election, this activity would have been broadly perceived and condemned as shameful profiteering from public office, whether or not it was technically illegal.  But I keep coming back to a more basic point - isn't what Trump doing an act of fundamental disrespect to this office and the job he's been entrusted with?  In this light, another of Trump's responses at the NYT sit-down grabbed my attention: "But in theory I could run my business perfectly, and then run the country perfectly. And there’s never been a case like this where somebody’s had, like, if you look at other people of wealth, they didn’t have this kind of asset and this kind of wealth, frankly. It’s just a different thing."  Who in their right mind would think they could be president and head of a successful company?

Donald Trump can't seem to fully acknowledge or comprehend the fact that he has a new full-time job now.  What does it matter that he says he's looking to "formalize something" around running his business?  Up to now, he's remained involved, and apart from the conflicts of interest this presents (whether or not he believes they're real), it's clear that he's got no problem using the presidency to cash in.  What are Americans thinking right now?  Have we so fully accepted cronyism in our economy that it's no big deal if even the president uses his position to make a buck?  That it's not big deal to use the presidency for personal gain?  Aren't the problems with this obvious, that it lures the president into confusing his interests with the people's interests?  Are people just in disbelief, thinking he can't be serious?  Is it just being underreported?  Are we in a post-truth universe, where half the population isn't going to believe this even if they read it, because it didn't come from approved right-wing news sources?  How is this not corruption of the highest order?

I know that there's a lot of other horrible stuff going on as Trump puts together his administration, from neo-Nazi enabler Steve Bannon to anti-civil rights icon Jeff Sessions, from a hard-right national security line-up to the proposed phaseout of Medicare waiting in the wings.  But Trump's use of his office to promote his business disturbs me the most right now, because in one blow the president-elect plays us all for chumps, revealing his con for all to see, without apparent fear of repercussions.  It's almost like he's privatizing the presidency, taking something that's always been all of ours, and making it only his own.  This is all bad enough.  What's most disturbing to me, though, is if we let him.  

Shame on Shaming! or, Sometimes What Feels Good Isn't the Right Thing to Do

I'm not sure how widespread this is, but it's at least enough of a thing that I'm seeing posts about it on my not-very-large Facebook feed.  There's apparently a faction of Trump opponents who think that part of the pushback should involving shaming or criticizing citizens who voted for Donald Trump.  I really can't think of a reaction to this election, or a strategy for opposing Trump and pushing forward progressive policies, that's more unhelpful than this.

I grant that Trump's undemocratic tendencies, illiberal beliefs, and general unfitness for office were on display for all to see for the many months of the campaign, and I wish to god that more people had decided that, whether or not they agreed with what his policies appeared to be, the man, himself, is unqualified for the presidency.  I say straight out that it is extremely difficult for me to relate to the mindset of anyone who saw the same things I saw, and still decided to vote for Donald Trump.  In this, I can understand an impulse to cast aspersions on Trump voters, the desire to rub their noses in the shit that Donald Trump and Mike Pence (let's never take our eyes off the man who will likely rival Dick Cheney as the most consequential VP in U.S. history) have already been tracking into the highest office in the land.  I can see how this could bring a sense of vengeful satisfaction; after all, if all those people hadn't voted for Trump, he wouldn't be president.  Righteous anger at those who voted for him is completely natural and totally understandable.

But will "shaming" Trump voters actually get them to reconsider their votes — which have already been cast — or consider anew the valid criticisms of Trump opponents?  Or will it backfire and simply reinforce the unnecessary divisions among our population that Trump and the Republicans have exploited to their great benefit?  I will be charitable and assume that a vote shamer's end goal is to get people to see the evils of Trump.  But shaming a person primarily turns the accusations of wrongdoing against that person him- or herself.  Far, far more effective to train one's fire on Trump, himself.  If our many criticisms of Trump are indeed right, then many Trump voters will begin to feel shame all on their own.  The idea that actively shaming someone will make them feel ashamed ignores some basic human psychology — rather than feel ashamed, what is perceived as condescension or unfair attacks will only harden the voter's assumptions.

This is particularly true when a key part of Trump's message is the alleged way that liberals condescend to, disparage, and otherwise dismiss the concerns of many Trump voters.  

The idea that shaming would be an effective strategy is at least partly based on the assumption that every Trump voter agrees with and endorses every one of Trump's noxious positions.  While I can understand someone making the argument that voting for Trump is a tacit endorsement of everything he stands for, and arguing that this should be made clear to Trump voters, this is quite a bit different from shaming Trump voters.  Shaming is worse than useless if one of our preeminent goals at this point is to start rallying Trump voters to the anti-Trump side.  And in fact I do think this is one of the most important things we need to be doing, starting now.  My assumption is that of course not every Trump voters is racist, or misogynist, or wants to transfer massive amounts of wealth to the rich, even though these are clearly Trump's goals.  I think it's pretty clear from the election results that economic dislocation and the ravages of a free market run amok are huge reasons people voted for Trump.

Have a lot of Trump voters combined this sense of economic outrage with a belief, for example, that minorities are benefiting from government policies while they themselves get the shaft?  Yes, and that's a disturbing fact that every progressive must contend with in figuring out a path forward.  But if we're going to take the fight to Trump and the Republicans, it needs to be founded in this basic principle: our fellow citizens are ALL potential allies, and our democratic process rests on the faith that right will out if we pursue dialogue with our neighbors.  Not chastisement, but dialogue.  We are seeing Trump already betray the faith of those who thought he was a politician who had finally truly heard the plight of working class and middle-class people, even as he, indeed, begins to make good on elements of his campaign like his anti-Muslim agenda.  Rather than haranguing Trump voters over a choice they have already made, we need to grab them (figuratively) by the lapels and say, hey, look how Trump and the Republicans are already trying to figure out ways to benefit the rich and screw the workers of this country.    

The idea of shaming Trump voters also usefully ignores the fact that Hillary Clinton was a truly awful candidate for the Democrats to run at this time of crisis in our country, that the Clinton campaign was the target of a Russian subversion effort, and that FBI director James Comey engaged in serious interference in the election process that inarguably hurt Clinton.  Through a confusing mix of fact and fiction, rightly or wrongly, Hillary was muddied in a way that few candidates in our history have been.  Whether you think all this negativity around Hillary was justified or not, an honest assessment of the election has to admit that for many people, she came out looking like a worse choice than Donald Trump.  Let me put this point in stark but hopefully not unpersuasively simplistic terms: If you have to choose between a sexual predator for president or someone who thinks it's OK to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give a coddling speech to the ripoff artists at Goldman Sachs, does voting for Donald Trump automatically make you an evil misogynist?  Everyone had to compromise when they cast their vote in this election.  That's part of what was so terrible about it.  I would argue that many people chose Trump out of the exact same despair at our economic situation that many other people chose Clinton.  To assume that every Trump voter made their decision to vote based on reasons you don't agree with is a mistaken generalization that hardly serves the anti-Trump cause, let alone a productive democratic discourse.    

Finally, the notion that voter shaming is in any way a proper strategy for success is an example of anti-Trumpers needlessly pissing away one of the most powerful facts on their side — by real world electoral measures, and not the retrograde funhouse fuck-up of the electoral college, Trump actually lost this election.  Hillary Clinton's popular vote tally is at 1.6 million and still growing.  Berating Trump voters has the taint of being a poor winner, and betrays an unfortunate lack of confidence in the justice of our position and our persuasive strength.

The election of Trump betrays massive and dangerous fissures in our economy, in our civil society, and in our collective democratic enterprise.  A foundational element of how we heal our nation and advance a progressive agenda that truly helps the vast majority of Americans includes always bearing in mind that promoting division — by suggesting irreconcilable divisions between Americans — is a big part of how Trump won.  Let's not buy into and aggravate this false view of our country.  Trump's the enemy, not our fellow voter.

Time for a Quick Jab at the Democrats

I've scribbled a lot about the immediate danger of the fast-approachingTrump presidency, and what the Democrats should do to counter him.  I want to be really clear, though, that the Democratic Party has contributed mightily to the circumstances that made Trump's election possible.  The party has had a default attitude that the loss of factory and blue color jobs is an inevitable part of the global economy, participating in the myth that the economy is some natural thing that happens outside of political decisions, like the weather.  The Democratic Party has indeed fought for racial justice, gender equality, gay rights, and environmentalism, often to its electoral detriment.  And it seems that many, if not most, of the party's movers and shakers have bought into the argument that demographics are in the Democrats' favor due to the Democrats' support of the aforementioned issues.  But this argument seems to rely, cynically in my opinion, that voters grateful for progressive positions on these very important issues (which are primarily cultural, but do have important economic elements) will then not make a fuss when they discover they have massive college debt or curtailed job prospects.  

Look, I get it.  Politicians are naturally cautious animals.  They don't want to rock the system under which they've risen to power.   But to have looked out at the dire inequality in our country over the last couple decades, and not felt outrage, disgust, and a profound desire to reverse it, should disqualify anyone from becoming an elected official in our country.  Not just on grounds of fairness and morality, which alone should be enough, but because of the consequences we are now beginning to face: a society unhinged by a bleak future, with a sizable chunk of the population rightly feeling fucked over by the upper ranks, and who are now primed to follow the lure of authoritarian solutions and the scapegoating of others perceived as having benefitted while they fell down.  Economic justice is the bedrock of a healthy democratic system. 

The Tea Party movement, the birthers, the alt-right, not to mention the massive Republican gains in Congress as early as 2010, should have been early warning signs that more radical, structural change was needed to get the country back in track.  After George Bush, the Republicans should have been discredited as a major political party; yet, instead, the Democratic Party managed to discredit itself by never taking as seriously as it should have the economic abyss of 2008 and the need for a continued, emergency-level response to widespread dire economic circumstances.  

Bet You Didn't Know You Needed Saving!

I wonder if this is how it's going to go for the duration of the Trump administration - false claims of amazing success, backed up by mainstream sources, and only later debunked with little fanfare.  At least the NYT is getting this one right.  I guess that's something.  

The Graft to Come

I'm choosing to be reassured by the general air of incompetence and in-fighting that surrounds the Trump transition effort.  Let's hope this is a sign of things to come in the Trump administration.  We're also seeing signs of the deep corruption to come, whether it's the outsize role of his kids and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump's company trying to leverage jewelry sales off her 60 Minutes appearance, the signs that Trump's assets won't be put in anything resembling a blind trust, unified Republican rule, the above-noted general air of incompetence, and the basic fact that America's greatest con man just conned his way into the White House.  These Trumpsters simply don't think like the rest of us.  They're all about the grift; I seriously doubt that Trump has given a minute of thought to the idea of ethics rules in his entire life.