Category: Politics

Biden’s Challenge: to Unbreak America

Taming a raging fire

If someone tallied the number of times Joe Biden used the words “unity” and “together” in his inaugural address, it would have run over a dozen, but whatever the score was, it’s a measure of the dominant theme of Joe Biden’s inaugural address: in unity is strength, and unity is achievable.

And yet, when Biden spoke to the reality of political conflict at this time, his words were those of hope, but his tone was plaintive. “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire,” and “we must end this uncivil war.” These phrases hang in the air like pleas for reconciliation.  But who will answer them?

Of the host of challenges facing Joe Biden, from a pandemic out of control to the plundering of the planet, the “raging fire” of politics and the fuel that feeds it are the most fundamental. We will get past the most toxic phase of Covid-19 in a matter of time. But most of the other problems—economic inequality, racial injustice, an inequitable health care system, environmental breakdown, our allies’ mistrust—will remain intractable without an end to the uncivil war.

Continue reading “Biden’s Challenge: to Unbreak America”

“Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban

European leaders have a point—up to a point

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire condemned decisions by Twitter, Facebook, Apple, et al to shut down Donald Trump’s social media accounts.  Le Maire accused Big Tech of forming a “digital oligarchy,” and called for public regulation of big online platforms.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized a “breach” of the “fundamental right to free speech” as “problematic.”

I get it. “Digital oligarchy” is apt.  I applaud the efforts of Europeans to hobble Big Tech as they have been doing and will continue to do; we should have been doing a lot more of it on our side of the Atlantic. If it weren’t for the unshackled free market ideology dominating American politics for the last 40 years, we might have been doing it.

Nevertheless, maybe they should butt out of the Trump social media lockdown controversy for the time being . . . at least until the dust settles around the transition to the Joe Biden administration.

The old analogy of “freedom of speech doesn’t give you the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater” applies in this situation.*  If Angela Merkel had had to live in a country with its leader shouting ‘fire!’ every day for four years straight, ultimately leading to an attack on the nation’s Capitol building by a lawless, violent, gun-toting mob bent on overthrowing the government, she might be willing to bend a little to the practicality of muting that voice as soon as possible, whether by Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, or my local mail carrier (I’d rather entrust the power to her than to the aforementioned, but that’s going to have to wait for The Revolution).

Continue reading ““Digital Oligarchy” – Europeans Say No to Social Media Trump Ban”

Watch Out! Article V Constitutional Convention Nears Reality

Overhaul of the Constitution sounds tempting: don’t bite

There are some things that liberals don’t like sitting like bedrock in the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, the Electoral College to elect the president, and the assignment of two senators to each state.  Then there’s the First and Fourteenth Amendments when extended by the Supreme Court going back to the 1880s to give the same protections to corporations as to real breathing humans.

Liberals, as well as many conservatives, also dislike the scope of powers conferred on the U.S. President that have expanded over the years. At least they dislike them when the president belongs to the opposing political party. (As a Virginian, I would like to point proudly to our Senator Tim Kaine’s principled crusade to limit the chief executive’s license to conduct wars, starting with the Obama Administration.)

How might these anti-democratic features of the Constitution be remedied? In fact, Article V of the Constitution provides for a method to completely overhaul the Constitution.

Say that again? What we customarily have in mind when we think of amending the Constitution is passing an individual amendment with two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress, then ratified by three-quarters of state legislatures.  It’s what’s been done to add all 28 amendments (28 in 229 years) to the original 10 in the Bill of Rights. That cautious procedure is in Article V, but also in Article V is something truly radical: a full-blown Constitutional Convention called for by two-thirds of the states (34 out of the current 50). The Congress would then be required to hold the convention, and a new constitution coming out of it could eventually be ratified by “the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof”—i.e., 38 out of 50 states.

Continue reading “Watch Out! Article V Constitutional Convention Nears Reality”

A Dog that Doesn’t Bark: Silent Sentinels that Keep Us Safe

It’s not just health care that’s collapsing

The U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic shines a glaring light on the inadequacy of the U.S. health care system—so glaring that folks who have shrugged off the howls of critics for decades have been shocked to realize just how fragile it is. Bernie Sanders has been the highest-profile, most strident, and most consistent critic, but he has had a lot of company among progressives. and the pandemic is driving even some centrists into his “Medicare for All” camp.

The mounting crisis prompted David Himmelstein of the CUNY School of Public Health to observe, of a properly-run health care system’s response to a crisis, “You don’t see the results. It’s a dog that doesn’t bark.”*

What has saved the U.S. pandemic response from utter tragedy is the level of expertise and commitment among health professionals—doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, radiologists, lab technicians, and the like—highly educated and benefiting from leading edge research in medical science distributed among institutions throughout the country. Their sacrifices in battling Covid-19 have been heroic. But this cadre of health care professionals has to drag around the ball-and-chain of a system that is structured primarily not to promote health, but to make money for insurance companies who pry open every cranny in the structure to achieve private again. Many private hospitals and specialists also work hand-in-glove with insurance companies to drive up costs and fatten profits.

Continue reading “A Dog that Doesn’t Bark: Silent Sentinels that Keep Us Safe”

Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?

Surprising Solidarities: Jordan, Romney, NASCAR

Michael Jordan, Mitt Romney, and NASCAR have something in common: they have all said, in their own ways, “we have had enough” in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

I felt there was change in the air when basketball great Michael Jordan, for years publicly mute on political issues, declared “we have had enough” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

As recently as May 5th, Jordan defended his apolitical public persona by saying “I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player.”

But following the murder of George Floyd on May 25th, Jordan said on May 31st: “I stand with those who are calling out the ingrained racism and violence toward people of color in our country. We have had enough.”

Those of us who have been puzzled by Jordan’s longstanding refusal to publicly address racism exclaimed, “Finally!”   . . . or words to that effect.

Continue reading “Turning Points: MJ, Mitt, NASCAR. Then What?”

A Real Chinese Invasion – a Thought Experiment

If they came in ships, it would be different – not so much

What if the Chinese, instead of  deliberately sending a deadly virus into our midst—the paranoid fantasy Trump is trying to sell—they launched an amphibious assault on the West Coast,  in an effort to establish a beachhead in North America from which they can conduct attacks deeper into the land. Trump cries foul, saying that the Chinese never warned us of an impending attack (whose imminence has been visible in the shape of ships gathering at the shore for a week), and goes on to assign the job of fighting off the attackers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington, with whatever armaments and soldiers they have available.  He assigns Jared Kushner the role of coordinating the effort.  The federal government will act as a “backstop” for supplies as the need arises, but each state will have to stop whining about their predicament and make its own case to receive the supplies.  While asking, the states should demonstrably show their gratitude—whether or not they get what they are asking for. Just in case they might want something in the future.

The President will hold daily briefings to deny that the scale of the invasion is anything to worry about, and that if it gets much bigger the states should  get a Magic Potion that he knows of to slow down the aggressors . . . and wait until bad weather discourages the occupiers  (“like a miracle”) and sends them home—a victory for which Donald Trump will claim all the credit. Reporters’ questions about the administration’s response will be called too “nasty” to be answered. The nasty press will be accused of spreading “fake news.” People within government who express doubts about the administration’s response will be fired or reassigned to musty basements with no access to their colleagues.

Continue reading “A Real Chinese Invasion – a Thought Experiment”

The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For

[Note: by Liberal Conspiracy Theory I mean not a theory about liberals, but a theory held  by liberals about the Deep Right.]

Who’s dying of Covid-19?

To state the obvious—I know you’ve been thinking it, but are wary of seeming too paranoid—the Trumpian Right is getting just what it wants out of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Steven Miller goes home at night chortling at the latest death toll—OK, he may be sorry about some bigoted Trump fans dying (there’s always collateral damage in a righteous war), but not enough to suppress his glee at the bigger picture.

Those who are dying in the greatest numbers, out of proportion to their fraction of the population:

(1) People in big cities: New York; Philadelphia; Chicago; Detroit; Boston; Baltimore  . . .

(2) Minorities, African-Americans in particular: for example, in Wisconsin 40 percent of Covid-19 fatalities are blacks, and they represent 6 percent of the population.

(3) Prisoners, with blacks being imprisoned across the U.S. at five times the rate of whites.

(4)  The elderly—in the U.S. as of March 16, 80% of Covid-19 deaths were in people age 65 or older.

(5) People with serious underlying health conditions.

Continue reading “The Liberal Conspiracy Theory We’ve All Been Waiting For”

Bread and Circuses in the Trump Era: Part IV of Treading into Darkness

[“Bread and circuses” was a satirical term coined by Roman poet Juvenal to characterize how Roman rulers kept the masses compliant with the provision of bread (Roman agriculture was very wheat-intensive) and circuses—public entertainment such as chariot races in the Circus Maximus, and bloody spectacles such as gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum.  Here, the target of Juvenal’s scorn was a disengaged, passive citizenry. He also had plenty of scorn for other forms of decadence prevalent in the Rome of his time.]

Republicans grovel, Trump soars, democracy frays, and who cares?

Two days after the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the President’s public approval ratings shot up to 49 percent. Stunning, until you look back on the week that was and saw that two events, external to the impeachment trial, had shaped the public mood: (1) the Superbowl three days before the acquittal, and (2) the Iowa caucuses, the day before the acquittal. The first drew a TV audience of 100 million (almost a third of the country’s population) and $10,000 per ticket.  In the second (the caucuses), some missteps by the organizers delayed the vote count, to the delight of the media who were all over the story like flies on a pile of horse droppings.

The Superbowl buildup during the previous week outshone the impeachment trial in the Senate (viewership less than a tenth of Superbowl-watchers), where the Democratic managers were proving that the President had clearly abused his power, and pointed out that, if he were acquitted, he would continue to do so with a sense of impunity (not just a sense of it, but with actual impunity). Part of the fallout from that week was the precedent set by the Senate refusing to call for witnesses and documents that in the normal run of things would be part of any trial. This pseudo-trial was not in the normal run of things—no run but more like a march toward the edge of a cliff.

All the time the managers were unintentionally proving that the American people care more about football  than the rule of law. If 100 million folks watched the Superbowl, you can be sure that at least 30 million of them were feeling a steady upward climb in football fever in the two weeks between the conference championships and the Big Event.

Continue reading “Bread and Circuses in the Trump Era: Part IV of Treading into Darkness”

Dumb and Dumber: the Iowa Caucuses

[Note: I began writing this post Monday night while the Iowa caucuses were still going on, and long before the debacle of the delayed count came into full flower. The “dumb” and “dumber” sections below do not refer to the disorganization of the caucus administrators; rather  they refer to things more basic. First, demographics, and secondly, timing. Both argue against kicking off a primary season to nominate a Democratic candidate for President in the Iowa cacophonies.]

Dumb: the irrelevance of the Iowa caucuses

The long delay in announcing the Democratic results of the Iowa caucuses Monday night gave pundits on MSNBC and CNN a lengthy opportunity to discuss the inanity of having the Iowa caucuses be the first and highly celebrated step in the Presidential primary process.

The result was music to my ears. On MSNBC, Claire McCaskill, Michael Steele, and Chris Matthews all sang variations on three themes: (1) the caucuses are not really an exercise in democracy but an exercise in local politics, although writ large by the national media;  (2) participation in the caucuses represents only 15% of all Iowa voters; (3) the racial breakdown of Iowa: 85.3% white, non-Hispanic and non-Latino; 6.2% Hispanic or Latino; 4.0% African American;  2.4% Asian; 2.1% other minority groups.

This racial demographic is particularly galling when Democrats like to claim that their ranks “look like America.”

Iowa does not look like America, at least not the 2020 version. 

Continue reading “Dumb and Dumber: the Iowa Caucuses”

Senate Republicans 51, America 0 – Part III of Treading into Darkness

U.S. Senate casts vote for nihilism

9 p.m., January 31, 2020

Here I’ve been working intermittently for weeks on drafts of Part III of Treading into Darkness—researching the effects of social media—and now the Senate Republicans (almost all of them) have made easy work of this installment. One of the most ugly gifts that has ever been handed to me.

The impact of the vote not to allow witnesses or documents in the impeachment trial is far broader than a judgment upon the person of Donald Trump.  What the Senate has just done can be used henceforward by the executive branch to shield it from any investigation by Congress being performed in a timely fashion.  That’s because the task of taking the subpoenas through the courts while being continuously obstructed can take months or even years.  That’s exactly what the administration has been counting on with their refusal to turn over documents since last fall.

I can’t see the vote by the Republicans representing anything better than a descent into nihilism. Truth doesn’t matter, justice doesn’t matter, the checks and balances we thought were built into the Constitution don’t matter, the will of the American people (75% wanted witnesses) doesn’t matter, the idea that no one in America is above the law has just been completely trashed.  And government by a gang of thugs has been validated.

Continue reading “Senate Republicans 51, America 0 – Part III of Treading into Darkness”