#^d 2019-01-27 #^h Weekend Roundup

Trump's lockout ended on Friday, for three weeks, anyway. I wouldn't make a big deal about Trump blinking or caving. He's a born bully, and still dangerous, so you'd just be taunting him. On the other hand, I'm pretty much convinced that the purpose of the lockout was to try to intimidate the new Democratic House, so we might as well acknowledge that in that regard he failed. Perry Bacon Jr. explains Why Trump Blinked, although the info graphic on "Trump Approval Ratings" is probably all you need to know: approve, 39.4%; disapprove, 56.0%. Those are his worst numbers since the 2016 election, and those numbers have never been above water.

Another big story was the much anticipated indictment and arrest of Roger Stone. My right-wing cousin on Facebook: "Gestapo tactics used against Roger Stone! A old man, his wife and a dog. A SWAT team in full gear for arresting! For shame F.B.I." Of course, Stone's not the first guy who's been Gestapoed by the FBI. That's pretty much their standard operating procedure. I can't even especially blame them here, given that the NRA has pretty much guaranteed that every criminal in America will be armed. The risk, of course, is that a half-cocked SWAT team member will freak out and kill someone for no good reason. We had a prime example of that here in Wichita, about a year ago.

Still, the bigger story is the coup that Trump & Co. tried to pull off in Venezuela. This one was a bit unorthodox. Normally, one tries to secure power first, then quickly recognize the plotters to help them consolidate power. This time Trump recognized the coup before there were any "facts on the ground," thereby alerting Maduro to the plot. As I recall, GW Bush recognized a coup in Venezuela [in 2002] that ultimately failed, but even he wasn't as premature as Trump.

This coup has been preceded by decades of vitriolic propaganda aimed at delegitimizing the democratically elected Chavez and Maduro governments. This has made it very difficult to know what reports are fair and accurate. On the other hand, the historical record is clear that the US has long exploited Venezuela (and virtually every other country in Latin America), leading to chronic poverty, extreme inequality, and harsh repression nearly everywhere -- and this has long made me sympathetic to political movements, like Chavez's, that have sought to halt and undo neo-liberal predation (even in cases where I don't particularly approve of the tactics). Whatever the facts here, Trump's actions are fully consistent with US policy of more than a century, and as such should be opposed.

Some links on Venezuela:


Some more scattered links this week:


PS: I asked for comments last week on a possible book outline, and got essentially zilch back. To save you the trouble of a click, I'll just paste them in here:

One thing I feel I need to decide this week (or, let's say, by the end of January, at latest) is whether I'm going to try to write my unsolicited advice book for Democrats in 2020. Say it takes three months to write, two to get edited and published, that gets us to July, by which time we'll probably have a dozen Democrats running for President. (I'm counting four right now: Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Julian Castro, and Tulsi Gabbard; Wikipedia lists more I wasn't aware of, plus an announcement pending from Kamala Harris tomorrow.) [Ballotpedia lists eight "notable" declared/exploratory Democratic candidates.] But that's just a measure of how soon what Matt Taibbi likes to call "the stupid season" will be upon us. I have no interest in handicapping the race, or even mentioning candidates by name. I'm more interested in historical context, positioning, and what I suppose we could call campaign ethics: how candidates should treat each other, the issues, the media, the voters, and Republicans. And note that the book is only directed toward Democrats who are actually concerned enough to get involved in actual campaigns. Even there, it won't be a "how to" book. I don't really know anything about running a campaign. It's more why we need candidates in the first place, and what those candidates should say.

Some rough ideas for the book:

Book doesn't need to be more than 300 pages, and could be as short as half that. It is important to get it out quickly to have any real impact. I would consider working with a co-author, especially someone who could carry on to do much of the promotion -- something I'm very unlikely to be much good at.

While I can imagine that this could be worth doing, I can also think of various reasons not to bother. The obvious one is that I haven't been feeling well, having a good deal of back pain, and having a trouble with my eyes -- things that have taken a toll from my normal workload over the last few months. I also seem to be having more difficulties coming up with satisfactory writing. I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to write up a response to a particularly annoying Facebook rant, and never did come up with anything I felt like sharing. I am especially bothered by self-destructive arguments I see both on the left and the right of the Democratic Party spectrum, and this sometimes tempts me to throw up my hands and leave you all to your fates. On the other hand, sometimes this tempts me to think that all the help you need is a little clarity that I fancy I can provide.

Just knocked this much off the top of my head, in two sets of a couple hours each, so this is very rough. Next step will be to try to flesh out a bit more outline, maybe 3-5 times the length, with a lot of bullet points. That would be the goal for the next 7-10 days. If I manage that, I'll circulate it to a few friends, then make a decision whether to proceed. The alternative project at this point is probably a memoir, which is something that can take however much time it takes (or however much I have left).

Comments welcome, and much appreciated.

I haven't made any notable progress in the intervening week, which is probably not a good sign. I have started reading Ben Fountain's book, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution, which is mostly reportage of the 2016 campaign, but a cut above, partly the writing -- Fountain is best known for his novel (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk) -- and partly because he pays as much attention to the public as to the politicians. (The paperback subtitle is Trump's Rise to Power and the State of the Country That Voted for Him. I can't say it's helped me a lot in thinking about my book, but does keep my head somewhat in the game.

Other books I've read on the 2016 election and/or Trump (latest to oldest):