#^d 2019-04-28 #^h Weekend Roundup
Started early and still running late. Having recently read Benjamin Carter Hett's The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic, I woke up this morning with the idea of writing something about Trump, Republicans, and Fascism for today's introduction. Never got close to that. Hett's book is pretty straight history, but you can find a page here or there where you could easily gloss in Trump's name for Hitler's. Then you move onto other pages where Trump fails any comparison, usually by being too dumb or too lazy. There are also big differences between the Nazis and the Republicans, although differences on race, foreigners, unions, and military muscle are insignificant. The biggest one is that the Nazis actually had their own goon squad that could go out and physically attack their suspected enemies, whereas Republicans only wish they could do that. Still, the key point about Germany in 1932 was supposedly sober conservatives were so desperate to squash the left -- indeed, any trace of popular government, of democracy -- that they were willing to hand power over to a psycho like Hitler and his vicious gang of followers. Republicans seem happy to do the same thing here in America, for the same reasons, and with the same obliviousness to consequences.
I should note somewhere that former Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) died last week. Back in the 1980s he was the model of how a Republican politician could straddle moderate urban politics (he was mayor of Indianapolis) and the Reagan reaction, which for a time helped make the latter seem more innocuous and palatable. He was finally devoured by the right, purged in a primary by an opponent so extreme that the Democrats were able to (temporarily) pick up the seat. I never felt any particular fondness for Lugar, but I could understand why people respected him. Even his breed of Republican is now a thing of the past.
Also noted that historian David Brion Davis has died. His 1967 book The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture greatly affected the way pretty much everyone understood the history of slavery in the Americas. I've often thought I should check out his later books, especially the ones that extended his study into the 19th century. I learned of his death from a cranky Corey Robin note, which I decided not to bother with below. Here's a more useful (and generous) obituary.
Anyhow, this is what the week has to show for itself:
Greg Asner: To solve climate change and biodiversity loss, we need a Global Deal for Nature.
Nicholson Baker: My brain on cable news: "Tuning into TV's battle to the death."
What's actually on cable these days is a bizarre legalistic death battle. Cohen, Manafort, Flynn, Butina, Mueller, Giuliani, et al. We aren't debating whether Trump has been responsible for the deaths of innocents, because everyone knows that he is -- presidents and collateral damage go hand in hand. If Trump goes to prison, it will not be for child murder, but for distributing hush money to silence former mistresses and for taking bribes and for engaging in back channel machinations with Russia. Whatever it takes, I suppose, but I have to agree with my cable guy: there's something unseemly about the means employed.
Fox News is addictive and awful: choirboys gone to seed and women's dresses with weird portholes at the shoulders or at the cleavage. The anchors jeer smilingly at ideas that any sensible person of generous mind can see make sense. Quick clips of closed-circuit footage of humans with darker skin doing bad things are injected into the river of commentary -- mug shots included -- to create little mental firecracker pops of righteous wrath among the pickup-truck crowd, along with "funny" attacks on progressive causes by rightist comedians who love steak and country music. Fox & Friends is a hot mess of clean living and white-right American self-deception, and I can't watch it for very long without feeling queasy. But it's an easy mark.
Jane Coaston: Trump's new defense of his Charlottesville comments is incredibly false. Related: Allegra Kirkland: Whitewash: Trump takes new approach to sanitizing Charlottesville protests.
Helena Cobban: The UAE's seedy influence operations are a footnote to the Mueller report.
Bryce Covert: Hedge-fund ownership cost Sears workers their jobs. Now they're fighting back. Seems like lots (damn near all of ) the companies you read about in bankruptcy first passed through a phase where private equity operators first bought the company with its own debt than stripped assets and paid themselves "management fees." Maybe if they were lucky they'd be able to sell the carcass off, but current bankruptcy law favors creditors over employees and customers, finishing the liquidation while leaving the public worse off. Our think tanks need to think about this situation, and come up with new bankruptcy laws that allow companies to survive such malign ownership, preferably under employee ownership, with debt loads reduced to levels which allow the companies to carry on. Other regulations could help, but just changing bankruptcy law would shift the incentives dramatically.
Alex Emmons: Coalition airstrikes in Raqqa killed at least 1,600 civilians, more than 10 times US tally, report finds.
Tom Engelhardt: Publisher and introduction writer at TomDispatch:
Collusion, hell, yeah!: "Suicide watch on planet Earth: as the flames began to rise, the arsonists appeared."
A "ridiculous" war: "American war is off the charts: how the US military feeds at the terror trough."
Allegra Harpootlian/Emily Manna: The AI Wars: "The end of war is just a beginning. Will technology stamp a 'forever' on America's wars?"
Jen Marlowe: Running for the Right to Thrive: "The Palestinian marathon: a window into occupation and survival in a less than holy land."
Nick Turse: No need to whisper, AFRICOM isn't listening in: "AFRICOM calls for my 'elimination' (from their daily media reports)."
Belle Chesler: Defunding children, a national crisis of the soul: "Making American schools less great again: a lesson in educational nihilism on a grand scale."
Arnold R Isaacs: The 100-year-old echoes of 2019: "Looking back at 1919: immigration, race, and women's rights, then and now."
Ann Jones: Our Veblen moment: "The man who saw Trump coming a century ago: a reader's guide for the distraught."
Alfred McCoy: America's self-inflicted wound: "Decriminalizing the drug war? Calculating the damage from a century of drug prohibition."
Todd Gitlin: The roots of Trumpian agitprop: Hint: article namechecks Leni Riefenstahl, as well as Susan Sontag writing about Riefenstahl.
Patrick Greenfield: Spain election: socialist party PSOE declared winner: live update blog; PSOE is expected to be able to form a coalition with the further leftist party Podemos; the far-right party Vox surged, but only wound up with 24 MPs (6.8%), at the expense of more mainstream conservatives (PP is down from 137 to 66).
Sue Halpern: The terrifying potential of the 5G network: "The future of wireless technology holds the promise of total connectivity. But it will also be especially susceptible to cyberattacks and surveillance." Guess who else is selling snooping gear? Richard Silverstein: Israel and the selling of the surveillance state.
Murtaza Hussain: Our enemies are the same people: San Diego synagogue shooter inspired by New Zealand anti-Muslim massacre.
Sean Illing: White identity politics is about more than racism: Interview with Ashley Jardina, author of White Identity Politics..
Christopher Ingraham: Rich guys are most likely to have no idea what they're talking about, study suggests.
Greg Jaffe: Capitalism in crisis: US billionaires worry about the survival of the system that made them rich.
Sam Knight: The uncanny power of Greta Thunberg's climate-change rhetoric.
The climate-change movement feels powerful today because it is politicians -- not the people gluing themselves to trucks -- who seem deluded about reality. Thunberg says that all she wants is for adults to behave like adults, and to act on the terrifying information that is all around us.
Related: Stewart Lee: Why Greta Thunberg is now my go-to girl.
Paul Krugman:
Armpits, white ghettos and contempt: "Who really despises the American heartland?" Opens with a sidebar on Stephen Moore (Trump's Fed pick), noting:
Moore is an indefensible choice on many grounds. Even if he hadn't shown himself to be extraordinarily misogynistic and have an ugly personal history, his track record on economics -- always wrong, never admitting error or learning from it -- is utterly disqualifying.
Survival of the wrongest: "Evidence has a well-known liberal bias." Much more on Stephen Moore.
The great Republican abdication: "A party that no longer believes in American values." Wait! Aren't greed, hubris, and desperate schemes to rig every contest the ultimate American values? Those are clearly the hallmarks of the recent Republican Party, and those are traits one can question and denounce. But calling them un-American misses a big part of their appeal.
Bill McKibben: To stop global catastrophe, we must believe in humans again: "We have the technology to prevent climate crisis. But now we need to unleash mass resistance too -- because collective action does work." Edited extract from his new book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?. He also pleaded for mass resistance recently in Glaciers and Arctic ice are vanishing. Time to get radical before it's too late.
Paul Mozur/Jonah M Kessel/Melissa Chan: Made in China, exported to the world: the surveillance state.
Anna North: Trump's Fed pick wrote that women should be banned from March Madness: Well, actually he's written and said a lot of stupid things, not least on matters more germane to his appointment -- not that whether he's an asshole is irrelevant. As for Trump's other pick of a political hack for a Fed seat, see: Li Zhou: It's official: Herman Cain is not going to be on the Fed. Zhou also wrote: Young voters want more action on climate change -- even if it hurts the economy.
Gabby Orr/Andrew Restuccia: How Stephen Miller made immigration personal.
Andrew Prokop:
Ben Protess/William K Rashbaum/Maggie Haberman: How Michael Cohen turned against President Trump.
Eric Rauchway: Obama's original sin: "A new insider account reveals how the Obamas administration's botched bailout deal not only reinforced neoliberal Clintonism, but also foreshadowed an ongoing failure to fulfill campaign promises." Review of Reed Hundt: A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions. Reminds me that perhaps the first of those decisions was letting Clinton factotum John Podesta run the transition team, which initially penciled in such pivotal figures as Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers.
Gabriela Resto-Montero: Most Americans believe Trump lied to them, but think impeachment is a bad idea. Related: Ella Nilsen: Democrats' impeachment dilemma, explained.
James Risen: Unanswered questions in the Mueller report point to a sprawling Russian spy game.
David Roberts:
Don't bother waiting for conservatives to come around on climate change. One sample quote:
We know that personality traits can be pretty deeply embedded by early childhood, but we also know that which traits and dispositions are brought to the fore, individually and collectively, depends on circumstances. Crudely speaking, when people feel safe and cared for, they will be more open to extending the circle of care (that is, more liberal). When they feel anxious or threatened, they will be more inclined to draw the circle of care inward, i.e., to become more conservative.
Right-wing media is a machine for scaring older white people -- i.e., for making them more conservative. A whole generation of young people has lost parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles to the Fox machine. It has dragged the political center to the right and slowed progressive reforms (like universal health care) that have been in place in other developed democracies for years. It will fight climate progress to its last breath.
Fox News has united the right against the Green New Deal. The left remains divided.
Aaron Rupar:
"This was a coup": Trump escalates his authoritarian rhetoric. Trump goes on: "This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government." The unstated premise to that could only be, "L'état, c'est moi." Actually, the Mueller investigation was launched by Trump's own administration to rescue Trump from the appearance of having obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey, whose job involved investigating the lies and possible corruption of several Trump appointees, notably Michael Flynn.
Why Trump's tweets about Don McGahn and the Mueller report could backfire.
Polling shows Fox News has been amazingly effective at shaping opinion on the Mueller report. Self self-selection as well: Fox viewers think that Mueller's report exonerates Trump by a 83-10 margin; MSNBC viewers break even harder the other direction, 7-90, while CNN is a bit less extreme, 17-71.
Darren Samuelsohn/Andrew Desiderio/Kyle Cheney: 'This is risky': Trump's thirst for Mueller revenge could land him in trouble. Related: Andrew Restuccia: Mueller report exposes diminishing power of Trump denials: "The report has reignited a media debate about how seriously to take the White House's statements of fact."
Eric Schmitt/David E Sanger/Maggie Haberman: In push for 2020 election security, top official was warned: don't tell Trump.
Ben Schwartz: The trigger presidency: "How shock jock comedy gave way to Donald Trump's Republican Party.
Dylan Scott: Trump's high-stakes subpoena battle with House Democrats, explained.
Matt Shuham: Trump lets loose stunning falsehood that doctors, mothers 'execute' babies.
Ben Taub:
How the War on Terror is being written: Starts on Guantánamo, ends with a long list of links to source documents. Midway, Taub notes:
The year after [James] Mitchell published his memoir [Enhanced Interrogation], it was cited in a lengthy report by Physicians for Human Rights, which argues that the interrogation program represented "one of the gravest breaches of medical ethics" since the Nazi medical experiments during the Second World War.
These documents -- along with contemporaneous reports and books by investigative journalists, academics, lawyers, and human-rights advocates -- make up an evolving draft of post-9/11 history. With each passing year, more details surface in memoirs, lawsuits, and military commissions, and the historical record comes into sharper focus. Millions of pages have come to light, and millions more remain classified. But, seventeen years into the war on terror, a core, uncomfortable fact remains: people on the receiving end of classified security programs -- from drone strikes to renditions and interrogations -- become aware of the outlines of secret U.S. national-security laws and practices long before American citizens have any clarity or say about what is being done in their name.
Murray Waas: Mueller prosecutors: Trump did obstruct justice.
Alex Ward:
Democrats want to challenge Trump's foreign policy in 2020. They're still working out how. Surprisingly little here, or maybe not given how readily Democrats have lined up behind the common consensus policies in place since shortly after WWII. Consider "the four main pillars of a progressive foreign policy (so far)":
I would have started off with negotiated demilitarization: securing treaties all around the world that resolve conflicts and reduce the military posture of all nations (especially the US). My second point would be to expand "democracy promotion and anti-corruption" to lean left, to support more power for workers and for women, while accepting that capital rights need to be limited and regulated. On trade, I'd work to limit (or in many cases eliminate) rents based on intellectual property. This in turn should lead to greater sharing of best practices in science and technology, which would help with problems like climate change, loss of biodiversity, etc. I'd also like to see some sort of international framework for dealing with migration. Democrats have done a miserable job of formulating foreign policy due to the old colonial mentality where they've never seen the rest of the world's peoples as our equals, and never recognized that our welfare is co-dependent on the world's. Another piece on trying to change Democratic strategy: David Klion: When will Washington end the Forever War?.
Sri Lanka suffered from decades of violence before the Easter Sunday bombings. Related: Samanth Subramanian: After the Easter bombings, Sri Lanka grapples with its history of violence.
Robin Wright:
Matthew Yglesias:
We're not hearing enough from 2020 candidates about things they could do as president.
Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020: "Americans want outsiders, reformers, and fresh faces, not politicians with decades of baggage." Pretty much all you need to know about Biden in 2020, but not the only thing written this week. E.g.:
Moira Donegan: Anita Hill deserves a real apology. Why couldn't Joe Biden offer one?
Jill Filipovic: Joe Biden's policies are as troubling as his inappropriate touching.
German Lopez: Joe Biden's long record supporting the war on drugs and mass incarceration, explained.
Arwa Mahdawi: Joe Biden is the Hillary Clinton of 2020 -- and it won't end well this time either.
Jane Mayer: What Joe Biden hasn't owned up to about Anita Hill.
Jim Newell: The 2020 candidates smell blood: "The reason so many Democrats are running is they think Biden won't survive."
The field in 2016 was so small not because politicians with national aspirations didn't exist, but because they thought Clinton -- with her name recognition, financial resources, party relationships, high early polling numbers, and general next-in-line aura -- was inevitable. She cleared the field of most competition because other mainstream candidates knew she would win (and non-mainstream Bernie figured she would too).
Biden is something more like a 2016 Jeb Bush: a weak establishment favorite whose time might be past and -- should voters deprioritize his top perceived strength, electability -- who could soon face the wolves.
Newell also wrote: Biden has successfullyl goaded Trump, which is exactly what he needs to do. One thing many Democrats will be looking for in primary season is the candidate who most effectively articulates their rage over Trump, and one of the best ways to do that is to get under his thin skin.
Nate Silver: How Joe Biden could win the 2020 Democratic Primary: Put a lot of weight on his initial poll lead, and hope nothing goes wrong.
Matt Taibbi: Is Joe Biden 'electable' or not? Thank God, nobody seems to know.
The Democratic establishment should chill out about Bernie Sanders.
As Sanders continues to rate highly in national polls, many longtime party stalwarts are palpably agitated over a blend of personal grievances and overblown political and policy concerns. . . .
As a personal matter, the establishment's response is understandable. Sanders, an independent Vermont senator, tends to portray the institutional Democratic Party as corrupt and relentlessly sows suspicion about the motives and integrity of everyone who disagrees with him. He treats the catastrophe of the 2016 election as a deserved rebuke to party leaders. And he brushes aside mountains of practical realities that others have spent years dealing with.
But blowing up over this makes no sense. The whole point of a party establishment is to be cynical, detached, practical-minded, and realistic. If they assess Sanders's actual track record -- rather than his personally insulting rhetoric -- they'd discover a fairly unremarkable blue-state liberal who's good at winning elections and has extensive experience with the disappointing realities of the legislative process.
Relevant here: Peter Daou: I was Bernie's biggest critic in 2016 -- I've changed my mind: "It would be an epic act of self-destruction for Democrats to try to hobble his campaign." Let's see if I can explain this in simple terms. During the Reagan-to-Trump era, Democrats have been preoccupied with raising money (cultivating donor support). Some, like Obama and the Clintons, have even done a good job of this, largely by promising that they'd do an even better job for business than the Republicans would -- something the stats clearly support. Meanwhile, the Democrats have let their base go to hell, and found their support eroding, even as Republicans have even less to offer. What Sanders is doing is rebuilding the Democratic Party base, by appealing to the people Democrats have been screwing for decades now. Attacking Sanders risks driving this base away, if not to the Republicans then to a third party or nothing. Sanders is doing the party a huge favor by not running as an independent. The party needs to reciprocate by welcoming him and his voters. They might even find, like Daou, that they'll learn something.
Gary Younge: Brexit is not just a tragedy for Britain.