#^d 2020-05-31 #^h Weekend Roundup
Lot of articles below on the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the demonstrations that have ensued, and reports of violence (especially in Minneapolis). I have no idea how extensive the violence is, let alone who's responsible for what, but I'm skeptical of reports that the nation is being torn apart, let alone that urban America is being reduced to rubble. I remember the riots of the late 1960s, Kerner Commission Report, and the backlash Nixon so profited from. I doubt this is anything like that, but should also note that the degree of anger over this particular killing -- as you well know there have been dozens that have risen to cause célèbre status, and hundreds that remain obscure. There was, for instance, a completely peaceful demonstration here in Wichita that drew some 2,000 people -- much more than I would have imagined. (No link, as The Wichita Eagle won't let me get past the headline, even with a subscription -- making it pointess to pass the link along.) What does make the current situation worse than in the 1960s is malignant lout in the White House, his toxic party, and their deluded followers. We used to jeer LBJ with "how many kids did you kill today?" but there's no point taunting Trump like that: not only doesn't he care, he's likely to take it as a challenge.
Speaking of the dead, the coronavirus death count in the United States topped 100,000 this week. It topped 10,000 on April 17, and 50,000 18 days later, on April 25. It took 32 days from there to double. The lockdown in Kansas has pretty much ended, although that makes me even more wary of going out. I do, however, have a doctor appointment on Monday, and have been assured they got their protocols together. May make a grocery run as well, as we're low on pretty much everything.
When I got up this morning, I played Down in the Basement (a "treasure trove of vintage 78s 1926-1937") and Maria Muldaur's Garden of Joy. From the former, I was especially struck by the continuing relevance of Bessie Brown's "Song from a Cotton Field." The latter ends with a 2009 remake of the Depression-era "The Panic Is On," with a new line for Obama. Couldn't find a YouTube link, but here's Spotify, if that helps. Here's the 1931 original, by Hezekiah & Dorothy Jenkins; I'm more familiar with a later version which drops the complaint about Prohibition and adds an optimistic like about FDR -- on a compilation somewhere, can't find the link now. I did find more recent ones: by Loudon Wainwright III (2010); Daddy Stovepipe (2013); and by Matt Rivers (2013).
Some scattered links this week:
Jamelle Bouie:
Did you really think Trump would mourn with us:
The president's indifference to collective mourning is of a piece with a political movement that denies our collective ties as well as the obligations we have to each other. If Trump represents a radical political solipsism, in which his is the only interest that exists, then it makes all the sense in the world that neither he nor his allies would see or even understand the need for public and collective mourning -- an activity that heightens our vulnerability, centers our interconnectedness and stands as a challenge to the politics of selfishness and domination.
Trump is following in Herbert Hoover's footsteps: "And we know how that worked out." Well, yes and no. Hoover was smart and disciplined and he was not without caring, but for some reason didn't believe he had any options -- maybe because his super-rich Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon vetoed them. (Mellon served 12 years, so the old joke was that three presidents served under him.) Trump has none of Hoover's virtues, and even more remarkably neither do his principle advisers. Also namechecking Hoover:
Tom Engelhardt: Donald Trump may not be Herbert Hoover.
Philip Bump: Trump just said what Republicans have been trying not to say for years: "The president revealed his real concern about mail-in voting: He's worried Republicans will lose more."
Jane Coaston: Trump's social media executive order, explained: "It won't hold up in court. That's not the point." Also:
Sasha Abramsky: Trump's Twitter tirade is the tantrum of a troll.
Peter Baker/Daisuke Wakabayashi: Trump's order on social media could harm one person in particular: Donald Trump: "Without certain liability protections, companies like Twitter would have to be more aggressive about policing messages that press the boundaries -- like the president's."
John Cassidy: Trump's phony war with Twitter escalates: "If Twitter were to fact-check all of President Trump's posts, he could significantly hamper his ability to propagandize effectively." Not to mention, send him into an endless recursive loop of rage.
Shirin Ghaffary: Twitter has finally started fact-checking Trump.
Sara Morrison: Section 230, the internet free speech law Trump wants to change, explained.
Alex Shephard: Mark Zuckerberg comes to Trump's defense.
Zeynep Tufecki: Trump is doing all of this for Zuckerberg: "The new executive order targeting social-media companies isn't really about Twitter."
Trump is unlikely to repeal Section 230 or take any real action to curb the power of the major social-media companies. Instead, he wants to keep things just the way they are and make sure that the red-carpet treatment he has received so far, especially at Facebook, continues without impediment. He definitely does not want substantial changes going into the 2020 election. The secondary aim is to rile up his base against yet another alleged enemy: this time Silicon Valley, because there needs to be an endless list of targets in the midst of multiple failures. . . .
Playing the refs by browbeating them has long been a key move in the right-wing playbook against traditional media. The method is simple: It involves badgering them with accusations of unfairness and bias so that they bend over backwards to accommodate a "both sides" narrative even when the sides were behaving very differently, or when one side was not grounded in fact. Climate-change deniers funded by fossil-fuel companies effectively used this strategy for decades, relying on journalists' training and instinct to equate objectivity with representing both sides of a story. This way of operating persisted even when one of the sides was mostly bankrolled by the fossil-fuel industry while the other was a near-unanimous consensus of independent experts and academics.
Siva Vaidhyanathan: Well done, Twitter. You've finally figured out how to deal with Trump's tweets.
Matt Ford: Trump's one constant is a fetish for bloodshed: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and the president has bunkered down." Aside from the notes on bullies and cowards, I note this Trump tweet: "It makes me feel so good to hit 'sleazebags' back -- much better than seeing a psychiatrist (which I never have!)." Assuming that seeing a shrink is supposed to make you feel better only makes sense when you realize that he has no capacity for self-reflection, in which case his denial is not just vanity (something he has tons of) but also an implicit recognition of his emptiness. Makes me wonder how terrifying it is to know you know nothing of yourself.
Cindy Forster: Bolivia's post-coup president has unleashed a campaign of terror.
Susan B Glasser:
The most mendacious president in US history: "On Trump, his Twitter lies, and why it's getting worse."
From the start of his Administration, his tweets have been an open-source intelligence boon, a window directly into the President's needy id, and a real-time guide to his obsessions and intentions. Misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies were always central to his politics.
In recent months, however, his tweeting appears to have taken an even darker, more manic, and more mendacious turn, as Trump struggles to manage the convergence of a massive public-health crisis and a simultaneous economic collapse while running for reëlection. He is tweeting more frequently, and more frantically, as events have closed in on him. Trailing in the polls and desperate to change the subject from the coronavirus, mid-pandemic Trump has a Twitter feed that is meaner, angrier, and more partisan than ever before, as he amplifies conspiracy theories about the "deep state" and media enemies such as Scarborough while seeking to exacerbate divisions in an already divided country.
Glasser refers to a piece by former Trump ghost-writer Tony Schwartz: The psychopath in chief, which she sums up:
[Schwartz] argues that the Presidency has transformed Trump from an attention-seeking narcissist, who spent decades lying about his golf trophies, his sex life, and his real-estate properties, into an ends-justify-the-means ruler who has increasingly and ominously escalated his lies and extreme behavior. Many of Trump's lies, Schwartz argues, come from his grandiose misconception of his own knowledge and powers, including his bragging that he knows more "than anyone" about ISIS, drones, social media, campaign finance, technology, polls, courts, lawsuits, politicians, trade, renewable energy, infrastructure, construction, nuclear weapons, banks, tax laws, the economy, and, during the pandemic, medicine. "His obsession with domination and power have prompted Trump to tell lies more promiscuously than ever since he became President, and to engage in ever more unfounded and aggressive responses aimed at anyone he perceives stands in his way," Schwartz wrote.
Glasser also reviews a forthcoming book by the Washington Post's Fact Checker staff, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth.
Katie Glueck: Kris Kobach is back, and a Kansas Senate seat may be up for grabs: From where I sit, it looks to me like Roger Marshall has sewn up the Senate nomination, although his stunt aping Trump and forcing his whole family to take hydroxychloroquine makes me question his sanity. Kobach, having failed to get a Trump admin job (other than the "voter fraud" commission that he ran into the ground), and having failed to win his governor race, strikes me as damaged goods (like Roy Moore in Alabama, who after losing the special election dropped to fourth in the Senate primary this year). Admittedly, Kobach is bad enough to worry about, but so is Marshall and the rest of the field. I'm not impressed by Barbara Bollier, but we'll take whatever we can get.
Erica L Green: Over veterans' protests, Trump vetoes measure to block student loan rules.
Chris Hedges: The coming collapse: "It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion."
Sheila Kaplan/Matthew Goldstein/Alexandra Stevenson: Trump's vaccine chief has vast ties to drug industry, posing possible conflicts: Moncef Slaoui: a venture capitalist, former executive at GlaxoSmithKline, a board member of Moderna.
Catherine Kim: The fatal arrest of George Floyd, a black man kneed in the neck by police, explained. As one section here notes, "the history of police brutality against the black community is long and repetitive." This event, following recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, led quickly to protests and more. Also see:
Karen Attiah: How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country. Later I saw a Tony Karon tweet that suggests the answer to this question is that they'd dub the demonstration "the American spring."
Radley Balko: White people can compartmentalize police brutality. Black people don't have the luxury.
Katelyn Burns:
Trump responded to the protests by lashing out at antifa, the media, and Democrats. Is there anything Trump doesn't blame on "his favorite political punching bags"? Trump has gone on to tweet: "The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization." I don't see how he can do that, not just because the law only applies to foreign organizations, but also it's not clear that "antifa" is an organization at all. More ominously, Attorney General William Barr "announced that the federal law enforcement will activate the 56 regional FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to apprehend and charge what he described as 'violent radical agitators.'" Using the FBI to investigate and harass political "enemies" was common back when J Edgar Hoover ran the agency, so I can't say his move is unprecedented, but it is extremely repugnant to the Constitution and democracy. On the other hand, if you do want to tackle "domestic terrorism," be aware that virtually all of the threats are on the right.
Police targeted journalists covering the George Floyd protests.
The racist history of Trump's "When the looting starts, the shooting starts" tweet.
Paul Butler: Law professor, former federal prosecutor, author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men:
Jonathan Chait: Trump's plan to end Obama's peaceful police reform succeeded.
Zak Cheney-Rice: The lies we tell about riots: "How America mystifies the wages of racism."
Jelani Cobb: The death of George Floyd, in context.
Sean Collins:
Trump's policies have enabled police violence against black Americans: "With pardons, abdication of oversight, harsh rhetoric, and executive orders, the Trump administration has encourage violent policing."
Matthew Dessem: Police erupt in violence nationwide.
Shane Harris: Officials blame outsiders for violence in Minnesota but contradict one another on who is responsible.
Derek Hawkins: Officer charged in George Floyd's death used fatal force before and had history of complaints.
Rebecca Heilweil: Feds flew an unarmed Predator drone over Minneapolis protests to provide "situational awareness".
Jason Johnson: What we're missing when we condemn "violence" at protests.
Which brings us to perhaps the most important thing to understand about how to watch protests: the context of what kind of protest garners police response. Over the past three months, the 24-hour cable networks have extensively covered mostly white armed men and women threatening police and politicians at state capitols across the nation over coronavirus lockdown policies.
How often have you seen police in riot gear? In fact, police seldom use force or even present in force (protest shields, black helmets, etc.) when conservative or right-wing groups protest. When is the last time you saw a group of anti-abortion activists get tear-gassed? Yet left-leaning groups, and especially groups of minorities, their protests are often met with shows of force. Right-wing groups spit in the faces of police in regular gear in Michigan, while SWAT teams show up like Storm Troopers to chanting teens in Minneapolis.
John Judis: Violent protests could be a gift to Trump: This is an obvious fear many of us have, especially those of us who remember how Nixon exploited the urban "riots" of the late 1960s. It also seems to be much on the minds of pro-Trump media today, who have come out in force to spread their take on whatever is happening. Personally, I don't see much to gain from demonstrating at this point: the key message is getting out more effectively via social media, and the Minneapolis city government (if not the police) seems to be responding constructively. On the other hand, if you must have a villain for the "riots," how about Trump? For a better take also at TPM, see Josh Marshall: The gang leader as president.
Kim Kelly: No more cop unions: I'll file this here because many of the examples of how police unions have saved their members from responsibility for acts of violence against the public come from Minneapolis. Of course, I don't believe that police should not be allowed to join a union. But there is much evidence of such unions behaving badly, from supporting Republicans (which proved to be a fatal mistake in Wisconsin) to bending policy for their own temperament.
Catherine Kim:
Daniel Kreps: Killer Mike delivers emotional speech to Atlanta protestors at Mayor's press conference. Robert Christgau tweeted a link to this. When I returned, the top item on my feed was by an Ali Velshi: "I'm hit in the leg by a rubber bullet but am fine. State Police supported by National Guard fired unprovoked into an entirely peaceful rally."
Nancy LeTourneau: In Minneapolis, a police union gone rogue.
Dahlia Lithwick: Whether the president understands the racist history of "looting and shooting" is beside the point.
German Lopez: Former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin charged with murder in the death of George Floyd.
Media Matters: Fox News hosts racist former detective Mark Fuhrman to analyze protests following George Floyd's killing. Also: Lou Dobbs blames "black churches," "black teachers and leaders" for Minneapolis protests.
Blake Montgomery: After George Floyd's death, Klobuchar faces scrutiny over record on police brutality. On the other hand, see Igor Derysh: Amy Klobuchar denies that she failed to prosecute former officer who kneeled on George Floyd's neck.
Mark P Nevitt: Trump cannot legally use "looting" to justify "shooting".
Michele L Norris: How Amy Cooper and George Floyd represent two versions of racism that black Americans face every day.
Tess Owen: Far-right extremists are hoping to turn the George Floyd protests into a new civil war.
Matt Purple: Maybe we should stop giving the Minneapolis police military equipment.
Dylan Scott:
Ryu Spaeth: America's social contract is broken: "The protests across the country are about more than police violence."
Alice Speri/Alleen Brown/Mara Hvistendahl: The George Floyd killing in Minneapolis exposes the failures of police reform.
Emily Stewart: George Floyd's killing has opened the wounds of centuries of American racism.
Alex S Vitale: The answer to police violence is not 'reform.' It's defunding. Here's why. "Bias training, body cameras, community dialogues -- Minneapolis has tried them all." Maybe the 30% of the city budget that the police suck up isn't the best way to use that money?
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: The intolerable tensions between American cities and their police forces.
Alex Ward: "Directly at us": Louisville law enforcement shoots reporters with pepper bullets.
Matt Zapotosky/Isaac Stanley-Becker: Gripped by disease, unemployment and outrage at the police, America plunges into crisis.
Li Zhou: "We're a country with an open wound": Joe Biden condemns the police killing of George Floyd.
David Badash: 'Absolute vacuum in leadership': Internet sheds 'coward' Trump for hiding as 75 cities protest. Assembled from tweets, the least original being "We don't have a president" and "Hitler hid in a bunker too." My favorite:
Kind of like those FDR Fireside Chats.
You know, without the inspiration, empathy, concern, sacrifice, honesty, integrity, and 3-syllable words.
Common Dreams: Michigan sheriff and police didn't use harsh tactics to control Flint Township's protest -- they laid down their batons and joined it.
Jen Kirby: Trump's purge of inspectors general, explained: "In an unprecedented move, Trump has fired or sidelined at least five watchdogs in recent weeks."
Ezra Klein: The vital missing piece of the Democrats' stimulus bill: "If the rule House Democrats followed doesn't allow enough spending, what use is their rule?" What's missing is automatic stabilizers, so in the future something like a rise in unemployment will automatically be met with funding for unemployment insurance. The rule that prevents this is one the Democratic leadership foolishly adopted when they took over the House in 2019, meant to show that they're responsible about deficits. However, if we've learned one thing about economics over the last century, it's that deficit spending is the only way to reduce the tragedy of economic catastrophe.
David Klion: David Frum's hold over the center: "The Never Trumpers styled themselves as critics of the GOP. Instead, they built up power over liberals." Review of Frum's latest essay collection, Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy. For another review, see:
Joe Klein: David Frum rethinks conservatism. Actually, one thing that I've found is that Frum remains very entrenched in certain parts of conservatism. For example:
He proposes a political trade: a severe tightening of immigration rules in return for the passage of much-needed social and climate legislation -- a comprehensive national health care system, a carbon tax (that would include products imported from polluters like China and India). "If Democrats want to perpetuate their health care reforms, they must do a better job of solidifying a sense of national belonging. If Republicans want to safeguard the border, they must offer a better deal to those living on that border's American side."
I might take such a deal, especially if I could stipulate that the immigration limits were combined with a program to legitimate all or most currently undocumented immigrants. But I doubt Republicans would offer any such deal, because they're more committed to blocking health care reform and limits on global warming than they really care about immigration limits.
Mike Konczal: Unemployment insurance is a vital part of economic freedom.
Paul Krugman:
On the economics of not dying: "What good is increasing the GDP if it kills you?"
In praise of fallible leaders: He means in praise of leaders who can admit errors and learn from them. Trump isn't one of them, and not for lack of mistakes.
How many will die for the Dow?: "In a pandemic, Trump is reverting to type." I didn't notice that he ever deviated.
We should help workers, not kill them: "Unemployment benefits: an unheralded success story."
Jon Letman: Trump boosts nuclear weapons spending, fueling a new arms race.
Eric Levitz: GOP vows to kill only thing keeping economy (and Trump) afloat: Enhanced unemployment benefits: the spectre of workers laid off due to the pandemic not feeling the pinch of starvation enough to settle for even lower-wage jobs.
Douglas London: How John Brennan and Mike Pompeo left the US blind to Saudi problems.
Mujib Mashal: How the Taliban outlasted a superpower: tenacity and courage.
Ian Millhiser:
How the Supreme Court enabled police to use deadly chokeholds. Recounts City of Los Angeles v. Lyons (1983). As it happens, I just read about this case last week in Erwin Chemerinsky's book, We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century, as an example of the many Supreme Court rulings that should be reversed. Also:
Why 4 justices on the Supreme Court voted to reopen churches in the pandemic.
A Texas Supreme Court decision could disenfranchise millions during the pandemic.
Timothy Noah: The Trump administratio has abandoned worker safety at the worst moment.
Alex Pareene: The crumbling cult of Jamie Dimon: "Dimon is a serial Noticer That Things Could Be Better, but he has always remained quite vague on why those things could be better or what might be required to improve them." That much, plus being extremely rich, seems to pass for profundity these days. I once wrote that "Barack Obama is so conservative he cannot even imagine a world where Jamie Dimon isn't CEO of a major Wall Street bank." Obama, you may recall, demanded a major shake up at GM as part of the price for a bailout, but never pushed to change a head on Wall Street.
Heather Digby Parton: Trump opposes masks because culture war nihilism is his last lie of defense.
Jeremy W Peters: They predicted 'The Crisis of 2020' . . . in 1991. So how does this end? Recalls two scholars, William Strauss and Neil Howe, whose 1991 book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069, tried to work out a cyclical view of American history, based on 80-year cycles broken up into 20-year phases. They later published a somewhat shorter similar sequel, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous With Destiny (paperback, 1997), which is still in print. The fourth phase of these cycles is "crisis," which they projected to come to a head in 2020, right about now. This is not far removed from the "four eras" schema I've been writing about -- their turning points line up with 1780, 1860, 1940, and 2020, whereas mine are 1800, 1860, 1932, 1980, and (most likely) 2020.
Michael Pollan: The sickness in our food supply: Explains, among much else, why some farmers are dumping milk, eggs, and chickens, even with grocery store shelves bare. That's just the way the industry is organized, for maximum profit, until it breaks.
James Poniewozik: CNN arrest is what actual censorship looks like.
David Roberts: Joe Biden has a chance to make history on climate change: "All he has to do is embrace the consensus that's waiting for him."
Aaron Rupar:
Trump dismisses his own government's guidance about masks as "politically correct": "Trump's latest unhinged news conference illustrates why he's no longer doing daily coronavirus briefings."
"Human capital stock": White House adviser Kevin Hassett uses dehumanizing term for US workers. I'm not a big fan of taking an unfortunate turn of phrase and blowing it up into a story, but this is pretty egregious, as well as revealing. He could have said "our workers are ready to get back to work," and all we'd be questioning is whether that's really true. He could have said "workforce," and while the abstraction is creepier and dehumanizing, we'd probably let is pass. It's true that some economists and businessfolk like to talk about "human capital," but that's usually to posit a human alternative to other forms of capital, and even there it suggests that people's skills and "know how" can be owned as an asset -- something that most of us reject. However, "stock" is where this gets really insulting: a word usually used for animals (e.g. livestock). One could say "our bovine capital stock is ready to be eaten," but who the fuck actually talks like that? That's a question I doubt anyone has asked before, but now we have an answer: Trump economic adviser.
Packing 20,000 people into an arena for the RNC is a bad idea. Trump wants it to happen anyway.
Robert J Shapiro: The economic recovery will be a whimper, not a bang: "Many economists, including some liberals, are predicting a strong comeback by November. They are using the wrong models."
Felicia Sonmez: Graham urges senior judges to step aside before November election so Republicans can fill vacancies. Always scheming.
Joseph E Stiglitz: Argentina and the future of finance capitalism.
Alex Thompson: Famed Democratic pollster: Warren as VP would lead to Biden victory: That's what Stan Greenberg says.
Andrew Van Dam: The unluckiest generation in US history: "Millennials have faced the worst economic odds, and many will never recover." As I recall, it was baseball mogul Branch Rickey who said, "luck is the residue of design." What me meant was built strong, deep teams, and luck will break your way. The converse also applies: the more fundamental weaknesses you have, the more likely luck will turn against you. The long-term trends of the last 20-40 years have been: the rich have gotten much richer; safety nets have eroded, so most people are at greater risk should something bad happen; and bad events have become more frequent due to war, climate change, and lack of infrastructure investment. Those are trends that are hard to notice as they're happening, only becoming evident when things break bad. At first that may look like luck, but deeper down lies design.
Peter Wade: In a disturbing rant, Trump says protesters 'would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs'. What is it with Trump and dogs?
Alex Ward:
Matthew Yglesias:
Household income surged in April despite the collapsing labor market. For once, you should thank the Democrats for that. When the stock market collapsed, Trump and the Republicans were desperate to inject cash into the collapsing economy -- especially those $1200 checks with Trump's name on them. Democrats went along, but only after insisting on funding the unemployment insurance system, including broader eligibility and a $600 per week supplement, which meant that some laid-off workers actually came out ahead. That was absolutely the right thing to do, and Republicans went along with it only because it was bound to their own poorly thought out plan. It's clear now that the "stimulus" didn't save the economy -- most of the money went into savings or debt reduction -- but it did help a lot of people. Thank the Democrats for that. And expect the Republicans to revert to form as the economy opens up slowly, and actually does need a shot of stimulus spending.
CNN reporter Omar Jimenez arrested live on air in Minneapolis.
Twitter flags Trump for "glorifying violence" in "looting starts, shooting starts" tweet.
Let Hong Kong move to America: "Visas could do more than sanctions to help Hong Kong and punish China." Contrast this with Jen Kirby: Trump says he will revoke Hong Kong's special trade status. I don't see how Trump's threat does anything but force Hong Kong ever deeper under China's thumb. On the other hand, I'm not wild about Yglesias's plan either. Reminds me of the special visa class that has allowed right-wing Cubans to flood the country, warping any chance of ever normalizing relations with Cuba, while sticking us with right-wing political operatives like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
The US should prioritize reopening schools, not salons and restaurants.
Joe Biden has a plan for that: "Not a joke, folks: He's running on a transformative policy agenda." Most of these points have substance while falling short of what Sanders (or for that matter Warren) proposed. The weakest area remains health care, where he wants a "public option" in what's probably a vain hope of reducing public costs by making the marketplace more competitive.