Afghanistan

There are two schools of thought on withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. One is that Al-Qaeda has been dispersed and the threat is no longer localized in Afghanistan, so keeping troops there is not an effective use of the military's resources. Moreover, in removing troops from Afghan soil, the Taliban may find less local support making common cause against the invading infidel.  The other is that the Taliban remain a threat to the Afghan government and without an American presence they may will retake control of the country. The modernizing reforms achieved since the US occupation began would be rescinded and the country would revert to the oppressive values the Taliban espouse. 

Where one comes down on this probably hinges on whether one sees the US' role in the world providing a policing presence or as exporting its values (or for some people, neither).  If one sees the US' role only as policing or simply defending the homeland then the troop withdrawal is the obvious answer. If one still sees the US' role as exporting its values, then it should have stayed. 

That Biden chose to leave suggests either that a more inwardly focused perspective is taking hold here (some would characterize it as the "America First" position) or that there has finally been a realization that imposing values on another sovereign nation with a completely different culture and history is harder than it looks. It requires a sustained, often heavy-handed presence which those being "asked" to reform might justifiably see as colonization.

On my watch

My first watch, Itta gave me. I was seven or eight. It was a Timex with an expandable spring metal strap. I can see it vividly in my mind's eye, now fifty plus years on.  Watch number two was my father's old Tissot. He bequeathed it to me when his colleagues bought him a new watch for his retirement. Mr Hughes, the affable Welshman who taught physics at Worthing High, thought it would be interesting to test the luminous hands and dial with a radiometer; it was almost off the scale, perhaps 10 time the legally permitted limit for radioactive sources so my father had a jeweler scrape off the radium infused luminous coating.  

At Imperial I think I may have had a digital watch with a small calculator - all metal buttons.  Next was a chunky Bulova, an electronic analog watch I bought from a catalog while I was working at IBM. Judith bought me my next one, a Kenneth Cole fashion item, chunky and heavy, very masculine (not at all me). Then there was a gap of about 10 years when I didn't wear a watch, instead using my new cell phone if I needed to know the time.

When went back to wearing a watch the Kenneth Cole had stopped (not that long ago now) and I bought the Olevs on Ali Express. I paid $29 for the first one but then found the same watch in a variety of colors, all for $16, in several different Ali Express stores. I now have five or six. The Tissot, which my father assured me was a top of the line Swiss watch (which apparently he had acquired on the black market in Tehran in 1945), needed winding every day and generally had to be adjusted at least once a week to make sure it told the right time. My Olevs have gone over six months (perhaps longer) and have lost (or gained) no more than three seconds. That's real progress, and about time too.     

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Today Britain is mourning the passing of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. After 73 years of marriage, one can only imagine how hard it will be for the Queen to deal with such a loss and ones heart goes out to her. 

While for the most part what the public saw of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip was carefully managed, I was stuck, many years ago, by what seemed to be a tiny glimpse of what their private life might have been like. 

When Imperial College was granted its own independent charter in 2007, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to the Exhibition Road entrance for a ceremony celebrating the College's departure from the University of London.  I was able to watch the proceedings which were live-streamed on the Internet.  

After the ceremony was over, there appeared to be a signing of a visitors book. At that point I think everyone expected the feed to be cut, but instead the camera (and more importantly the microphones) were still on.

Prince Philip signed first. For some reason he appeared to be taking his time, while the the Queens waited. To my complete surprise, apparently a little irritated with the delay, she rebuked him: "Oh, do get on with it, you silly old fool" is what I remember her quietly saying to him. 

While initially slightly shocking, on reflection it seemed to me incredibly humanizing and rather endearing. Behind the facade of the pageantry of the monarchy as an institution, here was a couple that had been married for almost 60 years, subject to many of the same emotional stresses and strains common to almost any marriage, a couple that had settled into a very comfortable routine of togetherness. That I found rather heart-warming.      

Misunderstood

Biden was hailed as "Mr. Bipartisan" - until he wasn't. Today the papers are confused that Biden appears to be pushing ahead with his agenda without bipartisan support.  This is to misunderstand Joe Biden; he was bipartisan, not as and end in itself, but as a means to an end - getting legislation passed in the Senate. Reaching across the aisle was the means available to him in the Senate and he used it in the service of getting stuff done. 

But it seems that there is no willingness to compromise on the Republican side. Biden tested the waters early on with the stimulus package. He tried to reach a deal with some of the moderate GOP senators but they were there only for show, to provide their base with a talking point that "They tried, they really did."

So if there is no acceptable means of getting stuff done with bipartisan support, then Biden, ever the pragmatist, will do whatever it takes.  It's not about bipartisanship; it's about accomplishing something meaningful; and if adhering to the former renders the latter inadequate and insufficient, then bipartisanship has to go. 

Stalking horses

The Washington Post reported that pro-Trump candidates are causing a headache for the GOP old guard. Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying that he only cares about electability (translation: "I want to get back to being leader of the Senate"). 

Whether McConnell gets his old job back or not, the effect on the political climate in Washington will be significant. By initially putting up a slew of far right, almost undetectable candidates in the primaries there is a good possibility that only slightly less extreme candidates end up being nominated. They are seen by the independents and old-guard republicans in contrast as acceptable enough to get them elected to the Senate the general election, particularly if the alternative is a progressive Democrat. The result will almost certainly be a further shift to the right in the Senate and even less chance of passing any bi-partisan legislation.           

Happy anniversary

March 15th 2020 was the last time I left the property - that is until today.  Three hundred and seventy two days of what was effectively house arrest. That ended at 10:15 today when I left to get the first dose of my Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine.  

While it is overstating it to say it has been a nightmare, a bad dream perhaps, from which I am just waking up, it is nonetheless a year gone with no gigs, an little else other than work and practicing.    

So, at 60, bring on the new normal and lets see where that takes us...  

Not my problem, John

No one likes hot potatoes, and Trump was one of the hottest. Mueller punted on holding him to account in the Russia election interference investigation, hinting that it was really up to Congress (and the House indeed did give it their best shot, first for the Ukraine call, which was a much clearer case than the Russia election interference scandal, and then for his role in Insurrection Day which was (or should have been) a slam dunk. There Mitch McConnell did much the same thing, saying after he voted not to convict, that the judicial system was where Trump should be held to account.  The institution to which Mueller passed the buck ultimately passed it on to the judiciary. The buck clearly only stops when it's no longer too hot to hold.         

Unconstitutional

Listening to Trump's pugnacious and mendacious defense team's closing arguments, I was reminded of leaders around the world who, when bought to justice, claim in their defense that the judicial system holding them to account does not have the authority to try them. 

In Trump's case, that question had been settled when the Senate voted that the impeachment was permitted under the constitution. Continuing to make the unconstitutionality argument after that decision only emphasized how undemocratic Trump and his team are. And by extension, so are all the senators who considered Trump culpable but voted to acquit on the grounds of unconstitutionality.

covid as a diagnostic for racism

Harassment and attacks, some physical and violent, against Asian-Americans has been on the rise since covid. Trump has been blamed for inciting this by his use of terms like Chinese virus and Kung-flu. While that has clearly had an effect, the reality is deeper and darker; Trump's words were oxygen blown onto already smoldering embers.

To see why this is not about language and terms per-se but about the underlying racism that the words tapped int, consider the Chinese virus vs the British [covid] variant. If it was the simply language that was the cause of the rise in ethnically targeted violence, then one would expect to see a rise in violence against Brits; which of course there hasn't been. So it can't be the language but the interaction of the language with underlying attitudes. In other words racism.  

As a footnote on language, it's also interesting that it's only some ethnic groups who we label as "Something-Americans", for example, Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, African-Americans. As a British ex-pat I'm not called a British-American even though I am a US citizen.  It seems as though groups that have been and are still discriminated against have taken on this labeling heuristic to emphasize that they are actually American; those who have not suffered racial discrimination—Brits, Scandinavians, Germans (and isn't that interesting!) for example—have, luckily, no need to send that signal.

Taking the long view

Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Covid has changed the way we see the world; and not metaphorically.  Of course there's the fact that we are now seeing our friends and colleagues in small boxes on a small and not in person. But Zoom aside, things look different.  I may be imagining things but what first struck me looking at this image of Mitch McConnell from today's New York Times is that is was taken with quite a long lens (perhaps a 300mm telephoto in 35mm format). The background seems too close to the figures in the middle ground who appear closer than they are to the foreground.  The depth of field is very shallow as well, again a feature of a picture taken with a long lens. 

Which got me to wondering whether photojournalists had swapped their normal-wide angles like the Nikon AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 for something like the Nikon AF-S 120-300mm f/2.8E. Why? Well if they used to get into a scrum of journalists quite close to the subject they'd need the shorter length lens. But with covid getting close to people like McConnell isn't possible. Everyone not in "the bubble" must be being kept at a very safe social distance, so you'd need a long lens. So taking the long view is just good sense. 

Deliberation

The Senate today concluded the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump without an conviction. What is slightly surprising when one compares a trial in the courts with this trial in the Senate is the absence of jury deliberation. 

In a court trial, the jurors would sit and discuss the evidence they had heard during the trial; but that didn't happen here. Of course, logistically with a jury of 100 it is far more difficult to replicate the process of deliberation, but it appears not to be "required" of the jurors in an impeachment. I am speculating that this was something that would have had to have been negotiated between Sens. Schumer and McConnell in setting up the structure of the trial. 

Would it have made a difference had a way been found for them to do so? In the highly partisan atmosphere in Washington, it seems unlikely; but I suppose it's just possible that it might have.     

Criminal negligence or reckless endangerment?

Never mind dereliction of duty; Trump's willful decision not to come to the aid of those under attack in Congress on January 6th should be seen as criminal negligence or even reckless endangerment. 

Typical defense strategies against allegations of criminal negligence include asserting that the defendant's actions were the result of a mistake or accident, or, and potentially most applicable here, that the defendant did not know that his actions (or inaction) created a risk of danger. 

Trump was watching the riot taking place, had been informed that people in the Capitol were in serious danger (is there any other kind?) but when asked to act to stop the insurrection, he chose not to. 

Perhaps reckless endangerment comes even closer. The FindLaw website defines "reckless endangerment" as "the criminal offense of recklessly engaging in conduct that creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury or death to another person. Whether you meant any harm or not, creating a situation that puts someone else at risk is illegal".  FindLaw also writes that recklessness "means the person knew (or should have known) that his or her action were likely to cause harm".

Trump's failure to act during the insurrection, not to mention his actions leading up to January 6th, seem to fit this description. Suppose instead of a riot Trump had been watching a several hundred people drowning and had, at his beck and call, lifeboats that a could have saved most or even all of them. To not issue an order that the lifeboats be deployed to save the drowning looks like reckless endangerment. And that is exactly what he did (or did not do). When asked by numerous staffers, family members and even by those who were presently being attacked when they called him for help, he chose to do nothing. He simply watched on television as the insurrection roll on, apparently pleased with the way things were going. Add to this his prior acts; telling those now drowning, before they entered the lake, that the water was shallow when in fact it was deep or telling his supporters the election was rigged when the courts had determined that it wasn't, and you have a pretty solid case.    

McConnell argued today that this is not the end of the matter and that Trump may still face consequences in the legal system.  While McConnell maneuver to avoid being seen as party to the attempt to convict Trump in the Senate is despicable, I hope he is right on this and that the law catches up with Trump. All his life he has evaded accountability.  Perhaps this time he went a bridge too far. Perhaps now his past misdeeds will finally lead to his undoing.

Not so co-equal after all

Congress, the judiciary and the executive are supposed to be "co-equal" branches of government. Increasingly however, Congress has ceded power to both the executive and the judiciary. Laws are challenged and overturned in court seemingly with increasing frequency and presidents have taken increasing power to their office including decisions regrading military action which is constitutionally a Congressional prerogative.  But there can be no clearer indication of the surrender of Congress to the judicial branch than its decision to ignore its own ruling today.

All those senators who voted to acquit Trump today on the pretext that to do so would be unconstitutional are, in so doing, saying that the decision the Senate's prior ruling in the impeachment process that a president may be impeached even after leaving office is non binding and has no legal force.  By default therefore any determination regarding the constitutionality of impeachment of a president after leaving office falls to the judiciary. 

It will be interesting to see, as I assume over time we will, which GOP senators who voted to acquit did so because they thought Trump wasn't guilty of causing the insurrection and which thought he was but tried to weasel out of defying Trump by hiding behind an unconstitutionality defense. Those in the first camp must now rely solely on the support of MAGA faithful. Those in the second have to hope that their voters either have short memories or are prepared to overlook their disingenuity.  Either way, the Trump debacle of a presidency will be a stain on the country's history not just in future living memory—60 years hence—but in perpetuity.

Impeachment, Act II Scene 4 - The art of McConnell's comedy...

...is Timing. 

First, notwithstanding the fact that the issue was irrelevant, McConnell's argument about the constitutionality of the impeachment was self-defeating. He argued that impeachment was improper since it was for the sole purpose of removal from office and Trump was no longer in office.  But consider the timing.  The articles of impeachment were presented to the House and voted on while Trump was still in office. McConnell suggested that the articles were not transmitted to the Senate for trial until after Trump had left office which is why the trial was now unconstitutional. But the reason for that delay was that the Senate was in recess and could not receive them (Fedex anyone?). Why wasn't the Senate in session? Because McConnell chose not to recall it.  By not recalling the Senate he created this constitutional loophole for his party to walk though; that they could not try Trump after he'd left office though they could have done had McConnell convened the Senate after the House passed the articles and before Biden's inauguration.  

Second, his speech today on the Senate floor excoriating Trump was fun to hear, but as has been said many times in this blog, way too late. Had he come out forcefully as he did today condemning Trump's lies after the election rather than after the acquittal, Insurrection Day might not have happened.  But what about the legal challenges McConnell hid behind for so long; 'it is within his rights to pursue all legal avenues' McConnell said on the Senate floor in December.  But when all those challenges failed, then he could have made the same statement he made today and the course of history would likely have been changed. 

McConnell himself argued today that Trump's failure to act to stop the insurrection once it was underway made him guilty. He also argued that the consequences of Trumps lies leading up to January 6th were clearly foreseeable. So, by that same argument, if McConnell himself was able to predict the consequences of the Big Lie yet failed to challenge it as forcefully as he has just done, he too is guilty by negligence of contributing to the insurrection. And so he should resign.

Impeachment, Act II Scene 4 - Acquittal

Despite voting to call witnesses this morning, the trial of Donald Trump concluded today with a 57 to 43 vote to convict, short of the two thirds majority required for the motion to pass. Interestingly, one senator, Richard Burr of North Carolina who, on the prior question on constitutionality of this impeachment, had earlier voted that it was not, nevertheless voted to convict.  For the record the other GOP senators who voted to convict were Bill Cassidy (Louisianan.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Ben Sasse (Nebraska) and Patrick Toomey (Pennsylvania).  

That raises an interesting question (which I hope scholars with expertise in this area will shortly opine on) as to who has the final say as to the constitutionality of an impeachment. The Constitution identifies the Senate, rather than the judicial branch, as the sole body that is empowered to try impeachments but does that mean they have the ultimate authority to interpret the constitution as to when impeachment is or is not constitutional?  It is possible they do not and that the vote it took last week to proceed should properly have been decided by the Supreme court. But were that the case, shouldn't Trump's legal team have immediately challenged in the courts the Senate's vote to proceed with the trial?  That they did not suggests either incompetence (certainly plausible) or that they implicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of the Senate in ruling on the constitutionality question. Note, too, that no Senators, who might have had standing to bring such a case, chose to do so.   

That failure to bring a legal challenge as to the Senate's right to decide the constitutionality question implicitly endorses that right. It follows then that Senators were in essence legally required to vote on the merits of the case and not its constitutionality, since constitutionality was now a settled matter, regardless of how they had voted on the question when it was presented earlier in the trial.  This provides the basis for Richard Burr's decision who, having voted against the impeachment's constitutionality, nonetheless voted to convict Trump on the merits of the case. 

Turning to McConnell's speech after the trial, McConnell made a fierce statement of condemnation saying essentially that Trump's actions leading up to the insurrection were what caused it to happen. But, he suggested, he did not vote to convict because he felt that would violate the constitution. While I have some sympathy for the argument he made and can see how a strict Originalist would likely have reached that same conclusion, the question of constitutionality was no longer at issue; it was settled by the Senate in its earlier vote. Even if he disagreed with the constitutionality of the impeachment (which he explained he did), he should have been bound by his oath as a juror in the trial to proceed and decide based on the merits. Judging by the unambiguous statements he made on the Senate floor this afternoon, he clearly holds Trump responsible for the insurrection; which can only mean that by not judging based on the merits he has violated the oath he took and thus he should resign.

It's not what he did...

Trump's defenders argue, amongst other things, that what he did doesn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense since it can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that his words led to the insurrection (at least now they've admitted that what took place was an insurrection). While most reasonable people, polls show, actually find that hard to swallow, it's not what he did that is really instructive. It's what he didn't do that matters more. While they argue that Trumps might not have seen that his actions could have led to the insurrection and thus he is not to blame, once the insurrection was underway, he can no longer hide behind the "no one could have seen it coming" defense because 'it' was now clearly there and no longer a indeterminable hypothetical. And it was his lack of action (and by some accounts his pleasure in seeing what he had wrought) that is so telling. He took no action to quell the riot although many options were available, both in his executive capacity as commander-in-chief and in his symbolic role as the president sworn to uphold the country's democratic institutions. Watching, unconcerned, from the shore when someone is drowning is tantamount to culpability.  Sometimes in-actions speak louder than words.   

Impeachment, Act II Scene 3 - Calculus

The outcome of the second impeachment of former reality TV host and president Donald Trump is, and has always been, a forgone conclusion.  He will be acquitted thanks to the self-interest and lack of principle of forty-odd GOP senators.  Unless...

It is conceivable that some GOP senators figure out that if they continue with the Trumpification of their party, they may jeopardize the party's long term future and even their own. Those on the moderate side could loose to the Democrats and those in the Trumpiest states could loose to more extreme primary opponents. Almost all would prefer Trump out of the picture, even though they can't say so publicly, as his erratic behavior and unpopularity outside his fevered base remains something they can't control and represents a potential danger to their party's popularity.  

Which leads us to the calculus; if they conclude that enough GOP Senators will vote to convict and so bar Trump from office, his force in the political realm would be diminished and they need not fear political retribution. On the other hand if he's not convicted, a vote in the affirmative would lead to Trump's exacting revenge and the end of their political careers.  So that's their homework assignment; find out where all the GOP votes in the Senate might be and weigh the odds of Trump as a spent force against voting to acquit and having to live with the label of subversive enablers (or in some cases unindicted co-conspirator). 

Their decisions may rest on whether they can find their way back to the door where they checked their consciences and their principles (at least, those that came in with some). Given their behavior over the last few years, I'm not wagering anything that they'll be able to. 

Mr. Sheppard

Mr. Sheppard was our milkman. I'm quite surprised that his name came back to me almost instantly after fifty plus years, yet I can't remember the name of someone I met the day before yesterday. Psychologist no doubt will have a good explanation, but this post is about what I do remember, not what I can't. 

For the first ten or so years of my life, milk, vegetables, meat and bread were delivered to the back door. Steyning, where I grew up, was (and still is) a village of about five thousand.  The dairy wasn't on the high street but on Charlton Street (as in Bobby), the narrow road that ran parallel to it. We seldom went there that I recall and I have no recollection of ever being inside. 

Three times a week Mr. Sheppard would arrive in his green and yellow electric powered milk cart, whirring and clanking as it made its rounds. He'd pull up outside the gate, sit for a minute doing his paperwork on a clipboard. Then he'd go to the back of the cart, select the bottles he needed for our order that day, put them in his wire milk-bottle basket and make his way to the back door.  

He rang the bell only once a week to settle up. My mother would pay him, in cash, which he'd put into an old leather pouch slung over his shoulder and across his chest. Otherwise, we'd leave the empties in a 2x2 white plastic-coated-wire milk bottle holder outside the back door (the "tradesman's entrance") which he'd collect to take back to the dairy, replacing them with the full ones my mother had ordered. 

Milk bottles in the 1960s were tall and tapered. In the mid 70s they were replaced by the shorter squatter variety in the picture.  At the time the change seemed traumatic, a much loved institution giving way to ugly modernity. Only now do I begin to understand the organizational enormity of switching from one size of bottle to another.      

The milk bottle holder may have been a new-fangled invention because my earliest memories are of the bottles standing free, but with a small red plastic disk (with a small chip in one side) on the top of one of the empty bottles; that was the indicator which my mother would set to let Mr. Sheppard know how many bottles we wanted that day. The new wire bottle holder came with a panel on the front and a red plastic pointer to show that day's milk order. I know it was wire because as the plastic coating on the handle aged and chipped, the wire underneath began to rust.  

The bottles were glass, reusable, and sealed with coloured aluminium foil caps. The color indicated what kind of milk was in the bottle. To open the bottle you simply pushed your thumb down in the center of the foil cap and lifted it off. My mother had some kind of plastic cap she would put onto opened bottles before they went back into the fridge. 

Our usual order was two gold tops and two silver tops. Gold top had more cream (technically, it was milk from Jersey cows) and the big treat was getting to be the first to pour the milk on one's morning's cereal WITHOUT shaking the bottle first so you got all the cream which had risen to the top of the bottle.  

When I was about ten or so, we started getting green-top milk. Green was my favorite color and I'd seen green foil tops on Mr, Shepard's cart, so that's the kind of milk I wanted. Green top was unpasteurized and tasted even creamier than gold top. My parents promised that if, in a blind taste-test, I could tell green-top from gold-top, they would order a bottle of green-top for me; I could and they did, at least for a while. 

As family of three with one dog, a border collie called Patch, we probably drank, collectively, a pint an a half to two pints a day; from breakfast cereal, to a glass of milk with lunch, milk in tea and often a glass for me at dinner. My grandmother, who died when I was about five, drank stout - "Nana's black milk" as my mother called it.

Mr. Sheppard retired when I was about eight or nine, which would make him about a hundred and ten, so I doubt he's still with us. But he remains an indelible part of my childhood, as do Mr. Brooks the butcher and Mr. Farncombe, the butcher further down the high street after Brooks closed. 

Impeachment, Act II Scene 2 - “Dad, I don’t want to come back.”

On January 6th, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland took his daughter Tabitha and his son-in-law to the Capitol to witness the certification of the electoral college votes. Instead of watching the ceremonial announcements of each States' votes, signifying the peaceful transfer of power, all three were held hostage by a violent mob of Trump supporters. 

When Raskin was reunited with his family after the rioters had been (gently) evicted from the building, he assured his daughter that the next time they came to the Capitol things would be different.    

“Dad, I don’t want to come back” was her reply.

What could be a sadder commentary on the current state of American democracy than that? 

Impeachment, Act II Scene 1 - Places, people, places

I didn't listen to any of the testimony today. Intentionally. I watched the insurrection on January 6th; I have listened for months to Trump whipping up his supporters; I know what happened; and I think I know why. And since I'm not a juror in the trial I'm not obligated to listen dutifully to the case for the defense. 

But what I did see was 44 of the 50 Republican senators rendering their verdict that the trial was unconstitutional. Whether or not they believe this or whether they are simply looking to their next elections, the vote guarantees that Trump will escape any consequences for his action (and inaction). None of the 44 who took the side of unconstitutionality will vote to convict; how could they after just saying the Senate has no business hearing the case? 

That mean that the best result the prosecution can hope for is that all the six who voted in favor of constitutionality will also vote to convict on the merits. But that's a best case scenario; more likely is that some (if not all) of the six will take the position that there is no direct line between Trumps actions and those of the insurrectionists. Their vote to proceed with the trial will make them appear to have taken the proceedings seriously without voting on the merits in a way that they worry will enrage Trump supporters and so might hurt them at the polls. It is the prelude to another rather sad day for American democracy. 

Unity does not mean capitulation

Predictably, the right has critiqued Joe Biden and the Democrats for talking about unity and then moving to pass his economic relief package with what is likely to be no Republican votes. Their complaint that its too expensive rings hollow when their administration increased the national debt by $3tn in its four years in office. When the 10 "moderate" GOP senators asked to talk to Biden to negotiate a smaller package it was clear that this was not a serious offer, and really just a stunt to make the GOP appear less intransigent and obstructionist than it really is. 

So no, unity doesn't mean wasting time on un-serious negotiations that were going nowhere, nor does it mean capitulating. And if one needed any more convincing that the GOP move was a public relations exercise, it is that there has been no followup offer from their side; they presented the President with offer so ridiculously below what he was proposing that it would have been difficult for him to entertain it as a serious proposal (which it evidently wasn't); and yet he had the good grace to meet with them for two hours. But true to form, the GOP isn't interested in compromise and presented their low-ball offer as a take-it-or-leave-it deal; which Biden, for obvious reasons, chose to leave.  One real benefit of Biden's 8 years in the VP's job is that he knows only too well the tricks in the GOP playbook. This isn't his first rodeo.      

And while we're on the subject of crass Republican behavior, those like Marco Rubio who purport to belong to the law and order party are all now brushing Trump's misbehavior under the rig and telling us we should be "moving on for the good of the nation". What happens to personal responsibility and holding people to account? The party whose position has been that ones actions cannot be excused by context?  Apparently that only applies to the left; those on the the right get a pass.  

And, Marco, complaining that the impeachment trial isn't creating any good paying jobs; well neither is your spending time on national TV complaining about the impeachment. 

Comeback kid?

Donald Trump is envisioning his second act, according to Politico. “He’s compared it to that time in between seasons of ‘The Apprentice,’ building anticipation and wonderment for what’s to come,” a source is quoted as saying.  

His mood may be similar but his framing may be off-base; at NBC, a second coming would have revolved around the question 'would it make money for the network', and the network's internal politics which, while cut-throat, would likely have been personal and fluid given the relatively small number of players involved.     

In a second bite at the presidency, as well as his large base of supporters, he will run into a potentially vast array of well funded actors lined up to prevent his re-ascendancy. And because they are numerous and have multifaceted interests that happen to coalesce around opposing his second term, they will be harder to manipulate or disarm.     

A different take on conspiracism

"Surely they can't really believe that"? is the question I keep coming back to when thinking about ludicrous MTG and her ilk. The best I've come up with so far is that they actually don't, but pretending they do grants them membership into a club of like-minded people. 

Espousing the believe that space lasers paid for by Jewish financiers started the California wild fires is so wacky that no one with more than an 8th grade education would believe it; but it's the not-so-secret "pass-phrase" that lets you into the club. 

It also serves a another purpose as a carrier for the cultural memes of the group. Using the space laser example, it combines antisemitism, anti-elitism (the 'financiers'), denial of the climate crisis and global warming, and a reminder of California as the Sate they love to hate.  That's some pretty efficient messaging.    

All of which reinforces the dictum to take them seriously (as a threat to democracy), but not literally.

Shame, WSJ

Shamefully, thought perhaps unsurprisingly, the WSJ editorial drew a flagrant false equivalence between comments made by Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor-Greene.  The paper cited this comment from Omar "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel" as counter point to Taylor-Greene's assertions, for example, that California wild fires were started by space lasers funded by a a cabal of Jewish fanciers.  

While one my disagree with Omar's depiction of Israel's actions as evil, it is nonetheless one interpretation of verifiable facts on the ground.  Taylor-Greene's conspiracy theory on the other hand is not an interpretation of facts, it is a ludicrous, deranged fantasy, completely disconnected from the real world of facts.  To suggest they are remotely equivalent is absurd.    

American Jihad

American Jihad is a phrase often used to describe terrorists living in the US who are sympathetic to, aligned with, and in some cases coordinated by, Islamic terrorist organizations. 

America now needs to confront the fact that there are groups within its borders who might more properly be termed American Jihadi. These are the right wing violent extremists, seditionists, and anti-government insurrectionists who came to Washington for Insurrection Day. 

Like their Islamic brethren, they advocate the use of violence to achieve their ends, seek to terrorize democratically elected officials, and rely on the same recruitment and indoctrination methods. They push the same buttons with very similar groups of psychologically vulnerable people; those who feel a sense of grievance, of being somehow left behind, who are angry and restful, who feel they haven't been treated fairly. By exploiting those feelings, amplifying their fears and feeding them distortions and lies, local American Jihadi leaders build groups that can be easily activated to acts of violence as 6/1 made all too clear. 

And like their Islamic counterparts, they are egged on by public figures who encourage and condone them while managing to remain above the fray and our of reach of the law. Using veiled threats that can't legally be used as evidence of sedition, these public figures, who American Jihadis worship with cult-like unquestioning reverence, orchestrate their activities from their bully pulpits and, disturbingly, still see nothing untoward in their actions. 

Joe Biden themed his run for the presidency as a battle for the soul of the nation; it looks as though a sizable proportion of one party's elected officials, in refusing to hold those responsible for inciting Insurrection Day accountable, have already made their no-refund-no-returns deals with the devil. 

On the way to Crazy Town

In a rational society, the likes of Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Lauren Boebert, with their adherence to bizarre and dangerous flights of fancy, would be put into straight jackets, given a double doses of Thorazine, and confined to a padded cell as a danger to others. 

But instead, for some inexplicable reason, here they are elected to Congress. 

Tom McClintock, CA 4^th district, noted that "every party has its lunatic fringe"—which is true—but few countries have well established major political parties a majority of whose elected representatives are whack-jobs and lunatics, or at least are indistinguishable from them.  

The end of the experiment

The "Great American [Democratic] Experiment" is nearing its end. Ironically, its demise has been brought about by the two things that seemed to be its central pillars: a laissez-faire approach to free enterprise and technological innovation. 

Technology has helped lower the entry barriers to broadcasting which has allowed niche players to target market segments. Free enterprise has allowed the news to become the "news business" rather than the Fourth Estate. And because of its love of unfettered free enterprise these new targeted "news" entities  have been unregulated, allowing them to disseminate lies and conspiracy theories that have undermined the foundations of society, namely trust in its essential institutions. Technology, here specifically the Internet and social media platforms, has exacerbated the problem by channeling communication into separate echo-chambers that are disconnected from each other and, in many cases, from fact. 

As has been noted in earlier posts (2016, 2017), absent trust in the essential institutions that allow society to function, it will ultimately collapse. We are now on the edge of a precipice with a clear choice ahead; we can decide to give up on the absolutist notion of freedom of speech Fox bangs on about and choose to regulate news organizations in such a way as to ensure they provide a useful function to society rather than a destructive one. 

And we must not be shy about calling out patently stupid ideas when we see them; one may usefully debate whether evidence supports the proposition that income tax cuts spur economic growth or that immigration depressed wages, but there is no good reason to join a discussion in which one party claims the other is part of a secret society engaged in Satanic child sex trafficking ring run from a Pizza parlor (or whatever  the latest nonsense is).  Those who believe that nonsense deserve some pity, medical treatment for insanity (fortunately covered under Obama care); but not a seat at the table.

Somewhere between rebellion and protest

This year has seen its share of violent protest. But the one that will cement Trump's legacy as the worst president the US has had was the storming of the Capitol on January 6th, "Insurrection Day". 

Much hand-wringing is going on about the security failure that allowed a violent mob to infiltrate the House and Senate chambers and ransack Congressional offices.  Those who see the event as an organized attack think the Capitol police and the Sergeants at Arms were to blame. Others see the event rather as a group of fervent Trump supporters, whipped into a frenzy by the Trumps, Giuliani, Guilfoyle and others, who collectively and spontaneously decided to turn a rally into a violent protest.  

The reality probably lies between those two points of view. On the one hand there was clearly no clear over-arching organization; once inside the Capitol many were simply wandering around like tourists; some were acting out their rage; and others, like the twist-tie guy, had clearly come with some sort of plan, although not well thought through.  Had they been better organised the rioters might well have assassinated a large number of Democratic members of the House and the Senate, and perhaps some GOP members they thought had betrayed the cause besides. As terrible as the events were, we can at least be thankful that this was a hodgepodge of grievance filled groups that coordinated internally, but not externally. 

That being said these groups are not going to fade away with the change in administrations and they will  surely see the benefit of forming a broader coalition of insurrectionists. That being the case, the country's law enforcement and security apparatus needs to take domestic terrorism much more seriously than it has.  

I suspect they have not, in part, because of "American Exceptionalism"; while Washington today looks like the Green Zones in Kabul or Baghdad, few in law enforcement were willing to admit that the gravest threat to American democracy was from Americans at home rather than from abroad. Yet what we are now confronting is a domestic jihad; groups that are indoctrinating like minded, disaffected and angry people to join their violent cause. 

Until the country finds a way of defusing the righteous anger that so many see as crucial to motivating their supporters and close the gap between the two parallel informational universes in which we now live, the problem will not dissipate. Without common cause to focus our attention on a single unifying objective unrest and violence will rise in intensity and sophistication.  

 "American Exceptionalism" contributed to the country's failure to understand the tribal and religious jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a consequence, struggled to contain it. As The Troubles show all to well, resentment and grievance persists across generations. Lessons for dealing with terrorism have been learned the hard way by the US Army and the Marines in the country's two ongoing foreign wars. It's time to bring those lessons to bear at home. 

The "Next Big Lie"

The media has taken to referring to Trump's claim that the election was stolen from him as "the Big Lie". Although Trump didn't get the outcome he wanted from telling the Big Lie, he did achieve something, arguably almost as destructive. He proved that you can convince almost half the American population of something that no evidence supports if you tell it often enough and loudly enough.  said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth. 

Certainly, that's not a completely new revelation; Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, relied on the ability to convince people willing to accept his leader's message with a concerted propaganda campaign; George Orwell wrote about its implications in his fictional novel about an authoritarian regime in 1984. But in the "land of the free" it had widely been thought that this could never happen here. It turns out those who held that article of faith, perhaps another by-product of the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, were quite wrong. 

If Trump has taught the GOP, now re-made in his image, anything, its that if the lie is brazen and bold enough, and sufficiently conspiratorial, those who want to believe him can be convinced of absolutely anything. 

So prepare for the next even bigger lie which will be: "while those attending the rally at the Ellipse were Trump's supporters, the people who attacked the capital were actually ANTIFA and BLM who had mounted a carefully planned false flag operation". (And if Sidney Powell gets in on the act, it will all have been coordinated by China and Hugo Chavez, Big Tech, and a communist child sex ring). 

In a way this is completely inevitable. For those who were all in on Trump's first Big Lie, given the clear evidence - in plain sight no less - that he had prepared the ground and, while stopping sufficiently short of the line to avoid be criminally culpable, orchestrated Insurrection Day, coming to terms with that would be unbearable. Since adhering to the Big lie was fundamentally an act of faith, like religion, loosing it will be excruciating. Far easier to accept the Next Big Lie that allows them not to confront the first.

Every movement has a lunatic fringe

As he voted to give Trump as pass on his incendiary incitement insurrection, Tom McClintock (R-CA) said "if we impeached every politician who gave a fiery speech to a crowd of partisans, this Capitol would be deserted".  Our of context that may be defensible, but here, context matters. He is in fact saying that were Congress to adhere to the same standard of not inciting a riot against the very government of which members are a part and which they have sworn to uphold, the House would empty; to that my reply is "and a good thing too". Then, those irresponsible firebrands who disingenuously cloak themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment, would be replaced by representatives who took their responsibilities toward maintenance of good public order and not inciting violence a little more seriously that McClintock appears to. He also noted that "every movement has a lunatic fringe"; it's a pity he appears to be part of it.  

A new two party system

No, this is not a post about procedural reform or other changes to the electoral system; just a snide observation that our two party system now comprises the Democratic Party and the Anti-democratic party, 197 of whose members felt that incitement to insurrection did not rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors". 

Remember this?

Tired of too much winning yet?

Guy Fawkes

The Washington Post reported this morning: "Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) delivered a defiant speech Wednesday in opposition to Trump’s impeachment, warning Democrats that the president will become “a martyr” if they vote to impeach him for a second time."  

To Biggs, I'd ask: "how is Guy Fawkes remembered?"  

Fawkes, who was one of the conspirators who tried to blow up the British Houses of Parliament in 1605, was executed. Every year on what is generally referred to as "fireworks night", "bonfire night" or "Guy Fawkes night", millions of Brits place his effigy on a bonfire and set fire to it, while children dance around the fire chanting "Remember, remember, the fifth of November; gunpowder, treason and plot". That episode and one of its perpetrators, seared into the public memory through tradition, has not been forgotten in over four centuries.     

Yes, Trump will certainly be remembered, but it's very unlikely that many will remember him as a martyr. 

Land of the free, home of the not so brave

In a democracy, votes, not the threat of violence, should determine how the country is governed. The 197 Republican members of House of Representative voting not to impeach Trump today appear not to have understood that basic tenet. 

No doubt they will complain that this misrepresents their position; that they are simply reflecting the views of those who voted for them. There are two problem with that argument. 

First, the reason that so many of their constituents do not think impeachment is appropriate is that those very same representatives had been telling them for weeks that the election was stolen and so Trump's claim he did nothing wrong in inciting insurrection falls on fertile soil. From there, one can only conclude those representative knew what they were saying was false and lied or had themselves fallen for the lie. In either case, be it lack of integrity or lack of intelligence and judgement, they are unfit to serve in Congress.  

Second, in a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy, those representative have agency. If they believe what they are being asked to do is wrong they should vote their consciences. Indeed even before we got to this point, they could, indeed should, have told those they represent the truth - that the courts concluded there was no widespread voter fraud or any irregularities that would warrant overtiring the results of the election. Had they done so, their constituents would have understood that Trump's claims were bogus and that the insurrection was therefore an illegal act.  

If they vote to impeach, they will enrage those constituents to whom they had lied; they risk at the very least losing their seats at the next election, and may even be in grave danger from the anger they have fomented. And so, ironically, those who harp on more than most about this being "the land of the free and the home of the brave" find themselves in bind a of their own making where standing up to the mob they have created is the act of bravery that the moment demands. 

Failure to stand up to violent extremists who directly threaten members of our legislatures, state or federal, means we are living in a county where the threat of violence rules the day, where bullies get their way, and democracy is nothing but a sham. 

Off by 6 days

In early October I wrote: "Most likely he [Trump] will claim it's voter fraud and that the election is being stolen from him. My fear is he will call on his army of right wing militias to come to defend what he thinks is his rightful victory. And as we saw in Michigan, there were be those prepared to heed the call; and they will descend, armed and angry on Washington D.C. to defend Trump in the White House."

On October 31st, I wrote:  "The courts will likely end up curtailing the tally prematurely. If that does not deliver the victory Trump wants, expect him to declare massive voter fraud and call (implicitly if not explicitly) for an armed insurrection ('will no one rid me of this turbulent ex-vice president?') to prevent him being evicted from the the White House. Expect more well armed thugs to take to the streets." I was wrong about the courts which is both encouraging and a little surprising. And I didn't expect his ire to be directed at his own sitting VP rather than the office's previous occupant.  I also wrote: "If America makes it through the next two months without politically motivated bloodshed that will be a miracle". I was off by 6 days; and sadly, we did not get that miracle. 

My daughter! O my ducats!

The day after Insurrection Day, I argued that his almost-a-concession speech was the only way he could have avoided a second impeachment. As we are now learning, that was probably something he was persuaded to do by his legal advisors (not that they've done such a great job recently but this was at least pretty sage). Yet his apparent disconnecting from reality is proceeding apace, and he has now reverted to type, asserting that there was nothing wrong with what was effectively his call to arms on Insurrection Day. The result has been a stiffening of resolve on the left to impeach him and even a few high profile converts from the right. 

And, as I envisioned, his business dealings may now be about to unravel. His brand is diminished, some would say worthless, even toxic. Good legal advice, which he will certainly need, is getting harder to come by; his properties are losing customers and his signature golf courses are losing big tournaments. He may find it hard to borrow the money he needs as his debts fall due. And perhaps SDNY will get us the pound of flesh so many are craving.  

Transfixed

Several accounts of Trump's actions during the siege and storming of the Capitol indicate that he spent the afternoon transfixed, glued to the television as events unfolded. To me that suggests several things; first Trump is so completely devoid of a capacity for empathy that even though he knew his VP was in the building as it was being attacked, he was unwilling to taking action (he refused calls from numerous people begging him to call off his mob); because at the same time he was riveted (and apparently enjoying) the spectacle he had so long nurtured and cultivated.  

It was his dream come true; a private army wiling to do his bidding. As someone who evidently gets off on manipulating others, this  was his intoxicating masterpiece. And in that he would seem to be in good company, with the likes of Putin, Orban, Erdoğan, and Duterte, all autocratic leaders for whom he has expressed admiration (and probably envies). The presidency, it seems, was "too much [constraint] and never enough [power]".      

Poof!

That's the sound of my head exploding after having to listen to Fox and Friends this morning. The couch dimwits played a clip of someone on MSNBC noting that Qasem Suleimani was very popular in Iran. What they somehow took away from that was that MSNBC loved Iran more than America. That's simply demented.

A family affiar

Though it is still uncertain whether Trump will, or even will be allowed, to run again in 2024, one should not forget that Trump organized his businesses and his presidency, like the Mafia, as a family affair. Since he only trusts his kith and kin (and more specifically his progeny's families), they were invited to play a central role in his White House.

By all accounts, his oldest son relished the attention and power, and was oblivious to criticism in his role as consigliere from anyone but his dad. That apple did not fall far from the tree; like his pop, Don Jr. appears to be unprincipled, vain, selfish and vengeful. And like Trump Sr. he lives in the shadow of an overbearing father who he needs to continually impress, and who ultimately demands obsequious obedience.  

Should junior run, expect him to set about settling scores, going after anyone who he or hid did think have wronged them; indeed, he'll likely do that whether he makes a run for the office or not.  He hasn't been banned from social media so expect him to become the surrogate voice of Trump the elder, whose followers will easily make the switch to following a son in his father's image. The GOP may thing they are better of ridding themselves of the Trump stain, but it may not be washed away so easily. 

Another bite from the big apple?

Trump has hinted repeatedly that he might make another run for the presidency in 2024. Were he to be impeached, even if he were not dethroned (the Senate is still unlikely to convict), he might still be barred from holding public office. The message that would send to others who might govern in his mold would be an important one.

But there might be a down-side; if he is barred from running again, others may take up the mantle. While Don Jr. is might try, my hunch (assuming he's not in jail) is that he'd not get the nomination; it would likely go to someone like Hawley or Cruz. Both have been keen to ride Trump's train and their shenanigans in the Senate on Insurrection Day were intended to lay the groundwork for a 2024 run. 

What makes that troubling is that they are both clearly far more intelligent than Trump and are therefore much less likely to make the kind of miss-steps he has made. That makes them more effective and hence more dangerous. One can only hope that the revulsion at the events of January 6th will be remembered long enough and their names along with it that they won't be able to keep driving the train in the nihilistic populist direction Trump set.

Insurrection Day: the Prequel

Who's to blame? What you'll hear (and are already hearing) from the far-right is "ANTIFA", "false-flag operation" (which is of course debunk-able nonsense; the ring leaders are apparently well know to the FBI as far-right extremists). 

From the slightly-less-rabid right we'll get the usual "a few bad apples" story, so often used in defending police shootings, the "good people on both sides" approach. What none of them will likely ever say is that the blame lies squarely with the GOP. 

Republicans didn't just turn a blind eye to Trump's egregious behavior for four years; they enabled him, they coddled him, they allowed him to escape any consequences for his repeated bad acts. Susan Collins's post-impeachment "I think he's learned his lesson" is the most obvious example of their complicit subservience.  Worse still, Sens. Hawley and Cruz, aided and abetted by eleven other US senators and more than half the GOP's house members, went along with the ridiculous charade that led Trump's base to think that there was a possibility the election might be overturned even after all the court challenges had failed. 

That, ultimately, is where the blame for yesterday's event lies, perhaps even more so than with Trump himself. Had the GOP not implicitly endorsed his delusions by refusing to tell him clearly and decisively that once the court challenges were over, it was done and by putting up with his transgressions for four years, he would not have been quite so bold (or stupid) yesterday. 

But as so often, the enablers and instigators will escape much of the blow-back while the DOJ prosecutes some "low level offenders". Not that I want to let Trump's rioters off the hook - what they did was terrible, but they had been goaded into it by none other than the president himself. His months long repeated claim that if he lost it could only be because of fraud was all they heard; and they trusted him.  And so it is understandable that at the 11th hour, having been fed a diet of lies by Trump and the right wing media, they would truly believe that Trump had won and that they had to do something to save the country from what they had been convinced was a coup by the left. 

Those who stormed the Capitol yesterday are not blameless, but neither are those who set the stage; those who will be charged had been told only minutes before, by the Commander in Chief no less, that they were acting in good faith. Did he tell them to storm the Capitol? No. Did his words imply they should. Absolutely!  Those who will take the fall are to some degree the victims of another Trump scam, this time with the members of the GOP as accomplices.   

How we got here, how yesterday happened, as shocking as it was, should not be not a surprise. How we fix it however is much more complicated.

Insurrection Day: Aftermath

Now a string of resignations: yesterday its was lower level aids Grisham, Niceta, Mulveney, Matthews and one cabinet appointee, Elaine Chow; today it was Education Secretary DeVos. 

The rush for the exit is to say the least unusual, but predicated one imagines by Trump's inciting a riot at the Capitol yesterday.

Was it a sudden realization, as Marine General John Kelly, ex- Chief of Staff put it today, that Trumps was a deeply flawed individual? Was it that they thought that he'd just gone too far? 

Perhaps not; more likely it was self-preservation of the vestiges of their reputations and the fear that unless they distanced themselves with all due haste they would be forever tied to Trump's appalling legacy. And for the cabinet level resignees, they avoided the possibility of having to discuss his removal under the 25th amendment. At least that way they wouldn't have to pick a side, democracy or Trump's base. 

Insurrection Day: A New Dawn

A few minutes ago Donald J. Trump released a video statement in which he agreed to stop trying to steal the election. Well not exactly; he agreed to a peaceful transfer of power to "a new administration".

While it was hardly surprising that he did not have the good grace to even mention Joe Biden, let alone congratulation him on his win, the fact that he has given up on the fight to stay in office is. 

Whether he feels partly responsible for yesterday's chaos, a situation he himself laboriously created or whether he was pushed we may never know. But the fact that there was serious talk about invoking the 25th Amendment and, were he not to be removed from office or resign, a second impeachment, may well have contributed to his decision, which, while not a concession per-se, was a close to one as anyone could have hoped. 

One interpretation is that were he to be turfed out under the 25th, or failing that, be impeached a second time (which was almost certain - although his removal by the Senate would again be doubtful) not only would his political future be over but his business life could get much more difficult with a completely trashed personal brand. While his removal under the 25th was a long shot, a second impeachment wasn't; and he would go down in history as the only president to have been impeached twice.      

His implicit concession was possibly the only way to defuse the coming onslaught; he'd pushed the envelope just a bit too far this time.  Unlike the Ukraine scandal, the images of the assault on the Capitol were striking and viral. The juxtaposition of video of his rally and the subsequent insurrection were so much more powerful than a "perfect [phone] call" that his ability to mount a defense in the court of public opinion was greatly diminished.   

As a now definitively lame duck president, effectively stripped of power and with his fair weather travelers jumping ship, his political adversaries and ex-allies, whom he had abandoned and often humiliated, could pursue him with far greater impunity; that was a risk he may have calculated was too great.  

By taking the wind out of the sails of the 25th amendment folk and making it politically much harder for the House to impeach him, he has averted an almost certain confrontation; and in so doing he may live to fight another day.  Lets hope he's lost his taste for politics and now understands that governing effectively  involves real work, something to which he appears to be quite allergic.

Segmentation in the news indsutry

When producing television was an expensive business, with high capital startup costs and thus economies of scale, only a small number of entities could survive (particular if one was state-funded via the license fee, as was the case with the BBC in the 1960s). When there was only a handful of channels, each had to appeal to the entire viewing audience with a generic one-size-fits-all product so news was not tailored to particular demographics or market segments. The news you saw on the 9 o'clock News on BBC was little if at all different in terms of content and approach from what you'd see on the 10pm ITN broadcast. 

But as production costs fell, and satellite and cable broadcasting lowered entry barriers by providing channels at lower costs, competition in the TV industry increased; news rooms were asked to become profit centers rather than cost centers. While state funded entities could resist segmentation pressure, new entrants found they could be profitable (and attract more advertising) by appealing to narrower demographics.  Market entry is always easier when you target a niche. 

The 1980s in Britain saw the rise of the tabloid newspapers; the "stuffy" broadsheets (which were hard to read in a crowded tube because of their size) were augmented and supplanted by the smaller "tabloids" whose pages were half the size. Rupert Murdoch and Robert Maxwell, the two innovators, in this segment understood that their product, still quaintly referred to as "papers" if only because of the material on which they were printed, did not have to be truthful to sell well. And thus began the tailoring and manufacturing of content to appeal to particular demographics. 

Rupert Murdoch took that insight into his TV empire, Fox in the US and and Sky in Britain. He now understood that by tailoring content to lucrative segments, dispensing with expensive fact checking and introducing opinion shows (which, like reality TV, were cheaper to produce), he could turn the news into a very profitable business. 

The result of lower entry barriers has been a proliferation of channels targeted at different segments like MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox, OANN and Newsmax.  And with that segmentation, audiences self-selected into the audience groups they preferred. Over time the segments diverged not only in terms of their perspectives on events but on the very events they chose to cover. So now, in contrast to the 1960s when everyone say the same stories covered in much the same way, people now see completely different stories covered with vastly different interpretive frames.  

And so here was are with a country (the USA) divided broadly into two market segments - which also means two information universes. That is why we can no longer have a civil discussion on policy; we are living side by side in different informational worlds. We speak the same language but what we know and how we interpret things, shaped by these divergent media outlets, are so radically different as to make constructive dialog "problematic".  

Insurrection Day: Fallout

January 6th 2020, Insurrection Day, has led to the resignation of several top White House aids. Stephanie Grisham, Melania's chief of staff, Anna Cristina Niceta, the White House social secretary, Mick Mulveney, once press secretary and now special envy to Ireland, and deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews had all resigned. Several others including national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien, deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and deputy chief of staff Chris Liddell were also thinking of leaving. Elaine Chow, Transport Secretary (and Mitch McConnell's wife) has also resigned. 

Was it an act of courageous defiance, risking the ire of their now former boss? Hardly! With two weeks to go, there is little downside - they'd be out of a job then. But there is a huge upside; they can tout this as acting on principle, showing, too, how they have distanced themselves from the mad king. They can pretend this shows they disagreed with him. But we must not forget that for four years, they have gone along for the ride; jumping ship when the ride has already ground to a halt is not something to be admired.

January 6th "Insurrection Day"

Just as July 4th is Independence Day, January 6th will be forever known "Insurrection Day", a day on which Trump's final coup de grace, a coup d'etat, was to incite a mob he had called on to come to Washington D.C. and then told them to go to the Capitol and "show strength", "be strong". 

Unsurprisingly, they took this, as he intended but will never admit, to mean using force to get him what he (and they) wanted which was to disrupt the certification of Biden's victory.  

It is tempting to dismiss this as just another Trumpian episode, particularity since Congress did finally complete its certification in the early hours of Thursday morning. But that would be a mistake.  

First of all, one person was shot trying to break into the House chamber. Second, it is the tip of the iceberg and speaks to a much more enduring social problem that will outlast Trump but not his ilk. 

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's CEO used the banal and hackneyed aphorism “This is not who we are as a people or a country. We are better than this". But all the evidence suggests his statement is at best aspirational, if not delusional. It is precisely who seventy one million Americans have said quite clearly that they indeed are; after 5 years of Trump's lies, broken promises, bullying, and general misbehavior, not to mention absurd incompetence, they voted to reelect him. And, according to polling, a large majority of them truly believe the election was rigged and voter fraud was widespread. That puts the "Great American Experiment" at considerable risk. 

Too little, too late

Leader McConnell made two really important speeches today. In his first, at the opening of the debate to certify the results of the election results, he made an impassioned plea to his colleagues to acknowledge the realty that the election was properly tabulated that the result was not in doubt.  The second was as the Senate reconvened, after its work was disrupted by Trump's thugs. He pleaded again for the Senate to conduct its business without further procedural nonsense of objecting to properly certified election results. 

As heartwarming as it is to hear McConnell clearly supporting the peaceful transition of power, as Stacy Abrams noted with respect to the actions of Republican Secretary of State for the state of Georgia, we should not forget the years of obstruction, the refusal to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland; and let us also note that he is finally saying what he should have said weeks ago.  

For too long, Republicans have either turned a blind eye to Trump's lies and his undermining of democracy and its institutions, and in some cases encouraged him. 

After the events of today, confirming the election results is no longer about making a symbolic protest as to the fairness of changes some states made to their electoral processed in light of the pandemic. It is now about quelling the unhinged extremists Trump has riled up.  To not do so now, will be to continue to lend credence to the insane lies Trump has been promulgating for months. 

It is also worth pointing out that, as Speaker Pelosi noted, this day of Epiphany, members of Congress appear to have had their own collective epiphany; that both sides of the aisle should work collaboratively together. What is also striking is that it was only when they found themselves personally imperiled that they come to the realization that the promoting of wild conspiracy theories and the relentless undermining of faith in the institutions of our democracy has very real consequences. 

Notably, Admiral Mike Mullen, ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has served in that capacity  under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, suggested this evening on PBS invoking the 25th amendment to remove Trump from office in light of his clearly undemocratic behavior and the violence his demented rhetoric has stoked. That's something I never expect to hear: the day continues to surprise.

Not a great day for America

Craig Ferguson used to begin his late night talk shows with "It's a great day for America"; but today was decidedly not. Trump supporters, egged on by Trump, stormed the Capitol while a joint session of Congress was in the process of certifying the November election. One person was shot and died.

As so often before this was incredibly shocking but completely unsurprising. We saw images that were reminiscent of those from countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Russia when the will of electors was was ignored by an undemocratic incumbent. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin), interview on PBS, told Judy Woodruff that he was barricaded in his office in Congress; rioters broke police lines, and smashed windows to break into the Capitol where they roamed around for hours before eventually being evicted by the initially woefully overwhelmed police. 

The image of the Senate chamber being defended from rioters by plain clothed Capitol police with drawn weapons was perhaps the most jarring image I can remember, ranking along side the collapse of the Twin Towers. 

As shocking as today's ugly episode was, and we should be immensely thankful that it was just an episode, it was completely predictable. Indeed, I wrote this post at the end of October suggesting exactly this outcome.  I did get two things wrong; first, I did not expect Trump to insight insurrection so blatantly and explicitly. And I didn't expect the initial police response to be so weak allowing the rioters to enter the Capitol. 

While those involved were relatively few in number, there is a frighteningly large number who likely support their actions. Let's not forget that seventy million people voted for Trump, despite knowing what we now know about his improper, potentially illegal, and routinely dishonest, not to mention incompetent, conduct; that's a problem. 

Making it worse are the cynical actions of members of Congress, Hawley and Cruz for example, who for cynical political  gain, had bolstered Trump's delusional claims. Lending seeming legitimacy to Trump's nonsensical claims about the election creates a problem where none existed. Based on their education they are not stupid, so they must understand that their assertions that the election needs to be overturned because so many people do not believe the outcome is preposterous; the only reason so many do not believe in the legitimacy of the election is that Trump, Cruz, Hawley and so many other members of the GOP had been telling them exactly this for months.         

"The Capitol has now been secured" Woodruff announced on PBS. Who could ever have imagined that in a Western democracy anyone would have to make that statement?  In my lifetime, at least that I can remember, no seat of Western government has been physically assaulted by political extremists. 

The hollowed ground of our democratic government has been violated. Our democratic system has been ill for some time; the cancer that has plagued it for years has metastasized into a stage four life-threatening condition in the era of Trump. The events of today should give us all pause that our democracy is on life support. 

Here are some of the shocking images, courtesy of the Washington Post.  

     

    

Special counsel for election fraud

The Times reported that Trump is considering appointing Sidney Powell, the loonie alt-right conspiracy theorist who allegedly has a law degree, as Special counsel for election fraud. That's good news and bad news. The bad news is that her flailing around may cause lots of needless collateral damage. The good news is that she is so embedded in the tin foil hat brigade that the likelihood of her having any more success that she has to date is somewhere between naught and zero.

Louder than tweets

Silence speaks louder than words the saying goes. And that goes for tweets too. The soon to be ex-president has said absolutely nothing about the Russian hacking offensive; so what does that suggest?

It could be that he's completely preoccupied with his failing attempt to overturn the results of the election. But he's had time enough to play some golf so it's not for lack of minutes in the day. Could it be that he is worried about weighing in on an issue that requires some in-death analysis (which as we know is not his forte)? Unlikely; he's never shown any hesitation about shooting of his thumbs when something bothers him, regardless of whether it's true or not. And it's not that he feels it's important for US diplomacy to maintain cordial relations with Putin since he's not going to have to worry about five a little under weeks from now. 

 So what's behind his silence? There are two possibilities, one future oriented that other historically oriented.  The first is that he still wants to do significant business in Russian and needs Putin's support or at very least acquiescence. The second is that he's already done something somewhat shady that could come back to haunt him; and Putin know what that is and might not be afraid to use it. As Trump always says, it's really something the ought to be looked into.