The Carpentariat

American democracy on the rack

The Cyber Ninjas are even more incompetent than we thought. They possessed every shabby opportunity to discredit Joe Biden's Arizona victory, which was the entire point of their slapdash exercise in election chicanery. And what do they come up with? An even stronger Biden win, and fewer votes for Trump.

"No substantial differences" exist between the Ninjas' findings and Maricopa County's official results, already twice audited. So says their draft report, although a possibly conflicting, full report is scheduled for release later today. Perhaps the Ninjas can then redeem themselves.

In fact they took a stab at it in the draft, referencing popular conspiracy theories as valid concerns and, through sheer ignorance, misrepresenting routine election procedures as possible dark doings. All of which, they said, resulted in findings "very close to the margin of error for the election."

I suppose some credit should be given to these idiots for denying, essentially, that unfettered fraud had poisoned Arizona's presidential election of late. That, however, will have no material effect on the state's Republican pols, the right's hyperventilating media twits and, of course, Trump.

Together they'll seize on the Ninjas' subtextual references to bustling conspiracies and uncomprehended election processes and be the first to rebrand the re-re-re-audit as a shocking exposé (although, as noted, the Ninjas might beat them to it in the final and "full" report). Indeed one Republican state senator moved quickly last night to defuse any danger of honesty, tweeting that the early report was "simply a draft," only "partial." She then triumphantly declared, "Tomorrow we make history."

Next up, Arizona's Republican state legislature will use the Ninjas' … whatever … as unassailable evidence of an urgent need for election thievery, otherwise known as election subversion. This scarcely needs emphasis, and it's even less of a revelation; it's been the unconcealed play all along.

Republican state-engineered election theft is also scarcely confined to Arizona. It's already law in Georgia, and Trump is agitating for the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania, wherever his partisan toadies can exterminate American democracy. 

Texas, another battleground state under autocracy's spell, opted yesterday for a four-county, Arizona-like audit of 2020. Only its tardiness surprises. At any rate, just a few hours passed betwixt Trump's agitation and a straight-armed Sieg Heil! from the state's election officials, which is to say, governor. "Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties," wrote Trump to Reichmarschall Greg Abbott. "Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!" And to the bottom they're going.

Before 2024 more battleground states under Republican Party control will have washed clean any regulatory impediments to victorious Trumpocracy — though merely one state's Electoral votes could well suffice to overturn a legitimate presidential election.

The United States is under a fierce, concerted assault not unlike the ghastly events of 1860-61. The contemporary forces of political brutality believe that in this nation-gutting go-around, the majority opposition will quietly countenance what amounts to authoritarian fait accomplis.

I find the brutalizers' confidence convincing. Though anti-Trumpian, the electorate at large is more engrossed by disappearing fiancés than by its vanishing democracy.

In short, our democratic spirit is either cripplingly wounded or already dead. Disinterest in politics has reached off-the-chart levels just as political engagement has become more vital than ever.

I have also come to doubt the potency of federal laws prohibiting the Trump Party's foul intentions, should congressional Democrats ever pause from squabbling about maybe taxing Jeff Bezos — a challenging question indeed — to pass them. This is a party brazenly unconcerned with the rule of law. It's stoked on depraved self-entitlement, and it has a Trump-loaded Supreme Court as an indecent ally. Who's to stop the Trump Party in the corridors of institutional power?

I pray that I've never been more wrong in my life. The logic of democracy's demise at the torturing hands of Trumpian authoritarians, however, is, from where I sit, incontestable. 

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With my advance thanks, — PM

A comment on Sen. Sinema

Literally, a comment. The below is from Jason, a commenter here. I wanted to allow it more prominence in the site's main body.

What Jason remarks about Sinema fascinated me, in that it made me reflect on the politicians I've known over the years. They wouldn't be politicians if they weren't (usually) "intelligent," as well as "tenacious, competitive," and so on. Definitely ego-driven. But Sinema would seem to stand out in being a "self-involved braggart" — which makes me question the level of her intelligence. Prone as many pols might be to self-centered braggadocio, normally they subdue the impulse. It's a bad look, notwithstanding Trump's — and, it appears, Sinema's — success at it.  

Anyway, try imagining negotiating a $3.5 trillion spending package with this:

I once spent a week with Kyrsten Sinema some ten years ago when we were working in Africa. As two Americans in a very foreign land, we befriended each other, had dinner together almost every night where we enjoyed some fierce debates, traveled, stayed in the same hotel, and so I got to know her pretty well. This was when she was a representative in the Arizona state legislature. I’m not at all surprised by her recent political behavior. She’s extremely intelligent, tenacious, independent, and competitive. But my Lord, a more ego-driven, stubborn, self-involved braggart I have never met. Completely unself-aware, her arrogance and need to dominate conversation became a bit of a behind-her-back running joke among our other companions. I remember clearly a discussion we had in a taxi where I told her that a problem I have with most politicians is their inability or refusal to engage in any sort of self-reflection or self-criticism. She was dismissive of my comment; it didn’t register with her one bit. And now here she is, poised to halt so much longed-for progress that would lift the quality of life for millions. I think she’s partly doing it to cater to her more conservative constituency (which is stupid), but really, I think she’s doing it because she can. She craves power and attention. Her name’s all over the news. She loves fucking with anyone who would try to corral her. Her stated reasons for not supporting the spending bill are non-sensical, but she’s wholly incapable of admitting error.

The granddaddy of all clusterfucks

"I would not want Nancy Pelosi as my enemy."

That, I would normally assume, is the gentle motivator being circulated by House Democratic whips among the legislatively fussy. But it would also assume that the whips themselves are being unfastidious.

And since every House Dem is presently at the throat of every other House Dem, this gentle motivator appears inoperable. The result is an epic street brawl between the moderate and progressive wings in the House, with both sides embarrassing themselves with unconcealed chutzpah.

The moderates are demanding a quick and stand-alone passage of the infrastructure bill, while progressives are having none of that, demanding instead a parallel approval of the roughly $3.5t social spending plan. Meanwhile, a government shutdown presses, with the subsequent option of a debt default.

There are no heroes in our story. Only villains. And they're behaving like three-year-olds, with a three-year-old's understanding of political realities and compromise. Their "sharing" skills are yet developed.

"Moderate" objections to the social policy bill are anything but. There are calls for lower price tags entirely divorced from need and fixated on the number alone; panty-waisted opposition to taxing the obscenely affluent; and mind-boggling hostility to Medicare-negotiated drug costs.

Progressives are more generic in their grievances. AOC has simply staked out a "nonnegotiable" stance, as has the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, who insists that up to half of her caucus will vote down the otherwise in-the-bag infrastructure bill, should moderates fail to approve the full spending package.

Which propelled Majority Leader Steny Hoyer into classic understatement: "There will not be a positive reaction to help coalesce our [entire] caucus if the infrastructure bill goes down."

And this is just the House. The mind rebels with violence at pondering, simultaneously, the Senate.

What seems to be missing from House Democratic calculations is that the party stands on a fatal precipice. The failure of compromise between moderates and progressives will mean three tortured years of legislative stagnation, a Democratic Party irreparably split, and a promising presidency shattered. To that we can add two years of a Republican majority, come 2023, investigating every White House sneeze.

It's time to do your magic, Nancy, probably with bludgeons and knives. Never have I seen your members' self-interest cranked up so staggeringly high. It ain't pretty, it's embarrassing, and it could well present the death of America's only governing party.

Guys, get your fucking act together.

Democrats are at a historic crossroad; the republic's survival depends on which way they turn

​​​​​Among Republicans' many misleading rhetorical ploys — together, there are gazillions — employed on the singular matter of refusing to raise the debt ceiling is that Senate Democrats, in the past, have also voted in opposition. Which is true. What is also true is that Democrats have historically done so only when there was no question that the ceiling would be raised; their opposition was mere theatrics for the fiscally befuddled back home.

Because to not raise the debt ceiling would be stupid, malicious and catastrophically reckless. These are behavioral inclinations that Democratic politicians tend to abjure. Not Republicans, though, for two reasons: Their tenure in office depends fundamentally on the stupidity, malice and cranked-up recklessness of their base, and, of equal significance, Republican pols just kinda like behaving that way. If they didn't, they would not have run as Republicans to begin with.

In a primal, preemptive scream, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spelled out the ABCs of Republicans' malicious stupidity in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Sunday:

"[Default] would likely precipitate a historic financial crisis that would compound the damage of the continuing public health emergency [and] trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock prices and other financial turmoil…. Mortgage payments, car loans, credit card bills—everything that is purchased with credit would be costlier after default…. Nearly 50 million seniors could stop receiving Social Security checks for a time. Troops could go unpaid. Millions of families who rely on the monthly child tax credit could see delays…. Billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs [would be] lost."

These are facts, as was Yellen's conclusion: "Neither delay nor default is tolerable…. We are just now emerging from crisis. We must not plunge ourselves back into an entirely avoidable one."

Plunging headlong into avoidable crises, however, is a Republican speciality of the highest order. Fomenting chaos and crisis is also the party's principal objective, for only by proving that government is nothing but chaos and crisis can Republicans also prove that Democrats are useless.

And here, in the impending calamity of a debt-ceiling standoff — about debt incurred mostly by Republicans — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has stumbled, ironically, on an uncomfortable reality: Senate Democrats are co-conspirators in making Republicans' case of Democratic uselessness, resulting in chaos and potential crisis. I'll let Mitch explain:

"The debt ceiling will need to be raised," he conceded last week to Punchbowl News. "But who does that depends on who the American people elect." In a contemporaneous tweet, he strained for more clarity: "Let’s be clear: With a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a Democratic Senate, Democrats have every tool they need to raise the debt limit. It is their sole responsibility."

The generality of that last part is, of course, bullshit. In any Congress with two sane parties, raising the debt limit would be a happily achieved, bipartisan exercise. In this miserable Congress, however, raising the debt limit is, indeed, Democrats' de facto, sole responsibility.

Now, laughably untrue in McConnell's assertion is that — at the moment — Democrats possess "every tool they need to raise the debt limit." See: filibuster.

Yet Senate Democrats do possess the power to unravel the wretched thing; to obliterate its undemocratic wickedness not only for America' fiscal survival and health, but, oh, I don't know, maybe also to guarantee every American's right to vote and ensure that the Trump-McConnell-McCarthy Party can't steal future elections? Just a thought.

To accomplish these rudimentary decencies, the filibuster's total annihilation is unnecessary. Advisable, but not required. Exceptions to the filibuster rule already exist, and democratically minded Democrats have proposed further exceptions. Nothing radical there. The problem, as we all know, lies in the ferocious obstinance of a few Democratic senators — very few. So here we are, tied up in immovable debt and electoral sabotage.

But that's not McConnell's problem.

It's the Democratic Party's problem, exclusively. However infuriating, however sickening, however absolutely insane it is, raising the debt limit in a responsible, timely fashion, as well as permanently safeguarding American democracy, is Democrats' sole responsibility.

Because they're dealing with a stupid, malicious, unthinkably reckless opposition party hellbent on American chaos, crisis and catastrophe.

And if Democrats cannot proceed accordingly — that is, as the majority power they are — then their unforgivable failure shall be America's epitaph.

Again with the U.S. credibility questions

Just now, this above-the-fold, NYT headline:

One monumental happening, however, preceded and preemptively answered such doubts: AUKUS.

The French are pissed, although with respect to Australia, submarines and deals, they once pulled the same stunt on Japan.   

The point being, the United Kingdom and Australia appear to have no "doubts" about U.S. global leadership. But it makes good headlines.

A rolling insurrection, perfectly normalized

Not once did I read it in the mainstream press, and not once did hear it on cable news: that the absence of Trump's brownshirts at Saturday's (presumed) non-event was a manifest warning.

"It's a trap." Such was the subterranean chatter detected by D.C., FBI, and DHS intelligence prior to the scheduled, neoNazi meet-and-greet. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three percenters and other putsch-savoring gangs were therefore deliberate in discouraging their rank-and-file thugs from attending.

But just what did "a trap" suggest? What, in fact, did these groups' advisories openly declare? The D.C. police could lay a trap only for those intending to do harm of some sort. Traps cannot be laid for the innocent and peaceful. Hence the Proud Boys et al. must have harbored violent intent all along; otherwise they would have issued no "trap" alerts for Sept. 18. In the coverage I heard, this went unmentioned.

In short, the violence-prone gangs will be back. Domestic-terrorist analysts have been clear in promulgating the general message that we're at the beginning — not the middle or end — of far-right militancy. Trumpian extremism is on the rise, the chatter is everywhere, the yahoos are sliming their way to even higher mucks of "kinetic" madness. The weekend's tranquility reports, then, were, in a way, unfortunate.

Another and more critical phenomenon went overlooked as well — a paradoxical fixture that greatly transcends the events, or non-events, of one day.

True, the yahoos are cowards, as I observed on Friday. Cowards are also bullies, and bullies will always avoid a fair fight. This singularly distinguishes them from Germany's far-right extremists of the early 1920s and others of history's revolutionary ilk. Nevertheless, while the Trumpists' fear and poltroonery are palpable, so is their unending menace.

For their pervasive blight is an inbred part — a small, underground but outsized part — of America's normalization of extremism.

How normalized has it become?

As the media were covering, in disappointed fits and starts, Saturday's absence of sensationalist, far-right extremism, a glaring instance of the real thing had occurred just 24 hours before. Yet it received little to no television coverage the following day, and in the press, neither the NY Times nor Washington Post treated it as front-page news. This overt, unprecedented and monstrous assault on American democracy was, I gather, but a ho-hum event in the media's estimation.

Friday, a former president of the United States and still base-acclaimed leader of the Republican Party sent a public, vastly intimidating, extortionist letter to Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, demanding that he singlehandedly reverse the state's 2020 presidential election results:

"Large scale Voter Fraud continues to be reported in Georgia," wrote Trump. "Enclosed is a report of 43,000 [invalid] Absentee Ballot Votes…. I would respectfully request that your department check this and, if true, along with many other claims of voter fraud and voter irregularities, start the process of decertifying the Election, or whatever the correct legal remedy is, and announce the true winner."

The letter's "if true" passage was a mere and typically fatuous throwaway, of course, given its subsequent "true" winner segment. But then came Trump's pointed intimidation meant to keep the secretary of state and governor's lights on at night and their sidearms loaded:

"People do not understand why you and Governor Brian Kemp adamantly refuse to acknowledge the now proven facts…. You and Governor Kemp are doing a tremendous disservice to the Great State of Georgia, and to our Nation — which is systematically being destroyed by an illegitimate president and his administration."

The letter was tantamount to calling out the Klan of yesteryear (i.e., the no-show buffoons of Saturday); an undisguised exhortation that its bed-sheeted yahoos pony up and ride, plant a burning cross in the censurable authorities' lawns, and for the latter to prepare for the deadly reckoning that any traitor to Trumpian supremacy deserves. 

From Georgia the Trumpian Warriors would gallop, one assumes, to the Great Southwest and then northeasterly, where more "true" Electoral Votes would be unmasked. Illegitimate presidency begone, Trump back in the saddle.

It's all a part-laughable, part-nauseous, part-bewildering fantasy, for sure. Yet up to three-quarters of Trump's everyday followers not only believe in the corrupt illegitimacy of a sitting presidency, they're seemingly untroubled by his naked threats to sitting government officials — with an assist by barely attentive news media.

Combined with Republican state legislatures' breezy efforts to outright steal the 2022 and 2024 elections, we now have what must be described as a kind of rolling insurrection, scarcely noted and thus perfectly normalized. 

Sept. 18: "The Pathetic Revolution"

The revolution will be televised. The revolutionary spirit, however, seems to have flagged.

What is it with these guys? — just yesterday, they of such vigor, mischief and boyish pride. Did Robespierre quake before the gendarmerie? Did the Bolsheviks sweat the Tzar's police? Did Sam Adams and Paul Revere huddle and hide as they espied the tyrannical Brits?

Of course not. Which is just another way of saying that one cannot stage a revolution without balls.

And so it is that the evidently testectomized folks organizing tomorrow's "Justice for J6" muster, "dedicated to standing up for patriotic Americans who have been forgotten by our government," may themselves be forgotten by tomorrow night.

Their fear is palpable.

January 6 was soft target instigated by an even softer head; the Capitol Building was essentially undefended, with no one having imagined that a towering lie could incite so many morons to such insane acts of violence. Tomorrow is a different story. The Capitol Police, the Washington D.C. force and the National Guard are all on alert — armed with items that hurt.

And so the revolutionaries are running scared.

Initial mob estimates were in the 700 to 1,000 range, but have since diminished to 500 and as low as 200. Proud Boy leaders have instructed their members to cower: "We aren’t going and you shouldn’t either because errbody going to jail. Sounds like bait." The organizing group's "director of government affairs" has disavowed any relationship with the Proud Boys as well as the Oath Keepers, just in case — in case any violence and thus indictments should follow.

In both a tweet and a CNN interview this week, Matt Baynard, the September Revolution's chief organizer, said "We have told people that when they come, we don't want to see any messaging about the election, we don't want to see any messaging on T-shirts and flags or signs about candidates or anything like that."

There is a man pissing his pants, for fear of joining his fellow revolutionaries in prison.

And the greatest, softest head of them all — you know you — told The Federalist yesterday that tomorrow is "a setup." Good grief, when even the Lenin of Loony forewarns his followers to stand down, well, what hope do we have of seeing 1,000 cretinous noggins cracked?

So yes, though the revolution will be televised, we are likely to be bored. There's nothing more tedious than watching a couple hundred emasculated morons standing around, scratching their ball-less groins and trying to sound tough.

I could be wrong, and I hope I am. For I was indeed looking forward to watching 1,000 cretinous, Trumpian noggins being cracked.

To scream or not to scream

I cannot account for my early morning compulsion to post this, but since when have compulsions demanded an accounting? So I'm dropping this note forthwith — a note about a subject that will soon hit the airwaves and presses with all the sensationalist drama of a presidential impeachment trial:

The debt ceiling calamity of 2021.

Because we haven't enough calamities.

Such is the sentiment — I started to type "thinking" — of the Trump Party, which once again is about to stick a loaded gun in the face of the American economy. The party's chief mugger is Mitch McConnell, who tweeted yesterday that raising the debt limit is Senate Democrats' "sole responsibility." They'll receive no assistance from Mitch & Friends.

To this he is committed, even though the Dems bailed him and his president out in 2019 by suspending the debt ceiling through this summer — thus averting an economic calamity on a Republican president and Republican Senate's watch. (Mitch is unlike Vito Corleone in only one respect: He never returns favors.)

The stupidity and partisan cruelty of refusing to raise the debt ceiling have been discussed and analyzed by the press every which way for years, which is to say, ever since Strangelovian GOP pols learned to stop worrying and love the terrorist bomb. No need, then, to rehash all the stupidity and cruelty here.

But wait, now I recall what compelled me to drop this note at this particular time. Earlier this morning I was reading a piece that referenced McConnellite hypocrisy; namely, that era in which he stiff-armed Democrat Obama's Supreme Court pick because the presidential election was but a year away, then rammed through a Republican president's appointment when a presidential election was only 45 days away.

Hypocrisy of that gargantuan magnitude can never be topped. It shall live not so much in infamy as in jaw-dropping, absolutely fucking astonishment. Goddamn! it's almost admirable.

At any rate, while the short story about McConnell's Supreme Court hypocrisy is keenly relevant to his hypocrisy about the upcoming debt-ceiling crisis, it's even keener in the broadest possible political terms, which have been astutely framed by Hawaii's Sen. Brian Schatz:

"I don’t think anyone believes [McConnell] will say, 'They nailed me for being hypocritical — I give up.' But it is possible, in fact it’s imperative, that we demonstrate that the modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy."

Jan. 6 was "exhibit A," he added. "This is exhibit B."

My profoundest wish is that the Democratic Party possessed the skill, the artfulness and above all the ballsy determination to demonstrate to the American electorate that the Republican Party is, as Schatz says, too dangerous for both the economy and our democracy. Any competent handicapper, however, would reduce the odds of Democrats ever striking the second target with thermonuclear determination because of its sorryass record on squarely hitting the first target.

Empirically proven is that the economy since FDR has performed better under Democratic administrations assisted by Democratic Congresses than have their Republican counterparts. And yet the party has failed to impress this straightforward fact upon the public. By and large, it persists in believing that the GOP is the party of strong, or stronger, economies.

Why? Because the Republican Party knows how to propagandize with a stentorian bullishness that could make Josef Goebbels blush. No longer does the party even really need to convince voters of the fabled untruth of its macroeconomic wizardry. With a Democratic assist, the electorate's delusion is baked in.

One can see the same sort of delusion-inclined thinking already taking place when it comes to Republicans' theft of American democracy. In any engaged, committed democracy, incalculable hordes of honorable voters would be on the streets of Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, demanding that Republican pols cease and desist from their antidemocratic schemes — which are every bit as brazen as their scheme to crater the American economy over the stupid, cruel issue of the debt limit.

Those voters would be on the streets because America's one responsible political party put them there, propelling them to unprecedented anger and action through unremitting, fire-breathing determination to unmercifully arrest Republican thievery.

Do you see such mobs of the righteous?

You may see a mob Saturday, from the other side, wholly untethered from righteousness. And it will be the Republican Party that placed them there. 

Of course this particular mobocratic mobilization could fizzle out. Who knows? But this much we do know: The Republican party, the Trump Party, is dragging America from exhibit A — Jan. 6 — to exhibit B — the debt ceiling calamity. And it's all of a set piece: "The modern Republican Party is just too dangerous for the American economy and for American democracy" — with emphasis on the latter.

Meanwhile, what are Democrats doing? How are they countering this existential democratic crisis? By haggling over the no-brainer of whether Medicare should negotiate drug prices.

The proper rhetorical response to this is: Unfuckingbelievable.

You tell me. Should I be so disheartened, so furious and frustrated? Should I forego my profoundest wish — that the Democratic Party muster the needed polemical artfulness and equally the colossal will to rally the honorable citizenry against Republicans' brazen designs to rob us of prosperity and our American heritage? I'm on the fence here.

Pardon me while my hair lights on fire

Though I've become accustomed to undiscerning analyses in political journalism — mostly because so many political journalists today are a mere eight years out of middle school — Jonathan Martin's NY Times analysis of California's recall election misses the relevant mark by an uncommonly, stunningly wide margin.

He looks at the recall as perhaps a harbinger of 2022; it's a "warning," he writes, for Republicans. "The recall [offers] at least one lesson to Democrats in Washington ahead of next year’s midterm elections: The party’s pre-existing blue- and purple-state strategy of portraying Republicans as Trump-loving extremists can still prove effective."

Therein lies the essence, or rather totality, of Martin's analysis. And what he writes would indeed be true for "Democrats in Washington," but only if other states and locales were as deeply blue as California. Which, of course, they are not. Not even close, excepting maybe Hawaii, Rhode Island and a twenty-block district in Austin, Texas. As well, what California has to teach purple states, I've no idea. Neither does Martin. But damn it sounds insightful.

Yet we've not yet approached the monumental purblindness of Martin's analysis, which requires some quotes and this bit of Martinean prelude: "For Republicans eying Mr. Biden’s falling approval ratings and growing hopeful about their 2022 prospects, the failed recall is less an ominous portent than a cautionary reminder about what happens when they put forward candidates who are easy prey for the opposition."

Again, deep-blue California has nothing to do with nearly all other states and, in general, Republicans' 2022 prospects. But more than that is Martin's reference to whom "they" will put forward as candidates. The "they" in his piece clearly suggests strategists and party leaders, which is fine, but it's Republican voters, by and large, who will determine the candidates. And that means the cyclical ritual of Crazy Unbound: primaries.

This, Martin brushes up against: "The last time Democrats controlled the presidency and both chambers of Congress, in 2010, the Republicans made extensive gains but fell short of reclaiming the Senate because they nominated a handful candidates so flawed that they managed to lose in one of the best midterm elections for the G.O.P. in modern history."

And that, muses Martin, taught them (an outdated) lesson: "If Republicans are to reclaim the Senate next year, party officials say, they will do so by elevating candidates who do not come with the bulging opposition research files of a 27-year veteran of right-wing radio."

Now we're getting close to the huge red elephant in the room, which, somehow, Martin fails to notice. He continues: "The possibility that Elder-style figures could win primaries in more competitive states alarms many establishment-aligned Republicans as they assess the 2022 landscape. Nominees too closely linked to Mr. Trump … could undermine the party’s prospects in states like Georgia, Arizona, Missouri and Pennsylvania that will prove crucial to determining control of the Senate."

With that, his analysis draws to close — without ever even mentioning the monstrous Republican backstop that either can or most definitely will save the day for troglodytic, insurrectionist GOP candidates: election subversion.

Simply put, insane primary outcomes are no longer the Republican problem they once were. Go ahead, ye morons of Election Day, nominate any Elderlike lunatic you wish. For state GOP legislatures in battleground states such as Georgia have rigged the electoral process. They have enshrined in law the Stalinesque maxim that it's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is more central to 2022 and 2024 than election subversion. (Show of hands: How many believe Georgia's state legislature, regardless of the will of voters, will return Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate next year?)

Republicans no longer need worry about psychologically disturbed candidates like Larry Elder, for Republican pols in critical battleground states have his back. The fix — the fixes — are in.

And yet nowhere is this all-encompassing, inescapable, thunderingly antidemocratic fact of America's electoral future — indeed, of America's future, full stop — even alluded to in Jonathan Martin's "analysis." Stunning. Just … stunning.

I expect Republicans' California circus to go on the road, and that bodes ill

It took a while and some doing, but California voters appear set today to reject Republicans' gubernatorial recall scheme by a wide margin. (They must be; otherwise President Biden would not have campaigned for the governor yesterday.)

The trend in favor of "no" has been advancing for weeks. By last Wednesday, a Suffolk University poll had the "no" column at 58 percent, a 17 point net advantage. Friday, an L.A. Times poll had no's net advantage at 21 points. Only a month ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom's advantage sat in the single digits.

Notes CNN's polling guy, Harry Enten: "While there are a few gubernatorial elections featuring a polling error as large as Newsom's advantage, it would take one of the largest polling misses in the last 23 years for him to be recalled [today]."

Perhaps modern polling's battered reputation will now get a boost, courtesy California. I pray this is so, for I love polls, odds, percentages, predictors of huge advantages and black-robed hangmen of electoral doom. How else to entertain oneself in the run-up to Election Days?

Beyond polling is this hard fact in Newsom's favor: "By Friday morning," reported WaPo, "registered Democrats had returned more than 4 million mail ballots, more than twice as many as were sent in by registered Republicans."

For that we can thank Trump. Given mail-in voting's ease, convenience and personal certainty of a civic job done, California's election officials cast pearls before the red swine. But the crimson masses have largely refused to pick up the gems, since that is a violation of Holy Trumpian Dogma, which has something to do with — frankly, I don't know. 

Nor has Trump been content with merely discouraging his brainwashed minions from voting via the United States postal system. From Maine to California, elections in general are rigged and riddled with fraud, he howls. Unless, of course, the Republican wins. Yet that's an increasingly difficult verdict when the Republican politician's party leader is running around the country saying elections are nothing but frauds, which would apply to victorious Rs as well. The klaxon also tends to suppress (deranged) voter enthusiasm. Just ask Georgia's David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Or, ask the state's Republican lieutenant governor, Geoff Duncan, who will answer: "The person that [GOP voters] most admired in their conservative beliefs was telling them that their vote didn’t count. And then the next day he would tell them that the election was rigged, and then the next day he would tell them, 'Why even show up?' And they didn’t. And that alone was enough to swing [Georgia's Senate elections] to the Democrat side."

In California, they've been hearing the same. Larry Elder — leading gubernatorial contender and black white supremacist — has voiced his "concern" about election fraud; yea, verily, he has foreseen Democratic "shenanigans." And Trump is still at it, predicting a "rigged election."

With all that said, California's recent history is nevertheless worrisome, since the madness will spill — not may, will spill — far from California's border. 

Republicans are realizing they can paralyze a state's governing system for months by organizing and executing wholly political recall efforts. (Granted, this is more easily done in California than elsewhere.) They can tie up public debate and Democratic movement on pressing, critical issues through the mammoth distraction of attempting to overturn the last election. Once completed, whether successful or not, another regularly scheduled election soon faces voters.

So, instantly, back to politics.

The result could be perpetual campaigning rather than governing, which is something Republicans are neither good at nor particularly familiar with, unless it's intended to harm conscientious citizens. Such recall efforts — exclusively focused, as they'll be, on Democratic evil — will also serve to distract voters from the straightforward reality that Republicans lack a coherent governing program to begin with.

What's more, woe to those who believe Republican activists of the Trumpian ilk — can there be any others? — will persist in instructing the base on the pointlessness of casting votes. This self-wounding stupidity initiated by Trump shall be soon be retired, embarrassingly shoved away and silenced.

For Republican politicians' designs on rigging federal elections will still require substantial base turnout to be tolerable short of blood on the streets in battleground states and swing districts. The party's pols, strategists, agitators and activists will, for sure, persist in characterizing past Democratic victories as fraudulent, but not upcoming elections.

Republican supremacy demands some level of faith in its legitimacy, no matter how illegitimately it may have been acquired. 

Thus, to me, today seems bittersweet. Democrats are likely to crush California's Republican schemers, dissemblers, deceivers and boneheads. Delightful. Yet Republicans are also likely to come out of this failed recall effort with three, pivotal objectives:

Suppress talk of future elections being rigged so as to bolster their turnout (while contradictorily telling the base that past elections were lost only because of pervasive, Democratic fraud); ensnarl Democratic progress in states where that party still dominates by engulfing the party's leadership in recall mania; and obliterate public attention to actual governing through the distraction of perpetual campaigning.

For the party of Trump, it's always and all about the game, nothing more. 

The Right's anti-vaccination madness was inevitable

Speaking for millions of the perplexed or just plain fed up, Bill Kristol tweeted on Saturday that "many of the views, attitudes, prejudices, and pathologies of today's Right seem to have pretty obvious intellectual, cultural, sociological or psychological sources. But I'm kind of bewildered by the source of the fanatical and fevered reaction to masks and vaccines."

To Kristol's list I would add "religious" and "geographic" (more on these in a moment), which, combined with the aforementioned sources of extreme partisan petulance, together establish the "pathological" foundations of "today's Right." With these additions, Kristol's multisided musing about the Trump Party's fevered fanaticism over masks and vaccines assumes the singular form of a Möbius strip: one source (one side) loops ineluctably to the next, which flips to the next, and so on, all of which leads the diagnostician to both the starting and end point of — political pathology, or, pathological politics.

Bewilderment begone, though we are still left with an intensely petulant, immeasurably dangerous Right. (Which reminds me of another writer's tweeted quasi-bewilderment, that of Andrew Sullivan's on Friday: "It’s paradoxical for Biden to say that a) the vaccines work and b) the vaccinated should fear the unvaccinated. The second argument is largely untrue, and deeply divisive." The second argument is, in fact, profoundly correct, since the primary danger from the unvaccinated is the amplified chance of a Covid mutant impervious to vaccines' lifesaving effect.)

Disconcerting as it is, bewilderment eradication may be the best we can do. Notwithstanding its unhinged warnings and psychotic tics over the Biden administration's Gestapo-like tactics and other jackbooted tyrannies hellbent on enforcing a national vaccination campaign, the Right will succeed in averting official efforts to persuade. It will go right on behaving like the truculent, reckless, unpatriotic body it is; it will persist in threatening America.  

For, as noted, in its politically pathological veins runs the immutable DNA of religious and geographic determinism — the mot virulent of all its noxious afflictions.

The modern American Right was born and swaddled in the antebellum, deeply "Christian" South, and there too was hatched American demagoguery on a vast scale — an elite core of politicians and propagandists at the top, bamboozling the rabble about Lincoln's tyrannical designs against the South's God-given, God-justified right to abuse and kill others while pissing on national unity and the furtherance of an enlightened, civilized society.

The madness took strong root, thus effectuating the sprawling Southernization of American politics — the long, sequential and painful history of which we need not review, given its universal familiarity. Now, here we are. In all its essence, the modern American Right writ large, but still of the antebellum, Christian South, still raging insanely against a president's tyrannical designs against its God-given right to abuse and kill others.

Having retained its regional concentration, the Right finds its malevolent voice most distinctly in Mississippi's Tate Reeves, Georgia's Brian Kemp, Florida's Ron DeSantis, Alabama's Kay Ivey, Texas' Greg Abbott and South Carolina's Henry McMaster. Together they have "declared war" on President Biden, his "blatantly unlawful overreach," his "outrageous" vaccine mandates, his "terrifying" "power grab"; they'll battle him, they say, "to the gates of hell." At least they won't have to go far.

Reinforcing their and the zealous rabble's malevolence toward all Americans is their Christian love. It's bad enough we must subsidize the Right's religious institutions of atavistic ignorance and petty prejudices through tax exemptions; we must also permit them to bodily assault conscientious Americans with claims of Godly fidelity. This, as is widely reported, shall be the Right's miraculous loophole to any national vaccination campaign. And they can play it in just about any manner they like.

As the Times relates: "The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has specified that religious objections do not have to be recognized by an organized religion and can be beliefs that are new, uncommon or 'seem illogical or unreasonable to others.'" I'll let that slide. Such objections "cannot, however, be based only on social or political beliefs." But good luck trying to separate the religious from the political among the artful dodgers of the Right. A cottage industry of snake-oiling, right-winging preachers will boom like the Oklahoma oil business in the 1920s. "An independent evangelist in Texas," for instance, "is offering letters [of religious objection] online in exchange for a donation."

Take them together — the Right's demagoguery of Southern yore against anything Bidenesque and its masses' professed obeisance to Christ's opposition to whatever may help others; a counterfeit, manipulative notion we and government must nevertheless "respect" merely because it is deemed religious — and what you get is a concerted, perfectly legal and above all successful resistance to the president's vaccination initiative.

America is reliving the sectional crisis of the 1800s: a national calamity geographically born of political grandstanding and sick theology. Once given these two essential sparks, anti-vaccination madness — an many other insanities — became inevitable. We should have seen it coming.      

An amendment

​​​​​Let's face it, guys. The day I stop writing is the day I drop dead. Writing is simply too much a part of me.

This I note as an act of partial reversal of my months-ago proclamation of hanging it up. I have not yet decided how much to write or how often to write; I'll probably revert to penning a column-length or near column-length piece as some sort of usual routine — which was the only manner in which I wrote years ago, for other sites — though that I cannot promise. All I can say is that I've canceled on self-cancelation. Perhaps I'll write once a week, or twice a week, or maybe five or seven times a week, short or long. I just don't know. Events — rather ominous events, appearing now in the offing (but definitely not "over the horizon") — will dictate much of that.

What I do know is that I shall not any longer drive myself crazy worrying about reader stats going up, down, or stagnant. Your reading this site is good enough for me, no matter how many of you there are.

I also won't worry about reader contributions. If you wish to donate to what you find here, that's great. And, of course, it'll always be much appreciated. So feel free but not obligated to pitch some cash into the till. I may ask from time to time, but I shan't beg. That I can promise.

It's been great, guys. And it's not over yet. I'm still breathing, still kicking, and I plan to keep writing.

A short treatise on Biden's … unpopularity?

Startling it was, the other day, when I ran aground and got snagged up in Jamelle Bouie's NY Times column, "How Has Joe Biden Become So Unpopular?" The title alone should have served as a lighthouse beacon of gratuitously troubled reading to come; I could have stopped there and turned my eyes to more salubrious material. But no, I ventured on. The beguiling siren of learning Jamelle's answer to such a stupid question was irresistible to me.

How has Joe Biden become so unpopular? The question's framing — its oozing of the extreme — conjured images of pitchforks at the White House gates, with a sweating, neurasthenic, Nicholas II-like character bunkered within, counting, perhaps, his last moments before the righteous provincials breach Secret Service security and render him a martyr to unexampled incompetence. Is Joe that unpopular? Or was I merely a victim of clickbait?

Turned out, yeah, the latter. For it also turned out that President Biden — according to the very author of his vast unpopularity — is not, after all, very unpopular. As Bouie trembled to inform us, Biden held a 46 percent approval rating after the last of his seven months in office — "the last" month having been about as problem-riddled as any early presidential month could be. Throughout, solid poop had been raining remorselessly on Joe from media know-it-alls and preening jackals on the right with reinvigorated intensity, and yet, Biden was — is — nowhere even close to, say, Truman's one-time 22 percent approval rating or Nixon's 24. Now they were unpopular.

Thus, though I love a good story, something in Bouie's premise seemed disturbingly askew from the get-go. Nevertheless I soldiered on, as did Bouie, who went on to explain that "there is a laundry list of reasons" for Joe's "downslope"; indeed, reasons why he is doing much worse — and that's a quote — in polling than at the year's beginning, when his approval rating was but a single digit higher than it is now.

In Bouie's "laundry list" (defined by dictionaries as "long and exhaustive") are all of three items: America's withdrawal from Afghanistan (sorry, our "shambolic" withdrawal, to use the media's obligatory descriptor), Covid's persistence, and a "slower" growing economy. To Bouie's list I would add inflation and the "border crisis."

I'd also add that these troubles incite the rather fascinating question of President Biden's responsibility for them. Yes, America's withdrawal from Afghanistan was messy — quite unlike the historical precedents of, for instance, Germany's graceful exit from Stalingrad or France's smooth retreat from Waterloo? Covid: Biden cannot force every moron to get himself vaccinated. The "slower" growing economy: It's related to those unvaccinated morons. Inflation: Though it's a global phenomenon, in the U.S. inflation was to be expected subsequent to Trump's blockheaded handling of Covid, the economic devastation it wrought, and then the economy's resurgence. The border: Biden cannot prevent Pedro from walking the 970 miles from Oaxaca, Mexico to Laredo.

At any rate, having worked my way through Bouie's abbreviated list of acute reasons for Joe Biden's vast unpopularity, which is nonexistent, I set off for further enlightenment. Which Mr. Bouie promptly offered: "There’s another dynamic at work, one that should guide our expectations for how popular Biden is and how popular he could become. Put simply, we’re still quite polarized."

That observation, to understate things just a trifle, was a letdown. Of course we're polarized. With few exceptions, we've always been polarized, as Bouie proceeded to relate. The deeper question is: Why are we so extraordinarily polarized today? And the answer is: As America's idiots have engaged politics more closely over the past few decades, the idiots have become even dumber — and some of their stupidity is bound to spill, from time to time, into the brighter, more rational mainstream (the Herd Effect). Which accounts for Biden's marginal decline in popularity of late.

Although Bouie altogether neglected the Great Polarizer's — Reagan's — seminal role in the further dumbing down of America's stupid, he did note our increasing polarization when Bush followed Clinton and Trump followed Obama. Now it's known by even today's yet-intellectually tainted schoolchildren that Bush was dumber than Reagan, and Trump was infinitely dumber than Bush. But here's the thing: With each of those presidencies, their rank-and-file disciples became all that much dumber by absorbing the assorted presidential imbecilities, the Republican Party at large became more dimwitted and rancid each year, and by now the whole lot of it is utterly bankrupt in the smarts department.

Hence the percentage of the American electorate that self-identifies as stupid — i.e., Republican — is bound to be the percentage of Americans disapproving of President Biden, who's done nothing to earn their disapproval. Therein lies our baseline: 46.9 percent of the American electorate was stupid enough to vote for Trump last year. Thus Biden's 48.5 percent disapproving group (Bouie's figure) is populated by the unspeakably cretinous, with a scattering of the stupidly susceptible, mainstream herd mixed in.

It's not so much that mere polarization accounts for the president's dip in his approval rating, as Bouie observed. Sure, we're polarized, and we pretty much always have been. Rather, it's what lies at the root of today's extraordinary polarization: staggering stupidity. And the only question that Joe Biden must ask himself is: Will we get even stupider?

I'm beginning to understand how it feels to live in a majority-oppressed nation

As George W. Bush was blundering his way into a minoritarian Middle East nation he did not understand, I understood from a historical perspective how its Sunnis had managed to rule over the Shia, even though, as noted, the Sunnis were a minority. The Ottoman Empire — whose official religion was Sunni — once ruled over the territory that became Iraq and which provided a buffer to the Shiite empire of Iran. Following the Ottoman Empire's fall, British colonialism reinforced Iraq's powerful Sunni minority over the Shia majority, which ultimately led to the Sunni dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush's blunder.

From a mere historical perspective, however, I had no way of really understanding — of feeling — Iraq's emotional mechanics in play during the reign of Saddam: the deep resentment of a majority population toward a ruling minority and all that goes with it, namely the humiliating omnipresence of the majority's electoral impotence, laws skewed to the likes of a few, the relentless hubris raining down from a hostile, hermetically ignorant, numerically inferior power.

As an American born and raised, I possessed no real understanding of any of that — until now, living, as I do, in this American nation increasingly ruled by the arrogant, unlearned, chronically dyspeptic few.

Now obviously the United States of today is not another Iraq of the early 2000s; not yet, anyway. But we the American majority are now daily experiencing the frightful sensation of being ruled by boorish political warlords hatched from sparsely populated fiefdoms of unutterable ignorance and unremitting hostility to civilized life. We are the nation's predominant centrists, moderates, liberals, progressives, socialists, Never Trumpers and Mugwumps — known broadly as Democrats — committed to civil rights, human liberty, freedom of conscience and democratic rule. And yet where we've not already lost power, we're losing it to the other guys — those Husseinlike Republicans.

So much of our growing impotence is — to use that overused word — structural, coupled with a complete and rather innovative lack of Republican scruples. Barely, just barely do Democrats now control the executive and legislative branches; yet even though their rank and file vastly outnumber the opposition, that control is at huge risk of being lost in 2022 and 2024 because of built-in, perfectly legal Republican advantages. Which means there's not a helluva lot Democrats can do about it.

The Trump Party's ruthless gerrymandering that would embarrass yesterday's Tammany leaders will almost certainly permit a fevered few to recapture the House; control of the Senate is, as always, at the mercy of voters in less populous states, where the uncivil brood; and the archaic, nitwitted and grotesquely undemocratic Electoral College, which enthroned our last two Republican presidents — both receiving less votes than their opponents — could easily present a trifecta of minority-based executive power.

As for the third branch of U.S. government? That instantly returns us to those two Republican presidents who were never democratically elected. For they appointed, for life, six of our nine Supreme Court Justices, who have ruled of late that states run by Husseinlike Republicans may pass nakedly unconstitutional laws which can then stand for months and, while they're at it, inhibit the voting rights of whatever and however many citizens they choose.  

What's more, one thus-liberated state (Arizona) has passed a law that allows for "post-election recounts." Get it? The Texas Senate has passed the same. Georgia can now oversee local voting procedures with national implications, and a freshly squeezed Florida law permits partisan "observers" freer access to ballot-counting.

Five states have passed intimidating laws by which election administrators can face felony prosecution should they violate whatever rules their state legislatures conceive, and nine states have vitiated the powers of state and local election authorities — in general, authorities who for years have performed in a professional, nonpartisan manner.

All of which will greatly help to propel Trump Party politicians from backwater enclaves and even reasonably sane districts and states into a congressional stronghold, coronate another unelected president, put a reactionary lock on federal court appointments, and further protect the entire, arrogant, ignorant minority against the majoritarian wishes of us centrists, moderates, liberals, progressives, socialists, Never Trumpers and Mugwumps. 

So yes, I'm beginning to understand, however mildly in comparison, how an Iraqi Shiite must have felt when the Sunnis ruled. 

(What to do? That's for another post. But this much I will say for now: The majority has to get mad — beyond, that is, a few cable-news hosts shaking their fists in outrage and speaking for the majority, wh0 must find their own voice — and their own means.) 

A careless, shameful piece of reporting, and what it - and other reporting like it - could mean in 3 years

Will Trump run again?

The question pops up in the press every few weeks, usually because some former consigliere to the still-sitting mob boss has proffered a premature answer. Earlier this month, for example, erstwhile Trump-advising Jason Miller ventured the odds of a campaign redux at 99 or 100 percent — "news" which made Medialite.com — while U.S. Representative and Insurrection Counselor Jim Jordan blurted in Iowa that Trump will announce "any day now," which the NYT's Maggie Haberman promptly re-disgorged on Twitter.

Yet however intriguing the question may be, its gruesome potential is nothing compared to the End Times reality that he could go all the way. Twenty-sixteen was a black political swan, we reckoned — a successful one-in-a-million shot; a crazy, guttersniping marketing scheme impossible to replicate. Four years and countless presidential disgraces later, the twice-impeached troll collected 11 million more votes. President Biden won by a mere 44,000.

It's old news that Republican state legislatures are hellbent on fixing the Electoral count of battleground states in the next go-around. Old news indeed, but still scary as hell. That said, the plausibly conceived and best defense against Republicans' outright theft of the 2024 presidential election has been a Democratic turnout so immensely staggering in numbers that the election thieves would be forced to give up their sinister game. The Great Backroom Election Robbery of '24 would be foiled by the sheer enormity of the self-evident reality on the ground and everywhere around that the Republican nominee got himself prodigiously, incontestably crushed.

There's something in play, however, that could upend this defense-cum-counteroffensive, and its quintessence came stealthily yet strikingly in one, careless NY Times piece on the Afghanistan evacuation. The story's unthinking characterizations, plus those of hundreds of predictably thoughtless pieces over the next three years on many other issues, could grind away at the national, indeed world necessity of a massive Democratic turnout in 2024.     

It's not that the story's meat-and-potatoes reporting in itself was inaccurate. It's that the reporting was seasoned with unwarranted, not-so-subtle Biden-scolding, and worse, the story was written in the near total absence of context in relationship to the president's intrinsic responsibilities and powers. Doubtless, this reportorial failing and gross unfairness left many Democratic readers rethinking their confidence in Biden's presidential leadership. And that's ominous, for 2024.  

The Times' most glaring scold: "Biden and his aides have insisted that the evacuation of Kabul after the Taliban seized the city on Aug. 15 was done as efficiently as possible. But State Department emails and documents from the Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Defense Departments, as well as interviews with officials and refugee advocates, suggest otherwise."

Note: The email and documents reveal huge problems. They do not refute an efficient-as-possible evacuation. In fact, the problems encountered appeared to be unavoidable. 

The scolding and context-vacancies continued …

"Within hours of Mr. Biden’s speech on Tuesday at the White House marking the end of America’s two-decade war, a private charter plane [from Afghanistan] … arrived at the air base in Doha [Qatar] … with no notice, carrying no American citizens but hundreds of Afghans."

Note: Biden possessed no authority over the chartering of private planes, their unscheduled landings, or who occupied their seats.

"'There are multiple other "rogue" flights that are seeking the same permissions' to land, emails from State Department officials sent that day said."

Note: What … Should President Biden have ordered the planes back to Afghanistan?

"Two days later, officials in Doha reported even more grim news: A 19-month-old child, who arrived from Kabul with 'pre-existing conditions,' died at the air base amid concerns about dehydration, norovirus and cholera among the refugees."

Note: Sad as it is, some children have pre-existing conditions, some children die, refugee camps are notoriously diseased, and President Biden could not change any one of those three hard facts.

"Two hundred and twenty-nine unaccompanied children were being held near the base, including many teenage boys who repeatedly bullied younger children. There were a 'large number of pregnant women,' some of whom needed medical attention, and increasing reports of 'gastrointestinal issues' among the refugees."

Note: Some teenage boys still bully, some women still get pregnant, some will need medical attention, and some refugees will suffer from gastrointestinal issues. Once more — hard, unalterable facts.

"Almost 15,000 Afghan refugees were packed into airplane hangars and wedding-style tents at Al Udeid Air Base, home to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing."

Note: The world was screaming for Afghan refugees to be packed anywhere but in Afghanistan.

The story's criticisms go on, as would my critical notations, were I to go on. But I'll stop here.

The point, again, is that the story was almost entirely void of characterizing presidential power and its realistic capabilities in context. Its heavy implication was that Biden had somehow created the evacuation's chaos and consequent human pain, when the elimination or even alleviation of the delineated hardships was altogether out of his hands. 

That, from the New York Times' "objective" reporting, as well as many others', recklessly disaffecting millions of centrist-to-liberal minds. And there's more to come, a lot more, about a lot of issues, just like in 2016. 

If I were Trump, there'd be no question in my mind: Damn right I'd run, for I'd have this and another three years' worth of straight, context-free journalism on my side — cutting up my opponent with magnificent obliviousness every day, igniting disgruntlement and depressing turnout.