The Carpentariat

"Big Win" in straightforward English

Here, in merely one article, is how Politico interprets Trump's "Big Win" last night:

"a stinging defeat for President Donald Trump"

"The Democratic triumph"

"Trump called Pelosi Tuesday night to congratulate her on the Democratic victory"

"The Republican wipeout"

"The House takeover"

"House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has again been denied the chance to become speaker"

"The House Democrats' victory"

"Democrats made big gains on Election Day across the country"

And,

"Democrats are expected [to expand] the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election,… also look at Cabinet officials’ alleged misuse of taxpayer funds, Trump’s family separation policy, the handling of the hurricane crisis in Puerto Rice, Trump's tax returns, and any conflicts of interest between his presidency and his personal business."

After all that, Trump's big win seems a trifle small.

 

Trump loses his mojo

Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2018

That bit of deceit was followed by a touch of alarming truth (with exceptions here and there, of course): "Those that worked with me in this incredible Midterm Election, embracing certain policies and principles, did very well. Those that did not, say goodbye!" And both tweets were mixed in with outside adulation and fawning which Trump was sure to include, such as Ben Stein's bootlicking embarrassment: "The Republicans are unbelievably lucky to have him and I’m just awed at how well they’ve done. It’s all the Trump magic - Trump is the magic man … he pulls out these enormous wins."

Trump, Stein and a horde of similarly deluded disciples appear to be under the impression that the U.S. Congress is a unicameral body; that the Senate reigns legislatively alone, while the 435-member House is a dismissible chamber of naught. We are accustomed to such humbug, however, so let them rave in their hermetic asylum of Republican illusions …

… because the House just became the country's most powerful political body.

I, you, we all would have preferred a crushing blue wave to the relative trickle that last night's results manifested. But by God we'll take it. Whether by a winning margin of one seat or a dozen, House Democrats now possess the unalterable power to investigate, subpoena and expose the criminal junta that is the Trump administration. From concealed tax returns to emolument violations to footsie-playing with Russians to self-enriching cabinet members, it will all come out. Trump has had a free ride for two years from a complicit GOP Congress. But no longer. From here on out, it's all costly liabilities for Trump.

What's more, other than Mitch McConnell's Senate rubber-stamping every hard-right "originalist" nominated by the Federalist Society — and admittedly, that's a big other — Trump's amorphous but always dangerous agenda is now as dead as Jacob Marley. That the U.S. Congress is a bicameral body is about to become shockingly clear to the hayseeds and yahoos who are being bamboozled this morning by Trump's "Big Win" last night.

The NY Times rather nicely frames the nation's mood, as well as the hurdles now before Trump: "The Democrats' House takeover represented a clarion call that a majority of the country wants to see limits on Mr. Trump for the next two years of his term. With the opposition now wielding subpoena power and the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, still looming, the president is facing a drastically more hostile political environment in the lead up to his re-election."

That should read, "in the lead up to his re-election effort" — which, once the Democratic House and Bob Mueller are done with him, may not even come to pass. I can still envision a deal cut between this flagrantly criminal president and the Boy-Scout special counsel: Resign, or face criminal indictment in 2021, subsequent to your re-election loss. Because Trump is a bully, it follows that he's also a coward; hence the spectre not of another "Big Win" but of the Big House may persuade him to quietly slither away.

So all in all, last night was a good night for America, and a very bad night for the once-magical Donald Trump.

 

Dems, Donald, and crap hitting the fan

Well, Donald, with the Democrats soon in control of the House, your tax returns, having been secured by a Democratic investigative committee, will be leaked to the public faster than a goose can crap.

Finally, welcome to the big leagues, Donald.

 

A horrifying encounter with online Russian drivel

In a NYT op-ed titled "Russians Meddling in the Midterms? Here’s the Data," Jonathon Morgan and Ryan Fox, executives of a cybersecurity company, write:

Our company is currently detecting more overall activity [among Russian propagandists] … than has been disclosed by social media platforms or detected by researchers during the same period before the election in 2016….

We have … identified more than 400 websites that our analysis indicates are likely to be Russian propaganda outlets aimed at American audiences…. In the month of October alone, we tracked 110,000 social media posts that … contained a link to one of these websites….

Last month, the most-shared article of known Russian origin for the month on Twitter was an article from The Duran purporting to show how groups financed by the billionaire Democratic fund-raiser George Soros "plotted with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms to eliminate conservative 'right wing propaganda.'"

In checking out The Duran, I landed on this breathtaking bit of right-wing opinion in a sprawling, mawkishly nostalgic, sophomorically written piece by one Nicholas Sampsidis:

A dictatorship can be a more effective form of government for business considering that the dictator is free to enact legislation without the restraints of Congress. If the economy is good, foreign wars aren’t needed. Finally, the dictator is above money, considering that, he or she, is in power for life, so it’s not necessary to steal from coffers or to stash away bribes for a rainy day.

The US is about to become either a benign dictatorship of the right or a radical dictatorship of the left. It’s up to Trump and his supporters to recognize the fact and to seize the opportunity while it’s still possible.

If you have wondered why it is you should vote against the GOP's Trumpism today, there you have it, in 108 words: a pro-Trump yearning for the simplicity, "effectiveness" and wholesale unAmericanism of autocracy — democracy be damned, for "migrant" people of color (we're told earlier in the article) are on the demographic, electoral march, and they are to be feared.

Conclude cyber-experts Morgan and Fox, "we estimate that at least hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even millions, of United States citizens have engaged with the content of Russian propaganda online." I would add that if Mr. Sampsidis' writing is at all representative of Russia's online propaganda, it is infinitely easy to spot.

 

Save this: Frum vs. Bannon

Last night I enjoyed watching this Munk Debate — a Toronto institution — titled, "Be it resolved: The future of Western politics is populist, not liberal," featuring David Frum and Steve Bannon. It's nearly 1 & 1/2 hours long, so you may want to bookmark this post for later viewing. (For heaven's sake, vote first.)

I'm also adding a critique of the Frum-Bannon debate ("What the hell is this?"), by David Doel, a videographer, writer and Green Party of Canada candidate in the 2015 election. It's a mere 5 1/2 minutes long, but to spare you even that, I'll summarize his main objections, which are two.

First, Doel argues that it's "dishonest" to call the Frum-Bannon event a "debate," since populism is never properly defined. Rather, it is assumed by the producers that populism is "inherently right wing"  — thus two debaters from the right — which, says Doel, it is not. (I would counterargue that today, populism is indeed inherently right wing, both in assumption and reality.)

Doel's second objection is a deeper exploration of what he touches on in his first: that the two debaters, David Frum and Steve Bannon, were poor choices. Although Frum, says Doel, is a "terrible person," so is Bannon, but with the additional demerits of being a "fascist" and "fucking moron." Doel argues that this Munk Debate was actually between a "neoliberal/neoconservative" and a "Nazi."

So give the Munk Debate a view sometime, and decide for yourself. If for no other reason, I found the debate worthwhile in that Frum made the critical point that opting for a "bad system" (Trumpism) simply because the good system has flaws is a truly fatuous option.

And now, I'm off to vote.

 

BE AFRAID - not of caravans, but of Trump

The Donald is a trifle more coy than was Adolf, who told the world precisely what he intended to do as Germany's leader. At a West Virginia Bund rally last Friday, Trump merely foreshadowed the next stage of his would-be dictatorship. Said the pathetic excuse of a POTUS:

"We’re doing very well, and we’re doing really well in the Senate. But [losing the House] could happen. And you know what you do? Don’t worry about it, I’ll just figure it out."

What one does, of course, is to simply accept the judgment of voters — assuming one is sane. In today's House elections, that judgment is virtually preordained. The Wall Street Journal summarizes the ruling party's imminent rout by Democrats: "Republican officials … have ceded seven GOP-held districts to the Democrats.... Nine more GOP-held House seats in suburban areas are already lost, party officials said. That means Democrats must win seven of about three dozen tossup districts to regain control of the House."

This is why Trump first warned his supporters, "It could happen, could happen." He knows it will happen, even if his troops still believe in the invincibility of Trump. The only remaining question is, What is it that Trump will "figure out"?

Paul Krugman leaves the question hanging. "Donald Trump claimed — falsely, of course — that millions of immigrants voted illegally in an election he won. Imagine what he’ll say if he loses, and what his supporters will do in response."

Sorry, Prof. Krugman. Imagining with unambiguous precision what the twisted, irrational mind of Donald J. Trump will do is an unattainable task for the rationally minded. It will be something insane — that we know, but that's all we know.

He can't dissolve the House like an Oliver Cromwell; nor can he conduct the affairs of the presidency as though the House doesn't exist. Even the Republican Senate wouldn't abide that. He hasn't the Army behind him, that being the method of many a Roman emperor taking dictatorial power. Neither does he have a single-chamber Reichstag by which his party can declare the opposition illegal and illegitimate.

My best guess, notwithstanding my inability to think like a madman? The Democratic House will become Trump's whipping boy for any and all of America's ills. When a recession hits, as is likely sometime in 2019 or 2020, it will be the fault of House Democrats. Continued illegal immigration — the House Dems' doing. Any crime committed anywhere in the lower 48, yes, House Democrats not only allowed it, they encouraged it. Future mass shootings: They'll stem from the Democratic House. Any Putin or Xi aggression? Sure enough, the Democrats of the U.S. House will be held accountable by Trump.

After all, the Democrats hold no power now, but in Trump's telling, they're already responsible for America's problems — any, that is, that Trump, all alone, hasn't already "fixed." Hence my best guess is really more of a foregone observation.

Trump's whining, finger-pointing and blame-gaming throughout the next two years will undoubtedly provoke more right-wing wackos to mail bombs and strafe innocents. Yet his ultimate ambition appears to be another American civil war, carried out not sectionally, but raging from neighborhood to neighborhood. Trump thrives on conflict — and what better way to ignite more of it on a far grander scale than by setting brother against brother, sister against sister, pseudoconservatives against liberals, all Republicans against all Democrats.

So buckle up. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

 

An important public service announcement

 

How in God's name could Trump be MORE undignified?

E.J. Dionne:

"A Public Religion Research Institute poll released last week found that 69 percent of Americans see Trump as having damaged the dignity of the presidency."

One can see this as a glass two-thirds full or one-third empty. To me, it's dispiriting to think that nearly one out of every three Americans does not believe that Trump has damaged the dignity of his office.

Of his own attorney general: "This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner." Of his arm-twisted empathetic post-Charlottesville speech: "That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made." Of African nations: "Shithole countries." Of Middle East foes: "I'm going to bomb the shit out of them." Of women: "Grab 'em by the pussy." Of "fake news": Roughly 80 percent of the Fourth Estate are "enemies of the people." Of football players concerned about racial justice: "Get that son of a bitch off the field right now." His political opponents are either "stupid" or "losers" or "morons." One could go on … and on.

How could anyone — let alone nearly a third of the American public — not see this behavior as presidentially undignified?

 

The good news and the bad news, but then more good news

FiveThirtyEight's election-eve forecasts:

There is an 87.5 percent chance that Democrats will take the House; a 12.5 percent chance that Republicans will remain in control.

There is a 17 percent chance that Democrats will take the Senate; an 83 percent chance that the Senate will remain under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's "unexampled malevolence."

Democrats are expected to possess 24 governors' seats (up from 16); Republicans are expected to possess 26 governors' seats (down from 33).

In 2019, at least:

 

 

Trump's lies and Trump's suckers

Since mid-September, right around the midterm campaign's official kickoff, Trump has made "1,419 false or misleading claims, an average of 30 a day," reports the Washington Post. As NeverTrumper Mike Murphy put it, "He doesn’t have any allegiance to the truth or reality to begin with, so he’s drunk on crowds, in a corner and under great political pressure."

Trump takes a modestly different view of his veracity. At a Belgrade, Montana rally, Trump assured the throng that "I’m the only one that tells you the facts." Such as …

Democrats want a borderless country, a drug-dealing haven, human trafficking, homicidal MS-13 thugs, violent crime raging, families imperiled, an economy destroyed, Medicare abolished and (huh?) the U.S. as a socialist Venezuela. Trump has added that if Democrat Stacey Abrams takes Georgia's governor's seat, along with Medicare she'll abolish the Second Amendment — which, for a governor, would be quite a trick.

The upside for his Swaggart-like congregation is that Trump will forestall the coming, George Soros-financed "invasion" of ill-clad, hungry, "illegal" women and children from Central America, all of whom are no doubt clamoring to join the aforementioned MS-13. His supporters will also get a 10 percent tax cut that he's been promising, although there is no legislation for it. One supposes he'll just generate a tax-cutting executive order, which parenthetically will gut the Fourteenth Amendment.

What do his blinkered admirers think of his Story Times? "At his rally Wednesday in Estero, Fla.," reports the Post's Philip Rucker, "one Trump fan after another explained away the president’s disregard for the truth." Said an emergency room doctor: "I’m not a fact-checker. All of the candidates, whether they be Republican or Democrat, don’t say things completely accurately all the time. But I trust in President Trump." Said a housewife: "Presidents should tell the truth, but sometimes they make mistakes…. At least Trump tells it like it is. Trump is a truth teller." Said a retired nurse: "I don’t think he lies. He gets excited when he’s talking, and he likes to exaggerate a little bit. But that’s just his way."

Yes, and selling out the country to a buffoonish, megalomaniacal wackjob of a demagogue is just their way.

 

Georgia's secretary of state, Snidely Whiplash, is at it again

For years, Republicans have vilified Democrats for practicing "Chicago-style politics," notwithstanding whence those Dems have come. But Republicans now have their own geographical snake pit of corruption that will live on for decades as a party-wide paradigm of political depravity: The state of Georgia, whose secretary of state is running for governor while supervising, as secretary of state, the gubernatorial election.

The shenanigans he's pulled — such as delaying roughly 50,000 voter registrations because of a missed hyphen in the surname or some similarly asinine excuse — are being topped by what professor of election law Richard Hasen has labeled "beyond the pale" and some real "banana republic stuff." Chicago's 20th-century ballot-stuffing mayors have got nothing on Secretary of State Brian Kemp.

"In perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era," writes Hasen, in Slate, Kemp "has accused the Democratic Party without evidence of hacking into the state’s voter database. He plastered a headline about it on the Secretary of State’s website, which thousands of voters use to get information about voting on election day." Kemp's office also issued a press release accusing Democrats of having committed "cyber crimes," but again, it offered no evidence.

It seems Kemp's elections oversight as secretary of state includes what forensic computer scientists have called, in Hasen's words, "perhaps the most vulnerable election system in the country." Kemp now wants to oversee, as governor, the entire state of Georgia. And he hopes to get there by accusing the Democratic opposition of cybercriminal activities. But, observes Hasen, "If anyone is to blame for vulnerabilities with the voting system it is Kemp. And now he’s trying to turn those vulnerabilities into crass political advantage by blaming Democrats without evidence for the state’s failings."

Sound familiar? Such as Republicans always blaming Democrats for the federal deficits they themselves habitually run up? Or blaming Democrats for "losing" impossible, unwarranted and unprovoked wars, which they recklessly started? Or blaming Democrats for engaging in Chicago-style politics, when Republicans' election-tampering would make Chicago Mayor and Capone-associate "Big Bill" Thompson drool with envy?

Writes Hasen, who, as a professor of election law, has seen a lot: "To … blame Democrats [for Kemp's malfeasance] is an act of political chutzpah by an election official on par with nothing else I’ve seen."

We can say this much for Brian Kemp and his Republican Party: No matter how wretchedly abysmal their politics become, they always surprise with something even more bottomlessly corrupt. They're akin to Snidely Whiplash, always tying a fair maiden to the railroad tracks — except in the real word, rare it is that our Dudley Do-Rights appear in time to save the maiden from a dreadful fate. Perhaps tomorrow.

 

Trump has destroyed the GOP by owning it (kinda like his casinos)

First, a moment of silent delight at the gruesome passing of merciless James "Whitey" Bulger, 89, convicted in 2013 of 31 of 32 counts of murder, "extortion, bookmaking, loan-sharking, gambling, truck hijacking and drug dealing." Tuesday he was found "beaten unrecognizable by inmates shortly after he had arrived at [a West Virginia federal] prison." Authorities suspect an Italian mob killing meant to even the score; for years, Whitey had ratted out Boston's Mafia to the FBI.

In other news of organized crime, many of the president's congressional allies and their associate capo regimes have decided that Trump's "political playbook of demonization" contains the savviest strategy for their reelections. In one Minnesota district, for instance, outside Republican groups have invested millions of dollars in television ads featuring "a caravan full of illegal immigrants" — including "gang members and criminals" — "marching on America." The video is, naturally, "grainy" — that adds a spooky visual touch — and "shows Latin American men pumping fists in the air." (I've seen Trump rally enthusiasts pumping their fists in the air, so I can only assume they're all gang members and criminals.)

Still, many other congressional Republicans who also fear unemployment know what Cook Political Report's Amy Walter knows: While Trump's demonization playbook works well in whipping up energized bigotry among the hardcore base, the less the president is "front and center, the better his job approval rating," observes Walter. The reason for this inverse relationship of presidential absence and electoral approval is simple enough: Trump's greatest liabilities are his nasty "temperament, his over-heated rhetoric and undisciplined tweeting," all of which dominate every Trumpian appearance. The man can't help himself; he is nasty, over-heated and undisciplined to his core. A lout has just gotta be loutish.

Hence Trump, in the final phase of midterm hoopla, is running around the country making a national fool of himself while merely adding superfluous Republican votes to red districts' columns. Accordingly, "GOP strategists … are seeing slippage in Trump’s approval rating," writes Walter. "This is why many of them are more worried about big losses in the House than they were just a week or ten days ago."

Though his ruby base is no problem — Gallup finds his job approval at 89 percent among Republicans — his relentless demonization of brown processions and mostly white Fake News has independents, especially, turning away. In 2016, Trump took 48 percent of the independent vote to Clinton's 42 percent. Now, a Marist/PBS poll shows independents favoring Democrats by 10 points, and an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has them favoring the Dems by 14 points. Again, Walter: "This is in line with the last three midterm wave elections (2006, 2010, and 2014), in which the winning party carried independents by 12 to 19 points."

In the end, what really fascinates is that revolutionary-Republican Trump finds himself in the GOP's aboriginal predicament — that policy success, say, in reversing Roe v. Wade or re-instituting school prayer or for that matter resolving any of the age-old cultural disaffections among the lower socioeconomic base, would only dispirit that base from mass mobilization on Election Day. After all, why go to the polls if your party has already accomplished what it for so long promised?

The Washington Post's Catherine Rampell sees Trump's predicament in the conventional way: "His disinterest in notching policy achievements — by passing immigration reform, say, or repealing Obamacare, or persuading China to actually do whatever it is he’s trying to get them to do — may actually help rather than hurt him. He needs the barbarians to be at the gates."

It is tub-thumpingly true, of course, that Trump needs the base to turn out, as would any presidential candidate. But Trump is not just any candidate. He is the base, and the base is he — so much so that he's alienated virtually everyone who isn't a member of that base. That is, by becoming the Republican Party himself, he has reduced the party to Trumpeteers only.

And there just aren't enough of them any longer — not after two years of his manifest madness — to carry an election, whether presidential or midterm.

 

The one pro and myriad cons of Trump's presidency

One bankable signpost of conservative cynicism is Republicans' argument that Donald Trump may be a bit odd and unorthodox in his presidential ways, but dang, the economy is sure doing well: personal income is rising; unemployment has subsided; the GDP, in 2018's first quarter, grew in 48 states, as well as in 312 of 383 metropolitan areas in 2017; and in the same year, personal consumption expenditures increased by 4.3 percent. Happy days are here again (they would say if they knew any history), so why all the fuss over Trump's, shall we say, peculiarities?

To make this argument is to betray America, its values, its most cherished institutions, and not least, its historically and globally envied system of stable governance and, mostly, honorable leadership. For at least a century the United States has been far more that an economic powerhouse; it has shone as a government of laws, a society of progress, a framework of official balances that checks irrational executive exuberance. And yet Donald Trump, under Republicans' congressional indifference to checks and balances, has managed to derail and desecrate every facet of presidential decency.

"It is hard to think of a precedent for a president who endorses violence against political foes," writes Andrew Sullivan in his latest NY Mag installment, "sees the Justice Department as his own personal prosecutor, calls the press 'the enemy of the people,' tears children from parents, brags of multiple sexual assaults, threatens to lock up his opponents, enthuses about war crimes, 'falls in love' with the foulest dictator on the planet, refuses to divest of personal holdings in office, lambastes allies, treats the Treasury as a casino, actively endorses the poisoning of the environment, destabilizes NATO, baits minorities, lies incessantly, and oversees a resurgence of the white nationalist right."

The above is no polemic. It's a litany of facts, which even Trump's supporters don't dispute. (They somehow see "strength" in his rude, eccentric, needlessly aggressive behavior.) Meanwhile, in "We have no excuses now; our eyes are wide open" — i.e., we can no longer nurse upbeat expectations of Trump's presidential character — the Washington Post's Dana Milbank adds to Sullivan's bill of particulars.

Trump sided with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, begins Milbank, as well as siding with Vladi­mir Putin — against U.S. intelligence saying otherwise — about Russia's innocence in our electoral affairs. Furthermore, he recklessly stabbed at a "Muslim ban." He brought us to the suddenly imaginable brink of a nuclear conflict with North Korea, He sacked an FBI director for refusing to obstruct justice, and he's abused his "corrupt" attorney general for not dismantling the rule of law. He dissembled about keep-quiet payments to a porn actress and he employed a bevy of now-convicted advisers who were complicit in Russia-Trump campaign frauds. He has been vile on Twitter and despicable in speeches, "often in … misogynistic terms."

He disrespected John McCain on his death. He has begrudged women’s gains. He confected a conspiracy theory about George Soros, Jewish financier, plotting against America. He has invented a national crisis about a caravan of far-south-of-the-border refugees from violence, while extraconstitutionally deploying the U.S. military against them — and insanely ordering the firing upon any who might pitch a rock. He has insisted with no little daftness that he can revoke birthright citizenship guaranteed, explicitly, by the Fourteenth Amendment.

He confected yet more conspiracy theories about pipe bombs sent to his domestic critics and the murder of 11 worshipping Jews in Pittsburgh. He ran a contemptible midterm campaign ad featuring a cop-killing Mexican man, while attaching the words: "Democrats let him into our country. Democrats let him stay” (in fact the killer arrived in the U.S. under the George W. Bush administration).

Let us concede, as many Republicans argue in contradistinction to the president's perversities, that the economy is rolling along nicely under Trump (even though President Obama was responsible for the present economy's robust health). But — does that singular reality in any way obscure the absolute horror and grotesque essence of Trump's presidency? Does it at all compensate for his vile, revolting behavior? Does it make America great? — or make you feel great about America?

If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then you are frightfully lost to the soulless vulgarity of Trumpism.

 

The deeply thoughtful, wonderfully fair-minded Bobby Jindal

Writing for just about the only publication that remembers him — the Wall Street Journal — Bobby Jindal, in "The Roots of Political Polarization," expresses his worry that "political debates today seem more intense" because the left and right misunderstand each other; they see the world through different lenses. So Bobby wants to help correct everyone's vision. Therefore, with exquisite balance in mind, he advocates "Taking a step back and understanding each  other’s priorities," so as to make "progress."

Here, for your edification, is Bobby's version of balance, empathy, mutual understanding, and stepping into the other guys' shoes.

He concedes that Republicans must argue beyond the judiciously proper, intellectually sound ideology of "cutting taxes and regulations [that] will result in higher wages and profits," and they can do so by also "mak[ing] the case for individual autonomy." In explaining the right's worldview, that's pretty much it: Republicans are brilliant, illuminating and enlightened, but gosh darn it they can be even more brilliant, illuminating and enlightened.

So now that we understand the right, Bobby thoughtfully examines the left — because remember, "step[ping] back and understanding" the other guys "is key to making progress." Thus I give you the highlights of Bobby's best effort at a caring, respectful, introspective understanding of the left:

• Truth vs. social justice. In a reversal of traditional liberal values, the left now prioritizes social justice over free speech, respect for facts, and the marketplace of ideas.

• Individual vs. group identity. The left sees people primarily as members of groups defined by race, class, sex and sexual orientation…. Individual agency is de-emphasized on the left and pure merit-based systems are dismissed as self-contradictory.

• Growth vs. redistribution. The left adopts economic policies that explicitly prioritize equality over growth in the apparent belief that the poor suffer more from relative deprivation than absolute poverty.

• Religious vs. secular. Whereas the left previously included Social Gospel adherents as a core part of its coalition, the modern left is increasingly secular and hostile to public expressions of faith.

Were I Bobby's professor in rhetoric, public policy, or political philosophy, I'd give him an A for perhaps the most disingenuous, shamelessly spurious, perfectly pecksniffian essay ever written.

 

Of Trump-obsessed cable news, and the latter's future

Jeff Zucker, president, CNN, relates to Vanity Fair what is by now axiomatic in the news inudstry: "People say all the time, 'Oh, I don’t want to talk about Trump. I’ve had too much Trump.' And yet at the end of the day, all they want to do is talk about Trump. We’ve seen that, anytime you break away from the Trump story and cover other events in this era, the audience goes away."

In a way that's unique, I suppose — Trump is this country's most abominable train wreck from which you just can't look away; still, presidential politics has always dominated cable news. I recall former CNN commentator Pat Buchanan, who often hosted the undearly departed "Crossfire," saying that he'd like to have covered more international news topics, yet whenever they did, the audience vanished. American news consumers are obsessed (I among them) with whoever the nation's chief executive happens to be, most commonly because he's either invading a nonbelligerent country, playing (ahem) footsie with an intern, obscuring his face from lip-readers, or selling arms to an overseas foe. We just can't get enough of the transparent bubble that is the periodically wrongdoing life of a mammoth ego.

Hence with Trump's unprecedented malfeasance, CNN's ratings are nothing like before. In prime time, it still lags behind Fox News and MSNBC, however "the average number of people watching on a given day has been above 700,000 each year since 2016, compared to around 400,000 in the pre-Trump news cycle," writes Vanity Fair's media correspondent, Joe Pompeo. "The average prime-time audience is around a million, compared to fewer than 600,000 when Zucker arrived."

(Note: I was once asked by CNN to write a piece for its Opinion section, which I did, gratis, just for the satisfaction of greater exposure. The network soon asked for another piece, again without pay. That I declined, since I agree with Dr. Samuel Johnson's commonsense observation that only a blockhead writes for free. I also declined because, as Pompeo reports, "CNN is projected to turn a $1.2 billion profit on $2.5 billion in revenue this year," which is more than when I donated a column … but still, come on; a billion-dollar network can't throw a few bucks to a cash-starved scribe?)

The concluding gist of Pompeo's article is, After Trump, what? Said Zucker: “Obviously our audience numbers will not stay at this level when he’s not president, either in two years or six years…. I do believe, though, that we have reset the playing field so that our audience levels will be significantly higher than they were." His projection is based on this: "On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump. On MSNBC, you rarely hear from people who do support Trump. We want to be home to both those points of view."

Because that's the more journalistically traditional view, it follows that Fox News and MSNBC are not news networks. In Fox's case, that's indisputable. Yet sadly, traditional journalism (by that I mean much of 20th-century journalism; not the hellfire partisanship of the profession's earlier eras) is going the way of the electorate: For each of the principal two sides, there is a self-confirming, utterly cloistered, perfectly agreeable network, newspaper, or magazine. Why bother with others' opinions when you know yours are infallible?

My view somewhat darkens Zucker's optimism, but one can still hope that he's right, after all.

 

Important note to readers

You may have noticed recently that my Facebook and Twitter buttons have been coming and going. As I (don't) understand it, it's the result, say those in the know, of some sort of technical issue explained to, and wholly uncomprehended by, me. Anyway, the buttons seem to be back now, permanently I hope. They're there not only for your convenience, but the site's promotion. A simple click on one or both buttons will share the post with your sane friends and family members. Please do so, for The Carpentariat can certainly use an enlarged readership. This is a tough racket, this blogging and column-writing business, as the competition of literally millions of other political sites is fierce. Cutting through the static is thus a formidable job, but you can make it easier by simply sharing these posts with others, who just might become regular readers — and financial contributors. Thank you for listening, and, I very much hope, sharing. —PM       

 

Trump's bloodthirsty demagoguery

Speaking to the Washington Post yesterday, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile reflected that "We’ve all done low politics. But Lee Atwater would be shocked at the vitriol we’re seeing today…. This is virulent. It’s bone-chilling. It’s like a toxin."

I'm skeptical as to Mr. Atwater's present-day "shock," since he happily pioneered the now-ubiquitous Republican campaign strategy of unending vitriol. In political combat, he harbored no rules of engagement. Any lie, any diversion, any below-the-belt blather was unobjectionable fodder to this mendacious, propagandistic goon of the 1980s.

Nevertheless, today's "toxin" needs no strategic Atwater to advise a campaign of bone-chilling malice, falsehoods and deception. For the toxin is a genuine natural; a foul creature from the stinking abyss. Occupying the once-venerated White House, he steams and wallows in green Exorcist goo, he desecrates traditional American values, he assaults our long-standing institutions of national stability. He's the political Prince of Darkness to Atwater's Beelzebub.

And this week he has — again — proved himself worthy of the grimmest opprobrium. Midweek he tweeted "a 53-second, expletive-filled video," reports the Times, "that features immigrants charged with violent crimes and images of a throng of brown-skinned men breaching a barrier and running forward." In Trump's fantasy world of racist rot and infinite universe of demagogic ferocity, the swarthy invasion is on. (Trump added, in this week of mourning for massacred Pittsburgh Jews, that he "wouldn’t be surprised" if Jewish George Soros had financed the invasion. Somewhere in that stinking abyss, Goebbels is nonetheless smiling.)

The following day, at a Columbia, Mo. gathering of his Luciferian disciples, Trump then delivered a characteristic, crypto-fascistic ramble "riddled with falsehoods," declaring that "large, organized caravans" infiltrated by "tough people, in many cases," as well as "unknown Middle Easterners," are marching toward us, the virtuous. Having also declared that he had ordered the military to gun down any mere rock-throwers, this absolute horror of a POTUS prattled hyperbolically that "This is a defense of our country. We have no choice. We will defend our borders. We will defend our country."

In a final touch of Trump's unAmerican ignorance, he brushed aside the 14th Amendment's birthright citizenship as a "crazy, lunatic policy that we can end."

Observed the Post: "Ahead of his rally here Thursday in Columbia, the speakers blared 'We Are The World,' Michael Jackson’s ode to peace and inclusiveness."

 

Civility starts here - and now

This morning I returned by air from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, only to be met by 80 miles of highway construction on the way home. So I'm still deciding which is more bothersome: the vulgarity of air travel or the inconvenience of "motoring," as blue-blooded Grosse Pointers might say.

I am also troubled by having to be somewhat remonstrative in this returning post. To wit, in the past couple weeks I have heard from two women commenters (I don't know them personally) who have complained about the comment section's occasional epithets thrown around therein; more pointedly, the ladies have written that such comments make them feel unwelcome at this site, in that many of the berating comments have been directed at them personally. In the interest of comity, I am naming no names on either side.

And in the interest of civility, I'm announcing that such incivility ends now. From here on out, any commenter's slur targeting any other commenter will be deleted forthwith. Not to sound sexist or medievally chivalrous, but I especially will no longer tolerate any remarks that make this site's lady commenters feel mistreated, unwelcome, or bullied. Every commenter is of course free to attack, decry, criticize or otherwise rebuke me or the subjects of any posts, but all internal slander — that is, harsh words directed at any other commenter — is hereby verboten.

In advance, I thank you for your cooperation. —PM

 

"Timeline acceleration" and advanced pixilation

Calling in light from the high realms.

What the fuck does that mean? I hear you cry. Perhaps you can figure it out, because I sure can't. At any rate, this video philosopher has dressed to the nines for his soulful tutorial, and I must say, he seems as though he's a genuinely personable fellow. But wow, is he ever off in La La Land. (I discovered this video only because I watched a John Kasich ad for Mike DeWine for Ohio governor — for maybe celestial reasons of which I remain unaware, this video popped up next.) 

   

Scholarship should be better than this

In what I found to be a disturbingly blinkered view of congressional indifference to public desires, an op-ed by political scientists Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Matto Mildenberger and Leah Stokes states:

Congress [on both sides of the aisle] doesn’t know what policies Americans support. We know that because we asked the most senior staff members in Congress — the people who help their bosses decide what bills to pursue and support — what they believed public opinion was in their district or state on a range of issues.

In a research paper, we compared their responses with our best guesses of what the public in their districts or states actually wanted using large-scale public opinion surveys and standard models. Across the board, we found that congressional aides are wildly inaccurate in their perceptions of their constituents’ opinions and preferences.

For instance, if we took a group of people who reflected the makeup of America and asked them whether they supported background checks for gun sales, nine out of 10 would say yes. But congressional aides guessed as few as one in 10 citizens in their district or state favored the policy. Shockingly, 92 percent of the staff members we surveyed underestimated support in their district or state for background checks, including all Republican aides and over 85 percent of Democratic aides.

The same is true for the four other issues we looked at: regulating carbon emissions to address the climate crisis, repealing the Affordable Care Act, raising the federal minimum wage and investing in infrastructure.

In a related column, Paul Krugman writes that the scholars' "opinion piece … seems to confirm something I already suspected: misunderstanding of what voters want is distorting both political positioning and public policy."

Hooey, hogwash and humbug.

Congressional politicians and their sycophantic aides know precisely what the public at large as well as their districts and states want; both examine opinion polls as though they're the Oracle of Delphi. No one is better informed about mass opinion than congressfolk and their staffers (who, nevertheless, mouth whatever their bosses "believe"). But of course what the public wants and what politicians' hyperactivist primary voters want can be, and usually are, completely at odds.

Hence Crackpot Inc. — its Louie Gohmerts, its Pete Sessionses, its James Inhofes — persists in spouting and legislatively advocating the most fatuous, antisocial proposals known to troglodytic knuckle-draggers, rib-scratchers and lice-pickers.

That the three social-science researchers above and Mr. Krugman (intentionally?) missed the bloody obvious is, to me, disturbing — in that the researchers' findings merely confirmed what they wanted confirmed. Scholarship is sacred, and should be more honest, for without erudite objectivity, none of us can really know the truths that lie out there.