Saturday, October 12, 2024

It's the lies, stupid

For my title, I'm borrowing a phrase from when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." That's because the Trump/Vance campaign is pretty much entirely based on lies. That hit home to me when CNN's Daniel Dale recently pointed out that Trump told at least 40 lies during two speeches this week. That is in line with how Dale categorized Trump's performance during his debate with Harris.

No major presidential candidate before Donald Trump has ever lied with this kind of frequency. A remarkably large chunk of what he said tonight was just not true, and this wasn’t like little exaggeration, political spin. A lot of his false claims were untethered to reality.

The most common lies told by Trump/Vance have to do with immigration. But they also tell blatant lies about the economy, tariffs, FEMA, crime, abortion, and schools. Those were all documented recently by David Corn, who makes an important point when he writes that Trump is running a disinformation campaign (emphasis mine).

Trump’s dishonesty goes further than the usual campaign lying. He concocts and promotes utterly false narratives to shape voters’ perceptions of fundamental realities. His campaign is a full-fledged project to pervert how Americans view the nation and the world, an extensive propaganda campaign designed to fire up fears and intensify anxieties...

Trump is not merely heading a campaign fueled by the routine lies of politics. He is endeavoring to use these and other lies to create an alternative reality for millions so they will vote on the basis of a false understanding of the world.

This is why it is so difficult (and perhaps pointless) to have conversations with MAGA people. It's not as if you can simply debunk a lie. It is that they are actually living in an alternate reality created by lies.

So what happens when Trump or Vance are confronted with the fact that they're lying? Trump just brushes it off as "fake news." But Vance has taken a different approach. For example, during the VP debate, Walz asked Vance a basic question: "Did [Trump] lose the 2020 election?" Here's how the senator from Ohio responded:

Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 COVID situation?...

Obviously, Donald Trump and I think that there were problems in 2020. We've talked about it. I'm happy to talk about it further. But you guys attack us for not believing in democracy. The most sacred right under the United States democracy is the First Amendment. You yourself have said there's no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to use the power of government and big tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this present political moment. I would like Democrats and Republicans to both reject censorship.

You can read a good fact check about what Walz said here. And Kamala Harris has never suggested that we should use the power of the government to silence people from speaking their minds.  

But it's important to note how Vance responded when challenged by Walz about the Big Lie. He pivoted to censorship. He did the same thing when challenged by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. 

What Vance is telling us is that he and Trump will lie in order to create an alternate reality. When challenged, he'll cry "censorship."  That's rich coming from the guy who wants the government to "seize the institutions of the left" and implement "a de-woke-ification program.” So no, Vance has zero respect for democracy or the First Amendment. He simply wants to lie with abandon. 

So what happens when politicians create an alternative reality based on lies. Here's what Peter Pomerantsev wrote back in 2014 in a piece titled "Russia and the Menace of Unreality: How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare" (emphasis mine)

The new Russia doesn’t just deal in the petty disinformation, forgeries, lies, leaks, and cyber-sabotage usually associated with information warfare. It reinvents reality, creating mass hallucinations that then translate into political action... insisting on the lie, the Kremlin intimidates others by showing that it is in control of defining ‘reality.’ This is why it’s so important for Moscow to do away with truth. If nothing is true, then anything is possible.

 A place where nothing is true and anything is possible is ripe for totalitarianism, as Hannah Arendt warned.

What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed...If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

 That is why Trump/Vance pose the biggest threat to democracy that we've seen in generations.

at 1 comment:

Sunday, September 15, 2024

The story Vance doesn't want you to hear about towns like Springfield, Ohio

During an interview on CNN Sunday morning, J.D. Vance basically admitted that he created the lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. 

The rationale he gives for spreading those lies is that he wanted the media to focus on what is going on in Springfield. What he doesn't want you to know is that several reporters have covered the story of towns like Springfield for over a decade. It's just that they have been doing so honestly - without the lies he's been ginning up. 

For example, back in 2011, A.G. Sulzberger wrote about what was happening in western Kansas. 

For generations, the story of the small rural town of the Great Plains, including the dusty tabletop landscape of western Kansas, has been one of exodus — of businesses closing, classrooms shrinking and, year after year, communities withering as fewer people arrive than leave and as fewer are born than are buried. That flight continues, but another demographic trend has breathed new life into the region.

Hispanics are arriving in numbers large enough to offset or even exceed the decline in the white population in many places. In the process, these new residents are reopening shuttered storefronts with Mexican groceries, filling the schools with children whose first language is Spanish and, for now at least, extending the lives of communities that seemed to be staggering toward the grave.

James Fallows visited the same area in 2016. 

Every single person we’ve met here — Anglo and Latino, African and Burmese and other, old and young, native-born and immigrant, male and female, well-educated and barely literate, working three jobs and retired and still in school—of all these people, we’ve asked the same questions. Namely: how has Kansas handled this shift in demography? And how does it sound, in this politically and culturally conservative part of the country, to hear the national discussion about “building a wall,” about making America “a real country again,” of the presumptive Republican nominee saying even today that Americans are “angry over borders, they’re angry over people coming into the country and taking over, nobody even knows who they are.”

And every single person we have spoken with — Anglo and Latino and other, old and young, native-born and immigrant, and so on down the list — every one of them has said: We need each other! There is work in this community that we all need to do. We can choose to embrace the world, or we can fade and die. And we choose to embrace it. (The unemployment rate in this area, by the way, is under 3 percent, and every business we’ve talked with has “help wanted” notices out.)

Dave Price wrote about Marshalltown, Iowa in 2016.

As many smaller Iowa towns are shrinking, Marshalltown is experiencing the opposite: The population has increased over the past 15 years, and it’s almost entirely due to an influx of immigrants. The number of non-Hispanic people in town has actually declined slightly since 2000, while Hispanics have more than doubled their share of the population in that time. They now make up more than a quarter of the city’s 28,000 residents.
Art Cullen, of Iowa’s Storm Lake Times, wrote about the shrinking population of small Iowa towns in 2019 and came to this conclusion.
[R]ural communities can be rejuvenated by immigration to replace those youth who don’t see their future in a food processing plant or dairy barn. First, a recognition of the crucial role immigrants play in low-margin industries like agriculture and food processing would be helpful. Second, a system that recognizes reality is overdue. The problem in Sac County is not too many Mexicans, but too few people in general, no matter their skin color.

Michelle Norris wrote about Hazelton, Pennsylvania in 2018.

Hazleton was another former coal mining town slipping into decline until a wave of Latinos arrived. It would not be an overstatement to say a tidal wave. In 2000 Hazleton’s 23,399 residents were 95 percent non-Hispanic white and less than 5 percent Latino. By 2016 Latinos became the majority, composing 52 percent of the population, while the white share plunged to 44 percent... 
Hazleton’s population is younger, the hospital is no longer in bankruptcy, and major employers such as Amazon, Cargill, and American Eagle Outfitters have opened distribution centers and plants offering jobs that helped attract the massive Latino migration.
 In 2019, Thomas Friedman visited Wilmar, Minnesota.
“We had 1,200 to 1,600 Somalis when I started as mayor in 2014 and now we have 3,500 to 3,800,” said [Mayor Marv] Calvin. “We also have 800 Karen people from Burma.” Add to that over 4,000 Latinos and you have a town of 21,000 that had been virtually all white and Christian its entire existence become nearly half new immigrants in the blink of two decades...

America is actually a checkerboard of towns and cities — some rising from the bottom up and others collapsing from the top down, ravaged by opioids, high unemployment among less-educated white males and a soaring suicide rate. I’ve been trying to understand why some communities rise and others fall — and so many of the answers can be found in Willmar.

The answers to three questions in particular make all the difference: 1) Is your town hungry for workers to fill open jobs? 2) Can your town embrace the new immigrants ready to do those jobs, immigrants who may come not just from Latin America, but also from nonwhite and non-Christian nations of Africa or Asia? And 3) Does your town have a critical mass of “leaders without authority”?

Almost all of these accounts describe the challenges these communities faced in light of the demographic changes they were experiencing. But what is true in every single case is that, prior to the influx of immigrants, these towns were dying. Now, if they can rise above the racism, they have a chance to flourish. 

That is the story David DeWitt tells about Springfield, Ohio.

The Times details how, after decades of shrinking and uncertainty, Springfield was able to attract new manufacturing and business with a strategic plan, and by 2020 had drawn in food-service firms, logistics companies, and a microchip maker, among others...

So what, in fact, do we have going on here?

We have a large population increase over a short period of time; we have a language barrier that can cause various strains; we have housing, schooling, and health services that need adequate resources to deal with a massive and rapid adjustment.

We also have an eager, dutiful, law-abiding, and peaceful workforce helping revitalize a city and helping local businesses thrive; we have a city’s population swelling instead of declining; we have an influx of new taxpayers and consumers filling blue-collar jobs, paying property taxes, shopping at local stores, and contributing to their community.

Are there struggles? Absolutely.

Is it chaos and terror? Absolutely not.

Let's first of all note that what is happening in all of these small towns started long before the Biden/Harris administration. There is a long history to these dynamics that Trump/Vance want to ignore. That's because they are more interested in fanning the flames of racism and inciting terror in towns like Springfield than they are in finding solutions to help them flourish. 

The truth is that small town America needs immigrants. 

Now run and tell that.

at 2 comments:

Thursday, August 22, 2024

Amanda Gorman: "the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together"

As I wrote previously, something in me literally "woke up" as I watched VP Harris and Gov. Walz begin their campaign. In thinking more about it, I realized that I had been experiencing a mild depression over the last few years. It's pretty clear that I'm not the only one. 

I think it all started when I watched the same country that elected Barack Obama chose Donald Trump as his successor. My optimism about my fellow Americans was shattered. But then, not only did we have to live through four years of division, hate, and chaos, we all had to navigate living through a pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the MeToo movement. The insurrection of January 6 was yet another blow. 

While Joe Biden did everything possible to deal with the physical and economic devastation we were experiencing, the MAGA crowd shouted so loud that we found ourselves chasing down every hateful lie they told. In other words, we found ourselves in the gutter with them on defense. 

Somehow Harris and Walz broke though all of that. Here's how Walz described it last night.

You know, you might not know it, but I haven't given a lot of big speeches like this. But I have given a lot of pep talks. So let me finish with this, team. It's the fourth quarter. We're down a field goal. But we're on offense and we've got the ball. We're driving down the field. Our job for everyone watching, is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling. One inch at a time. One yard at a time.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure that last bit was a reference to Al Pacino's locker room speech in "On Any Sunday," which is definitely worth a listen. 

But as right wingers and the media keep droning on about the lack of specific policy proposals from Harris, it is important to keep in mind that what has been broken is not about the lack of a legislative agenda. Democrats have accomplished that in spades over the last four years while no one gave them credit. And Harris has a long history of putting forth excellent policies to address issues. As just one example, her anti-poverty proposal was rated the most effective in 2020.

What has been broken is our spirit. Harris, Walz, and many of the speakers at the Democratic Convention aren't just bringing back the joy. They're reminding us of who we are and what's important to us. 

One of the most powerful reminders last night came from Amanda Gorman. Take a listen:

The whole thing is AMAZING! But here are the lines that went straight to my heart:

Empathy emancipates, making us greater than hate or vanity. That is the American promise, powerful and pure.

Divided we cannot endure but united we can endeavor to humanize our democracy and endear democracy to humanity.

And make no mistake, cohering is the hardest task history ever wrote,

but tomorrow is not written by our odds of hardship, but by the audacity of our hope, by the vitality of our vote.

Only now, approaching this rare air are we aware that perhaps the American dream is no dream at all, but instead a dare to dream together.

Here's how Obama talked about it:

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where “we, the people” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do...
 
All across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold. Because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better.

Oprah hit on the same theme. 

Coach Walz's entire life has been a testament to that theme. 

We can (and will) have debates about policy differences and the threat Trump poses to our democracy. But before we get there, we needed a reminder of the bedrock of who we are. 

at 1 comment:

Saturday, August 17, 2024

Harris: Competition is the life-blood of our economy

Does anyone else remember that time back in the mid-80s when Ben & Jerry's ice cream started an ad campaign titled "What's the doughboy afraid of?" Here's what happened:

By 1983, the little ice cream company from Vermont was distributing their frozen treats to grocery stores...the same stores that sold Häagen-Dazs.

Häagen-Dazs was owned by Pillsbury at the time, and their distributor had been given an ultimatum by Pillsbury: stop selling Ben & Jerry's or we'll stop selling all Pillsbury products through you.

Guess what the distributor did? Kept his biggest account and dropped Ben & Jerry's.

Much to Pillsbury's chagrin however, the innovative campaign from the small start-up worked. 

Prior to that, not many of us knew that Haagen-Dazs was owned by Pillsbury. But the fact is that 10 corporations own almost all of the world's food.

That's part of the reason why the FTC recently found that price-gouging became a post-pandemic problem (emphasis mine).
Notably, consumers are still facing the negative impact of the pandemic’s price hikes, as the Commission’s report finds that some in the grocery retail industry seem to have used rising costs as an opportunity to further raise prices to increase their profits, which remain elevated today.

“As the pandemic illustrated, a major shock to the supply chain can have cascading effects on consumers, including the prices they pay for groceries,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The FTC’s report examining U.S. grocery supply chains finds that dominant firms used this moment to come out ahead at the expense of their competitors and the communities they serve.”

Apparently, the editors of the Washington Post missed that report. Their op-ed is titled "The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks." But the tag line says it all: "‘Price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?"

Rather than "gimmicks," Harris is proposing to take on those "dominant firms" who used the excuse of the pandemic to increase their profits. Here's how she explained it: 

It was especially powerful when, at the end, she said, "We will help the food industry become more competitive because I believe competition is the life-blood of our economy. More competition means lower prices for you and your families."

Contrary to those who claim that Harris is proposing socialism, the fact is that the life-blood of capitalism is competition. When dominant firms use their power to control markets, they stifle the ability of small businesses to compete. That might line the pockets of people like Jeff Bezos - the owner of both the Washington Post and Amazon - but it means higher prices for the rest of us.

VP Harris is serious about tackling that issue head-on. Obviously the "dominant firms" won't like it one little bit, as Bezos just demonstrated.

at 1 comment:

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Drop the labels and embrace the joy

In case you're wondering how this Minnesota girl feels about the Harris/Walz ticket, here's something I tweeted a couple of days ago: 

The way Democrats rallied around Harris and are now positively joyous about adding Gov. Walz to the ticket is the best thing I've seen in politics since the 2008 election. 

But I want to take a moment to address the sourpusses among us who are joining with the opposition to suggest that Walz is a nod to progressives /radicals and risks alienating so-called "moderates." People who have said that include John Halpin, Ruy Teixeira, Jonathan Chait, and Nate Cohn.

Just to be clear, it's true that Walz and MN Democrats passed some of the most progressive policies in the country over the last couple of years. As the governor said at the time: "Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don't win elections to bank political capital. You win elections to burn political capital and improve lives.” And they did, indeed, improve lives. How do Minnesotans feel about that?

More than 70% of Minnesota voters — including majorities across every ideological and demographic category — say they approve of the Legislature’s decision last year to provide free school meals to all students, regardless of income...

The KSTP survey also found wide margins of support for several other new policies passed last year, including legal marijuana (65%) and paid family leave funded by a new payroll tax (61%).

When it comes to the issues Harris and Walz are talking about on the campaign trail, here's what the majority of Americans think:

  1. 63% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases
  2. 87% say they support requiring criminal background checks for all gun buyers 
  3. 61% support banning assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons 
  4. 70% favor U.S. taking steps to address climate change 
  5. 65% oppose book banning in schools 
  6. 61% favor raising taxes for household incomes over $400,000
I'd suggest that there is a serious disconnect between those sourpusses and the majority of American voters, wouldn't you? The so-called "center" isn't where they think it is. Here's how David Rothkopf put it:

But there are some things WAY more important than the policy issues. Walz showed us how to get beyond the fear.

And, is I indicated up above, he and VP Harris have brought back things like joy and hope. That does more than make people like me feel better, as Anand Giridharadas pointed out. 

Please listen to the whole thing because it is the most profound bit of punditry I've heard in a long time. Here's how he ended:

Here's an older white man, a coach, a soldier who is very hard to dismiss as some kind of coastal elite who is telling older folks and white people you do not need to be afraid of the future. There is joy in the future. There's joy in having your boss be a Black woman. There is joy in what is coming. I think it's going to teach lots of people, in addition to whatever role he is going to play in this election and in the White House. He is going to teach lots of people through his role in the culture that they are going to be okay. That there is joy on the far side of realizing a multi-racial democracy in this country.

Overshadowing the policy issues is the racism/sexism/homophobia that is so often driven by fear. Who better to lead the way out from under that cloud than an older white man who is fearlessly joyful about the promise of America. 

at 2 comments:

Monday, July 22, 2024

Vance's Dilemma

Yesterday's news rocked the political world as Biden pulled out of the 2024 presidential race and the Democratic Party immediately coalesced around VP Harris as the presumptive nominee. The angles on what this means for November are endless, but one take that I've found interesting was captured by Michael McFaul on Twitter. 

As you know, Trump said that the January 6th insurrectionists were justified in their chants of "hang Mike Pence." On the other end of the spectrum, Biden bowed out and passed the torch to his vice president. The contrast couldn't be more clear. 

But all of that reminds me that Trump's current running mate, J.D. Vance, is going to have to walk a very fine line. That's because, even before it became clear that the former president is suffering from dementia, he was clearly diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (among other things). 

Way back in 2016, Richard Greene wrote about what it means to deal with someone who has NPD (emphasis mine).

There are only two ways to deal with someone with NPD, and they are both dangerous. There is no healthy way of interacting with someone with this affliction. If you criticize them they will lash out at you and if they have a great deal of power, that can be consequential. If you compliment them it only acts to increase the delusional and grandiose reality the sufferer has created, causing him to be even more reliant on constant and endless compliments and unwavering support.

Vance has already shown that he's willing to bite the bullet and feed Trump's delusion with loyalty and praise. His dilemma is going to come from elsewhere. What Greene didn't mention is that people with NPD not only demand total loyalty (which Pence wasn't willing to give when it meant participation in a coup), they also need to demonstrate their dominance over everyone around them. 

J.D. Vance is a very smart guy with ambitions and his own ego to support. Folks are already claiming he's won the battle to be the next GOP leader. But Trump will turn on him in a hot minute if the VP candidate even comes close to out-shinning the guy at the top of the ticket. 

So Vance has to walk the fine line of bowing to Trump's dominance while not coming off as too weak and submissive to be the next MAGA leader. He'll get no sympathy from me for having to maneuver that minefield. It's what the entire GOP has brought on itself by turning a political party into a cult of personality.

at 4 comments:

Tuesday, July 2, 2024

"With fear for our democracy, I dissent."


My title is how Justice Sonia Sotomayor concluded her dissenting opinion to the Supreme Court case granting presidents criminal immunity for "official acts." Here's the context:
Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.
You might not have seen this coming if you'd watched the confirmation hearings for the six justices who ruled in favor of presidential immunity. At least three of them made statements that no one - not even the president - is above the law.
Why the change all of the sudden? Josh Marshall nailed it. 

Because the GOP has been overtaken by a criminal, it is now time to give their leader immunity. 

I believe that Sotomayor's words in response will go down as one of the most consequential moments in our history as a country. But in her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson took things a bit further and identified the root of the problem.
Ultimately, the majority’s model simply sets the criminal law to one side when it comes to crimes allegedly committed by the President. Before accountability can be sought or rendered, the Judiciary serves as a newfound special gatekeeper, charged not merely with interpreting the law but with policing whether it applies to the President at all...

In short, America has traditionally relied on the law to keep its Presidents in line. Starting today, however, Americans must rely on the courts to determine when (if at all) the criminal laws that their representatives have enacted to promote individual and collective security will operate as speedbumps to Presidential action or reaction...The potential for great harm to American institutions and Americans themselves is obvious...because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent.

In other words, the six extremists on the court gave themselves the power to decide when/if a president can be held accountable for criminal acts. Over time this isn't so much about making the president a king as it is about taking power away from the legislative and executive branches and giving it to the courts. It continues what the court ruled just three days prior.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo fully consolidates the Court’s dominance over federal agencies within the executive branch of government. It is a radical reordering of the US separation of powers, giving the one unelected branch of government all of its own power, plus much of the power that Congress has vested in the executive branch.

What we see unfolding is that the one unelected branch of government with lifetime appointments has decided that they have the power to overturn rulings by previous courts (Roe vs Wade), decide when a president can be held accountable, and discard expert analysis by federal employees - directing policy based on their own beliefs.

None of this is an accident. Two men in particular have been focused on elevating the power of the court over the other (more democratic) branches of government: Leonard Leo and Mitch McConnell. Recognizing that the GOP was moving into minority status when it comes to elections, they have been working on this for years. Their dream of neutering the legislative and executive branches of government to set up a country ruled by a majority of extremist judges is unfolding right before our eyes. Sotomayor issued the correct warning when she concluded her dissent by expressing fear for our democracy.

at 7 comments:

Saturday, June 29, 2024

Trump's attacks on Biden are no accident

According to the Washington Post fact-checkers, Donald Trump told over 30,000 lies during his presidency. During Thursday's ninety-minute presidential debate, CNN documented that he told over 30 lies. 

During a speech at the United Nations in 2018, heads of state and delegates laughed at Trump.

Trump has been found liable for fraud and rape. He's also been convicted of 34 felonies.

Over and over again Trump has promised to weaponize the federal government against his political opponents.

During his presidential term, some members of Trump's cabinet discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment. 

You might be wondering why I'm rehashing some of the sordid history of this country's 45th president. It's because this happened during/after Thursday's debate.

  • Trump said this about Biden "I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy...everything he does is a lie.”
  • Trump said that around the world Biden isn't respected.
  • Trump called Biden’s actions “absolutely criminal” and falsely alleged that Biden “gets paid by China” and is a “Manchurian candidate.”
  • Trump launched a groundless claim that Biden is weaponizing American justice against him. He called it "a system that was rigged and disgusting." 
  • Immediately after the debate, Republicans began calling on Biden's cabinet to invoke the 25th amendment.
Trump and his MAGA enablers chose those particular attacks for two reasons. First of all, as Karl Rove discovered years ago, the best way to defend your candidate against an attack is to accuse your opponent of the same thing. That way, when Trump's lies are documented, he simply accuses Biden of being a liar. The whole thing devolves into an argument of he said/he said.

Mike Lofgren explained how that works for Republicans by destroying public trust in government and its institutions.
There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn.

Secondly, that kind of "he said/he said" leads to headlines like this one at The Hill: "Trump, Biden accuse each other of lying."Rather than fact-check which one was lying and which one was telling the truth, it's easier to just act as a stenographer and report that both candidates accused the other one of lying. In other words, projection lays the foundation for the media's obsession with bothsiderism. When one candidate has demonstrated that he's a serial liar, that's a win for him.

During a more sane time, you'd be reading this kind of analysis all over the media because Trump's projection of his own failures onto Biden is so obvious. But these are, indeed, crazy times. I'm hoping this helps shore up your sanity just a bit. 

at 1 comment:

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

The root of the problem is a theology that enables sexual abuse

As someone who was raised in a white evangelical Christian family and church, it deeply saddens me every time we hear that another leader of that community is guilty of sexual abuse. One of the latest is Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church in Southlake, TX. 

Thirty-five years ago Morris began sexually abusing Cindy Clemishire, who was only 12 years old at the time. The abuse continued for over four years. Once Clemishire spoke out against the abuse, Morris left the ministry for two years and received counseling. After that, he returned to the ministry and is now the pastor of a church that attracts an estimated 100,000 worshippers weekly. He also served on Trump’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board during the 2016 campaign and has been a relentless MAGA cheerleader ever since.

From what I've seen, there are some individuals and churches attempting to document this kind of abuse in evangelical churches/organizations and develop ways to address the problem. But most of them focus on after-the-fact interventions designed to support the victim and hold the perpetrator accountable. No one seems to be willing to address the fact that sexual abuse is obviously rampant not only in Catholic Churches, but evangelical circles as well. 

In writing about Morris, Amanda Marcotte provided insight into the root of the problem.

As ex-evangelical therapist Jeremiah Gibson told Salon earlier this year, sex has never really been the issue with evangelicals. It's more about "the performance of gender" and maintaining a rigid gender hierarchy. While right-wing Christians talk a lot about "purity," that expectation only applies to women. Men, as the history of Christianity in America makes clear, largely get to do what they want, confident that the church will usually look the other way — even when the behavior is criminal or blatantly predatory...

The problem with expecting women — or in so many cases, underage girls — to bear the responsibility for maintaining "purity" is that it directly conflicts with another mandate placed on women in evangelical circles: total submission. Women were placed on earth by God, according to this theology, primarily if not exclusively to serve men...It's a lose-lose situation: Women are supposed to make themselves attractive and compliant, but if a man abuses or assaults her, that's her fault for not uttering the otherwise forbidden word "no." Furthermore, if she did say no but failed to fight him off, after a lifetime of being told that it's sinful "pride" to stand up for yourself, then that's her fault too.

That theology of "total submission" applies to children as well - which explains why young boys are also the victims of this kind of abuse. Once women and children have been properly schooled into a theology that tells them that men/fathers/pastors are at the top of a rigid hierarchy and that it is "sinful pride to stand up for yourself," the table has been set for sexual predators. 

In order to root out sexual abuse in the church, both Catholics and Protestants will have to grapple with a theology that actually enables the abuse. I have to say that I'm not optimistic that is going to happen any time soon. 

at 2 comments:

Thursday, June 6, 2024

Dear Byron Donalds: The terror of Jim Crow was NOT good for Black families

Apparently it's not enough for MAGA to ban books that teach American history, suggest that Black people benefited from their time as slaves, or claim that the passage of the Civil Rights Act was a "huge mistake." Now Rep. Byron Donalds says that "Black families were better off during Jim Crow." 

In response, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke some truth on the House floor.

Now Donalds claims that he never said that Black people were better off under Jim Crow, but wants to emphasize that he was suggesting that "Black families" were better off. I'll let you try to figure out how that's different. But a few lessons from actual American history are important to correct the record. 

First of all, Donalds wants us to forget what slavery did to Black families.

Roughly half of all enslaved people were separated from their spouses and parents; about one in four of those sold were children. Ads for the Thomas L. Frazer & Co. Slave Mart in Montgomery, Alabama, boasted that it had “constantly on hand a large and well selected stock” of Black boys and girls.

Slaveholders threatened separation to maintain control, forcing enslaved people to live with the constant fear of losing a loved one. Even those who were not traded across regions could be sold away from relatives at an owner’s whim, to divide an estate, settle a debt, or as punishment.

Secondly, a myth has developed in this country that Jim Crow was about separate lunch counters, water fountains, and schools. I'm going to let Hamden Rice bust that one.

It wasn't that black people had to use a separate drinking fountain or couldn't sit at lunch counters, or had to sit in the back of the bus.

You really must disabuse yourself of this idea. Lunch counters and buses were crucial symbolic planes of struggle that the civil rights movement decided to use to dramatize the issue, but the main suffering in the south did not come from our inability to drink from the same fountain, ride in the front of the bus or eat lunch at Woolworth's.

It was that white people, mostly white men, occasionally went berserk, and grabbed random black people, usually men, and lynched them. You all know about lynching. But you may forget or not know that white people also randomly beat black people, and the black people could not fight back, for fear of even worse punishment.

This constant low level dread of atavistic violence is what kept the system running. It made life miserable, stressful and terrifying for black people.

According to research by the Equal Justice Initiative, there were "more than 4400 racial terror lynchings in the United States during the period between Reconstruction and World War II." This also happened during Jim Crow: 


The lynchings, beatings, and massacres were all part of the terror campaign that led approximately 6 million Black Americans to flee the South (often leaving family behind) during the Great Migration of the Jim Crow era.

As is often the case, I have no idea if Byron Donalds was being completely ignorant or sadistically inflammatory. But it doesn't matter. He can't whitewash our history. 

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Monday, May 20, 2024

When it comes to the presidential race, are polls all that matter?


A little more than five months from the 2024 presidential election, conventional wisdom suggests that Biden is losing. But according to today's aggregate of national polls at the Economist, the race is tied. Even the right wing news site Real Clear Politics only has Trump ahead by about a point. Of course, that's national polls and the race will be decided by how candidates do in so-called "swing states," where Trump shows a bigger advantage. 

A lot of questions are being raised these days about the accuracy of polling. But even if we put that aside, it certainly seems to me that what they're telling us is that this race is incredibly close. National media tends to jump on every small tic upward or downward with pronouncements that, at this stage in the race, aren't justified.

So are there other indicators we should be paying attention to? How about the fact that Biden recently overtook Trump in at least one important measure: "the total number of donors who have given to his campaign, which is often seen as a proxy for voter engagement?"

There's also something important happening at the RNC and state Republican parties. I was particularly struck by something Lara Trump said just before she was elected co-chair of the RNC. She vowed to spend “every single penny” of Republican National Committee (RNC) funds to reelect Trump to the White House. Perhaps she made that statement out of ignorance about the RNC's role in helping to fundraise for state parties and down-ballot races. But I'd put money on a bet that she meant every word. 

According to Max Burns, it's even worse than that.

A growing number of state Republican operations are either broke or perilously close to it...

Republicans can thank Donald Trump for their current financial problems. Trump’s deal with the RNC requires the party to run its donations first through his Save America PAC — which already paid over $50 million toward Trump’s personal legal fees in 2023 alone. That was before RNC co-chair Lara Trump mused about skipping the middleman making the GOP pay Trump’s legal bills directly.

What Lara really meant was, "no money for state parties and down-ballot races" because it's all going to pay Trump's legal fees. WOW!

This raises a couple of questions when it comes to presidential elections: (1) do local/state GOTV efforts matter, and (2) is there such a thing as "reverse coattails?" 

On the second question, Amanda Lipman (co-founder of Run for Something), thinks the answer is a resounding "yes."

In addition to polls, these are some things to keep an eye on over the next five months.  

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Saturday, April 27, 2024

Bill Barr explains why Christian nationalists are so loyal to Trump

Former Attorney General Bill Barr is in the news again. After basically asserting that the former president is unfit for office, he is now endorsing Donald Trump. 

Barr said, “Between Biden and Trump, I will vote for Trump because I believe he will do less damage over the four years.”Barr went on to describe the difference between both parties in stark terms, insisting that the “the threat to freedom and democracy has always been on the left.”

“I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration,” he said.

This has everyone scratching their heads in an attempt to understand how Barr can suggest that policies he disagrees with are a more serious threat to democracy than someone who attempted to overthrow an election and is now facing numerous felony charges. 

But there are a couple of things to keep in mind about all of this. The first is that Bill Barr (much like his pal Leonard Leo) is representative of the Catholic version of Christian nationalism. Most of us have been scratching our heads for years now trying to understand why this religious sect remains so loyal to Trump. In a speech he gave at Notre Dame in 2019, Bill Barr helped us answer that question. 

The former attorney general began his speech by making the claim that "in the Framers’ view, free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people – a people who recognized that there was a transcendent moral order antecedent to both the state and man-made law and who had the discipline to control themselves according to those enduring principles." In other words, he posits that our founders thought that democracy would only work if people allowed religion to control their evil impulses.

Barr went on to claim that "over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack" leading to "the steady erosion of our traditional Judeo-Christian moral system." He then says that every social pathology - illegitimacy, mental illness, suicide, drug addiction - is the result of progressives who are militant secularists pushing religion out of the public square. He joins forces with the kind of rhetoric we hear from dominionists.

Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

In short, Barr believes that progressives are out to strip this country of it's Judeo-Christian moral system, which will make democracy unsustainable. That is the house of cards around which Christian nationalists have built their support for Donald Trump - at least on the surface. But as Fareed Zaharia explains, it goes much deeper than that. 

Zakaria points out that over the last 30-40 years, women, Blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc, are "rising out of the shadows into the mainstream," which is creating a major backlash not only in this country, but around the globe. Zakaria also suggests that Trump's superpower was his ability to tap into that backlash. Interestingly enough, that is exactly what white supremacist Richard Spencer said back in 2015.

“Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have – that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon.”

The reason Barr and his fellow Christian nationalists support Trump is that they are engaging in what Doug Muder called the Confederate mindset (emphasis mine).

The Confederate sees a divinely ordained way things are supposed to be, and defends it at all costs. No process, no matter how orderly or democratic, can justify fundamental change.

The very idea that, as Obama once said, we are continuing to "perfect our union" is anathema to the Confederate mindset.  Those are the stakes we're grappling with today. 

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Sunday, April 21, 2024

Did Zelenskyy play a role in Speaker Johnson's about-face on aid for Ukraine?

Since I wrote about the role white evangelical Christians played in influencing Speaker Johnson to support U.S. aid to Ukraine, I found a piece by Jonathan Larsen that expands on that theme. Putting all of the information together indicates the following timeline:

January 1, 2024 - Ukrainian evangelicals met with Johnson and presented him with a letter urging him to support U.S. aid to Ukraine (emphasis mine). 

In the letter, the leaders of the Ukrainian Churches call on the Speaker of the House of Representatives M. Johnson to "continue supporting the struggle of the Ukrainian people for liberty, independence, and freedom of religion with your wisdom and all other possible means, including the weapons, that our defenders at the forefront of freedom and democracy so lack , in particular, those weapons for which the political and military leadership of Ukraine is asking."

February 4, 2004 - Speaker Johnson said that the bipartisan Senate bill authorizing aid to Ukraine was "dead on arrival" in the House. 

February 5, 2024 - Ukrainians evangelicals addressed a group of Christian nonprofits in Plano, TX.

Speaking through an interpreter, Atonyuk described Russia’s assault on Ukraine as an “evil project” to destroy freedom, including religious liberty.

“We are looking for ideas, projects and partnerships with our fellow Christians in the United States, because together we can stop this evil project,” he said. “Our Lord Jesus Christ will prevail. We are praying for this, and we are looking for partners who will stand with us.”

March 28, 2024 - Johnson spoke with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy.  

April 2, 2024 - Zelensky met with Ukrainian religious leaders (emphasis mine).

"I would like to ask you to communicate with each other not only here, within our country, but also abroad. This dialogue is very important for us now. After all, the church has a great influence on society, on state leaders. And so this is a very important signal for us regarding the support of our partners," [Zelenskyy] emphasized.

April 5, 2024 - Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's top aid, wrote an article for The Hill titled "Ukraine's Evangelicals Need U.S. Support."

[S]ince Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and initial occupation of Eastern Ukraine, Putin stands as an adversary of Christianity, freedom of religion, and the church itself. Churches have been shuttered, ministers detained and tortured, and religious freedom suppressed. The full-scale invasion of 2022 intensified and brought this assault on Protestantism to newly-seized territories...

It is time for American and Ukrainian evangelicals to come together once again to ensure religious tolerance in Ukraine.

April 8, 2024 - Evangelical leaders in the U.S. (including Richard Land) wrote Johnson urging him to support aid to Ukraine. 

As you consider efforts to support Ukraine, we humbly ask that you consider the plight of Christians. The Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine and to target Baptists and other evangelical Christians in Ukraine has been a tragic hallmark of the war.

April 12, 2004 - Johnson went to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump.

“I stand with the speaker,” Trump said at an evening press conference at his gilded private club.

Trump said he thinks Johnson, of Louisiana, is “doing a very good job – he’s doing about as good as you’re going to do.”

April 14, 2024 - Appearing on Fox News, Johnson said, "We’re going to try again this week, and the details of that package are being put together right now. We’re looking at the options and all these supplemental issues.” (emphasis mine)

April 17, 2024 - A second letter was sent to Johnson signed by several U.S. pastors.

We remind Congress that religious freedom is a basic human right that must be protected everywhere. We pray Congress has the courage to stand in solidarity with people of faith. Ukrainian Christians deserve the freedom to worship in peace and embrace their faith without fear.

We call on Congress to provide Ukraine with the financial and military support required to defend herself, stop the bloodshed, and secure freedom of religion within her borders.

April 20, 2024 - Johnson brought a bill for U.S. aid to Ukraine up for a vote in the House. It passed by a vote of 311-112.

It's clear that both Ukrainian and U.S. evangelicals are aware of the fact that using terms like "religious freedom/liberty" will trigger someone like Johnson in a way that details of the battle situation would not.

What stands out to me is the fact that Zelenskyy might have played a critical role in all of this. A few days after he spoke with Johnson - and probably saw that an argument based on Russia's military actions wasn't having any effect - Zelenskyy held a meeting with Ukrainian religious leaders asking them to communicate with their colleagues abroad because "the church has great influence on...state leaders." That was followed a few days later by an article in The Hill (a moderately right-leading publication) suggesting that Ukrainian evangelicals needed U.S. support. 

If my assumption is correct, Zelenskyy is an even more impressive leader than I thought. 

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Friday, April 19, 2024

Why did Speaker Johnson change his mind about aid to Ukraine?

Over the last few days, Speaker Mike Johnson has done an about-face on the U.S. providing aid to Ukraine.  In case you didn't know, a group called Republicans for Ukraine gave Johnson an "F" rating for voting against aid every time it came up in the House.  Then, when he became speaker, he continually blocked bills from coming to a vote. 

Now all of the sudden, he's risking the ire of Trump and MAGA Republicans (and possibly his speakership) in support of aid to Ukraine. What changed?

There are those who suggest that Johnson showed his hand by saying that he believes intelligence reports that "Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed." But hasn't he been getting these kinds of reports all along? Why would he suddenly believe them now?

While we'll never know for sure, I would suggest that something started happening about three weeks ago that ignited the speaker's change of heart.

In a March 26 letter, the Ukraine Council of Evangelical Protestant Churches urged U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson to vote on providing aid to Ukraine without delay...

Writers of the letter mentioned church buildings being taken away, ministers being arrested and tortured, the Russian bombings of an East Ukraine church, Feb. 28—which killed the pastor—and an apartment building, March 2—which killed 12, including five children and an evangelical pastor’s daughter and infant grandson...

The letter implored Speaker Johnson to come to the aid of evangelical churches in Ukraine because “as Evangelicals, we are being accused of working for the interests of the American Government...Appealing to Johnson’s shared evangelical faith—Southern Baptist—the letter closed by asking for “prayers and action on behalf of 8,000 Evangelical churches in Ukraine.

On March 10th, PBS ran a story titled "Ukrainian Christian Groups Face Violent Crackdown From Russian Forces."

Russia first occupied the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol in early March 2022.

And Russian Secret Services, after persecuting pro-Ukrainian activists, former government officials and human rights defenders, have since targeted the churches and their pastors and congregants.

That was followed by two different letters to Johnson from Baptist leaders in the U.S. urging him to support aid to Ukraine. The first one, dated April 8th, included the signature (among others) of Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, on which Johnson once served.

As you consider efforts to support Ukraine, we humbly ask that you consider the plight of Christians. The Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine and to target Baptists and other evangelical Christians in Ukraine has been a tragic hallmark of the war.

The second letter to Johnson was dated April 17th and signed by several pastors.

We remind Congress that religious freedom is a basic human right that must be protected everywhere. We pray Congress has the courage to stand in solidarity with people of faith. Ukrainian Christians deserve the freedom to worship in peace and embrace their faith without fear.

We call on Congress to provide Ukraine with the financial and military support required to defend herself, stop the bloodshed, and secure freedom of religion within her borders.
I would submit to you that this is the reason Johnson did such an about-face on Ukraine. It was the specter of Putin's persecution of evangelical Christians in Ukraine that changed his mind. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm very relieved at the end result. But it's a good reminder that, to understand someone like Speaker Johnson, you always have to keep in mind where his loyalties lie. They're obviously not with national security or the lives of every day Ukrainians. Instead, they're with his tribe of evangelical Christians.

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Sunday, April 14, 2024

Israel owes Obama a huge debt of gratitude

While we don't know the outcome of Iran's attack on Israel yet, it appears as though the worst has been avoided. According to reports, Israel's multilayered air defense systems were effective in stopping the barrage of drone/rocket attacks launched by Iran. As a result, Biden has warned Netanyahu that any further attacks against Iran would not be supported by the U.S. At the moment, that warning seems to have been heeded.

The amount of blood and treasure that would have been spent on an outright war between Israel and Iran is impossible to quantify. So it is important for all of us to be clear about the role played by those air defense systems in potentially avoiding a global catastrophe. It might surprise you to know who is responsible for that. So let's take a walk back through some recent history.

The concept of an "Iron Dome" over Israel dates back to 2004, when Brig. Daniel Gold, a mathematician and head of new-weapons research and development for Israel’s Ministry of Defense, invited the country’s defense contractors to propose innovative systems to protect against aerial bombardment. In early 2007, Israel’s Defense Ministry backed the project’s pilot phase with an outlay of $10 million, but then decided that offensive readiness was a higher priority and didn't allocate any more funds. Instead, Israel approached the Bush administration requesting hundreds of millions in additional support to deploy the Iron Dome. Bush said "no."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama visited Israel. 

All the cameras were on Barack Obama as he gave an emotional speech against the backdrop of the remains of around 100 spent Hamas rockets in Sderot...It was then that he made his memorable statement about someone sending rockets into his house where his daughters were sleeping, and promising that if he were elected, he would do everything in his power to protect Israel from Hamas rockets.

In 2010, President Obama proposed that the U.S. spend $205 million to spur Israel's production of the Iron Dome. Congress complied as part of a package that also included the following:

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has three initiatives with Israel to boost its home-grown capability to defend against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

The so-called David's Sling Weapon System is for short-range defense; the Arrow Weapons System targets medium-range missiles; and the Arrow-3 interceptor is an upper-tier system under development.

The United States is also developing interoperability between the U.S. ballistic missile defense system and the Israeli architecture to make sure Israeli systems can be stitched in to a global umbrella.

Those are the systems that were used to deflect all of the drones/rockets that Iran launched against Israel on Saturday. Another middle east (and possibly global) war may have been prevented - all because President Obama had the foresight to take steps to prevent war. We all (including Benjamin Netanyahu and the people of Israel) owe him a huge debt of gratitude. 

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Thursday, April 11, 2024

Trump doesn't care about abortions


Natasha Korecki put together a helpful timeline on the way Donald Trump has bobbed and weaved on the issue of abortion. For example:
  • In 1999 - before running for president as a Republican - he said, "I am very pro-choice." 
  • Two years later, (when he was considering the idea of running against Obama in the 2012 election) he claimed to be "pro-life." 
  • By March of 2016, he said that women who have abortions should be punished and vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices that would overturn Roe. 
  • Since that happened in 2022, he has been on-and-off again about a federal ban on abortions.
  • When the so-called "red wave" didn't materialize in the 2022 midterms, Trump blamed it on Republicans who insisted on abortion bans with no exceptions. 
This week, the bobbing and weaving has continued. On Monday, the former president put out a statement claiming strong support for IVF and for leaving the decision on abortion up to the states. He also warned that state and local legislators should keep in mind the need to win elections - telegraphing that he recognizes that a pro-life stand could hurt Republicans. 

Then on Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court lifted a ban on an 1864 law that made abortion a felony punishable by two to five years in prison for anyone who performs one or helps a woman obtain one. When asked about that on Wednesday, Trump said that the Arizona law "went too far" and released a video claiming that overturning Roe was the only goal. He said that, from the beginning, it has always been about bringing the issue back to the states - nothing else. 

All of these mixed messages stem from the fact that Trump doesn't really care about the abortion issue. When he decided to run for president as a Republican, he had to take a stand against it - and when it turned out that a majority of his base was made up of Christian nationalists, he catered to what they wanted in order to win/maintain their support. 

But what the former president doesn't seem to understand is that, for the pro-life folks, abortion is murder. And these days, most of them are coalescing around the argument that life begins at conception. So when he says things like "leave it up to the states," they hear him saying that it is OK for blue states to murder children during a pregnancy. 

Here's how Trump's former vice-president responded on Twitter:
President Trump’s retreat on the Right to Life is a slap in the face to the millions of pro-life Americans who voted for him in 2016 and 2020...a majority of Americans long to see minimum national protections for the unborn in federal law. But today, too many Republican politicians are all too ready to wash their hands of the battle for life. Republicans win on life when we speak the truth boldly and stand on the principle that we all know to be true – human life begins at conception and should be defended from womb to tomb.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, said that abortion "has always been a human rights issue — not contingent on geography. Where you live shouldn't determine whether you live."

Steve Peace, BlazeTV host, is ready to give up on the whole GOP.

Now that Republicans have a chance to show they are sincerely pro-life, and act on decades of speeches and promises, they are by and large punting and cowering -- starting with the guy responsible for overturning Roe itself. Now plenty of our own teammates are also showing they're fine sacrificing kids on the altar of personal convenience...

What all of this means for Trump (and other Republicans on the ballot in 2024) is that what they want first and foremost is for this issue to quietly go away and get back to talking about the so-called "invasion" at our border. But that's not going to work. If the Christian nationalist base demands a federal ban on abortion - Trump is going to have to give them one. In the process, he loses everyone else.  

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It's the lies, stupid

For my title, I'm borrowing a phrase from when James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." That's because the Tru...