I just heard a great discussion with Masha Gessen about the autocrat’s (or cult leader’s) imperative to replace thought and inquiry with unthinking, unquestioning belief, based on an overarching worldview (or “ideology”). No totalitarian leader can come to power without convincing multitudes that debate based on so-called facts, truth, outmoded common agreement about empirical reality — what their eyes and ears may tell them — means nothing compared to the belief system their leader instills in them. This destruction of belief in “fact” and its replacement with narrative-driving “alternative fact” is a precondition for any takeover by an authoritarian regime (or cult leader, though Gessen didn’t speak of cults, cults and autocracy have the same operating system).
The only sure route to the autocrat’s desired end is by instilling an “ideology,” a belief system that eliminates the need for doubt, instantly invalidates all criticism and cuts off the need for thought, replacing these things with loyal obedience to the inevitable historical imperatives dictated by ideology. The expression of ideology is often reducible to an easily remembered phrase.
Why do thousands gather on January 6th to enthusiastically support the outlandish and many times disproven proposition that there was massive voter fraud among Democrats and an illegitimate communist-puppet president is about to be sworn in? Why do 140 Representatives in the House and a dozen Senators stand to voice this baseless objection to certifying an election that was deemed fair by members of both parties and certified in all 50 states? Because tens of millions are angrily repeating these “ideologically-driven” allegations, tens of millions who voted to keep #Stop the Steal proponents in Congress, and therefore, those allegations of a rigged, stolen election might be true, must now be investigated! Before it’s too late!!!!
Here’s Hannah:
GESSEN: The way Arendt saw Hitler’s ideology – and she wrote about ideology a lot, but not in a way that you probably would intuitively imagine she wrote about ideology. She didn’t write about ideology as coherent thinking or as a system – as a worldview. She wrote about ideology as definitely a bad thing, as a kind of unthinking system.
SHULZ: (As Hannah Arendt) The last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.
GESSEN: And she broke down the word ideology into its component parts, one idea taken to its logical extreme to derive from this ideological thinking the laws of history, right? So if history is inexorably moving in that direction, then we can help history along. And so they see themselves as agents of history. So then they go start – go about exterminating the other masses because the laws of history dictate that that be done. In the case of Germany, the idea that the Aryan race would come to rule the world…
Arendt broke down the word ideology into its component parts, one idea taken to its logical extreme to derive from this ideological thinking the laws of history.
With a client’s ideology on trial, and a sufficient number of jurors working with the defense and committed to acquittal, all a lawyer must do is show one incident where the other side is “lying” to prove his case that every enemy of his client is a fucking liar. As Mr. Trump’s lawyer, the sabbath observing David Schoen did with this arguable lie by Adam Schiff [1], who deliberately pronounced the commonly misspelled word “cavalry” in Kylie Jane Kremer’s tweet as “cavalry” [2].
“You see how these filthy, lying socialist Jews do it?” asked last-minute Trump attorney David Schoen, silently, referring to the alleged trickery of his sick and dangerous co-religionist.
Of course, as any Christian knows, and any clever (or even just choleric) Jewish lawyer knows, Calvary was where Jesus Christ was crucified. So, obviously, when talking about the modern day crucifixion of Donald Trump… this Trump supporter clearly meant that the place where Jesus was crucified was on its way. Exclamation point!
You could argue, of course, that in the context of Trump’s December 19 call for a march (no mere protest rally) on January 6, retweeting his “be there, will be wild” promise, the tweet by the person Schiff deliberately and cunningly misquoted could refer to the troops Trump was calling for to march on the Capitol and Stop the Steal (which they, in fact, did).
Of course, “context” is just more lying bullshit, calculated to obstruct and distract, if there is sufficient fervor for your “ideology.” The Trump supporter’s tweet was clearly referring to Our Lord’s crucifixion, which was coming, lying libtards!!!
Meanwhile, in other news, youth around the world are suffering massively from pandemic-induced social isolation. The New York Times reports ‘What’s the point?’ Young People’s Despair Deepens as Covid-19 Crisis Drags On.We philosophical old bastards have years of experience to compare this disorienting, historically unusual situation to, a world before we were all locked down in fear of infection and death. The young have not had as much time to become this philosophical, yet.
[1]
[2]
But this [misspelling] is also a mistake that Trump himself has made. On Jan. 1, promoting the Jan. 6 rally, Trump retweeted a user who also used “calvary” — prompting Merriam-Webster to troll the president by publishing an article on the differences. “Although they begin and end with the same groups of letters, cavalry and calvary are not related in either origin or meaning,” the dictionary company wrote.
I was never a big believer in the existence of “evil,” in spite of abundant proof that evil is out there thriving and scheming. It’s hard to put another word to an administration that ignores a deadly national emergency, and, while repeatedly lying about its severity, allows tens of thousands of us to die preventable deaths during a pandemic, based on how our state voted in the last election. The divisive narcissist who just got voted out of office (arguably), when you boil down all of his other traits, is an evil guy. A malignant narcissist, if you prefer a more clinical term.
It is finally, as extremists have long phrased it, an open battle to the death between good and evil — like the war between the right to participate in the Peculiar Institution and those intent on abolishing human slavery once and for all time.
I don’t know any other word to fully describe this knowing lie by Tucker Carlson, outside of evil — you may have heard this clip on the most recent On The Media (or seen it posted here yesterday).
Hearing this outrageous lie, smugly delivered, to enhance the wallop of its provocation, was like being sucker punched in the face by a smirking, preening rich boy punk, then kicked by said punk, while police stand around watching and laughing. Made me want to throw Tucker on the ground and keep my knee on his neck, just until he lost consciousness:
BROOKE GLADSTONE
Later that evening, Fox primetime hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity drew on increasingly deranged conspiracy theories to denature the evidence [in the impeachment trial –ed].
[CLIP]
TUCKER CARLSON
They’re just flat out lying. There’s no question about that. The question is, why would they lie about this? For an answer, think back to last spring. Beginning on Memorial Day, BLM and their sponsors and corporate America completely changed this country. They changed this country more in five months that it had changed in the previous 50 years. How’d they do that? They used the sad death of a man called George Floyd to upend our society. Months later, we learned that the story they told us about George Ford’s death was an utter lie. There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy show that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose. Fentanyl.
[END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE
Right. A full autopsy report by Minneapolis police found that Floyd had fentanyl and other drugs in his blood. He also had Covid-19. None of that killed him. His death was ruled a homicide. Maybe Tucker will move on to flim-flam less foul, but why would he?
When divisive, ugly, infuriating, easily disprovable lies are broadcast to millions as indisputable proof, and millions then believe them and support, say, the violent nullification of an election based on echoing and re-echoing baseless allegations, the beast broadcasting this false and inflammatory information must be starved.
Sometimes advertisers and donors will abandon a particular celebrity “personality,” when they cross a line, like publicly referring to someone as a “dirty nigger” instead of saying “dirty n-word”, for example, although, for the most part, corporations are, at best, amoral and driven by their responsibility to maximize shareholder profits. There is another source of revenue for outlets like FOX, Newsmax and One America (and you know which one) News Network — massive fees from cable contracts.
When you buy a monthly cable package from Spectrum, or one of the other regional monopolies that provide basic cable service “bundles,” you are also paying fees for other channels you will never watch. A Rachel Maddow fan will automatically pay for FOX, Newsmax, OANN [1] and other extreme rightwing outlets when they buy a package to watch MSNBC. The same goes for sports. Sekhnet, for example, hates sports, but the package she buys contains a roster of sports channels she will never intentionally watch. Sign up for cable to watch Glenn Kirschner, pay for Sean Hannity, Tucker and the rest of the lovable extremists at Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing love and propagandafest. Here is one group organizing to fight to end this massive automatic payout to FOX and friends.
Their petition reads:
Fox News and OAN broadcast factually inaccurate and offensive material into millions of homes daily. Just as people should not be subjected to and thusly offended by materials that are outside the common standards of decency, they should not be subjected to factually inaccurate, inflammatory and racist ideology masquerading as news. People who desire such entertainment should have to opt in and pay extra to receive these materials, just as they do for premium services such as HBO, Showtime, etc.
We therefore request the cable carriers and providers to exclude this offensive programming from the basic cable bundle.
We are prepared to boycott to achieve this objective!
#BlackLivesMatter
#EnoughWithTheBS
Sadly, this movement so far seems to have very few participants [2].
There are also lawsuits available to rein in this kind of maddening propaganda, when it crosses a line into defamation. When My Pillow Guy went on the far right Newsmax, after Newsmax was threatened with a lawsuit by Dominion voting machines, and began repeating Trump lies about dead Venezuelan presidents and other scary spooks flipping millions of Trump votes to Biden to steal the rigged election, Newsmax read a statement written by their lawyers, informing viewers that what Pillow Guy was saying was false, that the results of the election were legal and final. The interviewer tried to shut My Pillow Lindell down immediately. When Pillow Guy energetically persisted, as his ilk always does, talking over the attempts of the interviewer to stop him, the host literally got out of his chair and walked off the set.Here you go, Mike Lindell’s Newsmax mini shit show on youTube, taking a principled stand against Cancel Culture.
I note, with characteristic snideness, that the latest victims of Cancel (or Censure) Culture include every Republican who voted for impeachment or conviction of the, like, totally innocent MAGA-man. USA! USA!!!! One America NOW!
[1]
Almost as scandalous as Barack Obama brazenly wearing a flesh colored suit to a news conference, Biden is already at it with the dirty tricks, according to One America News Network:
[Biden] added he would ask FEMA to speed up the paperwork so he could sign it as soon as possible, but Biden hedged on whether he would visit Texas to assess the situation first hand.
“It depends. The answer is yes. The question is, I had planned on being in Texas the middle of next week, but what I don’t want to be is a burden,” Biden stated. “When the president lands in any city in America, it creates, it has a long tail, and they’re working like the devil to take care of their folks. If, in fact, it’s concluded that I can do it without creating a burden for the folks on the ground while they’re dealing with this crisis, I plan on going.”
His unclear response drew criticism, with some pointing to trips President Trump took to states hit hard by natural disasters.
Fucking hell, devils and darkness!Was Biden unclear, did he stutter? Some pointing to Trump’s often exemplary responses to national tragedy? Did we pay to subsidize that shit? Or OANN’s next headline:
MORE NEWS: Don Jr.: I Won’t Jump On Bandwagon To Cancel Sen. Cruz
[2]
This petition, on Moveon.org, has 370 of the 400 signatures needed to submit. It gives more detail about the monetary split and the involvement of cable giant Spectrum:
Customers should have the choice to remove Fox News from their Spectrum Cable package. If customers overwhelming say, we don’t want to financially support Fox News, then Spectrum should allow us to make the choice.
Why is this important?
From the misinformation about the coronavirus to the anger and hate it promotes across the board, Fox News is something I find hurts society. But we don’t have to support them. Every TV channel charges cable providers a fee for carrying a channel set during negotiations. This is called a subscriber fee. The provider pays this fee for each customer they have and not viewer. Providers (like Spectrum) bundle channels into packages and pass costs to subscribers. News & info channels’ subscriber fees are normally small. EXAMPLE: MSNBC gets ~$0.33, CNN gets between $0.70-0.90 per month (and includes CNN and CNN Headline News). In contrast, Fox News charges near or over $2 a month. This is way higher in comparison with industry averages. Fox News’ fees are extremely inflated. Fox would not be able to sustain itself in its current state (because it doesn’t have the ad dollar support it once had) without forcing cable providers into overpaying. We need a Fox News fee correction (by losing even more customers) and the ability to hold them accountable. Hurt them where the money is if you want true change.
Our defeated ex-president, seizing on the death of a man of great certainty of opinion and even greater influence, around whose neck he’d hung a presidential medal at his last State of the Union, reemerged into the public spotlight, on FOX, to repeat the familiar refrain that he’d won, in a landslide, the election he lost decisively. In support of his ongoing #Stop the Steal campaign he said that this great, recently departed American anti-Leftist had strongly agreed with him, the presidency was stolen from him, from all real Americans. The professionals and experts all know the truth, he said — that the presidency had been stolen from him and from America by a vast cabal of evil, sick, dangerous enemies of the people — the vast Leftwing, Antifa, BLM, Feminist, Homosexual, Liberal Jew media conspiracy.
The charge that he won the election he lost may be untrue, (reasonable people can argue about it, claims Lyin’ Ted Cruz, reasonably) but you have no right to call it a lie when tens of millions honestly believe it’s true that there was massive voter fraud that stole the election from the rightful winner. How dare you call the sacred dead former talk-show host with talent on loan from God a liar?!!Standing up for possible truth is the whole reason more than a hundred and fifty GOP members of Congress united to contest the “certification” of an election that nobody ever proved wasn’t massively fraudulent, the deliberate and systematic theft of an election, by lying traitors, that the “defeated” candidate actually won in a landslide.
Back for a moment to the personal, to the moment when somebody decides you will be in a fight to the death no matter what you think about it, no matter what actions you may take to try to prevent it. Certainty is a powerful force. I’m thinking about an old friend who called to angrily confront me about being unjustly angry after my health insurance was abruptly cancelled, (illegally as it turned out). He then escalated his indignation and challenges week after week, finally, after pressing me to just fucking move on from whatever my grievance was, snapped, cut me off mid-sentence with a snarl and hung up. Then texted me that he was done being reamed by me.
It seems petty, I know, to keep coming back to this same indigestible example of another old friend suddenly become a devoted, eternal enemy. I’m trying to wring something instructive out of the vexation of it. It seems like the lesson has to be more than that we can all convince ourselves of the righteousness of our own actions, once we construct the right frame. It may be no more than that, though that answer is as unsatisfying as the conclusion that homo sapiens are just a petty, quarrelsome, largely irrational species whose history is always written in the blood of the justifiably murdered.
Surely there is something like objective reality. If you have no dog in the fight you are generally able to look at what actually happened, trace cause and effect, and often assess who is basically correct and who seems to have things ass backwards. The answer is rarely that both sides in a heated argument (like the consensus of Climate Scientists versus for-profit Climate Change Skeptics) are equally valid. There is generally more truth, more fact, more data, more thought behind one position than the other. The genius of the long right-wing project to convert the GOP into a radical right-wing party, similar in its essential features to the one-time fringe conspiracy-based John Birch Society cult, described this way, by political scientists Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann in 2012:
is that today massive, repeated allegations of something, funded by tens of millions of dollars in ad buys to convince people of the allegations, suffice to back and fully justify any political move, including a righteous riot to disrupt the peaceful transition of power in the Capitol. You no longer need a shred of proof, evidence or any discernible facts on your side — the accusation itself is sufficient to fuel the righteous fight to the death.
Proponents of the need to contest the results of an election they claim (without evidence) was massively fraudulent, even after results have been certified fair by bipartisan officials, votes recounted, challenged dozens of times in court, left in place by the courts (for lack of evidence of fraud) need only site the ALLEGATION of fraud, believed by millions, to support their right to contest the election. Regardless, of course, of whether there is or isn’t, or has ever been, actual evidence of significant voter fraud found, even by the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation or Trump’s Presidential Electoral Fraud Commission headed by Hang Mike Pence and defeated voter-suppression expert Kris Kobach.
The project of convincing tens of millions of fraud that didn’t actually happen is vast power at work, and successful propaganda instilling belief in something that is based only on the needs of maintaining that power. It is our job going forward to make a humane case for the 99% as emotionally undeniable as these Koch-funded geniuses have made on behalf of the 1%. It saddens me to see the Democrats resorting to Lincoln Project-style attack ads, which they are now (the Lincoln Project proudly claims credit for Trump turning on his loyal retainer Pence) and I keep thinking there has to be a better way to make the case for fairness, although maybe not at the moment.
Back to the personal. This long-time friend, no matter how clearly I set out my issues, my specific concerns about our long “argument,” insisted that we can’t ever really know what is in anybody else’s head or heart, even someone we’ve known well for half a century.
It seems an untenable and depressing position to me, one that inevitably leads to estrangement, but this man is very smart, an accomplished lawyer, and he rests his case for this unshakeable belief on the fact that in the end, after my many attempts to be analytical and nonviolent in stating my concerns (concerns he repeatedly asked me to clarify, no matter how clearly I’d already made them) I admitted, in a very hurtful way, that I was frustrated, angry and disappointed in his limitations as a friend.
After all, from his point of view, every one of his attempts to make peace was met by my stubborn refusal to simply forgive, even after he made it clear that he truly didn’t understand what he’d ever done to me that was hurtful. Instead, he pointed out, I kept struggling, stubbornly and incoherently, to make him understand what was so “hurtful” about his conduct.
When I hear that Tucker Carlson, for example, said, of the police killing of George Floyd (bracketed by Brook Gladstone’s commentary from her excellent On The Media:
BROOKE GLADSTONE Later that evening, Fox primetime hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity drew on increasingly deranged conspiracy theories to denature the evidence [in the impeachment trial –ed].
[CLIP]
TUCKER CARLSON They’re just flat out lying. There’s no question about that. The question is, why would they lie about this? For an answer, think back to last spring. Beginning on Memorial Day, BLM and their sponsors and corporate America completely changed this country. They changed this country more in five months that it had changed in the previous 50 years. How’d they do that? They used the sad death of a man called George Floyd to upend our society. Months later, we learned that the story they told us about George Ford’s death was an utter lie. There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy show that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose. Fentanyl. [END CLIP]
BROOKE GLADSTONE Right. A full autopsy report by Minneapolis police found that Floyd had fentanyl and other drugs in his blood. He also had Covid-19. None of that killed him. His death was ruled a homicide. Maybe Tucker will move on to flim-flam less foul, but why would he?
I don’t often listen to FOX, or Cucker Tarlson (or whatever the well-born, entitled prick’s name is) but hearing him smugly intone a transparent and incendiary lie, calling the story of Floyd’s (who he called “Ford” at one point) homicide a lie, made me ready to fight him, as it was intended to. I immediately felt a violent urge to put my knee on Tucker’s neck and kneel on him for as long as it took him to stop kicking and begging, letting him up a second before his death. The whole FOX/Murdoch right-wing exercise is “triggering the libtards” and thar’s gold in them hills (Rush Limbaugh died with a net worth of over $600,000,000). The Minneapolis coroner who ruled that a grown man, armed with a gun, supported by three armed colleagues, kneeling on the handcuffed George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes, the last three after Floyd lost consciousness after begging for mercy and calling out for his mother, had caused Floyd’s death? A fucking liar and traitor, a tool of the fucking lying libs.
Hearing Carlson’s inflammatory hate speech I immediately, and involuntarily, flashed on my former friend’s claim that in spite of the thousands of words I’d written him trying to keep the peace (the first few thousand he thanked me for humbly, for I’d taken pains not cast undue blame on his actions) nothing I had written, in the end, gave him the slightest clue why I was so hurtful to him now.
The truth can slippery once strong emotions creep in, and people we trust can twist it convincingly sometimes, but, call me old-fashioned, I still believe there is a world of cause and effect that can be observed, that some narratives are closer to the truth of what happened than others. I can’t be sure what the root cause of my friend’s insistence that we fight to the death was. Not sure I made all the right moves to try to avoid it, obviously I didn’t, based on the irreconcilable enmity at the end.
But if someone asks you why you are angry, and you tell them you are protesting the long history of too many unarmed black people unaccountably murdered by the police in this country every year, and they respond by calling you a terrorist, dispersing protests with the full force of non-deadly state violence (tear gas, horseback charges, rubber bullets, anti-riot squad phalanxes swinging batons, mass arrests) you might be forgiven for feeling unheard.
“What is the real core issue here?” asked my friend, time after time, telling me he clearly didn’t understand what he did that seemed to have upset me so much. I told him that, in a nutshell, having my expressed concerns met by silence is probably the single most hurtful thing to me, that the attempted negation of my feelings by silence is like kryptonite to me. He stood on his right to remain silent, and on the reciprocal truth that I had no right to expect any different, since nobody can ever truly know what is in somebody else’s heart and mind or why they feel as they feel or do what they do.
“I read everything you wrote, searching in vain for a single clue as to what I’d done that made you so irrationally angry and hurtful to me,” he concluded, resting his case.
I can’t do anything about the gigantic phenomenon of unchallenged far-fetched falsehoods being presented as just good as undeniable truth when it comes to a partisan GOP argument. Greg Abbott, the Trumpist governor of Texas, is angrily blaming the Green New Deal for his state’s deadly weather-related emergency — and fuck your fucking facts, cucktards. The political is personal, of course, and there’s little we can do, outside of hard, slow, resolute work on the long-game of bending the long arch of history towards justice. In our personal lives, our choices are more straightforward.
I can’t do anything about a friend who insists that he will do everything in his power to save our friendship, while standing on his right not to revisit any concern that might make him uncomfortable, or even acknowledge I’ve clearly expressed a single goddamned thing worthy of consideration. In the end I can do one thing in the case of a friend like that — let him make his final arguments, accept his right to remain unchanged, and his verdict, and try not to brood about it whenever I hear a similar case indignantly made by a Tucker Carlson.
Though, I also have to acknowledge the deeply disturbing personal resonance of things like hearing the Rochester cop, while hand-cuffing and pepper spraying the emotionally disturbed nine year-old girl (and the fact that the cop was not immediately fired and prosecuted tells you the race of the child) demanding that she stop acting like a child. “I AM a child!” she replied, stating the obvious, to a brutal asshole who didn’t have the slightest concern for what was true and what was instantly verifiable bullshit. I heard the same from my own father, when I was that age and younger. That I should start acting like a man instead of a fucking child. He apologized about that right before he died, for whatever good that might have done anyone.
Truth and reconciliation, y’all, there is a tremendous value to it. It’s the only path to true healing.
At last, two of the country’s top Republican leaders finally speak the plain truth, after four solid years of partisan lying, sharp practices and covering for each other’s hypocrisy — and shortly after a partisan acquittal, on a shaky technicality, in Trump’s record second impeachment (in little over a year).Sadly, truth does not seem to have resulted in reconciliation.
MITCH McCONNELL:
“January 6th was a disgrace.
“American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of democratic business they did not like.
“Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the Vice President.
“They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry he’d lost an election.
“Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.
“The House accused the former President of, quote, ‘incitement.’ That is a specific term from the criminal law.
“Let me put that to the side for one moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago: There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.
“The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President.
“And their having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
“The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th.
“It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’
“It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.
“I defended the President’s right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke. The Electoral College spoke. As I stood up and said clearly at the time, the election was settled.
“But that reality just opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims.
“The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things. [1]
(Of course, the constitution requires, unfortunately, that such an elected official not be held responsible by the Senate, Mitch concludes.)
DONALD J. TRUMP:
“Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said in the statement. “He will never do what needs to be done, or what is right for our Country. Where necessary and appropriate, I will back primary rivals who espouse Making America Great Again and our policy of America First. We want brilliant, strong, thoughtful, and compassionate leadership.”
Then the CLINTON NEWS NETWORK continues:
Trump’s call for compassionate leadership came in a petty statement full of ad hominem attacks, including a jab at McConnell’s family, and after years of some of the most vitriolic political leadership in American history. Despite the potshot at McConnell’s family and the insulting characterization of his personality, Trump wanted to lob harsher personal attacks at McConnell, according to a source familiar with Trump’s desires. Trump adviser Jason Miller said an “earlier (version of the) statement was likely tougher. There was never a consideration to make a personal attack, though.”[2]
Which is why, of course, Mr. Trump refrained from making it a personal attack on another former close ally.
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” — Voltaire
(quoted by Representative Jamie Raskin during the impeachment trial)
[1] Here’s the rest of the immoral, chinless fuck’s self-serving remarks:
“Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally.”This was different.”This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.”The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began.”Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day… whatever reaction he says he meant to produce… by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world.“A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him.”It was obvious that only President Trump could end this.”Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration.”But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored.”Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!”Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.“Predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as further inspiration to lawlessness and violence.”Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later.”And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.”In recent weeks, our ex-President’s associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism.
“Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters.”That is an absurd deflection.”74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did.”And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it.”One person did.”I have made my view of this episode very plain.”But our system of government gave the Senate a specific task. The Constitution gives us a particular role.“This body is not invited to act as the nation’s overarching moral tribunal.”We are not free to work backward from whether the accused party might personally deserve some kind of punishment.“Justice Joseph Story was our nation’s first great constitutional scholar. As he explained nearly 200 years ago, the process of impeachment and conviction is a narrow tool for a narrow purpose.”Story explained this limited tool exists to “secure the state against gross official misdemeanors.” That is, to protect the country from government officers.”If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge.”By the strict criminal standard, the President’s speech probably was not incitement.”However, in the context of impeachment, the Senate might have decided this was acceptable shorthand for the reckless actions that preceded the riot.”But in this case, that question is moot. Because former President Trump is constitutionally not eligible for conviction.”There is no doubt this is a very close question. Donald Trump was the President when the House voted, though not when the House chose to deliver the papers.”Brilliant scholars argue both sides of the jurisdictional question. The text is legitimately ambiguous. I respect my colleagues who have reached either conclusion.”But after intense reflection, I believe the best constitutional reading shows that Article II, Section 4 exhausts the set of persons who can legitimately be impeached, tried, or convicted. The President, Vice President, and civil officers.”We have no power to convict and disqualify a former officeholder who is now a private citizen.”Here is Article II, Section 4:”The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.””Now, everyone basically agrees that the second half of that sentence exhausts the legitimate grounds for conviction.”The debates around the Constitution’s framing make that clear. Congress cannot convict for reasons besides those.”It therefore follows that the list of persons in that same sentence is also exhaustive. There is no reason why one list would be exhaustive but the other would not.”Article II, Section 4 must limit both why impeachment and conviction can occur… and to whom.”If this provision does not limit the impeachment and conviction powers, then it has no limits at all.”The House’s ‘sole power of Impeachment’ and the Senate’s ‘sole Power to try all Impeachments’ would create an unlimited circular logic, empowering Congress to ban any private citizen from federal office.”This is an incredible claim. But it is the argument the House Managers seemed to make. One Manager said the House and Senate have ‘absolute, unqualified… jurisdictional power.'”That was very honest. Because there is no limiting principle in the constitutional text that would empower the Senate to convict former officers that would not also let them convict and disqualify any private citizen.”An absurd end result to which no one subscribes.”Article II, Section 4 must have force. It tells us the President, Vice President, and civil officers may be impeached and convicted. Donald Trump is no longer the president.”Likewise, the provision states that officers subject to impeachment and conviction ‘shall be removed from Office’ if convicted.”Shall.”As Justice Story explained, ‘the Senate, [upon] conviction, [is] bound, in all cases, to enter a judgment of removal from office.’ Removal is mandatory upon conviction.”Clearly, he explained, that mandatory sentence cannot be applied to somebody who has left office.”The entire process revolves around removal. If removal becomes impossible, conviction becomes insensible.”In one light, it certainly does seem counterintuitive that an officeholder can elude Senate conviction by resignation or expiration of term.”But this just underscores that impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice.”Impeachment, conviction, and removal are a specific intra-governmental safety valve. It is not the criminal justice system, where individual accountability is the paramount goal.”Indeed, Justice Story specifically reminded that while former officials were not eligible for impeachment or conviction, they were “still liable to be tried and punished in the ordinary tribunals of justice.””We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”I believe the Senate was right not to grab power the Constitution does not give us.”And the Senate was right not to entertain some light-speed sham process to try to outrun the loss of jurisdiction.”It took both sides more than a week just to produce their pre-trial briefs. Speaker Pelosi’s own scheduling decisions conceded what President Biden publicly confirmed: A Senate verdict before Inauguration Day was never possible.”This has been a dispiriting time. But the Senate has done our duty. The framers’ firewall held up again.”On January 6th, we returned to our posts and certified the election, uncowed.”And since then, we resisted the clamor to defy our own constitutional guardrails in hot pursuit of a particular outcome.”We refused to continue a cycle of recklessness by straining our own constitutional boundaries in response.”The Senate’s decision does not condone anything that happened on or before that terrible day.
“It simply shows that Senators did what the former President failed to do:we put our constitutional duty first.”
When stuck with an untenable position in an argument, when the facts, the law and common sense are all against your cause, reframing is probably your best option. Here are three recent examples from the news.
Senator Ron Johnson, the Always-Trumper from Wisconsin, confronted by the fact that his leader unleashed a heavily armed mob, many in body armor, to riot in the Capitol building (immediately after a rally he promoted, promised would be wild and spent at least $3,500,000 in donations organizing) injuring 140 police officers, and killing several other people (including one of their own they trampled to death), focused on the word “armed.”
“Armed” Johnson claimed, reframing the word, means carrying a firearm. Since only one person was killed by a firearm, and a police firearm at that, it followed that the mob was not armed. Take something you can’t deny– the violent mob seriously hurt a lot of people, using a variety of arms (weapons, if you prefer), and reframe the question into a very limited definition of the word “armed.”
Bear spray (a super powerful form of mace to be used against wild 800 pound apex predator assailants), metal poles, baseball bats, stun guns, sticks, brass knuckles, whips, barricades, fire extinguishers and the other implements used in the riot to inflict injuries — not “arms,” not weapons. Guns only are arms, and only a small number were confiscated by police after the riot, and nobody was shot to death by the rioters (and only a few more automatic rifles, high capacity clips, homemade napalm and a few bombs were found– outside, in trucks owned by rioters– which don’t count) so, by simple logic, there’s your proof — the crowd was not armed.And even if there were a few guns, nobody was shot, except one rioter climbing through a window (by police) so, therefore, the CROWD was not ARMED [1].
It is an asinine bit of reframing, sure. Though how foolish the reframing is to a given individual in post-Trump America will depend on what their definition of “is” is and the color of their hat.
Texas is in the grips of winter storms and freezing temperatures rarely seen in that part of the country. The demand on electricity to heat homes caused a massive power outage across the state. Millions of Texans are without power, some have already died and many are in real danger of freezing. The power outage appears to be the result of unregulated energy in the state, arranged that way by the great state of Texas to evade those nasty federal regulators. Areas of western Texas that are part of an interstate power grid that is federally regulated, lost power briefly and then had it restored. A hard set of facts for the anti-regulation/government bad crowd to counter.
The Trumpist governor of Texas announced that since wind powered generators failed in the extreme cold, it was proof of how deadly the New Green Deal would be, with its reliance on renewable sources of energy.
Nicely done. Unless you know that wind powered generators account for only 10% of electric power in Texas.
Perhaps the most sickening recent bit of reframing — earlier this month police were called to help a girl who was in emotional crisis. When they arrived the nine year-old was very upset. The Washington Post reported:
The mother of the 9-year-old Rochester, N.Y., girl who was handcuffed and pepper-sprayed by police said Wednesday that she repeatedly told an officer that her daughter was having a mental health breakdown and she pleaded with them to call a specialist instead of trying to detain her.
The police did what they are trained to do — gave chase, ordered her on to the ground, subdued her, hand-cuffed her, pepper sprayed her (to calm her down), hustled her into a police car. She kept resisting. Here is the exchange between the child and one of the police officers, reframing to beat the band. The child has a better argument here, but that “stop acting like a child!” was a nifty bit of on-the-fly reframing by the police officer:
[1]
Others were armed during the riot: A police officer said he noticed a bulge on the hip of Christopher Alberts – who was dressed in body armor and carrying a gas mask – as he filed out of the Capitol grounds, according to court records. When they stopped him, they found a loaded handgun. Alberts’ lawyer did not respond to questions about the case.
I wrote two long versions of this the last two days, assessing the painful one-sided travesty that resulted in a jury that included the 45th president’s co-conspirators (Hawley, Cruz, Graham, Lee, Tubaveale among the most vocal) voting, on a disputed, minority-embraced technicality, to acquit a president they helped to organize and incite an insurrection against the government.
Two things the angry pro-Trump mob chanted during the ransacking of the Capitol that I don’t necessarily disagree with — “Treason!” (yes, it was) and “Hang Mike Pence!” (I’m never in favor of political murder, but if some sacrificial lamb has to go, why not the already soul-dead religious bigot Mr. Pence?) [1].
I realize now, fittingly on Presidents’ Day, that it’s time to look forward, to always frame things in the positive, from our perspective, what we concerned citizens need to do to fix a broken democracy, not from the incendiary and intentionally crippling perspective of modern day Nazis. The immediate future includes criminal conspiracy prosecutions of violent criminals (and ethics investigations of those in Congress who continue — they persist, even now — to shill for the soundly disproven Big Lie about a “stolen” election Trump and his party unsuccessfully tried to rig) and changes to the law to allow actual fair trials in future impeachments and similar Congressional investigations.
First, a palette cleanser, from E. J. Dionne (in an op-ed in yesterday’s Bezos, er, Washington Post) for a bit of perspective:
Don’t waste time mourning the Senate’s failure to convict Donald Trump for crimes so dramatically and painstakingly proven by the House impeachment managers. The cowardice of the vast majority of Republican senators was both predicted and predictable.
Instead, ponder how to build on the genuine achievements. Led with extraordinary grace by Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a diverse and able group of prosecutors laid out an indelible record not only of what happened on Jan. 6 and why, but also Trump’s irresponsibility throughout his term of office: his courting of the violent far right; his celebration of violence; his habit of privileging himself and his own interests over everything and everyone else, including his unrequitedly loyal vice president.
This record matters. We often like to pretend that we can move on and forget the past. But our judgments about the past inevitably shape our future. Every political era is, in part, a reaction to the failures — perceived and real — of the previous one. The Hoover-Coolidge Republicans loomed large for two generations of Democrats. Ronald Reagan built a thriving movement by calling out what he successfully cast as the sins of liberalism.
By tying themselves to Trump with their votes, most House and Senate Republicans made themselves complicit in his behavior. And Trump will prove to be even more of an albatross than Hoover, who, after all, had a moral core.
Given the chance to cast a vote making clear that what Trump did was reprehensible, only seven Republicans in the Senate and 10 in the House took the opportunity to do so.
You can tell how worried Republicans are that they are now the Trump Party by the contortions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who aided Trump almost to the end. Rarely has a politician been more blatant in attempting the impossible feat of running with the foxes and hunting with the hounds.
Moments after voting to let Trump off — “on a technicality,” as Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas shrewdly observed about many GOP “not guilty” votes justified by anything and everything but the question of guilt itself — McConnell blistered the inciter in chief in a speech the impeachment managers could have written.
His words told the world who won the argument. They also underscored how wrenching it will be for Republican politicians to appease the GOP’s Trump-supporting majority while pretending to be another party altogether.
The fact that only seven Senate Republicans bolted should end the absurd talk that there is a burden on President Biden to achieve a bipartisan nirvana in Washington. If most Republicans can’t even admit that what Trump did is worthy of impeachment, how can anyone imagine that they would be willing and trustworthy governing partners?
The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.
The case for ending the filibuster is now overwhelming. There are not 10 Republican Senate votes to be had on anything that really matters.
Free speech is our right as Americans, but, at this point, so is shutting off noise that makes free thought and informed debate impossible. We don’t need to endlessly give oxygen to demented theories endlessly repeated by our agitated mass media. No reason to waste energy further debunking the lies of a party that unites behind Big Lies that are shown to be false over and over and over and that have proven to lead to violence and mayhem. Nobody cares, those who drank Trump’s/GOP’s insane kool-aid have shown they will swallow anything. The Jews did it, fine, we did it, now let’s move forward.
If Democrats do the only sane and practical thing and end the filibuster, which has been used (since its creation by slavery advocate John C. Calhoun three decades before the Civil War) overwhelmingly to support slavery (fake, there was never slavery here! LIAR! Jew!) and racism (only Black people and radical Jews perpetuate that lie!!! Anti-lynching laws blocked by filibuster were attempts at COMMUNISM!!!) they can pass laws favored by the vast majority of Americans. Here’s a short list.
Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, making it easier for people to vote, as a right of citizenship, and much harder for Republican state apparatuses to continue violating the Voting Rights Act in the name of suppressing the majority vote, which they frame as a “privilege” only their side is fully entitled to.
Use actual scientific knowledge to fight the pandemic and give financial relief to millions of Americans who are in desperate situations.
Get busy doing everything possible to slow the hastening destruction of the earth.
Nominate five or more “moderate” Supreme Court justices and confirm them with as much bipartisan support as is available.
Stop aiding foreign despots in genocide (our billionaire Saudi “allies” are mass murdering Yemeni people in the poorest country in their region).
Restore faith in the rule of law by enforcing the law against powerful serial scofflaws like several criminal associates pardoned by our criminal former president (“Mr.” Trump must now be prosecuted for leading the well-financed “collusion” to overthrow an election) guys like Roger Stone and the always innocent Mike Flynn, who called for violence and actively participated in the planning and promotion of the riot and (in the case of self-proclaimed rat-fucker Stone) whose phalanx of Oath Keeper bodyguards all took part in breaking into the Capitol (as the NY Times documented yesterday).
Free OJ and exonerate him (sorry, couldn’t help myself… trying to be bipartisan. How did Trump miss this layup? Why is Bill Cosby still languishing in prison? Oh yeah, Trump is the least racist person in the world.)
and so forth.
And here’s an important concrete suggestion, from former federal prosecutor/justice activist Glenn Kirschner — create an Inter-branch Dispute Court [2].Here is why this idea is a crucial step toward actual justice and enforcing a true democracy-protecting balance of powers, as intended by the sainted Framers.There was, sadly, a strong argument for the seeming resigned, weak-kneed capitulation of Democrats on the issue of calling fact witnesses to disprove transparent lies told by Trump’s defense team about crucial facts that established Trump’s guilt — the interminable delays caused by the slowness of adjudications by federal courts.
When Robert Mueller interviewed former White House Counsel (and weasel-dicked Conservative operative) Don McGahn, McGahn admitted, under penalty of perjury, that Trump asked him first to fire Mueller, and then, after he refused because it could be seen as part of an ongoing pattern of Trump’s obstruction of justice, to write a memorandum for the record falsely stating that Trump had never asked him to fire Mueller. Erring on the side of staying out of prison, McGahn left the White House (after successfully installing Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court) and returned to private practice.
McGahn was subpoenaed by the House to testify to this effect, on live TV, in connection to Trump’s first impeachment. Had McGahn (and others who swore to damning facts in Mueller’s Obstruction of Justice volume II) been allowed to testify, the House surely would have drafted an article for Obstruction of Justice, backed by the eye-witness testimony of those asked by Trump to “collude” in making the Mueller thing go away, as he had tried to make the Flynn/Russia thing go away by firing Comey. It would have been hard, with that sworn, live testimony, for even today’s GOP to unanimously (thanks, Mitt, I didn’t forget your historic guilty vote on one count) acquit their leader, even at the no witness, evidence-free first impeachment trial.
McGahn had the politically unpalatable (for him) option to appear before the Congressional committee, and likely the legal obligation to testify, but McGahn chose to fight the subpoena in court, one of several such decisions by prominent present and former Trump officials to defy/contest subpoenas during the Trump term. McGahn v. Congressional Cucktards was filed in federal court in 2019. The matter has still not been decided.
As angry as I was Saturday that Democrats didn’t pause the trial and get testimony from former Trump aides present with him during his absorption in the riot on live TV, testimony that would have made an airtight case that Trump didn’t care how many police officers and other people had to die when his Stop the Steal riot was going on, I grasp one aspect of their hesitation. While in office Trump ordered subordinates to defy 130 lawful subpoenas, under Barr’s inspired suggestion he assert a ridiculous pre-emptive blanket immunity against anything that could tend to incriminate or compromise the Unitary Executive. His remaining loyalists, like Kevin McCarthy, who had already said he would not testify voluntarily, would certainly fight a subpoena, as his team does now by reflex.
Trump was never held accountable for that open violation of the law under color of Barr’s absurd theory of absolute Executive branch authority. One reason the issue was never decided is is that federal courts are overwhelmed, even essential cases of great public consequence move lethargically. Another reason is that if you manage to run out the two year clock on a Congressional subpoena, as McGahn, John Bolton and other “patriots” did, the question of defying the subpoena expires too, when that Congress ends, the subpoena is no longer valid. The “case” becomes moot, as they say.
When there is a dispute between the Executive Branch, insisting on its Article II supremacy, and Congress, enforcing its legitimate Article I powers, that dispute must go to a court that can immediately rule on the question of vital national concern expeditiously. Glenn Kirschner outlines how this dedicated court would work:
McGahn refuses to testify, based on an asserted presidential privilege. McGahn sends the legal arguments for his refusal to obey a lawful Congressional subpoena to the IDC. The Court gives Congress 72 hours to respond, they file an answer. The court then has 72 hours to make a ruling. Instead of a two-year wait for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to appear as a hostile witness, admit that he had a shouting match with Trump during the riot and that Trump said at one point “Well, Kevin, obviously there are people a lot more upset about this stolen election than you are, bitch…” the wait is less than two weeks. Impeachment trial adjourned for the ruling of the IDC and the inevitable Supreme Court challenge (which would be fast tracked, as in the instant overnight vacating of stays that sought to prevent the execution of federal death row inmates Trump was intent on killing). McCarthy then testifies, under penalty of perjury, and we learn the truth about a matter crucial to all of us, as the rule of law should have it.
Instead, because of the practical impossibility of enforcing Congressional subpoena power, impartial jurors Graham, Cruz and Lee are free to openly strategize with Trump’s defense team on the eve of their (angry, incoherent, false) closing arguments and Lyin’ Ted is free to visit Trump’s legal team during breaks in the trial itself, right up to the acquittal.
There are ways for people of good will to fix some of the fatal weaknesses Trump’s lawless reign exposed. Now we have to get busy doing it. La lucha continua! Let’s get busy, and be of good cheer!
[1]
And, talk about unfailing, obsequious loyalty, nobody, NOBODY, showed this more than Mike “I’m NOT a Fag!!!” Pence. You can see him standing behind the president every time Trump made an outrageous claim, his face a solemn mask of moral neutrality, conveying a certain zombie-like fealty to his master at the same time. Pence passionately defended his insane boss at every turn. When others quit, went to the media with accounts of Trump’s insanity, Pence made speeches praising Trump. He defended indefensible statements and actions, over and over, proudly. His reward for this doglike fidelity?
An angry crowd, dispatched by Trump, calling to hang him for betraying them by not breaking the law. Learning how Trump actually felt about him and Karen. When Trump learned they hadn’t yet strung up the traitor Pence, he sent another rage tweet (ten minutes later) that was immediately read aloud through a bullhorn, repeating Trump’s opinion that Mike Pence lacked courage, had not stopped the steal and, arguably, deserved whatever happened to the weak fuck.
Trump made it clear to coach/senator Tommy Fucking Tuberville, in their phone call that ended after Pence was hustled out of the Senate, that Pence’s life meant nothing to him. He also told House Minority Leader and expert bootlicker Kevin McCarthy that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the riot, or dead and wounded cops, that Pence was as dead to him as Sessions, Barr, Bolton, Bannon, McMaster, Tillerson, Mulvaney, Liz and Dick Cheney, that the important thing was to continue to Stop the Steal. Poor Mike Pence!
[2]
[00:59:17] To deal with, for example, interbranch disputes between Congress and the executive branch, so Congress issues a subpoena for testimony in an impeachment hearing, the executive branch says, nope, you can’t have that witness. Well, you know what you do? You go to the interbranch dispute, caught the eye, BDC and you get 72 hours to file your brief. You get another 72 hours to prepare and conduct your oral argument, and then you’re going to have a court opinion in another 72 hours.
[00:59:52] Was that nine days? If I can count, I don’t have my calculator. You want to appeal that decision? 72, 72, 72. Now, in less than a month, you’ve got an appellate court opinion and it’s been all but definitively resolved because you could still go to the Supreme Court. But what you have done is you’ve taken out the endless Don Meghann year and a half delay to run out the clock. The interbranch dispute caught folks it’s imminently doable.
[01:00:19] Donald Trump has opened our eyes to all of the problems, all of the deficiencies, all of the areas for abuse, right where they’ve wiggled into the cracks in our system and they’ve engaged in their abuse in those cracks and they’ve just blown them out into chasms, chasms of abuse and corruption and crime. By Donald Trump and his cabinet members and his family, and they’ve exposed they’ve exposed the weaknesses in our government, in our republic, in our democracy and our institutions.
Few people realize that in addition to being a world class bagpiper and a former two-time Attorney General, Bill Barr is also a gifted stand up comedian. I just wonder if he still finds this particular bit as hilarious as he did when he tried it out for the Federalist Society last year.
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