De-escalation is for Losers, according to Winners

If he wasn’t so destructive it would be tempting to feel sorry for him. That can be said for many angry, tyrannical, violent people, and it applies to our president, of course. Raised in a home where his ruthless and lawless father taught him that only “winning” matters, he never really had a chance not to be warped the way he was. Still, I’m not tempted to feel sorry for him. Not every abuse victim grows up to double down on abuse as an adult. Those who insist on their right to abuse others deserve our scorn.

This type sees every conflict as a zero-sum game to be won or shamefully lost. My father, an infant victim of vicious abuse, came to see the world this way, but deeply regretted the life-crimping idiocy of that view as he was dying.

Only in sports, where a neutral party keeps score, enforces rules of fair play and the team with the higher score beats the other team, does winning and losing in the strict sense actually come into play. The team that loses is not regarded by the victors as “losers” unless the winning team is composed of immature jerks. The rest of the uses of “winner” and “loser” are metaphorical and used to justify exploitative behavior by zero-sum thinkers, people too stunted to see the world otherwise.

At the same time, of course, there are winners and losers in every negotiation, victims and beneficiaries of every law. Every time the super-wealthy get another tax break, they win, the public’s ability to pay for programs and maintain infrastructure loses. Every time a court rules that private parties can be as homophobic as they like in conducting their business — a win for homophobes, a bitter day for homosexuals and their friends. Whenever an unarmed person is killed by police and an investigation determines the killing was justifiable– somebody wins and the family of the dead person (and society at large) loses again– and has their noses rubbed in their “loss”. There are countless examples of this kind of shit, which some call injustice, but that doesn’t mean the world, or nature, actually works in this smash ’em in the fucking face and WIN! way. It is a construction favored by authoritarian types.

Every sustainable system requires some give and take, cooperation and compromise always leads to better results than zero-sum warfare. Cooperative systems do not view things in absolute terms — that one party wins everything, the other must lose everything. Seeing things as win-win is for LOSERS, according to those who believe the world is composed of winners and losers. Like I wrote at the top, you could feel sorry for this type if they weren’t such ruthless, destructive fuckers.

Their approach to conflict is to dominate. You dominate people who work for you, dominate the news cycle, you dominate protests in the street, dominate the news about the protests in the street. You escalate conflict constantly, to prove your strength (which you always doubt and so must continue to prove). You provoke confrontations to demonstrate that you are capable of using more violence than the other side.

I recognize this idiocy from my senseless childhood battles with an adult who waited almost fifty years to realize he was wrong for framing everything as a war. When we’re upset we need somebody to de-escalate the situation, not enflame things by framing it as another instance of a war we are going to lose. Even as a very young boy, I understood this, was dismayed that my hurt was always quickly recast as irrational anger. If I wasn’t angry before, I was once I was angrily accused of being angry. And so it goes.

It’s now common to call the recasting of legitimate feelings as crazy delusions “gaslighting,” though I always still think of it as reframing. As the Kenosha sheriff said the other day about the people murdered by a 17 year-old from out of state who came to “police” the protest over the Jacob Blake shooting, a kid in illegal possession of a deadly long gun; if they had obeyed the curfew, they wouldn’t have been killed.

See what he did? Now we’re talking about lawbreakers, and maybe they shouldn’t have been killed, but clearly, they shouldn’t have been on the street after dark, openly violating the curfew. Not saying it was their fault, but if they’d obeyed the law they’d still be alive.

When people with a legitimate grievance, protesting legally, are met by a display of unyielding state violence — the outcome is not hard to predict. Maybe instead of “defund the police” the call should be more explicit:

De-escalate!

recruit police who are prone to de-escalate, mediate, problem solve, change the culture, send police out to emergencies with people trained in these things. Make violence a last, not first, resort.

When police show up where somebody is upset, acting crazy, if they have no training in how to de-escalate the situation, they will use the only tools they have and it is likely that someone will get hurt. A person who doesn’t need to die will often lose their life in this situation [1].

It’s a very weak definition of “Law and Order” to insist that a naked man acting irrationally is justifiably killed by police who inform him to lay face down on the ground. He disobeyed a direct order: subdue him, choke him, shoot him if necessary.

The police are not trained to de-escalate these situations. They should be. There is nothing weak about someone with the power to kill you instead calming you down, protecting you.

[1]

These killings of citizens by police are so common (contrary to Bill Barr’s lying assertion that “only seven” unarmed blacks died at the hands of police last year) that most of them don’t even make the news:

In Arizona, body-camera and surveillance footage released Tuesday show Phoenix police officers held a man on the hot asphalt for nearly six minutes before he died in the back of a police car earlier this month. Twenty-eight-year-old Ramon Timothy Lopez was apprehended on August 4, chased and tackled to the ground by one of the officers. Two others later arrived on the scene. After pressing him into the scorching hot pavement for six minutes, Lopez was lifted and placed in the back of a police car, where he was later found unresponsive. Photographs revealed his skin was covered in burns.

source

When I mentioned this story to a friend she asked me what the guy had done. I have no idea, but I whatever was doing — how does it justify what they did to him — killing him without a trial by burning him and suffocating him on the hot pavement? Depraved indifference to human life, at best.

Trump and Barr’s proof of massive mail-in voting fraud — or not

Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her most recent nightly Letter from an American:

He [AG Barr, interviewed on CNN] said that hostile foreign powers could send thousands of mail-in ballots to this year’s election, creating massive voter fraud. When pressed, Barr admitted there was no evidence for such a claim. The U.S. Intelligence Community has no evidence that foreign countries are trying to manipulate mail-in ballots. [Heather, this would be a great place to include a sentence on Republican “evidence” submitted in federal court two weeks ago]

Trump is also continuing his attacks on mail-in votes, insisting they will usher in voter fraud despite their widespread previous use that showed no evidence of fraud, and despite the fact that the president himself votes by mail. [or here]

Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and the Republican National Committee, in compliance with the federal judge’s order, submitted documentary proof of massive vote by mail fraud (or stated that they had no proof) in Trump’s federal case against the State of Pennsylvania, Trump v. Boockvar. Rather than citing Barr’s admission, when pressed by an interviewer, that there is no evidence for such a claim, why not look at the filing by Plaintiffs in the federal court in Western Pennsylvania? Did they submit evidence or, as the judge ordered, did they state they had none, as the judge ordered them to do if they had none?

Americans are simply not being told anything about this “put up or shut up” moment in a federal lawsuit brought to limit voting by a party that has become used to making incendiary claims without evidence of any kind.

On the bright side, we are told today that Mr. Trump will cut through all the Deep State red tape and cure COVID-19 by November 1, or kill countless Americans trying an untested vaccine or vaccines. Either way, victory Donald!

I need to send the facts of Trump v. Boockvar to Bill Moyers and Janine Jackson at FAIR. How can it be that nobody is reporting on Trump’s non-existent evidence of voter fraud in a federal lawsuit about the immediate (and longer term) future of democracy? WTF?

UNFAIR!

The implausible storyline the president is pushing:

It was so unfair for the mayor of Kenosha to announce that the president was not welcome in his city in the aftermath of a police shooting (in the back, seven times) of an unarmed man getting into a car with his three children, and understandable deadly violence from a peace and president supporting white kid a few nights later. The president!! Not welcome! Unfair for the governor of Wisconsin to second the mayor of Wisconsin’s hostile announcement.

Unfair for people to assume that the police officer who shot the 29 year-old had any kind of bad motive until William Barr fully investigates the shooting — especially the criminal history of the so-called “victim.” Unfair for that decent young white kid Kyle to be attacked by a mob of thugs without having a chance to defend himself. Unfair that the real victims never get the chance to be considered innocent until proven guilty, while the real sick, dangerous, violent criminals are allowed to run free, because of politics and “political correctness.” Unfair that loyal Mike Flynn still faces “justice.”

Unfair that politically motivated hacks keep bringing up the now 185,000 dead Americans allegedly killed by a pandemic that the president has already done everything in anyone’s power to get under control — while “Democrat” governors and mayors of cities like Sodom and Gomorrah whine and try to blame the president, and Jared, and Pence for their own miserable failure. If it’s anybody’s fault, blame Pence! So unfair. Yeah, I know “National Emergency.” Not my fault. Unfair to blame me– it’s the DEMOCRATS, those communist agents who only want to destroy.

Unfair if I lose the upcoming election. There will be a bloodbath if I “lose” and the only way I can is if the election is rigged. If I “lose” the election is rigged. Only a rigged election can cause my hugely successful presidency to be fraudulently ended. Unfair. The Democrats want to make it easier to vote, just so they can point to all those fake ballots and claim they won. Blood on the streets, I promise you, boys and girls, if, God forbid, their evil plan goes forward. Ask my loyal followers, they will not stand for it. Do you think that 600 truck caravan of my supporters pepper spraying and paint-balling Godless traitors in Portland was a joke? He who laughs last, laughs best, losers.

The Extreme Right Never Sleeps — Thousand Year Reich edition

In response to the pandemic, Pennsylvania made it easier for citizens to vote for president without going to polling places in person. In person voting is the preferred method for pandemic deniers to cast their votes, polls show. Pandemic deniers tend to be followers of the president who brilliantly handled the virus already, though his enemies keep snarkily pointing to the 1,000 Americans a day still dying from it, the “six million” who have allegedly been infected to date. A majority of Democratic voters appear to favor mail-in voting. So keeping down the number of votes cast by mail would appear to be the key to Trump winning the 20 electoral college votes of a battleground state he won by a fabulously slim 0.7% mandate in 2016– as well as every other state where it could be close.

Naturally, when they heard Pennsylvania was making it easier for absentee ballots to be cast, Trump and the RNC cried foul, fraud, unconstitutional, illegal, shameful, shameless, bloody murder, coup d’etat etc. They filed a federal lawsuit to stop it on June 29, 2020. You can see the history of this unreported on lawsuit and read all the filings in the case by clicking HERE.

The judge in that case, a Trump appointee named J. Nicholas Ranjan, ordered Plaintiffs to produce evidence of their claims of vote-by-mail fraud or state that they had no evidence. Donald J. Trump for President and the RNC were not deterred, apparently submitting 524 pages of clippings from Breitbart and FOX news, pages containing many accusations of shameless, massive electoral fraud but no proof of anything. After the judge stayed the case until October 5 for Pennsylvania courts to decide state law claims, Trump’s lawyers, on Friday, filed a request for a preliminary injunction– to prevent irreparable harm to the Trump campaign. It reads in part:

Without this relief, Defendants could begin irreversibly commingling potentially illegally cast ballots with other ballots from mid-to-late September 2020. Therefore, to prevent irreparable, constitutional harm to them and their fundamental rights, including without limitation their right to free, fair, and honest elections, and to preserve the ability to obtain an accurate count of the validly cast ballots in the November 3, 3030 General Election if this Court or any other court determines that any such ballots have been illegally cast, Plaintiffs ask this Court to modify the stay in its August 23, 2020 Order (ECF # 410) to provide for limited, preliminary injunctive relief and to modify the stay lifting date from October 5, 2020 to September 14, 2020.

Let’s run a bit of that back, because my “punchline” is embedded in legalese and is easy to miss.

…their right to free, fair, and honest elections, and to preserve the ability to obtain an accurate count of the validly cast ballots in the November 3, 3030 General Election

Trump’s motion was submitted with a glaring typo that refers to an election 1,010 years in the future, indicating either sloppiness in preparing the hurried application for emergency relief — or a more sinister intent to retain power by contesting election results for the next thousand years.

The second theory makes sense, from a poetic, non-evidence based point of view. Hitler and the original Nazis often vowed that their racially pure reign would be “The Thousand Year Reich.” Their administration was in power twelve years before self-destructing, as any regime based on hatred, rage, brutality and mass murder ultimately must destroy itself. Still, there are shades of so many of the original Nazi beliefs and techniques among Mr. Trump’s hard core of personally loyal party of the Leader zealots, haters and scofflaws, that it’s no surprise their lawyers made this Freudian slip.

Now if only the national news media would report on this crucial election case! Drawing attention to the president’s Twitter endorsement of truckloads of armed men driving in a caravan to violently confront protesters in Portland is important — but so is this federal case about how actual votes will actually be legally cast in 2020.

Fascists and their followers are capable of anything, have no shame, and they never sleep; neither can the rest of us, until our imperfect but crucial democracy is protected.

Hatch Act Violations? NOTHING TO SEE HERE!

The analysis below is from Janine Jackson’s excellent Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) podcast CounterSpin. For starters, though, do you think flagrantly violating the 1939 Hatch Act (it is unlawful to use the trappings of the office you hold to campaign for re-election) is nothing more than a violation of the The Emoluments Clause or harmless Abuses of Power or Obstruction of Congress? Here’s Janine:

… Al Gore was accused of violating the Hatch Act for making campaign fundraising phone calls from his White House office as vice president. The New York Times editorial page (3/5/97) called for an independent counsel to launch a major investigation; the House spent $7 million investigating, and the Senate held three months of hearings.

Here is her whole piece:

After the spectacle of a Democratic National Convention featuring more Republicans than Latinos, Americans got a Republican Convention featuring—to pick just one thing— gleeful violations of the Hatch Act. That’s the law that prohibits federal employees from taking part in partisan political activities. So, things like having the Secretary of State make a campaign speech from Jerusalem, where they’re engaged on state business, or the first lady stumping with the White House Rose Garden as backdrop, or the head of Homeland Security performing a naturalization ceremony, with Trump looking on, as part of the convention—all patently illegal and unethical.

USA Today: 'The rules go out the window': Democrats deride RNC over Hatch Act, coronavirus and transgender issues

USA Today (8/26/20) framed the Trump campaign’s flagrant violation of laws against the use of the Executive Branch for political purposes as a partisan disagreement.

But besides framing it as “many Democrats were outraged,” as did USA Today (8/26/20), elite media normalized the behavior with passivity, like the New York Times headline (8/26/20), pointed out by Eric Boehlert in his newsletter Press Run (8/27/20), “At RNC, Trump Uses Tools of Presidency in Aim to Broaden Appeal.” 

The same press corps for whom this is just “oh there he goes, breaking with precedent again,” had a very different response, Boehlert reminds, when Al Gore was accused of violating the Hatch Act for making campaign fundraising phone calls from his White House office as vice president. The New York Times editorial page (3/5/97) called for an independent counsel to launch a major investigation; the House spent $7 million investigating, and the Senate held three months of hearings.

But Trump, he’s just “using the tools of presidency” (or he “leverages powers of office,” as an updated version of the headline read).

NYT: TikTok, Trump and an Impulse to Act as C.E.O. to Corporate America

For the New York Times (8/3/20), Trump threatening to ban a company based on the nationality of its owners, and then demanding a cut of any resulting forced sale, is simply an “impulse to act as CEO” that his “predecessors would have avoided.”

It evokes another recent Times headline, when Trump was threatening to ban the app TikTok, explicitly because of its “Chinese ownership”—or else, he said, it could get taken over by Microsoft, in which case the US Treasury should get a cut since it was his threat that made the sale possible? The BBC, with restraint, called that “almost Mafia-like behavior,” but, as Dan Froomkin of Press Watch spotlighted (Twitter, 8/4/20), the New York Times (8/3/20) described it in a headline as Trump’s “Impulse to Act as CEO to Corporate America”—his “interventions in company dealings based on his own instincts” being, you guessed it, “a departure” from the “approach of predecessors.” 

Elite journalists are no doubt clearing their shelves for the awards they expect to win for the fearless and high-minded excoriations of the Trump presidency they will write…when it’s over. Too bad they can’t muster up that courage while it matters.

New York City Subway Car

I’ve been lucky enough, during this pandemic, to be locked down with Sekhnet at her little farm, in a neighborhood of lower density than my place in Manhattan. It’s actually a short walk from here to where Fred Trump’s mansion was, where little Donald grew up to be the great man he is today.

Here, unlike in the more urban parts of New York City, you can walk on tree-lined streets and easily avoid contact with the few others also out walking. It seems a bit safer here, in this much lower density area, taking precautions and waiting for the Second Wave the experts predict for flu season. We’re taking all reasonable precautions — isolation, N95 masks when out in public, frequent hand washing — even though several speakers at the RNC made it clear– to their base, at least — that the Leader has eradicated the pandemic in the USA in an amazing and praiseworthy fashion that only the deranged can’t see.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I took the subway for the first time in months, to meet Sekhnet and a friend at one of our favorite vegetarian restaurants in Manhattan. We ate under a tent on lower First Avenue. The condition of the subway car (which I caught at the first stop) was amazing. It was actually gleaming.