Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[pilowsky]

Barr is a sh*thole lawyer who should have been practicing law in a sh*thole country. His reputation is set in a pile of methane producing cow manure.

 

Tell us what you really think.

No need to beat around the bush.

[y66]

Well, just skeptical.

 

Ok, maybe I will try to explain.

 

 

The reference to "clowns" sounds to me like something where he hopes to be able to say "Boy oh boy, the chips were down and I really stood up for what was right. I'm really a tough guy". That's what I was getting at with my reference to an uncle and a friend's father. Listening to them was always listening to someone who was really really tough. If you believed their account of what happened.

 

I gather there were witnesses to this so maybe it happened as told. Or maybe not. Mostly it sounded like a guy trying to show what a heroic tough stance he took. Guys do this. Not all guys, but we have all known some.

 

A guy who knows who he is would simply say "This is what I did and why I did it" and leave it at that.

I can't read. I mistook your meaning as skepticism about the accuracy of Karl's story. Thanks for the clarification.

[Winstonm]

Barr is a sh*thole lawyer who should have been practicing law in a sh*thole country. His reputation is set in a pile of methane producing cow manure.

Take out ‘a’ , ‘hole’, and ‘lawyer’ and you’ve got more accuracy

[pilowsky]

and, as we say in Australia, "you can't polish a turd"

[y66]

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-29/who-really-wants-to-defund-the-police?sref=UHfKDqx7

 

Okay, I’m cranky again. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki argued during her briefing that Democrats have supported police departments and that Republicans are the ones who have actually defunded them. The reality is complicated; in fact, this is probably a topic that would demonstrate the limits of fact-checking, because both parties could make reasonable arguments.

 

It’s true that some activists, including a small number of Democratic politicians, support the abolition of police departments. A much larger group of activists and politicians has advocated for something called defunding the police, but that has in context meant a variety of things, some relatively radical and some not at all. On the other hand, as Psaki pointed out, Democrats in Congress have recently secured massive amounts of funding for state and local governments, over Republican objections, with a fair amount of that money specifically intended for local police departments that pandemic-strapped cities couldn’t afford.

 

So why am I cranky? Certainly not because politicians spin; I expect both parties to make their strongest case, deploy facts selectively and stretch the truth. No, I’m cranky because Republicans reacted to Psaki with ... I don’t quite know how to describe it. Outrage? Disbelief? They’re just incredulous that Democrats could consider their support for directing federal funds to local police departments — and Republican opposition to those efforts — relevant to the question of defunding the police. They aren’t claiming that the money didn’t actually go to the police; they just seem to consider “defunding the police” a sort of metaphysical position that has nothing to do with actual police-department budgets. Sure, symbolic politics can be important, but here symbolism is blocking out everything else.

 

All of this is, to be sure, related to the Republican Party’s difficulty in fashioning public policy. It’s also related to the Republican war on budgeting; having classified aid to state and local governments during the pandemic-induced recession as some sort of boondoggle intended to support Democratic politicians (even though the aid is flowing to states, counties and cities led by officials from both parties), they seem incapable of treating it as actual money that can pay for officer salaries and other such expenses, or indeed for any number of mundane things that governments do. In other words, funding they oppose is, by definition, waste. (There are Democrats who feel that way about military spending, but most of them understand that such funding actually pays for real military functions, even if they oppose some of those functions.)

 

At any rate, Michelle Goldberg has a nice column that touches on similar themes but in a different policy area — the quasi-fight over critical race theory. In both cases, there’s a reasonable argument to be had, but Republicans aren’t holding up their side of the dispute. Instead of specifying what they oppose and coming up with policies that would address it, they’re playing word games, followed in some cases with nonsense legislation that doesn’t address what’s happening in reality. This kind of rejection of real-world questions makes both meaningful politics and effective policy difficult.

 

And that makes me cranky.

[kenberg]

The Bernstein article has a link to another article, which has links to other articles, which have links to other articles. This could become a research project.

[Winstonm]

The Bernstein article has a link to another article, which has links to other articles, which have links to other articles. This could become a research project.

Does that make you cranky?

[kenberg]

Does that make you cranky?

 

I think interested but cautious might be the right description. There is a lot, my guess is I would disagree with a fair amount of it, but still it could be of interest. It looks like work.

 

But I might get cranky.

[Winstonm]

Give me that old time indictment

Give me that old tax indictment

Give me that old time indictment

It's good enough for me

 

It was good for Al and Nitty

It was good for Al and Nitty

It was good for Al and Nitty

and it's good enough for me

[y66]

There’s a new edition of C-SPAN’s historical presidential rankings, with the headline, I suppose, that the experts involved — academic and popular historians, with a couple of political scientists and some others thrown in — rank Donald Trump 41st of the 44 presidents. (Joe Biden is not included; Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve nonconsecutive terms, counts once in this exercise.) That’s higher than I would rank him, although the bottom three in this survey, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan, are all legitimate contenders for the title of worst president in American history.

 

Beyond Trump, there’s nothing notable about this particular survey. John Kennedy, at #8, continues to be ranked improbably high. Ulysses Grant, #16, continues to climb from where he was unjustly placed during the 20th century, and Woodrow Wilson continues to lose ground, to the 13th spot, as fewer and fewer experts consider him great. Gerald Ford (28) is underrated; Jimmy Carter (26) is overrated. The exercise, I should point out, is at best a moderately fun diversion that may inspire people to learn more history and more about how the U.S. government works. At worst? It’s another way of reinforcing an excessively presidency-centric view of U.S. history and government. No one should take it too seriously.

 

But it’s not a bad way to raise questions about the presidency. The C-SPAN version asks experts to rate presidents on 10 aspects of the job, including public persuasion, crisis leadership, administrative skills and moral authority. What strikes me about the categories, especially in the light of the last few presidents, is the importance of one category that they do not include: managing the party coalition.

 

Some of that may be included in other categories; for example, especially in eras of partisan polarization, “relations with Congress” overlaps with party leadership. But it’s really something different.

 

One reason it’s so important is because it has a lot to do with what happens after a president leaves office. In a president’s final years in the White House, we talk a lot about legacy in terms of policies enacted, but a president’s real legacy is often about which groups have gained influence within the party and which have lost, and about the governing personnel whose careers have advanced during the presidency.

 

Failure in this sense can be seen for example in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who left his party relatively unprepared to govern in the future, with catastrophic effects on Bill Clinton’s first years in office. Clinton actually went out of his way to avoid hiring people from the Carter White House for his administration. But Barack Obama filled his administration with Clinton personnel, and Joe Biden has done the same with Obama personnel, allowing both presidents to hit the ground running.

 

It’s more than just personnel. Ronald Reagan strengthened the conservative movement, making subsequent Republican presidents, Congresses and state governments more aligned with conservative policy preferences. Clinton and Obama empowered women and previously marginalized ethnic groups, helping produce a more diverse party during Biden’s presidency. It works the other way, too; George H.W. Bush’s indifference to the party helped fuel the rise of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the tactical radicalism (and worse) that eventually eclipsed policy-oriented conservatism. Trump seems to have finished that job.

 

Of course, as with any other assessment of presidents, it’s important to remember that they are hardly all-powerful when it comes to the party; parties constrain presidents at least as much as presidents lead their parties. And the overall political context matters, too.

 

But a president who actively tries to influence the party has plenty of ability to do so, whether through personnel decisions or by steering resources to some groups and away from others. And whether, and how, they do that, can be one of the most important things that a president does in office.

Links omitted to reduce strain.

[kenberg]

Links omitted to reduce strain.

 

It's interesting to browse the rankings.

FDR is 3rd, TR is 4th. Two very different people with very different ideas.

And then Ike is 5th, Truman is 6th. Again, two very different people with very different ideas.

 

I was 6 when FDR died but as for Ike and Truman, I remember HST somewhat (the conflict with MacArthur for example) and definitely remember Ike. It was a time when I could wish the best for both a Republican president and with a Democrat president. I miss that.

 

Staying on a personal note: The first four presidents during my lifetime were FDR (3rd), then HST (6th), then Ike(5th), then JFK(8th). I have a generally positive view of the US. I suppose having four highly regarded presidents during my early years could have something to do with that. Of course none of them were perfect. But also they were not Trump.

 

Oh. And I went to MonroeHigh School. The pres, not the school, is ranked 12th. It's now called Global Arts Plus. This might be a symbol of something.

 

But as Bernstein says, we should not go overboard with making much out of these rankings.

[johnu]

GOP domestic terrorists 2nd amendment patriots are everywhere

 

11 'heavily armed men' claiming to 'not recognize our laws' in custody: Police

 

How charges against the Trump Organization could cramp Donald Trump's…

Why the Trump Organization indictment may be far less…

 

A bizarre incident unfolded Saturday morning in Wakefield, Massachusetts. According to local police: "During a motor vehicle stop, several heavily armed men claiming to be from a group that does not recognize our laws exited their vehicles and fled into the woodline" near Interstate Highway 95.

[hrothgar]

GOP domestic terrorists 2nd amendment patriots are everywhere

 

11 'heavily armed men' claiming to 'not recognize our laws' in custody: Police

 

So, this all happened a few miles away from where I live.

 

In this case, the whack-a-doodles are NOT a right wing militia; rather they are some kind of weird "Moorish" militia.

If you google "Rise of the Moors", you can find some truly bizarre stuff.

 

I didn't have the patience to try and make sense of much of it.

[kenberg]

So, this all happened a few miles away from where I live.

 

In this case, the whack-a-doodles are NOT a right wing militia; rather they are some kind of weird "Moorish" militia.

If you google "Rise of the Moors", you can find some truly bizarre stuff.

 

I didn't have the patience to try and make sense of much of it.

 

I did the google search and I completely agree with your last sentence. I like to think of myself as open to discussion on many topics but there are times when it is clear that there is no point in reading or listening to another word.

I accept that this can cut both ways, but that does not mean that there is no way to choose. I can be wrong but I am not a whack-a-doodle. Those guys are. And that's that.

 

 

 

[kenberg]

Ok, it's the 4th. Time to say a few words.

 

The NYT had an article, by Robert Gottlieb, about a book that I recall knowing of, but not reading, when I was young.

Inside America by John Gunthe in 1947.

It was still very popular a few years later when I was old enough to pay attention to such things.

The local library is getting it for me from a more distant library.

 

 

 

Here is part of Gottlieb's description of Gunther.

 

Gunther was born in Chicago in 1901, went to the University of Chicago and then on to The Chicago Daily News, where in 1924 he scored with an eyewitness report on the Teapot Dome — not the tremendous scandal but the actual place (in Wyoming), to which no previous journalist had bothered to go. ("Teapot Dome has no resemblance whatever to a teapot or a dome.") By the next year he was in London for The Daily News, and soon was darting around Europe on missions to Berlin, Moscow, Rome, Paris, Poland, Spain, the Balkans and Scandinavia, before being given the Vienna bureau. It was as if he had been in training for "Inside Europe."

 

He managed to find time to marry Frances Fineman, also a journalist, with whom he shared a very long and very tortured marriage, not helped by either her obsessive attachment to Jawaharlal Nehru or John's wandering eye. (One woman on whom his eye had rested was Rebecca West, who referred to him in a letter to a friend as that "young and massive Adonis with curly blond hair.") But his most important, if platonic, relationship with a woman was with the famous journalist Dorothy Thompson — hers was the other clarion voice alerting America to the perils to democracy, to civilization, from Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin. The close bond between these two "competitors" never slackened until Thompson's death, in 1961.

 

 

 

 

Apparently, the book is 900 pages long. I haven't done 900 pages since War and Peace was assigned in Humanities 1 all those years ago. But there is always a chance.

 

 

One of the things that makes it so alive is Gunther's curiosity about his own country; he knew Latin America, he knew Europe, he knew Asia, but he didn't know America. "The United States, like a cobra, lay before me, seductive, terrifying and immense," he wrote. "'Inside U.S.A.' was the hardest task I ever undertook." He was yet again an outsider, looking in. "Not only was I trying to write for the man from Mars; I was one."

 

I might like this.

 

Anyway, the weather is good, company is coming, enjoy the day.

[y66]

The world is smaller than we think. A building at the end of my street, three blocks away, was once the headquarters of the American Nazi Party. It's now a coffee shop.

[y66]

I enjoy @kdrum in cranky mode, but I wish he'd tried to sugarcoat this a little to persuade more people.

https://jabberwocking.com/if-you-hate-the-culture-wars-blame-liberals/

 

Now: maybe you're personally delighted by the Democratic Party's leftward march and maybe you're not. It doesn't matter. Despite endless hopeful invocations of "but polls show that people like our positions," the truth is that the Democratic Party has been pulled far enough left that even lots of non-crazy people find us just plain scary—something that Fox News takes vigorous advantage of. From an electoral point of view, the story here is consistent: Democrats have stoked the culture wars by getting more extreme on social issues and Republicans have used this to successfully cleave away a segment of both the non-college white vote and, more recently, the non-college nonwhite vote.

 

So why is it conventional wisdom to point to conservatives as "culture war mongers"? As I've mentioned before, it's a straightforward consequence of behavioral economics. For most people, losing something is far more painful than the pleasure of gaining something of equivalent value. And since conservatives are "losing" the customs and hierarchies that they've long lived with, their reaction is far more intense than the liberal reaction toward winning the changes they desire. This produces more outrageous behavior from conservatives even though liberals are actually the ur-source of polarization.

 

Here's the nickel summary of all this:

 

• Since 1994, Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right.
  
• This has produced lots of safe states in liberal places like California and Massachusetts but has steadily pulled Democrats farther and farther away from median states like Iowa and Ohio.
  
• Recently, white academic theories of racism—and probably the whole woke movement in general—have turned off many moderate Black and Hispanic voters.¹ Ditto for liberal dismissal of crime and safety issues. Hispanics in particular moved in Trump's direction despite—or maybe because of—his position on immigration and the wall.
  
• Democrats will remain on an electoral knife edge forever unless they can pull themselves back toward the center.
  

This is obviously not a popular proposal among the white activist class. But a dispassionate look at voting patterns hardly allows any other conclusion. Moving to the left may help galvanize the progressive base—which is good!—but if it's not done with empathy and tact it risks outrunning the vast middle part of the country, which progressive activists seem completely uninterested in talking to.

 

It is well within our power to break our two-decade 50-50 deadlock and become routine winners in national politics. All it takes is a moderation of our positions from "pretty far left" to "pretty liberal." That's all. But who's got the courage to say so?

 

¹And for God's sake, please don't insult my intelligence by pretending that wokeness and cancel culture are all just figments of the conservative imagination. Sure, they overreact to this stuff, but it really exists, it really is a liberal invention, and it really does make even moderate conservatives feel like their entire lives are being held up to a spotlight and found wanting.

[Winstonm]

The reason Hispanics moved Trumpward was his machismo matched their religious and cultural models. The same reasons the southern Baptist and other evangelicals are so strongly Trump.

 

¹And for God's sake, please don't insult my intelligence by pretending that wokeness and cancel culture are all just figments of the conservative imagination. Sure, they overreact to this stuff, but it really exists, it really is a liberal invention, and it really does make even moderate conservatives feel like their entire lives are being held up to a spotlight and found wanting.

 

It is difficult for me to stay focused on a reply as this is one of the most odious and objectionable paragraphs I have ever read.

 

In 1921 a young black shoeshiner was arrested in Tulsa, accused of an incident in a hotel elevator with the white girl who ran the elevator. Before sundown, a lynch mob had gathered outside the jail, demanding that the sheriff turn over the inmate to the mob. (This young man was totally exonerated later). A few WWI veterans who were also black armed themselves and came to stop the lynching. At some point shots rang out and people fled.

 

The next morning an army of white men attacked the black community, burning houses and killing families - an estimated 300 were killed - an entire community was burned to the ground.

 

No one was ever arrested or held accountable for the attack. The story of the massacre was never told or taught - it was hidden from public view for almost 100 years.

 

If the snowflake evangelicals can't handle being awakened to facts like this then let them burn in the hell of their own making. Being "woke" to truth is a good thing - it makes you deal with what is rather than what you want it to be. And that is called reality.

 

And reality is that being awakened to truth, aka "woke", is a good thing while shunning, aka "cancel culture", has been around since the middle ages - so don't try to claim these are inventions of the left.

 

To say these are inventions is to hype the dishonesty of people like Tucker Carlson.

[kenberg]

If someone were to ask "Ken, are you woke?" I would say "Oh, probably not". There are a lot of categories and questions that I try to avoid.

 

I found the Drum article interesting, I can be confident that I found it interesting. But am I woke? Beats me. I am certain that I don't watch Tucker Carlson. I have only a vague idea of who he is but I am certain that I don't watch him. But I am uncertain about whether I am or am not woke. That probably means that I am not. And I am ok with that, which probably is strong evidence that I am not woke.

 

 

Yes, that seems to be the logical conclusion, I am not woke.

[Winstonm]

 

In order to secure Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) vote to begin debate on the For The People Act — a sweeping voting rights, campaign finance, redistricting and ethics reform bill — Democratic Party leadership had to accommodate his views.

 

The For The People Act's voting rights provisions, largely written by the late Democratic congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis, set a national floor for state voting rules that would make it easier to vote. But in his compromise proposal, Manchin suggested that a national voter identification law be added to the bill.

 

 

 

I have no problem with this idea from Manchin. It gets down to the implementation. It seems natural to tie voter registration to the U.S. census and have the registration good for 10 years until the next census.

[Winstonm]

If someone were to ask "Ken, are you woke?" I would say "Oh, probably not". There are a lot of categories and questions that I try to avoid.

 

I found the Drum article interesting, I can be confident that I found it interesting. But am I woke? Beats me. I am certain that I don't watch Tucker Carlson. I have only a vague idea of who he is but I am certain that I don't watch him. But I am uncertain about whether I am or am not woke. That probably means that I am not. And I am ok with that, which probably is strong evidence that I am not woke.

 

 

Yes, that seems to be the logical conclusion, I am not woke.

 

But of course you are - don't you know? If you are not a slobbering, AR-15 toting, mask-disavowing Trump supporter you are "woke". Just ask Tucker. He hardly ever lies.

 

Don't you see? "Woke" and "cancel culture" are inventions of the left created in order to frame the right - a false flag, if you will - to make the patriotic, god-fearing we're always "right" look guilty of deceit and selfishness - when it is the communist left with their push for historical accuracy while shunning those who try to hide accuracy in tall tales who are the guilty. Time to storm the capitol! Kill! Kill!! Kill!!!

[kenberg]

But of course you are - don't you know? If you are not a slobbering, AR-15 toting, mask-disavowing Trump supporter you are "woke". Just ask Tucker. He hardly ever lies.

 

Don't you see? "Woke" and "cancel culture" are inventions of the left created in order to frame the right - a false flag, if you will - to make the patriotic, god-fearing we're always "right" look guilty of deceit and selfishness - when it is the communist left with their push for historical accuracy while shunning those who try to hide accuracy in tall tales who are the guilty. Time to storm the capitol! Kill! Kill!! Kill!!!

 

I think this is (part of) what Drum was getting at. There are a lot of us who favor various plans for expanding opportunity but who are not woke. The Dem leadership has to decide how to treat us.

 

I had not really thought of whether I was or was not woke, but I think I am not. It seems that if someone has woken, they would be aware that they have woken.

[barmar]

If the snowflake evangelicals can't handle being awakened to facts like this then let them burn in the hell of their own making. Being "woke" to truth is a good thing - it makes you deal with what is rather than what you want it to be. And that is called reality.

 

And reality is that being awakened to truth, aka "woke", is a good thing while shunning, aka "cancel culture", has been around since the middle ages - so don't try to claim these are inventions of the left.

 

To say these are inventions is to hype the dishonesty of people like Tucker Carlson.

I don't think that asking people to acknowledge the Tulsa massacre is the kind of "wokeness" that people object to. What bothers them are all the "holier than thou" attitudes. Also, when woke people patronize the groups that they're supposedly trying to support.

 

I think an example is the white people who campaign to get sports teams to change their names or mascots based on indigenous people because they consider them to be racist. They may be offensive, but in many cases those groups haven't actually taken much offense from them, and they never asked for anyone to change them. They're more interested in policies that help them financially than worrying about these minor slights.

 

On the other hand, many blacks are truly offended by the monuments to Confederate leaders. So the campaigns to remove them are not inappropriate wokeness. The same with Black Lives Matter, and transgender rights movements.

[pilowsky]

Let's try and do this as a syllogism.

It is a fact that some people believe that being a member of a particular ethnic group MEANS as a logical consequence that the person is better, smarter or more worthy than another person.

If a person believes this, then they are racist.

If they don't believe it, then they are not racist.

What if they don't believe it but also don't believe that anyone else believes it either? Such people are not 'woke'. They may also be racist - I don't know - I haven't met all of them.

I once met a Professor from Mississippi. At the time, he was one of the most revered scientists in the world. He told me that "on average black people were not as smart as white people".

This happened in 1986. Not woke and a racist. If he was asked to conduct an employment interview and two equally well-qualified people were candidates, I doubt the black woman would get the job.

I just checked. The Department website where he worked has a group photograph of 50 people. Three of them are black. Here are the population demographics for Mississippi:

Mississippi Demographics ~ White: 58%, Black or African American: 38%, Other: 14%.

In the continental USA Mississippi has the largest percentage of African-Americans of any state (2019 census).

Clearly, black people in Mississippi do NOT have the same opportunities to gain education and status in that part of America.

On the other side of the coin, when people learn that I am Jewish, I am commonly told that I should feel lucky because Jewish people are smarter.

Some people even believe that Jews are God's chosen people, which would be great if I wasn't an atheist.

Places where this particular form of racism does not occur include South Africa, England and most of the Middle East.

Come to think of it, next time someone says it, I'll ask for a list of places (outside Israel) where most people believe this universal truth. When the pandemic finishes, I might visit.

What kind of democracy is it when people believe that you have to 'earn' the 'right' to vote, get health care housing and education, but the 'right' to be alive, free and happy (and own an assault rifle) is unalienable?

[Winstonm]

I think this is (part of) what Drum was getting at. There are a lot of us who favor various plans for expanding opportunity but who are not woke. The Dem leadership has to decide how to treat us.

 

I had not really thought of whether I was or was not woke, but I think I am not. It seems that if someone has woken, they would be aware that they have woken.

Although this is behind a paywall, it is a good comment on this "woke" issue, while Max Boot is hardly a liberal.

 

“For the Chinese Communist Party, history is legitimacy,” journalist Ian Johnson writes in the New York Review of Books. “Just to make sure that history really appears to be on its side, the party spends an inordinate amount of time writing and rewriting it and preventing others from wielding their pens.” Indeed, the Communist Party is constantly on guard against examples of “historical nihilism” such as “distorting the history of the party or attacking its leadership.

”

Comparing China to the U.S.: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/critical-race-theory-state-bans/

Keep in mind Critical Race Theory is a Republican strawman used to attack the teaching of any history that is not "approved" by Republicans.