Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[johnu]

 

It is November 2020 already? So much for yet another empty and dishonest promise to stop posting in this thread.

[y66]

In From Here to Home, Viet Than Nguyen reviews five short documentaries about the immigrant experience in America that "testify to both the depth of our shared humanity and the height of the walls separating us".

 

To love, to laugh, to live, to work, to fail, to despair, to parent, to cry, to die, to mourn, to hope: These attributes exist whether we are Vietnamese or Mexican or American or any other form of classification. We share much more in common with one another than we have in difference. And yet these differences — of color, religion, language, origin and so on — matter because we make them matter, or because others persuade or coerce us into believing in they matter.

 

...

 

Our national midlife crisis, our sense of our slipping global power, can drive us to act out or to examine ourselves. We act out by longing for enemies to conquer in the vain hope that this will restore our greatness, and we mistake immigrants and refugees for those enemies. But if we are mature enough to examine ourselves, we can both celebrate the accomplishments of American culture and also acknowledge — and maybe even atone for — its terrible deeds.

 

We can help to make up for these tragedies by doing two things that foes of immigration argue are incompatible: renewing our commitment to the most marginalized Americans who are already here, and welcoming the immigrants and refugees who regenerate us. But we don’t have a lot of time.

[y66]

From Don’t Buy the Conventional Wisdom on Impeachment by Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

The conventional wisdom is getting a bit ahead of itself on impeachment.

 

I’m not predicting that President Donald Trump will be removed from office; that’s probably not going to happen. But there’s a big difference between probably and certainly. And after two weeks of public impeachment hearings, it seems to me that a certainty has set in: that there’s simply no way that Republicans will ever turn on Trump.

 

Perhaps! It’s true that congressional Republicans seem to be more solidly behind Trump than ever. In particular, Representative Will Hurd, who might’ve been the most likely member of the party to vote for impeachment and take a few others with him, seems to have decided against it. The most likely outcome may still be a close-to-party-line impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.

 

But remember that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974 … right up until they didn’t. Trump’s seemingly unanimous support right now is similar to the backing that Nixon had even as his original cover-up collapsed in early 1973; as the Senate Watergate committee hearings dominated that summer; as the Saturday Night Massacre unfolded in October; and as the House judiciary committee debated and voted on specific articles of impeachment in 1974. And then: The smoking gun tape came out and it all collapsed immediately. Even Nixon’s strongest supporter on the judiciary committee, the Jim Jordan of the day, who had just vigorously defended the president during televised deliberations, flipped and said he’d vote to impeach on the House floor.

 

That suggests Nixon’s support was never as solid as it seemed. Which in turn suggests we just can’t know how firm Trump’s support is among congressional Republicans this time. Perhaps they’re prepared for the worst and determined to stick with the president no matter what. But history tells me that we don’t know for sure — and that it’s quite possible that they don’t know for sure what they’ll ultimately do.

 

Again: I’m not predicting anything. But just since the last hearing, new evidence has emerged showing how the White House tried to

 

• justify a delay in delivering military aid to Ukraine;
• Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas has turned over recordings and other material to the House intelligence committee;
• one of Trump’s conspiracy theories about the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 campaign has apparently collapsed;
• and Democrats have started probing the possibility that Trump lied to former special counsel Robert Mueller.
  

Moreover, the chaotic ouster of Navy Secretary Richard Spencer on Sunday shows that Trump remains quite capable of doing damage to himself, and gives another reason for Republicans who care about the traditional values of the U.S. military to think twice about backing him.

 

It all adds up to a lot more uncertainty than many people seem to appreciate.

Some of the early posts on this thread suggest Bernstein is not alone in his openness to seemingly unimaginable outcomes. I admire the openness but it is a quality of enlightened thinking that continues to elude me.

[y66]

From Lee Drutman, author of the forthcoming “Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America”:

 

As impeachment mania grips Washington, it is easy to descend into an ever-deepening political pessimism. But as odd as it may seem, for the first time in years, I’m optimistic about the future of American democracy. It might be because I’ve been reading more history and less news. And from the long arc of American political history, I see the bright flashing arrows of a new age of reform and renewal ahead.

 

Eras of reform follow a general pattern. First, a mood of impending crisis prevails. Unfairness and inequality feel overwhelming, and national politics feels stuck and unresponsive to growing demands. But beneath the shattered yet still stubborn national stasis, new social movements organize. Politics becomes exciting and full of moral energy. New writers, empowered by new forms of media, invent new narratives. And future-oriented politicians emerge to channel that energy and challenge the old establishment.

 

America has gone through periodic eras of political reform, every 60 years or so. The Revolutionary War; the Age of Jackson; the Progressive Era; the civil rights movement. In each era, the old rules of politics changed, the old centers of politics collapsed, and American democracy became a little more participatory and inclusive.

 

Of the reform periods, the Progressive Era holds the clearest parallels to ours. In the 1890s, inequality, partisanship and discontent were all sky-high. The depression of 1893-97 shattered faith that a growing industrial economy would lift all boats. New leviathan railroad and public-utility corporations seemed imposingly powerful, and partisan politics seemed thoroughly corrupted by them. Mass immigration was changing the face of the nation.

 

As public dissatisfaction built, and pressure grew from multiple directions, the political system eventually responded, led by a new generation of reform-oriented activists and politicians. New forms of participatory democracy — the primary, direct elections for the Senate, the initiative and the referendum — reshaped a political system that seemed to privilege the few over the many.

 

Women achieved the right to vote, first in cities and states, then finally nationwide in 1920. New regulatory agencies wrestled with the size and scope of giant corporate enterprises, cutting some down to size, putting stricter boundaries on others. But even as late as 1902, it was far from obvious that the years ahead would bring so much change.

 

A crucial Progressive Era lesson for today is that reform had no obvious order, and there was no one unified progressive movement — only a long list of social movements that sometimes made common causes and sometimes bitterly disagreed and often worked separately. Populist farmers caught in debt mobilized against the railroads. Liberal professional-class cosmopolitans grew disgusted with urban graft and devoted themselves to good-government municipal reforms. Many efforts suffered repeated setbacks before making progress. For example, women’s suffrage faced many battles before it eventually passed. In short: don’t plan too much, build coalitions opportunistically, and don’t give up.

 

Nor was there one leader, or even one political party, that drove change. A menagerie of ambitious politicians fused together different platforms and programs, and fought over fundamental issues: How much should rest on direct as opposed to representative democracy? Was it better to break up big companies, or just strengthen the ability of government to regulate them? Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Woodrow Wilson and the coalitions backing them all had different ideas. Reform was incoherent and chaotic. It is inherently experimental — new problems demand new solutions. In short: Don’t expect one politician or one reform to hold all the answers.

 

The Progressive Era left a mixed record, largely because progressives were too hostile to political parties as crucial engines of political engagement and overly optimistic about the power of independent, rational judgment. But the era’s reforms solved a particular problem of corrupt, top-down power at a particular moment. Each reformist movement can be expected only to resolve its most pressing problems in a way that keeps democracy going for a future era of reform

 

When future historians look back on the 2010s, they will observe three larger trends that paved the way for a new era of reform by clearing away the old consensus: a loss of faith in “neoliberal” economics, the breakdown of white male-dominated social and cultural hierarchies, and the collapse of the “normal” political process.

 

The financial crisis of 2008-09 and the decades-long stagnation of middle-class wages shattered the neoliberal faith that loosely regulated markets naturally bring widespread prosperity. In the last decade, leaders in both parties have turned (rhetorically, at least) against the global trade and financial system, mouthing the frustrations of voters.

 

The new tech giants now wield a kind of power as the central nodes of commerce and information that we haven’t seen since the railroads of the Gilded Age. For most Americans, the economy feels unfair. Capitalism has lost its luster, particularly for younger Americans. As in the Progressive Era, corporate domination and corruption are widely agreed to be a problem.

 

On the changing social and cultural order, both Me Too and Black Lives Matter represent profound and emblematic new social movements not just because they spotlighted and remedied longstanding injustices. They are also profound because they show how new technology and new forms of media have upended traditional power relationships by amplifying previously marginalized stories. For instance, the number of women, and particularly women of color, running for (and winning) public office has increased significantly over the last few years.

 

These cultural changes have provoked a backlash that contributed to Donald Trump’s rise and the associated growth of alt-right movements. Fights over identity now define national partisan competition because they echo and reinforce fundamental divides in the ethnic and geographical coalitions of the two major parties and amplify the zero-sum stakes of two-party electoral conflict. The unceasing culture war is a battle over two very different and diverging visions.

 

On the political system itself: The conflicts over economics and culture are intimately tied to declining faith in politics as usual and the growing distrust of government. But in a politics oriented around zero-sum questions of national identity, and with razor’s edge control of Congress constantly at stake, compromise equates to surrender.

 

Close two-party politics is a recipe for nasty two-party politics. Our government is not working under this strain because it was designed to prevent narrow majoritarian politics and instead demand broad compromise. But the good news is that dysfunction is the precursor to reform. The breakdown of norms has an upside — it’s possible to put new, fairer norms in place of old, broken ones. Presidential candidates now talk about structural reform, like the abolishing the Electoral College and adding judges to the Supreme Court and even adding states to change the balance of power in the Senate.

 

In short, in each area — economic, cultural, political — whatever once passed for an old consensus is gone. The range of the possible has expanded greatly in the past decade, and in many directions.

 

The history of American democratic reform has been on balance progressive. In each era, reformers achieved at least some of their goals, and new political and economic rules tamed the most striking injustices, at least for a while.

 

But history never repeats itself perfectly. And we’ve never quite had a president as defiant and hostile as Donald Trump before. The hyperpolarization that powered and sustains Mr. Trump is the first and essential challenge a coming era of reform must solve. Left to escalate further, the current partisan ratchet of constitutional hardball will break our democracy.

 

But here’s why I’m ultimately optimistic: I see how much the election of Mr. Trump acted as an impetus for people who care about democracy to get involved. The 2018 election registered the highest turnout midterm election in 104 years, and the smart money is on a similarly high turnout election in 2020. It may sound strange to say, but Mr. Trump’s election may yet turn out to be the shock and near-death experience that American political system needed to right itself.

 

I’m also optimistic because the one reform with the most potential to break our zero-sum partisanship, ranked-choice voting, is gaining tremendous momentum at the state and local level. In 2018, Maine became the first state to use ranked-choice voting for federal elections (after Mainers approved it in two statewide referendums). This month, New York City voters adopted it. Also in 2020, expect voters in Alaska and Massachusetts to decide whether they want in on ranked-choice voting.

 

By removing the spoiler effect of third parties, ranked-choice voting can break the us-versus-them force driving our partisan warfare, and create space for a political realignment that creates new coalitions to shape economic reforms and negotiate social change.

 

When political conditions become intolerable, people eventually stop tolerating them. And when old rules and power structures crumble, new ones emerge. Now is the time to participate. Get involved in a cause you believe in, and join a campaign to enact reform in your city or your state (national reform always starts at the state and local level).

 

As with each era of reform, we’ll get some things right and some things wrong. We’ll overcorrect for some past mistakes, and make some new ones. But democracy isn’t something to perfect or solve. It’s a continuing, improbable experiment in self-governance, of devilish scale and complexity. We’re still learning.

Dysfunction is the precursor of reform? I admit I've never thought of it that way.

[y66]

Justice Ginsburg is at the Supreme Court today and will be attending musical event this afternoon

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ginsburg/u-s-supreme-court-justice-ginsburg-back-at-court-after-hospital-stay-idUSKBN1XZ2C6

[johnu]

Rick Perry Calls Donald Trump The Chosen One Sent By God To Rule Over Us

 

In an interview clip shown on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” Perry told Ed Henry that the president was “the chosen one” sent by God to rule over America. The former Texas governor and Republican presidential rival of Trump used Old Testament kings to make his point.

 

“God’s used imperfect people all through history,” Perry said. “King David wasn’t perfect, Saul wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect.”

 

Perry said he shared his thoughts with Trump on paper recently. “I said, Mr. President, I know there are people that say you said you were the chosen one and I said, ‘You were.’ I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our government.’ ”

 

Henry noted that Perry said he believed that former President Barack Obama was also sent by God. {OMG}

Heathens who are criticizing the Criminal in Chief will probably go to hell for questioning God's plan. B-) :rolleyes:

[y66]

This could end up at the Supreme Court very quickly

 

RTRS: U.S. JUDGE RULES TRUMP'S FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL MCGAHN MUST COMPLY WITH CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE'S SUBPOENA FOR TESTIMONY

[Winstonm]

Rick Perry Calls Donald Trump The Chosen One Sent By God To Rule Over Us

 

 

Heathens who are criticizing the Criminal in Chief will probably go to hell for questioning God's plan. B-) :rolleyes:

 

The Big Plan is to establish a Christian theocratic oligarchy in the United States. And that makes them hard to defeat as reason has no appeal to zealots. 20% are in for the dough and the rest are in by faith alone. And there is no argument that will persuade faith.

 

As that famed Christian debater William Lane Craig once argued: when reason and science conflict with scripture, believe scripture.

Good argument. Hard to reason against. :o

[hrothgar]

Hi guys. Just passing through to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. May you all enjoy pleasant times spent with family and friends and the blessings of liberty while living in the greatest country on Earth.

 

So, who had two weeks in the pool?

[Chas_P]

It is November 2020 already? So much for yet another empty and dishonest promise to stop posting in this thread.

 

I apologize meathead. I really didn't consider a Happy Thanksgiving wish to be a political statement. It was sincere and intended for everyone on the board....even you. So once again, Happy Thanksgiving. I also apologize to helene_t. I didn't take into account that they don't celebrate Thanksgiving on New Zealand. So to Helene...my best wishes to you for a joyous 4th Thursday in November on New Zealand.

[Zelandakh]

I am afraid New Zealand isn't the greatest country on Earth, though, it is only 268.000 sqm.

You have the whole of Middle Earth there - seems pretty darned good to me! B-)

[Winstonm]

I wonder what the racist-in-chief thinks about this:

 

Chestnut and co-defendants Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart were formally exonerated Monday for the notorious 1983 murder of a junior high school student over a Georgetown basketball jacket. Police and prosecutors had claimed the Georgetown jacket found in Chestnut’s closet belonged to the victim. Now, they acknowledge the jacket had, in fact, come from his mother

[Winstonm]

The reason why the Republican party of corruption won't dump Trump.

 

Put it this way: By using his political power to punish businesses that don’t support him while rewarding those that do, Trump is taking us along the same path already followed by countries like Hungary, which remains a democracy on paper but has become a one-party authoritarian state in practice. And we’re already much further down that road than many people realize.

 

These people don't care about America. They don't care about democracy. They only care about staying in power. If that means creating an American theocratic oligarchy, so be it. After all, religion is the opium of the people.

[johnu]

Continues to show that his words have as much meaning as the Criminal in Chief by continuing to post here.

[hrothgar]

Continues to show that his words have as much meaning as the Criminal in Chief by continuing to post here.

 

What I find remarkable is that BBO lets him act as a Yellow

[y66]

NEW: House Judiciary Cmte just noticed its first impeachment inquiry hearing for Wednesday, Dec. 4.

 

Chairman Nadler sent a letter to President Trump inviting him to participate.

 

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/2019-11-26%20JN%20Ltr%20to%20White%20House.pdf

[johnu]

Trump claims he'd 'love' to have his top aides testify in impeachment probe

 

LOL

 

President Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed that he would “love” for various current and former senior members of his administration to testify before impeachment investigators, despite the White House’s directive for those officials not to cooperate.

 

Except for ordering anybody and everybody in his administration to not testify, the Criminal in Chief would "love" for them to testify. I'm sure he will allow them all to freely testify immediately after the IRS stops auditing his tax returns and he voluntarily releases them to Congress.

[johnu]

andrei can add this to the list of the stable genius's major accomplishments.

 

Donald Trump’s Boast About Celebrating Women’s Rights Gets The Treatment Online

 

Social media users schooled Donald Trump on what a centennial is after the president on Tuesday asked why a new coin to mark the 100 years since women’s suffrage had not been created before his time in office.

 

“I’m curious why wasn’t it done a long time ago?” Trump asked during the signing of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commemorative Coin Act. The act instructs the Treasury Department to issue $1 coins commemorating the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. The money will be circulated from January.

To be fair, the Manchurian President will be the only person in history to be US president on the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment. Well done.

 

In other news, the stable genius is one of the few presidents, maybe the only one, who presided when the earth rotated on its axis continuously without interruption, and the sun rose in the east and set in the west every single day of his administration. I'll bet that very few people knew that.

[y66]

In The post-Christian culture wars, Ezra Klein argues that the key to understanding why white Christian evangelicals support Trump lies in a couple of speeches that William Barr gave in October and November.

 

Speaking at Notre Dame in October, Barr argued that the conflict of the 20th century pitted democracy against fascism and communism — a struggle democracy won, and handily. “But in the 21st century, we face an entirely different kind of challenge,” he warned. America was built atop the insight that “free government was only suitable and sustainable for a religious people.” But “over the past 50 years religion has been under increasing attack,” driven from the public square by “the growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.”

 

This is a war Barr thinks progressives have been winning, and that conservatives fight in the face of long institutional odds.

Today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back. First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

Whatever political power conservatives hold, progressives occupy the cultural high ground, and they strike without mercy. “Those who defy the [secular] creed risk a figurative burning at the stake,” says Barr, “social, educational, and professional ostracism and exclusion waged through lawsuits and savage social media campaigns.”

 

In a November speech before the Federalist Society, Barr expanded on the advantage progressives hold. It’s worth quoting his argument at length:

 

The fact of the matter is that, in waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of “Resistance” against this Administration, it is the Left that is engaged in the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law. This highlights a basic disadvantage that conservatives have always had in contesting the political issues of the day. It was adverted to by the old, curmudgeonly Federalist, Fisher Ames, in an essay during the early years of the Republic.

 

In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursuing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

 

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized — that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?

 

For these reasons, conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war, especially when doing so under the weight of a hyper-partisan media.

It's really something to see Barr using the power of the Justice Department to do what he accuses progressives of doing: "Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection." Talk about a guy on a holy mission. Barr is a fanatic pretending to be a defender of the Constitution.

[Winstonm]

In The post-Christian culture wars, Ezra Klein argues that the key to understanding why white Christian evangelicals support Trump lies in a couple of speeches that William Barr gave in October and November.

 

 

It's really something to see Barr using the power of the Justice Department to do what he accuses progressives of doing: "Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection." Talk about a guy on a holy mission. Barr is a fanatic pretending to be a defender of the Constitution.

 

 

Today we face something different that may mean that we cannot count on the pendulum swinging back. First is the force, fervor, and comprehensiveness of the assault on religion we are experiencing today. This is not decay; it is organized destruction. Secularists, and their allies among the “progressives,” have marshaled all the force of mass communications, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.

my emphasis

 

He forgot to mention the three main assaults on religion: reason, abandonment of unnecessary superstitions, and increased knowledge.

[y66]

From Emily Cochrane at NYT:

 

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Trump on Wednesday signed tough legislation that would impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for human rights abuses in Hong Kong, expressing support for pro-democracy activists in the territory and most likely angering China as the two countries negotiate ending their trade war.

 

“I signed these bills out of respect for President Xi, China and the people of Hong Kong,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Wednesday. “They are being enacted in the hope that leaders and representatives of China and Hong Kong will be able to amicably settle their differences leading to long-term peace and prosperity for all.”

 

As late as last week, Mr. Trump refused to commit to signing the legislation, which Congress had overwhelmingly approved, saying that he supported the protesters but that President Xi Jinping of China was “a friend of mine.”

 

“I stand with Hong Kong,” he said on Friday during a nearly hourlong interview on the morning program “Fox & Friends.” “I stand with freedom. I stand with all of the things we want to do. But we’re also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history.”

 

The bill would require the State Department to annually review the special autonomous status it grants Hong Kong in trade considerations. That status is separate from the relationship with mainland China, and a revocation of the status would mean less favorable trade conditions between the United States and Hong Kong.

 

After the Senate approved the bill, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced it, saying it “interferes in China’s internal affairs” and “violates the basic norms of international law and international relations.”

 

The Hong Kong government said the bill was “unnecessary and unwarranted” and would harm relations between the United States and Hong Kong.

 

Because the bill, in theory, has the support of a veto-proof majority in Congress, it could have been enacted into law even if Mr. Trump had vetoed it.

 

The bill is the latest sign of a strong bipartisan push in Washington to confront China and its authoritarian leader on a wide range of issues, including commercial practices, global infrastructure building and the detention of at least a million Muslim ethnic minority members in camps in northwest China. Because of the pro-democracy protests, Hong Kong has become a central rallying point.

 

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, both flew to Hong Kong in October, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, has met with activists in Washington.

 

“We have sent a message to President Xi: Your suppression of freedom, whether in Hong Kong, in northwest China or anywhere else, will not stand,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said last month. “You cannot be a great leader and you cannot be a great country when you oppose freedom, when you are so brutal to the people of Hong Kong, young and old, who are protesting.”

 

While there was no immediate reaction from the Chinese government to Mr. Trump’s signing of the bill, Beijing had previously made clear its strong hostility to the measure.

 

On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry summoned the American ambassador to Beijing, Terry Branstad, to criticize the bill. According to the ministry, Zheng Zeguang, a vice foreign minister, demanded that the United States “stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.”

 

Although Mr. Trump announced last month that the United States and China had reached a “historic” Phase 1 trade agreement, signing a deal has proved elusive. Both the United States and China have tried to keep the Hong Kong issue separate from their bilateral trade talks. The Commerce Ministry issued a statement this week that talks were going well on a partial resolution of the issues.

[Chas_P]

What I find remarkable is that BBO lets him act as a Yellow

 

A lot of we "yellows" are volunteers Richard. We simply committed to helping fellow BBO'ers with the software, booting inactive table hosts, cheaters, etc. We are not paid. Our political views were never questioned. OTOH, barmar, Diana_Eva, and others are on BBO's payroll and have the power to remove my yellow mantle at any time they wish and if they do that's OK with me. I have given freely of my time and will continue to do so if they wish. With that said I wish, once again, a happy Thanksgiving to you, your family, and your friends (if you have any).

[y66]

Vladimir Putin has much to be thankful for. From Gerald F. Seib at WSJ:

 

Vladimir Putin has had a good year, and it just keeps getting better. He now is collecting his winnings on multiple fronts.

 

Even Mr. Putin must be amazed at how well he is achieving his goal of sowing discord within the U.S. political system. First, his agents interfered in the 2016 election. Now they can sit back and watch as their efforts to deflect blame away from Moscow and toward Ukraine are bearing fruit, in the form of a bitter American debate that is driving pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces further apart.

 

Fiona Hill, until recently the top Russia expert on the staff of President Trump’s National Security Council, summarized the Russian success on this front succinctly in her testimony before a House impeachment hearing last week: “The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.”

 

Mr. Putin appears so confident in his success on this front that he actually is publicly gloating about it. “Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine,” he said at a conference in Moscow last week.

 

Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, heads early next month into his first meeting with Mr. Putin—whose forces have invaded his country and lopped off part of it—knowing that American support for Ukraine can be, and was, caught up in domestic U.S. political fights. Ukraine’s leader thereby enters talks with Mr. Putin less certain of support from Washington in his country’s confrontation with Russia.

 

But these successes on the American front are only the top of the list of trends moving Mr. Putin’s way.

 

The British political system is being torn in similar fashion by a debate over how much Russian disinformation was unleashed in an attempt to convince citizens to vote in 2016 to leave the European Union.

 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Brexit advocate, is declining to release a sensitive report by the Parliament’s intelligence committee on Brexit interference, setting off a partisan argument just as Britain heads toward a new national election.

 

Regardless of whether Russia actually influenced the Brexit vote, the reality, three years later, is that Britain appears to be on the road toward exiting the EU in the messiest, most damaging way possible. What’s bad for European economic and political unity is good for Russia, so Mr. Putin can put the continuing Brexit mess as a big entry on the positive side of his 2019 ledger.

 

Meanwhile, the most important members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are descending into an argument about the functioning and future of the 70-year-old alliance, originally formed to deter expansionist moves by Moscow.

 

French President Emmanuel Macron, articulating what other NATO leaders are reluctant to say, has criticized Mr. Trump for his decision to pull back American forces in Syria and open the way for a greater Syrian role for both Mr. Putin and Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

 

From Mr. Putin’s point of view, discord within the main Western military alliance is good news of the first order.

 

At the same time, that American retreat in Syria has helped further a trend in which Mr. Putin is becoming the man to see about Middle Eastern affairs.

 

In fact, Syria has worked out smashingly well for Mr. Putin: American troops and their Kurdish allies did the lion’s share of the work to extinguish Islamic State and its caliphate there, which Russia actually opposed, too. Now, having finished the dirty work, Washington has essentially ceded oversight of Syria to Moscow and allowed its Kurdish allies to be obliterated or pushed aside.

 

Russia’s most reliable regional proxy, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, now appears secure in his position and certain to survive his country’s civil war. Having assumed a new position of prominence in Syria, Mr. Putin has Middle Eastern leaders of all varieties—Saudi Arabian, Iranian, Turkish and Israeli—beating a path to his door for consultations.

 

Mr. Putin is a former KGB operative, and it shows. He learned during the Cold War how to use disinformation and propaganda to exploit weak spots in Western democracies, and the dark space of the internet has opened a whole new playing field for him. He is a master of his craft.

[diana_eva]

@johnu your constant tracking of whatever chas posts to point out he once said he will not post in this thread again is more annoying that anything else in this thread, which is quite an achievement. Cut it out, many of the forumers rage quit and came back and so what. Especially in a thread like this one which seems to bring out the worse of everyone -- it's even worse than the climate change thread.

 

@hrothgar I removed the post where you're attacking chas.

 

For what is worth chas has been a helpful and useful yellow on BBO for a long time. I wish I never saw what his political views are, but that wont change that online, interacting with BBOers, he has been helpful and offered his time for free for many years.

[johnu]

@johnu your constant tracking of whatever chas posts to point out he once said he will not post in this thread again is more annoying that anything else in this thread, which is quite an achievement. Cut it out, many of the forumers rage quit and came back and so what. Especially in a thread like this one which seems to bring out the worse of everyone -- it's even worse than the climate change thread.

 

I'm not constantly tracking Chas, just remembering previous posts from very recent history. It's no great memory feat. If it seems frequent, it is because he constantly trolls, then posts that he is quitting the thread, and then almost immediately breaks his word to start posting again. As far as posters in this particular thread, he is the only person who rage quits and then embarrasses themselves by almost immediately posting again. Other posters have written that they were stopping posting because of apparently legitimate reasons at the time, and have started posting again when the circumstances changed. That seems perfectly acceptable to me. Are you trying to equate these other posters with Chas?