Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[kenberg]

Only if you have auto-play enabled.

 

For me, when the first clip ends, the video player is replaced with a mosaic of 9 stills from other videos in my queue.

 

Thanks, I'll adjust. It has not previously been an issue. mostly I use youtube for maybe hearing Artie Shaw play Begin the Beguine or maybe Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Maybe I look at options for what to play next, or maybe I turn it off and get back to bridge. this 7 second video was shorter than the typical ad, and then I was watching some scummy spliced together video.

 

I don't know what can be done. In the mid 1950s we had the John Birch Society but nobody I knew took them seriously at all, and my neighborhood was made up not only of non-college educated but, my parents for example, non-high school educated. Lacking diplomas, they still recognized crap when they heard it. Now we have the sort of stuff the Chas link took me to. People listen to this. They take it seriously. Good grief.

 

This has to be coped with. Turning off auto-play would have saved me from seeing it but that's not enough.

 

I really don't know the answer but I hope that there is one. People listen to Trump and they cannot tell immediately what he is. I don't get it.

[Winstonm]

Thanks, I'll adjust. It has not previously been an issue. mostly I use youtube for maybe hearing Artie Shaw play Begin the Beguine or maybe Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Maybe I look at options for what to play next, or maybe I turn it off and get back to bridge. this 7 second video was shorter than the typical ad, and then I was watching some scummy spliced together video.

 

I don't know what can be done. In the mid 1950s we had the John Birch Society but nobody I knew took them seriously at all, and my neighborhood was made up not only of non-college educated but, my parents for example, non-high school educated. Lacking diplomas, they still recognized crap when they heard it. Now we have the sort of stuff the Chas link took me to. People listen to this. They take it seriously. Good grief.

 

This has to be coped with. Turning off auto-play would have saved me from seeing it but that's not enough.

 

I really don't know the answer but I hope that there is one. People listen to Trump and they cannot tell immediately what he is. I don't get it.

 

Extending on your comment, Ken. My wife's sister called yesterday and somewhere along the way went on a rambling tirade about a "show" they'd seen on television the night before that explained all the ins and outs of the "soft coup" conspiracy of the deep state to overthrow Donald Trump, and how the Michael Flynn prosecution was part of that and what the code word "pizza" meant (pedophelia) and on and on.

 

Now, before we can blow off the crazoid sister-in-law it is important to know that feeding into her rant was her daughter, that her two sons also feed the rant, all the people she normally socializes with believe the rant, and her husband is a prominent psychiatrist who earns more than the rest of us combined.

 

I would guess this all came from a Fox News network broadcast, although OAN is possible. In their household, FOX is on pretty much 24/7.

 

The reason, I believe, that we cannot make headway in turning these - what used to be called marginal people but are now mainstream - folks is that we are not trained in deprogramming and cannot capture the cultist for long enough times to make headway, even if we were.

 

That, to me, is both the glory and the horror of the GOP - they were able to bring in multiple fringe cultists under a single umbrella by trading all morality for the accumulation of power. That is why, at Trump's rallies, you will find white supremacists next non-racist anti-abortionists next to militia members next to evangelicals next to hard core libertarian types and on an on.

 

Each one of these fringe groups only cares about their own core issue, and the GOP has added a plank or at least a nod to each position. And then they have painted everyone else as outsiders who are trying to take away our _______ (fill in the blank).

 

How do you fight madness? How do you fight a cult?

[kenberg]

Extending on your comment, Ken. My wife's sister called yesterday and somewhere along the way went on a rambling tirade about a "show" they'd seen on television the night before that explained all the ins and outs of the "soft coup" conspiracy of the deep state to overthrow Donald Trump, and how the Michael Flynn prosecution was part of that and what the code word "pizza" meant (pedophelia) and on and on.

 

Now, before we can blow off the crazoid sister-in-law it is important to know that feeding into her rant was her daughter, that her two sons also feed the rant, all the people she normally socializes with believe the rant, and her husband is a prominent psychiatrist who earns more than the rest of us combined.

 

I would guess this all came from a Fox News network broadcast, although OAN is possible. In their household, FOX is on pretty much 24/7.

 

The reason, I believe, that we cannot make headway in turning these - what used to be called marginal people but are now mainstream - folks is that we are not trained in deprogramming and cannot capture the cultist for long enough times to make headway, even if we were.

 

That, to me, is both the glory and the horror of the GOP - they were able to bring in multiple fringe cultists under a single umbrella by trading all morality for the accumulation of power. That is why, at Trump's rallies, you will find white supremacists next non-racist anti-abortionists next to militia members next to evangelicals next to hard core libertarian types and on an on.

 

Each one of these fringe groups only cares about their own core issue, and the GOP has added a plank or at least a nod to each position. And then they have painted everyone else as outsiders who are trying to take away our _______ (fill in the blank).

 

How do you fight madness? How do you fight a cult?

 

 

My guess is that you will not all be coming to agreement any time soon!

 

About families. I''m an only brat so my experience is limited. But some thoughts:

 

When Becky and I got married, my two kids were grown, Becky's youngest, of 3, was just finishing high school. Becky and I agreed that neither of us had to get along with the other's kids. The result was that in four out of the five cases, we all get along quite well. Becky's oldest is the exception but in that case it is mother-daughter not getting along all that well, I am a bystander. My older daughter's only demand of me was that anyone I marry could not be younger than she was. Becky qualifies. Becky's sister lives in Taos, that's about 7000 feet and as I have aged I have trouble with altitude, Other than that we are fine. Which is not at al to say that we agree. But we like each other.

 

So:

 

A. They will not be agreeing with you, that's a fact.

 

B. You all will just have to decide where that leads you.

 

As to my own cousins and so on, I am completely out of touch. Too bad, or I guess too bad, but we never much saw each other as I was growing up so there is not a great deal to build on. We got together once, it was seriously non-inspiring.

 

 

I wish you luck.

 

As to how this all happened, I really don't know. When I was 16 I and some other guys formed The Philosophy Club. We would meet on Fridays, discuss life, religion, politics, economics, what have you, then we would go out for pizza and, at this one place that would serve us, a beer. It was part of life, but a small part. Now people seem to be at each other's throats.

 

Best wishes to you and your family, and best wishes to all of us for working through this.

 

Remember. You will not convert them. They will not convert you. Heathens and saints, side by side? Perhaps. You have to put aside the question of who is the heathen, who the saint.

[Winstonm]

My guess is that you will not all be coming to agreement any time soon!

 

About families. I''m an only brat so my experience is limited. But some thoughts:

 

When Becky and I got married, my two kids were grown, Becky's youngest, of 3, was just finishing high school. Becky and I agreed that neither of us had to get along with the other's kids. The result was that in four out of the five cases, we all get along quite well. Becky's oldest is the exception but in that case it is mother-daughter not getting along all that well, I am a bystander. My older daughter's only demand of me was that anyone I marry could not be younger than she was. Becky qualifies. Becky's sister lives in Taos, that's about 7000 feet and as I have aged I have trouble with altitude, Other than that we are fine. Which is not at al to say that we agree. But we like each other.

 

So:

 

A. They will not be agreeing with you, that's a fact.

 

B. You all will just have to decide where that leads you.

 

As to my own cousins and so on, I am completely out of touch. Too bad, or I guess too bad, but we never much saw each other as I was growing up so there is not a great deal to build on. We got together once, it was seriously non-inspiring.

 

 

I wish you luck.

 

As to how this all happened, I really don't know. When I was 16 I and some other guys formed The Philosophy Club. We would meet on Fridays, discuss life, religion, politics, economics, what have you, then we would go out for pizza and, at this one place that would serve us, a beer. It was part of life, but a small part. Now people seem to be at each other's throats.

 

Best wishes to you and your family, and best wishes to all of us for working through this.

 

Remember. You will not convert them. They will not convert you. Heathens and saints, side by side? Perhaps. You have to put aside the question of who is the heathen, who the saint.

:)

It would have been a pleasure to have taken courses under you, Dr. Berg, but as I was and still am horrible at mathematics it is probably for the best the way things went.

[hrothgar]

And Biden is?

 

And the pattern persists

 

Once a week, Chas wanders in from the wilderness

Takes a ***** in the middle of the room

Pretends that this makes him important

Then wanders off again...

[y66]

:)

It would have been a pleasure to have taken courses under you, Dr. Berg, but as I was and still am horrible at mathematics it is probably for the best the way things went.

I suspect you're not as horrible at math as you seem to think and that if you had taken a class from kenberg you would probably have a new appreciation for the subject as with other stuff he writes about in the WC.

[kenberg]

I wasn't going to pursue this about math, being the DT thread, but maybe I'll say a word. When I was in elementary school I could not draw a decent tree to save my life. I was convinced I would flunk 8th grad because of my lousy tree drawing. It is far to easy to beat ourselves up. Yes, I am better at mathematics than at art class. But we all need to go a little easy on ourselves.

 

As to my teaching, there are some who liked it. Note the word "some". And I enjoyed doing it.

 

Anyway, now back to Trump. Do we have to? I suppose so.

[Winstonm]

I wasn't going to pursue this about math, being the DT thread, but maybe I'll say a word. When I was in elementary school I could not draw a decent tree to save my life. I was convinced I would flunk 8th grad because of my lousy tree drawing. It is far to easy to beat ourselves up. Yes, I am better at mathematics than at art class. But we all need to go a little easy on ourselves.

 

As to my teaching, there are some who liked it. Note the word "some". And I enjoyed doing it.

 

Anyway, now back to Trump. Do we have to? I suppose so.

Ann Coulter once again:

 

“At 4:30 in the morning Saturday night — well, technically, Sunday morning — I went on Twitter for the first time in a while and I saw this jackass tweet by our jackass president being a big baby blaming Jeff Sessions for the Russia investigation once again, something that was entirely, 100% his fault,” she explained to host....

 

I'm beginning to think some of these conservative hosts are starting to smell blood in the water about the election and are trying to position themselves to be able to say, see, what did I tell you.

[Chas_P]

Biden did have to work hard to overcome his childhood stuttering, and sometimes remnants of that problem show up, especially under stress.

 

And I'm not unsympathetic. I'm 82 years old and not nearly as peppy as I used to be either. But I do have a problem convincing myself to vote for a guy whose antenna doesn't seem to be picking up all the channels.

[y66]

I'm beginning to think some of these conservative hosts are starting to smell blood in the water about the election and are trying to position themselves to be able to say, see, what did I tell you.

Sounds right. This is what passes for integrity in Coulter's world where integrity is relative.

[Zelandakh]

Only if you have auto-play enabled.

 

For me, when the first clip ends, the video player is replaced with a mosaic of 9 stills from other videos in my queue.

To be honest I would recommend following the sort of links Chas provides in an incognito window rather than using your normal YouTube account. The trouble is that every video you watch adjusts the algorithm for future videos that will be put forward to you, so if you follow the links you will at some point start finding that YouTube thinks you are a right-wing loony and sending you bubble videos. Just a heads up on the way the internet works in 2020. Give it a few more years and the search algorithms might start joining together with other personal data, so best to be careful what you choose to link yourself to.

[Winstonm]

Sounds right. This is what passes for integrity in Coulter's world where integrity is relative.

When Murdoch's Wall Street Journal Editorial Board turns against him, I'm positive this is all about positioning themselves as Trump-thumpers.

 

President Donald Trump was slammed by the editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal on Tuesday evening.

 

“Donald Trump sometimes traffics in conspiracy theories—recall his innuendo in 2016 about Ted Cruz’s father and the JFK assassination—but his latest accusation against MSNBC host Joe Scarborough is ugly even for him,” the newspaper noted. “Mr. Trump has been tweeting the suggestion that Mr. Scarborough might have had something to do with the death in 2001 of a young woman who worked in his Florida office when Mr. Scarborough was a GOP Congressman.”

 

Also, there's this:

 

....polling experts Nate Silver and Harry Enten both poured cold water on the notion that a V-shaped recovery would be sufficient enough to lift the president above former Vice President Joe Biden, who has consistently led him in polls throughout the year

.

 

Keep an eye on Hannity and Rush. If they reposition, it will mean the Hindenburg has exploded in a fireball.

[kenberg]

To be honest I would recommend following the sort of links Chas provides in an incognito window rather than using your normal YouTube account. The trouble is that every video you watch adjusts the algorithm for future videos that will be put forward to you, so if you follow the links you will at some point start finding that YouTube thinks you are a right-wing loony and sending you bubble videos. Just a heads up on the way the internet works in 2020. Give it a few more years and the search algorithms might start joining together with other personal data, so best to be careful what you choose to link yourself to.

 

I checked this morning to see if youtube had any new suggestions for me. It did. Eric Clapton playing and singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

 

 

Exactly ow the algorithm worked out that someone who likes Artie Shaw and who also inadvertently watched a spliced video of a Biden interview would surely like Clapton's rendition of Rainbow? Maybe it figured I needed some relief.

 

Of course if I am to be serious I acknowledge a problem. Like most people, I grew up with anonymity. Except for friends and family, nobody cared what I watched, thought or did. There is a lot to be said for anonymity.

[y66]

From Noah Millman's book review at NYT (Jan 2020):

 

THE AGE OF ILLUSIONS

How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

By Andrew J. Bacevich

 

Andrew J. Bacevich, a trenchant critic of American foreign policy and the author of several studies of international affairs, begins his latest book, “The Age of Illusions,” with a quote from Harry Angstrom, the protagonist of John Updike’s “Rabbit” novels. “Without the Cold War,” Angstrom asked, “what’s the point of being an American?”

 

It’s a funny question. America is a young country, but the Cold War is a late episode even in our short history. From Ben Franklin to Langston Hughes, Americans have articulated our distinctiveness in ways that did not implicitly culminate in a twilight struggle with Communism. But the central argument of Bacevich’s book is that, for America’s major institutions, its ruling class and the intelligentsia that serves them both, Angstrom’s question was deeply threatening. Too much was riding, psychologically and financially, on the economic policies, military posture and cultural orientation that had outmatched the Soviet Union. As a consequence, when that pole star suddenly winked out, we didn’t consider changing course. We opened the throttle and surged forward in the dark, guided by the illusory stars in our eyes.

 

Three major illusions led us. First, capitalism’s victory over Communism meant that the more unbounded capital was, through freer trade and more open capital markets, the better off Americans — and the world — would be. Second, as America’s military superiority was now overwhelming, we had the right, the ability and the obligation to dictate the terms of global peace, and to enforce that peace by making war. Finally, as freedom had proved itself superior to tyranny, Americans no longer had any reason to accept limits on their autonomy, or any reason to worry that other nations might take a different view of freedom than we did. Guided by these illusions, we drove our ship of state straight onto the rocks: We dismantled our industrial base, mired ourselves in unwinnable wars and tore apart the social fabric that bound city to country, worker to employer and soldier to civilian.

 

It’s a compelling narrative, and one congruent with the story of “American carnage” that brought Donald Trump to the White House. Aware of that fact, Bacevich is at pains to stress his disgust at the current president, whom he views as a demagogue capitalizing on the failure of these illusions rather than offering any kind of helpful response. In the course of breezily narrating the deficiencies of the past four presidencies, he breaks periodically to remind the reader what an unedifying spectacle Trump was making of himself at each point in time, and how that spectacle exemplified something ugly about the America aborning.

 

Yet Bacevich’s narrative is also congruent with older critics of America’s way of life and its way in the world. Readers of Thorstein Veblen, William Appleman Williams or Christopher Lasch, of which Bacevich is one, would hardly be surprised by the choices America’s elites made after the Soviet Union collapsed. And if our national illusions go deeper than one generation, Bacevich’s argument becomes an indictment not just of how America handled the post-Cold War period, but also of what America had already come to be by the time the Cold War ended, or even was at its start.

 

This indictment is ultimately a spiritual one: of obsessive consumption, and freedom defined as escape from restraint rather than self-mastery. Aware of America’s need for a great moral mission, Bacevich calls on us to turn that impulse toward fighting climate change, a profound and real threat rather than an illusion. Still, while there are deep American roots for such a call, they constitute a countercultural tradition that stands against what the United States has most readily represented. If America neglected to look inward after the end of the Cold War, as Bacevich wishes we had done, is that a reflection of its failures, or of the natural temptations of our position? History records few if any emperors who willingly set aside power’s poisoned chalice.

 

Meanwhile, though Bacevich doubts whether America’s distinctive illusions actually won the Cold War, I wonder whether Mikhail Gorbachev would agree. Would he have been so willing to withdraw peacefully and see his own empire dismantled if he had not, to some degree, taken our professed beliefs at face value? If so, then our case is classically tragic. The very illusions that brought us victory are what powered our subsequent hubris, and nemesis rose from the inevitable disillusion of a world that trusted us in our folly.

re: America's failure to look inward after the end of the Cold War, the Economist's review of Bacevich's book and 2 others includes these observations:

 

However, in “The Age of Illusions”, Mr Bacevich’s gloss is that the country’s military, political and commercial elites came to believe American motives were beyond reproach, and that their world-view was sure to prevail. They therefore took it upon themselves to become global enforcers. They built a new operating system designed to cement American primacy, based on globalisation, military dominance, the individualistic pursuit of fulfilment and an imperial presidency.

 

The enemy within

 

Yet this system, Mr Bacevich argues, has been plagued by unintended consequences. Globalisation was meant to create wealth, but many Americans complain of inequality; military dominance sucked the country into never-ending wars that sacrificed the children of lower-income families (but, for the most part, no one else’s); the pursuit of fulfilment led to the withering of duty and a selfish, atomised society; and the supremacy of the presidency became a recipe for voters’ disappointment.

 

All this culminated in the election of Mr Trump. The president’s critics, this book argues, overestimate him even as they underestimate the importance of his victory. Mr Trump is “a mountebank of the very first order”, Mr Bacevich writes, but his presence in the Oval Office is a rejection of the post-cold-war operating system and all it stands for. The elites’ focus on Mr Trump’s wickedness, he maintains, spares them the pain of having to acknowledge how pitifully their own project failed.

 

It is telling that three such different books all try to understand what went wrong after the Soviet collapse not by looking overseas but within, at the nature of America itself. In their various ways, they all condemn Mr Trump. Mr Nye doubts his morality. Mr Kimmage sees him as the first anti-“West” president. Most interesting is Mr Bacevich, who warns that, although Mr Trump offered no definition of post-cold-war America, just a rejection, there is no going back. That is a lesson for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, who gives the sense that going back is what he would most like to do.

[Winstonm]

Even the ultimate stumper is turning non-Trumper (when it comes to masks):

 

While President Donald Trump and Fox News personalities mock face masks amid the coronavirus pandemic, pro-Trump Fox News host Sean Hannity lectured Missouri partygoers on Tuesday night who didn’t practice social distancing or wear masks over the Memorial Day weekend, telling them they needed to do it for their older relatives.

 

“There’s no mask-wearing here that I see,” Hannity said while airing a clip of revelers crowding a Lake of the Ozarks bar. “I see no social distancing. But if they get the virus and they’re in contact with older, more vulnerable Americans, that could be a disaster... If you can’t social distance, please wear the mask for your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa. My humble advice.”

 

Could Hannity be in the early stages of trying to untangle?

[kenberg]

From Noah Millman's book review at NYT (Jan 2020):

 

 

re: America's failure to look inward after the end of the Cold War, the Economist's review of Bacevich's book and 2 others includes these observations:

 

 

 

Three major illusions led us. First, capitalism's victory over Communism meant that the more unbounded capital was, through freer trade and more open capital markets, the better off Americans — and the world — would be. Second, as America's military superiority was now overwhelming, we had the right, the ability and the obligation to dictate the terms of global peace, and to enforce that peace by making war. Finally, as freedom had proved itself superior to tyranny, Americans no longer had any reason to accept limits on their autonomy, or any reason to worry that other nations might take a different view of freedom than we did. Guided by these illusions, we drove our ship of state straight onto the rocks: We dismantled our industrial base, mired ourselves in unwinnable wars and tore apart the social fabric that bound city to country, worker to employer and soldier to civilian.

 

 

 

The Wikipedia says the Soviet Union disolved in December of 1991. Clinton was elected in 1992 and took office in early 1993. Is Bacevich saying that Clinton was blinded by any or all of these illusions? He refers to "America's major institutions, its ruling class and the intelligentsia that serves them both". Well, ok, but these are not specific. Clinton was president. Is he saying that the president was under one or more of these three illusions?

 

There are always illusions and I can well believe that the break-up of the Soviet Union led to some.

 

[johnu]

Senate GOP Has No Plan To Help Millions Of Americans Losing Health Insurance During Pandemic

 

As millions of Americans slip into unemployment and lose their health insurance during a public health crisis, Senate Republicans still see no need to act on health care.

 

More than 36 million people have filed for unemployment benefits due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, meaning millions will be left without health insurance. In mid May, left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute estimated 16.2 million people have lost health insurance once provided by their employer — how roughly half of Americans get their health insurance. That number could be as high as 26.8 million if those who lost their jobs don’t sign up for other coverage, the Kaiser Family Foundation found.

 

But the Republican majority in the Senate isn’t interested in pursuing additional emergency relief for those who suddenly find themselves uninsured.

This is wildly inaccurate reporting that the Republicans don't have a plan. Of course they have a plan.

 

First, they are fervently praying that the Supreme Court rules that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional so millions more Americans will lose their healthcare.

 

Second, if the first plan doesn't work, they can always try to pass another law repealing the Affordable Care Act which they have done at least 70 times, again causing millions more Americans to lose their healthcare.

 

Third, if unemployed people lost their jobs and health insurance, Republicans strongly suggest that they get a job with health insurance and quit bitching. After all, we are in the strongest economy in American history with record low unemployment. B-) Maybe they can get elected to Congress which has some of the best healthcare plans in the country. As the Grifter in Chief says after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, "Happy times are here again".

[y66]

Is Bacevich saying that Clinton was blinded by any or all of these illusions? He refers to "[/size][/color]America's major institutions, its ruling class and the intelligentsia that serves them both". Well, ok, but these are not specific. Clinton was president. Is he saying that the president was under one or more of these three illusions?

Yes, but not just Clinton.

 

In this New Yorker interview he was asked "How would you distinguish between the five Presidents we have had since the end of the Cold War? Do you think they all succumbed to a similar hubris?":

 

I think they were all really creatures of a postwar consensus. I think that, in the way we talk about Presidents, when we talk about the process of electing a President, we assume somehow that the President is the supreme master of the universe, somebody who is directing the fate of humankind. That notion is very much an expression of post–Cold War hubris. But what I tried to argue in the book is that the President really is a creature of his time, and that the President’s ability to bring change is actually limited by circumstances. And so, without for a second denying that there are very important differences between Clinton and George W. Bush and Barack Obama as the post–Cold War Presidents, I do try to make the case that their similarities outweigh their differences. And the similarities come from their efforts to implement the post–Cold War consensus. Bill Clinton was the principal promoter of globalization. He said that we now know an unleashed corporate capitalism has the capacity to create wealth on an unprecedented scale, in which he insisted all would share. And I think that that notion had a very powerful effect.

 

It was in December, 1989—that’s, like, what, six weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall—that the elder Bush ordered the U.S. intervention in Panama, Operation Just Cause. As a military episode, it was very brief. But I think that was the template of how we could put American military power to work. In contrast to the Cold War, when the principal—not sole, but the principal—rationale for American military power was to prevent war, the idea was to contain the Soviet Union, to deter the Warsaw Pact. And every President thereafter did his own experimenting with how to use American military power to do good things abroad from [his] perspective. Even Barack Obama, who, when he ran for the Presidency, promised to get out of Iraq and to win the good war in Afghanistan, became a significant interventionist, whether we’re overthrowing the regime in Libya or embarking on a policy of assassination that, of course, Donald Trump has now himself embraced.

[Winstonm]

Yes, but not just Clinton.

 

In this New Yorker interview he was asked "How would you distinguish between the five Presidents we have had since the end of the Cold War? Do you think they all succumbed to a similar hubris?":

Brain Klaas at the WaPo: (commentary)

 

....U.S. politics is now defined by a phenomenon called “motivated reasoning,” the tendency to see reality through the lens of desired outcomes. For many Trump voters, reality stretches to fit a prior worldview. Every Trump scandal proves that the “deep state” exists. Every new revelation about Trump’s unfitness for office proves that he’s the victim of “fake news.” Everything in our politics is filtered through the prism of pro-Trump/anti-Trump divides. We’ve reached the dystopian moment in our politics in which taking common-sense actions to stop the spread of a virus by wearing a mask is a partisan act.

 

None of this is to say that Trump can get away with everything. He is losing support among key demographics during the pandemic, most notably with the crucial voting bloc of Americans 65 and older. In a competitive election, even modest changes can spell doom for a candidate.

 

But let’s be frank: American democracy is badly broken if few people change their minds about a president who falsely accuses someone of murder or boasts about his TV ratings while 100,000 Americans lose their lives and nearly 40 million lose their jobs. And that says as much about the dysfunctional state of our country as it does about Trump.

 

Regardless of what happens in November, we have a long, long way to go to restore decency and a stable democracy.

[kenberg]

Yes, but not just Clinton.

 

In this New Yorker interview he was asked "How would you distinguish between the five Presidents we have had since the end of the Cold War? Do you think they all succumbed to a similar hubris?":

 

 

 

I was focusing on Clinton because his eight years were, roughly, right after the fall of the Soviet Union so what happens then at least could set the general approach for subsequent years. I want to go very easy on saying what anyone should or shouldn't have done, I'm sure it's complicated. The Wik sets the dates as 1947, I was 8 then, to 1991, when I was 52. A good fraction of my life. Obviously the ending was a big deal, with opportunities and traps. Clinton was there at the beginning, so I am interested in how they assessed his role in any illusions that there might have been.

 

I think I see the illusion mostly being the thought "Whew that's over, now we can relax". Of course the same sort of thing happened in 1945. The war is over, now we can relax. It didn't work out that way, it seldom does.

 

 

 

[y66]

President Trump and his minions relentlessly grind out despicable acts — gratuitous insults to war heroes, over 18,000 (and counting) false or misleading statements, many decisions courts have ruled illegal. But Mr. Trump’s wantonly cruel tweets about the tragic death in 2001 of Lori Klausutis are distinctive: They may constitute intentional torts for which a civil jury could award punitive damages against him.

 

Here are the key facts. Ms. Klausutis, age 28, died in the Florida district office of a Republican congressman, Joe Scarborough, who was then in Washington. The police found no evidence of foul play and the coroner reported that the cause of death was a hard fall against a hard object precipitated by her floppy mitral valve disease.

 

That should have been the end of the story, but earlier this week the president tweeted to his 80 million followers that “some people think” that Mr. Scarborough, now a popular MSNBC news host who frequent criticizes Mr. Trump, “g[o]t away with murder,” calling Mr. Scarborough a “psycho” and a “total Nut job.”

 

The president has offered no evidence for this slander, because there is none. Last week, Timothy Klausutis, Lori’s widower husband, wrote a remarkably restrained, poignant letter to Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, citing the pain that Mr. Trump’s “horrifying lies” about his wife’s death have caused him and the family, and asking Mr. Dorsey to remove Mr. Trump’s tweet. Mr. Dorsey has refused, most likely because the 1996 Communications Decency Act probably protects him from defamation claims for publishing the words of another. However Twitter added a warning label to the president’s false tweets on Tuesday about mail-in ballots, the first time the service has taken such a step.

 

Mr. Trump’s first tort is called intentional infliction of emotional distress, which the courts developed precisely to condemn wanton cruelty to another person who suffers emotionally as a result. This tort, which is sometimes called “outrage,” readily applies to Mr. Trump’s tweets about Ms. Klausutis. They were intentional and reckless, and were “extreme and outrageous” without a scintilla of evidence to support them. And they caused severe emotional distress — the protracted, daily-felt grief described in Mr. Klausutis’s letter to Mr. Dorsey.

 

Although the tweets targeted Mr. Scarborough, his own infliction of emotional distress claim may be weaker than Mr. Klausutis’s. By shrugging off the tweet as simply political gamesmanship on the president’s part, Mr. Scarborough may not have suffered the “severe emotional distress” required for an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.

 

Even so, Mr. Scarborough might succeed in a defamation suit against Mr. Trump for reputational harm. After all, the president’s innuendo that Mr. Scarborough may have murdered Lori Klausutis — presumably credible to the many Trump Twitter followers who subscribe to conspiracy theories — may seriously harm Mr. Scarborough’s reputation with them and others.

 

Mr. Trump, moreover, often aims his tweets to lead multiple news cycles affecting well beyond his Twitter followers. The president will surely argue that he has not actually accused anyone of murder and was merely “raising questions.” But courts have held that such calculated innuendo can constitute defamation, depending on the facts. This would be for a jury to decide.

 

Mr. Scarborough, as a public figure in his own right, must satisfy the Supreme Court’s demanding test for defamation liability in its landmark New York Times v. Sullivan decision. Under this test — designed to free public debate from being unduly constrained by fear of legal liability — Mr. Scarborough must prove that Mr. Trump made his defamatory comment either with actual knowledge that it was false or with “reckless disregard” for whether it was true or false. But the president’s tweets about the Klausutis case probably satisfy this test. After all, he has not cited any evidence to support his calumny either before the tweets or in response to the backlash since then. If the jury found for Mr. Scarborough, it could require Mr. Trump to pay substantial punitive damages in addition to compensation for his reputational harm.

 

Under the court’s unanimous 1998 ruing in Paula Jones’s sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton, both of these lawsuits — by Mr. Klausutis and by Mr. Scarborough — could proceed against the president while he is still in office. Because his tweets reach followers nationwide, the lawsuits could probably be brought in any state. And since the subject of his tweets had nothing to do with his presidential responsibilities, he probably could not hide behind an assertion of executive privilege.

 

The Klausutis family has suffered enough for almost 20 years without having to endure Mr. Trump’s crocodile tears and malicious raking of the coals. Tort law might hold our brutish president to account.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/opinion/twitter-trump-scarborough.html?action=click&algo=top_conversion&block=lone_trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=794825464&impression_id=853822945&index=1&pgtype=Article&region=footer

[y66]

60 years of sanctions on Cuba have failed, but 60 years of letting Cubans flee from Castro for the United States have been a huge success.

 

We should apply those lessons to China’s stomping out of Hong Kong autonomy.

 

https://www.vox.com/2020/5/28/21272218/hong-kong-china-america-place-based-visas

[cherdano]

It's only May. I really worry what he'll do in October if it still looks like he will lose to Biden.

[y66]

Donald Trump is constantly claiming powers he doesn’t actually have while ignoring those he’s entitled to. That’s the theme of an excellent Jill Colvin story:

 

Threatening to shut down Twitter for flagging false content. Claiming he can “override” governors who dare to keep churches closed to congregants. Asserting the “absolute authority” to force states to reopen, even when local leaders say it’s too soon.

As she notes, all of this is Trump, as is his failure to fully exploit the Defense Production Act as part of his reaction to the pandemic.

 

Regular readers will recognize this combination as signs of presidential weakness that nonetheless is dangerous to democratic government. Another way to put it is that it’s the essence of lawlessness. It’s not that Trump necessarily breaks laws (although he surely has done that), but that he appears oblivious to the whole idea of the rule of law — the idea that there are rules that apply to everyone, including the president.

 

Another way of looking at it is that Trump doesn’t seem to understand that he’s been hired to do a job, and that he has more than 300 million bosses. As with any job, it comes with written rules, and an employee — that’s what he is — must thoroughly master the terms of employment if he or she hopes to perform well. Instead, Trump seems to believe he’s won some sort of honor, and it entitles him to things. That’s simply not the reality of the presidency. Sure, there are perks (as there are with many jobs), but more than anything, it’s employment.

 

The worst part of this is that failing to recognize and uphold the rule of law is a fundamental abuse of power by the government employee whose job it is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” That is the core of his obligation to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” It is the heart of the presidency.

 

Now, for normal presidents this gets complicated very quickly. Defending the rule of law is not incompatible with disputing what exactly the law means, including the rules constraining the president. Every modern president (and at least many of those before the modern era) has pushed around the edges of what the Oval Office is able to do. All of them fought to further enlarge an office already loaded with far more powers than their 18th- and 19th-century predecessors had. We all expect presidents these days to do things that were simply not part of the job for Martin Van Buren or James Garfield, and we provide them with a large White House staff to fight for the president’s program. So it’s hard to say that this or that attempt at presidential power crosses a line into autocracy.

 

But Trump? His entire approach to the presidency ignores all the lines about what he’s authorized to do and what he isn’t. It’s true, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Francis Wilkinson and the political scientist Dave Hopkins say, that the Republican Party paved the trail Trump is on and are deeply implicated in all of this. But it’s also true that Trump is very different than George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan in this regard. It’s always hard to tell what’s in someone’s mind, but I’ve never heard anything from Trump that suggested any real respect for the rule of law.

[cherdano]

Like a toddler, he wants all the power but none of the responsibility.