Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[pilowsky]

Since my last post I looked at the morning paper. There is an article in the WaPo Mag with suggestions from various sources about what to do:

 

https://www.washingt...estyle-magazine

 

And of course there was the Gene Weingarten article, I quote the beginning:

 

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It wouldn't have been quite such a problem if there were only two things to worry about. Also, it wasn't raining.

How come none of these people ever take their pet dogs to these rallies - what's wrong with these people?

[y66]

It's helpful to consider the contrast between someone who stands up to a corrupt authoritarian who's already tried to murder him once, and someone who refused to because he feared a mean tweet.

Extraordinary courage.

 

Putin is a KGB thug & there is incredible power in shining sunlight on his oppression [of Navalny].

[pilowsky]

Trump has announced that he will not be at the inauguration.

Where will he be?

A guess, not entirely joking.

In some country that has no extradition treaty with the US.

The House and Senate can remove him from the presidency. A court could put him in jail

 

Good news! Russia has restored Parler's internet connectivity.

[thepossum]

Good news! Russia has restored Parler's internet connectivity.

 

I don't know whether its good or bad news, what the implications are and how long any supposed freedom will be protected but yes its good news that whole platforms cannot just be silenced by a US Democrat/China tech-cartel. But then again given that our internet routes of all kinds are controlled by a couple of powerful global entities who knows whether I could access it even if I wanted to. Its rather sad when a supposed bastion of freedom reduces their trust to the level of China but I guess the eiltes in control of our world don't need to worry any more

 

Come to think of it for a while I have been quite convinced that everything I read or access is coming through some dodgy route, and all my OS, my applications, everything coming through the same routes and the same controls and possible manipulation of what I see

[pilowsky]

I don't know whether its good or bad news, what the implications are and how long any supposed freedom will be protected but yes its good news that whole platforms cannot just be silenced by a US Democrat/China tech-cartel. But then again given that our internet routes of all kinds are controlled by a couple of powerful global entities who knows whether I could access it even if I wanted to. Its rather sad when a supposed bastion of freedom reduces their trust to the level of China but I guess the eiltes in control of our world don't need to worry any more

 

Come to think of it for a while I have been quite convinced that everything I read or access is coming through some dodgy route, and all my OS, my applications, everything coming through the same routes and the same controls and possible manipulation of what I see

 

The specific problem that I have is that a Russian technology firm (story from Radio Free Europe) is behind the reactivation of an outlet that will enable Trump and his followers to continue to spread their lies about 'stolen elections'.

In real-life conversations with many people in Australia who are self-identified Trump supporters, it is a bit like talking to the 'pod people' from 'Invasion of the bodysnatchers'; they sound and look completely normal, but something is just not quite right.

 

The thing that is 'not quite right' is that unlike you and me, no rational argument will sway them from their fixed belief.

 

It's a bit like trying to explain to someone that the Dunning-Kruger effect is not real - it just sounds soo much like it should be real that people have a strong cognitive bias towards accepting the idea.

 

These strange beliefs are fine as long as they are not a danger to themselves or others.

 

What the past year has shown with total clarity is that some false beliefs are a real danger to people - even when a third of the population wants to believe them.

 

We have the same problem with people desperately wanting to cling to fossil fuel and therefore deny the existence of climate change.

 

This "belle indifference" to real problems has developed into the perfect storm of 2020 - something I learned about from an actual psychiatrist .

 

Perhaps we can call it 'abnormal social behaviour' - the victims are trying to make sense of difficult social circumstances and turn to theories that rely on 'faith and hope' rather than on knowledge and rational thinking: a bit like me when I'm playing Bridge.

[y66]

28 hours 36 minutes

[y66]

With only one day remaining until President-elect Joe Biden takes office, it’s time to look at how he’s doing on one of the biggest challenges of the presidency: filling the White House and the executive branch with first-rate people.

 

Biden’s picks so far have almost entirely avoided controversy, and for the most part his choices have been praised by the relevant policy experts. Only two selections have sparked much pushback. A lot of Republicans targeted Neera Tanden, the nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, mainly because she’s been an outspoken partisan. That makes her easy to attack on the grounds that her appointment undermines Biden’s message of lowering temperatures and seeking bipartisanship. It’s probably more accurate to say that Biden is charging ahead on a mainstream liberal policy agenda while also looking to cut deals; Tanden fits in with the former, if not the latter.

 

The other controversy has been over Secretary of Defense nominee Lloyd J. Austin III — not for the most part for reasons of politics or qualifications, but because he’s a recently retired general and the U.S. has a history of preferring civilian leadership of the military. There have been complaints from Democrats, Republicans and many neutral experts, but it appears likely that he’ll be confirmed, and that Congress will pass a waiver of a law requiring seven years to elapse after leaving military service before an ex-officer can lead the Pentagon. Austin retired in 2016.

 

It’s possible there will be more controversy once confirmation hearings start on Tuesday. We’ll find out then whether Biden’s vetting team has done as good a job as it seems. Overall, however, Biden appears to have a high-quality group.

 

He’s also fulfilled, at least so far, his pledge about demographic diversity. In particular, Biden is shattering all records for women in the White House and in the executive branch. The cabinet has more women than ever, but it goes deeper than that. To date, 29 of the 51 announced nominees that require Senate confirmation are women — and 40 of the 64 announced positions designated as senior White House staff have gone to women. This is a reflection of the Democratic Party as it is right now. Biden and is transition team deserve credit for putting that party preference into action, and doing it without alienating important party groups or (Tanden notwithstanding) inviting attacks from Republicans.

 

Are there hints of trouble? Yes. Biden has so far designated 51 nominees for Senate-confirmed positions. That’s almost twice as many as the 28 that Donald Trump had just before taking office in 2017. But experts recommend that about 100 of these nominees should be ready to go by around Jan. 20, and Biden is apparently going to fall way short of that. If Biden winds up just a few days behind, that’s no big deal. However, the road gets steeper after that. The Washington Post and Partnership for Public Service are tracking the 700 most important positions that require Senate confirmation; we’ll see whether Biden falls further behind or if he picks up the pace. Each vacancy in the executive branch is a missed opportunity to influence the bureaucracy and to make things run smoothly.

[y66]

This mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the President and other powerful people. And they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.

It's never too late to do the right thing? We'll see. Still, I was happy to see this and I hope we see more of it this week.

[y66]

The paradox of the 2020 race is that Trump — the least popular president in the history of modern polling — was soundly rejected by the public, and yet it's genuinely true that we came within a hair of him winning the Electoral College again.

[y66]

Yellen Tells Lawmakers That Workers Would Be Her Focus by Kate Davidson

 

WASHINGTON—Janet Yellen told lawmakers Tuesday she would make the needs of America’s workers her core focus if confirmed as the next U.S. Treasury secretary and ensure the U.S. has a competitive economy that offers good jobs and wages workers in cities and rural areas.

 

“I will be focused on day one on providing support to America’s workers and to small businesses, putting into effect as quickly and efficiently as I can, the relief in the bill that was recently passed, and then over time working for a second package that I think we need to get through these dark times,” she told the Senate Finance Committee at her confirmation hearing before a vote on her nomination.

This is so smart.

[Winstonm]

Yellen Tells Lawmakers That Workers Would Be Her Focus by Kate Davidson

 

 

This is so smart.

 

Trickle up?

[Winstonm]

We cannot forget that Trump dead-enders are still out there spreading garbage to the worshipful masses.

 

 

 

Secretary of State (and Christian dominion seeker) Mike Pompeo raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he tweeted that multiculturalism ― in a country that has long celebrated its immigrant heritage ― is "not who America is."

my emphasis

 

I guess in his view the only true American is white, Christian, and born prior to 1776.

[y66]

Trickle up?

I hope it's the first wave of a tsunami of smart agenda setting and communication.

[y66]

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down the Trump administration’s plan to relax restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, paving the way for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to enact new and stronger restrictions on power plants.

 

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia called the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule a “fundamental misconstruction” of the nation’s environmental laws, devised through a “tortured series of misreadings” of legal statute.

 

On the last full day of the Trump presidency, it effectively ended the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to weaken and undermine climate change policies and capped a dismal string of failures in which courts threw out one deregulation after another. Experts have widely described the E.P.A.’s losing streak as one of the worst legal records of the agency in modern history.

 

The appeals court did not reinstate a 2015 regulation that President Barack Obama’s E.P.A. had enacted, which would have forced utilities to move away from coal and toward renewable energy to reduce emissions. But it rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to repeal and replace that rule with a toothless one.

 

Judges eviscerated the Trump administration’s core argument: that the only possible way to interpret the Clean Air Act of 1970 is that the federal government does not have the authority to set national restrictions on emissions or force states to move away from fossil fuel power. That argument that would have prevented Mr. Biden or any future administration from tackling climate change from power plants without an explicit new law from Congress.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/19/climate/trump-climate-change.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Trump's about to lose control and I think I like it.

[Winstonm]

Don’t know about you but I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it

[pilowsky]

[y66]

A presidential inauguration in the United States is usually a celebration of democracy.

 

Hundreds of thousands of people descend on Washington to watch a newly elected president take the oath of office. A departing president signals his respect for the country by celebrating the new one, even when that departing president is disappointed by the election’s outcome — as was the case with Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and others.

 

“I grew up in the Washington area, and inaugurations have always been a time of hope and fresh beginnings regardless of party,” Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent, told me.

 

But when American democracy is under siege, an inauguration can have a very different feel. That was true in 1945, when the U.S. was fighting fascism in World War II, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fourth inauguration was a spartan affair. It was true in 1861, when the country was on the verge of war and Abraham Lincoln was the target of an assassination plot. It was true again four years later, when smallpox was raging and the Civil War was nearing its end.

 

And it will be true today — when mismanagement has left the U.S. coping with the world’s worst Covid-19 toll and when law enforcement agencies are warning of potential violence by President Trump’s supporters.

 

The day will still be a triumph of democracy in the most important way: A defeated president’s attempt to overturn a fair election has failed, as has a violent attack on Congress by his supporters. The election’s winner, Joe Biden, will be sworn in as president around noon Eastern, just after the new vice president, Kamala Harris.

 

Nonetheless, American democracy is under siege. Washington resembles an armed encampment, with visitors barred from many places, fences surrounding the National Mall and troops lining the streets. Trump will not attend the event, and many of his supporters believe his false claims.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Peter, who has covered every White House since Clinton’s and who first covered an inauguration as a junior reporter in 1985, the start of Ronald Reagan’s second term. “It’s surreal to see our city become such an armed camp. It reminds me of Baghdad or Kabul back when I covered those wars, but I never imagined we would see it quite this way in Washington.”

Darkest before the dawn? Man, I hope so.

[y66]

Six years ago, we were all perfectly fine to let him keep bumbling around New York, pretending to be a billionaire. He could have been hosting golf tournaments, making TGI Fridays commercials, playing this role he created of the wealthy tycoon. He could have bought a couple of new helicopters, a couple new wives, and we would have all just rolled our eyes and been like, ‘Oh, that’s Donald Trump.’ Probably would’ve landed a sweet gig as the cranky TV judge on some hooded celebrity pie-eating competition. That’s where Donald Trump belonged. But now, most of the country despises him; most of the world despises him. We found out he pays no taxes; he has no money; he is likely to face criminal charges in New York. Nobody will do business with him. Can’t host a golf tournament; can’t even operate a carousel in his hometown anymore. His wife hates him; his kids are screwed. He’s got to hole up in that Cheesecake Factory with a golf course in Florida he lives in for the rest of his life. He won’t be able to invite centerfolds up to his office anymore, and he’ll be generally thought of as the worst president in the history of the United States. So was it worth it? For him, it probably was, but it’s over now.

[y66]

Let’s say goodbye and good riddance to President Donald Trump with three lessons everyone should learn from his failure of a presidency.

 

The first lesson: Believe politicians when they tell you who they will be in office. Trump campaigned as a bigot. He campaigned with contempt for learning the basics of government and public policy. He campaigned as a would-be authoritarian with a fascination with violence and no interest in the rule of law and republican institutions. He campaigned with disdain for the truth. These attitudes, and not anything he said about policy — much of that was either nonsensical or confused — were his real campaign promises. And, unlike his policy promises, Trump’s attitudes amounted to pledges that he followed through on once in office.

 

The second lesson: The White House, as presidency scholar Richard Neustadt wrote 60 years ago, is no place for amateurs. Trump never did learn how to use the powers of the office to influence the other legitimate players in the governing process. He never understood how to use information to his advantage. Instead, he starved himself of information outside of what he saw on Fox News and what played well at his rallies. He failed to build a formidable professional reputation, which (as Neustadt would have predicted) badly weakened his bargaining position. It didn’t help that he was a historically unpopular president. The result? Botched administration of government; policy initiatives (such as health care and infrastructure) that never got around to being launched; other policy attempts that were too sloppy to survive court challenges; and an administration of free agents and loose cannons who pursued their own policy preferences regardless of the damage it did to the president. The paradox of presidential weakness: The less Trump could get done through the normal policy process, the more he retreated to things he could try to do himself or by evading rules and norms, thereby threatening to turn the nation into a lawless autocracy.

 

The third lesson: Parties risk much by nominating someone they cannot trust. In some ways, Republicans were lucky with Trump. He was willing in almost every instance to go along with what they wanted, notably by ceding control of judicial nominations. But even a weak president has some influence, and Trump used his to build up the most radical wing of the party at the expense of its conservative mainstream. Trump’s power within the party had little to do with how popular he was with Republican voters. It derived, and still derives, from the plain fact that everyone knows he has no significant loyalty to the party and wouldn’t think twice about harming it. Thus, to pick the most recent major example, Trump was able to hold most of the party hostage to his false claims of election fraud because it was plausible that he would tell his strongest supporters in Georgia to stay home on the day of special Senate elections earlier this month and deliver the Senate majority to Democrats, something that no other modern president would ever have done.

[cherdano]

Winston, will you start the new thread?

I propose as a title "Will US democracy survive?" Nothing too dramatic, you know.

[kenberg]

I'll repeat the first point Bernstein makes and add a bit:

 

The first lesson: Believe politicians when they tell you who they will be in office. Trump campaigned as a bigot. He campaigned with contempt for learning the basics of government and public policy. He campaigned as a would-be authoritarian with a fascination with violence and no interest in the rule of law and republican institutions. He campaigned with disdain for the truth. These attitudes, and not anything he said about policy — much of that was either nonsensical or confused — were his real campaign promises. And, unlike his policy promises, Trump’s attitudes amounted to pledges that he followed through on once in office.

From the beginning I have said I would not want Trump as president even if his views on policy were close to mine. With Trump that was easy, he is very clearly a horrible person. But even with a more normal choice I want the president to know more than I do about policy. I have recently said that I think that I, and others like me, should not be getting stimulus money that could be better spent on others And I think teachers and parents of small children should get the vaccine before i do. And I think student loan debt help should be a much lower priority than some others do. But what do I know? I want someone in the WH who knows more than I do. Someone with good sense and who has the best interests of the country at heart.

There are quite a few people whose professional lives have suffered because they worked for Trump. And perhaps a growing number of voters who think maybe they made a mistake. Me, I would have been more likely to trust a phone call from someone saying he is my grandson and I need to send him five thousand dollars that I would have been willing to trust Trump.

Anyway, I do not expect to always agree with Joe Biden. One of the good things: I think he would be ok with that. He does not seem to be in need of a butt kiss.

[Winstonm]

I think it only right for this thread to include a

from Donald Trump himself:

[barmar]

Many people voted for Trump because he was a bigot. They're bigots as well, and he made it OK for them to vote with their feeling of xenopobia and fears about losing their position of supremacy.

 

Many voted for him because he was an amateur. They were fed up with business as usual, they wanted someone to shake things up. I guess they got their wish. But he most definitely did not "drain the swamp".

 

Unfortunately, I don't think they really learned their lesson. They allowed themselves to be gaslighted by Trump, and many of them still think he was a great President. If not for Trump totally bungling the pandemic, he probably would have won re-election. We had to lose hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to get him out of office.

[pilowsky]

Trump used a classic piece of right-wing newspeak with the phrase 'drain the swamp'.

When Malcolm Fraser said (in 1975) that he was going to 'Defend and extend Medibank' - the forerunner to universal health care in Australia, what he meant was that he was going to sell it to private investors who would charge customers and make money from it.

 

If Americans say that everyone deserves food, clothing, education and decent health care they mean something very different to the person-in-the-street meaning. So does the right-wing in Australia.

Read our current prime minister's speech on fairness. He thinks that fairness is simply the chance to succeed without government.

No wonder Trump gave him a medal and he was the only foreign leader to pick up the phone last week when Trump/Pompeo called.

 

What I mean when I hear this statement is that nobody in the society that I live in should be deprived of decent health education and welfare no matter their circumstances. This is what I call 'fair'.

 

The attitude in America seems to be fundamentally different. Even people who are self-described democrats in America abhor the idea of 'socialised medicine'.

 

The difference may be embedded in the culture.

A little while ago, there was a competitive cooking show called Iron Chef that started in Japan and made its way to America and then to Australia.

 

The premise was/is simple. Three resident Iron Chefs ruled the roost. A challenger would then arrive and challenge one of the Chefs to a competition.

The host then reveals the secret ingredient and the two teams have ~ an hour to undertake "Battle Zucchini" or whatever.

Bobby Flay might Battle the White house Chef in the preparation of a multi-course meal where the key ingredient was cabbage.

 

A ferocious and exciting competition then took place, and a panel of experts judged the result.

This format worked well in America and Japan.

 

In Australia, it was a disaster. Why? Because in Australia, if one of the competitors were having a problem, the other competitor would offer to help.

This kind of behaviour is characteristic of Australia. We call it 'mateship'.

 

In America, you are only as popular as the amount of money you possess. Since having money (in excess) means that you have deprived someone else of it this approach to having a society has terrible consequences.

No money, no health care, no home, no education and no friends.

 

American movies and Television reflect this: Hunger Games, Lord of the flies, Greed and on and on.

Australian movies are characterised by people overcoming hardship by helping each other: Priscilla queen of the desert, or about how the British f*****d us up.

 

Films that do really well in Australia highlight the way Australians from different backgrounds work cooperatively to overcome adversity. They are particularly successful when this is achieved at the expense of Americans or the British.

The Dish and Crocodile Dundee are examples of the former. Any film about Australia in WW1 is an example of the latter.

In the Dish, Australia is the key link in the chain that sets Armstrong on the moon. At a critical moment, there is a problem. Despite the behaviour of the guy visiting from NASA, the problem is solved and I get to sit in my primary school and watch it happen on a Black and White television.

 

Interestingly, as D. Chalmers once commented, American heroes can be characterised in two ways; Christ-like figures or lone moral agents.

Superman is the archetype of the Christ figure. A Father and Mother send their only son to Earth where he sees and knows everything and solves all of your problems because he is always right moral and just.

Shane and Batman are lone moral agents. They are human, but they 'know the difference between right and wrong' - probably Bridge players.

Australian heroes are the tireless workers (so long as they don't make a fuss) or the people that overcome adversity. Wealthy people who succeed for no apparent reason (Trump) are treated as crooked gold-toothed rats worthy of contempt.

 

Trump is the epitome of what happens in this type of culture - he is simultaneously an aspirational figure, stupid and rich.

The educated people in America presumably voted for him because he was a joke, others voted for him because he represented their desire to be suddenly and effortlessly wealthy and because he was just like them. And he still lost.

Only getting elected because of a corrupt gerrymandered system set up to protect white supremacist slave-traders (The Founders).

I still hear people say that Hillary Clinton didn't get elected because nobody liked her, even though she actually won the election but was kept out of office by a bizarre electoral system set up to keep the right-wing in power.

 

From an outsiders perspective, it was hard to believe that a person who is incompetent in almost every area could become President.

Trump is obvious - give me money and I'll say or do whatever you want - whenever you want.

But that's politics, to run the world you don't need skill, you need 'likes.'

[Chas_P]

Anyway, I do not expect to always agree with Joe Biden. One of the good things: I think he would be ok with that. He does not seem to be in need of a butt kiss.

 

I hope he nominates you for Secretary of Common Sense.