Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Winstonm]

I didn't respond to Winston's post partly because I didn't have anything to say but also because it's a story in a paper, I wasn't there, and so...

 

But if we just go by the story, it seems a customer asked another customer to keep the proper distance in a check-out line.

 

Where I shop, places are clearly marked as to where you should stand when you are in line at a check-out.

People around here are pretty congenial, but if I moved in closer than the marked spot, I can well imagine the customer in front of me would ask me to step back.

Or, if the person behind me moved in closer than the marked spot, I might well, depending on whether we are speaking f a couple of inches or speaking of a substantial amount, ask them to step back.

The store sets the spots, I and others comply.

 

Covid is a serious business, states set rules stating expectations of stores, stores set rules stating expectations of customers. I wasn't a witness at the event, but if the story is accurate it seems that one customer, the woman, was ignoring the rules and another customer, the man asked her to comply with the rules. I don't care that she is 58 or that she does, or does not, love Trump, but if she was clearly crowding in on a guy in line then telling her to move back seems to be both allowed and sensible. The rules were not complicated and not burdensome, and they had an important purpose regarding both individual and community health.

 

Curious in that what I read in that article was the story of a woman whose vitriol was reserved not for simply being asked to step back but by being asked to step back by someone who didn't look or sound like her.

 

To me, this is the critical line from the article:

The report goes on to say, "The defendant also proceeds to stab the victim's vehicle with her keys while saying he needed to go back to his country."

Edited February 23, 2021 by Winstonm

[kenberg]

Is there a path back? I think we start with the basics.

 

A. The US deaths from covid have now reached a half million.

B, Bid was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

 

Can we, or can't we, begin by accepting that A and B are true? Of course, there will be those who say A and B are false just as there will be people who say that forest fires in California were caused by lasers fired from space. Such people will always exist, we have to hope that there are not very many of them.

 

For those, and I hope it is the vast majority, who accept A then a corollary would be that we did not address the problem very well, and we should start to do better. And then we might get to accepting that wearing masks might actually be a sensible idea. And keeping a distance from others while shopping.

 

But we start at the beginning. A and B are true, are they not? Then we can move on. The denial of the Euclidean parallel postulate can lead to very useful alternative geometries, Denying that there are half a million US deaths from covid will not end so well.

[Winstonm]

Is there a path back? I think we start with the basics.

 

A. The US deaths from covid have now reached a half million.

B, Bid was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

 

Can we, or can't we, begin by accepting that A and B are true? Of course, there will be those who say A and B are false just as there will be people who say that forest fires in California were caused by lasers fired from space. Such people will always exist, we have to hope that there are not very many of them.

 

For those, and I hope it is the vast majority, who accept A then a corollary would be that we did not address the problem very well, and we should start to do better. And then we might get to accepting that wearing masks might actually be a sensible idea. And keeping a distance from others while shopping.

 

But we start at the beginning. A and B are true, are they not? Then we can move on. The denial of the Euclidean parallel postulate can lead to very useful alternative geometries, Denying that there are half a million US deaths from covid will not end so well.

 

You are right, of course, but it is also critical to understand that gaslighting is the only plank in the platform of the new Republican party .

[y66]

Donald Trump and his lawyers have routinely argued that the former president would be subjected to “irreparable harm” if his tax returns landed in unfriendly hands. The Supreme Court disagreed, and refused to block a subpoena that local prosecutors in New York had issued for the records.

 

This doesn’t mean Trump’s returns will suddenly appear online. They’re going to a grand jury, and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., whose office issued — but had yet to enforce — the subpoena, presumably will be circumspect about who gets to see them.

 

Even so, a dam that Trump has spent decades fortifying around his finances and tax returns has been broken. And Vance’s investigation appears to be broad enough to pose a serious criminal threat to the former president, his three eldest children and the Trump Organization.

 

Vance is investigating Trump for possible tax fraud and falsification of business records, according to appellate court filings. His office is also examining whether Trump inflated the value of his properties and other assets to secure funds from lenders and investors. Vance’s investigation also involves the former president’s payment of hush money to two women who allegedly had sexual encounters with him, a possibly less-threatening inquiry that may involve campaign finance violations and falsification of business records.

 

Vance has been seeking eight years of tax returns covering 2011 to 2019 from Trump’s longtime accountants at Mazars USA. Last fall, the New York Times reported that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in 2016, the year he won the presidential election, and again in 2017, his first year in office. He managed to keep his payments so low by claiming massive business losses, maneuvers that also allowed him to pay no income tax at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

 

Trump has spent decades inflating his wealth and his business acumen, which has also fed his desire to keep a lid on his financial records. Pride, as much as the legal perils he faces, has informed his efforts to keep Vance, other prosecutors and Congress from getting his tax returns. (Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, "TrumpNation," alleging that the book misrepresented his business record and understated his wealth. Trump lost the suit in 2011.)

 

The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last summer involving Vance’s efforts to get Trump’s tax returns, ruled that presidents are not above the law. Trump’s lawyers had argued that prosecutors like Vance needed to meet a heightened standard when seeking any president’s personal papers. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed, noting that presidents aren’t immune from state criminal subpoenas and that Trump’s argument “runs up against the 200 years of precedent establishing that Presidents, and their official communications, are subject to judicial process.”

 

But the court said Trump was still free to contest specific legal concerns he had about various parts of Vance’s investigation and sent the case back to a lower court for review. His lawyers promptly acted on that opening, claiming that Vance’s subpoena, which included financial records apart from Trump’s tax returns, was too sweeping and intrusive. Two courts rejected that assertion, and the legal battle returned to the Supreme Court, where it ended on Monday.

 

The court took nearly four months to rule on emergency filings from Vance’s office seeking the right to enforce his subpoena, which he said hindered his investigation. Vance ultimately convinced the court that Trump “had multiple opportunities for review of his constitutional and state law claims, and at this juncture he provides no grounds for further delay.”

 

On top of the legal challenges Trump is facing in New York and elsewhere, his business has debts hanging over it that may be hard to repay without selling off prized assets. Both these factors were undoubtedly front of mind for him when he contested the results of the 2020 election, a loss that removed the protections he had enjoyed as president.

 

The Supreme Court has now given Vance fodder to pursue a criminal investigation that entails something Trump has always feared: exposure.

Presidents are still subject to judicial process? Was this ever in doubt?

[Winstonm]

Presidents are still subject to judicial process? Was this ever in doubt?

 

Barely survived: https://www.theatlan...itution/618097/

[barmar]

Barely survived: https://www.theatlan...itution/618097/

This is essentially a more scholarly version of Bill Maher's "Gus" explanation of the Trump presidency, named after the Disney film about a soccer team that added a mule to their team because there's nothing in the rulebook that says that players have to be human. So if there's no law explicitly saying POTUS must or can't do something, he can do as he wants. Traditions and norms that aren't inscribed in the statutes are worth the paper they're not printed on.

[pilowsky]

This is essentially a more scholarly version of Bill Maher's "Gus" explanation of the Trump presidency, named after the Disney film about a soccer team that added a mule to their team because there's nothing in the rulebook that says that players have to be human. So if there's no law explicitly saying POTUS must or can't do something, he can do as he wants. Traditions and norms that aren't inscribed in the statutes are worth the paper they're not printed on.

 

Particularly apposite since Caligula appointed a horse to be a Senator. Trump wouldn't appoint a mule because it might be seen to present (at least in part) a Democrat.

I suppose the Horse always voted neigh. I wonder what Trump's Donkey would bray about it?

No doubt he would consider it a nugatory experience if they failed to feed him hay.

 

 

[Zelandakh]

Is there a path back? I think we start with the basics.

 

A. The US deaths from covid have now reached a half million.

B, Bid was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.

I guess you have neither seen the Steve Scalise abc interview nor the CPAC agenda. Those basics are not going to be accepted on the Right any time soon.

[y66]

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell spoke in Congress today, which are words that are very boring to type. It wasn’t even the day’s most interesting congressional hearing. But with trillions of dollars hanging in the balance, every Powell utterance carries the weight of at least one (1) stimulus package.

 

And Powell did not disappoint. He was sanguine about a recent jump in long-term bond yields and didn’t do anything dumb, such as hinting he’d sway one iota from giving the economy full gas, writes Brian Chappatta. Short-term interest rates haven’t moved, and even long-term rates are barely above epochal lows. And they’re likely forecasts of a stronger economy ahead, not some sign hyperinflation is about to travel here in a time machine from the ’70s.

 

The outlook for the economy is certainly looking rosy, thanks to Covid vaccinations and stimulus spending. But it’s still uncertain, which means Powell and his peers around the world will keep giving markets what they want, writes John Authers.

 

Inflation should in fact come back from the dead this year, but, as with slightly higher bond yields, this is just a symptom of economies springing back to life and nothing to worry about, writes Bill Dudley. It will take a long time to return the economy to full health, and longer still to build an inflationary juggernaut.

 

With everything this wonderful, it’s the perfect time to buy stocks, you might think. Nope. It’s actually the perfect time to sell them, writes Jared Dillian. This is based on the thesis that the best portfolio-management strategy is the George Costanza model: Take whatever your instinct is and do the opposite. When the going gets easy is when the smartest investors make like Costanza and flee the room.

 

We often compare markets to children who are prone to throw tantrums, when they are in fact populated by grown adult humans that own houses and sometimes boats. Adults do get upset when markets go down, preventing them from buying more houses and boats. But if bonds and even stocks fall on stronger growth, then that’s actually a sign of maturity.

The opinions of Bloomberg writers are interesting but hardly qualify as reliable investment advice. Some stocks are obviously more overpriced than others. However, if your instinct is to pile into overpriced stocks, the Costanza model is probably worth considering.

[Winstonm]

Is there a path back? I think we start with the basics.

 

 

I agree that it is critical to continually restate facts - truth. I don't think facts or truth matter to this Republican Party.

 

It is a critical mistake to treat the Republicans as patriotic Americans with a different or conservative outlook - they have shown themselves to be uninterested in anything but raw power, and if the U.S. has to be sacrificed to that end so be it. Sure, there are a handful who may not be so far gone, but not enough to matter or enough to take a worthwhile stand against what has become the internal enemy of liberal democracy.

 

At this point in time, the Republican Party should be treated like a spouse treats an addicted or alcoholic partner. Don't let them lead else we'll only wallow with them. We don't engage them in debates. We keep them at arms length and live our lives fully and let them catch up, if possible. The reality is that the illness is theirs, not ours.

 

That is the only way to regain our national sanity.

 

 

[y66]

From Joni Ernst: Radical Policies from Coastal Elites Hurt Rural America

 

Just last month, President Biden raised eyebrows when he took executive action to begin transitioning federal government vehicles to electric vehicles. It followed a similar move spearheaded by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who last September, fully embraced the Green New Deal and implemented a move to all-electric vehicles by 2035.

 

For those who don’t fully understand how big the agriculture industry is to Iowa’s economy that may not seem like a big deal—after all, why would Iowans care what folks in D.C. and California are doing?

 

It’s simple—a move to electric vehicles means no more gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, which would eliminate the need to blend ethanol and biodiesel. And folks, anyone that knows Iowa knows that this move would deliver a devastating blow to our biofuel producers and farmers who have already had a tough go during COVID-19.

Seems like a good time to invent biolithium.

[pilowsky]

From Joni Ernst: Radical Policies from Coastal Elites Hurt Rural America

 

 

Seems like a good time to invent biolithium.

 

Tell you what. If the Iowans simply consume some of the lithium they might feel happier about moving into the 21st century instead of blackening the skies and contaminating all the atmosphere.

Then it will be a '

'

 

Alternatively, they could listen to

.

 

[y66]

This 2012 speech from former governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm is my platonic ideal of Democratic messaging.

 

[Winstonm]

From a WaPo article, a quite honest description:

 

 

Du Quoin's experience with covid-19 this past fall was typical of hundreds of small towns across the United States. Alarm when the pandemic began gave way to a mixture of complacency, denial and resistance to public health measures as the disease seemed for so long to be passing rural America by.

 

"We're prone to that make-believe way of thinking," Blakemore said.

 

my emphasis

 

 

My take is that make-believe, or magical thinking is the hallmark of the Bible Belt and stems from those religious beliefs.

[y66]

From a WaPo article, a quite honest description:

 

 

my emphasis

 

 

My take is that make-believe, or magical thinking is the hallmark of the Bible Belt and stems from those religious beliefs.

Isn't climate change happening everywhere?

[Winstonm]

Isn't climate change happening everywhere?

 

As soon as I get a response to that question from my latest prayer I'll let you know.

[pilowsky]

My take is that make-believe, or magical thinking is the hallmark of the Bible Belt and stems from those religious beliefs.

 

It turns out (naturally), that the place of atheists (like me) in society is a well-studied topic.

 

Conclusion

These studies are an initial investigation into anti-atheist prejudice, a common and understudied type of prejudice. Atheists are among the least liked groups of people in many parts of the world, and the present studies help to explain why. The present six studies converged on the conclusion that distrust is at the core of this particularly powerful, peculiar, and prevalent form of prejudice. Although religions continue to exert great influence on most human lives, the numbers of nonreligious people have continually grown, leading to a great degree of cultural polarization. In recent years, the topic of atheism has broken into public consciousness, leading to boisterous debate in popular culture and overshadowing the tremendous potential that the scientific study of atheism-and reactions to atheism-may hold for scientific understanding of the diversity of prejudice and the psychological, cultural, and evolutionary underpinnings of religion.

 

This quote is the conclusion of the following study.

 

Do You Believe in Atheists? Distrust Is Central to Anti-Atheist Prejudice;

GERVAIS, Will M ; SHARIFF, Azim F ; NORENZAYAN, Ara

Journal of personality and social psychology, 2011, Vol.101 (6), p.1189-1206

It turns out that although 97% of people - when asked - will identify culturally with a group that has belief in God as part of its oeuvre, 14% of people respond 'no' when asked if they believe in God.

I know it's a personal thing, but I call this 14% group 'grown-ups'.

Grown-ups have individuated from the concept that all of their decisions are governed by an 'external locus of control' and that so long as they appease this 'external locus' they can do and say whatever they please.

I achieved this state when I was about 12 years old. When I was 13, I had a Bar Mitzvah - my Bobe was very happy.

Undertaking this ritual meant that I was now responsible for my own actions.

 

 

 

[Winstonm]

I cannot understand how adults continue to accept a belief system based on a foundational claim that magic is real and that same magic explains all (unsolved) mysteries .

[pilowsky]

I cannot understand how adults continue to accept a belief system based on a foundational claim that magic is real and that same magic explains all (unsolved) mysteries .

 

The USA is constructed on the central big lie that everyone "believes". E Pluribus Unum. From many comes one.

 

This tiny phrase suggests to Americans that anyone, no matter their circumstances, can rise "like some rough beast, its time come round at last, and slouch towards Bethlehem". To paraphrase.

 

As a sidebar, the word 'bedlam' comes from the name of a major psychiatric hospital (my sister worked there) called Bethlehem (contracted to bedlam.

I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the occupants of this hospital also thought that they could become President at one time or another.

 

Of course, this is BS. Less than half of the people legally present in the USA can become President. And that's just based on citizenship and age.

 

The reason it's called the American dream is that it's only present in your dreams.

 

The Australian dream is to own a house. This is a much more achievable objective - around two-thirds of the Australian population have owned their own domicile. It's similar in the USA.

You don't lose your home in Australia if you have to pay medical (or electricity in Texas) bills.

 

I had the same sense of existential anxiety when living or working in the USA when visiting Iran.

At least the white people in the USA don't have to worry about being picked up on the street and imprisoned for no good reason by other white people.

 

I suspect that people develop these crazy notions because they watch too much television or other forms of entertainment that have no aesthetic value.

Someone once commented that the difference between art and pornography is that in a porn film, there is no story, 'actors' move from one scene to another doing things - alone or in groups.

The same applies to much of the 'product' in books, film and song. There is no aesthetic value; the action just rolls past your eyes like a duck (so to speak).

[Winstonm]

I am more and more concerned that we in the U.S. are blindly stumbling toward an American Spring, a type of anti-Arab Spring where the goal is greater authoritarian control and less liberal democracy.

 

One of the bigger reasons for my concern is the lack of diversity in points of views that our media has decided newsworthy. For example, only today there was a headline about some old Fox news lady who pulled her children out of school for some wacko reasoning - why should that be newsworthy? Only because she has some kind of audience - and she only has an audience because she has been promoted.

 

We are in for a great fall - and I really don't see how all the pieces can be put back together again.

[pilowsky]

I am more and more concerned that we in the U.S. are blindly stumbling toward an American Spring, a type of anti-Arab Spring where the goal is greater authoritarian control and less liberal democracy.

 

One of the bigger reasons for my concern is the lack of diversity in points of views that our media has decided newsworthy. For example, only today there was a headline about some old Fox news lady who pulled her children out of school for some wacko reasoning - why should that be newsworthy? Only because she has some kind of audience - and she only has an audience because she has been promoted.

 

We are in for a great fall - and I really don't see how all the pieces can be put back together again.

 

very true - Luis Rooten wrote a little poem about it

 

Un petit d'un petit

S'étonne aux Halles

Un petit d'un petit

Ah! degrés te fallent

Indolent qui ne sort cesse

Indolent qui ne se mène

Qu'importe un petit d'un petit

Tout Gai de Reguennes

[kenberg]

The USA is constructed on the central big lie that everyone "believes". E Pluribus Unum. From many comes one.

 

This tiny phrase suggests to Americans that anyone, no matter their circumstances, can rise "like some rough beast, its time come round at last, and slouch towards Bethlehem". To paraphrase.

 

As a sidebar, the word 'bedlam' comes from the name of a major psychiatric hospital (my sister worked there) called Bethlehem (contracted to bedlam.

I'm pretty sure that quite a few of the occupants of this hospital also thought that they could become President at one time or another.

 

Of course, this is BS. Less than half of the people legally present in the USA can become President. And that's just based on citizenship and age.

 

The reason it's called the American dream is that it's only present in your dreams.

 

The Australian dream is to own a house. This is a much more achievable objective - around two-thirds of the Australian population have owned their own domicile. It's similar in the USA.

You don't lose your home in Australia if you have to pay medical (or electricity in Texas) bills.

 

I had the same sense of existential anxiety when living or working in the USA when visiting Iran.

At least the white people in the USA don't have to worry about being picked up on the street and imprisoned for no good reason by other white people.

 

I suspect that people develop these crazy notions because they watch too much television or other forms of entertainment that have no aesthetic value.

Someone once commented that the difference between art and pornography is that in a porn film, there is no story, 'actors' move from one scene to another doing things - alone or in groups.

The same applies to much of the 'product' in books, film and song. There is no aesthetic value; the action just rolls past your eyes like a duck (so to speak).

 

One of the reasons "people develop these crazy notions" is because in our own lives the American Dream reflects reality as we have experienced it.

 

Some of us, I hope many of us, are willing to discuss how the American Dream can become reality for others.

 

Added for amusement: It's true that my father was ineligible to be president. I can't recall hin ever expressing any bitterness over that fact.

[y66]

From Noah Smith interview with Saikat Chakrabarti, creator of the Green New Deal:

 

Another idea we've advanced has been to return the Federal Reserve System back to its roots as a network of regional development banks. So while the FFB/NRDC focuses on national-level development strategies, a network of regional development banks can bring in the kind of bottom-up input necessary to have successful national development. To do this, the Fed would expand its direct-to-business lending to support productive small and medium sized businesses--similar to the Sparkassen in Germany. And unlike today, where the NY Fed makes the biggest financial decisions, the Fed would empower its regional banks to develop their respective regions. The Fed could be informed by the NDS put out by the NRDC every year to guide its investing decisions while also feeding information about what's actually working on the ground back to the NRDC. This would be a great way to rebuild, with some intentionality, the small and medium businesses that are dying by the millions right now due to the COVID-19 recession.

 

But beyond policy, successful national economic development will take a different kind of political leadership than what we're used to. We need leaders who are willing to take risks, be creative, throw out ideas when they aren't working and double down when they are, think outside the box to call the nation to action, and always be pushing to go bigger and faster. Just as an example, a few weeks ago some of us at New Consensus began digging a bit more into our vaccine production bottlenecks. New Consensus put out an op-ed arguing for going faster since if we can shave off even a couple months in vaccinating all of America, we could save hundreds of thousands of lives. Worst case, we would end up with the capacity to vaccinate the rest of the world faster, which we will need to do if we don't want COVID-19 to become a yearly disease like the flu. But when we started looking into what the actual bottlenecks are in mRNA vaccine development, we mostly came across articles arguing for why we can'tdo it. These articles are interesting and I'd encourage the reader to read them, but the argument boiled down to our inability to make more of these nanoassembly machines and train enough people to operate them. This sounded surprising to us--if only a handful of these machines are making our supply right now, how could we not possibly make more of them? My colleague Zack Exley and I called a few people in industry who work on vaccine manufacturing to see if maybe we were missing something--perhaps these machines were incredibly hard to make? But the people we called, including someone at a company that makes these nanoassembly machines, thought we could easily build more in a matter of weeks. So why isn't Biden pushing to invest in building more of these machines now to ramp up our production?

 

The point of this anecdote isn't to say that there is one weird trick to upping vaccine production by building more nanoassembly machines. Even if these machines are the only bottleneck now (which I'm skeptical of), as soon as we fix it there will be a new bottleneck. My point is we need the kind of political leadership that tries to relentlessly figure out what we should be doing to go faster and does it. With vaccines, the only reason to not make more doses faster would be if there is some raw material we have to get from nature that we are running out of. But then our leaders should ask, why not make a synthetic version of it? We need leaders who assume there is a way to do better instead of assuming we're doing the best we can.

 

This is, unfortunately, the opposite of how most of our political leaders act today. From my time in Congress, I learned that politicians in America are greatly incentivized to do as little as possible as long as it doesn't get them in trouble. The consequence for action and failure is obvious to them--you get attacked in political attack ads and probably the media. Also your colleagues won't like you because you are the annoying person asking uncomfortable questions and telling people they could be doing a better job. But we need politicians to realize that often, the consequences for trying and failing are minimal compared to the consequences for not trying at all. We need leaders who are brave enough to question, break through barriers, and drive progress even when there isn't public pressure to do so. Without that, I fear even the best designed institutions and industrial policy will not get us very far.

[thepossum]

It turns out (naturally), that the place of atheists (like me) in society is a well-studied topic.

 

....

 

I would regard myself as a secular Christian upbringing atheist (who tried to incorporate and make sense of half a dozen other major traditions etc) with a lifetime of complex experiences who has a distrust for some high profile outspoken atheist types due to their rather limited lens on the world and human experience. They/many atheists seem to deny the sophistication and complexity of human evolution, cognition, psychology, and what all the different philosophical/religious interpretations and representations of those things could be.

I prefer to work out and question (as a scientific type) what things mean(how they came about) rather than mocking them which is a common approach.

Note - regarding your comment on locus of control is it not the case that possibly the majority of the world has a very little power/control (and entitled to feel it is largely external) and many of those who mock/similar word have huge power

 

I feel that some extreme atheistic pronouncements/attitudes are on a par with the distrust I have with techs running our world

 

PS I remember when I first visited Indonesia I was advised to call myself a Christian rather than an atheist. It was a safer approach :)

 

PPS As an afterthought I should be careful what I say about papers from one of my associated (and trained) professional groups, but I do find the nature of much psychological research (including my own) to be rather frustrating in how it is researched, analysed and written up. It too seems to lose the complexity of the human mind. This thing appears not to be correlated with this but it is with that kind of thing

[thepossum]

I am more and more concerned that we in the U.S. are blindly stumbling toward an American Spring, a type of anti-Arab Spring where the goal is greater authoritarian control and less liberal democracy.

 

One of the bigger reasons for my concern is the lack of diversity in points of views that our media has decided newsworthy. For example, only today there was a headline about some old Fox news lady who pulled her children out of school for some wacko reasoning - why should that be newsworthy? Only because she has some kind of audience - and she only has an audience because she has been promoted.

 

We are in for a great fall - and I really don't see how all the pieces can be put back together again.

 

I am curious how to reconcile this with the recent celebration of the Democrats' (EDIT fixed apostrophe - more than one Democrat) success :)