Strongman Rule is Fantasy

 

The Strongman Fantasy (text and audio) by Timothy Snyder

And Dictatorship in Real Life

Read on Substack

Quite a few Americans like the idea of strongman rule. Why not a dictator who will get things done?

I lived in eastern Europe when memories of communism were fresh. I have visited regions in Ukraine where Russia imposed its occupation regime. I have spent decades reading testimonies of people who lived under Nazi or Stalinist rule. I have seen death pits, some old, some freshly dug. And I have friends who have lived under authoritarian regimes, including political prisoners and survivors of torture. Some of the people I trusted most have been assassinated.

So I think that there is an answer to this question.

Strongman rule is a fantasy.

Essential to it is the idea that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't.

In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something. But the vote you cast for him affirms your irrelevance. The whole point is that the strongman owes us nothing. We get abused and we get used to it.

Read or listen to the rest of Snyder's essay on his linked Substack.

As to "in democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents..." WHY do we take it for granted?

In Arizona, each Congressional district has more than 800,000 people in them. In these districts, how does a constituent get her or his voice heard? 

Two ways, ACCESS, which is often granted based on campaign donations, and by staff aggregating information from constituents who contact them through phone calls and email (web forms on official websites). 

In theory, such aggregation would equate to the Voice of the People and guide the Representative's voting decisions. In practice, it's not so simple. BUT they DO listen and have to make complicated decisions.

Nevertheless, Trump was apparently elected to a second term. He consistently projected himself as a "strongman." However, we KNOW from the last 8 years that he acts in HIS OWN interest. Not yours or mine.

Timothy Snyder has seen what dictators, autocrats, do, in practice.

Then there's journalist and historian Anne Applebaum. Her recent book, Autocracy, Inc. shows how dictators and autocrats of all flavors network to use, abuse and loot the treasuries of their countries.

It's been a while since I read Masha Gessen's Surviving Autocracy, but in light of the election result this week, it bears reading again.

A bestselling, National Book Award-winning journalist's essential guide to understanding, resisting, and recovering from the ravages of our tumultuous times.

After grieving--and millions of American voters are now grieving--the task before us, is to understand, resist and recover from the ravages of the certainly tumultuous times to come after January 20, 2025. 

 

  

The LIGHT of America's Promise will ALWAYS Burn Bright...

 ...as long as we NEVER give up, and AS LONG AS as we keep fighting...

"While I concede this election, I do NOT concede the fight that fueled this campaign... the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people...fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation. The ideals that reflect America at our best. THAT is a fight I will never give up... this is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves. 

"This is a time to organize, to mobilize, and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom, and justice, and the future we ALL know we can build together... let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant, billions of stars; the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service. And may that work guide us even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America."   -- Kamala Harris.

By the way, did you notice Kamala Harris did not BLAME anyone for anything. 

Thomas Paine's American Crisis

Paine began his essay/pamphlet thus:

December 23, 1776

THESE are the times that try men's souls. 

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but [s/]he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. 

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. 

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. 

Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

November 5, 2024

THESE are also times that try the hearts, souls and backbones of woman and man alike. We do not yet know whether the American Electorate has, in the 2024 general election, brought an end to the nearly ten year long national nightmare which is convicted felon Donald Trump.

But we DO know that WE are citizens of a great nation, regardless. 

Citizens are responsible. Citizens have duties, responsibilities.

As such, if Donald Trump is again put in office, our obligations are to the US Constitution, and each other. 

You've left it all on the field! Time to let it go.

Whether you believe it or you don't. You have done all that you can to positively influence the 2024 general election. You've left it all on the field.

To expend the utmost of one's energy and effort, typically while playing a sport.

At this moment, the night before the last day to vote in this election, you may need a good night's sleep.

You may need to unburden yourself of election anxiety. 

Perhaps the best thing might be to Let It Go.

When I was 22, I set out on a hitchhiking adventure. I had lived for half a year in Los Angeles, working full-time in the telecommunication technical field I trained in while in the Air Force. Like many young adults, I knew too little of what I wanted to know. I won't bore you with the long story.

However, I believed God would provide. In this case, safe rides from Los Angeles to Gunnison, CO.

To get that to take place, I had to do something. Namely, stand along side highways with my backpack and sleeping bag while sticking my right arm out and my right thumb. The trip was eventful. It was summer in the desert, no less. One long ride was on the back of a motorcycle across I-40 in California and Arizona. The daytime was VERY hot. Once the sun set... the ambient temperature dropped precipitously. Staying awake, thus not falling off the bike, wasn't easy. The gracious bike rider got me as far as Gallup, NM. 

Automobile traffic was pretty slow going north from there. I spent a night sleeping alongside the road just outside of Durango, CO. By morning, I was getting anxious because I was on a deadline to get to Gunnison. I kept thinking I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. 

After about two hours with my thumb out, I felt like I had hit an emotional and mental wall and finally said to myself, and to God, "I give up!" 

Within a few short minutes, I got a ride to Grand Junction. The next ride, east to Gunnison, came along very quickly.

That was how I learned, roughly 50 years ago, to Let GO and Let God.

Of course, life since then hasn't been a bowl of cherries. Nevertheless, this was an important life lesson for me.

So, when I encourage people to Let it GO, it means something to me, whether it does for a reader or listener or not.

So, regardless of any possible Disney Corp motive for the animated movie Frozen, (which I've never watched anyway), I have listened to women and girls sing the theme song a few times. It's a good message for emotional intelligence nevertheless.

Many of you, like me, have left it all on the field. Staying focused is all we can do now... and let it go.

One catch. Staying focused only gives you peace and control over what you have a right to control, which is yourself.

IF what happens tomorrow and in the run-up to the next (peaceful) transition of power in Washington, DC on January 20, 2025 differs from what we want and hopefully expect, that will not be the end of the story.

As Yale historian Timothy Snyder teaches, we do NOT obey in anticipation of what an autocrat MIGHT command. We are citizens tonight and we will still be citizens, not subjects of a despotic ruler, after tomorrow.

We will still have citizenship responsibilities even if loser Donald's coup d'etat succeeds. I will blog about those if the need arises. At minimum, we will NOT be silenced.

The Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts, a prime mover (besides Trump) of Project 2025 quietly, but boldly declared a revolution in the event Trump wins. If that happens, we will NOT be silenced.

Consider what happened after Project 2025 (WaPo gift article) began to attract unwanted attention. People spoke UP and OUT. Heritage and Trump backed away from the project.

We will NOT be silenced.

When you should return your EARLY ballot?

 Trump LOST a couple of voter suppression lawsuits in Nevada, as ruled the Nevada Supreme Court.

Marc Elias notes at 2:15 into this video, how these lawsuits were the first effort to directly suppress the November 5, 2024 vote. Trump LOST.

Elections officials publicize dates as deadline thresholds for mailing back early ballots. Those dates take into account mailing processes. They are ONLY deadlines as far as expectation of receiving the ballots by the end of each state's actual deadline. Make sure, if you miss the publicized mail-in date, you have a plan to get your ballot into election officials hands on time, whether it be an official drop box or county official's office.

Subscribe to Democracy Docket to get the latest updates.

Further, despite Neal Katyal's recent recitation of his Debbie Downer rant about how he believes Trump will steal this election, Arizona Eagletarian, after thinking it through (as much as I could), this outcome shows how UNLIKELY it will be for loser Donald to succeed.

Reflections by scholars, activists & WaPo staffers

And then there's Loser Donald spreading disinformation.

Timothy Snyder, Yale University historian, author of On Tyranny, Road to Unfreedom, On Freedom, and more reflecting on the WaPo and LATimes decision to nix endorsements for Kamala Harris. Snyder points out the danger in obeying Fascist commands and expectations in advance.

Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist and professor of practice at Rochester Institute of Technology David Cay Johnston's statement, posted last night to Facebook, as a counter argument to people cancelling WaPo subscriptions.

That some Americans say that they are cancelling the WaPo, LATimes, Detroit News and presumably other newspaper subscriptions is deeply disturbing because as journalists we should be more open than any other segment of society to differences of opinion.

The editorial page(s) belong to the publisher. They are his or hers to use and abuse. More than a few times when I was with the LA Times my front page exposes drew editorials disparaging or dismissing my reporting. The publisher's entitled -- just so long as he or she keeps their hands off the news report.

Criticism and disagreement are central to journalism. [AND democracy] So is diversity of perspective and giving voice to a broad range of viewpoints.

I join those who are angry/disappointed/furious/outraged/upset/ by Bezos and Soon-Shiong not endorsing in the 2024 presidential race. This is a democracy-threatening dereliction of duty.

But we don’t ignore principles in disagreements. Well, not unless you are, like Donald, utterly unprincipled.

It makes no sense to deny yourself the serious news reports of the WaPo and LAT because of a decision on the editorial page(s).

That's no reason to cancel subscriptions and harm both the great work and the solid journalists soldiering on at these three and other newspapers. And in canceling your subscriptions you hurt yourself and our democracy. Shame on those of you who cancelled, action I hope you quickly reverse.

Criticize the feckless publishers. Shame them. Picket. Hell, yell at them if you encounter them on the street. [The LOUD Minority: Why Protests Matter in American Democracy]

But canceling subscriptions gets their attention because they are already subsidizing money-losing newspapers.

My critique:

1. If you did this out of fear off Trumpian retribution, this won't save you. Donald is not one to make fine distinctions in his hatred and lust for vengeance. The time to curry favor by bowing to his majestic view of his own perfect omnipotence was years ago, not now. Donald says he will punish those who dared to criticize him. You should believe him but react with courage not cowardice even if you believe, as I do, that down the road of a Trumpian dictatorship lie firing squads with me and other journalists likely to be lawlessly executed.
2. If you did this because you want more tax cuts for you and your fellow billionaires you have revealed yourselves to be selfish, shallow, immoral and in the long run incredibly stupid because for those with more than enough while tens of millions live in economic fear will breed more political resentment and ultimately revolution against oligarchs (See France, 1789).
3. The decent and proper next step is to explain your reasoning. Write your own editorial and sign it. And then authorize your editorial board to both critique your work and express their expert opinions about the best qualified candidate. This would show that you believe in robust debate and actually care about making our democracy endure. [Emphasis, and reference to Gillion's book, ADDED by the Arizona Eagletarian]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/post-columnist-no-endorsement-2024-trump-harris/ The newspaper’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate is a mistake.

If you have not yet done so, VOTE. VOTE early if possible in your state/county/community.

P.S. In the unlikely event Trump wins, WE do NOT obey in advance based on his outrageous and ridiculous claims of retribution or other Fascist measures. We WILL, as need be, organize and resist.

In the meantime, I'm still confident Kamala Harris will win the election; Arizonans will approve a constitutional amendment (to the state constitution) ensuring reproductive freedom to all women Prop 139. I am hopeful Arizonans will strike at the heart of GOP hegemony in state lawmaking by approving Prop 140 (Make Elections FAIR). For the record, all other statewide ballot measures were referred by the GOP dominated Arizona Legislature. In case it matters to you, I voted NO on all (except 139 and 140) of them.

As to county funding, transportation and school district measures, I voted YES (City of Maricopa and Pinal County).

I also support Terry Goddard and Heather Macre for re-election to the Central Arizona Water Conservation District board.

WTF just happened at WaPo and LA Times?

BILLIONAIRE newspaper outlet owners tell their editorial boards to NOT endorse Kamala Harris WTF!?!

From Politico:

No matter who wins the election — but especially if it is Trump, with his vows of retribution and his history of norm-busting — we’re entering another period where the institutions of a free society are going to be tested: courts, bureaucracies, advocacy groups, law enforcement and news media. During the Trump presidency, a lot of the same institutions embraced their role as guardrails of democracy. But there’s no reason it would have to be that way a second time. I’ve written before that Washington’s psychology may look a lot different in a second Trump era, motivating many former stalwarts to turn turtle.

If that’s what happened at the Post, it’s a pretty grim first whiff of what may lie ahead.

Regarding the Los Angeles Times:

A decision by the owner of the Los Angeles Times not to endorse in the 2024 presidential race — after the paper’s board proposed backing Kamala Harris — has created a tempest, prompting three members of The Times editorial board to resign and provoking thousands of readers to cancel their subscriptions.

Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said that his decision not to offer readers a recommendation would be less divisive in a tumultuous election year.

“I have no regrets whatsoever. In fact, I think it was exactly the right decision,” he said in an interview with The Times on Friday afternoon. “The process was [to decide]: how do we actually best inform our readers? And there could be nobody better than us who try to sift the facts from fiction” while leaving it to readers to make their own final decision.

He said he feared picking one candidate would only exacerbate the already deep divisions in the country.

Translated into English, HE FEARED. His decision was exclusively based on FEAR. This is the owner/operator of an enterprise that buys INK by the barrel.

How and why would a cash hoarding BILLIONAIRE be cowed by Trump? Hint: in the Wikipedia article about him, the section on philanthropy says:

A 2017 Politico report found that Soon-Shiong's research foundation, the Chan Soon-Shiong NantHealth Foundation, which he named after his wife, had spent over 70% on businesses and non-profit organizations that he controlled. Furthermore, it found that most of its grants were awarded to organizations that have business dealings with Soon-Shiong's companies. The Foundation also paid some employees from Soon-Shiong's companies, which is a potentially inappropriate use of charitable funds to cover unrelated business overhead.[27]

Both WaPo and LATimes were cowed, in the face of threats by Trump.

IF you have not already, VOTE.

Why would ANYONE with critical thinking skills vote for the guy who consistently disrespects the US military?

 

Then along comes former DOJ acting solicitor general Neal Katyal. I'm not sure why he suddenly became so pessimistic about this election, but he has.

In the next clip, Katyal spells out risks associated with what we already know is Trump's next attempt at a coup d'état. We KNOW, and have known for quite some time, Trump and his acolytes have initiated a serious effort to subvert American democracy, imperfect as it already is. That's a known fact.

In the interview with Katie Couric, Katyal cites several risks. 

These risks include: 

• Infrastructure is being set up to create circumstances in which the election could be rigged; 
• Katyal's conclusion Trump WILL (when he loses) declare victory; 
• Because the polls suggest the race is very close, Trump might be successful if he can reverse the vote in only one state; 
• IF that's the case, it would be easier for him to win in court or in Congress; 
• Stephen Miller and others have already filed ~90 lawsuits to HOPING TO suppress voting rights; however, he "only knows what the newspapers are saying";
• Citation of a litany of reasons more lawsuits could nullify various numbers of ballots; 
• Thus our most precious right might be take away in a back room somewhere (i.e. not transparent process); 
• For her part, Couric asks to Katyal about state laws to prevent replacement of actual election officials with Trump loyalists; 
• Katyal lists problems that MIGHT come up; 
• Personnel changes in the GOP since 2021 are problematic; 
• We don't know what's going to happen when the Georgia election rules decision is appealed (gift article, no paywall at the link); 
• Congress COULD, Katyal further laid out, despite updates to the Electoral Count Act, mess with the results;

Together, it's a fatalistic scenario. To which I say that, IF Trump has his way, of course we'd be f**ked. 

But how possible or probably could that be? I say two chances, Slim and None. And Slim's going to be out of the country on January 6, 2025. Really, however, that seems like a LOT of things that have to all go Trump's way. Oh but, you say, he's got a lot of acolytes working on the scenario? 

  

Does he have Democracy Docket, or CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington); or Protect Democracy; or Common Cause, or Lincoln Project, or any number of other not-for-profit organizations that have already or will obviously join the fight against Trump's efforts to subvert American democracy.

I have to figure Neal Katyal is being overwhelmed and in this is overwhelmingly short-sighted. How much thought did he give to assessing those who will resist Trump's coup? 

I could speculate about the cause of his pessimism. But why should I? It might be as simple as the Russian troll machine manipulating American capitalist media. We know, because of the ongoing degradation of the news media business model that they're desperate for their own survival. They have been brazenly sanewashing Trump.

Trump is NOT sane. And they (the capitalist media) are not acting rationally either.

Nevertheless, Katyal concludes that the situation is dire. The fact that this WILL BE difficult is NOT reason for pessimism. 

It's always darkest just before the dawn.

For a change to the national mood (and if necessary, your mood), listen to historian Heather Cox Richardson:

The video with Professor Richardson was made three months ago. 

We GET TO DO this! And we WILL CELEBRATE!

I would be less optimistic if the path forward would be easy.

Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became fuel for the blaze that was their ambition. -- Holiday, Ryan. The Obstacle Is the Way (p. 4). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

THIS JUST IN...

Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules in FAVOR of voters:

Let America be the Dream the Dreamers Dreamed OR A NEW Plot Against America; WE CHOOSE.

Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson, October 20, 2024

October 20, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson

Read on Substack

October 20, 2024 by Heather Cox Richardson (what's above, anyway, the rest is mine)

Let's put some context and perspective in front of us, shall we?

Anne-Marie Slaughter (born September 27, 1958) is an American international lawyer, foreign policy analyst, political scientist, and public commentator.

She also wrote Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics, published in 2021 after riding out (enduring) a professional crisis. "Let America be the Dream the Dreamers Dreamed" is the title of the preface to Slaughter's book. 

In the Introduction to Renewal, Slaughter's first sentence writes, "It was the worst day of my professional life." By the way, the Intro section is titled, "When Leadership Means Having to Say You're Sorry."

Reading Slaughter caused me to recall when President Gerald Ford declared, in his inauguration speech, "Our long national nightmare is over," as he reflected on the fact his predecessor Richard M. Nixon had resigned rather than face the specter of having to be removed from office in 1974.

Coincidentally NOW, we're hoping to wake up from what seems like another, perhaps longer national nightmare. We can hardly compare Nixon with Trump. Beside the fact that I was essentially a snot-nosed kid (in the US Air Force and not even having turned 21 at the time) and knew little about politics or legal issues; today, I'm on the cusp of turning 70 and know a little bit more about the current affairs of our time.

Nevertheless, Ms. Slaughter, CEO of think and action tank New America, and a professor-emerita at Princeton, might have some insight relevant for us, American voters, today. After the Intro to Renewal, Chapter ONE is titled, Run Toward the Criticism.

Speaking of a mentor, Slaughter recalls, 

He did not mince words when I called him--in his capacity as friend and guide as much as New America board member. We both knew I was in trouble.

He said: "run toward the criticism." Even if you are 98 percent right and only 2 percent wrong, he elaborated, acknowledge the fault rather than insist on the virtue. Then use it as the point of departure for a "learning journey." A journey in which I would deliberately ask for honest critique, even if deep down I wanted to run as fast as possible in the other direction.

It should go without saying that when one is posting to a social media platform, it's far from the same as running a public policy think and action tank. Or the entire American federal government. One of the candidates for president this year has publicly and emphatically disclaimed ANY blame/responsibility for all of his actions/inactions during his disastrous 2017-2021 administration. Even though the American people (and the entire world with access to broadcast and print media) saw so many of those actions/inactions that he can no longer escape accountability. We teach our children that choices yield consequences, good or bad.

In a Facebook post I shared recently together with the following image, some feedback I received sadly surprised me.

Some comments expressed frustration, because those commenters had been working to inspire and enact positive change, including in the Arizona Legislature. Others expressed despair because "There is nothing in the real world that the propaganda machine can't overcome." 

I am hopeful that one day James Hansen's research, advocacy and prophetic words will cause radical social and economic change before it's too late.

As to the illusion of the "propaganda machine's" power over everything else, I am convinced there's no cultural influence more potent than human artistic expression. That includes literary, musical, theatrical, visual or any other artistic expression. Do adult humans transform their beliefs, views and values any other way? Note that fear doesn't persuade even though it sometimes coerces to enforce compliance. 

Art transcends linguistic and cultural barriers, making it a universal language. A piece of art created in one part of the world can evoke strong emotions and resonate with people from entirely different backgrounds. This universality fosters empathy and understanding, bridging gaps between diverse communities.

Consider how music from different cultures can move us, even if we don’t understand the lyrics. The melodies, rhythms, and harmonies speak directly to our emotions, creating a shared human experience. Similarly, visual art can communicate powerful messages and evoke a sense of connection, regardless of the viewer’s cultural or linguistic background.

In 2004, Pulitzer Prize winning author Philip Roth published his alternate history novel The Plot Against America (from page 7):

Lindbergh was the first famous living American whom I learned to hate--just as President Roosevelt [FDR] was the first famous living American whom I was taught to love--and so his nomination by the Republicans to run against Roosevelt in 1940 assaulted, as nothing ever had before, that huge endowment of personal security that I had taken for granted as an American child of American parents in an American school in an American city in an America at peace with the world.

The only comparable threat had come some thirteen months earlier when, on the basis of consistently high sales through the worst of the Depression as an agent with the Newark office of Metropolitan Life, my father had been offered a promotion... 

The publication date of Roth's Plot shocked me, because even though it was an imagined history, there was a stark element of prescience to it. In 2004, I had worked for a small newspaper for a couple of years covering the Arizona Legislature. A vivid memory from that time stays with me. A security guard at the Arizona House of Representatives would regularly rant about undocumented immigrants (he and many others called and still call them "illegals").

To me, PEOPLE are not illegal. Actions and inactions, instead, can be illegal.

But I digress.

Might it be time for another acclaimed author to write an updated version of Roth's Plot Against America? This time, in such a tome perhaps the protagonist could confront the election denialism movement.

----

Last night, I was grateful to be able to meet historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, and narrator of the short (half hour) film For Our Daughters about abuse in Christian churches.  

Du Mez is a scholar, but she's also a bestselling author. Among her many activities and accomplishments, she also publishes on Substack.  

Character is Fate

 

Which one would you want your children to emulate?

Which one would YOU want to delegate your authority to as a citizen? The one who engages on the basis of compassion, or the other one, with a view to properly stewarding the resources of the American federal government?

Which one serves the PEOPLE; which one serves himself?

A vote for ANY candidate for US President this year, other than Kamala Harris, is a vote for convicted felon Donald Trump

There is not... an ounce of compassion in Donald Trump. He is petty; he is vindictive; and he is cruel. And Donald Trump is NOT fit to lead this good and great nation. -- Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney.

 

He's an angry and desperate man.

America or Trump. Tell your local AND national newspaper editors and publishers to stop sane-washing this serial predator.

Reject the DEPRAVED CRUELTY of Donald Trump.

Power is GIVEN, not grabbed. This list is from The Power Paradox by UC Berkeley Professor Dacher Keltner. THIS is why I do believe the only poll that matters will not be close.

Join this broad coalition of citizens of this good and great nation as we delegate OUR power to Kamala Harris to preside over the American federal government!

Make a PLAN to VOTE on or before Tuesday, November 5!

 

WE can DO this.

VP live debate: IMPORTANT CONTEXT

Last night, Rachel Maddow fleshed out more of the intent of JD Vance/Peter Thiel/Donald Trump for a second term Trump administration.

The Walz/Vance debate is coming up shortly. Whether you view it live or not, you'll no doubt read news about the aftermath. THIS segment from the Rachel Maddow show last night (September 30, 2024) provides important context for what Vance and Trump are up to, which ultimately is NO GOOD.

Further, earlier today, David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, in his weekly interview on the Mark Thompson Show (David's on the You Tube show every Tuesday) recommended the Maddow segment.

Here's today's Mark Thompson interview with Johnston, who now serves as a Professor of Practice at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY.

Donald Trump is a SERIAL predator; It's time to talk about it. End the sanewashing of Trump

 

George Conway Explains: Trump Is a Serial PREDATOR. It’s Time To Talk About It.

The entire video is nearly an hour long at normal speed (I generally listen or watch YT videos at 1.5x or 1.75x). But the starting point for each of these is at the beginning of a one minute clip for ads George Conway produced. His PAC, PsychoPAC intends to run those ads nationally on cable news programs and elsewhere.

From Columbia Journalism Review:


Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?

There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals (which Linda Kinstler wrote about recently for CJR), and meant “attempting to downplay a person or idea’s radicality to make it more palatable to the general public.” (It was deployed in discussions around, for example, “defunding the police.”) Recently, though, various observers have applied the term to media coverage of Donald Trump. Aaron Rupar, a journalist who is very active on X, has been credited with coining “sanewashing” in this specific context, but the term appeared to really blow up last week, after Parker Molloy wrote a column about it in The New Republic. (She expanded on the idea as a guest on the podcast Some More News.) The word has since been picked up by media bigwigs including Paul Krugman and Rachel Maddow, and appeared in outlets from Ireland to India.

As applied to Trump, the idea is that major mainstream news outlets are routinely taking his incoherent, highly abnormal rants—be they on social media or at in-person events—and selectively quoting from them to emphasize lines that, in isolation, might sound coherent or normal, thus giving a misleading impression of the whole for people who didn’t read or watch the entire thing. In her column, Molloy called out CNN for sanitizing a Trump screed about tomorrow’s presidential debate and the New York Times for omitting an allusion to a conspiracy theory about vaccines and autism from its summary of a Trump pledge to tap Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to help make health policy; since then, she and others have applied the same analysis to coverage of Trump’s incoherent remarks—particularly around the costs of childcare and a proposed Elon Musk–led “efficiency commission”—at an economic forum in New York. “This ‘sanewashing’ of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism,” Molloy wrote. “It’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy.”

Wisdom from ancient mythology

Noted historian Yuval Noah Harari, in the prologue to his latest book (Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI) asks,

Why are we so good at accumulating more information and power, but far less successful at acquiring wisdom? (page xii)

An earlier Harari book (Sapiens) explores a brief history of our species, (Sapiens means The Wise Human, see note 292 at this link), yet in Nexus he wonders why, if we are so wise, are we so self-destructive?

He says many traditions have believed some fatal flaw in our nature tempts us to pursue powers we are unable to handle. They were not necessarily wrong.

The Greek myth of Phaethon told of a boy who learns he is the son of Helios the sun god. 

Despite Helios' fervent warnings and attempts to talk him out of it, counting the numerous dangers he would face in his celestial journey and reminding Phaethon that only he can control the horses, the boy is not dissuaded and does not change his mind. He is then allowed to take the chariot's reins; his ride is disastrous, as he cannot keep a firm grip on the horses. As a result, he drives the chariot too close to the Earth, burning it, and too far from it, freezing it.

Millennia later, Goethe wrote a similar cautionary tale (poem), "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." A century later, Disney popularized Goethe's poem in an animated film. 

Cut to the chase, warnings have been many. Adapting to the challenges presented have been limited and perhaps often awkward. Think unintended consequences.

Harari, who has more understanding of history than I (and most likely than you), suggests, also in the Nexus prologue,

The fables offer no answers, other than to wait for some god or sorcerer to save us. This, of course, is an extremely dangerous message. It encourages people to abdicate responsibility and put their faith in gods [God?] and sorcerers instead. Even worse, it fails to appreciate that gods and sorcerers are themselves a human invention--just like chariots, brooms, and algorithms. 

Harari's Nexus sees danger in AI, which has been called Artificial Intelligence. But Harari considers it analogous to an Alien Intelligence.

I am confident there will be positive and negative consequences from the wider spread of AI.

I'm not sure (yet) the extent to which Harari is optimistic or pessimistic about AI.

As an aside, it may be reasonable to characterize Trump as an alien intelligence. I use the word "intelligence" here with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek.

However, I believe the prologue to Nexus describes well the dilemma facing the American Electorate in the rapidly approaching 2014 general election. 

Not simply in the presidential contest. Control of both chambers of Congress, as well as many of the 50 state legislatures are at stake. Project 2025 is NOT something the Right-Wing is aiming to implement only at the federal level.

I know what I will choose/vote for. But I'm not the only American voter.  

Overall, I have been and am optimistic that the problem of Trump will fade away soon. Even if it doesn't, it's still OUR responsibility to exercise our citizenship to seize the reigns of society and politics to direct government at every level and jurisdiction in the United States of America.

VOTE Maximizer- new from Electoral Innovation Lab

If YOU could figure out a way to have the most impact with your vote, your volunteering efforts, and your small dollar political donations, you would want to do so, right? Here's a new tool to do that very thing. 

The Electoral Innovation Lab, headed up by Princeton Professor Sam Wang, has done research on various topics related to maximizing voter impact, including regarding redistricting. Now, we can get DATA on where our energy and resources (i.e. time, effort and small dollar contributions) can have impact.

Vote Maximizer

Vote Maximizer is a web app designed to bring attention to competitive races and topics to repair our democracy in 2024. Because American voters want a government that adequately represents its people, this project is designed for democratic needs. We combine ballot information and campaigning efforts, including donations, to create data-driven pivot points in key elections and ballot questions. Our main feature involves a built-in voter power metric. Across election races, voter power can tell you where your vote, your campaign volunteering, and your political donations will have the most impact. It does this by measuring critical elections, regardless of party preference, that can swing the balance of legislatures.

You can begin accessing Vote Maximizer's data to maximize the POWER of YOUR VOTE by entering your Zip Code.

From Sam Wang's latest email:

At the core of Vote Maximizer is a rigorous mathematical concept: calculating per-voter power. As described here, we quantify how much one voter can shift the probability of a desired outcome. Vote Maximizer uses this concept to show how voters are powerful all over the nation, in nearly every state. This same concept applies to volunteerism and to donations.

The voter-power concept centers on the voter, not the campaign. Our non-partisan tool gives voters guidance in a way that has never been done before, and sets us apart from media coverage.

Our probabilistic calculations quantify per-vote power in Congressional, legislative, and Presidential races.

You will see that voters in Montana and Nebraska have outsized influence over control of the U.S. Senate due to close races and small state populations. For donors, Nebraska is an underrecognized major bargain: $100,000 would be 10% of the total amount raised by either candidate, compared with 0.16% of a national Presidential campaign. This is a 600-fold larger impact - in a state with less than 1% of the nation’s population.

For state legislatures, we highlight potential for party control shifts and showcase the impact of anti-gerrymandering efforts in places like Wisconsin and New York. In single legislative districts, $100,000 can sometimes run an entire campaign

High-interest issues such as reproductive rights, which are on the ballot in ten states. [including Arizona]

The Electoral Innovation Lab

Our mission is to to build a science of data-driven democracy reform using math, law, and practical strategies for change. The goal of this work is to help voters gain and maintain the power to choose their elected officials instead of politicians suppressing voters' rights to fair and meaningful representation.

Gimme Hope Kamala! What's a satsuma?

The Marsh Family recorded this wonderful song, but when I first listened to it, I had to look up "Satsuma."

I had no idea what to what these singers referred. Now I do.

The Satsuma Rebellion, was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government of Japan, nine years into the Meiji era. Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in the Restoration and became home to unemployed samurai after military reforms rendered their status obsolete. The rebellion lasted from 29 January until 24 September of 1877, when it was decisively crushed, and its leader, Saigō Takamori, was shot and mortally wounded.

Saigō's rebellion was the last and most serious of a series of armed uprisings against the new government of the Empire of Japan, the predecessor state to modern Japan.

In other words, with a former president trying to regain power and threatening civil war, history may not repeat itself, but perhaps it rhymes, or echoes. 

In 2018, journalist Elaine Weiss published The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote. 

From the introduction to The Woman's Hour:

ON A SATURDAY EVENING in mid-July 1920, three women raced toward Nashville’s Union Station on steam-powered trains. They each traveled alone, carrying a small suitcase, a handbag, a folder stuffed with documents. They were unremarkable in appearance, dressed in demure cotton dresses and summer hats; their fellow passengers could hardly imagine the dramatic purpose they shared: they had all been summoned to command forces [not all on the same side] in what would prove to be one of the pivotal political battles in American history.

This is the story of that battle, the furious campaign to secure the final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the most fundamental right of democracy—the vote. [...]

They converged on Nashville for the explosive climax of American women’s seven-decade struggle for equal citizenship, and there was much at stake: thirty-six state approvals were required for ratification, and thirty-five were in hand. If the Tennessee legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, woman suffrage would become the law of the land and twenty-seven million women would be able to vote, just in time for the fall presidential elections; if the legislature rejected it, the amendment might never be enacted. It all came down to Tennessee. 

There were powerful forces opposing federal woman suffrage as it approached the legal finish line: political, corporate, and ideological adversaries intent upon stopping the Nineteenth Amendment. Some of the most vociferous foes of enfranchisement were the women “Antis” such as Josephine Pearson, who feared that women’s entrance into the polling booth would hasten the nation’s moral collapse. The “Suffs” had reason to worry, as the amendment had already been rejected by nearly all the southern states, for the same blatantly racist reasons as put forth by Tennessee: if women got the vote, black women would also be entitled to the ballot. The presidential candidates were playing their own games, using woman suffrage as a pawn. This was the moment of reckoning, and both sides were willing to use every possible weapon to prevail.

I wasn't there. But I'm thankful Elaine Weiss diligently researched this incredibly important time in America.

I've read some American history. I follow current events in the news today. From my perspective, I have been confident WE the PEOPLE will again do the right thing and declare Donald Trump GUILTY, as opposed to allowing him to regain the power of the Oval Office.

However, national journalists and pundits aren't as confident as I am. That is probably a good thing.

The fight for women's suffrage may have been seven-decades long (I suppose counting from the mid-19th Century until the 19th Amendment was enacted). But America and the World have suffered a long century since that culminated with democracy coming under severe risk.

For those wanting to grasp the gravity of the fight for women's suffrage, I emphatically encourage you to obtain a copy of The Woman's Hour.

In 2015-16, the fight against Fascism was intense. Hillary Rodham Clinton fought valiantly but came up short. Significant lessons for the American Electorate ensued. President Biden's administration has been both revolutionary and a healing balm for so many of us.

Over the last month, a magnificently serendipitous event occurred when Biden, who could have won a second term anyway, stepped aside. Vice President Kamala Harris seamlessly stepped into the breach and delivered a huge gut punch to the criminal seeking to regain power. Simultaneously, Harris delivered hope millions of Americans now bask in. Hope that Trump took away from the millions who died in the Covid-19 pandemic.

I'm thankful for YOU. And for hopefully in two months President-elect Kamala Harris.

Fight for what you LOVE. If you're like me, you LOVE American freedom. Let's work vigorously together to ensure our democratic republic lives on into and beyond 2025.  

Excerpt: Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/183932735-autocracy-inc

Page 10

Autocrats hate these principles [rule of law, transparency, accountability and related institutions] because they threaten their power. If judges and juries are independent, then they can hold rulers accountable. If there is a genuinely free press, journalists can expose high-level theft and corruption. If the political system empowers citizens to influence the government, then citizens can eventually change the regime.

Page 12

This is the core of the problem: the leaders of Autocracy, Inc., know that the language of transparency, accountability, justice, and democracy will always appeal to some of their own citizens. To stay in power they must undermine those ideas wherever they are found.

----

Critical thinkers, those who have paid attention to current affairs and US news over the years of the current and former president, will recognize patterns.

 

Trump is a wannabe autocrat. What does that really mean today?

We know names of some autocrats: Viktor Orban, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Vladimir Putin. We know Xi Jinping and Kim Jung Un.

We also know two prominent autocrats of the 20th Century, Hitler and Mussolini. Hitler and Mussolini suffered ignominious demises. Today's dictators have learned some lessons from the mistakes of these two.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Anne Applebaum's latest book, Autocracy, Inc. (first published July 23, 2024) enlightens interested readers in a very timely way in this US election season. From inside the front cover:

Today's autocracies, she shows, are supported by a web of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists who operate beyond their own borders. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another. The autocrats are rewriting the rules of world trade and governance as their propagandists pound home the same messages about the weakness of democracy and the evil of America.

Looking back on Trump's administration and domination of the press (they are, of course, according to him, the enemy of the people). Orban suppresses freedom of the press too. Putin has robbed Russian (and Ukrainian) families of their young adult males (to serve as cannon fodder in Putin's expansionist fantasies as they, in reality, play out).

Applebaum connects a lot of dots. In 2019, I learned about money laundering (including, I think, how Vlad Putin does it) from Kal Penn on Amazon's This Giant Beast that is the Global Economy.

Anyway, I began reading Autocracy, Inc. today. It's not a long book. I expect to have more from it to share with readers of the Arizona Eagletarian soon. In the meantime, Applebaum has been giving talks about it. Several are on YouTube. Here's one. (just a few minutes)

Here's another if you have an hour to spend watching/listening to her talk about the book.

NOW is not the time for a sense of relief, we have MUCH to accomplish first

For all of the people rejoicing about President Biden's decision today... don't count your chickens before they hatch.

We will NOT KNOW if his withdrawal is a good thing until the votes are counted in November.

To me, a feeling of relief is a warning sign. It could be an indicator of let down.

Might it be better to RESOLVE:

To realize there is NO NOMINEE now. It will take work (a process) to decide on and actually nominate a nominee.

To realize there is NO VP candidate yet. That also will require a process.

To realize this is all uncharted territory for the country. It would be good for the PEOPLE to have a say.

To realize the GOTV (get out the vote) effort needs to begin anew. 

To realize that the Orange Monster (Trump campaign) will not roll over and accept what President Biden announced today with honor and grace.

To realize counting votes cast on and for the November 5th general election is likely to face at least as much controversy as we saw in 2020.

To realize the electoral vote determination in December will likely be as chaotic and controversial as what we saw in 2020.

To realize January 6, 2025 is something federal agencies need to prepare for already.

Only THEN can we look to January 20, 2025 with a sense of relief... and even then, there's likely to be more unexpected chaos than we saw in 2020.

****

By the way, I've already received five text message solicitations from unfamiliar phone numbers asking for contributions to support potential nominee Kamala Harris.

NONE of which provided any indication of legitimacy or proof money collected would go to the indicated purpose.

Don't be fooled by text or email solicitations asking for money just because people are hyped up today about the unexpected development in the presidential election race.

If the number sending the request for money is not familiar, it would be wise to immediately respond only with the word STOP. 

Project 2025 will impact YOU whether you know it or not

There are people MUCH smarter than I am (political scientists, historians, and attorneys) who have MUCH more to say about what's in the 900+ page document, and how it would change our country than I can. Therefore, I'm not the one who will expound the detail therein.

The Arizona Eagletarian will, however, point to some of those who can clarify the issues for you and me.

As of today, here's some of them.

Snopes has a run down on quite a bit of Project 2025, with plenty of links to verify.

Here's the bottom line for me. 

This moment in the context of American History boils down to the 2024 presidential election campaign is fundamentally a choice between the best US president in my (our) lifetime and the end of the American democratic republic as we have known it.

You may or may not agree with me. I'm not interested in bickering with you about this point.

I am completely and emphatically "Ridin' with Biden."

Worst case scenario, in my opinion, is that IF President Biden cannot, for any reason, finish a second term, we already KNOW who will succeed him. That's not the case with the presumptive Republican nominee.

Two salient substack essays posted in the last day or so were written by former US attorney for Northern Alabama, Joyce Vance, and Yale political scientist/historian Timothy Snyder.  

I recommend Arizona Eagletarian readers read both essays (by Vance and Snyder).

Here are pertinent excerpts:

Trump claims he’s not connected to Project 2025. That seems like a convenient fiction that the Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025, maintains as well. According to the website, they’re just working on an agenda for whichever Republican president—nudge, nudge, wink, wink—comes along next. Axios reports that, “Trump himself spends little time plotting governing plans. But he is well aware of a [the] highly coordinated campaign to be ready to jam government offices with loyalists willing to stretch traditional boundaries.” And then, there are the personal connections.

I have questions based on Trump’s post itself. How do you “know nothing” about the Project and have no idea who is behind it, but also know that you disagree with some of the things they’re saying?

From Snyder:

Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past. A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933. [...]

5. Citizens should not obey in advance. Much of fascism is a bluff — look at our loyal cult, listen to our outrageous language, heed our threats of violence, we are inevitable! Hitler was good at that sort of propaganda. [btw, so is Trump]  Yet to gain power he needed luck and the errors of others. American fascism, likewise, is far from inevitable. It too is largely bluff, most of it digital. The internet is much more fascist than real life, which is discouraging. But we vote in the real world. The crucial thing is the individual decision to act, along with others, for four months, a little something each day, regardless of the atmospherics and the polls and the media and the moods.

It’s simple: recalling history, we act in the present, for a future that can and will be much better.

Be prepared. Think things through well ahead of time. We are four months away from the general election. 

Don't be distracted by the political polling industry. It hasn't been correct since before 2016. 

How LONG have we waited for this day?

 All 34 counts. 

GUILTY! 

I'm getting emotional.

It's about damn time. 

Turn off the convicted FELON's microphone, unplug it, and throw it away.

SB1070 redux, only worse?

Conned by GOP lawmakers into spending more than $325 million annually

The Arizona Republic published an op-ed yesterday (Saturday May 11) regarding House Concurrent Resolution 2060. 

Arizona Republicans aren't giving you the full story on their 'border security' bill

"Arizona lawmakers pushing a ballot measure to crack down on illegal immigration aren't telling the truth on what it does."

Does that secondary headline strike you as euphemismistic? Perhaps it allowed the author to starkly call attention to those who are supposed to respect the WILL OF THE PEOPLE but actually don't. Thankfully, the op-ed laid out clearly and unambiguously how Arizona's GOP state lawmakers have been lying through their teeth hoping to further divide our state's already deeply polarized electorate. And it's far from the first time.

SB 1070 was touted as the toughest immigration law in the nation when [then Gov.] Brewer signed it on April 23, 2010.

But several months later, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton blocked key provisions from taking effect, including one that required law-enforcement officers engaged in a lawful stop to ask about a person's legal status when reasonable suspicion exists that the person is in the U.S. illegally. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that portion of the law but struck down several other provisions.

In Saturday's op-ed,

The Arizona lawmakers pushing for a Texas-style law authorizing local officers to go after illegal border crossers insist nobody will be racially profiled because of it.

That’s a [demonstrably false] myth and they know it.

There’s no such thing as an immigration crackdown without racial profiling — not in Arizona or any place else in America.

Reality is that most asylum seekers and border crossers fleeing poverty and other calamities come from countries where darker skins predominate.

Imposing a penalty for a crime not necessarily related to border crossing by immigrants (selling fentanyl) seems designed to augment the slave population of the Arizona prison industrial complex. 

Because current Gov Katie Hobbs vetoed SB1231 which sought to do much the same thing as HCR2060, and because the GOP controls both chambers of the Arizona Legislature (by ONE VOTE in each chamber), they apparently think they're pretty clever. They are fully aware that the reproductive rights initiative will draw many people to vote in November. Are the Republicans now trying to further inflame racial animus to get an already polarized electorate to decide on their feigned "border security" measure in November?

Think back a few weeks to when AZ GOP legislative leadership proposed running an abortion initiative to confuse voters in November. However, Arizona is NOT Texas. Does trying to hoodwink voters qualify as a Republican dirty trick?

The op-ed further notes:

They know exactly what they’re doing. They’re counting on Arizonans to merely take their word for what they say the ballot measure would do — whether that’s true or not.

Today (Sunday May 12) protesters showed up at the Arizona Capitol. 

[Gina] Mendez, who acts as organizing director for Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA), was joined by more than 100 activists from multiple organizations in a rally decrying House Concurrent Resolution 2060.

"It's scary," Mendez said of HCR 2060, which is likely to be approved Monday by Republicans as a ballot measure in the general election.

According to the Grand Canyon Institute, taking on federal government responsibilities as spelled out in HCR2060 would cost Arizona taxpayers:

The report by the institute’s research director, Dave Wells, says state government would have to shell out $185 million a year for the border enforcement provision, basing the estimate on 40% of the state allocation Texas approved for its program. Arizona’s law is based on Texas law SB4, which the Biden administration opposes and is currently under a stay by a federal appeals court. City and county governments would have to pay another $140 million, for a total cost of $325 annually.

Engaged citizens can call (even on Sunday) to leave a voice mail or send an email to their state representatives to tell them what you think about HCR2060 and how they should vote when it does come up for final approval.