Author Archives: Sheila

We’re Not In Kansas Anymore, Toto…

Apologies for inundating your inboxes yesterday. The extra post was sent in error.

A large number of older Americans (I’m one) reached adulthood before what I like to call the “digital age.” Unlike our grandchildren, use of email, texting and instant access to a universe of information was not–and is not–intuitive to us. Most of us have learned to “make do”–we have our smartphones, use our computers, increasingly rely upon google–but I think we can be forgiven for not recognizing how dramatically technology is constantly changing the world we inhabit.

Or the ways that technology can be–and is being– employed to threaten the very foundations of our individual liberties.

Donald Trump doesn’t understand that process–but Elon Musk does. Trump is merely an ignorant and self-engrossed buffoon; Musk comes from that “intuitive” generation, and despite his clear mental and moral defects, does understand the various ways our emerging information environment can be employed–weaponized, to use a phrase popular these days–to amass power at the expense of us “little people.”

I’ve previously posted on the hugely negative effects of Trump’s erasures of factual information from government websites, but that is only one aspect of the threat we face.

In a recent “Letter from an American,” Heather Cox Richardson illuminated that threat. In her closing paragraphs, she described how technology was used to skew the 2016 election.

The story of how Cambridge Analytica used information harvested from about 87 million Facebook users to target political ads in 2016 is well known, but the misuse of data was back in the news earlier this month when Corey G. Johnson and Byard Duncan of ProPublica reported that the gun industry also shared data with Cambridge Analytica to influence the 2016 election.

Johnson and Duncan reported that after a spate of gun violence, including the attempted assassination of then-representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and the mass shootings at Fort Hood in Texas, a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, had increased public pressure for commonsense gun safety legislation, the gun industry’s chief lobbying group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, worked with gun makers and retailers to collect data on gun owners without their knowledge or consent. That data included names, ages, addresses, income, debts, religious affiliations, and even details like which charities people supported, shopping habits, and “whether they liked the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade and whether the underwear women had purchased was plus size or petite.”

Analysts ran that information through an algorithm that created a psychological profile of an individual to enable precise targeting of potential voters. Ads based on these profiles reached almost 378 million views on social media and sent more than 60 million visitors to the National Shooting Sports Foundation website. When Trump won in 2016, the NSSF took partial credit for the results. Not only was Trump in office, it reported, but also, “thanks in part to our efforts, there is a pro-gun majority in the U.S. House and Senate.”

That was ten years ago–before the “flowering” of AI. As I write this, Musk’s techie nerds are gaining access to the private information of millions of Americans, and anyone who thinks they’re looking for “fraud and waste” is smoking something.

Checks and balances were designed to prevent any one branch of government from wielding unbounded power. They should prevent the Executive Branch from employing the ever-increasing sophistication of digital technology to target/mislead unsuspecting citizens or punish those who are unwilling to bend the knee. But right now, one branch–Congress–has been neutered. Thanks to the nation-wide gerrymandering that the GOP perfected with RedMap in 2010, the House has devolved into a clown show of radicals, ignoramuses, Christian Nationalists and performative egomaniacs. Vote suppression, civic ignorance and digitally-sophisticated targeting have allowed MAGA to gain (slim) control of the Senate.

Thus far, the courts are doing their duty, but there are increasing signs that our would-be monarchs will simply defy them. The so-called “legacy media” warns that such defiance “would be” a constitutional crisis, ignoring the fact that we are already experiencing a constitutional crisis.

As empowering as having a lot of money has been (and still is), possession of information is even more so. Just as computerization allowed gerrymandering to become ever more precise, ever-expanding digital tools can enable those with access to citizens’ information to gain–and keep–unprecedented control over huge segments of the population.

Those of us who are beginning to understand the dimensions of the threat we face need to take to the streets. Peacefully, but in huge numbers.

We aren’t in Kansas anymore.

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What They’re Breaking

Those of us who are aware of the “shock and awe” assault on America’s governance–and even those of us who are trying not to focus on the details of that assault–tend to shudder over our recognition that the Trump/Musk tantrum is doing immense damage. But few of us possess either the knowledge or the fortitude to enumerate what these know-nothing zealots are destroying.

In a recent Substack Letter, Paul Krugman provided a partial enumeration. He began by noting the difference between breaking ‘things” and breaking government processes.

“Move fast and break things” is sometimes an OK approach if the things in question are just hardware, which can be replaced. But what if the object that experiences “rapid unscheduled disassembly” is something whose continued functioning is crucial to people’s lives — say, something like the U.S. government?

As he points out, the (very) young techies Musk has sent into government agencies (Krugman dubs them “Muskenjugends”) share three characteristics:

First, they all seem to be extreme right-wing ideologues: whenever journalists investigate the social media trail of one of Musk’s operatives, what they find is horrifying. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, had in the recent past advocated racism and eugenics.

Second, they don’t know anything about the government agencies they’re supposedly going to make more efficient. That’s understandable. The federal government has around 2 million workers, many — I would say the vast majority — performing important public services, in a huge variety of fields. You can’t parachute into a government agency and expect to know in a matter of days which if any programs and employees are dispensable.

But the third characteristic of the Muskenjugend is that, like Musk himself, they’re arrogant. They believe that they can parachute into agencies and quickly identify what should be cut.

The Muskenjugend attack is compromising important–even essential–government operations. In their haste to “trim” the fedeeral workforce, Trump officials fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, “apparently unaware that this agency oversees America’s nukes.”

The next day, realizing the enormity of the error, the agency tried to reinstate those workers — but was having trouble getting in touch, because the terminated workers had already been locked out of their government email accounts.

The administration also fired 3400 workers at the National Forest Service, which plays a critical role in fighting forest fires, and has mandated large layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (just as alarms are escalating about the potential for a bird flu pandemic.)  The CDC has been pressured to withhold reports, so Krugman notes that we might remain unaware of the next pandemic until it’s well underway.

Large layoffs have also decimated the Department of Health and Human Services. According to CBS, those layoffs have included half the officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, who play a critical role in identifying public health threats. There have also been layoffs at the FDA, which monitors the safety of food additives and medical devices.

And according to the union, despite an uptick in air disasters, several hundred workers have been fired at the Federal Aviation Administration.

The list goes on. But peering through the details, the overall strategy is clear: Musk and his minions decided to summarily fire as many federal workers as they could without making any effort to find out what these workers do and whether it’s important.

It’s easy to criticise the growth of government in the abstract. It is a lot harder to explain why government should not be making sure our foods are safe to eat and our aircraft safe to fly, among the many other functions that must be performed collectively in modern societies. It’s easy to point to excesses of red tape, to find fault with systems that seem faulty or have become obsolete. It is much harder to identify and correct the flaws while taking care to maintain essential safeguards.

It seems all too likely that Americans are about to learn the real costs of austerity theater. Many of the suddenly laid off workers were providing essential services. Nor should we underestimate the demoralization the vindictive layoffs have created even among those workers who still have their jobs (so far.)

So when we experience our next wave of devastating forest fires, when significant numbers of Americans begin dying from preventable diseases and faulty medical devices, remember: These disasters will be partly the fault of arrogant, ignorant men who decided to smash up a reasonably functional government.

And don’t get me started on the effects our “Nazification” and bowing to Putin while betraying Ukraine is having on America’s global stature…

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What We Can Do

Last week, I had separate lunches with two women I know, and the conversations in both revolved around anxieties produced by Trump’s coup.  Both of my companions focused on the same question: what can an individual do? Both women seemed to think that–because I’m a political policy blogger– I would have an answer, or at the very least, a suggestion.

If only!

I have a big problem–one that’s undoubtedly shared– with helplessness. Tell me there’s a problem to be solved, but I have to climb that mountain to solve it, and I’ll pull on hiking boots and make the attempt. Tell me there’s a problem, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m beside myself.

I wasn’t able to share any brilliant (or even dumb) insights with my luncheon companions, but a recent Substack from Hoosiers4Democracy reminded me that we are not without the ability to mount effective protests.  We can and should continue our calls and emails to the elected cowards like Todd Young (and even to the moronic Christian Nationalists like Jim Banks). Posts to social media aren’t really a substitute for action, but even singing to the choir can probably be helpful, so we can continue those. When there is an in-person protest, we absolutely should turn out.

But as H4D reminded readers, economic “messages” are likely to be more effective. (As someone recently posted, money is the. only thing these jerks respect!)

We MUST command the attention of the corporations funding our representatives to make it clear that the policies of this administration are unpopular! We must do this in a way that is immediate, impactful, and sustainable. We are asking you to participate in several upcoming, nationally planned, economic boycott events that will remind our leaders and representatives that we have more power than they think and that they work for us. 70% of the U.S. economy is consumer driven. When money talks, they listen.

First up, join H4D on February 28, 2025 for the national Economic Blackout. This event originated with The People’s Union USA and is being promoted by organizations across the country. Absolutely NO SPENDING for 24 hours beginning at midnight on February 27th. If you must spend on essentials, please try to shop small, local stores and avoid using bank cards and credit cards.

We also ask that you maximize your impact by recruiting 3 friends or family members to participate and to ask them to recruit 3 people to participate, in the hopes of creating a snowball effect.

There is additional information on the Economic Blackout and other upcoming events, available at The People’s Union Economic Blackout.

News of the planned economic action has been spreading. So has debate about its likely efficacy. Nevertheless, if enough people participate, a day of severely diminished economic activity will send a clear message. (The threat of additional boycotts may also stiffen the spines of companies that have decided to “obey in advance” by scrapping their DEI programs and other equity efforts in order to curry favor with our bigoted would-be monarch.)

The genius of the protest on the 28th is that it offers those of us who’ve been feeling helpless a virtually painless way to be heard. It can be daunting to go out in freezing weather to physically protest (although thousands of our fellow Americans have done so). People who must work long hours cannot make personal visits to the offices of Congressmen and Senators. Even calls and emails require some positive effort. But the protest on the 28th requires us to do nothing. It’s a purposeful nothing that requires little in the way of effort or hardship. There are very few purchases that cannot be delayed–or advanced– a day, or better still, reconsidered.

There are more aggressive plans to follow up on the action planned for the 28th with more extensive actions– a number of grassroots groups have come together in a movement called Shutdown 315 to urge Americans to support a nationwide shutdown. Participants would  not only stop making purchases from major corporations, but would abstain from social media use and absent themselves from work on March 15th. This is a more ambitious effort, and if successful is likely to have a significant effect.

Participation in planned boycotts of the large companies that have “obeyed in advance” are also planned.

If enough Americans participate in these very peaceful protests, our voices will be heard. They represent a promising initial answer to the anguished question: what can I do?

Tell your friends and family. Spread the word. 

Fight back against the coup.

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Nazification

While Musk and his techno-nerds are busily dismantling agencies of the federal government that–among other things– keep planes in the air and food free from e coli, J.D. Vance is attacking America’s international alliances and giving aid and comfort to the neo-Nazis in Germany and elsewhere. 

Heather Cox Richardson (among several others) recently reported on Vance’s shameful performance.

At the conference on Friday, February 14, Vice President J.D. Vance launched what The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour called “a brutal ideological assault” against Europe, attacking the values the United States used to share with Europe but which Vance and the other members of the Trump administration are now working to destroy.

Vance and MAGA Christian nationalists reject the principles of secular democracy and instead align with leaders like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. They claim that the equal rights central to democracy undermine nations by treating women and racial, religious, and gender minorities as equal to white Christian men. They want to see an end to the immigration that they believe weakens a nation’s people, and for government to reinforce traditional religious and patriarchal values.

Vance attacked current European values and warned that the crisis for the region was not external actors like Russia or China, but rather “the threat from within.” He accused Europe of censoring free speech, but it was clear—especially coming from the representative of a regime that has erased great swaths of public knowledge because it objects to words like “gender”—that what he really objected to was restrictions on the speech of far-right ideologues.

Vance followed his speech by throwing his support behind the neo-Nazi AfD, breaking protocol by refusing to meet with the German chancellor, and breaking a longstanding taboo by accepting a meeting with the leader of AfD.

According to The New Republic, “the United States of America is becoming part of a global fascist network.” 

Trump called Vance’s speech “very brilliant.”

It’s time to call a Nazi a Nazi. 

Vance is most certainly not “going rogue.” Musk’s neo-Nazi proclivities were obvious even before his “heil Hitler” salute–he turned Twitter into a cesspool of fascist, racist and anti-Semitic hate that would have earned plaudits from Der Fuhrur, and he has assembled a group of techie apparachicks who share his political orientation–whenever journalists investigate the social media trail left by of one of his operatives, they find horrifying–and unambiguous–evidence. For example, Marko Elez, who had access to the Treasury Department’s central payments system, has consistently advocated racism and eugenics. Musk has encouraged right-wing political movements in at least 18 countries. 

Of course, racism has long been Trump’s defining feature.

Thanks primarily to America’s role in the Second World War, most of us are unaware that, historically, significant numbers of Americans have been Nazi sympathizers. (Our history classes–unlike those in Germany–have shied away from reporting accurately and completely about slavery, let alone the nation’s very substantial history of neo-Nazi ideology.)

Historians have reported on the significant “inspiration” that Hitler took from the United States. 

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren’t just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, that country was the United States.

“America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.”

While Jim Crow was a primary example, Hitler’s administration took additional lessons from the nation’s designations of Native Americans, Filipinos and other groups as non-citizens–“othering” those populations even though they lived in the U.S. or its territories. These models influenced the citizenship portion of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped Jewish Germans of  citizenship and re-classified them as “nationals.”

The Nazis adopted some parts of Jim Crow laws wholesale, especially America’s anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited interracial marriages in 30 of 48 states. As the linked article notes, the desire to ban Jewish and Aryan intermarriages presented the Nazis with a dilemma: How would they tell who was Jewish and who was not?  So the Nazis looked to America, and American jurisprudence on how to classify who belonged to which “race.”

Numerous scholars and pundits have pointed to the parallels between Trump II and Germany in the 30s. Fewer have noted the unsavory aspects of our own population’s history that are emerging once again to facilitate a new–and even more expansive– “final solution.”

We ignore that history and those parallels at our peril.

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What MAGA Has Wrought

When Jennifer Rubin and Norman Eisen established The Contrarian, with the intent of keeping tabs on what was clearly going to be a rogue, anti-American administration, I immediately subscribed. (I know a lot of you really don’t want to know about the minutia of Trump/Musk’s assaults on the American Idea, but the publication is worthwhile–begin by just “skimming” if you can’t stomach the details.)

If you just want an overview, a recent article by Jennifer Rubin summed up the incredible amount of damage that these two ignoramuses–Trump and Musk–have done in just the first month of Trump II.

Rubin began by quoting Senator Maria Cantwell:

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee, called out the mindless slashing of vital government employees. “The FAA is already short 800 technicians and these firings inject unnecessary risk into the airspace—in the aftermath of four deadly crashes in the last month,” she said. Acting-president Elon Musk’s DOGE outfit cut 300 FAA employees.

Rubin proceeded to list just a few examples of the major damage being caused by indiscriminate firings undertaken by bozos who didn’t bother to figure out what tasks their targets actually performed or how essential those task might be.

  • Flying is arguably less safe and the risk of calamities is higher.
  • Food safety has degraded and the danger of food contamination is higher.
  • American predominance in science and medicine has been undercut, with the development of life-saving drugs slowed.
  • Farmers are losing income and market share, labs working on crop innovation are shutting down, and supply-chain businesses are facing layoffs. In short, American agriculture (not to mention our image and influence in the world) has become worse off.

As Rubin points out, these Muskovite cuts are not part of an actual reworking strategy.

These are not steps of a brilliant plan to modernize and improve performance. Mindlessly slashing government agencies impinges on the health and safety of all Americans, while the layoffs weaken our economy. (Government workers, of course, live and work throughout America, not just in D.C.) Moreover, Musk-Trump personnel cuts add to the unemployment rolls. Unless fired employees can instantaneously find comparable work, some will seek public assistance, while others will pay less in taxes, reduce purchases, and/or go further into debt….

I doubt many voted for Trump (none for Musk, certainly) because they wanted to increase aircraft accidents and food poisonings while holding back medical science—let alone because they wanted to increase unemployment and shrink the economy. But that is what they are getting—it’s what we’re all getting.

The GOP White House and the spineless Republican senators who confirmed unfit nominees, as well as House Republicans who have ceded the power of the purse to an unelected South African billionaire, own the results of their demolition of government.

This particular article preceded the unconscionable treason of Trump’s betrayal of Ukraine and his undermining of NATO.

In one short month, the administration installed by MAGA cultists has given Putin a victory he could never have won on a battlefield–he is winning a war with the United States without firing a shot.

The MAGA Americans who installed and support this neo-Nazi regime are motivated by one primary–and primal–emotion: racism. It’s past time to call it for what it is.

Trump voters who offer economic or other excuses for their votes are simply unwilling to admit that what really motivates their support is fear of losing White Christian privilege. They were willing to install this clown car of petty incompetents and grifters in return for promises to attack DEI programs and trans children.

If real Americans–those of us who value liberty and equality and the Constitution–fail to rise up, fail to reverse the carnage– future history books will record that America’s precipitous collapse was caused by the persistence of “racial grievance,” the bigotries that study after study have identified as central to the MAGA cult.

As Rubin notes, the “Pottery Barn rule” applies here: you broke it, you own it.

In the case of Musk, Trump, and the AWOL Republicans in Congress, they are responsible for the hopes, aspirations, problems, well-being, and lives of roughly 347M Americans. They may relish breaking government; they may revel in the nihilism. But all of this comes with a steep price. The Contrarian is unafraid to point out that wildly slashing government means Republicans own the airplane disasters, the E. Coli outbreaks, the cancelled medical trials, the excess unemployment, and the consequent damage done when competent people performing critical tasks are fired.

They will also own a world in which the United States has become a minor and unreliable global player.

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