Random Blogging – Sheila Kennedy

A Factual Rebuttal

In the wake of Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the Presidential campaign, media attention turned from the just-concluded Republican convention to the Democratic ticket. While that’s understandable, it’s also important to revisit the fantasies promulgated at that GOP lie-fest. I particularly liked one of those reviews, penned by David French in the New York Times, because French is a conservative former Republican, whose analysis cannot fairly be attributed to progressive ideology.

French-who was a Mitt Romney delegate at the 2012 Republican convention– noted that this year’s event “was the first that revolved entirely around a fundamentally false premise: that in our troubled time, Donald Trump would be a source of order and stability.” As he noted, if past performance is any indication, a second Trump term would be as chaotic as the first.

To bolster their case, Republicans misled America. Speaker after speaker repeated the claim that America was safer and the world was more secure when Trump was president. But we can look at Trump’s record and see the truth. America was more dangerous and the world was quite chaotic during Trump’s term. Our enemies were not intimidated by Trump. In fact, Russia improved its strategic position during his time in office.

Convention speakers emphasized the same themes that Hoosiers saw in the GOP’s primary fight–especially ominous warnings about crime and crime rates. These arguments reek of what Yiddish speakers call “chutzpah,” because acceptance of GOP arguments about public safety requires swallowing a Republican “alternate reality.”

As French notes,

The most egregious example of Republican deception centered around crime. The theme of the second night of the convention was “Make America Safe Again.” Yet the public mustn’t forget that the murder rate skyrocketed under Trump. According to the Pew Research Center, “The year-over-year increase in the U.S. murder rate in 2020 was the largest since at least 1905 — and possibly ever.”…

It’s particularly rich for Trump to claim to be the candidate of order when the crime rate rose during his presidency and is plunging during Joe Biden’s. In 2023, there was a record decrease in the murder rate, and violent crime, ABC News reported, “plummeted to one of the lowest levels in 50 years.”

French also reminded readers of Trump’s utterly unAmerican approach to international relations, which consisted of dumping on the country’s longtime allies and cozying up to autocrats and dictators–especially Putin.

Trump’s argument about foreign policy is also fundamentally deceptive. Throughout the convention, we heard variations of the same theme: Russia didn’t invade any other country under Trump, and Iran was broke and powerless. But again, this is misleading. Far from being frightened and intimidated by Trump, both Russia and Iran directly attacked American troops when he was president.

In 2018, Russian mercenaries and their Syrian allies assaulted an American position in northern Syria, leading to a four-hour battle during which American forces deployed artillery and airstrikes to beat back the attack. In 2020, Iran fired a volley of ballistic missiles at American troops in retaliation for our strike against Qassim Suleimani and injured more than 100 American service members.

In both instances, our forces handled themselves with courage, professionalism and skill, but if Russia and Iran were so frightened of Trump, why did they attack Americans?

Trump enabled Iran to restart its nuclear program, and ordered a precipitous withdrawal from northern Syria that abandoned our Kurdish allies, creating an opening for Russia. (Russians filmed themselves occupying an abandoned American base.)

Trump’s obvious disrespect for our allies harmed American interests then, and if he wins they’ll harm American interests again. At the end of Trump’s term, Russia was stronger, Iran was unbowed, and America’s relationship with our key allies was more tenuous. Trump had even threatened to yank the United States out of NATO, our most important alliance, an act that would fulfill one of Putin’s fondest hopes.

As French concludes, Trump wants voters to empty their minds of the past so that he can fill it with his own “alternative facts.”

The Republican National Convention was one long exercise in creating memories of a Trump term that never existed. The real Trump term was chaotic and dangerous from start to finish, and if Americans’ memories don’t improve soon, the voters who seek peace and stability will instead bring us violence and tears.

The problem is, for the MAGA cult, reality is irrelevant. Climate change is a hoax, NATO isn’t worth supporting, Brown immigrants are all criminals…the list goes on, and at its base is the real glue holding the cult together–White Christian Nationalism and nostalgia for a (largely non-existent) past in which White men dominated the government and the culture.

A Republicans vote is a vote for the Confederacy.

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How Conspiracy Theories Work

I have a confession to make. In the aftermath of the attempt on Trump’s life, my first reaction was suspicion that he’d arranged the whole thing. After all, it would be just like him to produce a scenario where he could play the brave victim…and with the death of the shooter, there would be no evidence…

Okay–not my finest moment. But a cursory scan of my FaceBook page provided evidence that I wasn’t the only person open to similar fantasies, and that, in turn, led me to consider just how America got to the stage where conspiracy theories have more force and impact than facts.

An interesting experiment sheds some light on that inquiry: a while back, The New Republic ran an article detailing a “prank” that illustrated how such theories spread. The article began:

Bird propaganda is everywhere, once you’re trained to recognize it. Since the Cold War, children have eaten their breakfast cereals with Toucan Sam and spent their after-school hours learning at Big Bird’s oversize feet. Television has streamed into our homes and onto our smartphones under the strutting sign of NBC’s rainbow peacock. Penguins gaze out at us from our bookshelves. Eagles, the government insists, are patriotic symbols of strength and freedom. Duolingo uses an earnest but irritating green owl to engineer our digital behavior and shame us into learning rudimentary Portuguese.

As you catch your breath from this unnerving revelation, you should also know that there is a growing movement online determined to reveal the truth: that none of this is benign, none of it accidental. That Americans are being birdwashed into docility and obedience.

Calling itself Birds Aren’t Real, this group of primarily Gen Z truthers swaps memes and infographics on social media (the official accounts boast more than 800,000 followers on TikTok and 400,000 on Instagram), challenges the powers that be with combative media appearances, and holds rallies across the country. They explain that the U.S. government secretly ran a “mass bird genocide” starting in the late 1950s, replacing the real avian population with sophisticated surveillance-drone look-alikes. Bird-watching now goes both ways.

The group’s leaders even published a book, in which they “revealed” that the government’s bird genocide plot was hatched by “notorious CIA director Allen Dulles—when he wasn’t spearheading the MK-Ultra mind-control program.” They provided “evidence” of the complicity of presidents from Eisenhower to Biden, and a field guide for recognizing bird-drones in the “wild.”

“Birds Aren’t Real” was an elaborate prank, what the article calls “a knowing satire of American conspiratorial thinking in the century of QAnon–an experiment in misinformation. And it demonstrates the elements needed for a successful conspiracy theory. First of all, it offers a “theory of everything”—a way for people to make sense of the world’s complexity and contradictions, to tie up all the loose ends. Good conspiracy theories offer “arguments by adjacency,” meaning that arguably related credible facts are used to “prove” wilder claims, “offering just enough truth to make you wonder.”

Finally, successful conspiracy theories are able to perform a kind of psychic alchemy for their followers. On the one hand, they drain pleasure from everyday life. Nothing can be innocent; everything is wrapped up in the plot. QAnon supporters pull away from friends and family, convinced that the people they most love have become satanic cultists. Birds Aren’t Real tells you that you can’t enjoy simple joys like nature walks and bird-watching, family Christmases (eating turkey is “ritualized bird worship”), or even your pets. People with birds at home are advised “to calmly pack your things in the middle of the night and leave. Make sure your bird does not see you leave.” Your pet bird never loved you, for it was merely a government drone-robot, but at least now the imminent danger has passed.

The article notes that conspiracy theories offer people agency in a world that seems fallen to pieces, and it reports and analyzes the efforts underway to combat them. It’s a fascinating–albeit somewhat depressing–read.

When I thought about the elements needed for wide acceptance of a conspiracy theory, I realized mine lacked them. My reaction was more a suspicion than a theory–it didn’t explain everything (like why anyone sane thinks Trump is fit to be President); the only available “argument from adjacency” is that Trump, who lies constantly, is demonstrably capable of inventing and spreading misinformation. And my theory would hardly offer agency to those of us who are shocked and saddened by realizing that large numbers of our fellow Americans are drinking Trump’s Kool-Aid.

There’s probably a lot of overlap between MAGA folks and those who believe that Birds Aren’t Real….

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Losing My Faith

I used to have faith in the good will and common sense of my fellow citizens. Over the past several years, I’ve lost that faith.

Good will?? The MAGA zealots who have taken over a previously normal political party routinely engage in outlandish accusations and escalating calls for violence. As David Frum recently wrote,

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television…

Common sense??? Chris Lamb is a journalist professor at IU-Indianapolis who has documented (at length) the ridiculous “facts” that Republicans have to believe in order to cling to their insistence that the 2020 election was stolen.

Lamb began by referencing the Washington Post’s compendium of Trump’s lies–over 30 thousand of them– during his four-year presidency, and linked to the newspaper’s accessible data base of those lies. And as he reminds us, that figure was restricted to public statements.

There is no point fact-checking Trump because he uses no facts.

There is as much evidence that Donald Trump led American troops on D-Day as there is evidence that he won the 2020 Presidential Election.

And yet, as he points out, two-thirds of Republicans say Biden’s win of that election was illegitimate. In a post replete with links to sources of his evidence, Lamb deconstructs that claim, and enumerates the multiple ridiculous assertions that must be accepted as true in order to believe it.

The post points out what should be obvious: for one thing, that the massive award against Fox News for defamation could not have been won had there been any probative evidence of election fraud. (As he writes, “It’s worth noting that the truth is an absolute defense in libel suits. If news sites – and I use that word loosely – told the truth they would have been immune from defamation lawsuits”). He also points out that a significant number of the sixty-plus cases dismissed for lack of any evidence were heard–and dismissed–by judges Trump appointed.

Lamb’s post provides a meticulous and documented list of the claims MAGA folks have embraced, and copious evidence of their falsity. I won’t recite that whole list–which I encourage you to click through and read–but to say it is discouraging is an understatement.

The unanswered question, of course, is: what percentage of the American population actually believes these things? How many of my fellow Americans have listened to both Biden and Trump, to Democratic and Republican political figures, and actually concluded that Democratic rhetoric has stoked violence? What percentage of American voters truly thinks the 2020 election was stolen, despite a total and complete absence of any corroborating evidence?

And what is wrong with that cohort? Why do they cling to beliefs that are so clearly unsupported by reality?

So yes, until relatively recently, I was confident that most people in this country were people of good will and common sense. Yes, we have always had fringe elements–the bigots of the far Right and far Left, the discontented, fearful and well-armed “Second Amendment” contingent, the scary theocrats like Beckwith and Banks– but I used to believe those people constituted a relatively small part of our body politic.

In the age of MAGA, It’s harder and harder to believe that.

I tell myself that these deluded souls really are a minority; that it is only because they are so loud and “in our faces” that they seem so numerous, but it gets harder and harder to convince myself that the sort of people with whom I regularly interact (on this site and in “real life”)–people who are, by and large, normal, measured and evidence-based –are the real majority.

If they aren’t–if the hordes of angry MAGA Christian Nationalists return Trump to power–the rest of us will lose more than faith in our fellow Americans. We will lose America.

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The Company Heritage Keeps…

Because I’ve been on the road, heading for a much-needed vacation (and hopefully, a brief hiatus from my daily contemplation of the various–and frankly terrifying– threats to my country and its Constitution), I’m taking the lazy way out this morning, and posting an eye-opening compendium of the contributors to Project 2025. These are the “think tanks” (note quotation marks) and other far-Right organizations that worked with Heritage to produce that document.

You can find the list here.

Some of these names will be chillingly familiar. I found others to be a mystery. Those I recognized, and a few unknown ones I was able to trace, are all members of a category we might dub “scary.” Or unAmerican–at least if one defines unAmerican as rejection of the underlying philosophy of the Constitution and Bill of Rights (especially but certainly not exclusively the First and Fourteenth Amendments.)

Click through, take a look at the list, and–as the anti-science folks like to say–do your own research.

I’ll be back to my usual hectoring and too-wordy routine tomorrow.

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How Awful Are Hoosiers, Really?

Consider this a follow-up to yesterday’s “Extra” post.

I have written before about Indiana Democrats’ self-defeating attitudes and behaviors. A recent conversation with two very savvy political observers reminded me–again!– how incredibly unhelpful those negative attitudes are.

It’s a conversation I’ve had repeatedly. Acquaintances who are committed Democrats refrain from donating to Hoosier Democratic candidates because “they can’t win in Indiana.” Rather obviously, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy–if these candidates lack sufficient resources to compete, they will lose. (During that recent conversation, when I reminded my friends that Obama had won Indiana, one responded “Yes, but he put significant resources here.” Yes–with sufficient resources, Democrats can win Indiana. Duh.)

This year, as I have documented, the Indiana Democratic Party has nominated a statewide (non-gerrymander-able) slate of truly excellent candidates. They are capable, moderate, and–unlike their GOP opponents–sane. Meanwhile, the Republicans are running a ticket of out-and-out White Supremecist theocrats, men who are personally repugnant supporters of an exceptionally far-Right agenda: anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-public education, anti-environment…candidates who enthusiastically support positions that survey research confirms are at odds with the positions of most Hoosiers, Republican and Democrat alike.

So why, you might ask (I’ve certainly been asking) do people who clearly recognize both the merits of the Democratic candidates and the threats posed by the Republican ones still insist that Indiana voters will opt for the Republican ones?

During that last discussion, I finally came to understand the roots of that belief. (I’m slow.)

These same people–people who care about their neighbors, who understand and worry about the current assaults on the Constitution and civil liberties, who recognize the nuanced nature of policy disputes–apparently believe that a significant majority of Hoosier voters are ignorant and hateful.

Too many of my Democratic friends view all Hoosier Republicans–especially but not exclusively rural Republicans– as uneducated and politically unsophisticated, resentful of social change and suspicious of anyone who isn’t a White Christian. They see all Republicans as MAGA bigots, mired in a Fox “News” universe, dismissive of information inconsistent with their prejudices, and they conclude that efforts to inform or persuade them are useless. (This belief actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the Democratic candidates lack resources to communicate their positions, many Hoosier voters will lack accurate information.)

I’m willing to concede that this picture of a committed racist rube accurately describes the base of today’s GOP–the MAGA folks who form the core of what has become Trump’s political party. But I refuse to believe that all Hoosier Republicans are cut from that same MAGA cloth. There are people who are relatively uninformed, but not hateful–many people who would reject the premises and promises of Project 2025 if they knew what those premises and promises really were.

The Democrats who are writing off Hoosier voters rather clearly believe that providing sufficient resources to disseminate accurate information widely around the state is a fool’s errand. They believe that the super-majority in our deplorable state legislature is an accurate representation of unenlightened, racist and misogynistic Hoosier sentiment–after all, those voters elected that super-majority. (They forget the substantial effects of gerrymandering and vote suppression.)

The only thing that would change the minds of these dismissive observers of Indiana politics is an election that upends their smug conclusions–but their unwillingness to fund their preferred candidates adequately makes such an election result infinitely more difficult.

I’ve been working with both the McCormick and McCray campaigns, and I can report that both are well-organized, strategically sound, and–most important–right on all the issues that matter. I am absolutely convinced that–with adequate funding–they can inform voters statewide of the enormous differences between them and the GOP’s Christian Nationalist ticket, and that adequate dissemination of that information would lead to victory.

I guess it’s up to those of us in Indiana who are politically “unsophisticated” to step into the breach. Those of us who care deeply about women’s access to abortion, civil rights for our gay friends and neighbors, support for public education, and the other immensely important rights threatened by today’s far far Right GOP candidates need to contribute as much as we can so that the good guys have enough to communicate their message.

They don’t need as much as their opponents; they just need enough.

Unless, of course, my “sophisticated” friends are right, and a majority of my fellow Hoosiers are contemptible.

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