Category Archives: Random Blogging

HCR Connects The Dots

One of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent Letters clarified–in a way I’d not seen elsewhere–the stakes of our upcoming election. She began by reporting on a recent interview in which Bill Barr, who headed the Department of Justice under Trump, acknowledged Trump’s volatility and unstable behavior, but then indicated his intent to vote for him.

When the interviewer asked him why he planned to vote for someone he knew had tried to subvert the peaceful transfer of power–someone incapable of achieving his own policies, who lies repeatedly, and faces multiple criminal charges–Barr responded, “I think the real threat to democracy is the progressive movement and the Biden administration.”

Just wow.

Later, Richardson shared a speech Barr had delivered that illuminates that otherwise incomprehensible response. The speech was a defense of the so-called “unitary executive” theory (a “president as king” theory, the origin of which has been attributed to Samuel Alito.)

In 2019, Barr explained to an audience at the University of Notre Dame the ideology behind the strong executive and weakened representation. Rejecting the clear words of the Constitution’s framers, Barr said that the U.S. was never meant to be a secular democracy. When the nation’s founders had spoken so extensively about self-government, he said, they had not meant the right to elect representatives of their own choosing. Instead, he said, the founders meant the ability of individuals to “restrain and govern themselves.” And, because people are willful, the only way to achieve self-government is through religion.

Those who believe the United States is a secular country, he said, are destroying the nation. It was imperative, he said, to reject those values and embrace religion as the basis for American government.

The idea that the United States must become a Christian nation has apparently led Barr to accept the idea that a man who has called for the execution of those he sees as enemies should be president, apparently because he is expected to usher in an authoritarian Christian state, in preference to a man who is using the power of the government to help ordinary Americans.

That is the unbridgeable gulf we face. The over-riding question Americans will face in November is whether the United States will continue to be the secular democratic republic bequeathed to us by the nation’s founders, or a Christian Nationalist theocracy.

As Richardson noted, a number of pundits have shared a recent, blistering diatribe by George Stephanopolis, focusing on the numerous other differences between the upcoming election and previous contests.

“Until now,” he said in the show’s opener on Sunday, “[n]o American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation, and sexual abuse….

“The scale of the abnormality is so staggering, that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflexive habits, to treat this as a normal campaign, where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But, that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.”

Stephanopolis’ passionate summation was absolutely correct–but it was also incomplete. What he neglected to add was that those who are prepared to ignore all of it–prepared to cast a ballot for this wretched joke of a man– are motivated by an underlying philosophy utterly incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Christian Nationalism–not to be confused with genuine Christianity–often cloaked in legal jargon about a “unitary executive” and MAGA slogans about putting America First–is at the root of Trump support. MAGA Republicans are all about remaking America into their version of a “Christian Nation,” and we are just now beginning to see that movement for the racist, misogynist, utterly regressive effort it is.

This is no time to debate the merits of this or that policy. We can argue policy later. In November, we need to prevent MAGA Christian Nationalists from turning America into the country of Bob Barr’s wet dreams.

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Doonesbury Nails It

Stinging humor has been one of the more notable characteristics of what I devoutly hope will NOT be known as “the age of Trump.” Late-night comedians have gone where GOP politicians terrified of their MAGA base (and Democrats persuaded to  “go high” when Republicans “go low”) have failed to go. 

The result has been a situation in which the most biting–and frequently, most accurate–commentary has come from stand-up comedians and the Sunday funnies. Last Sunday, Doonesbury used a fictional psychiatrist to echo observations and conclusions that have been discussed for several months by real mental health professionals: Trump is rapidly slipping into dementia.

Elias–Doonesbury’s fictional “resident psychiatrist”– points to the symptoms: repeatedly mixing people up (not just forgetting names, which happens to all of us, but calling Biden Obama or Haley Pelosi); phonemic paraphasia (“freestyling” off the stem of a word); slurring; semantic aphasia; and tangental speech. The last panel of the cartoon is a warning, showing nonsense words coming out of the White House.

In all fairness, I didn’t find the Sunday strip funny. I did find it educational–and terrifying.

Trump’s “word salads” have been the subject of innumerable Facebook jokes and memes, but mental health professionals and pundits agree that his more recent speeches and outbursts have changed in nature. The Doonesbury labels appear to fit.

Phonemic paraphasia, for example, is defined as a disorder in which incorrect phonemes are substituted. For example, one may say “spot” instead of “pot.” Literal paraphasia could also be switching syllables or creating reverse compound words such as “markbook” instead of “bookmark.” There are differing types; according to Wikipedia,

Wernicke’s aphasia is characterized by fluent language with made up or unnecessary words with little or no meaning to speech. Those who suffer from this type of aphasia have difficulty understanding others speech and are unaware of their own mistakes. When corrected they will repeat their verbal paraphasias and have trouble finding the correct word….

Phonemic paraphasia, also referred to as phonological paraphasia or literal paraphasia, refers to the substitution of a word with a nonword that preserves at least half of the segments and/or number of syllables of the intended word. This can lead to a variety of errors, including formal ones, in which one word is replaced with another phonologically related to the intended word; phonemic ones, in which one word is replaced with a nonword phonologically related to the intended word; and approximations, an attempt to find the word without producing either a word or nonword. These types of errors are associated with Wernicke’s aphasia, among others. Phonemic paraphasias are often caused by lesions to the external capsule, extending to the posterior part of the temporal lobe or internal capsule.

Wikipedia defines “semantic aphasia”as a “progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by loss of semantic memory in both the verbal and non-verbal domains. However, the most common presenting symptoms are in the verbal domain (with loss of word meaning). Semantic dementia is a disorder of semantic memory that causes patients to lose the ability to match words or images to their meanings.”

Tangential speech is a communication disorder in which the train of thought of the speaker wanders and shows a lack of focus, never returning to the initial topic of the conversation. (Full disclosure: my kids will tell you I have this one…although usually I do– eventually– return to the initial topic.)

Quite obviously, I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. Neither is Gary Trudeau, the Doonesbury cartoonist. That said, Trudeau hasn’t created this diagnosis out of thin air or political pique–increasing numbers of mental health professionals have raised alarms. It began during his first term, with “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” in which 27 psychiatrists evaluated concerning aspects of his personality; and has accelerated with psychologists warning of the dangers posed by  more recent evidence of his mental decline. (One example: Harry Segal, a senior lecturer in psychology at Cornell University who has been critical of the former president’s mental health since he was first elected, said Trump was showing clear signs of onset dementia.)

It doesn’t correlate with age. Some people “lose it” at sixty; others are mentally sharp at 100.

And it isn’t simply the bone-chilling prospect of a single, truly demented head of state. The Trump presidency has illuminated a challenge going forward. It has become standard for candidates to share their medical evaluations with the voting public; is it time to require aspirants for high office to be screened for mental illnesses? 

And given some of our past Chief Executives, where would we set the bar?

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The Protests, The War

This will be a somewhat longer post than usual, and it has been an extraordinarily difficult one to write.

As a retired faculty member of Indiana University, and a former Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU, I have been appalled by IU’s over-the-top response to the student protests on the Bloomington campus. The late-night change of a 55-year-old policy,  the decision to invite a police presence, the horrifying confirmation that a sniper was positioned on a nearby roof–all of this in response to what observers described as a peaceful protest–is incomprehensible.

Other institutions of higher education have similarly over-reacted–but still others have not. At Dartmouth, Jewish and Middle-Eastern professors have co-taught a class exploring the conflict and its history; at the University of Chicago, where my granddaughter is a sophomore, the University has issued a statement reaffirming students’ right to protest while making it clear that demonstrations “cannot jeopardize safety or disrupt the University’s operations and the ability of people in the University to carry out their work.”

You don’t have to agree with the message being conveyed in order to support the right to protest. In the immortal words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, freedom of speech is meaningless unless it is also “freedom for the idea we hate.”

I have refrained from posting my own concerns about the conduct of a war that has divided America’s Jewish community as much as it has the broader polity. But Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo recently shared his reactions, and I share them. (Marshall is Jewish). He begins his essay by noting that much of the anti-Semitism being voiced has come–at least at Columbia–from non-students on the periphery of the protests. He also points to the naiveté of students calling for the elimination of the State of Israel, attributing the slogans to “the kind of revolutionary cosplay that is often part and parcel of college activism.”

Is this anti-Semitic? Not as such. It’s a political view that the Israeli state never should have come into existence in the first place and that the events of 1948 should simply be reversed by force, if a solution can’t be voluntarily agreed to. But since a bit over half of Jews in the world live in Israel, that is a demand or an aim that can’t help but seem wildly threatening to the vast majority of Jews in the world, certainly the ones in Israel but by no means only them.

Marshall discusses the decades-long administrative changes in institutions of higher education that have made so many universities ill-equipped to deal properly with this particular moment, and then he turns to the war itself.

If it is true that the groups spearheading the protest expressly hold eliminationist goals and beliefs about Israel, it is just as clearly true that the real energy of these protests isn’t about 1948 or even 1967 — they are about what people have been seeing on their TVs for the last six months. And that is a vast military onslaught that has leveled numerous neighborhoods throughout Gaza, led to the substantial physical destruction of much whole strip and lead to the deaths of more than 30,000 people. That’s horrifying. And people know that the U.S. has played a role in it. It’s not at all surprising that lots and lots of students are wildly up in arms about that and want to protest to make it stop.

To me, you can’t really understand the situation without recognizing that Hamas started this engagement by launching a massacre of almost unimaginable scale and brutality and then retreated to what has always been its key strategic defense in Gaza, which is intentionally placing their military infrastructure in and under civilian areas so that the price of attacking them militarily is mass civilian casualties that are then mobilized internationally to curtail Israeli military attacks on Hamas.

This is unquestionably true and no one can honestly deny that this is Hamas’s central strategic concept: employing civilian shields to limit Israel’s ability to engage Hamas in military terms.

But that being true doesn’t make tens of thousands of people less dead. And most of the dead aren’t Hamas. So if you’re a student you say — along with quite a few non-students in the U.S. — all that stuff may be true, but what I’m seeing is the ongoing slaughter of thousands of innocents and I absolutely need that to stop, especially if it is being carried out directly or indirectly with arms my tax dollars bought….

The last six months has thrown me very hard back on to defending the existence of Israel, its historical connections to Jews in Europe and the Middle East before the 20th century, its origins as the political expression of a people who are in fact indigenous to Israel-Palestine. And that’s because all of these things are now questioned and attacked as core questions.

But the reality is that these conversations, often harrowing and angry, are simply diversions from anything that creates a path forward from the terrible present. There are two national communities deeply embedded in the land. Neither is going anywhere even though there are substantial proportions of both communities who want that to happen to the other one. There’s no way to build something sustainable and dignified without both peoples having a state in which they have self-determination and citizenship. That’s the only plausible endpoint where violence doesn’t remain an ever-present reality. How you get there is another story. And yes, if you think one unified state makes sense, God bless you. If you can get majorities of both groups to agree to that, fine. I don’t live there. If that’s what they want, great. That’s almost certainly never going to be the case. And it’s a failed state in the making.

But none of these arguments about 1948 or 1967 or indigeneity or “settler colonialism” really impact or have anything to do with getting to some two state/partition end point. And no I’m not saying for a moment that that will be easy to get to. It seems terribly far off. But fantasies and alternative histories won’t get us there.

I am older than Marshall–old enough to remember my mother sobbing while reading “The Black Book” after the end of WWII–a compendium of reporting on Nazi atrocities. I remember the little blue box she kept, in which she collected dimes and quarters to plant trees in Israel, and I remember the fervent hopes of family members for the establishment of a place where Jews would be safe. Back then, none of us could have conceived of an Israeli government dominated by a Bibi Netanyahu, whose twenty years of shameful policies toward Palestinians have actually strengthened the Hamas terrorists, not to mention being utterly inconsistent with Jewish law, culture and tradition.

On this blog, I often repeat the mantra “it’s complicated.” And the situation in the Middle East is nothing if not complicated. Nothing–not history, not Netanyahu’s behavior before or since–justifies the barbarity of October 7th. That said, neither does that barbarity justify the horrors that have been unleashed on the Palestinian civilians in Gaza–just as shameful incidents of anti-Semitism on the nation’s campuses do not justify wholesale assaults on peaceful protesters.

A final reminder: the Christian Zionists in and out of Congress who support anything and everything that Israel does are motivated by their belief in the prophecy that all Jews must be “returned” to Israel in order to usher in the Rapture. Jews who accept Jesus will be “Raptured up,” while the rest of us will burn in hell. Unconditional support for Israel is necessary to bring that about–such support is most definitely not evidence of loving-kindness for the Jewish people.

At the end of the day, I keep thinking about that plaintive question from Rodney King, after he’d been beaten by officers of the LAPD: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

If only I had an answer to that…..

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Way To Go, Idaho Democrats!!

Americans who support a woman’s right to control her own reproduction have been following Supreme Court arguments in a recent case out of Idaho, in which the Court will decide whether federal rules requiring doctors to take measures to save women’s lives and health are superceded by Idaho’s law forbidding abortion unless necessary to save the woman’s life–a law that prevents medical intervention until the threat of death is dire.

This anti-woman law is hardly the only evidence of the extreme Rightward turn of Idaho’s GOP, a turn that–together with a “compete everywhere” strategy– the state’s Democrats believe will help the party win seats in the upcoming election.

As Politico has reported,

Democrat Loree Peery knows she’s a long-shot candidate for the Idaho Legislature.

But when her state House representative introduced a bill in February expanding an anti-cannibalism law — action prompted by a prank video — Peery decided she had to try to oust the far-right incumbent, Heather Scott.

“You can’t win if you don’t run,” Peery said, adding that Scott’s focus on irrelevant issues like cannibalism shows she isn’t a serious lawmaker. “It forces the Republicans to work, it forces [Scott] to get out there and talk to people so they can see what she’s about. It forces Republicans to spend more resources on the races.”

Peery, a retired nurse, is one of dozens of Idaho Democrats seeking an office in Boise for the first time. Under new leadership, the Idaho Democratic Party has deployed a grassroots recruitment strategy to put a record number of candidates on the ballot. In fact, there’s a Democrat running in every district for the first time in at least 30 years.

Idaho’s Republican super-majority–like Indiana’s–is obsessed with culture war issues. The draconian abortion ban is front and center, but Idaho Republicans–like those in Indiana–are also focused on attacking LGBTQ+ rights and punishing librarians over violating book bans. There is also what Politico calls “bitter infighting” between the conservative and (somewhat more) moderate flanks of the GOP.  As a result, Idaho Democrats see an opportunity to present voters with a different vision for the future of the state.

High visibility events like the just-concluded Supreme Court abortion argument and the Court’s recent refusal to stay enforcement of a ban on gender-affirming care while the case is being litigated, have allowed Democrats to make their case to a wide public.

As the Politico article pointed out,

It’s also not just Idaho. More Democrats than usual are running in states with GOP-dominated legislatures like Tennessee, Iowa and North Carolina. Democrats have made gains in recent years in state legislative races — flipping chambers in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Michigan — after more than a decade of nationwide GOP dominance. But Republicans still control 55 percent of state legislative seats, compared to 44 percent for Democrats.

Idaho’s Democrats aren’t delusional; the article notes that they are frank about the very low odds of sweeping the election in November. Instead, they’ve set a modest goal of knocking out the GOP’s supermajority over the next decade. And they’ve embraced the critically-important strategy of competing everywhere. 

More than 50 obstetricians have stopped practicing in Idaho since the state’s abortion ban, which makes it a crime with a prison sentence up to five years for anyone who performs the procedure. Most of those remaining doctors practice in the most populous counties — and only half of the state’s 44 counties have access to an obstetrician.

“It’s really been a hair on fire situation, even for people who are not historically Democrats,” said state House Rep. Ilana Rubel, the Democratic minority leader. “[Republicans] have really overshot the mark in a big way and we’ve seen in other states when Republican supermajorities do this, they can lose.”
 
There’s some evidence that Democrats’ assessment of Idahoans’ mood may be right. A long-running public policy survey conducted by Boise State University found — for the first time — that more respondents said they feel the state is on the wrong track rather than headed in the right direction. Among those unhappy with the state’s trajectory, the top reason cited was Republicans’ conservative supermajority.

Idaho’s GOP is also experiencing brutal infighting. If the political ads we’re seeing in Indiana are any indication, so is Indiana’s.

What Idaho Democrats understand–and Hoosier Democrats evidently don’t–is that you can’t take advantage of the GOP’s mounting problems if you don’t field opposing candidates. You can’t win if you don’t run.



 
 

 


 
 
 
 

 
 
 
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The Direction Of The Wind…

It is certainly possible that I am engaging in the confirmation bias I constantly warn others about, but I recently read an essay recommended by Robert Hubbell, whose Substack newsletter I get, and I found it persuasive. It was titled “The Wind Has Changed,” and–assuming the accuracy of its observations–ought to give aid and comfort to citizens terrified of  MAGA victories this November.

Here are a few of those observations, written just after the House agreed to vote on the much-delayed assistance to Ukraine. The essay charted changes that–as Hubbell often cautions–should make us hopeful but not complacent.

The MAGA movement got splintered last night, and I for one don’t think they have the skill to put Humpty-Dumpty together again. (How’s that for mixed metaphors? Good?)

For one thing, J.D. Vance, Moscow Marge, and the rest of the Space Laser Putin Caucus, got thrown under the bus by Fearless Leader last night – who may not be able to do much, but he can read polls. He knows the wind has shifted, that the wind is filling the sails and we are beginning to move out of The Doldrums. He knows he’s losing control.

After last night, Ukraine aid will pass. Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell braved the FART (Floor Action Response Team) of the Space Laser Putin Caucus and Did The Right Thing.

Trump gave Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell the green light, while at the same time casting J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, and the rest of the Russia Traitors over the side.

The essential line of Trump’s “Truthing” post last night is this: “As everyone agrees, Ukraine Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!”

He’s not doing this because he cares about Ukraine; he’s doing this because the polls are shifting; he needs fewer hassles. The wind is changing.

As the essay notes, Trumpism – “particularly its J.D. Vance-led German-American Bund Putinism” – is pessimistic. Trump and what the writer aptly dubs the “Space Laser Caucus” constantly tell supporters “We need to retreat, withdraw, hide, and let regional warlords like Putin reign over as much territory as they can seize.”

But constant pessimism has a sell-by date.

MAGA broke something in the House. Retirements are up. Swing seats are in danger. The endless infighting has soured many “normie” Republicans on the Space Laser Caucus and their strategy of screaming, throwing feces like a rabid monkey in a zoo, and all the performative lying. Even in the right-wing media bubble, the act has gotten old.

Fox has had enough of Marjorie Traitor Goon’s tantrums, her unearned sense of entitlement, and her political terrorism.

The perverse incentives of MAGA rewarded the Space Laser Caucus while leaving the rest – or at least those not representing the most ruby-red districts – fearing electoral survival this fall.

It turns out that shitting in the punchbowl is unwelcome over time. The tell is that Fox has slowly stopped booking the MAGA clowns while Rupert and Lachlan try to find and anoint the Next Star after their major fakakte with DeSantis.

The author points to the likely defeats of crazy caucus members Gaetz and Boebert, and asserts that the House GOP is staring down the barrel of a political gun.

Happy warriors like Jamie Raskin, Jared Moskowitz, Eric Swalwell, Jasmine Crockett and others know who is in charge in the House now.

Chuck Schumer managed to keep his caucus together, pulling in some GOP support, as the Senate schooled the Space Laser Caucus about their impeachment clown show of the House. No high drama; just procedural murder

What has been going on at 100 Centre Street in New York City, where Trump is finally facing the prospect of justice for his crimes in a case that now is seen as far more important than it was originally, is also a good sign the tide and wind are changing.

Here in Indiana, the disarray of the GOP is seen daily by those of us bombarded by the increasingly nasty, unhinged accusations being leveled by Republicans running for Governor. Anyone who thinks that these candidates  will smile and play nice after the primary is smoking something. Meanwhile, Senate candidate Jim Banks may no longer have a primary opponent, but his membership in the Space Laser Caucus and his constant support of unpopular bills–ranging from a national ban on abortion with no exceptions to his recent bill to defund NPR–suggest that he is far, far to the Right of most Hoosier Republicans. In contrast, for once, Indiana Democrats are working together and fielding a first-rate statewide ticket.

Even in Indiana, the wind is shifting.

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