Random Blogging – Page 31

An Accurate Diagnosis

Last week, President Biden spoke at the opening of the John McCain library. In an impassioned address, he drew a bright line between the Republican Party of John McCain and others with whom he’d worked in a bipartisan fashion, and the MAGA crazies who now dominate the party.

The entire speech was excellent, and if time permits, it’s worth clicking through and reading it all, but a couple of paragraphs really stood out to me–striking me as especially accurate diagnoses of where we find ourselves today.

“[T]here is no question that today’s Republican Party is driven and intimidated by MAGA Republican extremists. Their extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”

The MAGA Republicans, Biden said, are openly “attacking the free press as the enemy of the people, attacking the rule of law as an impediment, fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.” They are “banning books and burying history.” “Extremists in Congress [are] more determined to shut down the government, to burn the place down than to let the people’s business be done.” They are attacking the military—the strongest military in the history of the world—as being “weak and ‘woke’.”

They are “pushing a notion the defeated former President expressed when he was in office and believes applies only to him: This president is above the law, with no limits on power. Trump says the Constitution gave him…’the right to do whatever he wants as President.’ I’ve never even heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”

Biden spoke at a time when rational Americans were facing the intransigence of MAGA House Republicans who were clearly enthusiastic about forcing a government shutdown (and later, furious with McCarthy for working with Democrats to avoid it.), Their “impeachment hearing”–a hearing at which their own witnesses testified that they had no evidence of wrongdoing–was a pathetic attempt to distract the public from their refusal to do the jobs they were elected to do.

Those who read and comment on this blog probably share my reaction to the utter insanity of all this: disbelief. Who are the people who still support these extremists? How is it possible that any American citizen listens to Trump’s increasingly demented word salads and thinks, yep, that’s the guy who ought to have control of the nuclear codes?

How is it possible that roughly a third of Americans remain Trumpers?

The answer is pretty chilling. It turns out that–in addition to racism– a lot of Americans are nuts.

Back in 2016, polling found that twelve million Americans believed alien lizard people rule us.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey, around 12 million people in the US believe that interstellar lizards in people suits rule our country. We imported that particular belief from across the pond, where professional conspiracy theorist David Icke has long maintained that the Queen of England is a blood-drinking, shape-shifting alien.

That research was conducted in April. In November, Trump was elected…

As the article pointed out, there are a number of equally…let’s just say unsupported…beliefs endorsed by millions of Americans.

Around 66 million Americans believe that aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico; around 22 million people believe that the government faked the moon landing; and around 160 million believe that there is a conspiracy surrounding the assassination of former US president John F Kennedy.

In the years since 2016, we’ve seen the growth of various QAnon conspiracy theories, Bill Gates’ chips in Covid vaccines, vaccines causing autism…etc. etc.

Who are the people most susceptible to these beliefs?

Researchers say feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty trigger a need to believe in conspiracies. Or, as one scholar is quoted,

Conspiracies are for losers …

“I don’t mean it in the pejorative sense, but people who are out of power use conspiracy theories to strategically alert their side to danger, to close ranks, to salve their wounds,” Uscinski explains.

According to another researcher, belief in a conspiracy theory–alien lizards, the existence of Q, the ‘real purpose’ of vaccination– is a strategy fearful people use to regain a sense of control, even if the conspiracy theory is unrelated to what caused the lack of control in the first place. Conspiracy theories allow a person to make sense of what they see as otherwise senseless or unfair in the world they inhabit, and allow them to restore some sense of control.

Bottom line, there are millions of Americans for whom logic, evidence and demonstrable facts are irrelevant. And they vote.

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John Kelly: Late, But Better Than Never

At lunch a few days ago, a friend and I shared our distress over the current chaos of America’s political landscape. Both of us are women of “a certain age,” and both of us have difficulty wrapping our heads around the loyalty of MAGA Republicans to a man who is quite clearly–and dangerously–mentally ill.

My friend has always been a Democrat, but I spent 35 years as a Republican, which adds to my bewilderment. The Republican Party I worked for had its problems (there was always a racist, anti-Semitic fringe), but it also had a set of principles that have now been totally abandoned. Today’s GOP –now controlled by what was once its fringe–is in thrall to a man who repudiates virtually everything the party once stood for.

That includes respect for the men and women who serve in the U.S. Military.

In an interview that has been labeled “better late than never,”John Kelly, Trump’s former Chief of Staff, confirmed what most observers have surmised–that Trump’s “it’s all about me” worldview made it impossible for him to understand why people might sacrifice themselves for their country.

Kelly set the record straight with on-the-record confirmation of a number of damning stories about statements Trump made behind closed doors attacking US service members and veterans, listing a number of objectionable comments Kelly witnessed Trump make firsthand.

“What can I add that has not already been said?” Kelly said, when asked if he wanted to weigh in on his former boss in light of recent comments made by other former Trump officials. “A person that thinks those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are all ‘suckers’ because ‘there is nothing in it for them.’ A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ A person who demonstrated open contempt for a Gold Star family – for all Gold Star families – on TV during the 2016 campaign, and rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.

“A person who is not truthful regarding his position on the protection of unborn life, on women, on minorities, on evangelical Christians, on Jews, on working men and women,” Kelly continued. “A person that has no idea what America stands for and has no idea what America is all about. A person who cavalierly suggests that a selfless warrior who has served his country for 40 years in peacetime and war should lose his life for treason – in expectation that someone will take action. A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators. A person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

Kelly confirmed the accuracy of earlier reports that Trump had refused to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris, saying “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” Trump said the 1,800 US Marines killed in the Belleau Wood were “suckers” for getting killed.

Perhaps the most eloquent rejoinder to that despicable attitude was in the widely-quoted retirement speech delivered by General Mark Milley. Without mentioning Trump, Milley explained America’s military patriotism.

“We are unique among the world’s militaries. We don’t take an oath to a country. We don’t take an oath to a tribe. We don’t take an oath to a religion. We don’t take an oath to a king, or queen or a tyrant or a dictator. We don’t take an oath to a wannabe dictator. We don’t take an oath to an individual.”

“We take an oath to the Constitution, and we take an oath to the idea that is America, and we’re willing to die to protect it,” Milley continued. “Every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Guardian and Coast Guardsmen each of us commits our very life to protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price, and we are not easily intimidated.”

You don’t have to be a fan of America’s bloated defense budget or unfortunate history of international meddling to respect the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way to serve the American idea. To view these people as “suckers” and “losers”–to call General Milley a “traitor”– can only be understood as the ravings of a mentally-ill man who has become increasingly unstable as he faces accountability for his own past criminality.

I wonder–if John Kelly had “come clean” at the time about the ravings of the ignorant narcissist he served, would it have made any difference to the MAGA cult?

Probably not.

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A Case Study

Wisconsin is currently providing us with a lesson about the state of American democracy.

It isn’t just the arrogance of Republicans who are threatening to overturn the expressed will of the voters with a trumped-up impeachment of a state supreme court judge; the state is a case study for Democrats elsewhere whose voters face similarly manufactured limits on their ability to win elections.

Last December, just after the midterms, the Guardian ran a report on how Democrats had managed to fight back in what the article called “the nation’s most gerrymandered state.”

Ben Wikler spent so much time poring over polls ahead of the midterm elections that it eventually became too much to bear.

“I was throwing up with anxiety,” Wikler, the chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic party, confessed to the Guardian.

It wasn’t merely out of concern, common to Democrats nationwide in the run-up to the early November vote, that voters were set to give their candidates the traditional drubbing of the party in power, powered by Joe Biden’s unpopularity or the wobbly state of the economy.

Rather, Wikler feared that in Wisconsin his party was on the brink of something worse: permanent minority status in a state that is crucial to any presidential candidate’s path to the White House.

What the party faced in Wisconsin was dire: if Democratic Governor Tony Evers lost re-election, or if the state’s GOP achieved supermajority control of Wisconsin’s legislature, the GOP could have ensured that its electoral college votes never helped a Democrat win the White House.

As Wikler said, Wisconsin is “a state where Republicans have tried to engineer things to make it voter-proof.”

According to several studies, Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the country, and the fourth most difficult state in which to cast a ballot. It also has laws that make it practically impossible to conduct voter registration drives.

But Wisconsin’s Republicans are looking to tighten access to polling places further, and passed a host of measures to do so, all of which fell to Evers’s veto pen. With a supermajority in the legislature, they would have been able to override his vetoes. In a speech to supporters, Tim Michels, the Republican candidate for governor, made it plain that if he was elected, the GOP “will never lose another election” in the state.

Amazingly, despite being faced with enormous structural barriers, Evers was re-elected, and Wisconsin Democrats narrowly managed to keep Republicans from a supermajority in both houses of the legislature. Democrats’ success at standing their ground in Wisconsin was one of the most pleasant surprises the party experienced in the midterms.

What accounted for Evers’ robust win?

The fact that statewide races can’t be gerrymandered is obviously key. And according to various news sources, Evers had a clear advantage over Michels among those age 18 to 44 years old, an age cohort that made up more than a third of voters in Wisconsin.

Evers also had stronger support for the issues he ran on than Michels did.

The AP VoteCast survey showed the most important issue facing the country for Wisconsin voters was overwhelmingly the economy and jobs. However, Evers focused much of his campaign on abortion, which was only slightly more important to voters than the issue of crime, something Michels made a prominent theme of his candidacy.

Voters who cared most about the economy split their votes between the parties–but Wisconsin voters who said the abortion issue was very important to them were lopsidedly pro-choice. Evers attributed the strength of his win to that issue.

There is a lesson here for Indiana in next year’s statewide elections.

As with Wisconsin, Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering will be irrelevant in the upcoming statewide races. And–mirroring the Wisconsin gubernatorial contest–the Hoosier electorate cares about economic and public safety issues, but is divided on which party is best able to address those issues.

As in Wisconsin, however, Hoosiers who care about reproductive rights are lopsidedly pro-choice.

All but one of the five Republicans running for Governor are running ads professing their “pro-life” and “Christian faith” credentials. The already-endorsed Republican Senate candidate (Indiana’s male version of Margery Taylor Green) is a flat-out culture warrior who supports a ban on abortion with no exceptions, along with a multitude of other far-Right positions. (He recently called President Biden the “most corrupt person to ever occupy the White House.” No kidding.)

I will grant that Indiana’s state Democratic party structure ranks somewhere between weak and “where the hell are you?” but the party has lucked out with strong and appealing statewide candidates–Jennifer McCormick for Governor and Marc Carmichael for U.S. Senate. Both are on the right side of the issues Hoosier voters care about, and–if adequately funded– both can win next November.

We can learn from Wisconsin.

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A Partisan Political Pitch

Warning: the following is a partisan political screed….

As many of you know, I left the Republican Party in 2000, when I foolishly believed that the GOP had hit bottom with George W. Bush. (If you’d told me that twenty years later I would look back on George with something approaching fondness, I’d have said you were crazy…)

In the intervening years, I’ve all too often found myself voting for Hoosier candidates I considered the lesser of two evils–people running for Governor or Senator who were at least not crazy.(I know–low bar.) But this year–okay, really next year–I am in a very different place. There are Democratic candidates for both offices that I am enthusiastically supporting, and I am especially involved with and supportive of Marc Carmichael’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Last night, I was one of several co-hosts for a fundraiser for Marc, and I introduced him to an unusually large turnout for what was a relatively high-ticket event. As I explained to a crowd of some eighty attendees, sometime in late July, I’d read an announcement by a guy I’d never heard of, named Marc Carmichael. He was running for U.S. Senate, and his announcement listed his top twelve priorities.

I agreed with every single one of them.

In a conversation about the upcoming elections, I told a friend of mine what I’d read. I’d have left it there, but he said we should meet this person, and he arranged a lunch for the three of us–something that would never have occurred to me.

We lunched.

We met a down-to-earth, engaging man with an excellent grasp of the issues–and, importantly, a politically savvy man with significant elective and legislative experience, who very clearly understands the challenges that face Democrats in Indiana. (You can read about his priorities and experience here.)

As those of you who are regular readers of this blog already know, I was hooked.

Jim Banks, who will be Marc’s Republican opponent, is a male version of Margery Taylor Green. He is one of the crazy Right-wingers currently threatening to shut down the government–a pro-gun, anti-abortion (with no exceptions!), anti-“woke” MAGA culture warrior who has endorsed Trump and called President Biden “corrupt.”

Hoosier voter’s choice is clear: sane and hardworking versus crazy and embarrassing.

In his speech at our fundraiser (interrupted several times by applause), Marc said he wanted to go to Washington to actually do the job. That line reminded me of something my own political experience has taught me: some people pursue public office because they want to do something–the job– and others just want to “be someone.” Marc has thrown his hat into this particular ring because, like many of us, he has grandchildren and he wants to leave them a habitable planet and a country in which they can flourish.

It is so refreshing to work for a candidate you can respect and admire, rather than someone you support because he or she is the lesser of two evils. Defeating Banks would certainly provide me with political motivation, but defeating him with a first-rate candidate would be icing on the cake.

So, I’m all-in on this campaign, and I am convinced that–assuming Marc can raise enough money to get his message out–he can win, even in Red Indiana.

Here’s my partisan pitch: go to the linked website, or to my previous post on Marc’s priorities. If you agree that he’s the “real deal,” and you share my opinion that Banks is appalling, volunteer or send money.

About the money: Marc doesn’t need to match the Club for Growth and Banks’ other far-right funders, but he needs enough to get his message out. The data I’ve seen confirms that most Hoosiers agree with that message–but they need to hear it. Marc has been out of elective office for many years, and when voters hear his name, they need to know who he is, what he’s done, and what priorities he will support.

Send him money.

If you are a reader of this blog who sees the world as I do, I’m asking you to trust me on this, and to put your money where our common political hopes and aspirations are.

Candidates in places more purple than Indiana won’t have trouble raising enough money to compete in 2024. We Hoosiers need to fund a repeat of 2008 –when Barack Obama won Indiana– by funding and electing Democrats as Governor and Senator in 2024. It’s time.

We CAN do this!

This blog will return to its usual preachy-ness on the issues tomorrow…..

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It’s Still Kool-Aid

Trying to figure out social trends while you are living through them is sort of like being in the eye of a hurricane and trying to predict which way the wind’s blowing.

Since the 2020 elections, media mentions of QAnon have abated. Those of us who shook our heads over gunmen raiding pizza parlors and “patriots” attacking the U.S. Capitol have been inclined to breathe a sigh of relief, assuming that lack of sightings meant diminishing numbers of believers.

Of course, it’s never that simple, as a recent article in the Guardian explained.

QAnon appeared in 2017 and quickly spread through the far right, before beginning to wane in the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration.

But it hasn’t disappeared entirely, and understanding the conspiracy theory’s rise and fall – and the awful legacy it has left us – reveals a great deal about the modern landscape of partisan paranoia. It also offers some clues on how best to fight back.

QAnon seized the public’s imagination in 2017, exploding from an anonymous forum on one of the internet’s most notorious websites and becoming a popular conspiracy theory. The figure of “Q” first appeared on the message board 4chan – a website where anonymous users posted hardcore pornography and racial slurs – claiming tobe a high-level intelligence officer. (Later Q would move to the equally vile site 8kun.)

QAnon posited a conspiracy by the so-called deep state–composed, in several versions, of Democratic pedophiles who drank children’s blood. (The child trafficking had to involve sexual abuse and ritual murder so that the participants could harvest a chemical “elixir of youth,” called adrenochrome.) The deep state was intent upon undermining the presidency of Donald Trump – but that dastardly effort was being countered by someone called Q and other “patriots.”

I think I hear the music from “Twilight Zone”….

QAnon borrows heavily from the rhetoric of the End Times–a rhetoric that evidently prompted something in 1844 called the “Great Disappointment”–so named because thousands of people had prepared themselves for the Second Coming of Christ. It’s also in the apocalyptic fiction of the Left Behind series.

In the days before the 2020 election, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that fully half of Trump’s supporters believed that top Democrats were “involved in an elite child sex trafficking ring” and that Trump was working to “dismantle” that same Democrat-led conspiracy. And despite the ludicrous and defamatory nature of the conspiracy theory, Trump seemed to embrace it; during a town hall event in October of 2020, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie repeatedly offered him a chance to denounce the movement and Trump refused.

Speaking of “Great Disappointments,” it became harder to sustain the QAnon fantasy after Trump was removed from office. As one pundit noted, “unleashing the purge of the deep state over Twitter doesn’t really work when he’s not the president any more, and he’s not on Twitter any more.” But..

even as the original storyline “came to a natural end”, there was immediately “the emergence of the stolen election movement, and they found their next thing. It really went really seamlessly from one thing to another.” The movement no longer needed “the codes and the drops and the props and the cryptic stuff”. And without the mystic clues and portents, many of the ideas that first gained strength through Q drops have gone mainstream. They have percolated into the public discourse, embraced by many in the Republican party, and no longer need to involve any actual reference to Q or 4chan.

People who were vulnerable to QAnon idiocy are now part of the MAGA mainstream, and elements of the conspiracy theory have been absorbed into Rightwing talking points.

Last week, the Florida governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis told supporters at a barbecue in New Hampshire: “We’re going to have all of these deep state people, you know, we are going to start slitting throats on day one.”

While such violent rhetoric is primarily directed at Democrats, the article reminds readers that “QAnon, like many other conspiracy theories, traffics heavily in antisemitism: tropes about “puppet masters” controlling everything, along with constant references to George Soros and the Rothschild family.”

Karl Popper coined the term “conspiracy theory” in the 1940s, explaining that it is a quasi-theological outlook.

While a shadowy cabal controlling your every action from behind the scenes may seem terrifying, it offers a narrative and an explanation for the way the world works. And this is what QAnon was and continues to be to its believers: proof that there’s a plan (even if not entirely divine), which in turn gives them hope, and meaning.

As the article concludes, “That’s a far more powerful drug than adrenochrome, and weaning adherents off of it will take real work.”

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