Uncategorized – Sheila Kennedy

Actions We Must Take NOW

Thus far, there hasn’t been a single admirable or even minimally fit Trump Cabinet nominee –but even among the clowns, buffoons and conspiracy theorists who are likely to dominate the upcoming administration, four stand out: Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I’ve used the term “resistance” a lot since the election, without suggesting concrete steps to take. But Simon Rosenberg has outlined two in a recent Hopium newsletter, and I heartily endorse them.

Call your Senators and Representative to let them know your dissatisfaction with the rapist, fraudster, traitor and 34 times felon’s pick of Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy; and to inform them of your expectation that they will leave it all out there on the playing field to block these profoundly dangerous nominations whether they have a vote on them or not.
Contact the White House and ask President Biden to order the FBI to begin background checks into Trump’s nominees immediately and before Trump installs Patel to disable the process.

In case you are unfamiliar with these nominees, Robert Hubbell has offered a description of the terrifying Kash Patel, noting that Patel wants to destroy the FBI while converting it into a weapon of political vengeance.

Patel has promised to “shut down” the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. on his first day as director of the FBI and re-open the FBI Headquarters the next day as a “museum to the deep state.” He said,

“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state. And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.”

But he has also threatened to use the FBI to harass journalists and politicians who sought to hold Trump accountable for his crimes. Patel said,

“[W]e’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Patel’s nomination is also an assault on the US intelligence community; the FBI plays a critical role in counterterrorism and intelligence gathering. Hubbell links to a number of other resources for background on Patel.

Speaking of the intelligence community she would head, Tulsi Gabbard is widely considered to be a Russian asset. As the Independent has reported,

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

The media has been full of reports about Pete Hegseth–all negative. The New Yorker has issued an updated review of the behaviors that caused him to be forced out of prior positions. Those disclosures–unethical behaviors, sexual misconduct, egregious drunkenness–added to the already widely reported and salacious details of this nominee, who at this point, is not expected to be confirmed.

It is hardly necessary to update my prior comments about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. His brain worm is insufficient to explain the conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine fixations he’s embraced. Even Trump’s former FDA commissioner has expressed significant concerns about naming him health secretary.

So here’s the assignment, as Rosenberg outlined it.

We need to inundate our Senators and Representatives with letters, emails, phone calls–any and all methods of communication decrying these nominees and demanding that they be properly vetted. Those of us fortunate enough to have Democratic Senators and/or Representatives can simply affirm our deep concerns and urge them to do whatever they can to derail what are actually attacks on the agencies involved.

Those of us unfortunate enough to be represented by Republicans have a trickier task. Here in Indiana, for example, we have two Republican Senators. Todd Young is relatively moderate (he’s a policy person and refused to endorse Trump)–letters to him should urge him to do what he probably knows is the right thing, and oppose these unfit nominees. Our other Senator (replacing Trump-complacent Braun) will be Jim Banks, who is certifiable. Banks is a lost cause; he will support anyone Donald Trump wants. Letters to him should set out the demonstrated flaws of these nominees and call on him to explain his support for any of them. Copy the news media with all of it.

Bury them with protests. I’m starting mine now.

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Bread And Circuses

“Bread and circuses” is a phrase referring back to the Roman Empire. Rome’s rulers distracted the public from corrupt and/or autocratic rule by giving the population free food and violent entertainments. They distributed grain to the poor, and provided entertaining distractions– chariot races, gladiatorial combat, and wild animal hunts, among others–to keep the masses from getting bored and restless, and to divert them from engaging in political activity.

That time-honored tactic is still being employed.

In yesterday’s post, I shared my observation that Americans no longer occupy a democratic system–that gerrymandering, the Electoral College, Citizens United and various other elements of our electoral system have allowed the cult that is now the GOP to assume control of our government, and to rule without concern for the opinions of the citizenry. (Indeed, rather than a citizenry, we “voters” have more in common with subjects than with those who wield the power originally reposed in “We the People.”)

As the Trump administration takes shape, we can see that those who have secured the right to rule are the plutocrats. Assuming most of his proposed nominees are confirmed, America will be ruled (not governed) by billionaires pursuing further tax cuts and privileges–appointees ranging from obviously corrupt to ethically challenged and rife with conflicts of interests.

We have come to this sorry end of the American Experiment thanks to our current version of “bread and circuses.”

There have always been distractions and methods of promoting disinformation, but the Internet and the ubiquity of devices with screens that constantly occupy us have massively multiplied the diversions. Most readers of this blog are all too aware of the wealth of political propaganda promoted by Fox, et al, but that is a relatively minor aspect of the overall environment. Fox and its clones merely misrepresent the political world we occupy; it’s the growth of the entertainment world, the so-called “influencers,” the proliferation of celebrities who are famous for being famous (Kardashians, anyone?), that truly provides the “circus” that prevents most of us from recognizing the degradation of our own influence as citizens charged with choosing people to administer the powers of our governments.

Most observers of America’s political landscape recognize the decline of democratic decision-making. On this platform, I have repeatedly pointed out the very negative consequences of our structural deficits–especially gerrymandering, which allows legislators to choose their voters rather than the other way around. But it was only with the 2024 election of Donald Trump that I fully recognized what should have been obvious to me previously: American government is no longer even remotely democratic, and America’s economy is no longer an example of functioning market capitalism.

We are a plutocracy and a kakistocracy, and our economy is corporatist, not capitalist.

A kakistocracy is defined as rule by those least competent or suitable; corporatism–sometimes called “crony capitalism” –is control of the state by special interests. Honest observers have chronicled the country’s descent into those unfortunate categories for several years, only to be ignored by a population diverted by its own varieties of bread and circuses.

I will admit to being one of the people who didn’t sufficiently appreciate that descent. In my case, I focused far too much attention on the largely positive cultural changes that have allowed civic participation by previously marginalized folks–women, LGBTQ+ citizens and people of color–and far too little attention on the steady erosion of democratic citizenship.

The only salutary outcome of the 2024 election is the consequent inability of any sentient American to ignore the extent of that erosion.

Thanks in part to voters’ constant diet of “circuses,” Republicans were able to conduct a pivotal and monumentally successful gerrymander in 2010.–an actual, victorious, bloodless coup. The REDMAP program radically altered America’s electoral map, insulating the GOP and its wealthy donors from popular democracy. The book Ratf**ked “pulled back the curtain on that coup,” explaining in detail how a group of Republican operatives hijacked democracy.

The question now, as always, is “what can be done?” Can We the People regain control of our government?

I will readily confess that I don’t know. Gerrymandering will continue to work so long as there are an adequate number of voters to be deployed who support the racism, misogyny and plutocracy championed by today’s GOP. The only “fix” I can envision is a significant reduction in their number.

It is possible that the pain likely to be caused by Trump’s administration will shake some folks loose. Meanwhile, it will behoove those of us who understand the problem to figure out how to break through the pervasive misinformation and distractions that keep too many voters content with being subjects rather than citizens.

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The Biggest Problem We Face

In a recent conversation, my youngest son made an observation that went to the very heart of America’s current political dysfunction: it’s the media–but not in the way that accusation usually assumes. Whatever the considerable deficits of “mainstream” coverage–and there were plenty of them–focusing on the New York Times and Washington Post and their ilk ignores the fact that the vast majority of Trump voters never read them.

As my son pointed out, what almost all of the finger-pointing and attacks on “messaging” miss is that Harris’s messaging was fine (indeed, it was arguably better than Democratic messaging in prior election cycles). That messaging would have made a huge difference–had it reached a majority of voters.

It didn’t.

We live in a time when mainstream media reaches far fewer people than the right wing media ecosystem that has developed in our digital age. That ecosystem goes far beyond Fox and Sinclair–it includes sites like AONN, social media like X/twitter, and all of the rightwing troll farms, bloggers, and podcasters. Their effectiveness rests on a dimly-understood reality: not only do these sources collectively reach more people, unlike mainstream outlets they are all on the same page--they reinforce and repeat the same propaganda, ignore the same “inconvenient” facts, and do so over sustained periods of time. Not only do they distort reality and manufacture issues (immigrants are eating dogs and cats), they encourage their audiences to blame groups against whom they’re already prejudiced.

The center/left has absolutely nothing like this, and would be philosophically allergic to establishing a similar propaganda arm.

There is evidence that Harris’s message would have been persuasive had it been able to penetrate that rightwing echo chamber. When the candidates’ names were removed, and only their policy proposals were polled, Harris’s plans and statements were vastly more popular than Trump’s. But Harris’ messaging never reached a majority of Trump voters.

It is certainly the case that significant numbers of voters simply refused to hear her, thanks to the rampant sexism and racism that characterized much of the voting public, but we cannot dismiss the importance of the fact that a majority of the American voting public never sees mainstream coverage. (People struggling to put food on the table don’t subscribe to the New York Times.) The deciding plurality of voters who delivered the election to Trump received only the Trump cult’s messaging.

If that observation is true–and there’s ample research to confirm its accuracy–Democrats need to stop their carping about what the campaign did or didn’t do right, and address the (pun intended) elephant in the room. How can fact-based information be delivered to people who have opted to get all of their information from a massive, co-ordinated right-wing propaganda ecosystem?

I tend to agree with my son, who argues that the actual messaging mistake wasn’t content or tone. It was dissemination.

Democrats have made a very consequential error in refusing to engage with the propaganda on the propagandists’ turf. Only Pete Buttigeig and Gavin Newsom have been willing to take Democratic perspectives onto that turf–to bring contending facts and messages to the millions of people who get their “facts” from media sources voicing the preferred messages of what Hillary Clinton once–quite accurately– called “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Autocrats everywhere understand the power of media, and move to control it. In the United States, a shadowy network of rightwing think tanks, theocratic organizations and plutocrats have been working for decades to roll back the “woke” politics of inclusion and civic equality–to return us to a social order dominated by straight White Christian males. Participants in that network understood that control of information was key to the success of that effort, and the right-wing media ecosystem is the result.

I often remind readers that support for the Constitution and the Rule of Law requires an informed public. When a significant portion of the public is misinformed, when they are fed uncontested propaganda that feeds and plays to their already-potent fears and prejudices, we get outcomes like the one we got on November 5th.

How to penetrate that ecosystem is a conundrum. Making it even more challenging is the vocabulary of the Right. I’ll discuss that further obstacle to political sanity tomorrow.

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Who Drinks The Kool-Aid?

There’s a thread running through my political conversations. (Granted, those conversations are with friends and family, all of whom detest MAGA and Trump.) Why do all the indicators point to a close election? Why isn’t Harris easily eclipsing Trump?

Think about it. Even voters who don’t particularly like Harris surely understand that she is a normal politician, infinitely preferable to a senile narcissist with a third-grade vocabulary and a raft of “policies” that would plunge America into a recession (or worse) and threaten world peace.

Hundreds of members of former Republican administrations–including his own–warn that he is a fascist, a dangerous lunatic, a self-regarding autocrat who should not be allowed anywhere near power, let alone the Oval Office.

Trump is a convicted felon, an admitted sexual predator, a congenital liar, a six-times bankrupt “titan of industry”…I could go on, but readers of this blog are well aware of the extent of his depravity.

How, then, is he at all competitive for the Presidency?

It certainly isn’t due to his “policies.” To the extent that he even has them, those policies are anything but the conservative political positions traditionally held by the bygone GOP. The striking departures from those traditional positions means it also can’t be loyalty to the ideology that once characterized the GOP.

As Heather Cox Richardson recently reminded us, Trump has boasted that he had “taken the Republican Party and made [it] into an entirely different party…The Republican Party is a very big, powerful party. Before, it was an elitist party with real stiffs running it.” As Richardson put it, the GOP

had been controlled for years by a small group of leaders who wanted to carve the U.S. government back to its size and activity of the years before the 1930s, slashing regulations on business and cutting the social safety net so they could cut taxes. But their numbers were small, so to stay in power, they relied on the votes of the racist and sexist reactionaries who didn’t like civil rights.

Once in office, Trump put that racist and sexist base in the driver’s seat. He attacked immigrants, Black Americans, and people of color, and promised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

After his defense of the participants in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, he began to turn his followers into a movement by encouraging them to engage in violence.

In the following years, Trump’s hold on his voting base enabled him to take over the Republican Party, pushing the older Republican establishment aside. In March 2024 he took over the Republican National Committee itself, installing a loyalist and his own daughter-in-law Lara Trump at its head and adjusting its finances so that they primarily benefited him.

As Richardson explained, establishment Republicans had wanted a largely unregulated market-driven economy. MAGA Republicans, however,

want a weak government only with regard to foreign enemies—another place where they part company with established Republicans. Instead, they want a strong government to impose religious rules. Rather than leaving companies alone to react to markets, they want them to shape their businesses around MAGA ideology, denying LGBTQ+ rights, for example.

Support for MAGA and Trump isn’t motivated by admiration for his character, intellect or personality. It isn’t motivated by his economic plans, which even conservative economists warn would severely damage the economy, or by loyalty to the GOP, which he has remade into a cult dominated by what used to be its disreputable fringe.

So–What explains his support?

I recently had a discussion with a local philanthropist who served in a state Republican administration, and I agree with his analysis. He ticked off three reasons he believes people support Trump.

Some subset of wealthy individuals care more about promised tax cuts for the rich than for the health and wellbeing of the country.
Some people are truly ignorant. Perhaps they get all their “news” from Fox and its clones, or they lack the intellectual capacity to understand what is at stake, or to evaluate competing political claims.
True MAGA movement folks–by far the largest group of Trump supporters, the ones who’ve “drunk the Kool-Aid”– are disproportionately people who are unhappy with their lives. They haven’t achieved the status or security or love or whatever else they believe they were entitled to, and they’re convinced it couldn’t be their fault; it must be the fault of “those people.” Trump gives them permission to point fingers and give voice to their bigotries: it’s those immigrants, those gay people, those uppity women and/or Blacks.

If the polls are right that the election is close, there are a lot more people in those three categories than I ever imagined…

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SO SORRY

My site suddenlly began sending out old posts–a LOT of them. I have no idea why. My son is looking into it. Meanwhile, my apologies for inundating your inboxes.

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