An Un-sedated Colonoscopy

Gail Collins is one of my very favorite columnists. Lately, I have especially enjoyed her weekly “Conversations” with Bret Stephens. Collins is liberal and Stephens is conservative-but-not-batshit-insane, so their Monday Times discussions have been both informative and entertaining.

We can all use some entertainment these days, so I thought I’d share some “highlights” from Monday the 10th.

The linked column  began with a discussion of Trump’s recent speech to his golf club buddies. Both Collins and Stephens agreed that this “allegedly presidential speech” was really just a campaign rant about Joe Biden —” interspersed with reminders that the virus and everything that followed in its wake is ‘China’s fault.'”

Stephens pointed out that the President’s recent “Executive Orders” were unconstitutional (only Congress controls the nation’s purse). That was followed by the following exchange:

Gail: Before I had to listen to him address the nation via his cheering golf partners, I was going to ask you how far the Trump terribleness had driven you. We talk all the time about our mutual desire to clean out the White House. But what about the Senate? Are you rooting for a Republican majority? For Mitch McConnell? For Susan Collins? Tell all.

Bret Stephens: Gail, when it comes to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, I’m a reluctant member of the “destroy-the-village-in-order-to-save-it” school. Obviously I’d much rather see Susan Collins keep her seat than Mitch McConnell keep his post as majority leader, for the same reason that I want moderate Republicans to prevail within the party.

But the most important thing is for the G.O.P. to take such a shellacking in November that they will remember it as the political equivalent of an unsedated colonoscopy.

The thought of handing today’s iteration of the GOP the equivalent of an un-sedated colonoscopy cheered me immensely. I could almost forgive Stephens for some of what I consider his retrograde policy positions.

Stephens followed that zinger up with a good summary of what (the few remaining) rational, unTrumpian Republicans find so unacceptable in this administration:

The kind of Republican Party that didn’t think the term “family values” meant an enrichment scheme for Trump’s children and in-laws; that believed in the power of immigrants to refresh and reinvent the nation; that understood that Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un were the enemy, not Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer; that respected federalism even if it meant deferring to the wishes of Democratic governors and mayors; and that worshiped at the political altars of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, as opposed to P.T. Barnum and Archie Bunker.

Later, he excoriated the Trump supporters–the “Mark Levin types whose default setting is certitude and fury. And Sean Hannity types whose default is obsequiousness and fury. And Tucker Carlson types whose … ” Well, you know.

And– in yet another bodily reference– Stephens noted that

The only good thing that might have come from putting a libertine at the head of the G.O.P. was to get the party to unconstipate itself. And he couldn’t even get that right.

The column became more serious with a discussion of potential Biden running mates, and then concluded with the following exchange:

Gail: Whenever we get on this subject a wave of sadness overtakes me. Still yearning for Elizabeth Warren. But really, anybody who’s part of a change of administration would be OK by me in the long run. One thing I have to give Trump credit for is a general lowering of expectations.

Bret: Gail, rest assured that before the year is out he’ll lower them some more.

I keep thinking about that initial description of what is needed in November: a defeat that Republicans would experience as an un-sedated Colonoscopy.

Believe it or not, I know a lot of formerly dependable GOP voters who would be happy to contribute to such a defeat, if they thought it would lead to a resurrection of the party they had originally joined.

Personally, I’m with the guy in one of those “former Republican” ads who says he’d vote for a can of tomato soup if it would deliver the country from the chaos of Trump. It reminded me of my sister’s declaration that she’d vote for toenail fungus over Trump.

Our job is to make sure everyone who feels that way casts a vote, and that it gets counted!

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Ladies And Gentlemen, I Give You Today’s GOP

Yesterday, Joe Biden announced that Kamala Harris would be his running mate.

Harris is a walking, talking embodiment of the America that so terrifies white nationalists: an Indian mother, a Jamaican father, a Jewish husband. She’s also a whip-smart lawyer and a seasoned public servant. Harris is one of a new generation of highly accomplished, very diverse Democrats–and by “diverse” I don’t simply mean that their ranks include many men and women of color; they are also ideologically, religiously and geographically diverse.

Then there are the Republicans.

Yesterday also saw primary elections in a number of states. In one of those, in Georgia, a white loony-toons conspiracy theorist handily  won the GOP nod for Congress. (In all fairness, it was a female loony-toons conspiracy theorist, so maybe that’s progress.)

Conspiracy theorists won a major victory on Tuesday as a Republican supporter of the convoluted pro-Trump movement QAnon triumphed in her House primary runoff election in Georgia, all but ensuring that she will represent a deep-red district in Congress.

The ascension of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who embraces a conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat, came as six states held primary and runoff elections on Tuesday.

Greene has also made a series of videos in which she complains of an “Islamic invasion,”  claims Black and Hispanic men are held back by “gangs and dealing drugs,” and pushes an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. After her win was announced, Trump gave her his “full-thoated support.”

The Brookings Institution , as well as the FBI, has confirmed that (despite Trump’s rants about “antifa” and Black Lives Matter) members of white supremacist organizations and adherents of widespread conspiracy theories like QAnon (largely embraced by white nationalists) are responsible for most of the terrorist attacks in the U.S.

In the last four years, violence linked to white supremacy has eclipsed jihadi violence as the predominant form of terrorism in the United States. Beyond high-profile terrorist attacks in the United States like the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue and 2019 El Paso Walmart shootings, white supremacists have also tried to seize on the protests following George Floyd’s death to foment chaos.

In the Georgia GOP primary, Ms. Greene defeated a neurosurgeon described as “no less conservative or pro-Trump.” She held a lead of nearly 15 percentage points early Wednesday.

The New York Times story, linked above, reported that Greene’s victory “is likely to unsettle mainstream Republicans.”  But there really aren’t many–if any– “mainstream” Republicans left, a reality that seemed to escape the authors of the report (and continues to escape most of the Times political reporters).

The reality–especially painful for those of us who spent years working for a very different Republican Party–is that Donald Trump is not an anomaly, and today’s GOP is no longer a political party connected to a set of governing principles and policies. Today, to be a member of what is now the GOP cult is to adopt a tribal identity –an identity characterized by white grievance and a furious rejection of scientific, demographic and moral reality.

Not to mention sanity.

QAnon is a wild, unfounded belief that Donald Trump, of all people, is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media–a war that will lead to a day of reckoning on which prominent people like Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed. A troubling percentage of today’s GOP base believes it.

I keep thinking back to that great–and prescient– speech from the 1995 movie An American President, when Michael Douglas, playing the President, thunders

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. 

Today’s Republican Party has become a cult composed of lightly-tethered-to-reality know-nothings who have uncritically and enthusiastically embraced the party’s only consistent, remaining message:  “You should fear ‘those people’ –the ones who don’t look or worship like real (i.e.white Christian) Americans. They are to blame for all of your problems and disappointments.” 

And so it goes….

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Hate Clicking

Welcome to the Resistance!

A few days ago, in a comment to this blog, Norris Lineweaver posted a link to an article from Medium, describing “hate clicking”--a mechanism employed primarily (at least, so far) by young, technically-savvy people, but available to everyone who has a computer. It falls into a category that Pew calls “digital disruption.”

The rest of the country got a hint of the possibilities when young people used their social media skills to artificially inflate the Trump campaign’s count of registrations for the Tulsa rally. The campaign flaunted the phony numbers, boasting that it reflected the President’s popularity–and vastly increasing media attention to the actual, pathetic turnout.

The article notes the Trump campaign’s expensive, aggressive online presence, and its enormous number of  paid online advertisements. It also points out that these ads aren’t really about soliciting votes; they are intended to generate data that can then be used for purposes of fundraising and merchandise sales. And as the author also reminds us, industry practice is generally to charge by the click. Each time an ad is clicked it costs the advertiser anywhere from a few pennies to a few dollars.

Here is where you come in. Every day (and up to a couple times a day) Google “Trump” or “Trump Store” or “MAGA Hat” or something similar and then click on the ad links. Look for the ones that say “Ad” next to them, those are the ones they are paying for.

If thousands of us do this a few times a day it will increase the campaign’s online ad spend while producing nothing of value for them. It is probably not helpful to refresh and click again more than a handful of times per day because online advertising platforms often filter out repetitive frequent clicks from the same computers and don’t bill for them.

The article then goes into considerable detail about the most effective ways to click and distort the data being gathered, while costing the campaign extra money.

There you have it. Easy peasy. As someone who’s spent a few days doing this, I can say that it feels good to throw a wrench in Trump’s historic investment in digital advertising. Yes, it does mean looking at it a bit more than I’d like, but the fact that it’s costing them money — that holy grail of human virtue from Trump’s point of view — makes it worthwhile.

The author cautions that this tactic is not intended to take the place of the other important ways to get involved in the upcoming election. He does not recommend “hate clicking” as a replacement for phone banking, voter registration, or donating money–as he says, It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

But for those of us who feel angry and powerless when we read about Trump’s interminable assaults on competent government and the rule of law, the prospect of using the “down time” required by the pandemic to actually do something is a gift.

I still remember when–back at the dawn of the Internet Age–many of us thought the World Wide Web would improve democratic (small-d) participation. We failed to anticipate the extent to which this new medium would disseminate hate, misinformation and propaganda, and actually set back the cause of thoughtful democratic deliberation.

It has been very demoralizing.

This report on “hate clicking”–in addition to offering a tool for political action that I hadn’t previously considered–offers something else: a suggestion that, as the medium matures (along with a generation for which its possibilities are intuitive), it may fulfill at least part of that original promise.

For good or ill, it may increase participation.

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Qualified Immunity

Putting aside for the time being the unfortunately-labeled effort to “defund the police,” we should definitely consider other steps that might be taken to return a measure of accountability to the nation’s police departments.

We might begin by repealing–or at least significantly narrowing–the doctrine of Qualified Immunity.

A bit of background: The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 was a Reconstruction era-effort to address what one court termed the “reign of terror imposed by the Klan upon black citizens and their white sympathizers in the Southern States.” That law is now  known to practicing lawyers–especially civil rights lawyers– as Section 1983. It  gives citizens the right to sue state and local officials for depriving them of their constitutional rights, and to collect damages and legal fees if they prevail.

As Ruth Marcus recently wrote in a column for the Washington Post,  that’s great, except for the fact that the Supreme Court began to eviscerate the law more than 50 years ago with a doctrine dubbed “qualified immunity.” As the judge in one recent case has noted, it might just as well be called “absolute immunity.”

Nothing in the text of the 1871 statute provides for immunity — not a single word — but the court imported common-law protections in 1967 to shield officials operating in good faith.

Then, in 1982, it went further. To be held liable, it’s not enough to prove that a police officer violated someone’s constitutional rights; the right must be so “clearly established” that “every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right.” There must be a case on point, except that how can there be a case on point if there wasn’t one already in existence. This is Catch-22 meets Section 1983.

Numerous justices across the ideological spectrum — Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor — have criticized the doctrine. But the court has appeared unwilling to do anything about it. As its term concluded, the court refused to hear any of the eight cases offering it the opportunity to reconsider the doctrine.

 Lawsuits for damages are a crucial method for protecting everyone’s constitutional rights. Qualified immunity–protection against a damages verdict– is what lawyers call “an affirmative defense”–it can prevent the court from assessing damages even if the officer clearly committed unlawful acts.

A case from 1982, Harlow v. Fitzgerald established the modern application of the doctrine. Ignoring precedents that examined the “subjective good faith” of the officer being sued, the court adopted a new “objective” test. After Harlow, a plaintiff had to show that the defendant’s conduct “violate[d] clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Ever since Harlow, the court has required plaintiffs to cite to an already existing judicial decision with substantially similar facts.

As a result, as one lawyer recently wrote, “the first person to litigate a specific harm is out of luck” since the “first time around, the right violated won’t be ‘clearly established.’” As a post on Lawfare explained,

A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit illustrates this point. In that case, a SWAT team fired tear gas grenades into a plaintiff’s home, causing extensive damage. And while the divided three-judge panel assumed that the SWAT officers had in fact violated the plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment rights, it nonetheless granted qualified immunity to the officers because it determined that the precedents the plaintiff relied on did not clearly establish a violation “at the appropriate level of specificity.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor has called qualified immunity a “one-sided approach” that “transforms the doctrine into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers.” Her criticism– in an opinion which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined– pointed out that the doctrine “sends an alarming signal to law enforcement officers and the public. It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

It is past time for this doctrine to be dramatically limited. It is bad law and worse policy, and it insulates reckless police from the consequences of obviously wrongful behavior.

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Health Policy Costs Us All

For more years than I can count, opponents of “socialized medicine” (i.e., single-payer, universal health insurance) justified that opposition by assuring us that we were “number One!” American healthcare was the best in the world, thanks to the innovation that was made possible by our refusal to extend that healthcare to everyone who needed it.

As the world got smaller, and more Americans traveled abroad, we began to realize that we really weren’t number one–that in fact, those global indices that ranked us somewhere around 37th or 39th were onto something.

More recently still, medical tourism became a thing (at least, pre-pandemic, when we weren’t shut out of healthier countries.) Americans are traveling to have procedures–and babies!–in places where the care is just as good or better, but much cheaper. 

There’s a reason so many reasonably well-educated, reasonably well-meaning middle-class Americans were so slow to recognize the gargantuan flaws in America’s patchwork approach to medical care–and for that matter, all social services. So long as we remain lucky and privileged, accessing health insurance through our employers, not getting a rare or terribly expensive disease, not having to navigate a system designed to say “not you,”  there’s simply no way we could imagine the experience of those who aren’t so lucky or privileged.

For years, I fell into that “lucky and privileged” category. But many years ago, when a diagnosis meant that my oldest son was unable to work, I encountered the Byzantine world of Social Security disability. At the time, it took two lawyers (me and my youngest son) and a friend who headed a social services agency to navigate the process.

When I asked my oldest’s then-doctor what happened to people without family lawyers and savvy friends, he said simply, “They die.” 

Just over a week ago, we got another lesson. My oldest grandson and his wife had a very premature baby. Born at just over 26 weeks, she is in the NICU, life-lined and hooked up to a tangle of machines and devices. My grandson and his wife take turns being with this much-desired little girl (and when I say “little,” she was one pound five ounces at birth, and about the size of my grandson’s hand.) The stress they are experiencing is etched on their faces.

In addition to the helplessness we feel watching this unfold, the whole family has worried about costs that their insurance won’t cover. If there is anything they don’t need,  especially right now, it’s thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. My granddaughter-in-law’s sister was so worried she set up a Go Fund Me page, something that wouldn’t be needed–or even comprehensible–in “socialized medicine” countries. (I have a son who lives in the Netherlands and an adult granddaughter who lives in England, and both sing the praises of their healthcare systems.)

We were relieved–and surprised– to learn that there are government programs that  provide at least some measure of secondary insurance in these situations. It’s just that no one in our (reasonably well-educated) family knew they existed until now. And I’d be willing to wager that, unless you are a social services or health insurance worker, those of you reading this haven’t heard of them either.

There is an important public policy lesson here–not to mention a lesson about equity.

This country spends far more than any other country in the world on medical care–twice as much per capita as the next most expensive country. (But hey–“We’re number 37!”)  That includes significant amounts on a patchwork of low-profile programs that help eligible people who manage to find out about them, and still more on the bureaucracy that serves as a “gateway” to those programs.

Think how much we could save if we replaced that haphazard patchwork of complicated and under-inclusive programs with some version of Medicare-for-All. Of course, a simple, single-payer health insurance system with a common and comprehensible “entry point” would serve all citizens, not just empowered ones–maybe that’s why we don’t have one.

There is some evidence that American voters are beginning to catch on.  In a recent column for the Washington Post, E.J. Dionne wrote:

No matter how hard they tried, Republican politicians and their allies could not stop Missouri’s voters from expanding access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
They tried to rig the timing of the referendum by forcing the vote during a relatively low-turnout primary on Tuesday rather than in November. That failed. They played on racial prejudice and nativism by falsely claiming a yes vote would mean “illegal immigrants flooding Missouri hospitals . . . while we pay for it!” That failed, too.
 
And so did Missouri this week become the sixth state since 2017 — five of them staunchly Republican — where voters took the decision on the expansion of health coverage out of the hands of recalcitrant conservative politicians.

You shouldn’t have to have a social work degree (or a friend with one) in order to access government insurance against calamity.

And Republicans should stop kidding themselves–calamities don’t just happen to “those people.”

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