;)
The Commentariat -- February 19, 2018
Afternoon Update:
"170 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section" to rank U.S. presidents from best to worst. If you're looking for Donald Trump, you'll have to read through the names of every other president first. Quite a distinction!
Nina Burleigh of Newsweek: "White nationalist provocateurs, a pair of fake news sites, an army of Twitter bots and other cyber tricks helped derail Democratic Senator Al Franken last year, new research shows.... The Franken takedown originated in — and was propelled by — a strategic online campaign with digital tentacles reaching to, of all places, Japan. Analysts have now mapped out how Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model Leeann Tweeden's initial accusation against Franken became effective propaganda after right-wing black ops master Roger Stone first hinted at the allegation."
*****
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie Note: Includes only presidents who don't require an asterisk.
"They Are Laughing Their Asses off in Moscow." Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post: "Donald Trump has taken the presidency to yet another new low. In a remarkable set of tweets over the weekend, the commander in chief sounded off on new revelations about the extent of Russia’s campaign to undermine our electoral system. His response: to lash out at his political adversaries and the institutions that are charged with keeping the country safe.... These are the moments that test a country — and a president. They call for bringing people together in a sense of national purpose against a common adversary. Once again, Trump has failed that test.... His self-absorption is such that he cannot see beyond his own fixation, which is that all of this has no meaning beyond the legitimacy of his own election. Moscow must indeed be laughing." ...
... Joshua Yaffa of the New Yorker: "It must indeed be amusing for the political technologists — as the stage managers of Russia’s domestic scene are called — to watch a U.S. President at war with so many parts of the political system, while, at the same time, the Kremlin is preparing for a serene, almost unnoticeable coronation of Putin for his fourth Presidential term, next month.... What a laugh it must be to see how much turbulence those institutions can churn up for your adversary. The question — the answer to which we’ll find out sooner rather than later — is whether the joke is ultimately on us or them." ...
... Larry, Mo & Curly. David Ferguson of the Raw Story: "CNN’s Boris Sanchez reported on Sunday that sources say President Donald Trump’s weekend Twitter attacks on the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation were spurred by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric. Sanchez told anchor Fredericka Whitfield that the president has chose to spend the weekend indoors and away from the golf course to avoid the 'bad optics' of being seen golfing while the grieving families of Parkland, FL lay the victims of Wednesday’s mass shooting to rest. The trouble with the restive president and his child-like attention span is that it has left him beholden to the influence of his sons, who have shown themselves to be eager dupes for racist conspiracy theories and other disinformation campaigns." ...
Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said ... his takeaway from Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian nationals and Russia groups is that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and that the best way to respond would be for Trump to impose the bipartisan sanctions against the country that Congress passed last year. 'Instead he’s launched a desperate sounding series of unhinged tweets this morning, and to me that is not only wildly inappropriate, it shows consciousness of guilt,' Lieu said. 'Which is what a [guilty] person would do,' he said. 'Mislead, lie and not take action against the Kremlin.'” ...
... David Frum of The Atlantic: "Having failed at one presidential duty, to speak for the nation at times of national tragedy, Trump resumed shirking an even more supreme task: defending the nation against foreign attack.... At every turn, Trump has failed to do what a patriotic president would do—failed to put the national interest first.... But Americans who cherish democracy and national sovereignty need to start discussing a bigger and darker question.... To what extent does President Trump—to what extent do congressional Republicans — look to Russian interference to help their party in the 2018 cycle?.... A little extra help could make a big difference to Republican hopes — and to Trump’s political survival. Nothing has been done in the past 15 months to prevent that help from flowing. You have to wonder whether the president does not privately welcome that help, as he publicly welcomed help from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2016." --safari ...
... "The Case of the Petrified President*." An American Mystery Tale. Tom Friedman: "Our democracy is in serious danger. President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.... Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history." ...
... David A. Graham of The Atlantic: "[B]y refusing to take information warfare seriously — in an attempt to distance himself from it and any questions it might raise about the legitimacy of his election — the president has paradoxically made the story about himself again and again.... In theory, the things he said [during his latest tweetstorm] were designed to push the story away from himself and downplay any connection. In practice, he forced himself into the middle of the story, inextricably linking himself to it.... Rather than stick to a single, coherent message, the president is trying out several contradictory ones. " --safari ...
...Emily Stewart of Vox: "Greg Touhill [is] a retired Air Force general officer and one of the nation’s premier cybersecurity experts.... I spoke with Touhill about what the United States can do to try to stop Russia from interfering in US politics and elections in 2018 and beyond." --safari ...
... Emily Stewart: “'I never said Russia did not meddle in the election,' Trump wrote [in a tweet this weekend]. 'I said "it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer". The Russian "hoax" was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia — it never did!' This would make sense, if it were even a little bit true. It appears the president is suffering from a bit of Russian-meddling-denial amnesia, or perhaps a case of selective memory: Trump has publicly doubted increasingly clear evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. And he’s done so a lot. Fact-checking website PolitiFact declared Trump’s continued proclamations that Russian interference is a 'made-up story' as its 2017 Lie of the Year." Stewart goes on to cite numerous instances where Trump denied or refused to conclude Russia interfered in the 2016 election. ...
... George Washington Saw Trump Coming. Thomas Pickering & James Stoutenberg, in a New York Times op-ed: "In September 1796, George Washington ... wrote a farewell address explaining why he would not seek a third term. His message is worth remembering in our current political moment.... One of his greatest concerns: The ways in which hyperpartisanship could open the door 'to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.' On Friday, Robert Mueller, the special counsel, charged 13 Russians with trying to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election. One need only read the indictment to understand what the first president was talking about.” ...
... Washington's farewell address is here....
Buried in the Dawsey-Rucker WashPo story -- also linked yesterday -- about Trump's crazed Twitterstorm is this: "The president also surveyed Mar-a-Lago Club members about whether he ought to champion gun control measures in the wake of last week’s school massacre in nearby Parkland, telling them that he was closely monitoring the media appearances by some of the surviving students, according to people who spoke with him there." Mrs. McC: Right, because it's very important to know what rich people think about gun control. And other stuff. Trump is also gauging whether or not traumatized kids will make him look bad. It's all about Trump. ...
... Mrs McCrabbie BTW: If you didn't see the stories linked in yesterday's Commentariat about Trump's wild & crazy Twitterstorm, you might want to read them today. The old boy was bouncing off the stuccoed Mar-a-Lago walls.
... Guardian: "Students who escaped the deadly school shooting in Florida have focused their anger at Donald Trump, saying that his response to the attack has been needlessly divisive.... Students across the country are organising rallies and a national walkout in support of stronger gun laws in a challenge to politicians they say have failed to protect them.... These will include a 'March for Our Lives' protest in Washington on 24 March to call attention to school safety and ask lawmakers to enact gun control. They also plan to rally for gun control, mental health issues and school safety on Wednesday in Tallahassee, Florida’s state capital." --safari ...
... Devlin Barrett & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Students at the Florida school where 17 people died last week said Sunday they will organize nationwide marches for gun control next month and try to create a 'badge of shame' for politicians who take money from the National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups."
Just watched a very insecure Oprah Winfrey, who at one point I knew very well, interview a panel of people on 60 Minutes. The questions were biased and slanted, the facts incorrect. Hope Oprah runs so she can be exposed and defeated just like all of the others! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet late Sunday
... Way back last month, Donald liked Oprah. Now he's all mad at her because of a "60 Minutes" segment in which she re-interviewed some Michigan Trump and non-Trump voters. ...
... Margaret Hartmann: "Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t seem Trump actually watched the 60 Minutes segment, which was the followup to a previous discussion with a bipartisan group of 14 Michigan voters.... Plenty of time was devoted to Trump voters loudly expressing why they still support the president.... [Trump] seems desperate to be back on the campaign trail attacking a female opponent...."
The Fixer. Jim Rutenberg, et al., of the New York Times: "As accounts of past sexual indiscretions threatened to surface during Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign, the job of stifling potentially damaging stories fell to his longtime lawyer and all-around fixer, Michael D. Cohen. To protect his boss at critical junctures in his improbable political rise, the lawyer relied on intimidation tactics, hush money and the nation’s leading tabloid news business, American Media Inc., whose top executives include close Trump allies. Mr. Cohen’s role has come under scrutiny amid recent revelations that he facilitated a payment to silence a porn star, but his aggressive behind-the-scenes efforts stretch back years, according to interviews, emails and other records.
Michael Birnbaum & Griff Witte of the Washington Post: "Amid global anxiety about President Trump’s approach to world affairs, U.S. officials had a message to a gathering of Europe’s foreign policy elite this weekend: Pay no attention to the man tweeting behind the curtain. U.S. lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — and top national security officials in the Trump administration offered the same advice publicly and privately, often clashing with Trump’s Twitter stream: The United States remains staunchly committed to its European allies, is furious with the Kremlin about election interference and isn’t contemplating a preemptive strike on North Korea to halt its nuclear program." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... John Oliver confirms that yes, indeed, the world is laughing at us. --safari
** Nuclear Scurfuffles. Jonathan Swan of Axios: "On Thursday Nov. 9, when President Trump and his team visited Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Chief of Staff John Kelly and a U.S. Secret Service agent skirmished with Chinese security officials over the nuclear football.... When the U.S. military aide carrying the nuclear football entered the Great Hall, Chinese security officials blocked his entry. A U.S. official ... told Kelly what was happening. Kelly ... told the U.S. officials to keep walking.... A Chinese security official grabbed Kelly, and Kelly shoved the man’s hand off of his body. Then a U.S. Secret Service agent grabbed the Chinese security official and tackled him to the ground.... I'm told that at no point did the Chinese have the nuclear football in their possession or even touch the briefcase.... [T]he Chinese security detail apologized to the Americans afterwards for the misunderstanding." --safari
All the Best People, Ctd. New York Times Editors: "President Trump’s White House has been so scandal-plagued that controversies involving cabinet members and other high-level officials that would have been front-page news in any other administration have barely registered in the public consciousness." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yes, but look at the bright side. Trump has failed to fill many positions, leaving most agencies short-handed. If he'd staffed the executive branch in a timely manner, there would be a lot more scandals.
Scott Shane of the New York Times: "... the online pitches [by Russian trolls] reached a big audience. In written answers to questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, Facebook said some 338,300 people saw the announcements of rallies promoted by the bogus pages — and 62,500 said they planned to attend one. Those numbers ... show that the Russians were able not just to attract Americans to their ersatz groups but actually manipulate their actions.... While most of the Americans duped by the Russian trolls were not public figures, some higher-profile people were fooled. The indictment mentions the Russian Twitter feed @TEN_GOP, which posed as a Tennessee Republican account and attracted more than 100,000 followers. It was retweeted by Donald Trump Jr.; Kellyanne Conway, the president’s counselor; Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser; and his son, Michael Flynn Jr." ...
... Jeff Toobin has a long piece in the New Yorker on Trump's Miss Universe pageants, which apparently he fixed to coincide with his other business interests, & his fixation on Russia, which provided both a source for capital when legitimate U.S. money dried up because of Trump's business failures & bankruptcies & a potential market for his Trump-branded real estate projects. ...
... Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe..., Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact. 'I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,' said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.... So far, the talk of pardons has mostly centered around [Michael] Flynn, whose clemency Trump did not rule out in a brief mid-December exchange with reporters. 'I don’t want to talk about pardons with Michael Flynn yet. We’ll see what happens,' Trump said." ...
... David Willman of the Los Angeles Times: "A former top aide to Donald Trump's presidential campaign will plead guilty to fraud-related charges within days – and has made clear to prosecutors that he would testify against Paul J. Manafort Jr., the lawyer-lobbyist who once managed the campaign. The change of heart by Trump's former deputy campaign manager, Richard W. Gates III, who had pleaded not guilty after being indicted in October on charges similar to Manafort's, was described in interviews by people familiar with the case." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Maggie Haberman & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "In a West Wing where senior officials have developed something of a bunker mentality to keep the chaos at bay and survive each day, this better-not-to-know approach allowed the [Rob] Porter problem to fester and raises questions about whether the White House is capable of creating a system with greater accountability.... 'They haven’t figured out how the place operates, and apparently they don’t want to learn,' said John Dean, a White House counsel under President Richard M. Nixon. The Porter situation, he added, 'is a manifestation of what happens when you have chaos.'”
Pruitt Cancels Taxpayer-Funded Vacation Official Trip. Juliet Eilperin & Ruth Eglash of the Washington Post: "Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has canceled a nearly week-long trip to Israel, agency officials confirmed Sunday. Pruitt, who had been scheduled to leave this weekend for an extensive tour of the Mideast ally, has come under fire over the past week for the cost of his domestic and international travel. In May, the head of Pruitt’s security detail recommended he travel either business or first class whenever possible to avoid public confrontations with critics." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Samantha Michaels of Mother Jones: "Federal prison employees across the country say staffing cuts made by the Trump administration have crippled their ability to provide services to inmates and keep prisons safe.... For more than a decade, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has run on what it describes as 'mission critical' staffing — the minimum number of correctional employees necessary to safely run the 98 facilities it operates. Yet over the past year, federal prisons have dipped far below those numbers.... In January, the Bureau of Prisons told its facility administrators to expect a 14 percent reduction in their staffing levels.... The practice of making prison teachers, nurses, and other non-correctional staffers work as guards, called 'augmentation,' started more than a decade ago.... Now, employees say the practice has become a near-daily occurrence at some facilities. As a result, they say, the wait lists for inmate medical care are growing and classes are being canceled." --safari
History Lesson. Tom Philpott of Mother Jones: "When you look at the White House, you probably don’t think of it as a Southern plantation mansion.... But Washington, D.C. was carved out of territory from Virginia and Maryland, both slave states.... Enslaved people not only built the original White House and the post-1814 edition, but they also toiled in the kitchen for the first several decades of the republic.... In his 2017 book The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, From the Washingtons to the Obamas, Adrian Miller, an historian and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, unearths this largely hidden history ... of previously invisible black cooks working at the center of American power." --safari
Jill Abramson writes a long piece for New York titled, "Do You Believe Her Now?" The subhead is. "With new evidence that Clarence Thomas lied to get onto the Supreme Court, it’s time to talk seriously about impeachment." Abramson puts together a convincing case. Mrs. McC: I wouldn't recommend impeaching Thomas while a serial sex-abuser is the guy who gets to choose his replacement. AND Joe Biden is making noises about a presidential run again. It would be a bitter irony if the senator who suppressed women's testimony against Thomas picked an impeached Thomas's replacement.
Amanda Arnold of New York: "The Movement for Black Lives recognized a great opportunity to register a whole lot of people to vote: the opening weekend of Black Panther. According to activist Kayla Reed, the campaign has already inspired similar drives all over the country. The initiative is spearheaded by members of the organization’s Electoral Justice Project, who are dressing up in 'Wakanda-inspired outfits' to register citizens to vote — or, as they’re calling it, #WakandaTheVote." --safari
E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "Keeping global warming below the lower Paris agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius is 'extremely unlikely,' according to a leaked draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a trend that can only be countered if countries like the United States devote themselves to countering rising global temperatures." --safari
Beyond the Beltway
Max Londberg of the Kansas City Star (in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch): "Third-graders in a Missouri community are continuing to sell raffle tickets for an AR-15 to benefit their traveling baseball team after the same type of rifle was used to slaughter and injure dozens at a Florida school. Levi Patterson, the coach of a 9-and-under baseball team in Neosho, Mo., told The Star the idea was conceived before the shooting in Parkland, Fla. A father of one of the players — who co-founded Black Rain Ordnance Inc., a weapons purveyor in Neosho — offered the weapon for the raffle.... Lee Woodward, the principal of South Elementary School in Neosho, announced the raffle on her Facebook page and encouraged purchases to support the '9u Neosho baseball players, coaches, and parents.' The post was made hours after the Florida shooting." Mrs. McC: The Star & the Post-Dispatch are both reputable newspapers, so I'm just going to assume this story is not a hoax & the principal & parents in Neosho, Mo., are really this stupid.
Way Beyond
Daniel Boffey of the Guardian: "The prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, has ramped up his populist rhetoric ahead of April elections to claim that 'dark clouds are gathering' and that his country is a last bastion in the fight against the 'Islamisation' of Europe...He claimed the west had 'opened the way for the decline of Christian culture and … Islamic expansion' while his administration had 'prevented the Islamic world from flooding us from the south'." --safari
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Reader Comments (31)
Where we’re at today:
Breaking news: 17 killed in horrific massacre at a school in Florida.
Trump’s response: “What about me?”
To sum up a typical Trump day:
The word 'scandal' no longer applies. Now it's just the daily routine.
US diplomats tell the world not to worry about all that noise coming out of the WH, the US has no president.
There are a couple of stunning things about the indictment of Russians & Russian entities. The fact that Russia tried to sway the U.S. election is not one of them. Many countries, including of course the U.S., conduct espionage to try to affect political outcomes in other countries. The U.S., mostly via a private front agency -- the supposedly benign humanitarian group USAid -- did exactly the same thing in Cuba, beginning in 2010, to try to trigger a "Cuban spring." It might not be a coincidence that news of the U.S.'s Twitter-like sham in Cuba came out in 2014, the same year the Russians began planning their intervention in U.S. elections.
The couple of stunning things are (1) U.S. voters may be so stupid that their votes could be swayed by some post they read on Facebook or by some 140-character claim; and (2) Donald Trump's willingness not only to participate in the Russian scam but also to refuse to try to curb the scam once the damage -- his election -- was done. It's one thing to pretend to be shocked there's espionage going on here & quite another to make no attempt to protect Americans from those spy products.
Hopefully there won't be another massacre until Nov 6, 2018,
and the victims will be Republicans, and the weapons will be
votes. But then, it may depend on how gullible our voters are in
believing Russian B.S.
To David From:
You've been hanging around Republicans for most of your adult life. You are evidently a smart man, smart enough to have it halfway figured out: Your party has harbored any number of rotten idea and even more rotten people over the years and its current "leader" is by far the worst of all. What you haven't tumbled to yet, though, is that the current Republican Party is now the Oligarch Party, some of its people still a bit impure maybe, but its policies already nearly perfected. And....
There are no walls and no borders for the Oligarch Party.
Those walls and borders and especially that quaint holdover from a former time, that devotion to something other than self, that patriotism thing are not for us. They are for the little people.
@Ken Winkes: Yes, what was it Marx wrote? "Patriotism is the opioid of the masses"? Something like that.
But your point is well-taken. Patriotism is for suckers. The Masters of the Universe see their duties & loyalties in descending order: themselves, their shareholders, their customers, the U.S. Maybe their families & pets come in there in the middle somewhere. Tax avoidance? You betcha. Cayman Islands? Great. "Deregulation"?Please, sir, may I have more. Lobbying for even more special favors? Yup. Secret campaign contributions? Check. Sending their own kids to war? Bone spurs.
Once again the man from Pin Point Georgia is front and center thanks to Jill Abramson's piece in the New Yorker. We have covered this from time to time here on R.C., many of us remembering that confirmation hearing like it was yesterday–-it has been seared in our memory and for good reason. Thomas won the victim sweepstakes–-played the race card so convincingly–-the game of ethnic advantage that he had built a career opposing. Anita didn't have a chance. The fury that some of us felt at the time has not dissipated, and given that we still have a bunch of white guys who, if chance would have it, could repeat the process you can be sure the result would be the same.
It will be interesting to see where this goes. Final vote for Thomas was 52-48–-most negative votes ever cast for a S.C. nominee?
"He's not a light-skinned Negro like Thurgood Marshall. He knows what it's like to be black" (said by one of those white guys who were certain who was lying and who was telling the truth.)
And since it's President's Day––-always love those morphing faces–thanks Marie––a wee word about the man who is one but has failed miserably in the job. Are we seeing the unhinging of this presidency? Trump's latest tweets seem to have a feeling of desperation about them–-like someone who has fallen in a fox hole and can't get out.
Re: those Masters of the Universe: As in so many other aspects of our public life, the good of the many is sacrificed to the gain of the few. Maybe Marx said that, too.
It Works
The little dictator and his enablers (both here and in Russia) don't want anyone to believe that Russian interference had anything to do with the outcome of the election. "No votes were changed!" they scream. "Our balloting process was inviolable!" Well, that's more than debatable, but that's a separate issue. So, no, very likely (I'm more inclined to say "possibly" because hacking electronic voting machines has proven to be stupidly easy), Russian Friends of Trump didn't go into the ballot boxes and switch "Hillary" check marks to "Trump" (they'd need crayons for that anyway). But what they're really saying is that propaganda doesn't work.
It does. Why would people use it and spend billions propagating lies, misinformation, and demonization, or in the case of businesses, a way to sell products and services, if it didn't work? It's been around for centuries. Bad ideas just don't last that long. The first use of the word came from the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Gregory XV created the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in 1622, to combat the rise of Protestantism in the wake of the Reformation. "Hey, kids. Don't go over to that new church. They're boring. They nail shit to the door. Stay with us. We're the real Coke. Besides, if you do convert, you're goin' to hell. Okay?"
Of COURSE it works. Trump uses propaganda every day. So does his mouthpiece, Liarby Sanders. So do all of his cabinet leaders. So does the entire Party of Traitors, "Gun violence? MORE GUNS!". And Russian propaganda, with our without collusion had an effect on the election, because if you're gonna go with propaganda, go to the pros: Russians. They've been doing it for a hundred years. Propaganda works by appealing to the emotions. It is flatly non-rational. In fact, it's so anti-rational that propaganda techniques read like a who's who of logical fallacies. See how many of these fallacies the Russian/Trump team used to stick it to Hillary Clinton:
Ad hominem attacks.
Appeal to fear.
Bandwagon ("Well geez. I was thinking of voting for Clinton, but now I'm not so sure. Everyone is going for Trump!")
Big Lie.
Cherry picking (selective truth)
Common man (an appeal to the "common man" using "common sense" ideas to describe the other side as elitists who look down on them.
Demonization
Cult of Personality
Disinformation
Gaslighting
Outright lying (A Trump specialty)
Name calling (Another Trump specialty)
Pensée unique (reduction of arguments to simplistic cant: "I'm the only one who can fix it")
So, you get the picture. It's a smorgasbord of indoctrination techniques. And here's what it achieved. By constant demonization of Hillary Clinton, the Russian/Trump team created an emotional tidal wave that swept up even those who may not have entirely been convinced of Trump's qualifications. These are the people who now say things like "Well, I'm not a Trump fan, but after hearing all that stuff about Hillary, I just couldn't vote for her."
Bingo.
Propaganda works. Outcomes are changed. If propaganda didn't work, why do companies spend billions on advertising, itself a form of propaganda? It works. That's why. The Willie Horton ad put Poppy Bush in the White House (the Dukakis tank picture didn't help his cause, but it was Willie Horton that did him in. It works. Ask Roger Stone if propaganda works. Ask Lee Atwater. Oh, never mind. He's busy burning in hell.)
Collusion or no, Russia put Trump in the White House. The president has been installed by an adversarial foreign power and he's getting ready to step aside to let his Rooski pals fuck us again in 2018. So is the entire Party of Traitors.
Look at it from Putin's point of view. His scheme was wildly successful. He put an ignorant asshole in the White House, a whiny child who is screwing up the American political system six ways from Sunday. He's pretty sure he won't suffer any consequences for doing it again, so he'd be a fool not to double down and ratchet up the pro-Trump, pro-Confederate propaganda. A vote for Trump and his Party of Traitors is a vote for Moscow!
It works. Don't listen to anyone who tells you different. They're trying to sell you, well, pro-Trump propaganda.
See Richard North Patterson article with presidential perspective and why #45 must go: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-patterson-presidents-day_us_5a848f5be4b0774f31d18d35
Marie,
I believe Marx identified religion as the opium of the masses. Patriotism under the Lenin's version of Marx's system was a complicated affair, designed to engender loyalty more to the system itself rather than the standard nationalist version of the same. Socialist Patriotism is just as emotionally inscrutable and psychologically bendy as it sounds, like so much of Soviet ideology.
But you're right on the money with the Party of Traitors. Someone out here (it might've been you, or maybe PD, I forget), last week, noted how far removed we are now from Kennedy's dictum of asking not what your country can do for you. Confederates, and especially Trumpists, ask exactly that question, although they may phrase it more as "How much can I scam these fools for?"
Patriotism, a connection to something larger than oneself, a continued commitment to the success of the American Experiment, is old hat. It's for the rubes. These guys sell it by the truckload, but they don't drink what they're selling. They make a fortune selling it and they use it to attack anyone who calls them on their scam, but patriotism for them, loyalty, honor, integrity, intellectual honesty, are punchlines, Colonial era jokes that were old before George's cherry tree hit the ground.
Nope. There's money to be made and rubes to be fleeced. Let nothing get in the way of that. Least of all loyalty to American ideals.
@Safari
Just part of the plan, err scam.
Starving the socialist federal prison "beast," then replacing it with the capitalist one. You know, with the slavering one that salivates at the mere prospect of the rubes' tax money diverted into its own pocket.
One more rock on the mountain of evidence proving Trump's stunning lack of qualifications to be president is this quite amazing "bad optics" story. So the little dictator sadly gave up a weekend of cheating at golf because doing so would "look bad". No fucking kidding. This is a surprise? Something unexpected? In fact, rather than partying at Xanadu or Sloppy Joe's or whatever the fuck the name of that place is (okay, Marred a Lago), he should have been in a car on the way to Lakeland. He should have been talking about serious responses to yet another NRA-Republican enabled mass murder.
But no, instead, he sits on his fat ass and stews about how much it sucks that he can't play golf because pesky kids and Nosey Parker journalists will complain that it "looks bad" for him to be having fun (What the hell good is being president if you can't have fun now and then, right?) while the bodies of kids are being interred. Then he gets on the horn with Tweedledum and Tweedledummer and they convince him to go off on a tangent about how it was the FBI's fault. For everything! Yeah. That's the ticket. And not only that, I should be playing golf and having fun! Fuckin' pain in the ass kids.
But not to worry. He (or some fearful White House dweeb) has arranged something called a "listening session" with those same pain in the ass kids who fucked up his golf weekend, because he has to hear first hand how terrible it is to almost get murdered and to watch your friends turned into bloody pulps by an AR-15. I mean, otherwise, how could he be expected to know?
It's all about what's good for Trump. Bad optics make Trump look bad. No do. Listening session make Trump look good. Do.
Trump is like the Marquis St. Evrémonde, in "Tale of Two Cities". His carriage, riding at unconscionable speed through the streets, runs over a child, killing him. The Marquis is pissed that his driver had to slow down, making him late for an important appointment. Trump would do the same. What I'm wondering now is where is our own Madame Dafarge. Is there someone, somewhere, knitting an end game for this pig of a royal?
(Wasn't Evrémonde stabbed to death in his bed? I'd be fine with Trump alive in bed. In prison.)
There is some good news in the air, however.
It seems we may be seeing a rejuvenation of the spirit of activism abroad in the 1960's. It remains to be seen whether the kids in Florida can provide a nationwide spark to the gun control movement, but it's looking like it has legs. It certainly has a number of passionate and well spoken representatives. I've been mightily impressed by some of these kids and the directness and eloquence of their appeal to rationality as well their insistence that supine politicians be held accountable. In the wake of the Me Too movement, it seems political activism, here in the Age of Trump, has gotten a new life.
The little dictator has even been forced to say that he "supports" improved background checks. Who knows what this really means and whether or not it's true. Typically, by the time Trumpskyev says one thing, it comes out the other side of his smirking mouth with a great big "No" attached to it.
Still and all, not a bad start.
Of Douchebags and Daybreak
Poor Donaldo, did that mean ol' Oprah say awful, lying things about you? Or did you not, in fact, watch it at all, but merely, as is your wont, project your own bilious temperament out into the media firmament? After all, she's a woman, talking about the great Donald. She MUST be lying, and, naturally, weak. Not big and strong and vye-rile like the Great Donaldo.
As Margaret Hartmann suggests in her NY Mag piece (linked above), Trump "...seems desperate to be back on the campaign trail attacking a female opponent...."
AND having his Russian BFF's aid in the attack. After all, it helped enormously to have hundreds of thousands of tweets posted and reposted furiously, by bots of the Trump and Russian variety, expressing sincere stupefaction that that awful Hillary Clinton dined regularly on Roast Baby and sold the remaining body parts off through her vivisectionist pals at Planned Parenthood.
Nothing like being able to bully a woman, right Donnie? That is, if you can't grab 'em by the pussy. (Still nearly impossible to believe that this supreme creep is president*.)
Too bad the job is not as fun as the campaigning for the job, when all you had to do was lie, lie, lie, point to disinformation being spread by WikiLeaks, and Fox, and Russian Friends of Trump.
Each hour, it seems, brings chaos and darkness by the boatload. But the walls are closing in on the little dictator. Darkness for him and the Party of Traitors means a little more light for the forces of truth and honesty and competence.
Emily Dickinson, in a letter to Samuel Bowles, in 1858, makes her usual acute and trenchant observations on life. Of the local official homo religiosus, she takes issue with this pastor's description of his flock as "worms" and wonders, archly, if "vain-sinful worm is of another species". She closes with the eminently sanguine reminder that "Confidence in Daybreak modifies Dusk".
Quite so, Emily. Quite so.
Here's some more good news. One of the communities that took matters into their own hands and stepped up to help Puerto Rico was in Madison, Wisconsin where the Puerto Rico Relief Fund of South Central Wisconsin was formed and over 40 Madison-area residents rallied the local community to raise funds and contribute relief items to Puerto Rico. It’s estimated that there are about 5,000 Puerto Ricans living in south-central Wisconsin.
Thanks to the work of the dedicated committee, and hundreds of individual donors and fundraising events hosted throughout Madison, $70,000 in cash, including in-kind donations, almost $90,000 has been raised.
Just got back from my walk and on the way had a chat with one of my neighbors who works at a polling place that surveys the state and national populace. "I've had this job," she tells me, "for 26 years and I have never seen such diversity and divisiveness ( her "never" was exclaimed so loudly her dog jumped). She also said that many of the people who "love" Trump are ignorant of basic political facts such as "Mike Pence? Who is he?" Someone thought Paul Ryan was a film star. But by and large people she polls are energized–-mad as hell either for or against the man at the center of the chaos. The question, "If you could use one word to describe President Trump what would it be?" brought such hilarious answers, she had to laugh out loud which is verboten–-but "Asshole" was the most common answer.
Tried, but unsuccessful creating an active link. Copy and paste. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/9/16448302/guns-nra-sunday-lubach
@Akhilleus: Just for the record, "Patriotism is the opioid of the masses" was a joke.
"Show Us the Carnage" by James Fallows in The Atlantic responds to readers and one who complains that coverage is too respectful and tasteful: " on stopping the massacres "
Following the Texas church slaughter, one reader wrote: "The media needs to show Americans the truth. Watching tonight's news coverage of the massacre, it was bizarrely possible to think of a mass shooting as a random event like a tornado that causes a community to rally together. Thoughts and prayers for all. Yet entirely missing from the coverage was the truth of what had happened. No pictures of pools of blood. No video of blown out brains. No images of dead children in pews."
Some years back, I posted here on RC that our stories were too sanitized. For an example: pictures after the recent Florida shooting include: Lots of police cars surrounding the school, students with arms raised marching out of the building AFTER it was over, candlelight gatherings, close-ups of tearful and distraught family and friends, but none that show the true horror of what happened in those classrooms.
Is showing the unthinkable what it will take to change gun laws in this country? I am sympathetic, and I do understand not wanting to inflect further distress on the survivor families, but without knowing what the first responders, the police saw, it seems everyone and everything returns to ho-hum until the next horror show occurs. (Often European publications do publish more explicit images of catastrophic events, which have more impact. (usually blurring the face(s) out of respect and privacy).
Fallows concurs that finally it was photos that made a difference in the Vietnam era. Who among us has forgotten the little girl running naked from a Napalm strike. Maybe brutal exposure is warranted.
In addition, I have noticed how very careful US news publications are about showing shocking images of events here...but, have begun to show images with the dead IF THE EVENT TOOK PLACE OUTSIDE THE US. Guess it is different when such horrors take place in the Middle East or Africa. You know, the sh**hole places.
Marie,
Duh....brain not fully functioning on Monday morning. Sorry for the miss.
Surely not the last words on "patriotism," but a bevy of good ones:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/patriotism
BTW, I knew his name was From, but my fingers didn't.
...and they apparently still don't. FRUM!
Sheesh!
KenW: your fingers are slow learners! Still not From! Frum!
MAG,
I'm a big believer in the power of images. That being said, I'm still a little queasy about putting video of dead students/victims on the nightly news. I'm reminded of the post Patrick made last week of the horrific damage an AR-15 can do to human tissue. The gun knobbers, and NRA lackeys in Congress, would scream "politicization!" and yelp about how horrible it is to put such pictures on TV screens across America. I, for one, would hate to have my little guy accidentally see such imagery. He's seven. We have really tried to downplay the recent shootings. We don't talk about them in front of him and don't let anyone else do so either. We want him to be a kid as long as possible in this age of Trumpian barbarity. Certainly a warning would have to be given before showing things like that, but that wouldn't mollify (or protect) everyone.
I dunno. I do think your observation about foreign disasters being handled differently is correct. And I think we are at such a terrible state right now that anything that can afflict the smug, comfortable gun lobby and their obsequious submissives in Congress would be a good thing.
Maybe shoving graphic images of torn up bodies would help propel us to a tipping point. Networks would, however, then have to deal with the parents and relatives of dead children being shown in grisly detail on national TV.
Although I do recall that fairly graphic pictures of the bodies of American Marines, killed in an ambush at Fallujah were used to gin up the Decider's War of Choice, so I guess grisly imagery is fine when it's used for the "right" causes.
And on the other side of the argument, I doubt the abuses at Abu Ghraib would have gotten much more than a single news cycle of play without those pictures. The radio description of the burning of the Hindenburg was compelling ("Oh, the humanity!"), but nothing like seeing that newsreel footage. And when film of the prisoners at death camps and piles of bodies in pits were shown to Americans, it became harder than ever to deny stories of the Holocaust that had been filtering back for years during WWII.
What do the rest of you RC'ers think?
"What do the rest of you RC'ers think?"
Every now and then print medium (read by adults) should show the hamburger.
But, overexposure and frequent exposure inures the observer and deadens the soul. So, editors should not show all the blood for every event.
It wouldn't make much difference, but would give people the opportunity to see how bad the effects are. which, to some, would be titillating. Remember "Signal 30", the film parade of horrible accidents to scare you into driving responsibly ? It became a joke to high school kids, just because everything was a joke. So, you can't overdo it or make it mandatory viewing.
PD,
Geez, the ignorance is appalling. I only hope those morons are never able to give a good answer to "Mike Pence, who he?"
Today we're run by a scrofulous, self-important six year old. Were the half pence to take charge, we'd be controlled by a priggish, pompous Torquemada with access to nuclear weapons.
@Ken Winkes: Just today David From's article in The Atlantic castigates trump for, among other things, his lack of patriotism. I guess he thinks patriotism as important for the lord as for the serf.
I am heartened by the reaction of long time republican conservatives like From and Steve Schmidt to the ascent and rule of trump and the devolution of the republican party. I might even think it more painful to a lifetime conservative who sees his teenage ideals perverted into today's republican party. Republican or democrat are not measures of patriotism. As insiders they might be even more aware of the influence of the oligarchs on the party.
Just because they have been lifetime conservatives does not mean they cannot, have not, evolved. From was at one time staunchly against same-sex marriage for all the old reasons, destruction of the family etc. But then he wrote "The case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed the test" ie he was wrong and changed his position. While he recognizes the effect of the oligarchs he sees trump as forming an autocracy with a compliant republican party. From even voted for hillary!
As for Schmidt, I find him the most evocative commentator on television today. His pain and outrage is tearfully palpable.
I don't see trump as being willing to share power with his billionaire friends in order to form an oligarchy. He's not an ideologue trying to change the American political system. That would require sharing power. From writes that trump is just trying to use the presidency as a means to steal his way to real billions.
But pence, with his neediness for power, acceptance, respect, is another story.
What I find truly disturbing is From's assertion that conservatives will never give up on conservatism but if denied electoral success will give up on democracy. Maybe David knows republicans better than you think.
One RC’s thought on showing graphic details of the current shooting. If one major outlet (WaPo?) could ask permission of family, friends and school, a pic on the front page could be a good tool to show people a reality of massacres. We also need to join the propaganda war, and we have seen how effective an image can be in converting and motivating people to join our movement against the proliferation of weapons of war in our communities. The Australian gun control program is incontrovertible evidence that reducing the number and type of weapons in the community reduces the number of deaths. Not just death by gun, but deaths. John Oliver has done several articles on this over the years.
@ Safari. To carry on a thread from yesterday; whether the consequence and cost of 13 meddling hackers in our election be levied as economic sanctions against Russia: I don't think that will work like it did in South Africa, Iran, Libya, or North Korea, in fact it might do the opposite. Russia has more untapped resources than any northern hemisphere country and they will reach out to European companies to help develop them. It is the USA that might lose out economically by imposing economic sanctions. Check out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAJvfehmo3k
near the end the Irish farmer working the Russian fields for a Swedish Ag developer says the sanctions will do more good than harm.
Personally, I think Obama's symbolic expulsion of diplomats and closing down the headquarters was probably good enough. They will never extradite the hackers. We should take this meddling incident as a call to educate more critical thinkers here. But yeah, don't expect Donny shitstorm and the confederates to promote an national education initiative.
"Mass shootings have started to look, sound and feel the same — and that’s a problem" by James Burnett & Elizabeth Van Brocklin in WAPO that ties in to my earlier post: " Smartphones & videos " will bring big change—ready or not.
If the school shooting in Parkland produces a different outcome, it will be because of the way the teenagers who lived through it enabled the rest of us to get closer to what they endured. The spree that left 17 people dead and another 14 injured brought with it the usual progression of images and news accounts. But on their social media accounts, the Florida students also created a separate record, unmediated and unsanitized by journalism’s conventions.."
Bringing the carnage into the living rooms of americans in the vietnam era was another time: people had not yet been deadened by the relentless propaganda storm of recent times. For propaganda purposes, it is better for people to be emotionally numbed (what Patrick calls dead souls), to the point that the viewer feels only rage or fear. People who are that traumatized will view dead bodies, or parts of bodies, as simple fodder for fear or rage. People like this are easy prey for the Fox storm troopers.
There is no educational purpose, or moral reason, to show parts of corpses, or all of corpses. And, as Akhillius says, it is sadistic to show these types of things to young children, who do not have the life experience to understand that mutilation and death really happen.
And besides, even those of us who have direct experience with corpses and death struggle with a natural human denial of death - even when the corpse is right in front of us and intellectually we know the body is dead.