The Eastman memo: A fascist plan to subvert an election

The Washington Post writes about a way to overthrow the US government that a legal adviser to the ex-president wrote to steal the 2020 election for him:

it’s a good bet that most people have never even heard of the Eastman memo.

That says something troubling about how blasé the mainstream press has become about the attempted coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election — and how easily a coup could succeed next time.

The memo, unearthed in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s new book, is a stunner. Written by Trump legal adviser John Eastman — a serious Establishment Type with Federalist Society cred and a law school deanship under his belt — it offered Mike Pence, then in his final days as vice president, a detailed plan to declare the 2020 election invalid and give the presidency to Trump.

In other words, how to run a coup in six easy steps.

Pretty huge stuff, right? You’d think so, but the mainstream press has largely looked the other way. Immediately after the memo was revealed, according to a study by left-leaning Media Matters for America, there was no on-air news coverage — literally zero on the three major broadcast networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. Not on the evening newscasts watched by more than 20 million Americans, far greater than the audience for cable news. Not on the morning shows the next day. And when Sunday rolled around, NBC’s “Meet the Press” was the only broadcast network show that bothered to mention it. (Some late-night hosts did manage to play it for laughs.)

“The Horrifying Legal Blueprint for Trump’s War on Democracy” read the headline on Jonathan Chait’s piece in New York magazine’s Intelligencer section. And in the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie took it on with “Trump Had a Mob. He Also Had a Plan.” The Post’s Greg Sargent hammered away at it.

Some national newspapers paid attention, but not much. USA Today with a story; the New York Times with a few paragraphs dropped deep into a sweeping news analysis.

For the most part, the memo slipped past the public — just another piece of flotsam from the wreckage of American society, drifting by unnoticed.

Questions: 

1. Has the MSM failed to report responsibly on the Eastman memo, or is it merely an aberrant curiosity of little importance and the MSM did a fine job by mostly ignoring it?

2. Is corporate ownership and/or capitalism of news media mostly compatible with competent, professional journalism, or mostly incompatible? Does it matter that corporations are people and unlimited dark money can flow to politicians to buy them? 

Status check: The Democrats and judicial nominees

Under current broken government circumstances, political partisan appointments to the federal bench are the most direct way to move politics to the left, right or anywhere else. Congress is hopelessly broken by hyper-partisan fascist Republicans. Republicans in power don't compromise unless there is absolutely no alternative. Democracy demands compromise. Republican refusal to compromise is anti-democratic authoritarianism.

Under our fascist and crackpot ex-president backed by a fascist and crackpot Republican Party Senate, putting radical right judges on the federal bench was a top priority. Arguably the top priority. What is it under Biden and the Dems?

Wikipedia writes about the status of judicial nominees as of Sept. 30, 2021:

This is a comprehensive list of all Article III and Article IV United States federal judges appointed by President Joe Biden as well as a partial list of Article I federal judicial appointments, excluding appointments to the District of Columbia judiciary.[1]

As of September 30, 2021, the United States Senate has confirmed 14 Article III judges nominated by Biden: five judges for the United States courts of appeals and nine judges for the United States district courts. There are 27 nominations currently awaiting Senate action: eight for the courts of appeals and 19 for the district courts. There are currently five vacancies on the U.S. courts of appeals, 71 vacancies on the U.S. district courts, two vacancies on the U.S. Court of International Trade,[2][3] and 32 announced federal judicial vacancies that will occur before the end of Biden's first term (11 for the courts of appeals and 21 for district courts).[4][5] Biden has not made any recess appointments to the federal courts.

In terms of Article I courts, as of September 30, 2021, the Senate has not confirmed any judges nominated by Biden. There are currently two nominations to Article I courts awaiting Senate action; both for the United States Court of Federal Claims. There are currently four vacancies on the United States Court of Federal Claims, two on the United States Tax Court, and one on the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. On March 2, 2021, Biden designated Elaine D. Kaplan as Chief Judge of the Court of Federal Claims.[6]

Regarding Article IV territorial courts, as of September 30, 2021, the Senate has not confirmed any judges nominated by Biden. Biden has not elevated any judges to the position of Chief Judge.

Questions: 

1. What grade should Biden, Schumer and Senate Democrats reasonably get so far about putting Democratic judges on the federal bench, A, B, C, D or F? 

2. Should Biden's choices not be called Democrats, and if not, why not? Since Republican judges are clearly partisan Republican politicians, should Democrats take the "high ground" and not worry too much about political partisanship, or are we now past that and it's time to drop the pretense?

Words of inspiration… or not.

 

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

What do you think?  First, let me plant some mixed seeds in your brain, just for the hell of it:

• I believe it beyond question
• I believe it, but with caveats
  
• I don’t believe it, period
  
• What a crock, but it makes people feel better
  
• Only after we’ve exhausted every other possibility
• Correlates based on certain variables (e.g., skin pigmentation, bank account balance, how well-connected one is, based on one's GPS situation, other)
• Morality and justice are ECCs (essentially contested concepts) that are in the eye of the beholder
• The moral universe keeps changing the goal posts and can’t be kept up with in a timely manner
• There is no "universal arbitrator" of morality and justice
  
• God decides justice and morality, not man
• Justice is just a four seven letter word
• Idealistic, bleeding-heart bullshit
• Theoretical, not real.  Wake up and smell the corruption
  
• “The [arc] wall is high, and too hard to climb,” a la Juliette
• “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows”
• “What’s morality got to do, got to do with it?”
• “A tree grows in Brooklyn,” but that’s about the extent of it
• “There is a rose in Spanish Harlem.”  And she’s mostly effed.

Okay, okay, getting a little weird here just for the dramatization (and I know it 😉).  Anyway, here’s the question:

Do you believe that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice?

Bloviate.  And recommend.

Pragmatic rationalism: Another forlorn attempt to explain it

Germaine's predicament -- cognitive rocks are super heavy

This blog post is another of my proverbial lost causes. But I'm a modern day Sisyphus. In my opinion, my past attempts to explain my political anti-ideology ideology, pragmatic rationalism, have been unsatisfactory.

Nonetheless, Sisyphus is persistent. He keeps pushing that rock up the hill, hoping the spouse doesn't, uh, interfere?

Hey tweety pie, could you please let that thing go and get some groceries?? 

You can play with your rock later. I'll make sure it 

stays at the bottom of the hill. 

Aw, crud, do I have to?

Yesterday, I tried to explain why I now believe that the Republican Party and its rank and file supporters are fairly included in the label of FRP (fascist Republican Party). I got entangled in this quite useful politics back and forth, also known among experts as "to and fro."  

The following is from yesterday's discussion here about the fascism or lack thereof among Republican rank and file voters.

Opening volley: I don't think your description of the Republican party is either helpful or entirely fair. You basically are saying that there are 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News. There isn't enough daylight between these groups to call them separate.

Most of the people who actually care about fiscal conservatism (read: tax cuts) are a separate group. The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. Likewise, the base is willing to parrot the points of the elites, but they don't really care about the priorities of the elites. Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons. The elites are fine with it because it solidifies their power. The base is fine with it because it lets them impose their will on others.

Sisyphus response 1: 

The second group are the actual elites, and they don't care much about the first group (we'll call them the base). The elites don't have the same social priorities of the base, but they're happy to use them and let them have their way if it means feeding their interests. .... Both are fine with authoritarianism, but for different reasons.

That is a really nice, clear way to describe the situation. Well done.

That is how I see it. The elites are happy to, and expert at, using the base to serve their own interests.

But I do not understand the unfairness you see in how I characterize and label the FRP. I'm missing something in your reasoning. Is fascism the wrong label, and if so, why? What is a better label, or is it better to assign labels to the different groups to be more accurate?

For example:
elites = three groups (i) anti-democratic laissez faire capitalists, (ii) anti-democratic radical Christian nationalists, and (iii) anti-democratic racists, fascists and/or White supremacists
R&F = ? (some of all of the above?)

Volley 2: The label of fascist is fine for the party as an organization. What's unfair is saying that there are only 3 types of Republicans: Christian nationalists, Nazis, and the people deluded by Fox News.

You stated that there are 2 groups. The elites, radical ideologues whose main goals include Christian nationalism, and the rank and file, 50% of whom are Nazis, and 50% of whom are deluded by Fox News. By your reasoning, all Republicans fall into one of those 3 groups. That's what isn't fair.

There are plenty of Republicans who joined the party because they are anti-tax and/or anti-regulation. They don't care about Christian nationalists, Nazis, or Fox News, both in the sense that they don't necessarily share that ideology but also in that they feel no need to oppose it. Saying there's no difference between that group of Republicans and those who fall into your 3 groups is unfair and inaccurate.

Response 2: I understand your point. Not all Republicans are strictly in one or more of those three major groups. That is true.

But here is my problem. Reference to the FRP includes in people who aren't in one of the three groups, but they are in the genus group called Republicans, which includes all groups, not just the big three. If these outliers vote for Republican candidates who advocate for anti-democratic policies and rely heavily on anti-democratic rhetoric and dark free speech, what are those people? They support the fascism of the FRP with their votes. Maybe there are enough Republicans outside the big three groups that they are a necessary block of votes to win state and/or federal elections for anti-democratic or fascist Republicans.

In their minds they are not fascists. But in practice, what does their meaningful behavior amount to?

Volley 3: If you're just going to paint them all with the same brush based on how they're voting, you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore. If you're actually trying to understand them, though, you have to consider where they're coming from. The question, then, it what you're trying to do. Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

Response 3: 

... you don't need to go through the charade of separating them into categories that you're just going to ignore.

It's not a charade on my part. It is an attempt to explain why the categories can collapse into the single FRP label. Some people accuse me of unreasonably lumping disparate groups into one genus and to be transparent, explaining the subgroups helps people understand my reasoning, which they are free to partly or completely accept or reject. At least when others decide, it will be on the basis of a reasonable understanding of why I lumped groups as I now do. I don't ignore the small groups but conclude that, by their actions or behaviors, they defensibly or rationally can be included in a larger generic group.

Are you trying to justify screaming about them? Or are you trying to make a fair description of them?

I am trying to make a fair description of them. I try not to engage in irrational screaming. Not all criticism amounts to irrational screaming. But unless I explain myself and my reasoning, people have no objective basis to decide if I am unjustifiably screaming or fairly describing something that is complicated and open to dispute.

Without an empirical basis to understand my beliefs, people default to politics as usual, i.e., people who agree will see my opinions as true, and ones who disagree will see them as false or flawed. I don't want to do politics as usual. IMO, politics as usual is inherently toxic and anti-democratic. I want to do pragmatic rationalist politics and that requires enough explanation to afford people a better basis to decide for themselves than mere uncritical agreement or disagreement with an opinion not supported by any facts, truths and/or reasoning.

Volley 4: You really don't seem like you're trying to make a fair description. Your three categories look more like of a collection of insults than any kind of serious effort to understand them, and your dismissal of anyone who doesn't fit one of those three as being a small minority not worth considering only compounds that impression. The entire post makes me think it's unlikely you have any friends or family that are conservatives.

Response 4: Fair enough. At least we understand each other and that is a good thing.

To recapitulate, nothing I have said to try to explain myself in this blog post and my comments to you is sufficient for you to believe that my assertion of facts, truths and reasoning is nothing more than mere insults with no respect or serious effort to understand the people my comments discuss. 

Just curious, exactly what do I not understand about the people you believe I unfairly and/or irrationally smear, slander and/or falsely lump together or characterize? Since you offer almost no details of your facts, truth or reasoning, I assume you completely reject everything I assert as false or worse, with little or no probative weight in fact, truth or reason.

 

I am not trying to be obtuse or disrespectful to you. I am trying to explain myself. So far, my explanation is completely unpersuasive in your mind. I accept that, but don't understand why.

FWIW, some of my family is deeply conservative, but not my immediate family. Some of my friends are conservative, but not hard core T**** supporters -- they are uncomfortable with the modern GOP. Would a different family and friends situation for me necessarily make a major difference in my analysis and beliefs? How many liberal friends and family do T**** supporters have and would a difference in

Volley 5: to be determined if there is a return volley

The point I want to make

The core point I want to make here is in the comments highlighted above. Whether one agrees or disagrees with my assessment of rank and file Republicans as fascists is beside the point here. 

My point is this: One cannot do rational pragmatism without at least some explanation of asserted facts, truths and/or reasoning. Absent that, there is no rational basis to evaluate most political opinions in dispute, ~98% in my opinion. In those cases, politics defaults to politics as usual where people agree with opinions they like and disagree with ones they don't.

Questions: Other than facts, truths and reasoning, what else is there to evaluate the acceptability or lack thereof in disputed political opinions, e.g., personal morals and self-interest? Are morals and self-interest built into truths? Is this blog post too wonky?

Fighting wave of misinfo, YouTube bans false vaccine claims

 YouTube is wiping vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories from its popular video-sharing platform.

The ban on vaccine misinformation, announced in a blog post on Wednesday, comes as countries around the world continue to offer free immunizations for COVID-19 to a somewhat hesitant public. Public health officials have struggled to push back against a steady current of online misinformation about the COVID-19 shot since development of the immunization first got underway last year.

YouTube’s new rules will prohibit misinformation about any vaccine that has been approved by health authorities such as the World Health Organization and are currently being administered. The platform had already begun to crack down late last year on false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, will delete videos that falsely claim vaccines are dangerous or cause health issues, like cancer, infertility or autism — a theory that scientists have discredited for decades but has endured on the internet. As of Wednesday, popular anti-vaccine accounts, including those run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were kicked off YouTube.

“We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines,” YouTube said in a prepared statement.

The new rule will apply to general claims about vaccines as well as statements about specific vaccines, such as those given for measles or flu.

Claims about vaccines that are being tested will still be allowed. Personal stories about reactions to the vaccine will also be permitted, as long as they do not come from an account that has a history of promoting vaccine misinformation. ___

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-misinformation-public-health-d68aa3f6f6bc44e36c77c33cff4a450a

What took YouTube so long? OR will this be seen as censorship of opposing views? 

Is the label “fascist Republican Party” unduly unfair, inaccurate and/or offensive?

American fascists, Kansas City, MO, 2013

Context

Several people here have pointed out that not all Republicans are fascist, which in my opinion is probably true in some sense. That said, I put a lot of thought into the label before starting to use the FRP (fascist Republican Party) label after the 1/6 coup attempt. I understand that what we have now is not identical to fascism under Mussolini. But I believe the similarities are sufficient to warrant the label. And, what the FRP wants to do to this country is not done yet. If that party gets its way, I believe that the differences between Mussolini and what we are now would significantly narrow further. The overt, ongoing Republican Party attack on democracy, elections, the rule of law, civil liberties, inconvenient facts and inconvenient truths is not over yet. Its not close, at least among the elites and power players that dominate the FRP.

Has corporate power merged with the American state?

What is the modern FRP?

In my opinion, the FRP consists of two main different groups that dominate the party, the elites and the rank and file (R&F). The elites consist of radical ideologues, prominently radical fundamentalist Christian nationalists and radical wealthy laissez faire capitalists and special interests. One main goal of the elites is to install fascism in the name of trickling wealth and power up to the top few. The other man goal is to impose dark ages Christian morality and biblical law, basically Christian sharia, on what they see and/or claim is a nation deeply corrupted by horrors such as secularism, social tolerance, ferocious persecution of innocent Christians, racial impurity and sexual abomination. That group clearly is, among some other bad things, anti-democratic, anti-inconvenient truth (deeply mendacious), and fascist. This group utterly dominates the FRP and its divisive, polarizing rhetoric, policies and behaviors.

By contrast, the R&F are a different kettle of fish. Probably at least about 50% are strongly authoritarian or fascist and thus strongly aligned with the elites. Those are the White supremacists, racists, Nazis, capitalist autocrats, etc. The other ~50% see themselves as patriots desperately fighting to defend threatened democracy, truth and other democratic ideals. Most of this portion of the R&F firmly believe the lies and bullshit the elites have convinced them to believe after decades of ruthless radical right propaganda. Some of this portion of the R&F are supportive of violence to defend democracy, with some of those willing to participate in a violent defense with bloodshed.

The lies and bullshit The R&F has been deceived into believing are exemplified by slandering both Democrats and the Democratic Party like this description by one disgruntled conservative observer: 

Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day [1/6], insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. .... Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.”

That is a direct call for civil war backed by gunfire. It is not an invitation to the opposition to come in for a coffee and donuts chat to compromise and settle differences amicably.  Although it is an authoritarian call for violent overthrow of democracy, most of the R&F see it as a call to defend threatened democracy, and defend it by violence if needed.

In addition to being falsely labeled as radical left communists, some of the R&F believe that the Democratic Party and rank and file Democrats are, among other awful things, 

    (i) cannibalistic pedophiles; 

    (ii) conducting a massive deep state conspiracy to install some form of fascism or other form of tyranny on the American people; 

    (iii) planning to confiscate all guns and then enslave most everyone; 

    (iv) planning to make Christianity illegal and apply force to convert everyone to atheism; 

    (v) planning to rig all future elections so that Republicans cannot win elections any more, because “there is no way they win elections without cheating.”; and/or

    (vi) planning to replace White people in power and White people’s rights with non-White immigrants who will (a) invariably vote for Democrats, and (b) enjoy rights superior to the rights of White people.  

That is mainstream FRP propaganda and talking points. Tens of millions of the FRP R&F believe at least some of that deranged crackpottery and lies. Some or many independents also believe at least some of it. Heck, even some Democrats believed, probably still do, that the 2020 election was stolen. That kind of vicious FRP propaganda has been going on for decades. It has worked with most of the R&F.

Back to the FRP label

People will partly or completely accept or reject that description of the modern Republican Party. I believe it is accurate and not overstated or understated. Nearly all Republicans will reject most or all of it. Opinions of others will vary widely. 

But based on my perception of the Republican Party, that is why I use the label FRP for both the elites and the R&F. I resisted lumping the two groups before the 1/6 coup attempt, but not after that. After 1/6, there was no excuse to keep the elites separate from the R&F. Most people either saw 1/6 as pro-democracy or anti-democracy, despite FRP propaganda painting it as just innocent tourists taking selfies in the Capitol. 

So, despite most, (~90 ?) of the Republican R&F strongly believing, actually “knowing,” they are not fascists, their beliefs and behaviors directly support and sustain elite FRP American fascism. If the R&F walked away from the Republican Party and stopped voting for the politicians in power now, the cancer of Republican Party fascism would die. 

People sometimes do act based on false belief(s), thinking they support X and/or oppose Y, but in fact their actions do the opposite. That is what is happening here. The Republican elites and their well-funded propaganda Leviathan have finally managed to deceive, manipulate and betray most of the Republican R&F. 

Questions: 

1. Under current circumstances in the Republican Party, is it unfair, inaccurate and/or offensive to label the Party, its elites and/or the R&F fascist? If not fascist, what label would be better, authoritarian, radical, autocratic, plutocratic, Republican, something else?

2. Assuming one believes that most of the Republican R&F are deceived and not aware of what they actually support, does that mean they are not fascists? Or, does the Republican Party not actually support fascism, but is mostly or completely benign and pro-democracy?

3. Should members of the Republican R&F leave the party in protest, or stay while believing that they and/or the GOP are not fascist?  

Some racists are in the mix

The Supreme Court’s public credibility drops to new low: Litmus tests are involved

In a display of adult self-delusion and crackpot juvenile logic, some Supreme Court justices have been publicly asserting that they are not political because sometimes they make decisions they do not like. That reasoning is nonsense. One can be a highly political judge, like all six of the radical Christian nationalist (CN) Republicans on the bench now, but still sometimes constrained by the law. Rome was not built in a day, and neither will the Republican Party’s dream of American fascism. To build a durable fascism, American democratic rule of law needs to be corrupted and subverted over time into authoritarianism. That cannot be done in a single case or even a dozen cases. It will take several years, probably at least four, assuming a Republican wins the White House in 2024.

Recent polling indicates that ~60% of Americans now view the court with disapproval. Recent court decisions that fell in line with fascist Republican and radical CN ideology appear to have had a negative impact on public opinion. The Washington Post writes: 

In emergency decisions in August and September, the court ruled against two Biden administration initiatives, ending a nationwide eviction moratorium and reimposing an abandoned immigration policy. And in a bitter 5-to-4 split that sparked controversy and prompted congressional action, the court allowed to take effect a Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, while legal challenges to it continue.

“I think these last few years have really been very dangerous and potentially devastating to the Supreme Court’s credibility because the public is seeing the court as increasingly political, and the public is right,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who served as a Supreme Court clerk to Justice Harry A. Blackmun. “The statements by Thomas, Barrett, Breyer, you know, give me a break . . . they are just inherently noncredible.”

As expected, the radical right propaganda Leviathan has been cranked up to chime in with its faux reality. Radical right propagandists and blowhards dismiss charges of radical right politics in the court as just liberal complaints about a Supreme Court doing great job. This is as partisan as just about everything else in contested American politics.

No one on the radical right and none of the judges mention the fact that Republican nominees have to pass a number of political litmus tests to even be considered for a judicial nomination. The political tests are what one would expect. For example, Republican nominees must show themselves to staunchly opposed to abortion, gun regulation, government regulation, taxes, secularism, secular education, climate change regulation, immigration, consumer protection, civil liberties, and staunchly in favor of corporate power, rich people power and trickle-up economics. 

By definition, fascist Republican judges are pre-packaged politicians with their credentials and ideological bona fides thoroughly vetted before they can be put on the radical right, CN Federal Society’s acceptable judge list. At least for the fascist Republicans in power, this is purely political and so are their judges.

What about the Dem’s litmus tests for judges?

In 2019, some Democratic politicians indicated that for them, support for abortion rights and the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision was their litmus test. The Hill wrote in an article entitled, 2020 Dems break political taboos by endorsing litmus tests:

Democratic presidential hopefuls are embracing a political tool long considered taboo: setting litmus tests for potential judicial nominees.

A torrent of legislation restricting abortion rights in several states has prompted a scramble among several candidates to set more explicit ideological and jurisprudential conditions for would-be judicial nominees.

Chief among those conditions: that any potential judicial nominee back the ruling in Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that established a woman’s right to an abortion. So far, a handful of candidates for the Democratic nomination, including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have committed to appointing only justices that would uphold that decision.

Those pledges underscore the extent to which presidential candidates have become comfortable with shattering what has been considered largely off-limits in campaign politics. 

“There’s been a discomfort with crossing that line. I think what we’ve seen over the past three years is a breakdown in that discomfort,” Christopher Schmidt, a constitutional law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

It looks like that in response to the rigid litmus tests the FRP (fascist Republican Party) now require its judicial nominees to pass, the Democratic Party has started moving in the same direction, at least on the issue of abortion. 

A personal analysis: Not all litmus tests are the same -- authoritarian vs. democratic

Demagoguery: political rhetoric, activity or practices that seek support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument

In my opinion, there are two fundamentally opposed mindsets at war in America’s political and legal systems. One is mostly democratic, pluralistic, secular, and in favor of relatively more wealth and power distribution to the masses. For the most part but not completely, that’s the Democrats. The other mindset is mostly authoritarian, racially and socially intolerant (I see it as an American variant of fascism) and in favor relatively more wealth and power distribution to wealthy people and powerful special interests, usually at the expense of the masses and/or the environment. For the most part and with few exceptions, that’s the FRP. Decades of RINO hunts have mostly ideologically cleansed the FRP of mental diversity. 

Based on 2010 data

One other important mindset difference is grounded in principle and morality. The democratic mindset usually relies much more on facts and reasonably sound reasoning to make its arguments and appeals for support. For that mindset, the ends do not justify the means. Inherent in the democratic mindset is an openness to accepting social change in both law and policy. 

By contrast, the fascist mindset is demagogic and relies much more on lies, deceit, irrational emotional manipulation and partisan motivated reasoning. Here, the ends justify the means, e.g., lies, fomented irrational fear, hate,  bigotry, etc. Inherent in the fascist mindset is an openness to law and policy that the elites dictate, usually in reliance on laisses-faire capitalism and/or God as moral authority. In general, society gets what it wants only if the elites, speaking for their economic ideology and/or God also want it.  

Those opposed mindsets are at war in the courts. Hence the litmus tests. If one accepts that description of the two mindsets as basically accurate, and yes, the FRP vehemently disagrees, one can see litmus tests for judges as one of two different things, mostly democratic or mostly authoritarian. Thus a judicial litmus test in favor of defending something that most of the public wants, e.g., easy access to legal, safe abortions, is different than a litmus test hell-bent on getting rid of abortion rights regardless of what the public wants.

Questions: 

1. Are all litmus tests for judges equal, or is the democratic vs authoritarian distinction argued here real and meaningful?

2. FRP elites and its propagandist Leviathan (Faux News, Breitbart, the Federalist Society, etc.) now routinely refer to the Democratic Party as radical left and socialist tyrants, but is that true, with the FRP actually being the more authoritarian and radical of the two mindsets?

3. Which mindset is currently more powerful (i) in politics and law, and (ii) in society generally, as represented by, e.g., the distribution of wealth data shown above?

The Social Dynamics of Online Communication

 

I started a little channel on Disqus in 2016, and have participated in discussions on various platforms for over a decade now. It has become very common to criticize social dynamics online, whether discussed in terms of "trolling," cyber-bullying, the dimunition of "civility," the frequently observed obsession with being "liked" and "followed" as a source of self-esteem and validation, or other related issues that have received attention in social discourse. While the resulting literature is often thoughtful (Sherry Turkle's Alone Together and Jaron Lanier's manifesto,  I Am Not A Gadget,  https://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1MHHS4T68-C8ZML1-6DRW/YouAreNotAGadget-Jaron%20Lanier.pdf  come to mind), the problem that I'm concerned with here is more narrowly focused.  My focus here is on only one of the many problems mentioned above. To keep things simple, I'll  describe the problem in terms borrowed from  educational theorist, Alfie Kohn, in his book, No Conflict (1991). He coined a useful acronym to get at the basic issue, "MEGA."  MEGA stands for MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE GOAL ATTAINMENT, and the psychology underlying it has deep roots in theories of cooperation and conflict.

 

 

The underlying core-belief in MEGA is that when people discuss issues on which different and strong positions/viewpoints exist, it is generally the case that it can best be understood as a "conflict" or "debate" in which one party's gain entails the other's loss (as in a zero-sum-game). Like our adversarial legal system, it presupposes that there must be a "winner" and "loser" on any issue of importance. The binary of "win" and "lose" carries with it an attitude (ranging from subtle to overt) of basic enmity. This comes up again and again whether the  mutually exclusive categories are framed in terms of  political affiliation, musical taste, philosophical theories, religious beliefs, sports or even seemingly innocuous topics like TV shows and favorite celebrities.

 

 

Back in the aughts, I began to notice youtube philosophy vids (youtube was still new then) formatted as "point-counterpoint" debates. My academic background was largely in philosophy, and so I was, at first, intrigued. One person would post a thesis or argument,  and another person would publish a rejoinder in which he or she (usually he at the time, though this has changed) tries to "defeat" the other party. If Sam argues for, say, "free will," then the response by Bill will be the most forceful attempt to show that Sam's view is dead wrong in no uncertain terms. Such debates have a place in traditional philosophy, but they also have limits. Both parties may have insights, for example, and neither may have a full and adequate account of the complex concept of free will. So there's a potential loss in terms of learning from one another or engaging in cooperative inquiry. This can be generalized to most complex conceptual discussions. If my sole focus is on "winning" an argument (where that entails the other party "loses") then I will selectively attend to what I see as the "weak points" in the other's presentation, and vice versa. I may (subliminally or consciously) skip over those portions of the content that might otherwise spur healthy *discussion* and exploration, rather than win/lose debates. It's like reducing all political discussion to Crossfire, the old show pitting "Left" and "Right" against each other. I still remember when Jon Stewart went there to satirize these hosts (esp. a young Tucker Carlson), which contributed to CNN canning the show. But the "Crossfire" mentality was never "canceled," and no matter how erudite the topic, one finds a similar interactive and cognitive style at work in many online venues, including "academic Twitter," where professors and grad students are free to express themselves in ways not entirely compatible with the norms of the classroom. 

 

 

The collapse of discussion into binary debating patterns carries more serious threats to culture than the loss of learning opportunities, though. When watching those vids back in 2006-7, I was put off by the hacker/gamer slang being used in the content, comments and titles. Typical examples might be "Sam OWNS Bill," or the offshoot, "Sam PWNS Bill" on the Question of Free Will/Existence of God/fill-in-the blank-debate. Gamer slang had colonized online public philosophy and other "erudite" realms of discourse online. According to  a Wikipedia article, "the term ["pwn"] implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the internet gaming culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated." https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0940_pwned.pdf It was taken by teenagers and young adult from the world of hackers where pwning basically meant controlling or compromising another computer or server. So this is more than winning a binary debate, it has a *hostile* connotation, to put it mildly. Ownership of another person is, by definition, chattel slavery. While this is obviously not what is being endorsed online,  the meanings of words have consequences, and as authors like George Lakoff have argued, the "metaphors we live by" say much about our underlying cognitive and social structures. (see his book with Mark Johnson,  Metaphors We Live By: U of Chicago: 1980). These terms, and the metaphors they invoke (e.g. "ownership" of another) seem to encourage some degree of dehumanization of those with whom we disagree.

 

 

More recently, during the 2010s, we've seen the strategical application of these terms, as in the case of "owning the libs." Self-described "liberals" and "progressives," on the other hand, tend to use more generic insults including "moron," "loon," "loser" and "idiot" to label opponents on the Right. https://qz.com/291533/this-is-how-liberals-and-conservatives-insult-each-other/  There are certainly high-stakes conflicts in policy, but depicting them in terms more appropriate to a grade-school playground than town hall meeting actually obscures and emotionalizes matters, generating more heat than light. It dumbs down political culture ever more drastically, and engenders a culture of round-the-clock toxic hostility. While it's true that in politics the history of this hostile style of discourse owes more to Right Wing radio shows than it does to Left Wing culture, this doesn't explain the appeal of the hostile MEGA interaction style now pervading discussions in domains as "refined" as philosophy, or religion among people across the political spectrum. For example, the New Atheism debates-- both pro and con-- of the noughties were characterized by much of the "pwning" and "owning" tropes; and discussions in that domain are still largely fought in crudely insulting and aggressive terms, even if the slang has changed. 

 

 

I think it's easy for most of us to spot these behavioral traits and patterns in others, but how carefully do we evaluate our own output? Why does a blog-site like this one need to state, as a "rule," no less, "Don't be an asshole?" I'm not criticizing the rule, but questioning the conditions that give rise to it. Surely it is addressed to the actual and potential users of this site. To me, to you, to all. We think nothing of such "rules" at this point. It's a perfectly reasonable reminder given the state of interaction these days, right? I find it telling that such a "rule" blends into the background of consciousness like wallpaper. That is, it does not appear to jolt, jar, surprise or confuse anyone (correct me if I'm wrong and it has surprised you in the past). In a sense, it is an acknowledgment of one of the most serious problems we face today in culture and politics, and it would be interesting to see a calmly written post on exactly what it is that makes one an "asshole" online. What are the criteria? When did the traits in question become so omnipresent as to require such rules and warnings? What have we let ourselves become? How might we move towards more humane encounters with one another? 

 

 

I have not answered those questions here. This is intended more as a spur to further thought on the issue. I think it's important to note that from the beginning of Web 2.0 (from the aughts to present), this mentality or interpersonal style was not originally linked solely to politics, but came from a gamer (win or lose) MEGA mentality, in which others are experienced as adversaries to be dominated and humiliated rather than potential partners in prosocial dialogue and discussion. So, while this has certainly been evident and toxic in our politics, the mentality is deeper. Perhaps, in another OP, I will explore socio-historical roots of the problem. But for now I'm more interested in hearing from others. 

 

 

Questions: 

 

Am I exaggerating the problem?

 

 Do you think the problem is unique to a certain ideological/political/cultural groups that you oppose, or do you see it as a pervasive aspect of communication in culture and society? 

 

Have you ever insulted others in the heat of the moment while writing comments? Have you ever been hurt or upset as the recipient of such insults? What do you think are some of the causes of this phenomenon, and how might it be diminished and/or counteracted?

The crisis explodes: The fascist Republican attack on democracy, elections and truth intensifies

In what is among the starkest evidence of an full-blown FRP (fascist Republican Party) attack on democracy, truth and elections, the results of the Arizona (AZ) audit from yesterday unleashed an immediate, blistering response from radical right Republicans. The audit triggered a bizarre outpouring of crackpot conspiracy theory drivel by fascist Republicans in AZ. It also triggered crackpottery in Texas (TX), where the 2020 election was not contested by the FRP until yesterday by Fascist Donald, our ex-president.

On yesterday’s Rachael Maddow show, Maddow reported that the AZ FRP continued to question the legitimacy of the election. AZ Republicans leveled crackpot allegations about election fraud that made no sense whatever. For example, the AZ FRP questioned that a server in the Maricopa county recorder’s office was found to link to the internet and that somehow could have been a source of election fraud.

Maricopa county officials spent the day rebutting astonishing FRP ignorance, lies and crackpottery that exploded after the audit results were released. In the case of the server, county officials explained that the server was to the county recorder’s office website server and it functioned to link the website to the internet. That server had nothing to do with the election.

It was clear that the attack on the 2020 election that the AZ FRP unleashed immediately after the audit results were released was planned in advance. It had to be more than a mere spontaneous outburst of frustrated disappointment. The FRP knew the audit would confirm the 2020 election result, but that it was critical to continue and intensify the attacks on the election.

This is far worse than merely irresponsible, it is a blatant  

fascist Republican attack on democracy, elections and truth

Within hours of Fascist Donald’s demand to have the election in TX audited, the state legislature called for and started a forensic audit. The fascist won the TX election, but the audit has nothing to do with the statewide vote. The audit is confined to the four main Democratic counties in TX. In the minds of the entire FRP nationwide, it is undeniable and blatant that only Democrats commit election fraud and the FRP damn well will put a stop to it one way or another. This is a national FRP strategy. This attack is not over yet. We are now in the middle of an all-out, radical right war against democracy, elections and truth.

Fascist Donald demands an election audit in Texas and

the TX FRP legislature immediately complies

Maddow also interviewed Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. Schmidt made it clear that he believed that the FRP is now highly radicalized and openly attacking democracy and elections, putting us in in a crisis, the magnitude of which he states is is hard to overstate. His thinking is that 

    (1) on the one hand the FRP is fomenting chaos and confusion, e.g., by open attacks on elections and its public threats to default on the federal debt by refusing to raise the debt limit, but 

    (2) on the other hand FRP rhetoric is selling law and order to the public to get support and votes. 

See the YouTube video at the top.

Maddow believes that, absent a failure of his health or some other major incident, it is certain that Fascist Donald will be the FRP’s candidate for president in 2024.

Finally, there is this urgent warning from a hard core conservative, Robert Kagan, writing an opinion piece two days ago for the Washington Post entitled, Our constitutional crisis is already here: 

The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt:

First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running.

Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary. Trump’s charges of fraud in the 2020 election are now primarily aimed at establishing the predicate to challenge future election results that do not go his way. Some Republican candidates have already begun preparing to declare fraud in 2022, just as Larry Elder tried meekly to do in the California recall contest.

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.

The stage is thus being set for chaos. Imagine weeks of competing mass protests across multiple states as lawmakers from both parties claim victory and charge the other with unconstitutional efforts to take power. Partisans on both sides are likely to be better armed and more willing to inflict harm than they were in 2020. Would governors call out the National Guard? Would President Biden nationalize the Guard and place it under his control, invoke the Insurrection Act, and send troops into Pennsylvania or Texas or Wisconsin to quell violent protests? Deploying federal power in the states would be decried as tyranny. Biden would find himself where other presidents have been — where Andrew Jackson was during the nullification crisis, or where Abraham Lincoln was after the South seceded — navigating without rules or precedents, making his own judgments about what constitutional powers he does and doesn’t have.

Today’s arguments over the filibuster will seem quaint in three years if the American political system enters a crisis for which the Constitution offers no remedy.

Most Americans — and all but a handful of politicians — have refused to take this possibility seriously enough to try to prevent it. As has so often been the case in other countries where fascist leaders arise, their would-be opponents are paralyzed in confusion and amazement at this charismatic authoritarian. They have followed the standard model of appeasement, which always begins with underestimation. The political and intellectual establishments in both parties have been underestimating Trump since he emerged on the scene in 2015. They underestimated the extent of his popularity and the strength of his hold on his followers; they underestimated his ability to take control of the Republican Party; and then they underestimated how far he was willing to go to retain power. The fact that he failed to overturn the 2020 election has reassured many that the American system remains secure, though it easily could have gone the other way — if Biden had not been safely ahead in all four states where the vote was close; if Trump had been more competent and more in control of the decision-makers in his administration, Congress and the states. As it was, Trump came close to bringing off a coup earlier this year. All that prevented it was a handful of state officials with notable courage and integrity, and the reluctance of two attorneys general and a vice president to obey orders they deemed inappropriate.

These were not the checks and balances the Framers had in mind when they designed the Constitution, of course, but Trump has exposed the inadequacy of those protections. The Founders did not foresee the Trump phenomenon, in part because they did not foresee national parties. They anticipated the threat of a demagogue, but not of a national cult of personality. They assumed that the new republic’s vast expanse and the historic divisions among the 13 fiercely independent states would pose insuperable barriers to national movements based on party or personality. “Petty” demagogues might sway their own states, where they were known and had influence, but not the whole nation with its diverse populations and divergent interests.

Such checks and balances as the Framers put in place, therefore, depended on the separation of the three branches of government, each of which, they believed, would zealously guard its own power and prerogatives. The Framers did not establish safeguards against the possibility that national-party solidarity would transcend state boundaries because they did not imagine such a thing was possible. Nor did they foresee that members of Congress, and perhaps members of the judicial branch, too, would refuse to check the power of a president from their own party.

The Trump movement might not have begun as an insurrection, but it became one after its leader claimed he had been cheated out of reelection. For Trump supporters, the events of Jan. 6 were not an embarrassing debacle but a patriotic effort to save the nation, by violent action if necessary. As one 56-year-old Michigan woman explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government.”

The banal normalcy of the great majority of Trump’s supporters, including those who went to the Capitol on Jan. 6, has befuddled many observers. Although private militia groups and white supremacists played a part in the attack, 90 percent of those arrested or charged had no ties to such groups. The majority were middle-class and middle-aged; 40 percent were business owners or white-collar workers. They came mostly from purple, not red, counties. 

The events of Jan. 6, on the other hand, proved that Trump and his most die-hard supporters are prepared to defy constitutional and democratic norms, just as revolutionary movements have in the past. While it might be shocking to learn that normal, decent Americans can support a violent assault on the Capitol, it shows that Americans as a people are not as exceptional as their founding principles and institutions. Europeans who joined fascist movements in the 1920s and 1930s were also from the middle classes. No doubt many of them were good parents and neighbors, too. People do things as part of a mass movement that they would not do as individuals, especially if they are convinced that others are out to destroy their way of life.

It would be foolish to imagine that the violence of Jan. 6 was an aberration that will not be repeated. Because Trump supporters see those events as a patriotic defense of the nation, there is every reason to expect more such episodes. Trump has returned to the explosive rhetoric of that day, insisting that he won in a “landslide,” that the “radical left Democrat communist party” stole the presidency in the “most corrupt, dishonest, and unfair election in the history of our country” and that they have to give it back. He has targeted for defeat those Republicans who voted for his impeachment — or criticized him for his role in the riot. Already, there have been threats to bomb polling sites, kidnap officials and attack state capitols. “You and your family will be killed very slowly,” the wife of Georgia’s top election official was texted earlier this year. Nor can one assume that the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers would again play a subordinate role when the next riot unfolds. Veterans who assaulted the Capitol told police officers that they had fought for their country before and were fighting for it again. Looking ahead to 2022 and 2024, Trump insists “there is no way they win elections without cheating. There’s no way.” So, if the results come in showing another Democratic victory, Trump’s supporters will know what to do. Just as “generations of patriots” gave “their sweat, their blood and even their very lives” to build America, Trump tells them, so today “we have no choice. We have to fight” to restore “our American birthright.” (emphases added)

 

Questions: 

1. Is there an urgent crisis unfolding right now in American politics, or is this mostly just politics as usual, maybe with some hair on fire freaks and/or some unusually overheated rhetoric from a few crackpots and radicals that are harmless fringe nutters outside the circles of relevance, influence and/or power? 

2. Absent a failure of his health or some other major incident, is it likely that Fascist Donald definitely is going to be the FRP nominee for president in 2024, as Maddow and Kagan assert?

3. Does the evidence accumulated so far that the FRP (i) is anti-democratic and authoritarian or fascist, and (ii) is openly attacking democracy, elections and truth, and if so, does that (a) amount to a reliable proof thereof, and if so, (b) engaging with denials of that proof amounts to false balancing or bothsidesism?[1]

Footnote: 

1. False balancing, also called bothsidesism, exists when the evidence is sufficient to show that arguments against the proven side are not even worth engaging with because it elevates false information, lies, deceit, crackpottery or motivated reasoning, and/or etc. to the same level as actual facts, true truths and sound reasoning. 

Wikipedia describes it like this: False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a cause of misinformation.