A commentary about patriotism

The NYT editorial board seems to be worried (not paywalled):

The Only Patriotic Choice for President

It is hard to imagine a candidate more unworthy to serve as president of the United States than Donald Trump. He has proved himself morally unfit for an office that asks its occupant to put the good of the nation above self-interest. He has proved himself temperamentally unfit for a role that requires the very qualities — wisdom, honesty, empathy, courage, restraint, humility, discipline — that he most lacks.

Those disqualifying characteristics are compounded by everything else that limits his ability to fulfill the duties of the president: his many criminal charges, his advancing age, his fundamental lack of interest in policy and his increasingly bizarre cast of associates.

This unequivocal, dispiriting truth — Donald Trump is not fit to be president — should be enough for any voter who cares about the health of our country and the stability of our democracy to deny him re-election.

For this reason, regardless of any political disagreements voters might have with her, Kamala Harris is the only patriotic choice for president.

[Trump] has promised to be a different kind of president this time, one who is unrestrained by checks on power built into the American political system. His pledge to be “a dictator” on “Day 1” might have indeed been a joke — but his undisguised fondness for dictatorships and the strongmen who run them is anything but.

Hm, morally unfit. One doesn't hear that very often. And, an unequivocal, dispiriting truth, also pretty rare in MSM rhetoric.

Now taking predictions…

 …for the upcoming political "October Surprise(s)."

Let’s see if anyone predicts correctly.

(by PrimalSoup)

Well, isn't this a kicker?

 Always putting down red states. Places run by Republicans. All them Trump voters. Rednecks and hillbillies. 

Yet.................

Best Places to Live in the U.S. in 2024-2025

Naples, FL

#1 in Best Places to Live

Boise, ID

#2 in Best Places to Live

Colorado Springs, CO

#3 in Best Places to Live

Greenville, SC

#4 in Best Places to Live

Charlotte, NC

#5 in Best Places to Live

In fact, keep going down the list, NO Democrat infested cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York. 

All the top ones in red states. 

Check it out: https://realestate.usnews.com/places/rankings/best-places-to-live?sort=overall&high_to_low=true

San Francisco, CA

#22 in Best Places to Live

Yeesh, had to wait till #22.

What say you all? This an indication of anything? 

Germaine's war on incorrect language: Authoritarianism is not conservatism

US Conservatives Are Uniquely Inclined Toward 

Right-Wing Authoritarianism Compared to Western Peers

RWA = right-wing authoritarianism

As we all know, I routinely send out email darts to people and commentators in the MSM who incorrectly call authoritarians conservatives or authoritarian groups or institutions conservative or hard right.

The basic communication error is simple: Pro-democracy conservatism is mostly not anti-democracy authoritarianism. 

By now, I've concluded that the main reason the MSM usually refuses to call out authoritarianism is corporate ownership and attendant concerns about profit. Other factors are very likely at play, e.g., quiet complicity with authoritarianism by MSM employees and influencers, incompetence and ignorance, but the profit motive feels like the main player.

This morning, I opened a new front in my war on incorrect language. I darted Perplexity for doing the same damned thing, (see the two follow-up questions below). Geez, even artificial intelligence gets this wrong.

Q: What is the recent supreme court case that legalized bribery in politics?

A: The recent Supreme Court case that has been interpreted as effectively legalizing certain forms of bribery in politics is Snyder v. United States, decided on June 26, 2024. .... In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, the conservative majority ruled that the federal anti-corruption statute (18 U.S.C. § 666) does not criminalize "gratuities" - payments made to an official after an official act as a token of appreciation.

Follow-up Q1: Why do you refer to the Republicans on the supreme court as conservative when in fact they are authoritarian?

A: I apologize for any confusion in my previous response. You're right to point out the distinction between conservative and authoritarian ideologies. Let me clarify:The six justices appointed by Republican presidents (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) are often referred to as the "conservative majority" in common parlance. However, this label can be overly simplistic and potentially misleading.

Follow-up Q2: Why do you say that the label conservative can be overly simplistic and potentially misleading when describing an authoritarian or authoritarian institution when in fact it is actually misleading, not merely potentially misleading?

A: You're right to point out that the term "conservative" can be more than just potentially misleading when applied to authoritarian individuals or institutions - it often is actively misleading. Let me clarify and expand on this important distinction: ....

An analysis

Here is my mindset explained -- it is not complicated: Being an authoritarian often overlaps with many policies that old-fashioned pro-democracy conservatives want, but it differs in multiple critically important factors.[1] 

Those major differences boil mainly down to (i) opposition to democracy, free and fair elections and voting rights, (ii) denial of authoritarianism, instead claiming the opposite, defense of democracy, (iii) denial of wealth and power intent and motives, (iv) heavy reliance on dark free speech (lies, slanders, flawed, crackpot hyper-partisan reasoning, unwarranted, irrational emotional manipulation, bad faith rhetoric and other behavior , ill-will (malice), etc.), and (v) expansion of special interest power at the expense of civil liberties. 

While conservatives generally favor limited government power, autocratic authoritarians seek to concentrate and expand it, while plutocrats and theocrats what to get government off their backs. Also, conservatives are typically cautious about rapid social change, whereas authoritarians often implement major changes to consolidate power among the ruling elites.

So, in terms of being pro-democracy and pro-truth even when it is inconvenient, it is more accurate to use the label authoritarian or conservative in view of their differences? 

What is it most important for the public to be exposed to, authoritarianism as mere pro-democracy conservatism, or authoritarianism as what is actually is in American politics right now, i.e., kleptocratic, autocratic, plutocratic, Christian theocratic, stunningly mendacious, morally rotted, hypocritical, intentionally deeply divisive, and bigoted/racist scapegoating of innocent target groups? 

Q: Is Germaine's mindset about fundamental differences between conservatism and authoritarianism basically accurate, or is it more wrong than right, e.g., by overestimating the disregard for democracy and/or inconvenient facts and truths that alleged American authoritarians harbor, i.e., heavy reliance on dark free speech?

Footnote:

1. Wikipedia on "authoritarian conservatism":

Authoritarian conservatism is a political ideology that seeks to uphold order, tradition and hierarchy, often with forcible suppression of radical and revolutionary enemies such as communists, Nazis, and anarchists. 

Although the concept of authority has been identified as a core tenet of conservatism in general, authoritarian conservatism is only one of many different forms of conservatism. It is contrasted with libertarian conservatism, which is the most common form of conservatism in the United States.**

The topic of authoritarianism is therefore controversial within the American conservative movement. John Dean, a critic of Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, writes in Conservatives without Conscience (2006):

Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.

** American libertarian conservatism seems to be more pro-democracy than American authoritarianism. It may be more common, but from what I can tell is less powerful and corruptly aggressive than American authoritarianism. However, the analysis is clouded by the scope of the MAGA  movement which appears to have swept up many or most American libertarians, converting them to authoritarians.

Are they conservative, authoritarian,

confused, ignorant and/or something else?

MAGA mindset update; Pay-to-play politics updates

To remind us of what mainstream authoritarian MAGA elites think of the non-MAGA world, there is this:

Tucker Carlson Just Hit a New Low

The disgraced former Fox News host giggled and nodded along as Roseanne Barr screamed about liberals being baby-eating vampires—and insisted she wasn’t “crazy”

Comedian Roseanne Barr is all in on the right-wing conspiracy hype train.

During a leg of ex–Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s tour in Fort Worth, Texas, on Tuesday, the Trump-supporting actress echoed QAnon theories, insisting that Hollywood denizens are “gay as hell,” and likened liberals to “vampires” that “love the taste of human flesh.”

“You know they eat babies. That is not bullshit, it’s true,” Barr said. All the while, Carlson nodded along and giggled, seemingly in agreement.

In fact, Carlson prodded her to continue, echoing a similarly baseless and asinine theory that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets.

“It’s not just the dogs and the cats,” Barr said, not joking. “They are full-on vampires, and everybody still thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not crazy. They’re full-on vampires. They love the taste of human flesh, and they drink human blood. They do.”

Of course, according to Barr, Trump will be the antidote to all this madness.

“By the time we go in to vote for Trump, that he will open up everybody’s eyes and they will stop pretending to be asleep,” she continued. “You know what they say. You can’t wake people up that are pretending to be asleep. But I pray to God, please wake up. Even those who are pretending to be asleep with the irrefutable truth of what the worst people on this planet are really up to. They are really up to that. They’re doing it. There are so many victims. There are so many victims!”

During the same interview, Barr went on a tangent against liberals for accepting the 2020 presidential election results, clamoring that it was Democrats—not registered Republicans supporting the former president—who attempted to thwart the results “with their insurrection.”

“They overthrew the constitutional republic of the United States of America,” Barr said. “And then they covered it up with their January 6 bullshit. With their insurrection!”

There, now we have been reminded. And, Barr is not a comedian. She is a very nasty human being who is ignorant and a liar One can reasonably wonder if she takes pleasure in hurting innocent people who never lifted a finger against her.

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Update 1: In Snyder v. United States, decided on June 26, 2024, the USSC legalized corruption of politicians, judges and others in politics. In Snyder, the kleptocratic Republican court overturned the bribery conviction of James Snyder, a former mayor of Portage, Indiana. In a 6-3 decision split, the conservative majority ruled that the federal anti-corruption statute, 18 U.S.C. § 666, does not criminalize "gratuities" or "rewards" which the court says are payments made to an official after an official act as a token of appreciation. The ruling distinguishes illegal bribes, which are payments made or agreed upon before an official act.

How it works in practice

Consider a hypothetical conversation between a lobbyist and a US supreme court judge or a US senator. Lobbyist says his client strongly supports (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, giggle, snort) a certain court decision or pending law, either of which would be worth tens of billions to the client. The judge or senator frowns and says, Well, I'll consider it but I have to balance my  decision with all relevant factors, including the law. As you know, my vacation plans (judge) or or my campaign (senator) needs three million to get things properly squared away (huge gassy belch followed by a gigantic belly laugh and slap on the back for the lobbyist). Then, the client gets what he wants and the judge or senator shortly thereafter gets a "gratuity" or "tip" for three million dollars for doing a good job.

So, if a person sometimes gets the feeling that the US government and the American radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement are corrupt, they would be correct. Our pay-to-play system is morally rotted with corruption. Authoritarian elites are in the process of establishing a true kleptocracy basically like what exists or will exist in Russia, Afghanistan and some African countries where China and Russia are both actively strengthening kleptocracy. 

Update 2: The AP reports:

Launchpad Strategies was incorporated less than a year ago and has since received $15 million from Donald Trump’s election fundraising machine.

For what is mostly a mystery. Campaign finance records indicate the limited liability company was hired to provide online advertising, digital consulting and fundraising. On its website, the firm boasts it is a “full-service Republican digital agency run by expert strategists.”

Yet, those expert strategists aren’t identified. An online contact form does not appear to work. And business registration records in Delaware provide no clues as to who owns or runs the firm. The campaign’s checks are sent to a P.O. Box in North Carolina.

An Associated Press review of Federal Election Commission records shows that more than $876 million moved through Trump’s campaigns and pro-Trump fundraising committees over the past nine years to six limited liability companies, including Launchpad Strategies. The filings meet the minimum disclosure requirements, yet the final recipients of the cash are unknown.

The $15 million paid to Launchpad Strategies is a fraction of the huge sums spent during presidential elections. But the lack of transparency makes it impossible to know if money donated by Trump’s supporters was spent wisely or could be personally benefiting the former president’s aides and allies.

The AP was not able to identify a representative for Launchpad Strategies from whom to seek comment. The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about Launchpad Strategies or the other such companies it has paid.

But the government agency that enforces federal campaign finance laws is unlikely to do much about it.

A deep ideological divide among the FEC’s commissioners has stymied almost 30 investigations recommended by agency lawyers of accusations Trump’s campaign broke the rules. One closed complaint alleged two of the limited liability companies were used to mask millions of dollars in payments to Trump family members or vendors controlled by campaign staff.

The FEC’s evenly divided structure and a polarized political environment have paralyzed the agency at a time when presidential and congressional elections are awash in money. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the floodgates of election spending and raised the potential for misconduct. Yet no more than three of the FEC’s six commissioners can be from the same political party, leading to frequent gridlock.

Notice how Republicans in government support corruption on a gigantic scale? That is a key goal for all three kinds of authoritarianism now attacking and destroying our democracy and civil liberties, i.e., (i) kleptocratic autocracy with DJT as dictator for life, (ii) kleptocratic plutocracy with its unregulated brass knuckles capitalism, and (iii) kleptocratic Christian nationalism with its brutal, bigoted and racist Christian Sharia law and its morally rotted, enraged wealthy White male Christian Taliban. 

That Republican radical right Axis of Evil is the unholy trinity that is rotting and killing American democracy, our civil liberties, honest governance and society from within. Power and wealth flows from us and our government to the authoritarian kleptocrat elites. More wealth for the elites means more power too. This is authoritarianism's trickle-up theory of wealth and power, and it is working quite well.

Q: Is America in deep authoritarian shit, very deep authoritarian shit, or just in a wee bit of a rough patch with hordes of liberal vampires run amok doing nasties like eating lots of human flesh, including lots of baby flesh? 

Project 2025 update

Some sources are reporting that, Project 2025 proposes downsizing NOAA (National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration). This reporting is inspired by the human and economic damage that Hurricane Helene is causing in the southeast US. The Poynter Institute reports:

What does Project 2025 say about the National Weather Service, 

NOAA and National Hurricane Center?

The policy blueprint for a Republican administration says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ‘should be broken up and downsized’

As Florida braced for Hurricane Helene, some weather and politics observers were mad about Project 2025.

“Reminder that Project 2025 would dismantle the National Weather Service and NOAA,” wrote the League of Conservation Voters on X.

NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, founded in 1970.  

Project 2025 is the conservative Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint for a Republican administration. Trump has disavowed it, but it was written by several former Trump administration officials. In 2022, when Trump gave a keynote speech at a Heritage event in Florida, he said the organization would “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

Project 2025 includes about four pages on NOAA and the National Weather Service. That part was written by Thomas F. Gilman, who was an official in Trump’s Commerce Department.

The document describes NOAA as a primary component “of the climate change alarm industry” and said it “should be broken up and downsized.”

The National Weather Service, one of six NOAA offices, provides weather and climate forecasts and warnings. The National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service within NOAA.

Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency “should focus on its data-gathering services,” and “should fully commercialize its forecasting operations.”

Dart update: As part of my ongoing public service efforts, 👍, I still actively dart folks who need it. The article quoted above was written by Amy Sherman. She works for PolitiFact, which is now part of the Poynter Institute. Just before posting this, I emailed Amy about her incorrectly referring to the Heritage Foundation as "conservative." Heritage is a radical right authoritarian propaganda machine, not conservative. The dart concluded with this:

Referring to American radical right authoritarians and their authoritarianism as "conservative", "hard right" or anything else that does not convey the idea of opposition to democracy, civil liberties and/or the rule of law as applied to elites amounts to false balancing. That false balancing amounts to a failure to tell the American people this truth at a time when they desperately need it unvarnished and unspun.

Why not call a spade a spade? Most of the MSM makes the same terrible mistake of calling authoritarians conservatives. All or nearly all old-fashioned pro-democracy and pro-civil liberties conservatives have been RINO hunted out of power and often the GOP itself. In view of how close the election is projected to be, this labelling error could wind up being a necessary factor that costs us our democracy and most of our civil liberties.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

 

Germaine's analysis: Calling 

authoritarians conservative 

is a big mistake

Fentanyl update; Billionaire style free speech; Global warming update

A NYT opinion discusses fentanyl:

Last year over 70,000 Americans died from taking drug mixtures that contained fentanyl or other synthetic opioids. The good news is that recent data suggests a decline in overdose deaths, the first significant drop in decades.

One potential reason fentanyl spread more slowly to the West Coast is that heroin there has long been sold in a dark, sticky form known as black tar. In the East, heroin was sold as a light-colored powder, so it was easier to conceal fentanyl’s presence. Nonetheless, synthetic opioids have now spread fully to the West, in black tar and powder form and pressed into counterfeit prescription pills.

Some people argue that the current fentanyl disaster in the US and the West generally is China's payback to the West for the British opium war against China. That is one plausible motive. The opium trade and subsequent Opium Wars had profound long-term effects on China. That marked the beginning of the "unequal treaties" era that eroded Chinese sovereignty.

Regardless of motive, there is some evidence that China intentionally supports supplying chemicals needed to make fentanyl. Why do that? At the very least, the cost to the US economy of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids was about $1.5 trillion in 2020. Fentanyl is a cheap, (probably mildly profitable) easy way to wage a significantly damaging war against democracy (i) without firing a shot, and (ii) without accountability for the ensuing human carnage and misery.

Fentanyl is a big win for China and a big loss for the West and the US.

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The NYT reports:

5 Days With Elon Musk on X: 

Deepfakes, Falsehoods and Lots of Memes

Almost a third of 171 posts last week from the X owner were false, misleading or missing vital context

Hours before former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a rally in New York last week, rumors started circulating online that a bomb had been discovered nearby. While the report was debunked, Elon Musk nonetheless amplified it in a post to his nearly 200 million followers on X.

It was among dozens of false or misleading posts that Mr. Musk shared on the platform from Monday to Friday last week — after both the second presidential debate and the second apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Trump. In 171 posts and reposts during that frenetic five-day period, the tech mogul railed against illegal immigration, boosted election fraud conspiracy theories and attacked Democratic candidates, according to a New York Times analysis.

Ah yes, the stench of dark free speech packaged as valiant, patriotic absolute free speech allegedly justified by the fallacy that "the more speech, the better." That is "reasoning" is insulting. We are not that stupid. 

Well, with Musk the blatant liar having 200 million followers, maybe some of us really are that stupid.

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The WaPo reports (not paywalled) about an odd discovery of an old piece of wood that points to a possible way to sequester carbon:

A cheap, low-tech solution for storing carbon 

may be sitting in the dirt

Figuring out ways of locking carbon out of the atmosphere, such as by burying wood, is key to stalling the worst consequences of climate change

About 3,775 years old but it didn't rot!

A 3,775-year-old log unintentionally discovered under a farm in Canada may point to a deceptively simple method of locking climate-warming carbon out of the atmosphere for thousands of years, according to a study published Thursday.

“This accidental discovery really gave a critical data point,” said Ning Zeng, a University of Maryland climate scientist whose team unearthed the ancient chunk of wood.

“It’s a single data point,” he added, but it “provides the data point we need to really say under what conditions we can preserve wood for a thousand years or longer.”

But much of [the carbon in trees] quickly makes its way back into the air once insects, fungi and bacteria chew through leaves and other plant material. Even wood, the hardiest part of a tree, will succumb within a few decades to these decomposers.

What if that decay could be delayed? Under the right conditions, tons of wood could be buried underground in wood vaults, locking in a portion of human-generated CO₂ for potentially thousands of years. While other carbon-capture technologies rely on expensive and energy-intensive machines to extract CO₂, the tools for putting wood underground are simple: a tractor and a backhoe.

Radiocarbon dating revealed the log to be 3,775 years old, give or take a few decades. Comparing the old chunk of wood to a freshly cut piece of cedar showed the ancient log lost less than 5 percent of its carbon over the millennia.

The log was surrounded by stagnant, oxygen-deprived groundwater and covered by an impermeable layer of clay, preventing fungi and insects from consuming the wood. Lignin, a tough material that gives trees their strength, protected the wood’s carbohydrates from subterranean bacteria.  

The next step is to find prehistoric logs in other locations, to see how well other types of soil preserve wood.  

The researchers estimate buried wood can sequester up 10 billion tons of CO₂ per year, which is more than a quarter of annual global emissions from energy, according to the International Energy Agency.

One of the biggest challenges isn’t so much the supply of wood but rather the cost of transporting it to the right spots, Poisson said. “There’s probably a lot of unmerchantable wood right now that doesn’t have any market or doesn’t have any purpose.”

It's not clear if this can be done on a large scale. The cost of moving wood to burial spots is probably a deal killer for this idea. 

InfoWars and media ownership; Swing voters in swing states poll

One of the key differences between American pro-democracy and pro-authoritarianism factions, roughly Dems vs Repubs, is a major focus media on mass media ownership. Dems themselves, e.g., the neoliberal Bill Clinton, helped create the current disaster. Biden perpetuates it. 

After he got in power, DJT installed a plutocrat to head the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), Ajit Pai. Media ownership rules were changed to allow far more concentration of owner power in single markets for individual entities or families. Our authoritarian radical right supreme court stepped in and reinforced DJT deregulation that killed media ownership diversity. 

For example, the FCC repealed the Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule, which had prohibited a single entity from owning both a daily newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market. Also, the Radio/Television Cross-Ownership Rule was eliminated. That rule restricted the combined ownership of radio and television stations in the same market. So far, the Biden administration has not reversed those authoritarian rule changes, and the supreme court has reinforced them. It is not clear that Biden wants those rules changed.

Thom Hartmann comments on one aspect the critically important media ownership issue, talk radio: 

Radio Silence: How Progressives Lost the Airwaves

Inside the GOP's 30-year plan to dominate America’s talk radio system

After Ronald Reagan struck down the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, Republican money men got the memo. Whichever party controlled the most states would have a big edge in both the Senate (and thus control of the Supreme Court nominations) and the Electoral College, and most of the low- and medium-population states had relatively inexpensive media markets.

You could buy or lease radio stations for less than a party might spend over a four-year electoral cycle on advertising, so why not simply acquire a few hundred stations across a dozen or more states and program them with rightwing talk radio 24/7?

This became particularly easy after Bill Clinton signed the neoliberal Telecommunications Act of 1996 that ended limits on how many radio or TV stations a single corporation or billionaire could own. Within months of that bill passing into law, Clear Channel and other networks had gone from small regional groups to massive nationwide radio empires.

The strategy worked, and today there are over 1,500 rightwing radio stations in America, along with another 700 or so religious stations that regularly endorse Republican memes and candidates for office.

Right-wing talk radio has been integral to Republican strategy for decades. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich took control of the House of Representatives, he understood the power of talk radio.

The GOP hold on most of American radio seems pretty unshakable.

A few years ago, a billionaire acquired one of the largest networks of these stations (800+ stations) and a senator I’ve known for years invited him and me to meet in his office near the US Capitol. The Senator asked the billionaire — who then owned several hundred stations programming exclusively rightwing content — if he’d ever considered putting some progressive content on the air.

The billionaire leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, tented his fingers in front of his mouth, and then said, carefully but emphatically:

“I’ll never put anybody on my air who wants to raise my taxes.”

A few years earlier, I’d sat at lunch at a Talkers Magazine conference with a vice president of what is arguably the most influential of the rightwing radio station networks [Salem Media Group; family-themed content and conservative (authoritarian) values]; the company had started out as a bible publishing business and moved from there into radio and then into political radio.

I asked him if he’d consider putting a progressive show on any of his stations (they were all 100% conservative talk) and he bluntly told me it was “never going to happen” because, he said, “It’s impossible for a liberal to be a true Christian.”

Think about it — political campaigns will pay thousands for a minute of advertising, and find that to be so effective that they continue to buy ads year after year. If that minute can be so influential, how about a host — who’s built a relationship with his or her listeners — telling them dozens of times a day who they should vote for and why? You literally can’t buy promotion like that; you have to buy the station instead.

I have argued many times here that demagogic DFS (dark free speech) has been the single most effective weapon that American radical right authoritarianism has used in its decades-long war against democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. Ownership of mass media is a key component. Concentrated media ownership by radical right authoritarian individuals and businesses maximize DFS's power to deceive, trap and manipulate minds and the distorted realities those minds think they see.

From what I can tell, Bill Clinton was, and Joe Biden still is, on the wrong side of our pro-authoritarian federal media ownership policy. They blew it and betrayed us.

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A NYT article discusses recent poll results from swing voters in three swing states:

We define swing voters as the roughly 18 percent of likely voters who say they haven’t yet made a firm decision. Some describe themselves as undecided, while others say they’re leaning toward one candidate but open to changing their mind.

All the numbers in today’s newsletter come from a poll of three swing states — Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. But I’ve analyzed a similar question in a nationwide poll conducted by YouGov and The Economist, and the themes were similar.

Swing voters’ biggest concern about Trump, by far, is his temperament.

Is this poll more reassuring than troubling? I think it probably is, but that's certain. The 35% personality, 8% honesty, 7% threat to democracy, 5% ideology and 3% court cases amount to 58%. That's not an overwhelming majority. Presumably "ideology" and "threat to democracy" mostly refers implicitly to his authoritarianism, and maybe so does concern about his "personality."  

Other recent poll data is seemingly not as encouraging as this poll.

One has to wonder what the benefits of DJT policies are that Republicans cite as beneficial for them personally. A perplexity search indicated that Republicans commonly cite (i) the 2017 tax cut, (ii) pre-pandemic economic and job growth, (iii) energy independence policy, and (iv) deregulation with attendant reduced business costs and lower consumer prices. 

That search indicated that the perceived reality of some of the benefits are not clear. The 2017 tax cut added to the federal debt, so there was that downside. Before DJT was in office, the economy was on an upswing, so it is hard to know what influence he had on that. Evidence of energy policy and deregulation helping lower consumer prices ranges from non-existent to debated. In short, the claimed benefits may not have materialized as much for the average person as most of DJT's supporters presumably believe.

It still looks like the election is going to be very close in the electoral college. The outcome is not predictable at present.

Social science: Regarding the minds of DJT supporters

A fascinating NYT opinion/analysis writes about the disregard for truth and a basis in animus or hostility toward marginalized groups that drew ~14% of the American electorate early on in 2015-2106. According to the opinion, that disregard and animus now binds “roughly 43 to 45 percent of the electorate” to DJT today:

The Real Trump Mystery

The mystery of 2024: How is it possible that Donald Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the presidency despite all that voters now know about him? .... The litany of Trump’s liabilities is well known to the American electorate. His mendacity, duplicity, depravity, hypocrisy and venality are irrevocably imprinted on the psyches of American voters.

John Podhoretz, in a 2017 Commentary article, “Explaining Trump’s Charlottesville Behavior,” .... “Whose early support for Trump itself played a key role in leading others to take him seriously and help propel him into the nomination?” .... a conspiracy-oriented constituency with little regard for truth:

If there’s one thing politicians can feel in their marrow, even a non-pol pol like Trump, it’s who is in their base and what it is that binds the base to them. .... Trump found himself with 14 percent support in a month. Those early supporters had been primed to rally to him for a long time.”

I’m talking about Alex Jones and Infowars, the conspiracy-theory radio show/website on which Trump has appeared for years; the radio show has 2 million listeners a week, and Jones was said in 2011 to have a larger online presence than Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck.

I’m talking about American Media, the company that owns the National Enquirer, the Star, the Sun, and the Weekly World News run by Trump’s close friend David Pecker; the combined weekly circulation of its publications is well in excess of 2 million.

The pervasive denial of truth has, in turn, been crucial to Trump’s continued viability.

Partisan loyalty is crucial to Trump’s success. He has a base of support — roughly 43 to 45 percent of the electorate — that sticks with him through good and bad times.

One reason for this is what Yphtach Lelkes, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, calls the “crystallization” of the electorate. In an email, Lelkes explained what he meant:

Crystallization describes a world where people’s attitudes won’t be swayed, no matter what new information they get. Campaign dynamics do very little to move attitudes. Polarization is the engine of crystallization.

MAGA loyalists believe “the investigations against Trump are witch hunts and baseless.” Taking this logic a step further, “people think that the other side is dangerous and that we need someone willing to do whatever it takes to stop them. That is, they think they are protecting democracy by supporting Trump. Finally, in a polarized world, people value policy and partisan outcomes over democracy — they are willing to tolerate some authoritarianism to further their own political goals.”

The political scientists Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski and John V. Kane capture this phenomenon in their June 2021 paper “Activating Animus: the Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support.” .... “feelings of animosity toward Democratic groups do not predict favorability toward the Republican Party, Paul Ryan, or Mitch McConnell,” Mason, Wronski and Kane write. Instead, “Trump support is uniquely predicted by animosity toward marginalized groups in the United States.” .... Their conclusion amounts to a warning, even if it’s veiled in academic language:

This research reveals a wellspring of animus against marginalized groups in the United States that can be harnessed and activated for political gain. Trump’s unique ability to do so is not the only cause for normative concern.

Instead, we should take note that these attitudes exist across both parties and among nonpartisans. Though they may remain relatively latent when leaders and parties draw attention elsewhere, the right leader can activate these attitudes and fold them into voters’ political judgments.

I love it, the opinion refers to the “crystallization” of the electorate. I sometimes use crystallization to describe what DJT has been able to do and maintain ever since 2015. 

Even before DJT, many or most of his current acolytes had been primed for decades by authoritarian radical right animosity (bigotry, racism, hate, fear, intolerance). That bad state of mind was intentionally fomented by America's authoritarian radical elites and their right dark free speech Leviathan, e.g., Faux News, the GOP, Christian nationalist propagandists, elite American plutocrats, etc. 

This opinion assesses evidence that DJT's committed rank and file supporters are significantly different from the portion of the American population that (i) still mostly allows inconvenient truth to have some impact on belief and behavior, and (ii) does not harbor significant animosity toward marginalized groups.

I queried the Perplexity search engine about how it assessed the importance of truth and animosity toward marginalized groups in supporting DJT. It responded that both factors seemed to be important. My follow-up question referenced this NYT opinion piece. Perplexity then commented:

Based on the new information from the New York Times opinion piece, I would revise my assessment to emphasize the importance of animosity toward marginalized groups and disregard for inconvenient truths as key factors binding committed supporters to Trump.

Animosity and disregard for truth are not the only two factors in play, but it seems plausible that each is important. So maybe together the two are dominant.

Q1: Does the evidence presented here and other things known to constitute a convincing case that most of DJT's committed rank and file are bound to him more by (i) disregard for truth, and (ii) animosity toward marginalized groups than other factors alone or together, e.g., feelings of being disrespected, and fear of the Great White Replacement catastrophe (assuming one can meaningfully disentangle GWR fear from probably overlapping animosity toward marginalized groups)? 

Q2: On the basis of what is presented here and other things you know or believe, is it (i) unfair, (ii) inaccurate and/or (iii) counter-productive to refer to committed DJT rank and file supporters as MAGA or part of the MAGA movement, or are they otherwise unremarkable people like you or me but who just happen to support DJT?

Brass knuckles capitalism update; Plastics pollution update

The Guardian reports: 

Amazon, Tesla and Meta among world’s top companies 

undermining democracy – report

Some of the world’s largest companies have been accused of undermining democracy across the world by financially backing far-right political movements, funding and exacerbating the climate crisis, and violating trade union rights and human rights in a report published on Monday by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

Amazon, Tesla, Meta, ExxonMobil, Blackstone, Vanguard and Glencore are the corporations included in the report. The companies’ lobbying arms are attempting to shape global policy at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York City on 22 and 23 September.

At Amazon, the report notes the company’s size and role as the fifth largest employer in the world and the largest online retailer and cloud computing service, has had a profound impact on the industries and communities it operates within.

“The company has become notorious for its union busting and low wages on multiple continents, monopoly in e-commerce, egregious carbon emissions through its AWS data centers, corporate tax evasion, and lobbying at national and international level,” states the report.

The report cites Amazon’s high injury rates in the US, the company challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), its efforts in Canada to overturn labor law, the banning of Amazon lobbyists from the European parliament for refusing to attend hearings on worker violations, and refusal to negotiate with unions in Germany, among other cases. Amazon has also funded far-right political groups’ efforts to undermine women’s rights and antitrust legislation, and its retail website has been used by hate groups to raise money and sell products.

Simply put, capitalism, like theocracy, is inherently anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian. When capitalism is not reasonably regulated, elite capitalists have too much power. That power comes mostly at the expense of the public interest and government functions needed to protect it. Unfortunately, in pay-to-play politics, special interest money talks and democracy and the public interest get a kick in the pants.

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The WaPo reports (not paywalled) about the abysmal, decades-long state of affairs regarding the non-recyclability of plastics:

Is recycling beyond fixing? 

Here’s why California thinks so.

California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil says plastic recycling is broken. The oil giant agrees, but blames the state

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued ExxonMobil, claiming the oil and petrochemical giant had engaged “in a decades-long campaign of deception” about the effectiveness of recycling. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit seeks to hold the company responsible for the plastic pollution crisis. It argues that, since at least 1988, ExxonMobil has blanketed the state in marketing and advertising to convince people plastic is being recycled, making them more likely to buy it. This includes spreading misinformation about the efficacy of plastics recycling on social media, it alleges.

The amount of plastic being recycled in the United States today is a sliver of what is produced. Recent estimates suggest that only about 9 percent of this waste is recycled worldwide, while in America it’s about 5 to 6 percent.

Take, for instance, two common household plastics: an orange laundry detergent bottle and a clear squeezable ketchup bottle. They are made from different resins — a petroleum product that’s the main ingredient in plastics — are different colors and contain different chemicals. They can’t be combined and resold. The makeup of each product is so specific that even green and clear soda bottles made of No. 1 plastic cannot be recycled together, which is why the Coca-Cola Co. no longer packages Sprite in its iconic green container.

“Fundamentally, most plastics are not recyclable,” said Judith Enck, the president of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and a former regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator. “And you know who has known this for years? The companies that make and sell plastic.”

ExxonMobil responded to California’s lawsuit by alleging the state’s recycling system is broken. A spokesperson for the company said it had kept more than 60 million pounds of plastic waste out of landfills by turning it into reusable raw materials.

In the face of growing skepticism about plastic recycling, the industry has gone on the offensive. The Plastics Industry Association, a trade group, launched a $1 million campaign last year called “Recycling is Real.” Aimed at lawmakers and brands, the digital ads tried to bolster confidence in recycling.

The WaPo article also commented that an an international trade group of plastic recyclers said that as long as people use plastic products, recycling has merit. That is very much like DJT telling us he has "concepts of a plan" to replace Obamacare. It's pure insulting, morally rotted bullshit.

A person does have to marvel at the insulting arrogance of lying pollution profiteers like ExxonMobil. They foster plastics pollution but falsely claim recycling is real, while blaming government for the non-recyclability of plastics. Morally rotted, outrageous arrogance is a reasonable assessment. Capitalism's inherent lack of compassion for human welfare and the environment is on display.

Piles of plastic

The staggering fragility of American democracy: The Nebraska horror story

A terrifying NYT opinion (not paywalled) discusses the possibility that one person, Nebraska State Senator Mike McDonnell, who defected from the Democratic Party a few months ago, is standing in the Republican Party’s way of giving DJT the election if the closest electoral college scenario comes to pass:

A Leading Law Scholar Fears We’re Lurching Toward Secession

Here’s how rickety our constitutional system has become: The fate of the 2024 election could hang on the integrity of a single Republican state senator in Nebraska.

Almost all states use a winner-take-all system to apportion their presidential electors, but Nebraska and Maine award some electors by congressional district. In 2020, Joe Biden won one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes, and Donald Trump won one elector from rural Maine. This year Kamala Harris’s clearest path to victory is to take the so-called blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, plus one electoral vote in Nebraska.

This year, Republicans waited until it was too late for Maine to change its rules before starting a push to change them in Nebraska. If they succeeded and Harris held the blue wall but lost the other swing states, there would be a tie in the Electoral College. For the first time in 200 years, the election would go to the House, where each state delegation would get one vote and Trump would almost certainly be installed as president.

So far, one man, State Senator Mike McDonnell, who defected from the Democratic Party this spring, is standing in the Republican Party’s way. We should all be grateful for his courage. But the pressure on him from his new party will be intense, and he can still change his mind in the coming weeks.

Whether or not McDonnell remains steadfast, this is a preposterous way to run a purportedly democratic superpower. The Electoral College — created in part, as the scholar Akhil Reed Amar has shown, to protect slavery — has already given us two presidents in the 21st century who lost the popular vote, and it continues to warp our politics. It is one reason Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the U.C. Berkeley School of Law and an eminent legal scholar, has come to despair of the Constitution he’s devoted much of his life to. “I believe that if the problems with the Constitution are not fixed — and if the country stays on its current path — we are heading to serious efforts at secession,” he writes in his bracing new book, “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”

To me, the main point is this: this is a preposterous way to run a purportedly democratic superpower. 

Chemerinsky's concern about secession is too far out in time to be a serious worry for me at least. The possibility of a constitutional convention doing anything significant or at all is very low because 38 states (75%: 37.5 gets rounded up to 38) would need to ratify it. That is politically just about impossible, if not actually impossible. 

So, join with me and let's fret about the crappy way we run our democracy, which is on the verge of falling to some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism. Just one yahoo in Nebraska could drag us into the brutality and cruelty of DJT and MAGA in control. Let's hope that probably low-probability Nebraska scenario does not come to pass.

What, me worry? Nah!

America's fine-tuned electoral

system works just fine  /s

A sampling of authoritarian radical right reality & thinking

Dissident Politics is exposed to too little MAGA reality and thinking. To broaden our horizons a bit, here is some heavy duty MAGA-ology:

Progressives Thrive on Deceit

To remake America, progressives have centered on a strategy of rewriting history, distorting current events, changing language, and using false allegations of disinformation, malinformation (facts progressives believe are presented out of context), and racism to censor and suppress centrists and conservatives.

By undermining confidence in American values, progressives have considerably advanced their efforts. They have controlled the White House and at least one House of Congress for 12 of the last 16 years, and the Supreme Court for nearly all of the last 70 years. Almost all major media outlets and reporters are in lockstep with progressive goals, lies, and omissions. Most report only about events and views that benefit the progressive agenda, and mischaracterize or suppress news, information, and opinions that may impede it. Progressives also control most federal agencies, many state agencies, leading universities, school boards, professional organizations such as the American Medical Association and the American Bar Association, most leading think tanks, and many corporate boards.

As the COVID pandemic raged, progressives spoke hopefully of a new world order in which experts would tell us how to live. Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, along with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, often refer to this chaos as the “rules-based international order.” They and other progressives, including Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, see the U.S. as just one among many countries. That is why they oppose immigration controls, support global compacts, subordinate the United States to the United Nations, and believe the U.S. can use economic or military power only when supported by an international coalition.

In a recent article for RealClearPolicy[1] about progressives’ crude ad hominem attacks on conservatives, it is explained that progressive dogma is a fierce,
culturally Marxist philosophy that:
(1) demands all policies, resources, and opportunities be allocated in accordance with a benighted view of oppressors and victims centered on race, sex, and sexual orientation;
(2) believes children are wards of the state to be indoctrinated by educators, while physically cared for by parents;
(3) represses religion for being what Karl Marx described as “the opium of the people;” and
(4) places a green agenda, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the rights of criminals above free speech and assembly, the judicial process, and rights of petition. Progressives deny that ISIS and Hamas are terrorists, oppose Israel’s right of defense because Jews are “oppressors,” and believe children may select irreversible gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.

Eliminating or distorting teaching about Western civilization, American exceptionalism, and liberty leaves students uninformed about America’s unique story. An Echelon Insights poll highlights the cumulative impact of this indoctrination. Sixty-six percent of high schoolers viewed the U.S. as exceptional and unique, compared to 47% of college students; 63% of high-schoolers were proud of the U.S., compared to 40% of college students; and 58% of high-schoolers were patriotic, compared to just 35% of college students.

Concurrently, progressives are remaking the acceptable lexicon. They corrupt language and norms to deprive us of the ability to express nuance and understand distinctions.

Leading institutions, including government agencies, professional organizations, and universities, proclaim that our language is replete with hidden racism and genderism that must be cleansed with a new vocabulary featuring ideologically-laden phrases. Among the words that trouble the American Medical Association are “disadvantaged,” “equality,” and “disparities.” The politically acceptable terms are “historically and intentionally excluded,” “equity,” and “inequities.” Similarly, “ex-con” or “felon” are to be replaced with “returning citizen” or “persons with a history of incarceration,” and “fairness” with “social justice.”

“Illegal alien,” the term used in federal law for those who enter the U.S. without proper visas or overstay their visas, first became “undocumented alien” and then “non-citizens,” who somehow deserve all benefits to which citizens are entitled.

As progressives erase and change language, history, and values to create a foundation to change America’s way of life, they also corruptly fabricate, suppress, and misrepresent recent and current events to confuse voters, shield accountability for their failures, and disparage their opponents. The following is a list of recent political hoaxes promoted by progressive elected officials, bureaucrats, and major national media (my thanks to Breitbart News for identifying many of these):

Russia Collusion Hoax
Hunter Biden’s Laptop Is Russian Disinformation Hoax
Biden Is Not Cognitively Impaired Hoax
The Biden-Harris Administration Is Not Censoring Social Media Hoax
Biden Is Not a Crook Hoax
Project 2025 Hoax
Hands Up, Don’t Shoot Hoax
Jussie Smollett Hoax
Covington KKK Kids Hoax
Very Fine People Hoax
Drinking Bleach Hoax
Seven-Hour Gap Hoax
Russian Bounties to Taliban Hoax
Trump Trashes Troops Hoax
Policemen Killed on January 6 Protest Hoax
Rittenhouse Hoax
Eating While Black Hoax
Border Agents Whipping Illegals Hoax
NASCAR Noose Hoax
The Georgia Jim Crow 2.0 Hoax
COVID Lab Leak Theory Is Racist Hoax
Biden Will Never Ban Gas Stoves Hoax
COVID Deaths are Overcounted Is a Conspiracy Theory Hoax
Mass Graves of Native Children in Canada Hoax
Hamas Hospital Hoax
The Alfa Bank Hoax

Hiding Biden’s cognitive impairment took dozens, if not hundreds, of staff, family, elected officials, and reporters. That hoax was revealed only when replacing Biden became imperative to defeat Trump. In lockstep, the progressive media complex abandoned its cover-up of Biden’s impairment and called for his replacement.

Harris’s and Tim Walz’s campaign became the second act of this hoax. With few exceptions, they refuse to discuss their records or beliefs, and falsely claim to have changed both. They willfully misstate Trump’s positions and falsely attribute to him sponsorship of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (yet another hoax, as even USA Today and CNN have acknowledged).

From what I can tell, that is very likely very close how most of MAGA sees the situation. In all of that, one can see some nuggets of truth, along with some other things. For example, one could consider Dem elites hiding Biden's cognitive situation a hoax. I do, but that does not lead me to support DJT or his corrupt authoritarianism. Despite labeling the bad guys here progressives, this is probably how most of the MAGA rank and file sees most everyone other than themselves. Centrists, the center-right, independents, pragmatic rationalists and other non-MAGA, but anti-MAGA folk seem to be either implicitly lumped in, or ignored. The undeniable authoritarianism and staggering corruption of DJT and his MAGA are flat out denied or ignored.

With that kind of "reality" and "reasoning", it is easy to see why so many minds stay trapped in MAGA's version of reality and reason. There is no good will in it. No accounting for disagreement. Can you feel the pull of persuasion in it if you just let go and ride the emotional appeal, the facts be damned? I can definitely feel it.

Qs: Is it good or at least useful to be occasionally exposed to how MAGA presents its version of reality and reason, e.g., so that the power and appeal of its dark free speech can be felt in one's guts? Or, are Germaine's guts full of crappage and there is little or nothing one can feel in, or learn from, how the radical right authoritarian propaganda Leviathan presents its arguments, reasoning and alleged facts?

Footnote:

1.  The RCP article referred to above includes these comments:

Both parties are guilty of incivility, hyperbole, hubris, and engendering turmoil. But, there is a binary choice in what this election means for freedom, prosperity, and security.

To deflect from their autocratic dogma and failures, including massive illegal immigration, compounding inflation, lawless prosecutors, spiraling crime, a two-tiered justice system, rampant racism, and international wars, progressives falsely attack Trump as an existential threat to democracy.

The faux Russian collusion conspiracy, defunding police, delegitimizing conservative justices, and claims that Republicans are threats to democracy is the sophistry of leftists who despise traditional values, family, faith, equal opportunity, individual rights, Western culture, industriousness, and performance. As the ultimate centralization of authority, the far left intelligentsia seeks a liberal, rules-based international order that overrides national sovereignty.

The RCP article equates the far left intelligentsia with the mostly center to center-right politics and policy of dominant mainstream Democratic politics. In the real world, the far left is socialist, not centrist to center-right capitalist. Support for abortion and reasonable gun safety laws is centrist, and maybe also socialist, but that does not negate the possibility that centrism or even center rightism and socialism sometimes overlap. What decades of radical right dark free speech has successfully done is drag the Overton Window so far to the right that most of the MAGA rank and file now think of the center right and center as far left progressives, i.e., socialists or communists. That's the power of dark free speech.

Overton Window