An Early Coronavirus Post-Mortem

The Washington Post writes:

“President Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat, was slow to move and has delivered mixed messages to the nation. The federal bureaucracy bungled rapid production of tests for the virus. Stockpiles of crucial medical materials were limited and supply lines cumbersome. States and hospitals were plunged into life-and-death competition with one another. 

When the public looked to government for help, government sometimes looked helpless or frozen or contradictory — and not for the first time. 

The country and its leaders were caught off guard when terrorists on hijacked airplanes attacked the homeland on Sept. 11, 2001. The financial crisis of 2008, which turned into a deep recession, forced drastic, unprecedented action by a government struggling to keep pace with the economic wreckage. The devastation from Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 exposed serious gaps in the government’s disaster response and emergency management systems. 

‘We always wait for the crisis to happen,’ said Leon Panetta, who served in government as secretary of defense, director of the CIA, White House chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the House. ‘I know the human failings we’re dealing with, but the responsibility of people elected to these jobs is to make sure we are not caught unawares.’ 

In interviews over the past two weeks, senior officials from administrations of both parties, many with firsthand experience in dealing with major crises, suggest that the president and his administration have fallen short of nearly every standard a government should try to meet. 

Leadership is important, and President Trump will have on his record what he did and didn’t do in the early stages of this particular crisis. But the problems go far broader and deeper than what a president does. Lack of planning and preparation contribute, but so too does bureaucratic inertia as well as fear among career officials of taking risks. Turnover in personnel robs government of historical knowledge and expertise. The process of policymaking-on-the-fly is less robust than it once was. Politics, too, gets in the way. 

Long ago, this was far less the case, a time when the United States projected competence and confidence around the globe, said Philip Zelikow, a professor at the University of Virginia who served in five administrations and was executive director of the 9/11 Commission. 

‘America had the reputation of being non-ideological, super pragmatic, problem solvers, par excellence,’ he said. ‘This image of the United States was an earned image, of people seeing America do almost a wondrous series of things. . . . We became known as the can-do country. If you contrast that with the image of the U.S. today, it’s kind of depressing.’”

The article goes on at length to explain some key events the Bush and Obama administrations faced and how the handoff of power to the president was handled. One weakness of the current administration that WaPo discusses was its refusal to appoint personnel to key positions and indifference to professional competence. WaPo comments that there are “scores” of unfilled vacancies in critical positions. Those positions tend to operate independently of a president simply because of the size and complexity of operations needed for a competent federal response.

BRAIN TEASER

YEAH, I posted this on my Forum too, but what the Hell, it is Sunday, time for something off politics:

 Diljit Dosanjh's Brainteaser. Can You Solve It?

The answer, for those who need it, is here:

https://www.republicworld.com/entertainment-news/bollywood-news/diljit-dosanjhs-post-touches-upon-perks-of-quarantine.html

Debating Positively and Negatively

I'd like to share some observations about debate, and start with two terms I will call "debating positively" and "debating negatively"

First of all I'll cover what they're not. Positive is typically associated with good. Negative is usually associated with bad. Forget that. That's not how I am using them here. 

It's like positive and negative space:

To debate positively means to construct an argument.

To debate negatively means to deconstruct and critique an argument.

Make sense?

An effective application of debate requires the presence of both. You must build and defend your case, and critique the other party's position to be successful, logical and honest.

I'd hope the reasons might be obvious so I'd like to discuss an anti-pattern - a form of behavior that is a red flag. In this case it's an indication that you or your opponent's argument is shaky.

Debating negatively is safer territory. If you're having trouble defending your position it's easier to attack the other person's position. If you find you are only arguing in the negative it's entirely likely that you are retreating (even if you're not mindful of it) because you can't make or defend your case. The same goes for your opponent.

It's very common, so be on the lookout.

Democracy, the Rule of Law and Competence are Directly Threatened

“Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” -- former president Richard Nixon



For roughly the last 18 months or thereabouts, I've been explicitly arguing that institutions or values like democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties are under a serious threat by the president and the Trump Party (formerly the GOP).

Attacks on democracy

Attacks on democracy are clear and undeniable in view of Trump Party efforts in a number of states to suppress democratic voters. The president made this strategic goal clear in the last week in comments he made to Fox and Friends about the Trump Party having to block democratic efforts to protect universal voting rights. Salon described that attack on democracy like this: “Trump admits ‘You'd never have a Republican elected in this country again if voting access [was to be] expanded: ‘The things they had in there were crazy,’ Trump said of the voter protection and expansion proposals in the bill. ‘They had things—levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again.’”

The situation could not be clearer. All that the president and his enablers can do is dismiss such criticism as fake news promulgated by Trump opponents, democrats and ‘the enemy of the people’ press. Most of the president’s supporters presumably see it that way for the most part, otherwise one would presume that most of them would no longer be supporters. However, given how authoritarian many conservatives and populists appear to be, maybe that assumption is false. Maybe many or most of the president’s supporters consciously approve of single party rule and want to suppress opposition voting.

Attacks on the rule of law, government accountability and competence

Attacks on the rule of law, government accountability and competence are are clear and undeniable in view of, for example, the president’s efforts to purge the entire federal government of employees who he deems to be disloyal and in how the attorney general is shielding the president from the rule of law. The president is replacing competent employees with corrupt yes-goons who will use federal prerogatives and the law to attack political opponents, while shielding the president. A recent high-profile example of the ongoing purge has surfaced.

Politico reports that the president has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson. Atkinson was the federal employee who alerted Congress last September about an “urgent” complaint he received from an intelligence official involving the president’s communications with Ukraine’s president. That set off the House investigations that ended up with impeachment of the president. The president now has his revenge for Atkinson doing exactly what his job required.

Other sources have reported on the president’s vengeance and attendant purge of ‘disloyal’ employees. For example, The Hill writes:

“Recent reports from Axios and Government Executive, and even the words of the president’s own spokesperson on Fox News, confirm that President Trump has tapped a 29-year-old former body man who was fired by then-chief of staff John Kelly to lead a governmentwide effort to purge federal employees who are not sufficiently loyal to the president. All this on the heels of the already-near-total ouster of career officials who testified during the impeachment inquiry. 

These actions will plunge American’s federal government back into a system of prosaic corruption, sleaze and dishonesty. It will make it more difficult – if not impossible – for whistleblowers who have identified waste, fraud or abuse to come forward and inform the American public. And, finally, it will make it intolerably challenging for the federal government to marshal credibility, truth, facts and science to address global or national crises like a pandemic.”

The view that Attorney General William Barr holds that the role of the AG is to protect the president from the rule of law is well known, except of course for people who deny that. So is the president's explicitly stated belief that the role of the AG is to protect the president from the rule of law: “I don't want to get into loyalty, but I will tell you that, I will say this: Holder protected President Obama. Totally protected him. When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I'll be honest.”

The president is explicit that he respects an AG who protects a president from the rule of law. And despite his false claim, the president very much wants to ‘get into loyalty’. He wants to get into loyalty with real vengeance in mind.[1] Once again, the situation could not be clearer. All that the president and his enablers can do is dismiss such criticism as fake news promulgated by the president’s opponents, democrats and ‘the enemy of the people’ press. Most of his rank and file supporters presumably see the situation mostly as the president and his enablers falsely tell them it is.

It is reasonable to think that the people who will replace the fired employees will work hard to protect the president, while they will do their jobs when it means attacking political opposition. That is a sign of tyranny and an impotent rule of law.

Conclusion

Given the facts, one can defensibly argue that we are now clearly and quickly moving toward some sort of an incompetent, kleptocratic (corrupt) tyranny-oligarchy, probably tinged with a vengeful Christian moral self-righteousness. I've been making that claim for at least the last 18 months or so. Even during the 2016 campaign, the president’s authoritarian proclivity was quite clear. But early on, the thought was to hope that competent advisors and federal employees would blunt that. That was a false hope. As time passes and evidence continues to accumulate, a belief that America is headed toward a vicious kleptocratic authoritarianism is constantly reinforced.

Democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law are in real jeopardy. Most Trump supporters (~97% ?) are mostly or completely unaware of what is happening right in front of their eyes. Once again, human cognitive biology and social (tribal) behavior is undeniable and on display for all who can see. For those who cannot see, this is literally fake news spread by opponents of the president, the enemy of the people press and/or democrats.


Footnote:
1. The president is clear that he sees vengeance as a way of life. He takes that seriously.