Authoritarian Republican legal wars are just as radical, irrational and bad faith as its political wars

Vanity Fair writes:

When [Trump] Judge Aileen Cannon [a/k/a/ Loose Cannon] granted Donald Trump’s request for a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI in August, blocking prosecutors from using those documents in their investigation until that review was complete, the legal community did not hold back in its assessment of the decision. “To any lawyer with serious federal criminal court experience who is being honest, this ruling is laughably bad, and the written justification is even flimsier,” Samuel Buell, a Duke University law professor, told The New York Times. Judge Cannon’s decision “was utterly lawless. She has disgraced her position as an Article III judge,” constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe tweeted. “This special master opinion is so bad it’s hard to know where to begin,” wrote former US acting solicitor general Neal Katyal. “Frankly, any of my first year law students would have written a better opinion.”

Cannon’s bizarre decision was largely based on the (very flawed) thinking that because some of Trump’s personal items were seized along with the large volume of classified material, the DOJ could no longer, for the time being, use said classified material in its criminal investigation. Which is a lot like someone saying a murder investigation couldn’t move forward because the police took one of the suspect’s favorite T-shirts, in addition to a knife with the victim’s blood on it, when they searched his house. Obviously, this logic makes zero sense, which is why the Department of Justice is giving Cannon a few days to come to her senses. 

Vanity Fair quotes Politico on the possibility that Loose Cannon would reverse her corrupt, crackpot ruling:

The offer to Cannon presents her with a difficult choice. Her opinion was criticized for failing to fully grapple with the government’s argument that Trump doesn’t own the classified documents he stored at Mar-a-Lago. She lumped all of the seized property together as potentially Trump’s, and gave enormous weight to the argument that any of the documents seized could potentially be subject to privilege claims. She was essentially saying that DOJ couldn’t be trusted and that the special master should sort things out.

From what we’ve seen so far, our bet is that Cannon doesn’t accept this deal outright. Doing so would require her to reverse arguments that she’s already made about potential privilege claims and her (widely criticized) position that Trump could suffer irreparable harm from the investigation itself.

The Republican war is fully engaged 

Let’s face it. The Republican Party autocrat-kleptocrat-theocrat assault on democracy, inconvenient truth, inconvenient reasoning, the rule of law and civil liberties are just as intense, bad faith, mendacious and morally corrupt as its political and social attacks. The war is now fully engaged on all major fronts by the entire GOP.

That most rank and file Republicans see little or none of this and support with their votes it is now a major part of the threat. It used to be the elites were leading the charge and were the major threat. But now that all the propaganda, lies, crackpottery and slanders have sunk in, the rank and file is fully engaged. Evidence? There’s this analysis from FiveThirtyEight, for example:

60 Percent Of Americans Will Have An Election Denier On The Ballot This Fall

There are a lot of election deniers on the ballot. Out of 540 total Republican nominees running for office, we found 199 who FULLY DENIED the legitimacy of the 2020 election. These candidates either clearly stated that the election was stolen from Trump or took legal action to overturn the results, such as voting not to certify election results or joining lawsuits that sought to overturn the election.

.... 118 election deniers and eight election doubters have at least a 95 percent chance of winning.

Republican Party election denier map

Election denial = radical right

autocrat-kleptocrat-theocrat

Proof...

Let’s examine the concept of “proof” with some specific, really difficult philosophical questions:

1. Define proof in your own words.
2. Is proof a variable (meaning “not consistent or having a fixed pattern”)?  If no, not a variable, why not? If yes, a variable, how so?
3. What kind of evidence does it take to prove something (categorical, circumstantial, quantitative, observable, repeatable, unfailing, a combination, etc.)?
4. How much evidence does it take to prove something? (50.0001%, 99%,100%)

Debate these questions among your fellow posters.

Some observers’ thoughts on America’s broken society

The New York Times published a couple of fairly long, complicated articles on this issue. These observations are not new, but they come from thoughtful people who are carefully watching what America is going through. The first article focuses on observations of a long time war correspondent Luke Mogelson, a journalist for The New Yorker. Mogelson sees deep fear grounded mostly in mirages as a major polarizing force in American politics and society. He is incredulous that mere vaporware (propaganda, lies, slanders, etc.) can foment such intense emotion and social damage. The NYT writes:

Living in Paris in the spring of 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, he was jarred by photos of armed lockdown protesters in Michigan. “The images of men in desert camo, flak jackets and ammo vests, carrying military-style carbines through American cities, portrayed a country I no longer recognized,” he writes in his new book, “The Storm Is Here: An American Crucible.”

So Mogelson flew back to the United States, where he reported on months of turmoil leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection. “I had never doubted that the U.S., under the wrong circumstances, could succumb to spiraling cycles of violence as intractable as any I’d seen abroad,” he writes. “But what were those circumstances?”

I wanted to know whether Mogelson, who has witnessed real war, sees auguries of it here. The answer is complicated. At one point he writes, “Increasing talk on both the left and the right about the possibility of civil war left me somewhat bemused.” At the same time, he draws trenchant comparisons between ISIS in Syria and certain parts of the American right. And he recognizes something familiar in the growing sense among Americans of many different political persuasions that their government can’t protect them.

“This breakdown of confidence in sources of stability long taken for granted intimated the kind of social fracturing I’d covered overseas,” he writes.

“Every civil conflict that I’ve covered has been rooted in real injury and grievance,” he said. “In Iraq, for example, I was spending time with soldiers who had the scars to prove their suffering at the hands of the people they were fighting against.”

In America, by contrast, the right’s enemies tend to be either wild exaggerations or outright fantasies — antifa supersoldiers, totalitarian globalists, satanic pedophiles. “Whether or not the very real fear of these very unreal threats would be enough to sustain a hot conflict and people killing and dying for those projections of their own paranoias, I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never seen that.”  

“There’s a difference between the complexities of those long-running conflicts [Iraq, Syria, Liberia, etc.], and how certain people become radicalized in those environments, and what we have in the U.S., which would just be large-scale violence based from the get-go on lies,” he said.

The second article focuses on the effect that social media algorithms have on many Americans. The author finds the same thing about the neuroscience of morality that I came to see. Simply put, we can’t explain morality yet. That’s true despite billionaire blowhards (Zuckerberg, Thiel) arrogantly telling us they know how to fix what ails us, while actually making us more polarized and sicker. The gist of the article is that the algorithms feed into and amplify feelings of moral outrage, hate and fear. That generates revenue and profit.

[Max] Fisher, a New York Times journalist who has reported on horrific violence in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, offers firsthand accounts from each side of a global conflict, focusing on the role Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube play in fomenting genocidal hate. Alongside descriptions of stomach-churning brutality, he details the viral disinformation that feeds it, the invented accusations, often against minorities, of espionage, murder, rape and pedophilia. But he’s careful not to assume causality where there may be mere correlation. [Fisher's] book explores deeply the question of whether specific features of social media are truly responsible for conjuring mass fear and anger.

The enjoyment of moral outrage is one of the key sentiments Fisher sees being exploited by algorithms devised by Google (for YouTube) and Meta (for Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), which discovered they could monetize this impulse by having their algorithms promote hyperpartisanship. Divisiveness drives engagement, which in turn drives advertising revenues.  

The lesson of Fisher’s book is surely that we don’t need more celestial inspirations for ambitious projects of human transformation. Rather, we need to make individual members of societies resistant to such efforts. We have the means to do so if the political will is strong enough, and if our political system hasn’t yet been wrecked by the chaos machine.  

ARE YOU OBSESSED WITH POLITICS?

 I haven't been. I admit it. Doesn't mean I don't care. Or that I don't have a political philosophy. I just don't obsess over politics.

Study: Up to 80% of Americans follow politics casually or not at all

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/study-up-to-80-of-americans-follow-politics-casually-or-not-at-all

Somewhat dated, from 2020, but an excerpt:

Are you obsessed with politics? Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan, associate professors of political science at Stony Brook University have been studying the ways in which people pay attention to politics and how it may impact their political views and behavior.

They found that the other divide, rather than Democrats and Republicans, is also between those who eat, sleep and breathe politics versus the people who pay attention but don’t make politics an essential part of their lives.

So, found something more up to date. From the same philosophical view. A much longer read, just so you know:

JANUARY 26, 2022

Do Democrats and Republicans hate each other? Perhaps that only applies to a small proportion of Americans, but they get all the attention because they are the loudest, regularly posting on social media. Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan find that journalists overestimate polarization because they hear from the politically obsessed, who co-inhabit bubbles where politics is always central. For most Americans, partisanship is a relatively unimportant identity. What looks like dislike for the other party is actually disdain for politicians and people who are constantly talking about politics.

We’ve heard that Americans are strongly polarized with Democrats and Republicans increasingly disliking one another. But what if that only explains a small proportion of the population that gets all the attention because they are the loudest, posting on social media, and talking about politics? What if what looks like dislike for the other party is more like anger at politicians, or aversion to people who make politics central to their lives?

The rest of it:

https://www.niskanencenter.org/u-s-politics-the-hyper-involved-vs-the-disengaged/

From YOUR own personal experience, regardless of what the studies say, do you agree with the premise? That despite the loudest and most engaged generating all the headlines, most "Americans follow politics casually or not at all?"

Footnote: I have now moved to Canada, but I have in fact become more worried about the direction the U.S. is taking, I see a real danger in the political divide, loss of civility, and the rise of nationalism. But I am an optimist by nature, so will be keeping a hopeful but wary eye on events as they unfold. 

Another urgent climate change warning: It's time again to place blame where it is due -- The Republican Party

The New York Times writes:

Failure to Slow Warming Will Set Off Climate ‘Tipping Points,’ Scientists Say

As global warming passes certain limits, dire changes will probably become irreversible, the researchers said, including the loss of polar ice sheets and the death of coral reefs.

Failure to limit global warming to the targets set by international accords will most likely set off several climate “tipping points,” a team of scientists said on Thursday, with irreversible effects including the collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, abrupt thawing of Arctic permafrost and the death of coral reefs.

The researchers said that even at the current level of warming, about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, some of these self-sustaining changes might have already begun. But if warming reached above 1.5 degrees Celsius, the more ambitious of two targets set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, the changes would become much more certain.

And at the higher Paris target, 2 degrees Celsius, even more tipping points would likely be set off, including the loss of mountain glaciers and the collapse of a system of deep mixing of water in the North Atlantic.

The changes would have significant, long-term effects on life on Earth. The collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, for example, would lead to unrelenting sea level rise, measured in feet, not inches, over centuries. The thawing of permafrost would release more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, hindering efforts to limit warming. A shutdown of ocean mixing in the North Atlantic could affect global temperatures and bring more extreme weather to Europe.

Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and one of the researchers, said the team had “come to the very dire conclusion that 1.5 degrees Celsius is a threshold” beyond which some of these effects would start. That makes it all the more imperative, he and others said, for nations to quickly and drastically cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases to curb global warming.

The research is in line with recent assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of experts convened by the United Nations, that beyond 1.5 degrees of warming, the threats of climate change grow considerably.

Let the blame game commence

Who or what deserves the most blame? The human species is part of it, for sure. That is fact, despite cynical, lying Republican politicians who to this day still claim to be unsure that humans have much or anything to do with it. Beginning in the 1980s (maybe earlier), the Republican Party decided that it would use its power to protect polluters. It has been successful. Polluters and their profits have been protected. 

Of course, there are the major pro-pollution sectors of the economy, oil, coal, gas, chemicals, etc. At least since the 1970s, Exxon-Mobile and its ilk have successfully used a sophisticated, well-funded three-pronged propaganda program, deny, distort, delay, to successfully block nearly all serious efforts to deal with climate change. The pro-pollution propaganda program imitated the successful pro-lung cancer sector's deny, distort, delay propaganda program. That effort protected cigarette sales and profits for decades. It still does today to some extent.  

The pro-pollution sector funds politicians, including corrupt ones like Joe Manchin. Those bought politicians protect the polluters from regulation or taxes, allowing maximum profit from polluting to trickle up to the top.

So, how to apportion blame, or credit if you like what is happening with the climate?

Candidates for blame or credit:

Republican Party 

The pro-pollution sector 

Democratic Party 

The radical right crackpot and lies media, e.g., Faux News 

The mainstream media 

Voters and non-voters  

The rest of the business community

Public relations (professional propaganda) firms

Christian churches

Everything and everyone else

As I sit here writing this in San Diego, the city is in grip of the longest heat wave since I moved here about 25 years ago. Not only is it hot and quite humid, the city is waiting for the arrival of a troipcal storm (Hurricane Kay?) that is slowly moving up the Baja coast. It is anticipated to dump a lot of rain somewhere here in the Southwest. Waiting for a hurricane in San Diego is a first for me, if that is what the storm turns out to be. But I do look forward to whatever it turns out to be if it dumps a lot of rain on the city and county, but without tearing the solar panels off the roof of our house. 

Now, with that screed out of the way, and it felt good, I feel like this for an assessment of blame, not credit:

Republican Party ~30%

The pro-pollution sector ~20%

Democratic Party ~10%

The radical right crackpot and lies media, e.g., Faux News ~10%

The mainstream media ~5%

Voters and non-voters ~5%

The rest of the business community ~5%

Public relations (professional propaganda) firms 5%

Christian churches ~5%

Everything and everyone else ~5%

That feels about right. I hope the storm or hurricane or whatever just gently dumps water on us.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/?cpac 

Iraq is falling apart

Iraq is becoming, or has become, a failed state. Some warned before the 2nd Iraq war that if the US overthrew Saddam Hussein, it would unleash forces and violence that the state could not contain. Those warnings have come to pass. The New York Times writes:

Politicians have failed to form a new government nearly a year after the last elections. Baghdad just saw its worst militia clashes in years. And despite vast oil wealth, the state can’t provide basic services.

.... apparent prosperity in parts of Baghdad belies what many Iraqi officials and citizens see as the crumbling foundation of the state — an oil-rich Middle Eastern country that the United States had intended to be free and democratic when it led an invasion 19 years ago to topple the dictator Saddam Hussein.

After the invasion, Iraq’s long-sidelined Shiite Muslim majority came to dominate government, and the power struggle between Shiite and Sunni political groups fueled a sectarian war. Now, in a dangerous threat to the country’s already tenuous stability, rival Shiite armed groups, the most powerful among them tied to neighboring Iran, are fighting each other, and are beyond the control of the central government.

“Internally, externally, at the political level and at the security level, Iraq is now a failed state,” said Saad Eskander, an Iraqi historian. “The Iraqi state cannot project its authority over its territory or its people.”

Iraq’s weaknesses once again came into sharp relief last week when a stalemate over forming a new government — almost a year after the last elections — exploded into violence in the heart of the capital.

Followers of the influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stormed the heavily guarded Green Zone in an antigovernment protest after Mr. Sadr announced he was withdrawing from politics. Then rival pro-Iranian Shiite paramilitary fighters on the public payroll began shooting at the protesters, and armed members of a Sadr militia emerged to fight them.

Ordered by the prime minister not to shoot at the demonstrators, government security forces were largely sidelined while the rival militias fought it out. After two days of fighting killed 34 people, Mr. Sadr ordered his followers to withdraw from the Green Zone, restoring an uneasy calm.  

Last month, the country’s respected finance minister, Ali Allawi, resigned with a stark warning that staggering levels of corruption were draining Iraqi resources and posed an existential threat.

“Vast underground networks of senior officials, corrupt businessmen and politicians operate in the shadows to dominate entire sectors of the economy and siphon off literally billions of dollars from the public purse,” Mr. Allawi wrote in his resignation letter to the prime minister. “This vast octopus of corruption and deceit has reached into every sector of the country’s economy and institutions: It must be dismantled at all costs if this country is to survive.”

As usual for that part of the world, corruption is rampant and endemic. Corruption is a nation killer, and arguably a potential civilization killer. What can save Iraq? Maybe the rise of a new dictator, just as brutal as Hussein, might do the trick. Democracy sure doesn't seem to be up to the task.

 

How the poor folks live

(no air conditioning)

Raw sewage flows down the street