Yea or nay?

I stumbled across this video this morning and was really taken by it.  I’m not in the habit of hero-worship anymore, like in my younger days, but Steve Schmidt says this so well (as usual) that I felt it was worthy of an OP here on DisPol.

So, if you have 7-8 minutes to spare (the video is really quite captivating, but you only need to see the first half to get the gist), I think it’s well worth the view. 

Some important points that were made:

- Leadership is a character test

- It should be tempered with a sense of idealism

- The candidate must be fearless about losing

- They must believe in something

- Leadership cannot be ceded to the craziest elements of a society who should be institutionalized

- A leader must be honest, including telling people about  inconvenient truths

________

After viewing, here are the questions:

Q1: Do you disagree with any of Steve’s comments?

Q2: What would you add to Steve’s comments?

Q3: Do you believe there are any potential POTUS prospects that meet the requirements that Steve sees as necessary?  If yes, who would that be?

Thanks for chiming in.

News bits: About the persistence of poverty; Anti-woke is pro-discrimination, anti-democracy

Sociologist Matthew Desmond has studied the sources of persistent poverty and finds that insufficient spending is an important root cause. He argues the evidence points to an imbalance of power between poor people and those who are not poor. It is even more important than diversion of welfare dollars by states for non-welfare spending.  Desmond writes for the NYT Magazine:  

A fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. But this does not fully solve the puzzle of why poverty has been so stubbornly persistent, .... [isn’t that some kind of fraud?]

There are, it would seem, deeper structural forces at play, ones that have to do with the way the American poor are routinely taken advantage of. The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.

As a theory of poverty, “exploitation” elicits a muddled response, causing us to think of course and but, no in the same instant. The word carries a moral charge, but social scientists have a fairly coolheaded way to measure exploitation: When we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation; when we are overcharged relative to the value of something we purchase, we experience consumer exploitation. For example, if a family paid $1,000 a month to rent an apartment with a market value of $20,000, that family would experience a higher level of renter exploitation than a family who paid the same amount for an apartment with a market valuation of $100,000. When we don’t own property or can’t access credit, we become dependent on people who do and can, which in turn invites exploitation, because a bad deal for you is a good deal for me.

Our vulnerability to exploitation grows as our liberty shrinks. Because undocumented workers are not protected by labor laws, more than a third are paid below minimum wage, and nearly 85 percent are not paid overtime. Many of us who are U.S. citizens, or who crossed borders through official checkpoints, would not work for these wages. We don’t have to. If they migrate here as adults, those undocumented workers choose the terms of their arrangement. But just because desperate people accept and even seek out exploitative conditions doesn’t make those conditions any less exploitative. Sometimes exploitation is simply the best bad option.

See why I keep harping on the critical importance of always keeping track of where power and wealth flows? See why I keep pounding on the radical right for attacking and shrinking civil liberties and deregulating businesses while empowering business over consumers? 

I continue to argue that what we are witnessing right now is a gigantic war between the organized, disciplined, well-funded authoritarian radical capitalist and Christian theocratic forces against the messy herd of cats forces fighting for democracy and civil liberties. The authoritarians are fighting for concentrated power and wealth for the elites. The democrats are fighting for somewhat more distributed wealth and power for the masses 

That’s my narrative and I’m sticking to it unless some really compelling contrary evidence comes on the scene.

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Personal safety tip: Always keep an eye on personal power flows.

Anti-woke = pro-discrimination, pro-authoritarian/theocracy, and anti-democracy: If one is paying attention, one will certainly have noticed by now that radical right anti-woke measures in laws usually change how power is distributed. 

Power usually flows from targeted groups, usually minorities such as the LGBQT community, to businesses and corporations or to inherently authoritarian/theocratic red state governments or religious organizations. In essence, the anti-woke movement is focused on withdrawing civil liberties and consumer protection powers from the federal government and individuals and redistributing it to elites.

Accumulating more power is what the anti-woke movement is primarily focused on. A secondary focus is rewriting and whitewashing inconvenient history.** Hence the book bans that anti-woke elites are heavily promoting in their dark free speech campaign.

As we all know, more wealth usually comes with more power. The anti-woke movement serves the elites at the expense and freedom of the masses.

Or, is there a lethal flaw or two in that reasoning?

** For example, this is the kind of inconvenient history that radical right anti-woke authoritarians and theocrats are whitewashing by forcing it to be removed from public schools:

‘Slavery was wrong’ and 5 other things some educators won’t teach anymore

To mollify parents and obey new state laws, teachers are cutting all sorts of lessons

Excerpts from Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.” Passages from Christopher Columbus’s journal describing his brutal treatment of Indigenous peoples. A data set on the New York Police Department’s use of force, analyzed by race.

These are among the items teachers have nixed from their lesson plans this school year and last, as they face pressure from parents worried about political indoctrination and administrators wary of controversy, as well as a spate of new state laws restricting education on race, gender and LGBTQ issues.

Making power flow from the people to the elites,

and making ignorance flow to the people

Kevin McCarthy and the KYMS tactic

In an astonishing WaPo opinion piece, Dana Milbank writes about how completely ignorant of inconvenient facts and truths House speaker Kevin McCarthy claims to be. He is the true master of the KYMS (keep your mouth shut) propaganda tactic. Milbank writes:

Not since the Know-Nothing Party disappeared in the 1850s has a public figure boasted about his ignorance with as much gusto as Kevin McCarthy does.

It doesn’t seem to matter what you ask the speaker of the House. He hasn’t read it, seen it or heard about it.

The explosive documents from the Dominion case showing Fox News hosts privately said Donald Trump’s election lies were hokum but promoted the lies on air anyway?

“I didn’t read all that. I didn’t see all that,” McCarthy told The Post.

The way Fox News’s Tucker Carlson (predictably) manipulated the Jan. 6, 2021, security footage McCarthy (foolishly) gave the propagandist, giving the false appearance that the bloody insurrection was “mostly peaceful”?

“I didn’t see what was aired,” McCarthy asserted.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, in an implicit rebuke of McCarthy, blasting the Carlson propaganda while holding up a statement from the Capitol Police chief denouncing Fox News’s “outrageous,” “false” and “offensive” portrayal of the insurrection?

You guessed it. McCarthy “didn’t see” McConnell do that.

The benighted McCarthy has been amassing this impressive body of obtuseness for some time. If ignorance is bliss, the California Republican has been in nirvana for years now.

How about Trump’s speech on the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, provoking the sacking of the Capitol?

“I didn’t watch it,” McCarthy said. 

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) calling the insurrectionists’ rampage a “normal tourist visit”?

“I don’t know what Congressman Clyde said,” quoth McCarthy, and “I didn’t see it.”

When his own designated negotiator reached a bipartisan agreement to form a commission to probe the Jan. 6 attack (a commission McCarthy ultimately killed)?

“I haven’t read through it.”

Trump, in a recorded phone call, demanding Georgia’s secretary of state “find” enough votes to overturn the election results?

“I have to hear it first.”

Obviously McCarthy is lying about not knowing anything about anything inconvenient. We know he is lying and he knows it too. But KYMS is so popular because it works. By doing KYMS, it is impossible to PFIM (put foot in mouth) and be embarrassed. 

Kevin, we know what you are doing

and we're not fooled!

Stop lying to us!

Lies don't make bad things go away,

and neither does feigned ignorance

News bits: The authoritarian radical right silences even Sir David Attenborough; What the radical right wants for America

Evidence of severe damage the damage that radical and hyper-radical politics and cancel culture is inflicting on inconvenient truth, free speech and secularism continues to accumulate. This is not just about America. It is about the human condition. This one really, really pisses me off. The Guardian writes:

BBC will not broadcast Attenborough episode over 

fear of ‘rightwing backlash’

The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

The decision has angered the program-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.

The BBC strongly denied this was the case and insisted the episode in question was never intended for broadcast.

The radical and hyper-radical right In America and everywhere else silences as much inconvenient truth as possible whenever possible by any means possible. I don’t believe the BBC’s bullshit excuse it was never intended for broadcast. If it was was never intended for broadcast, then why was it made? 

We all know exactly what this is about. The forces of evil tyranny and lies are defeating the forces of democracy and truth one at a time. The BBC has fallen.

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A NYT opinion by Michelle Goldberg lays out the plan. The takeover over the US Supreme Court by the radical right was just the start of its massive social engineering plan for America. Goldberg’s information is based on investigative reporting and research by ProPubica and Documented. She writes:

Leonard Leo, a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, an extraordinarily effective legal organization, is broadening his ambitions. Leo is hoping to transform American culture the way he transformed the judiciary. In the words of an investigative report produced by ProPublica and Documented, he aims to build a sort of “Federalist Society for everything,” devoted to helping reactionaries consolidate power in realms like Wall Street, Silicon Valley, journalism, Hollywood and academia.

“I spent close to 30 years, if not more, helping to build the conservative legal movement,” Leo said in a video for the organization at the heart of his strategy, the Teneo Network. “And at some point or another, I just said to myself, ‘If this can work for law, why can’t it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now?’” That includes “wokeism in the corporate environment, in the educational environment,” biased media and “entertainment that is really corrupting our youth.”

Given Leo’s past success, he should be taken seriously. As Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, he helped put Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom have close Federalist Society ties, on the Supreme Court, making him central to the demise of Roe v. Wade. Leo has access to enormous resources; last year a conservative financier donated around $1.6 billion to a dark-money group that he controls. And since many elites resent the congeries of behavioral norms and linguistic innovations denigrated as wokeness, the Teneo Network will start from a place of strength, pushing on an open door.

After all, the nearly 50-year project of ending Roe is complete. Stirring crusades against Communism and then against radical Islam have subsided. The cult of personality around Trump has splintered. Many on the right would still like to obliterate the welfare state, but they’re deeply defensive about it. Hatred of wokeness is a brittle foundation for political identity, but it’s almost all that’s left.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a favorite for the Republican presidential nomination, declared during his January inaugural address that “Florida is where woke goes to die.” Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state and a possible presidential candidate, recently tweeted, “Our internal threats — especially those trying to corrupt our kids with toxic wokeness — are more serious than our external threats.” Last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said, “Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic.”

Goldberg goes on to argue that wokeness is too weak a glue to hold together a radical political movement that would do to America generally what the radical theocrats did to Roe v. Wade. I very much doubt that. I think Goldberg is wrong. As far as I can tell, all the necessary cognitive biology and social behavior elements are there for the radical rage against abortion social and political movement to morph into just as much or even more rage against wokeness. To me, the emotional, social and intuitive factors for deranged abortion hate look to be about the same as they are for deranged woke hate. I think Leo has found a plausible cognitive-social pathway to kill democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, secularism, pluralism and inconvenient truth. Of course, that is just my opinion, but it is a firm opinion. 

So, what is the identity politics and policies of wokeness? Radical, aggressive authoritarian-theocratic intrusion into people's lives like this:

•  Three Texas women are sued for wrongful death after allegedly helping friend obtain abortion medication. In the first lawsuit of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a husband seeks damages from women who allegedly helped his ex-wife obtain the medications to terminate her pregnancy.

A focus on demolishing American democracy like Viktor Orban did to Hungarian democracy:

• Florida Could Start Looking a Lot Like Hungary. The bill, of course, is only one part of DeSantis’s culture war. His administration has already limited what can be taught to K-12 students about race, sex and gender. “DeSantis seems to be putting into practice some of the political lessons Orban has to teach the American Right,” Rod Dreher, an American conservative living in Budapest, recently wrote with admiration.

Vicious mendacity, slander and bigotry like this (from Goldberg’s NYT opinion):

• A 2020 video that ProPublica and Documented found, in which the Teneo Network’s co-founder Evan Baehr described how he believed the left operates. He asked his audience to imagine a luncheon at the Harvard Club featuring a billionaire hedge funder, a movie producer, a Harvard professor and a writer for The New York Times. “The billionaire says, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if middle school kids had free access to sex-change therapy paid for by the federal government?’” Baehr said. “Well, the filmmaker says, ‘I’d love to do a documentary on that; it will be a major motion film.’ The Harvard professor says, ‘We can do studies on that to say that’s absolutely biologically sound and safe.’ And the New York Times person says, ‘I’ll profile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender.’”

• Laws are being passed all over the country targeting trans people, particularly trans kids, and the right’s language has turned openly eliminationist. (One speaker at CPAC said, “Transgenderism must be eradicated.”)

What the radical right has in store for us is a terrifying, morally rotted, dystopian tyranny-Christian theocracy. The radical right monster will be built mostly (~97% ?) on lies, slanders, irrational emotional manipulation, vilification of allegedly evil minorities (especially non-heterosexuals), and plenty of deranged crackpottery replete with blue space lasers, microchips in vaccines, and bigoted and racist false crackpot narratives. 

By now if one does not sense and oppose the grave danger the radical right poses to democracy and civil liberties, then one (i) denies or downplays it, (ii) mostly does not care, or (iii) implicitly or openly supports it. If there are significant states of mind other than denial, apathy or support, it’s not clear to me what they are, e.g., vincible ignorance.

Vincible ignorance -- a 4th state of mind?

OK FOLKS, How is THIS helpful?

 I found the following OpEd offensive. Sure, it makes some good points, BUT............ we tend to blame the Right for our uncivil discourse, and here we have a piece attacking uneducated whites from Red states and we wonder WHY they get pissed at us more educated Leftists from Blue states.

However, after reading the following piece, if you feel it hit all the right notes, you are more than welcome to dispute my feelings about this OpEd, which I find divisive and insulting.

Opinion: Uneducated Rural Voters Have Ruined America

After every election, social media feeds are filled with maps showing how much of the country is red. These maps show surface area rather than population density, but that doesn’t matter to ignorant people.

I grew up in a rural area so I know what rural voters are like. I remember being in classrooms where there would be mini-mutinies because the students couldn’t figure out the course material. I always thought it was a colossal waste of time to have to go over the same things over and over and over again.

It was like my classmates were allergic to facts. In algebra, kids would say, “When are we ever going to use this?” Then they’d refuse to study.

Most of the people I went to high school with are still in the same town. If I come home to visit, I can go to the bar on Main St. and it’s like a class reunion. Few of them even attempted college and most of those that did dropped out.

Many of them work on family farms that only function because they qualify for regular subsidy checks from the government. That’s fine. I don’t mind that program. Our nation needs to make sure it has an adequate food supply.

But that’s also socialism.

I think it’s ridiculous that people who spend their whole lives being supported by government subsidy checks turn around and lambaste the “evils” of socialism. I guess it’s really easy to be self-righteous when you never hold yourself to your own standard.

If you don’t like “socialism,” then don’t deposit any government money into your bank accounts.

Then the red states sit around and complain about “socialism” even though they are the ones cashing the checks.

In many ways, our whole country reminds me of my old algebra class from high school. There are a few people who try to get the most out of their opportunities. They work hard. They educate themselves. They go on to achieve something.

All the while, they have to sit and listen to the howling of obnoxious people who think it’s a form of righteousness to remain ignorant. You’ve got people who haven’t read a book their whole lives who think they know more than renowned experts in their fields.

It’s time for the United States of America to cultivate some respect for the people who have proven they have discipline and drive. Everyone should have an opportunity to get an education. If more people were educated, perhaps there would be fewer ignorant voters in rural areas who supported policies that are detrimental to our nation’s future.

https://original.newsbreak.com/@walter-rhein-563121/2945032088257-opinion-uneducated-rural-voters-have-ruined-america

Questions: Is the above an over-simplification, is it insulting and self-congratulatory? Is it mocking and disingenuous? Is it stereo-typing?

OR are the points valid? Is what the author said needed to be said? Are rural Red State voters "ignorant" because of their lack of education?

Moreover: Do pieces like the above serve to enlighten us, Or do they serve to alienate a large part of the U.S. population? Do OpEds like the above only make rural voters angrier and see urbanites as snooty and acting "superior?"

Weigh in.

News bits: When rights collide, some people whine about it; Trump lawsuit yawner; Etc.

The Telegraph writes about attitudes in the UK (note I now question the reliability of the information posed here - I retract this news bit): 

Women’s rights have gone ‘too far’, say majority of Gen Z and millennials, study shows

More than half of younger generations polled say women's rights are now discriminating against men

Some 52 per cent of Gen Z and 53 per cent of millennials say society has gone so far in promoting women’s rights that it is discriminating against men, a survey by Ipsos UK and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London found. In contrast, four in 10 baby boomers (40 per cent) and Gen X (46 per cent) said the same. More than half of all men (55 per cent) held this opinion, compared to 41 per cent of women.

Men, what a bunch of wuss. No wonder so many of them in America are Christian nationalists. They get to sanctimoniously whine about being severely persecuted and oppressed with backing from the self-righteous wrath of loving, infallible God.

Note added after posting earlier today: Another reference in another story mentioned The Telegraph. That suggested that The Telegraph might be a radical right or hyper-radical right source. I checked on a fact accuracy and bias assessment source and found that The Telegraph is too often not reliable. Therefore, I retract this news bit as too likely unreliable.

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The NYT writes about Trump and the absent without leave law: “Prosecutors Signal Criminal Charges for Trump Are Likely -- The former president was told that he could appear before a Manhattan grand jury next week if he wishes to testify, a strong indication that an indictment could soon follow”

Yawn. The only news bit will be if (i) he is indicted or not, and then (ii) if he is acquitted or found guilty and liability for lawbreaking survives appeal all the way to the US Supreme Court. Everything else is the same empty white noise we have been hearing for some years now.

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Budget wars are heating up -- the GOP proposes blither and crackpottery, Biden proposes something that might work: This is posturing in advance of the radical right in congress ready to force the US to default on its debt. A NYT opinion piece by Paul Krugman argues these points:

• In 2013 radical Republicans proposed a budget that was economic nonsense, i.e., it would not have reduced the debt. It included a move to privatize Medicare over a period of some years, which would have achieved a goal the GOP wanted.

• In 2023 radical Republicans propose things that are even more nonsensical, while claiming the federal debt is a crisis. If the GOP was serious about there being a crisis, one could not see that reflected in their proposal, which preserves debt-increasing Trump tax cuts, with no cuts in in defense, Social Security or Medicare. Krugman comments on that: “Yet it also claims to balance the budget, which is basically impossible under these constraints.”

• By contrast, Biden’s proposal might do some good. He proposes to modestly reduce the ongoing spending deficit, while shrinking the federal deficit by about $3 trillion over 10 years. In essence, Biden’s proposal reduces deficit while modestly expanding social programs by (i) raising taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and (ii) cost-cutting measures in health care, e.g., via using Medicare’s bargaining power to reduce spending on prescription drugs. 

• Biden’s budget proposal is not far out of synch with what the Congressional Budget Office comes up with in its analysis of the Biden proposal. So, unlike the blithering nonsense from the GOP, there is some credibility in what Biden proposes.

• Krugman sees no economic sense in the Republican plan and muses about why that might be: “The modern G.O.P. gets its energy from culture war and racial hostility, not faith in the miraculous power of tax cuts and small government. So why not give up on the ghost of Reaganomics? Why not come out for a strong social safety net, but only for straight white people?” 

Was that last comment by Krugman snark? 🤨

Of course, there is zero chance that Biden’s proposal would pass in congress. The entire Republican cadre hates taxes and government. So, we will be left with gridlock probably right up to the time of a US default, maybe some time thereafter if the radicals force the US into  default.

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More fun with the budget -- the hyper-radicals throw down the gauntlet: The WaPo writes about what the foaming at the mouth hyper-radicals want in their budget utopia:  

The House Freedom Caucus insisted on steeper spending cuts than some GOP lawmakers had been considering, along with caps on future spending, as the fight over the debt ceiling intensifies

A powerful group of far-right Republicans on Friday issued a new set demands in the fight over the debt ceiling, stressing they would only supply their votes to raise the limit if they can secure about $130 billion in spending cuts, cap federal agencies’ future budgets and unwind the Biden administration’s economic agenda.

The ultimatum from the House Freedom Caucus — led by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — threatened to deal a massive blow to government health care, education, science and labor programs.

That’s more like what we have come to expect from the hyper-radical wing of the GOP. They believe in blue space lasers, babies and microchips in vaccines and lizard people Democrats. Those crackpot freaks are so far to the extreme right, they almost make the radicals look centrist. Almost, but not really.

Come June or whenever the US hits its spending ceiling, things are going to get real interesting and extremely ugly.

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More on the budget: The WaPo editorial board argues that the debt really is at crisis levels and a lot more than what Biden proposes is necessary. This paints a really scary scenario:

As debt gets bigger than the economy, the interest costs become so onerous that there is little money left for anything else. By 2033, the nation will be spending more on paying creditors than on the entire defense budget.

Even the more modest goal of attempting to stabilize the debt as a size of the economy would take close to $8 trillion in savings, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says. Mr. Biden proposed about $3 trillion in net savings over the next decade, achieved mostly by hiking taxes on the rich and a proposal for the government to pay less for the prescription drugs it buys through programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. He deserves credit for offering some cuts and revenue raisers, but his plan underscores the reality that getting anywhere close to what’s needed over the next decade will take heroic political efforts.

The scale of sobriety that is now necessary means we will need to do a lot more than lawmakers are acknowledging. Republicans falsely claim that the nation’s budget situation would be fine if it just cut back on welfare, waste and foreign aid. Democrats are equally misleading when they suggest it will take raising taxes on big businesses and the rich and perhaps shaving a bit off defense to get where we need to be.

The CBO projects Medicare will have to start making dramatic cuts to benefits by 2030 and Social Security by 2033. There’s another reckoning coming even sooner, at the end of 2025, when Mr. Trump’s individual tax cuts expire. The GOP made the corporate tax cuts permanent, but not the cuts for families. If the tax cuts are extended, the nation’s finances look worse.

Is it just me or does the budget issue look this time like it is going to force a solution on us sooner rather than later, e.g., in the next 4-5 years? Some experts have been arguing for years that the longer we dither, the worse the pain will be later. That argument feels right.