News bits: Doing business in Alabama; Biden impeachment vote; Biden responds; Democracy status update

Law and Crime reports about how Alabama treats some or most of its prisoners:

Alabama made $450 million annually from ‘convict leasing,’ forcing 

Black prisoners to work at fast-food chains: Lawsuit

A group of current and former Alabama prisoners filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday saying that they were forced into “a modern-day form of slavery” by working at fast-food chains for next to nothing.

The complaint, which seeks class-action certification, alleged that the prisoners “have been entrapped in a system of ‘convict leasing’ in which incarcerated people are forced to work, often for little or no money,” all while Alabama and its corporate partners reap millions in profits.

Inmates, according to the complaint, “live in a constant danger of being murdered, stabbed, or raped that is so profound that the federal government has sued Alabama for inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, and if they refuse to work, the State punishes them even more.”  

The 129-page complaint alleges it is “no accident” that the people “caught in a labor-trafficking scheme” are Black, comparing it to “like individuals who were enslaved and forced to work Alabama’s cotton fields, and those forced to participate in the sharecropping and convict leasing schemes that followed the end of the Civil War.”

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

Reuters reports:

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to formally authorize its ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, as Republicans unite behind the effort even though they have yet to find evidence of wrongdoing by the Democrat.

The Republican-controlled chamber voted 221-212 along party lines to approve the probe, which is examining whether Biden improperly benefited from his 53-year-old son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, hours after the younger Biden refused a call to testify behind closed doors. 

“The House has now spoken, and I think pretty loudly, pretty clearly with every single Republican voting in favor of moving into this official impeachment inquiry phase of our constitutional duty to do oversight,” said Republican Representative Jim Jordan.

One can expect that this could be the new normal. If one party controls the House, a president of the other party will at least be investigated for impeachable offenses and maybe impeached, even without evidence. DJT probably has successfully rendered impeachments by the House mere exercises in partisan political theater. That helps DJT sanitize his rotten legacy by claiming that neither a House impeachment investigation or an actual impeachment vote signifies anything significant.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

The Huffpo reports:

Joe Biden Calls Republicans Time-Wasting 

Liars After Impeachment Vote

“I wake up every day focused on the issues facing the American people — real issues that impact their lives, and the strength and security of our country and the world,” the president said in a statement. “Unfortunately, House Republicans are not joining me. Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies.”

That’s a refreshing little blast from Joe. I didn’t know he had it in him to speak blunt truth to the mendacious, corrupt, radicalized, dictatorship-loving GOP. IMHO, he needs to do that a heck of a lot more often. That morally rotted party is so target rich that a person can throw darts at it blindfolded and hit something meaningful.

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

A NYT opinion by Charles Blow comments on worldwide democracy:

America’s Thirst for Authoritarianism

Around the world, authoritarianism is ascendant and democracy is in decline.

A 2022 report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that “over the past six years, the number of countries moving toward authoritarianism is more than double the number moving toward democracy” and that nearly half of the 173 countries assessed were “experiencing declines” in at least one metric of democracy.

The United States wasn’t impervious to this trend. The report found that America was “moderately backsliding” on its democracy.

But I fear that we’re now on the precipice of fully turning away from democracy and toward a full embrace of authoritarianism. The country seems thirsty for it; many Americans appear to be inviting it.

Confidence in many of our major institutions — including schools, big business, the news media — is at or near its lowest point in the past half-century, in part because of the Donald Trump-led right-wing project to depress it [In large part IMO]. Indeed, according to a July Gallup report, Republicans’ confidence in 10 of the 16 institutions measured was lower than Democrats’. Three institutions in which Republicans’ confidence exceeded Democrats’ were the Supreme Court, organized religion and the police.

And as people lose faith in these institutions — many being central to maintaining the social contract that democracies offer — they can lose faith in democracy itself. People then lose their fear of a candidate like Trump — who tried to overturn the previous presidential election and recently said that if he’s elected next time, he won’t be a dictator, “except for Day 1” — when they believe democracy is already broken.

News bits: The one-way ratchet to dictatorship moves a notch; COP28 final global warming communique

The NYT reports about what looks to me to be another notch toward some form of an American radical right, kleptocratic autocracy-plutocracy-Christotheocracy dictatorship:

House Set to Approve Biden Impeachment Inquiry 

as It Hunts for an Offense

Republicans are pushing forward with a formal investigation even though their yearlong scrutiny of the president and his family has turned up no proof of high crimes or misdemeanors

G.O.P. leaders refrained for months from calling a vote to open an impeachment inquiry, given the reservations of mainstream Republicans, many of them from politically competitive districts, about moving forward without proof that Mr. Biden did anything wrong. But the political ground has shifted considerably, and most of them are now willing to do so, emphasizing that they are not yet ready to charge the president.

“Voting in favor of an impeachment inquiry does not equal impeachment,” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No. 3 House Republican, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “We will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, and if they uncover evidence of treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors, then and only then will the next steps towards impeachment proceedings be considered.”  

Using their subpoena power, Republicans have obtained more than 36,000 pages of bank records; 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports from the Treasury Department; and dozens of hours of testimony from two of Hunter Biden’s business partners, a senior official from the National Archives and Records Administration, seven federal agents and three U.S. attorneys.

“Republicans’ yearlong fishing expedition has uncovered no evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden,” said Representative Dan Goldman, Democrat of New York.

At present, the House seems to be set to vote on impeachment tonight. Note the incoherence of Emmer who claims voting to start a formal inquiry is just following the evidence. So far, the evidence says there is no reason for an impeachment. This is how people rationalize the irrational. To me, this exemplifies what I see as a one-way inching of American politics toward some form of deeply corrupt dictatorship.

__________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________

Good news! The COP28 meeting wound up with an actual modern day miracle. The final Communique included a modest call to phase out fossil fuels. The pro-pollution oil, coal and gas sectors had fought tooth, claw and poison dagger for decades to keep the phrase “fossil fuel(s)” out of the messaging. Apparently the urgency of the situation finally overwhelmed the polluter’s sophisticated, ruthless propaganda, lies, slanders, money, dirty tricks and threats. The WaPo reports:

Nearly 200 countries struck a breakthrough climate agreement Wednesday, calling for a transition away from fossil fuels in an unprecedented deal that targets the greatest contributors to the planet’s warming. The deal came swiftly — with no discussion or objection — in a packed room in Dubai following two weeks of negotiations and rising contention. It is the first time a global climate deal has specifically called to curb the use of fossil fuels.

Countries agreed to transition from fossil fuels “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” while “accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”

Sultan Al Jaber, the filthy rich rabidly pro-pollution chief executive of 

Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., is the president of COP28

He tried, but couldn’t keep fossil fuels out of it

News bits: Life in red states; Pharmacies betray customers; Democracy good news bit

A NYT opinion by Jamelle Bouie:

Where Republicans have gained .... full control over state legislatures and statehouses, they have used that authority in pursuit of policies meant to curtail the ability of people in their states to live as they please.

You know what this looks like. It’s the “anti-woke” policymaking of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Florida, from laws that stigmatize L.G.B.T.Q. students and teachers in public school classrooms to an assault on higher education that has driven professors out of state. “What we are witnessing in Florida is an intellectual reign of terror,” LeRoy Pernell, a law professor at Florida A&M University, said in an interview with a special committee of the American Association of University Professors.

Republican trifectas in states across the country have introduced and passed dozens of bills aimed at the public existence of trans and other gender-nonconforming people. Republicans in Oklahoma banned the use of nonbinary gender identifiers on birth certificates; Republicans in Tennessee, similarly, banned trans people from changing their gender on their birth certificates.  

Abortion . . . .  

The state-level Republican agenda also includes efforts to restrict voting or gerrymander political opponents out of representation. Taken all together, you could say that Republicans are engaged in a comprehensive effort to limit the freedom of entire categories of people. 

.... what we can see in the divergent agendas of Republican-led states and Democrat-led states, is how the differences have far more to do with the actual purpose of government. For Democrats, that purpose is usually the public good. For Republicans, that purpose is harsh social regulation, with little apparent regard for the lives of those who have to endure these policies.

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

In the police state’s never-ending war on privacy, all means to nab the bad guys are pursued, sometimes even if they are illegal. The WaPo reports about cooperating pharmacies:

Pharmacies share medical data with police without a warrant, inquiry finds

The revelation could shape the debate over Americans’ health privacy as states move to criminalize abortion and drugs related to reproductive health

The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy.

Though some of the chains require their lawyers to review law enforcement requests, three of the largest — CVS Health, Kroger and Rite Aid, with a combined 60,000 locations nationwide — said they allow pharmacy staff members to hand over customers’ medical records in the store.

It’s good to know that ‘concerns were raised’ but what difference does that make when giant companies don’t care about customer privacy and neither do foaming at the mouth, authoritarian radical right Republican politicians? Raising ‘concerns’ about privacy is like sending thoughts and prayers after another mass slaughter of innocents. These days, concerns by politicians about consumers or the public interest are almost always nothingburgers. The real concern for authoritarian radical right Republicans is obliterating civil liberties to exert more control.

Betraying customers

Betraying customers

_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

Here’s a bit of good news for democracy. Poland voted out of power its equivalent of the American authoritarian radical right Republican Party. MAGA!! to that. The WaPo writes:

In a cathartic moment for many in Poland, centrist political veteran Donald Tusk got the nod on Monday to be the country’s next prime minister, marking the end of eight years of right-wing nationalist rule and a dramatic shift in the European political landscape.

Tusk’s alliance secured a majority in October elections with a promise to restore Polish democracy and the country’s relationship with European allies.

Tusk faces the daunting task of repairing relations with the European Union, depoliticizing the judiciary, restoring the independence of the media, and bolstering the rights of women and minorities — all without alienating the many who sympathize with the old guard. [does that sound familiar?]

GET A PIECE OF TRUMP'S SUIT & HAVE DINNER WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP

https://collecttrumpcards.com/#Offers

SEE SOME OF THE
AMAZING MUGSHOT
EDITION TRADING CARDS

This is Your Chance To BUY a Trump Digital Trading Card MugShot Edition For Only $99

LIMITED TIME OFFER!

Buy 47 Digital Trading Cards Or More (in a single transaction), And You'll Get Both: A Piece Of The President's ACTUAL Suit From His Famous Mugshot & Dinner At Mar-a-Lago With The President!

Martha N, Ireland

"Mar-a-Lago was even better than I could have imagined. The food was exquisite and The President was so gracious to take a picture with me. Thank you CollectTrumpCards.com."

Fascism expert Jason Stanley opines about DJT & the MSM

Chauncey Devega at Salon published an interview he had with fascism expert Jason Stanley. 

Jason Stanley on “undermining propaganda” with fascism: 

“Trump is robbing democracy of any meaning”

“We have a classic fascist situation in this country right now,” according to the author of “How Fascism Works”

Like other dictators, Trump is a megalomaniac, possessed by delusions of grandeur and omnipotence. As part of that pathological and extremely dangerous behavior, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he appears to be profoundly mentally unwell. As seen last weekend in Iowa, Trump is now going so far as to basically declare that he is some type of Chosen One, and that “God” and “Jesus” will intervene on behalf of him and the American neofascists in their campaign to defeat President Biden and the Democrats.

Fascism, as an extension of today’s version of American conservatism, is a form of religious politics (a movement of faith, action, and violence more than reason and reflection) that is largely immune from empirical reality and the type of obsolescent normal politics that the mainstream news media and larger political class are slavishly devoted to.

In total, the MAGA movement and American neofascism are revolutionary projects, decades in the making, to end multiracial pluralistic democracy and replace it with an American Christofascist Apartheid plutocracy. As seen with Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the Red Caesar scenario for example, the Republican fascists and "conservative" movement have made great progress in creating the infrastructure to implement these plans.

The mainstream American news media and responsible political class, however, continue to act shocked and surprised by Trump’s Hitler-like threats and agenda. In so many ways, this is all anticlimactic and obvious: Trump and the other American fascists have been telegraphing and announcing in plain sight their plans to end the country’s democracy for more than seven years. To be in denial for so long is a form of malpractice and betrayal of the responsibilities by the so-called guardians of democracy. 

Stanley comments:

The elite news media is finally waking up, if only for a second, to the reality of Trumpism and American fascism and how he is going to be a dictator. But here is the problem: they sound the alarm, but I don't think they really believe it because the next day it is back to the obsolete horse race coverage and ill-conceived "hot take" and superficial controversy of the day. These stories about Trump and fascism should be on the front page every day. The mainstream news media is so late to the reality of the situation they really have no credibility left as I see it.

It's surreal. No amount of reality will change them. I'm shocked, by the way the media is reacting to every new claim that Trump is a fascist as if this were news. Those like me, you, and a select group of others have been saying for years that Trump was a potential fascist dictator and there is a movement behind him. They dismissed us and laughed at us. Now instead of turning to those of us who were accurate and sounding the alarm years ago, the media is turning to people, supposed experts, who only now are realizing that we're facing a fascist, social and political movement.

Trump is doing something very sophisticated right now that is going to take these people who are late to the danger by surprise. Trump is saying that Joe Biden is the real threat to democracy. That is such a smart move. Every horrible thing Trump is accusing Biden and the Democrats and his other opponents of being is a reflection of Trump. These are expressions of intent by Trump. In his own fascist twisted way Trump is the most honest politician of my lifetime. Trump is a master of politics. He says what he means, and he means what he says. If you know how to read Trump correctly then you understand his intentions and plans. If you are just now realizing that Trump is a fascist, you're going to be looking for signs to assuage yourself that you are just being hysterical, because you spent so many years calling those of us who have been correctly describing reality, hysterical. The people who the media are turning to now as alarm sounders are not equipped to understand what is really happening.

The commentariat– especially too many centrist and liberal types — really are in denial about Trump's deep strategy. It is easy for them to call him names and mock him and the MAGA movement and the Republicans. When I look at Trump and his machine, I see something very sophisticated. For example, so many of the usual suspects who have been so late and so wrong about the crisis, are saying that Trump's attacks on Biden as an "enemy of democracy" won't work because "who would believe it?" — "It is so obviously wrong." They aren't the audience. Their egos and hubris and narcissism will not allow them to see that fact. They are not the center of the political universe.

Salon: Do words and language like "fascism" and "democracy crisis" actually have any currency anymore in the popular discourse?

Trump is trying to rob those words of meaning, which is very smart. Trump is so much smarter than the people in the media who he is manipulating. As I discuss in my book, a method of propaganda is to try to rob the language of ideals of meaning. To that point, by accusing Joe Biden of being the one that threatens democracy, Trump is robbing “democracy” of any meaning. That is called “undermining propaganda.” As applied here, the proponent of democracy is labeled as being the antidemocratic one. What Trump is doing with language and propaganda is very clever. Moreover, when you use the correct words to condemn Trump as a fascist or corrupt or what have you, those words will not have any force behind them because of how they have been weakened by Trump and his agents.

Salon: How do we balance hope and optimism?

I think a sense of urgency is required. Unfortunately, the news media is intentionally trying to destroy that sense of urgency. The mainstream media is all about telling people what they want to hear, and what makes them feel good, and not about real news that is upsetting. And if you tell people that the country is experiencing an extreme emergency from Trump and this fascist threat to the country, most Americans don't want to hear that.

The Salon article goes on at length, but you get the picture.

Regarding the philosophy of fascism

 What normalization does is transform the morally extraordinary into the ordinary. It makes us able to tolerate what was once intolerable by making it seem as if this is the way things have always been. — Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, 2018

When Trump and the Republican Party attack political correctness, their goal is to normalize demagoguery, insults, lies, deceit and slanders, making them much more tolerable. That helps to pave the way to making authoritarianism more acceptable to the American people, while undermining respect for, among other things, democracy, the rule of law and adult manners. — Germaine, 2022

In 2019, Jason Stanley wrote an essay, The Philosophy of Fascism, which makes some points that most informed people probably want to be aware of. Stanley is a political philosopher and an expert focused on rhetoric and propaganda. Stanley's essay discussed the historical location of fascism and whether it is a localized political phenomenon or not. According to Stanley, it is not. That means some form of fascism can happen to America. 

Fascism is inherent in the human condition, a point I have argued here multiple times. 

To distinguish fascism America from 20th century fascism in Italy, one should call an American variant something like modern fascism, American fascism, neo-fascism or something along those lines. Fascism reflects local circumstances and local societies and it thus has to be adapted for such differences to take hold on societies.

Stanley sees fascism as an ideology and process that normalizes the intolerable. He sees this process underway in the US, Russia, Hungary and some other countries. 

Stanley starts by pointing out that democracy differed in different places at different times. The same is true for other political concepts.

The concept of democracy is not tied to a particular time and place. Even if democracy originated at some point, perhaps 5th and 4th Century BC in Athens, the concept of democracy describes a structure that is realized in different places under very different material conditions. We can understand democracy as a voting system, one that reflects majority rule. We can also understand democracy as a culture, one that values liberty and equality (on some suitable interpretation). Both democracy as a voting system and democracy as an ideology (that is, a culture) have wide generality.  

What about concepts like liberalism, socialism, communism, and capitalism? These are more specific than the concept of democracy; their origin times are more recent. In the case of these concepts, one must be attentive to the possibility that their elucidation reflects social structures local to their origins.

Stanley moves on to fascism, a topic he deals with in detail in his 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Contrary to some experts, he argues that fascism is thing that can move from one place to another:

.... I argue that the concept of fascism has wide interpretive applicability across societies that otherwise differ quite drastically from one another. If I am right, fascism is not one of [Léopold Sédar] Senghor’s “completely historically located” concepts. I aim to rescue the concept of fascism from the discipline of history and make a case for its centrality in political and social philosophy. Such a rescue would in fact constitute a return; some of the greatest theorists of fascism, such as Theodore Adorno and Hannah Arendt, were philosophers. 

To rescue the concept of fascism for philosophy requires arguing that fascism has the kind of universal significance and centrality characteristic of philosophical concepts. It must have a recognizable structure that abstracts from local historical contexts, and be capable of being interpretively useful in locations that differ significantly from one another. .... If fascism is a historically located concept, however, then we do not need to be worried about confronting it. Fascism cannot reoccur, and political philosophers in recent decades have been right to ignore it.

If I am right, the view that fascism is a historically located concept is not just false, it is dangerously false. If fascism describes a dangerous ideology with universal appeal, representing it as an artifact of particular past historical circumstances masks a real danger. By not studying fascism philosophically, philosophy lends credence to the view that fascism is not a risk. How Fascism Works is a case for revisiting thinking in political philosophy, to reopen the case that philosophers should study fascism.  

If “fascism” is not the right word to use, what is? One of the attractions of the ideology to its supporters is that it promises to provide a strong leader whose decisions will not be filtered through the mechanisms of democracy, discussion and deliberation, but imposed by strength and will and even cruelty. In other words, this ideology involves an element of authoritarianism.

Stanley's vision of fascism reflects normal functioning of the human mind. It is inherent in some or many people and in societies. What is needed to bring it out and allow it to control societies and governments is talented, charismatic demagogues. By Stanley's definition, fascism normalizes the intolerable, or as I put it, the immoral, the reality-detached and the irrational. That is what Trump and the Republican Party have done to millions of Americans who now distrust or reject democracy, inconvenient facts and truths and appeals to reason. Fascism appeals to base emotions and prejudices to tear societies apart, and to foment distrust, fear, rage, bigotry and etc.

IMO, Stanley is right to argue that fascism (i) isn't just a nasty but one-off thing from 1930's Italy, or (ii) that it requires normalizing the intolerable, i.e., the immoral and anti-democratic. Powerful conservatives in America are working hard to bring their version of fascism to America, whether the majority likes or wants it or not.

For the record, poll data suggests that the majority of Americans do not like or want an American version of fascism. However, many unknowingly support it due to the effective deceptiveness and constant presence of neo-fascist propaganda and its many sources, e.g., Faux News. 

Adapted from orig. post 3/6/22