Some Memorial Day thoughts; A new centrism rising?; DJT & his dark free speech

A sobering NYT opinion (not paywalled) contemplates several aspects of America’s wars: 

How Should We Honor the Dead of Our Failed Wars?

Iraq 2006

About 10 years ago, as the war in Afghanistan was slowly, painfully winding down, I walked through Arlington National Cemetery with a fellow Marine veteran and a relative of mine visiting from Ireland. We passed row after row of pristine white tombs, the dead of all the just wars and unjust wars that made and remade this country, and my relative told us he found it quite moving; he hadn’t been expecting that. Perhaps he thought it’d be more bombastic, or obviously militaristic, and he was taken by the beauty and serenity and quiet dignity of the place.

So we brought him to Section 60 to see some of the newest graves, of kids born in the ’90s, and I told him the sight filled me with rage, these young lives thrown into a mismanaged war, where even their deaths, at that late stage, were mostly ignored. Just the background hum of a global superpower.

A couple of years later, in 2021, the Afghan war finally ended, taking with it a few American children of the 2000s, and, in a moral failure laid on top of the military failure, leaving tens of thousands of Afghans who worked with us at risk in the now completely Taliban-controlled country. The last Marines to fall died in a suicide bombing at a gate to Kabul’s airport, a blast that killed 11 Marines, one Navy medic, one soldier and about 170 Afghan civilians. The Marines were trying to manage the chaos of the poorly planned evacuation of Afghans from Kabul — a humanitarian mission at heart, trying to help those we were abandoning. A week before she died, one of the Marines, Sgt. Nicole Gee, posted a photo of her cradling a baby in Kabul and captioned it, “I love my job.”

America responded to those deaths with a drone strike against a Kabul vehicle the military claimed was transporting ISIS members who were about to carry out another attack, but that, in a twist that felt grotesquely emblematic of so many of our failures, turned out to carry an Afghan aid worker. The blast killed the aid worker and his relatives, seven of whom were children. The sort of people those Marines died trying to help.

How do you memorialize the dead of a failed war? At Arlington, it’s easy to let your heart swell with pride as you pass certain graves. Here are the heroes that ended slavery. Here are the patriots who defeated fascism. We think of them as inextricably bound up with the cause they gave their life to. The same can’t be said for more morally troubling wars, from the Philippines to Vietnam. And for the dead of my generation’s wars, for the dead I knew, the reasons they died sit awkwardly alongside the honor I owe them.

For so many of the kids I saw, their mission mattered to them, and so their mission should matter to all of us when we remember their deaths. And the mission was a catastrophe. Memorial Day should come with sorrow and patriotic pride, yes, but also with a sense of shame. And, though it has faded for me over the years, with anger.

I’ve come to feel that airbrushing out the complexities of their wars is, ultimately, disrespectful to the dead. We owe it to the dead to remember what mattered to them, the ideals they held, as well as how those ideals were betrayed or failed to match reality.

This Memorial Day, as I get ready to take my sons to march in our local Memorial Day parade, our country is in the midst of the most divisive antiwar protests since the early days of the Iraq war, protests my friends characterize as either “objectively pro-Hamas” or as “opposing undeniable genocide.” Questions long dormant, about how we use our might and whom we help kill, feel like live political questions once again (even if we’re not talking much about actual American military deployments, or the troops who have most recently died at the hands of Iranian proxies). The debate is raw and angry.

Good. What a good, uncomfortable, painful national mood for remembering the dead. This year, when I remember them, I will not just remember who they were, the shreds of memory dredged up from past decades. I will remember why they died. All the reasons they died. Because they believed in America. Because America forgot about them. Because they were trying to force-feed a different way of life to people from a different country and culture. Because they wanted to look after their Marines. Because the mission was always hopeless. Because America could be a force for good in the world. Because Presidents Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden didn’t have much of a plan. Because it’s a dangerous world, and somebody’s got to do the killing. ....

For Vietnam and most of our later wars, the mission was always hopeless. The wars were mismanaged. The goals were ill-defined, and usually impossible to attain. 

Trying to elect better leaders would be one way to honor the dead.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

The NYT writes about an alleged new, maybe pro-public interest, centrism in Washington politics:

A New Centrism Is Rising in Washington

Call it neopopulism: a bipartisan attitude that mistrusts the free-market ethos instead of embracing it

But in a country that is supposed to have a gridlocked federal government, the past four years are hard to explain. These years have been arguably the most productive period of Washington bipartisanship in decades.

During the Covid pandemic, Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together to pass emergency responses. Under President Biden, bipartisan majorities have passed major laws on infrastructure and semiconductor chips, as well as laws on veterans’ health, gun violence, the Postal Service, the aviation system, same-sex marriage, anti-Asian hate crimes and the electoral process. On trade, the Biden administration has kept some of the Trump administration’s signature policies and even expanded them.

The trend has continued over the past month, first with the passage of a bipartisan bill to aid Ukraine and other allies and to force a sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner. After the bill’s passage, far-right House Republicans tried to oust Speaker Mike Johnson because he did not block it — and House Democrats voted to save Johnson’s job. There is no precedent for House members of one party to rescue a speaker from the other. Last week, the House advanced another bipartisan bill, on disaster relief, using a rare procedural technique to get around party-line votes.

The new centrism is not always so moderate. Forcing the sale of a popular social app is not exactly timid, nor is confronting China and Russia. The bills to rebuild American infrastructure and strengthen the domestic semiconductor industry are ambitious economic policies.

A defining quality of the new centrism is how much it differs from the centrism that guided Washington in the roughly quarter-century after the end of the Cold War, starting in the 1990s. That centrism — alternately called the Washington Consensus or neoliberalism — was based on the idea that market economics had triumphed. By lowering trade barriers and ending the era of big government, the United States would both create prosperity for its own people and shape the world in its image, spreading democracy to China, Russia and elsewhere.

That hasn’t worked out. In the U.S., incomes and wealth have grown slowly, except for the affluent, while life expectancy is lower today than in any other high-income country. Although China, along with other once-poor countries, has become richer, it is less free — and increasingly assertive [more to the point, increasingly aggressively anti-democracy].

Both Democrats and Republicans have grown skeptical of free trade; on Tuesday, Biden announced increased tariffs on several Chinese-made goods, in response to Beijing’s subsidies. Democrats and a slice of Republicans have also come to support industrial policy, in which the government tries to address the market’s shortcomings. The infrastructure and semiconductor laws are examples. These policies feel more consistent with the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower or Franklin Roosevelt than those of Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton.  

“There is a sense on both the left and right, and among many independents, that the economy hasn’t been working in many places,” Ro Khanna, a progressive House Democrat whose district includes Silicon Valley, told me. Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, said that more Republicans “have woken up to the fact that neoliberal policies didn’t work out so well for a large coalition of working people.”

This alleged centrism feels strange, assuming it exists at all. Maybe in a year whether this is for real will become apparent. Right now, there is no room for centrism in Project 2025 or DJT, but there is plenty of room for bigotry, dictatorship and kleptocracy. Time will tell.

______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________

Reuters reports that DJT is falsely claiming, no evidence as usual, that illegal immigrants are building an army to attack Americans:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed without evidence on Thursday that immigrants from Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere were "building an army" to attack Americans “from within,” once again using inflammatory rhetoric about migrants in the U.S. illegally.

During a rally in the mainly Hispanic and Black neighborhood of New York City's South Bronx, Trump sought to portray migrants from China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries as a violent threat, even as studies show immigrants are not more likely to engage in criminality.

“Almost everyone is a male and they look like fighting age. I think they're building an army,” Trump said to a few thousand supporters who gathered to hear him in the South Bronx's Crotona Park. “They want to get us from within.”

By now lies like this are to be expected from DJT. But what, if anything at all, are those few thousand people at the rally thinking? Do they really believe the lies, or are they mostly just virtue signaling to the cult by simply being there and cheering on the lying, kleptocratic dictator bigot? My guess is it is probably mostly a mix of the two, maybe ~20% the former, ~70% the latter and ~10% whatever else. 

About cancel culture: Who cancels whom the most?

The evils of cancel culture appears to be an important issue in this election. Some people believe that liberals cancel conservatives more than vice versa. The bickering is endless. From what I have seen so far, the bickering is not backed up by research data. Instead, the arguments boil down to personal opinions based on personal experience, anecdotal examples and/or mostly partisan dark free speech. A key issue is assessing whether one kind of cancellation, e.g., liberal students blocking a conservative speaker on campus, is the same, better or worse than another, e.g., Republican election deniers firing RNC employees who refuse to say the 2020 election was stolen. Not all cancellations are necessarily anti-democratic. Cancelling liars and divisive rabble rousers strikes me as generally more good for the public interest and democracy than harmful.

My suspicion was that authoritarian conservatives (ACs) probably cancelled more than democratic liberals (DLs). In part, that was based on a personal belief that ACs were generally more rigid, biased and ideological about politics and people than DLs. But that tentative personal belief was not based on any empirical research data I could recall. It was just anecdotal.

A question to AI started my inquiry:

Q: In society generally, are liberals or active in cancelling conservatives than conservatives are in cancelling liberals?

A: Based on the provided search results, there is no clear evidence that either liberals or conservatives are more active in “cancelling” the other side. The search results focus on comparing the general political and social views of liberals and conservatives, but do not directly address the issue of “cancelling” or attempting to silence opposing viewpoints.

The search results highlight the key differences between liberal and conservative ideologies, such as their contrasting views on the role of government, economic policies, social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, and their preferred living environments (urban vs. rural). However, none of the results specifically discuss the prevalence or extent of “cancelling” behavior from either side of the political spectrum.

If that is true, but it may not be, then my current assessment is correct that the bickering about this is mostly opinion or dark free speech, but not based on empirical research data.

A 2023 political science research paper comments about perceptions of cancel culture by conservative and liberal academics:

In recent years, a progressive “cancel culture” in society, right-wing politicians and commentators claim, has silenced alternative perspectives, ostracized contrarians, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate, with college campuses at the vanguard of this development. These arguments can be dismissed as rhetorical dog whistles devoid of substantive meaning, myths designed to fire up the MAGA faithful, outrage progressives, and distract from urgent real-world problems. Given heated contention, however, something more fundamental may be at work. To understand this phenomenon, the opening section defines the core concept and theorizes that perceptions of this phenomenon are likely to depend upon how far individual values fit the dominant group culture. Within academia, scholars most likely to perceive “silencing” are mismatched or noncongruent cases, where they are “fish-out-of-water.”

Social situation: Fish out of water feel  

cancelled more than fish in water

Data are derived from a global survey, the World of Political Science, 2019, involving almost 2500 scholars studying or working in over 100 countries. The next section describes the results. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and considers their broader implications. Overall, the evidence confirms the “fish-out-of-water” congruence thesis. As predicted, in post-industrial societies, characterized by predominately liberal social cultures, like the US, Sweden, and UK, right-wing scholars were most likely to perceive that they faced an increasingly chilly climate. By contrast, in developing societies characterized by more traditional moral cultures, like Nigeria, it was leftwing scholars who reported that a cancel culture had worsened. This contrast is consistent with Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence thesis, where mainstream values in any group gradually flourish to become the predominant culture, while, due to social pressures, dissenting minority voices become muted. The ratchet effect eventually muffles contrarians. The evidence suggests that the cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth; scholars may be less willing to speak up to defend their moral beliefs if they believe that their views are not widely shared by colleagues or the wider society to which they belong.

That data is limited to academics, not people outside academia. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to think that contrarian non-academics react similarly to some extent when faced with a society, group or personal situation that is mostly in opposition to their beliefs. Situational behavior is a very important aspect of the human condition. 

American society today is split roughly in half by two deeply differing and clashing mindsets, generally secular, DL and generally religious, AC. Non-authoritarian conservatism, roughly correlated with opposition to Trump, and authoritarian liberal, seem to be small minority influences. Dominance of the DL mindset is generally (but not always) centered in urban areas and AC generally rural (but not always).

Partisan ideology and the degree that individuals are ideologically biased could lead to partisan bias and partisan cancel behavior. A 2019 research paper found equal bias among liberals and conservatives. But another paper criticized that research as flawed and unreliable. The research I looked at for this post is incomprehensible to me. Other factors such as false memories and personality traits complicate the research. A 2022 paper reflects the messy complexity of political bias research, e.g., propensity to believe in false memories is partisan biased: 

While cognitive psychologists have learned a great deal about people’s propensity for constructing and acting on false memories, the connection between false memories and politics remains understudied. If partisan bias guides the adoption of beliefs and colors one’s interpretation of new events and information, so too might it prove powerful enough to fabricate memories of political circumstances. Across two studies, we first distinguish false memories from false beliefs and expressive responses; false political memories appear to be genuine and subject to partisan bias. We also examine the political and psychological correlates of false memories. Nearly a third of respondents reported remembering a fabricated or factually altered political event, with many going so far as to convey the circumstances under which they “heard about” the event. False- memory recall is correlated with the strength of partisan attachments, interest in politics, and participation, as well as narcissism, conspiratorial thinking, and cognitive ability.

As he reported on both December 4, 2001, and January 5, 2002, George W. Bush clearly remembers watching footage of the first plane strike the Twin Towers on 9/11. On December 20, 2001, though, he made no mention of watching this footage and instead remembered that adviser Karl Rove informed him that the first plane had struck the towers. History tells us that Bush’s memory of watching footage of the first crash is inaccurate; only amateur footage of it exists, and it was not available on the morning of the attacks. While some suspect that Bush was lying, it is likelier that he simply possesses a false memory of the events of the morning of 9/11, memories that he genuinely believes to be true (Greenberg, 2004). He can hardly be blamed for this. False memory is a phenomenon that afflicts all people (Nichols & Loftus, 2019).

This 2023 paper indicates that bias seems to highly correlate with partisanship in terms of pro-democracy vs (unconscious) anti-democracy partisanship. That sometimes correlates with cancelling opposition, e.g., restricting civil liberties:

Democracy often confronts citizens with a dilemma: stand firm on democracy while losing out on policy or accept undemocratic behavior and gain politically. Existing literature demonstrates that citizens generally choose the latter—and that they do so deliberately. Yet there is an alternative possibility. Citizens can avoid this uncomfortable dilemma altogether by rationalizing their understandings of democracy. When a politician advances undesired policies without violating democratic rules and norms, people find ways to perceive the behavior as undemocratic. When a politician acts undemocratically to promote desired policies, citizens muster up arguments for considering it democratic. Original survey experiments in the United States, and 22 democracies worldwide, provide strong support for this argument. It is thus not deliberate acceptance, but a fundamentally different perceptual logic that drives the widespread approval of undemocratic behavior in today’s democracies.

[A]ccording to existing research, citizens are willing to accept undemocratic behavior if they stand to gain from it politically. When asked in abstract terms, they profess to hold sincere democratic values, but when asked in more specific terms, they merely act as “questionnaire democrats”: they are not willing to tolerate groups they dislike; they are willing to restrict civil liberties for those they disagree with politically; and they are likely to vote for an undemocratic candidate as long as that candidate offers policies they desire. When policy considerations conflict with democratic values, citizens often end up on the undemocratic side of the equation. (emphasis added)

In conclusion, I still do not know if DLs cancel more than ACs. That arguably depends on how cancellation is defined and assessed. I still suspect that in America today (i) ACs do more cancelling than DLs, and/or (ii) the cancelling that ACs do is more important relative to democracy and the public interest than the cancelling that DLs do. Maybe quality is more important than quantity in assessing who does more.

News bits: Election update; Christian nationalism on the USSC; Plutocrats for Trump

From the For What It Is Worth Files: Most everyone paying any attention over the last 8 years or so is wary of putting much weight on polls this far out from elections. That’s reasonable. However, a bit of apparently new information has popped up. Polling suggests that although DJT has been leading in battleground state polls for the last several months, some of that support appears to be coming from low information people who may or may not vote next Nov. The NYT writes:

[A warning sign for DJT]: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.

To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election.

President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

By now, everyone paying any attention knows that USSC justice Sam Alito is radical, deeply morally corrupted (e.g., mendacious, kleptocratic), hyper-partisan, and authoritarian. Based on recent revelations and reporting, there is solid evidence he is also a Christian nationalist theocrat. He flies flags indicating he believes in (i) Trump’s stolen election lie (although he blamed his wife for that), and (ii) American government should adopt Christian Supremacy and theocracy based on Christian Sharia law as its guiding dogmas. NPR reported about the Christian nationalist flag Alito flew at one of him homes: 

The New York Times reports that an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which has origins dating to the Revolutionary War but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's election win, was seen flying outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s New Jersey beach home last year. .... The flag has origins dating to the Revolutionary War, but is now associated with Christian nationalism and efforts to overturn President Biden's 2020 election win. The flag was also carried by rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

By flying two different partisan flags at two of his homes, Alito clearly has conflicts of interest in Trump’s immunity lawsuit the USSC will eventually get around to maybe hearing. Deciding on immunity might happen in 2025 or 2026, depending on how much the radical authoritarian Republicans choose to slow the case down. It is also possible that the court will sidestep the case entirely on some technical ground the Republicans dream up. Despite his conflicts of interest, Alito will probably not recuse himself from the immunity case. In the unlikely case that Alito deigns to give an explanation, he will simply lie and he can be fair and unbiased. That is authoritarian Republican moral rot on the USSC. 

The flag of authoritarian Christian Supremacists  

and theocratic Christian Sharia law

So far, Alito has refuse to explain why he was flying the Christian Supremacist theocrat flag at one of his homes. He is expert at the KYMS (keep your mouth shut) tactic when faced with inconvenient facts and questions. The KYMS propaganda tactic effectively prevents FIMS (foot in mouth syndrome).

Alito also flew the US flag upside down at his home. The US flag is not to be inverted “except as a signal of dire distress in instance of extreme danger to life or property.” That is clear 

evidence that Alito believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. He cannot be impartial about deciding Trump’s immunity case. Flying a US flag upside down in protest dates back at least 50 years. In Spence v. Washington (1974), the Supreme Court upheld the right of a student to display a US flag upside down from his dorm room with a black peace sign taped on it. 

At Sammy’s house --

his naughty wife did it!

At Trump’s 1/6 coup attempt

__________________________________________________________________

__________________________________________________________________

Various reports of discontent of billionaires with Biden are coming out. Biden wants them to pay some taxes. They do not want to pay any. So to protect their cash piles, they are going to vote for Trump and plutocracy. The NYT writes: Some of Silicon Valley’s Most Prominent Investors Are Turning Against Biden -- Marc Andreessen, Chamath Palihapitiya and several other tech venture capitalists are increasingly criticizing President Biden and making their disaffection known in an election year.

For plutocrats, money talks and everything else walks. Money includes pro-plutocrat dictatorship and plutocracy. Everything else includes democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. According to one source, Elon Musk elegantly has stated the compelling plutocrat rationale: Musk used to vote '100% Dem,' but now he thinks the US needs a 'red wave' to save it. Save it from what? Taxes on himself.

Plutocrat and patriot Elon defending the border,

but not democracy or taxes on billionaires 

Republican cancel culture

America’s authoritarian radical right Republican Party (ARRRP) howls in self-righteous outrage about liberal cancel culture. Despite all the squealing, most cancel culture action is by the radical right blocking criticisms of Trump. I have been banned from all pro-Trump online sites, usually on my 1st comment.

Reddit pro-Trump site r/trump

Note rule #2

Now-a-days, radical right Republicans do not tolerate any criticism of Trump at most online pro-Trump sites. That started years ago. Faux News constantly bitches about how people who criticize the left or CRT or groomers in the Democratic party will be severely canceled by liberals and Democrats to silence criticisms of the left. 

Now, in an expansion of Republican cancel culture, the WaPo reports that to protect Trump from criticism, America’s ARRRP cancel culture has spread to the House of Representatives. The WaPo writes (not paywalled):

In the GOP House, details of Trump’s trials 

are an unfair personal attack

Rep. Jim McGovern’s (D-Mass.) articulation of Trump’s legal issues on Wednesday was stricken from the record

A candidate for president of the United States is on trial for allegedly helping facilitate a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law. He’s also charged with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He’s also charged with willful retention of classified information. And a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court.

As you probably know, those statements apply to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee on November’s presidential ballot. They are also statements that, with only a few slight changes, were deemed unfair personal attacks by House Republicans and removed from a record of debate on Wednesday afternoon.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) rose on the House floor to challenge having been admonished for saying Trump had been indicted by a grand jury and is on trial. He made a parliamentary inquiry about the admonishment; that is, he asked Speaker Pro Tempore Jerry L. Carl (R-Ala.) for clarification on the rules of debate. Specifically: “Has the chair determined that it is unparliamentary to state a fact?”

“The chair is not in a position to determine the veracity of remarks made on the floor,” he replied as the member facilitating debate at the time. “Members must avoid personalities.”

McGovern declared this to be “unbelievable.”

“Personalities” is another of those terms that has a specific meaning in the context of the House. It comes from a long-standing rule governing debate in that chamber, including the rules adopted for the 118th Congress.

“Remarks in debate (which may include references to the Senate or its Members),” Rule XVII, Section 1b states, “shall be confined to the question under debate, avoiding personality.” And “avoiding personality” means, simply, not making personal attacks on peers.

The intent is to foster collegiality, to keep members of Congress from attacking other representatives, senators or the president. In this way, decorum might be maintained and interpersonal disparagements limited.

But Trump is not a representative, senator or president. He is a private citizen, at least at the moment.

To McGovern’s point, it’s fraught to suggest that statements of fact are personal attacks. He noted that previous comments about the trial in New York, in which Republicans called it a “sham,” did not prompt any sanction. His articulation of Trump’s status, though, did.

“These are not alternative facts. These are real facts,” he began. “A candidate for the United States is on trial for sending a hush money payment to a porn star to avoid a sex scandal during his 2016 campaign, and then fraudulently disguising those payments in violation of the law.”  

“He's also charged with conspiring to overturn the election,” McGovern continued, referring to charges in Fulton County, Ga. “He's also charged with stealing classified information.”

McGovern added that “a jury has already found him liable for rape in a civil court,” which is true.

It was at about this point in McGovern’s soliloquy that Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) demanded his comments be stricken from the record. Carl stated that the words would be taken down and told McGovern to sit down.

This probably wasn’t a great idea from a political standpoint. The clip of McGovern’s objection and comments was shared on social media, where prominent Democrats quickly jumped in to defend the legislator — and ensure their followers saw what he said. This is the Streisand Effect at work: the effort to suppress awareness of information can draw even more attention to it.

But we shouldn’t lose sight of McGovern’s broader point. It is both the case that his comments were (largely) accurate and also that they were embarrassing for Trump and, by extension, members of his party who seek to downplay his legal problems. McGovern highlighted this tension, giving Republicans the opportunity to argue that true things said about a nonmember violated rules of decorum barring the disparagement of elected officials.

There it is, right out in the open. ARRRP cancel culture on display in the House of Representatives. Instead of doing real work, ARRRP pisses away precious time whining about fact-based criticisms of Trump and striking legitimate criticisms from the public record. According to scientific measurement, that is gross and disgusting hypocrisy:

Inclusivity is leftist cancel culture!

Etc.

News bits: Israeli govt. loses its mind; Etc.

The NYT reports that in response to Spain, Norway and Ireland saying that they recognize an independent Palestinian state, Israel will withhold funds Israel sends to the Palestinian Authority, the governing Palestinian power in the West Bank. That will worsen the Palestinians’ already dire economic crisis, but what the heck. Israel has never wanted a two state solution. So this is a fine way to respond. 

For what it is worth, as of May 2024 the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 143 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. Spain, Norway and Ireland are the first in Europe to do so. Guess that really ticked off the Israeli government. Israel simply opposes a two-state solution. It is now an impossibility.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The New York Times identified over 300 hundred civilians that were abducted in Afghanistan in the largest campaign of forced disappearances of the war. It all led back to one man, a US backed Afghani general. The actual disappeared (dead) toll is likely far higher. The NYT refers to the murderer as America’s monster. 

Secret graves in the desert

The general, Abdul Raziq, was one of America’s most important partners in the war against the Taliban. Witnesses report that he once stood before a crowd, gesturing at two prisoners he had brought along to make his point. The prisoners knelt with their hands bound as Raziq spoke to his men. A pair of his officers raised their rifles and opened fire, sending the prisoners into spasms on the reddening earth. In the silence that followed, Raziq addressed the crowd, three witnesses said. He told them to reject the Taliban and warned them that “I will come back and do this again and again, and no one is going to stop me.”

We all know how well that fun anti-Taliban tactic worked out. 

Our government is not good at keeping us informed about inconvenient facts and truths. Actually, it is bad at it and the badness is bipartisan.

Raziq at his home in Kandahar City, 2015 

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The WaPo reports that Fani Willis won her Georgia state primary election bid for re-election to stay on as Fulton County’s District Attorney. Also, the judge on the Trump election interference lawsuit won was elected to a full term in on the bench. In the November general election, Willis will face Courtney Kramer, an inexperienced radical right authoritarian Republican lawyer who interned in the Trump White House. Kramer has never prosecuted a criminal case. No doubt the Republicans will go all out to get Kramer elected so that she can stop the criminal lawsuit against Trump. Kramer, was involved in Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 loss in Georgia, so we all know exactly what she will do for Trump if she gets elected in November. WaPo comments that Fulton County (Atlanta) is heavily Democratic, so Willis is probably to be re-elected. Nonetheless, there has been an influx of national Republican donations for Kramer. That election will be nasty. It will be loaded with outrageous radical authoritarian Republican lies and slanders against Willis.

Willis already has attacked Kramer for not having any experience and for having no allegiance to the people of Fulton county. Willis correctly says Kramer is loyal to partisan politics and powerful Republican interests. Trump’s successful delay tactics have already pushed the likely date of the trial past the Nov. elections, so that alone constitutes a massive win for Trump. 

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

The WaPo reports that the Louisiana legislature has passed a law that makes the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol controlled substances, the legislature calls “controlled dangerous substances.” Once the governor signs the bill into law, that will effectively make all abortions in the state illegal. The law includes incarceration and fines for an individual having the pills without a valid prescription or outside of professional practice. It exempts pregnant women from prosecution.

So, there will probably be an underground railroad to smuggle the drugs into the state. Once again, radical right authoritarian republican elites show their disregard for civil liberties. According to those self-righteous elites, God decides what a liberty is, not humans or a mere Constitution.

As dangerous as fentanyl

(according to Christian nationalist zealots 

in the Louisiana legislature)

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

WaPo reports that Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, is barging back into news content after backing off of it for a while. This time things are going to get real ugly. The WaPo reports:

After years of Meta steadily walking away from news on its platforms, the company’s new AI tool is now using the work of those outlets for content.

Meta’s new chatbot, Meta AI, is happy to scan news outlets and summarize their latest stories and headlines for anyone who asks. It’s even doing it in Canada, where the company banned links to news sources on Facebook and Instagram in August to get around a law that could require it to pay publishers.

It’s CliffsNotes for the news. Meta AI draws on news outlets to give its users the day’s top headlines, summaries of specific stories or deeper dives on current events without them having to leave its apps.

In our tests of the chatbot, we asked about top headlines and recent news, then compared its answers to the sources Meta listed. We found the chatbot regularly responded with slightly rephrased versions of sentences that appeared in the original articles. In multiple cases, the chatbot reproduced sentences from the news sources verbatim.

There are no links to the stories or names of sources in the answers themselves. Instead, you need to click another button or link at the bottom of Meta AI’s answers to see external links and sources, such as CNN, the Associated Press or NBC.  

In April, Meta began removing the News tab from Facebook in the United States and Australia, saying in a blog post that “people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content.”  

Publications have already seen large drops in traffic from Meta’s shifts. AI summaries could herald another massive change in how people find and consume news, and further affect news outlets’ traffic. According to a poll last year by Pew Research Center, vastly more people got news on their digital devices than from television, radio or print publications. 

Well ladies and germs, we all know how this is going to play out. Already weak news reporting is going to get summarized and distorted. Profits to news sources will further decrease. News organizations will sue in court to get payment from Meta for using their content for profit. God only knows what the courts will decide. Maybe that will depend on how Trump feels* about it, assuming he chooses to pay any attention to it whatsoever. 

* Feels, not knows. He doesn't know anything, he just feels and shoots from the hip.

Powerful politicians subverting the rule of law and democracy

Yesterday's Rachael Maddow news show highlighted a serious weakness in the American system of justice. That weakness is the possibility of powerful politicians attacking and subverting the federal Department of Justice when it investigates serious crimes against those politicians. In the process of subverting the rule of law, criminal politicians attack and utterly destroy the careers and reputations of the investigators who try to defend the rule of law by prosecuting the powerful criminals.

In the past powerful politicians in the federal government have successfully blocked investigation and prosecution of crimes by powerful politicians who have committed serious crimes. The example Maddow explained at the beginning of the 34 minute video below described powerful Nazi collaborators in the American congress who successfully blocked prosecution of their treason and other treason and crimes. As part of their self-defense, those traitors viciously destroyed the careers and reputations of DoJ prosecutors who investigated the treason and moved to indict the guilty politicians. The traitors were never prosecuted.

The same is happening today. The Republican Party in congress and the state of Georgia are doing their very best to slander, neuter and destroy the prosecution of Trump for election interference by Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis. What the modern Republican traitors, e.g., Jim Jordan, are doing is no different from what the Nazi traitors in congress got away with in the 1940s.

At ~21:20 of the video, Maddow interviews Willis and gets her take of what radical authoritarian Republicans in congress and the Georgia state legislature are doing to block her prosecution of Trump for criminal interference with the 2020 election. She refers to the Jim Jordan as a clown. Jordan is no clown. He is a dangerous traitor and a vicious, lying authoritarian thug. He is trying to do to Willis what treasonous Nazi collaborators in congress successfully did to DoJ prosecutors in the 1940s. He wants to protect Trump from prosecution for his crimes by destroying and blocking Willis’ lawsuit, and her career and reputation. Jordan is, more or less, a modern day Nazi collaborator right out of the 1940s.

Maddow points out that few people have stood in defense of what Willis is doing. Willis is remarkably unfazed by all the threats, or which there are plenty, attacks on her reputation and constant harassment by radical Republican politicians and rank and file Trump supporters. She says nothing is going to stop her from prosecuting crimes that evidence shows have been committed.

I post this as an urgent warning about the shocking ill-will and vicious intent that the poisoned, radicalized authoritarian Republican Party stands for. The GOP does not care about democracy, public opinion or the rule of law if it is works against themselves or their supporters. They care only about unfettered access to more wealth and power. GOP elites and rank and file (whether they know it or believe it or not), are pro-dictatorship and pro-kleptocracy.

American democracy, rule of law and civil liberties are all under a ferocious attack by well-organized, well-funded and deeply corrupt, morally rotted authoritarian forces that are concentrated mostly (~80% ?) in the Republican Party and its supporters, e.g., corrupt Christian nationalist theocrats, and corrupt plutocrats, with the rest residing mostly with elements within the Democratic Party. 

___________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________

For the wonks - Perplexity gets perplexed

A search of Perplexity (an artificial intelligence search engine) for information about the Nazi collaborators came up with an answer that there were no Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1940s. When I asked a follow-up question about why Perplexity was unaware of Rachael Maddow's book Prequel which focused on Nazi collaborators in congress in the 1930s, it responded:

Based on the excerpts and summaries provided from Rachel Maddow's book "Prequel", it is now clear that there were indeed members of Congress in the 1930s and 1940s who collaborated with and took money from Nazi agents like George Sylvester Viereck, spreading Nazi propaganda and potentially obstructing investigations into their activities.

The chain of my questions and Perplexity’s answers is at this link. It took me a while to ask the right question. If you ask artificial intelligence the wrong question, you will get a wrong answer. And sometimes, if you ask artificial intelligence the right question, you can get a wrong answer. For example this chain of Qs & As. One needs to be very careful with artificial intelligence.