The coming election war

A few days ago, I posted about comments that Rachael Maddow made concerning DJT's recent public statements asserting that he "had plenty of votes" and people did not need to vote for him. Maddow hypothesized that DJT planned to steal the election by way of having election deniers in country and local elections offices refuse to certify vote counts. 

Now, more sources are making the similar arguments. Democracy Docket writes:

What Happens When Election Officials Refuse to Certify Results?

What was once seen as nothing more than a procedural part of the elections process has, in the past two election cycles, evolved into something of a battlefield in the election denial movement.

By all accounts, election certification is somewhat of a mundane statutory task: after tabulating all ballots — in-person, mail-in, provisional, absentee — local election officials certify that the ballot count is complete and accurate. That process is then repeated by election officials on the state level and, in the case of a presidential election, in Congress.

.... election certification has become one of the more pervasive, and legitimate, concerns of the upcoming election. What happens when rogue county and local election officials who refuse to certify their jurisdiction’s election results? A recent Rolling Stone investigation found there are at least 70 election officials in key swing states with a history of promoting conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election — igniting concerns that such officials would refuse to certify the election results in their jurisdiction should they not be happy with whichever candidate wins.

Lauren Miller Karalunas, a counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, explained “certification is the process by which local election officials sign off on the completion of the election results to say that: yes, the many processes to tabulate the results and confirm that they’re correct, have all taken place.” While that process is a necessary step in the election process, it’s more “a formality that’s procedurally important, but substantively very narrow,” Karalunas told Democracy Docket.

Some states use a single official, like the secretary of state, to certify all the election results from that state. Whatever the method, states do this within 30 days after the election, though some do it within one day. This certification process, Karalunas stressed, is a “mandatory process for election officials to do. It is not the time for them to investigate election results. And that’s because there are other procedures like election contests and court proceedings that are specifically designed to answer legal questions about election results.”

But what happens when an election official refuses to comply with a court order to certify an election? They could be removed from their position. In the 2022 midterm elections in North Carolina, two officials were removed for refusing to certify.

Do we need to be worried about rogue election officials disrupting the 2024 election?

Yes and no. As the Rolling Stone article noted, and as Marc Elias explained in his latest column, “we are going to see mass refusals to certify the elections” because the GOP is “counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.”

Such refusals to certify local elections by rogue election officials are certainly going to cause a headache, but the important thing is that there are processes to ensure each election is properly certified.

“Voters should be rest assured that if they see an attempt to refuse to certify an election in their jurisdiction, that does not mean that there was a problem with the elections,” Karalunas said. “There are processes in place to make sure that certification ultimately will happen in a timely fashion and that their vote will be counted.”

Some states have legal means to reign in rogue election officials. So do not. Presumably, all states where election deniers who are in power will dispute the outcome if they do not like the result in their jurisdiction. The open question is what will happen in states that do not have laws that deal with corrupt election officials. And, what is to stop red states from getting rid of such laws, or even empowering rogues to wreck the entire state? 

In a separate article for Democracy Docket, election expert Marc Elias writes:

The Fight To Certify Elections Has Already Begun

Earlier this week, the Rolling Stone published a deep dive investigation into the pro-Trump election deniers who may refuse to certify accurate election results at the county level.

In the article, I voiced my concern for this possibility, predicting that “we are going to see mass refusals to certify the elections” because Republicans are “counting on the fact that if they don’t certify in several small counties, you cannot certify these statewide results.”

After Rachel Maddow featured the article on MSNBC, my concern quickly reached far and wide, with thousands of people taking to social media and flooding Democracy Docket’s inbox with questions about how this could happen and what can be done to prevent this seemingly new threat.

Except, this isn’t a new threat. I have been fighting against it in court for years.

We first saw Republicans deploy this anti-democratic tactic in the aftermath of the 2020 election. At the time, I was representing Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in recounts, election contests and litigation brought by Donald Trump and his allies.

As Michigan’s county certification date approached, we learned that the Trump campaign was pushing the GOP members of the Wayne County Canvassing Board to vote against certifying the election results in Detroit. Part of that effort, we have since learned, was a call from Trump himself, along with then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, to the local county canvass board members.

Ultimately, this scheme failed as did a subsequent effort to convince the Republican members of the statewide county canvassing board to refuse statewide certification. But its failure was not for lack of effort.  

So what are pro-democracy advocates like me supposed to do about it? Already, we’re fighting back. We’re in court to prevent Republicans from changing the rules so they can cheat later on. The excitement generated by Democratic candidates from top to bottom is aiding in our own volunteer efforts. And, there are dozens of election officials of both parties who take pride in their work and want a free and fair election.

This is the new normal. As long as the Republican Party remains morally corrupt and authoritarian, attacks on elections will continue. Remember, this 40 seconds of horror is from 1980:

Thoughts about authoritarianism as a label; About lies in a democracy

Authoritarianism

These days, I often write to editors, journalists and opinionators in the mainstream media and near-MSM complaining that they keep incorrectly calling America's radical right wealth and power (W&P) movement "conservative" and it's elites "conservatives". In fact, they are radical right and authoritarian. The main subspecies of American authoritarianism are corrupt autocrats with DJT as the current leader, corrupt brass knuckles capitalist plutocrats and/or corrupt, bigoted Christian nationalist theocrats. To be clear, all three are deeply corrupt. That is a state of affairs normalized and made popular by our deeply corrupt supreme court and its pro-corruption decisions like Citizens United in Jan. of 2010.

Despite my constant corrections, the elite MSM cognoscenti still usually, maybe ~97% of the time (?), refer to the various flavors of American authoritarianism and its elites as conservative or occasionally strongly conservative. On a rare occasion, the term autocratic pops up in connection with DJT, but that is about it. I see that kid gloves treatment as a major MSM failure. In my opinion, the failure amounts to a betrayal of the public trust, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties.

But, is the MSM label warranted or justified? The only significant pushback I recall having ever gotten is that the MSM needs to stay neutral. Presumably that assertion comes from a sentiment of not wanting to inflame the situation. I guess it is possible that calling American authoritarians, and their kleptocratic authoritarianism, authoritarian, autocratic, plutocratic and Christian theocratic might inflame some who object to an authoritarian label and sincerely believe they are not authoritarian. 

But so what? An authoritarian label, e.g., kleptocratic dictator or corrupt Christian Sharia theocrat, is defensible. It is arguably factually true, not mere opinion. Power flows from (i) the people, and (ii) government defenses of democracy and protections of the people, to powerful authoritarians. From what I can tell, the American authoritarian W&P movement cannot be appeased, compromised with or shamed by blatant lies, slanders or crackpot conspiracy theories.* The whole damned thing has been normalized and sanctified** on the political right. The rest of us can just go pound sand if we don't like it. Our complaints mean nothing to the authoritarians, which is a key hallmark of authoritarianism, which by definition does not compromise unless forced to.

* Steve Bannon's rhetorical tactic for authoritarianism sums it up nicely: Flood the zone with shit! That is exactly what the radical right authoritarian W&P movement does.

** Sanctified by one, two or all three of the unholy, infallible ideologies, (i) love of a dictator and dictatorship, (ii) love of unfettered (unregulated, untaxed, freely polluting) brass knuckles capitalism, and/or (iii) unfettered, Christian theocracy and its bigoted (hate of the LGBQT community, hate of the establishment clause, etc.) Christian Sharia law.

Q: Is conservative or occasionally strongly conservative better than authoritarian or some form of it, e.g., kleptocratic plutocrat or corrupt dictator?

Science: Regarding lying in a democracy

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. .... And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please. -- Hannah Arendt, one of the foremost analysts of 20th century totalitarianism 

Arendt makes a pretty good point. Fomenting distrust in just about everything is a key goal of authoritarian dark free speech (propaganda, lies, slanders, crackpottery, etc.) I find myself believing a lot less these days. From the radical right, I believe essentially nothing at all unless I independently know or believe there is some truth in it.

A recent research paper that Nature published considers lying, disinformation and the need for facts and truth in a democracy:

Liars know they are lying: 

differentiating disinformation from disagreement

Abstract 

Mis- and disinformation pose substantial societal challenges, and have thus become the focus of a substantive field of research. However, the field of misinformation research has recently come under scrutiny on two fronts. First, a political response has emerged, claiming that misinformation research aims to censor conservative voices. Second, some scholars have questioned the utility of misinformation research altogether, arguing that misinformation is not sufficiently identifiable or widespread to warrant much concern or action. Here, we rebut these claims. We contend that the spread of misinformation—and in particular willful disinformation—is demonstrably harmful to public health, evidence-informed policymaking, and democratic processes. We also show that disinformation and outright lies can often be identified and differ from good-faith political contestation. We conclude by showing how misinformation and disinformation can be at least partially mitigated using a variety of empirically validated, rights-preserving methods that do not involve censorship.

Introduction: One of the normative goods on which democracy relies is accountable representation through fair elections (Tenove, 2020). This good is at risk when public perception of the integrity of elections is significantly distorted by false or misleading information (H. Farrell and Schneier, 2018). .... Misleading or false information has always been part and parcel of political debate (Lewandowsky et al., 2017), and the public arguably accepts a certain amount of dishonesty from politicians (e.g., McGraw, 1998; Swire-Thompson et al., 2020). However, Trump’s big lie differs from conventional, often accidentally disseminated, misinformation by being a deliberate attempt to disinform the public.

An analysis of mis- and disinformation cannot be complete without also considering the role of the audience, in particular when people share information with others, where the distinction between mis- and disinformation becomes more fluid. In most instances, when people share information, they do so based on the justifiable default expectation that it is true (Grice, 1975). However, occasionally people also share information that they know to be false, a phenomenon known as “participatory propaganda” (e.g., Lewandowsky, 2022; Wanless and Berk, 2019). One factor that may underlie participatory propaganda is the social utility that persons can derive from beliefs, even if they are false, which may stimulate them into rationalizing belief in falsehoods (Williams, 2022). 

The circular and mutually reinforcing relationship between political actors and the public was a particularly pernicious aspect of the rhetoric associated with Trump’s big lie (for a detailed analysis, see Starbird et al., 2023). During the joint session of Congress to certify the election on 6 January 2021, politicians speaking in support of Donald Trump and his unsubstantiated claims about election irregularities appealed not to evidence or facts but to public opinion. For example, Senator Ted Cruz cited a poll result that 39% of the public believed the election had been “rigged”. Similarly, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is now Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argued against certification of the election by arguing that “80 million of our fellow citizens, Republicans and Democrats, have doubts about this election; and 60 million people, 60 million Americans think it was stolen” (Salek, 2023).

Public opinion has shifted remarkably little since the election. In August 2023, nearly 70% of Republican voters continued to question the legitimacy of President Biden’s electoral win in 2020.

This nature paper really resonates with me. The authors are spot on to attack liars and those who defend lies with bad faith. Honest mistakes made in good will are one thing morally, but lies coupled with ill-will are much worse.

Lying implicates a core moral value on which democracies rely, i.e., respect for facts, true truths, and sound reasoning in good will, even when they are inconvenient. Public opinion without facts and truths does not and cannot replace facts and true truths. Moral philosopher Sisella Bok makes this point in her book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. I argued this point in 2020.[1]

Footnote:

1. A commentator commented about this paper:

The identifiability of willful disinformation For decades, the hallmark of Western news coverage about politicians’ false or misleading claims was an array of circumlocutions that carefully avoided the charge of lying—that is, knowingly telling an untruth with intent to deceive (Lackey, 2013)—and instead used adverbs such as “falsely”, “wrongly”, “bogus”, or “baseless” when describing a politician’s speech. Other choice phrases referred to “unverified claims” or “repeatedly debunked claims”. This changed in late 2016, when the New York Times first used the word “lie” to characterize an utterance by Donald Trump (Borchers, 2016). The paper again referred to Donald Trump’s lies within days of the inauguration in January 2017 (Barry, 2017) and it has grown into a routine part of its coverage from then on. Many other mainstream news organizations soon followed suit and it has now become widely accepted practice to refer to Trump’s lies as lies.

Given that lying involves the intentional uttering of false statements, what tools are at our disposal to infer a person’s intention when they utter falsehoods? How can we know a person is lying rather than being confused? How can we infer intentionality? 

Anecdotally, defenders of Donald Trump’s lies have raised precisely that objection to the use of the word “lie” in connection with his falsehoods. This objection runs afoul of centuries of legal scholarship and Western jurisprudence. Brown (2022) argues that inferring intentionality from the evidence is “ordinary and ubiquitous and pervades every area of the law” (p. 2). Inferring intentionality is the difference between manslaughter and murder and is at the heart of the concept of perjury—namely, willfully or knowingly making a false material declaration (Douglis, 2018).

I believe this summation describes the Misinformation Age: ‘Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities’ -- Voltaire, 1765

Global wealth distribution; American abortion trends; Sexual violence data

American wealth inequality, 2010 data

In addition to wealth inequality in America. There are other forms of wealth inequality. Nature writes: 

Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labor and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labor in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labor from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labor was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labor that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labor that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.

In this study, we use the EEMRIO model EXIOBASE to track flows of embodied labor between North and South, for the first time accounting directly for sectors, wages and skill levels (as defined by the International Labor Organization, ILO, described in Methods). This enables us to define the scale of labor appropriation through unequal exchange in terms of physical labor time, while also representing it in terms of wage value, in a manner that accounts for the skill level composition of labor embodied in North–South trade. Our category for the global North approximates the IMF list of ‘advanced economies’, with the South comprising all emerging and developing economies (see Methods). All monetary units are in constant 2005 Euros, corrected for inflation, represented in market exchange rates (MER), which is appropriate for international comparisons of income purchasing power in the global economy (see Methods).

We arrive at several major conclusions. (1) We find that the labor of production in the world economy, across all skill levels and all sectors, is overwhelmingly performed in the global South (on average 90–91%), but the yields of production are disproportionately captured in the global North. (2) The North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labor from the global South in 2021 (in other words, net of trade). This net appropriation occurs across all skill categories and sectors, including a large net appropriation of high-skilled labor. (3) The wage value of net-appropriated labor was €16.9 trillion in 2021, represented in Northern wages, accounting for skill level. In wage-value terms, the drain of labor from the South has more than doubled since 1995. 4) North–South wage gaps have increased dramatically over the period, across all skill categories and sectors, despite a small improvement in the South’s relative position. Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill as of 2021, and 83–98% lower for work of equal skill within the same sector. (5) Workers’ share of GDP has generally declined over the period, by 1.3 percentage points in the global North and 1.6 percentage points in the global South.

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The Australian and New Zealand science source Scimex reports:

More US women are attempting abortions without 

medical assistance since the laws changed

The proportion of women in the US who have attempted an abortion without medical assistance has increased since the country's Supreme Court overruled federal abortion protections, according to an international study. The researchers conducted a series of online surveys in late 2021-early 2022 and then again in mid 2023, asking women whether they had "ever taken or done something on their own, without medical assistance, to try to end a pregnancy". With just over 7,000 respondents each for the earlier and later surveys, the researchers say 2.4% of women in the earlier survey reported having self-managed an abortion, which rose to 3.3% in the later survey. The researchers say many who shared their stories were from marginalized groups and often used ineffective methods.

It is a small increase, but an increase was reasonably predictable. The research paper comments:

To our knowledge, this study represents the first population-based estimate of changes in attempts to self-manage abortion before and after the Dobbs decision. We observed an increase in the proportion of the US female population of reproductive age that reported experience with SMA [self-managed abortion] from 2.4% in 2021 to 3.4% in 2023, suggesting people are increasingly relying on self-sourced methods to end a pregnancy. This is likely a conservative estimate, given underreporting of abortion in self-administered surveys. Assuming people underreport SMA to the same degree they do past-year, facility-based abortion, the proportion with SMA experience increased from approximately 5% before Dobbs to 7% after Dobbs.

We all know where this is going.

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A Lancet research paper reports:

Intimate partner violence against adolescent girls: regional and national prevalence estimates and associated country-level factors

Intimate partner violence is a serious public health problem and negatively affects short-term and long-term health, development, and wellbeing of adolescent girls. Global estimates from WHO have shown that adolescent girls aged 15–19 years experience high rates of intimate partner violence. We aimed to estimate the lifetime and past-year prevalence and patterns of physical or sexual intimate partner violence against adolescent girls by male partners across 161 countries and areas, and to examine the country-level factors, including the prevalence of child marriage, associated with the lifetime and past-year prevalence of intimate partner violence in this age group.

Overall, the prevalence of both lifetime (154 countries) and past-year (157 countries) intimate partner violence against adolescent girls was higher in low-income and lower-middle-income countries and regions than in high-income countries and regions. Countries with higher rates of female secondary school enrolment and those with inheritance laws that are more gender-equal had lower prevalence of intimate partner violence against adolescent girls. Lower-income countries and societies with a high prevalence of child marriage had higher prevalence of physical or sexual intimate partner violence against adolescent girls.

Past-year physical or sexual (or both) intimate partner violence

Hey! Canada and Mexico are better than America -- not MAGA!

Idle musings about politics, democracy and pragmatic rationalism

The news is rather uninspiring today. Various polls seem to indicate that Harris is now about even with DJT. Her public approval seems to be real. Maybe she can beat back the authoritarian kleptocratic threat that DJT and the Republican Party constitute. 

I haven't posted anything about PR (pragmatic rationalism) recently, e.g.,  post 1, post 2, post 3, etc.  Maybe a revisit is called for. This is a stream of consciousness post, maybe too boring and/or wonky for most people.

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. -- Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013 (PR probably is one of those high-minded, out-of-reach ideals)

PR is designed to be an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology (or mindset) that reveres (i) facts, evidence and reason-based politics, and (ii) defense of the public interest, democracy, transparency, civil liberties and the rule of law. Those are the core moral values. Those moral values all stand in opposition to what DJT and the Republican Party stand for, regardless of how vehemently they might deny it.

The main idea is to focus on tamping down the aspects of human nature, primarily cognitive biology, social behavior and moral beliefs, that lead to things like the irrationality, bigotry, false beliefs and sometimes violence that often prominently characterizes politics and political rhetoric. That asks an awful lot of most people. More than they can deliver.

Under current polarized social, commercial, religious and political circumstances, PR cannot gain much traction. It asks more than can reasonably be expected, e.g., because facts and sound reasoning often generate unpleasant cognitive dissonance and/or threats to self-esteem. Worse, it is in opposition to more powerful and much more pervasive authoritarian dark free speech. Cognitively heavy facts, truths and conscious reasoning are usually significantly less appealing than fast, cognitively light, and fun (self-affirming) lies, slanders, crackpot conspiracy theories, irrational partisan emotional manipulation, etc. (dark free speech - DFS). DFS is designed to minimize or avoid cognitive dissonance that often accompanies unspun reality and sound reasoning. PR doesn't really stand a chance against DFS under current circumstances.

One thought by a commenter about the human condition posited this: Our human psyche is simultaneously organic and social in nature.

I've constantly cited human cognitive biology (organic) and social behavior, to help explain the human condition doing politics and probably most everything else. PR is in synch with that idea.

Another thought: A key question about humans asks, can I live with others?

A key point of PR is to foster a mindset that lives with and tolerates others, especially including others who are different politically. It is usually easy to tolerate people like oneself politically. But it is usually a lot harder to tolerate those who significantly differ. That has been the case since the polarization US has undergone since the 1960s, and especially since the rise of MAGA. Serious polarization makes it harder, often impossible, to live with or at least tolerate others.  

At least two factors seem to be dominant in the weakening of Americans being able to live with others. One is personal bias, the other is ideology (political, religious, economic, political, philosophical, etc.), both of which have cognitive (organic) and social origins. PR is designed to tamp down the inherently divisive and distrust-fomenting effects of bias and ideology. That ought to make it a little easier to live with others in a tolerant, liberal democracy.  

“One cannot fully grasp the political world unless one understands it as a confidence game, or the stratification system unless one sees it as a costume party. . . . . Finally, there is a peculiar human value in the sociologist’s responsibility for evaluating his findings, as far as he is psychologically able, without regard to his own prejudices likes or dislikes, hopes or fears. . . . . To be motivated by human needs rather than by grandiose political programs, to commit oneself selectively and economically rather than to consecrate oneself to a totalitarian faith, to be skeptical and compassionate at the same time, to seek to understand without bias, all these are existential possibilities of the sociological enterprise that can hardly be overrated in many situations in the contemporary world. In this way, sociology can attain to the dignity of political relevance, not because it has a particular political ideology to offer, but just because it has not.” -- Sociologist Peter Berger in his 1963 masterpiece, Invitation to Sociology, commenting on the poison that ideology typically is for most people most of the time, which modern cognitive and social science has now shown to be basically true (See why PR is an anti-ideology ideology?)

Of course, it is possible to force people to live with each other in a non-democracy society, e.g., a dictatorship or theocracy. But PR rejects authoritarianism and force as deeply immoral (often evil). Free will and choice is the best and most moral possible way for societies to live in peace. 

Societies under authoritarian regimes are power-concentrated, usually also wealth-concentrated. If power and wealth concentration is a reasonable indicator, the US arguably is well on its way to some form of kleptocratic authoritarianism, e.g., a deeply corrupt DJT-dominated MAGA dictatorship. In essence, PR is a moral framework that fosters ethical understanding among people, which tends to have a humanizing effect among people locked in disagreement. If one has no understanding of the "other", it is a heck of a lot harder to have some trust and respect. 

Instead of changing minds, trying to reach stasis, the point at which people in disagreement can state why they disagree is a far more realistic goal than shooting for a change of mind about something. I posted on the importance of stasis in political disagreement a few yeas ago.  

Understanding why people disagree with each other in an online forum like this has at least three significant pro-democracy effects. One is that mutual understanding tends to humanize the one who is understood, which tends to rationalize how we think about others.  The second is onlookers who are not part of the discussion can asses for themselves what, if anything to believe about what the two in conflict are saying and whether the basis for their beliefs is credible or not.  The third is that by laying out one's facts and reasoning for personal political beliefs and behaviors, bias and ideology are directly tested against actual reality far more than discussions that rely only on opinions, personal biases, personal morals and ideology. In other words, trying for stasis is inherently anti-biasing and anti-ideology.  

But getting to stasis is unusual very likely because it forces scrutiny of unpleasant things, especially things that contradict belief or undermine self-esteem or identity. Most people are uncomfortable having that scrutinized. But as unusual as getting to stasis is, changing minds is nonetheless a lot less common. 

In my experience, trolls and political ideologues usually refuse to state why they believe what they believe. The reason is that either (1) they don't care and are just playing nasty games (trolls), or (2) they unconsciously know that they cannot support their beliefs very well or at all (ideologues). I use the quest for stasis to suss out trolls. I banned a troll a several days ago because he/she refused to state their facts. They had their chances but refused, so I whacked 'em. Ideologues are harder to deal with because they tend to conflate opinion with fact, while rejecting inconvenient fact and reasoning as lies and crackpottery (a function of cognitive bias and tribe social loyalty). 

“Time as cyclical, especially when married to the idea of fate and destiny, is inherently conservative, protective of the established social order, established political authority, and dominant traditions. .... In addition, with time as cyclical, the debate between advocates of democracy, such as Aristotle, and those who advocated aristocratic rule, such as Plato, is stable. Nothing new will alter that debate as human nature is fixed and our natures either suit us for democracy, as some have it, or for aristocracy as others have it.” -- Psychologist George Marcus, chapter 3 of his 2013 text book, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics and Politics, about the difficulty of mindset change -- this hints at why pragmatic rationalism has been such a difficult concept for me to explain and why it can't gain public acceptance in the face of an ocean of normalized and accepted authoritarian radical right DFS (whether it admits it or not, America's mainstream media has also significantly contributed to normalizing and social acceptance of radical right DFS that has poisoned America and torn its society apart)

A rare glimpse of how the USSC works

Our thesis may be simply stated: basic democratic theory requires that there be knowledge not only of who governs but of how policy decisions are made. .... We maintain that the secrecy which pervades Congress, the executive branch and courts is itself the enemy. .... For all we know, the justices engage in some sort of latter-day intellectual haruspication, followed by the assignment of someone to write an opinion to explain, justify or rationalize the decision so reached. .... That the opinion(s) cannot be fully persuasive, or at times even partially so, is a matter of common knowledge among those who make their living following Court proclamations. -- AS Miller and DS Sastry, Secrecy and the Supreme Court: On the Need for Piercing the Red Velour Curtain,  Buffalo Law Review, 22(3):799, 1973 (my blog post on this paper)

Everything degenerates, even the administration of justice, nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity. .... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton, 1834-1902

To hell with that mode of operations --

it's busted

The Daily Beast reports about a rare leak regarding internal USSC (US supreme court) operations to CNN:

The Supreme Court has been hit by a new damaging leak over its abortion decisions in a fresh blow to its embattled reputation—and a hint of even more leaks to come.

Intimate details of months of disagreement among the nine justices were reported at length by CNN Monday, just hours after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both backed major reforms to the court, with the president accusing justices of being “above the law.” CNN also said its report was the first of a series, suggesting more leaks ahead.

The justices are likely to be extremely concerned at the level of detail CNN has obtained about their internal divisions over the case Moyle v. United States. It was prompted by Idaho introducing an extreme abortion ban in the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which would have criminalized doctors performing abortions under any circumstances. That move prompted the federal government to introduce formal guidance that hospitals receiving federal Medicare funding had to offer emergency abortions—which Idaho’s Republican attorney general tried to challenge.

Initially Idaho had the case taken up as an emergency by the Supreme Court and got an emergency stay of the federal Medicare move in January on the court’s so-called “shadow docket.”

CNN revealed Monday that the stay was issued 6-3, splitting along ideological lines, a split which had never been known before and should be a secret.

But that split was then followed by sixth months of fracturing among the conservative justices, the outlet revealed. Among the leaked facts were that after a public hearing on the case in April, the justices’ private vote revealed no clear majority for resolution. Private votes of the justices are considered one of the court’s most closely guarded secrets.

Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Brett Kavanaugh both “expressed an openness to ending the case without resolving it,” CNN reported.

The leak also reveals that Roberts then abandoned normal protocol and did not assign the writing of the majority decision to any of the justices, leading to months of negotiations.

Instead he, Kavanaugh and conservative Amy Coney Barrett worked on an opinion which would call the case “improvidently granted,” a rare move to essentially admit that the court should never have taken it up.

But CNN reveals that the other conservatives—Samuel Alito, the author of the Dobbs decision, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch—argued from April until June that Idaho should have its abortion ban upheld. Alito was described as “adamant” that the Biden administration was in the wrong, CNN said.

The report reveals that Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh were then offered a compromise in “negotiations” with liberals Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, which was eventually what prevailed: a ruling not that the court had made a mistake in taking the case, but that Idaho had not shown “irreparable harm” by the Supreme Court setting aside its emergency stay of the federal guidelines. The liberals accepted, leading to the June ruling.

Such a lengthy and extensive leak of internal disagreements and the specifics of procedures and draft opinions are likely to cause extreme concern inside the court and particularly for Roberts. A lengthy probe into the 2022 Roe v. Wade leak— called “appalling” by Roberts—saw U.S. Marshals demand access to clerks’ private texts and emails but did not find a culprit.

Given the moral collapse and authoritarian radicalization of the Republicans on the USSC, there is no reason to trust its opinions or its fidelity to democracy or the rule of law. I sincerely hope that CNN leaks and leaks and leaks. The leak of the Dobbs case that overturned Roe was not appalling as the radical authoritarian justice Roberts claims. It is the six Republicans on the bench and the secrecy they demand to operate in that is appalling. And in view of the current circumstances of radical authoritarian extremism, secrecy as usual is ghastly and unjustifiable.

Of course, if transparency is injected into internal USSC operations and decision-making, what might the bad consequences be assuming there would be some? I assume that the six Republicans could simply stop talking to the three Democrats and just do whatever they want without any input from them other than their dissenting or concurring votes and opinions. That would make the USSC just like the House is now (and the Senate probably will be if the Repubs regain Senate control and DJT wins re-election). Raw power is the only thing that counts. 

If it boils down to just raw power in all three branches of government, one can argue that our democracy and the compromise that it demands will be severely damaged. Maybe that is inevitable.

Election updates

Maddow on MSNBC

Deep corruption: Last night, Rachael Maddow show made three disturbing but important points on her show. First, she reviewed the evidence that DJT does policy flips after meeting with billionaires who what a policy change from him. She pointed out that happened with Bitcoin, electric cars, TikTok and Anheuser-Bush regarding its evil "woke" Bud Light beer. In each situation, DJT did a complete reversal after a meeting with super wealthy people or lobbyists involved in those businesses. Basically DJT is for sale, as he has indicated in the past.

4-minute flip-flop video

Plutocracy: Second, Maddow asserted that billionaire Peter Thiel said that democracy is incompatible with freedom and he chooses freedom. Presumably freedom to people like Thiel means plutocracy with super-rich people like him above the law and completely unburdened by taxes, regulations, social conscience and any accountability for his bad actions and inactions. That is true plutocracy. For context, Thiel was responsible for getting JD Vance elected to the US senate via a $15 million donation to his campaign..

Election subversion: Third, Maddow played three video clips of DJT at three different campaign events telling people in the crowd that they do not need to vote for him in the 2024 election because he already "has plenty of votes." Maddow questioned why a candidate in a close race would ever say such a thing multiple times. Her interpretation of that strikes me as probably (~90% chance?) correct. She argues that DJT has no intention of winning the election by votes, but instead he plans to subvert the election itself. 

For evidence, Maddow pointed out that hard core 2020 election deniers have been put in key election subversion positions in several counties in some battleground states. Those election officials can prevent a state from certifying the state's votes by refusing to certify the votes in the counties where they can block certification. Maddow's hypothesis seems highly plausible because, (1) DJT tried to subvert the 2020 election via a violent coup attempt, and (2) those election officials have already been recalcitrant about certifying vote counts in their counties. Those officials need to be removed from office and jailed for treason.

"Free speech absolutist" and shameless hypocrite Musk

Multiple sources are reporting that Musk has suspended a pro-Harris X account after it raised money for her campaign. yahoo News reported:

‘White Dudes for Harris’ X Account Suspended After Raising 

$4 Million for Kamala Harris

The X account for the White Dudes for Harris campaign group was suspended on Monday, apparently just minutes after its debut fundraising event raised $4 million for Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential bid.

Asked on his personal X account why the organization, which boasted over 13,000 X followers, was blocked, organizer Ross Morales Rocketto responded, simply, “Got Elon Musk scared.”

“The ‘free speech absolutist’ has now suspended White Dudes for Harris. Presumably for raising $4 million in a few hours. The fascists are terrified. Good,” wrote one verified supporter.

This is more evidence of the intent and tactics that America's radical right authoritarian wealth and power movement plans if it gains control of the federal government. Free speech is only for the elites, not political opposition or independent thinkers in dissent.

Peanut gallery commentary:

Musk is a frothing hypocrite who only supports free speech for racists.

We severely fucked up as a society if someone with a petulant 6th grader mentality has that much money and influence over folks.

It's precisely because he came into that much money that he hasn't had to develop any sense of maturity, civic responsibility, or basic manners.

Where are the right wingers that cry about censorship?

They lied about the left doing it so now they can pretend to be justified in actually doing it themselves. A lot of right wing projection is this way. That is literally the fascist playbook.