Various bits: Blog note; Poll note; Chaos note; Violence note; Headlines

Blog note: Regardless of whether Harris and the Dems generally win or lose tomorrow or in the days following the election, please try to maintain control of emotions. Don't gloat over Trump losing. In recent posts, I've argued that America is in a generations-long battle of deeply corrupt authoritarianism vs less corrupt democracy. 

If Trump wins, that could be the decisive battle that leads to the end. But if he wins, pro-democracy, pro-honest, competent government people will need every possible ally they can get in hopes of saving our rule of law-based democracy and our civil liberties. Along the way to establishing his corrupt dictatorship, Trump and his enablers will have to do a lot of anti-democracy things. Each of those bad things need to be pointed out and the democratic damage they cause stated clearly and respectfully. Maybe some allies will come of that defense tactic. Alienating, disrespecting or insulting rank and file MAGA people as a whole will not be helpful in the long-term war against the various forms of American authoritarianism vying for power no matter how the elections turn out, even if Harris wins.

That said: I strongly endorse Harris. GO HARRIS!

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Poll note: Each Day I watch the polls. In the last few days I sensed a shift from net Trump support to net Harris. The Iowa poll yesterday showing Harris beating Trump was part of that. However, the situation is so complex that I am unsure of how much weight to give the polls. My intuition has flipped from thinking DJT would narrowly win to now thinking Harris will narrowly win. 

I suspect that those commercials showing women voting for Harris but keeping quiet or saying they voted for DJT is resonating with some women. There seem to be an awful lot of angry husbands out there who are rabid DJT supporters. That could be something the polls cannot pick up on. Also, it appears that Biden's incredibly idiotic and insulting assertion that Trump supporters are garbage is not going to hurt Harris nearly as much as I initially thought. Initially, I thought Biden's comment was going to be the last nail in the Harris coffin. 

In the history of modern polling, there’s never been a race where the final polls showed such a close contest. If the poll averages are exactly right down to the decimal (they will not be), Ms. Harris would barely need to outperform the polls to prevail.

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Chaos note: I was aware that authoritarian MAGA Republicans were planning to unleash a massive wave of lawsuits if Trump loses. I was rudely told yesterday by an exceptionally well-informed interlocutor that I was seriously misinformed and needed some slapping around to wake me up. So, I Perplexited (not a real word, yet) it:  

Q: Have oner 100 lawsuits been filed by Republicans to lay the groundwork for fomenting chaos if Trump loses the election? Apparently that has happened, but it is being poorly reported by the MSM.

A: It appears that Republicans and the Trump campaign have indeed filed a significant number of lawsuits related to the 2024 election, though the exact number is not explicitly stated as over 100. However, the information suggests an aggressive legal strategy aimed at challenging various aspects of the election process. 

Republican Legal Strategy: The Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Trump campaign have adopted a more aggressive pre-election legal strategy compared to 2020. This strategy includes: Implementing an "election integrity" program with 100,000 volunteers and attorneys in battleground states. Engaging in over 130 election lawsuits across 26 states, according to an RNC official.

The lawsuits filed by Republicans cover various aspects of the election process: Challenging voter registration procedures, contesting rules for overseas voting, questioning the certification of voting machines, and attempting to restrict mail-in voting.  

In conclusion, while the exact number of lawsuits is not confirmed to be over 100, the search results indicate a significant and coordinated legal effort by Republicans to challenge various aspects of the election process. This strategy appears to be more extensive and organized compared to 2020, potentially setting the stage for contesting the election results if the outcome is unfavorable to Trump.

I stand corrected. I was misinformed. A lot of lawsuits are flying right now. We can expect a heck of a lot more if DJT loses the election.

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Violence note: In my opinion, widespread violence is highly unlikely if DJT loses the election. But there could be scattered violence. But there is some indication (not paywalled) of some violence being plausible:

On Telegram, a Violent Preview of What May 

Unfold on Election Day and After

Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.

“The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible,” read one post from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”  

A New York Times analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome. Nearly every channel reviewed by The Times was created after the 2020 election, highlighting the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement.

Geez, we have an election denialism movement bubbling up! What next, a vaccine denialism movement or a global warming denialism movement? Oh yeah, we already have those. Never mind.

Q: How many of those authoritarian blowhards are actually willing to get off the computer, load up their guns and stomp into the streets to shoot at whatever targets they pick? (IMO, very few, maybe several dozen) 

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Trump, in Increasingly Dark and Dour Tones, Says He ‘Shouldn’t Have Left’ the White House

Reading the Auras of Democrats and Republicans on the Eve of the Election -- According to daily polling from Civiqs, which has been charting America’s mood about the direction of the United States, the vibes around this so-called vibes election have been strikingly stable.

Dem vibes

Repub vibes

(more fearful than the Dems)

The election is uncertain, but it might not be close -- Close polls don’t tell the whole story. It’s not unlikely that if we see a typically sized polling error, one candidate — Donald Trump or Kamala Harris — could run away with the election

GOP primed to back Trump if he contests election

Some dark humor

You have to prioritize

the imminent threat --

Choose paint color or call fire dept?

News bits: My path to political clarity; A really big court fine; Gaza; Trump's list of stolen election lies

Briefly, it took years for clarity about politics to come to me. The depth and breadth of the authoritarian threat was not at all clear to me in the 1970s or 1980s. I didn't start to wake up until about 1997 or 1998. In 1998 I started studying the science of politics and engaging in online politics. By about 2000-2002 it was sinking in that the GOP leadership was radicalizing and drifting into authoritarianism. By about 2006, it became clear to me that authoritarian radicalization mostly (~90% ?) contained in years of ruthless dark free speech was spreading to the rank and file and seriously taking hold. I'm a slow learner.

☹️

It is now also clear that most humans tend to be slow unlearners. Specifically, it will take decades to unlearn the authoritarianism that  decades of authoritarian radical right propaganda taught millions of Americans. Neutralizing the authoritarian threat is going to take a mountain of unlearning by the radicalized public. I don't know how to do that. Maybe it is impossible under current circumstances. A heck of a lot of adult Americans think us non-authoritarians need to unlearn what we believe.

What does the non-radicalized pro-democracy public need to learn and unlearn? Probably some things, but I don't know what they are.

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A Russian court has fined Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 for blocking the content of Russian media sources:

To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google would therefore have to find more money than exists on Earth to pay Moscow - but on Tuesday fell a little short of that mark when it posted $88 billion quarterly revenue.

The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media.

"Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS.

The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called “a case in which there are many, many zeros.”

Dang, the fine doubles every week! 

😮

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Florida sent a reminder to the U.S. Department of Justice that they are not allowed to send monitors to polling locations after the DOJ sent a press release announcing the planned visits.

The Justice Department announced Friday that it “plans to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws in 86 jurisdictions in 27 states for the Nov. 5 general election.”

The DOJ said they “regularly deploy” staff to “monitor for compliance with federal civil rights laws in elections in communities all across the country.”

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd wrote an email to the Deputy Chief at the U.S. Department of Justice Voting Section, Jasmyn Richardson, that said: “As a reminder, Department of Justice monitors are not permitted inside a polling place under Florida law.”

He cited 102.031 (3)(a) of the Florida statutes, which lists those who are allowed inside of a polling place.

“Department of Justice personnel are not included on the list,” he wrote.  

“Even if they could qualify as ‘law enforcement’ under section 102.031 (3)(a) of the Florida Statutes, absent some evidence concerning the need for federal intrusion, or some federal statute that preempts Florida law, the presence of federal law enforcement inside polling places would be counterproductive and could potentially undermine confidence in the election,” he said.

Florida calls federal election monitors a "federal intrusion." What they are actually thinking is that federal election monitors constitute a federal invasion and declaration of war against their precious tyranny. That is how authoritarians see their sacred right to undermine elections. American authoritarian tyranny supporters are now just itching for excuses to pick fights and file lawsuits.  

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No good news comes from Gaza:

All those who remain in northern Gaza — especially children — are “at imminent risk of dying” from disease, famine and ongoing bombardments there, UNICEF’s executive director warned.

The World Health Organization reported an attack Saturday on a health-care center in Gaza City, where a polio vaccination drive was taking place. At least six people, including four children, were injured, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, adding that the attack took place during a humanitarian pause that Israel agreed to.

The IDF said that it was “aware of claims” that civilians were injured at the clinic, but that “an initial review determined that the IDF did not strike in the area at the specified time.”

There we have it. The IDF didn't do it. Someone else did blew up the health-care center where polio shots were being administered to children. Since he is a rabid anti-vaxx crackpot, I think RFK Jr. did it. 

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The WaPo published a long analysis article (not paywalled) including quotes by DJT listing ways the Dems intend to steal the 2024 election:

13 ways Democrats will steal the election 

(according to Trump)

“It’s the only thing they do well, they cheat. Their policies are no good. Their government is no good. Their management is no good, but they cheat like nobody can cheat.” — Former president Donald Trump, remarks about Democrats in Wilmington, North Carolina, on Sept. 21

Here’s an assessment of the claims made by Trump and his allies — some repurposed from those he made in 2020, and some newly conjured for 2024. Be alert for projection, a hallmark of Trump claims: He likes to accuse others of what he himself has done or would try.

1. Migrant noncitizens will vote in droves

2. Polling places will have lax rules

3. Media coverage will favor Democrats

4. Prosecutions are election interference

5. ‘Americans’ abroad will cast illegal votes

6. Democrats will harvest ballots

7. GOP poll watchers will be obstructed

8. Voting machines will be rigged and hacked

9. Private money will favor Democratic voters

10. Dead people will vote (my favorite!!)

11. The weather will be used against Trump (yeah, go figure that one out)

12. The Fed’s rate cut is election interference

13. The Democratic nomination was a coup

Two points, if I may.

• In my firm opinion, that list is solid evidence of how powerful America's RRA (radical right authoritarian) infrastructure has become. Even just 30 years ago, a Republican candidate for president spewing that list of blatant lies, even without Trump's public record of horrors, would not have had any chance of being nominated by the Republican Party. That list would have been laughed out of the GOP and relegated to the crackpot RRA fringe where it came from. But now, that crackpottery and extremism have been normalized and accepted as mainstream RRA dogma among GOP elites and most of the rank and file.

• I take that list of lies, slanders, crackpottery and cynical ill-will as deeply insulting. It is insulting to see all Democrats smeared as crooks, traitors and liars by a lying jackass who actually is a convicted felon, a traitor, a sex predator and a chronic liar.  And when I hear the defense, but all politicians lie, it sickens me. Trump's lies are in support of authoritarianism, deep corruption, bigotry, oppression and some other Dark Ages horrors. He is not anywhere close to pro-democracy, pro-civil liberties or pro-honest government. He is not a regular politician. He is a morally rotted, enraged, vengeful demagogue. It is unpersuasive to cite lies by all politicians as justifying any lying at all. Lies by authoritarian politicians and partisans seeking to kill democracy and civil liberties by deceit, mendacity, stealth, coercion and any other tactic, immoral or not, are not the same as lies by pro-democracy politicians and partisans. 

A personal commentary by Snowflake

 Believe me when I say this: I really enjoy the back n forth on this channel. I enjoy arguing with those who disagree with me, because - most of the time - we do it respectfully.

Yet, I have made a decision about the upcoming week. I will NOT be present. Probably starting Tuesday. 

What has irked me in the last couple of weeks is how much worse it has gotten and how much worse it is GOING TO GET regardless of the election results. 

In fact, I don't know which will be worse........

Trump winning, or Trump losing.

A win will usher in weeks of machismo from one side, lots of gloating, rubbing salt into our wounds.

BUT can we honestly say, we won't be tempted to do the same if our side wins? Rubbing their noses in it? 

I do attend other debate forums, and the vile has become more vile than ever. Especially around stories like this one:

https://www.wesa.fm/politics-government/2024-10-31/mount-pleasant-parade-kamala-harris-pennsylvania

Which garbage remark was more offensive? Pick a side. Never mind they were BOTH offensive. One side says their garbage comment "was a joke" while the other side says Joe Biden just "misspoke."

I have a question too for our friend Germaine. Have you considered posting any guidelines about election night or the day after? Reason I ask: refugees from other Disqus channels that could come on here gloating if Trump wins or making threatening comments if Trump loses?

Worse: Will we automatically attack anyone who celebrates Trump's victory, even if they are within the rules? I suspect we know better, but it's still a question worth asking.

I have - ALMOST - lost faith in the American people. But I also remain an eternal optimist. But I will NOT be watching coverage on election night, nor likely next day, I will even avoid turning on any Canadian news channels. Me and my lady have already told all we know don't be calling us with results. We will watch movies or some of our favorite TV shows. 

I know - as pretty much everyone else here knows - that it is going to be ugly. Even to the point - dare I say it - where a lot of people, both out there AND on debate forums and social media are going to lose their cookies.

I hope that the regulars here and Germaine will understand my reluctance for being on here and I will probably not even take part in any discussions on my own channel.

I hope Kamala wins. I hope civility survives. I hope we can all move forward after this election. 

I also hope I will win a lottery, and what are the chances of that?

Be back some time in the future, till then, cheers to all my friends (or otherwise) on here. 

Major law news: The USSC voter role purge opinion revisited; Trump judges attack mail-in ballots

As I argued yesterday, a recent USSC emergency decision allowed Virginia to purge a voter role. The purge was clearly, undeniably illegal under federal law. There was zero dispute about any illegality, until the USSC apparently silently just blew a hole in a federal law with zero explanation. The entire decision is shown below:

Translated into English that says the federal trial court decision to block the voter purge by Virginia is reversed. Virginia can purge the voter role as it had planned to do. If the people trying to block the purge don't like this decision, they can appeal it to the 4th Circuit and, if they lose there, then they can appeal it back to us. In other words, the voter role will be purged and if the losers here want to contest this on appeal they can go ahead and do it and we'll see how that plays out in appeals court over the next year or two. 

This terrifying decision was 6-3. All six radical right authoritarian Republican Party judges apparently voted to eviscerate a reasonable federal election law without a single word of explanation. 

On top of this being terrifying, it is deeply galling that the three Democratic Party judges simply say they disagree and would allow the court to stop Virginia's voter role purge. They too do not deign to offer any explanation for their opposition to Virginia's voter purge or the trial court decision to block it. We get bupkis for an explanation. The USSC shows no respect for citizens who want to know what is going on and why. Instead we get insulting, contemptuous silence.

The three Dems here appear to be either (i) grossly incompetent due to arrogance or who knows what, (ii) the court has a rule, likely in secret, that if in emergency cases like this the dissenting judges offer an explanation for their dissent, the authoritarians will turn the USSC far more corrupt and authoritarian than it already is, maybe by completely shutting the Dem judges out of all cases, or (iii) something else is going on that I am unaware of.

Peanut gallery commentary:

Peanut 1. Not good. Not good at all. The EDVA [Eastern District Virginia trial court decision] seemed very solid to me.

Peanut 2. That's because it is. It's literally against federal law to purge the voter rolls this close to the election. The fact that they're ignoring that is more proof that they'll interpret the law anyway they want.

3. Does ignoring federal law open then up to impeachment? Wouldn't that be the only check on the power of the Supreme Court left since legislation does not seem to have an effect?

4. Problem is impeachment doesn't mean shit without one party in control of both Chambers sadly ....

3 again. I still think there would be some benefit to just carrying out the impeachment process (even if it failed) to remind these Justices and more importantly the public that there is a mechanism by which to remove these corrupt judges once the tide turns against them.

2 again. If. If the tide turns against them. That's this election. This is the best chance to change the course of this country. I don't know when we'll get another if we miss this one. Presidential immunity is a hard one to overcome. (emphasis added) 

5. Thank everyone who voted for any Republican after the Federalist Society was founded in 1982 in order to create exactly these sorts of legal outcomes. 

The presidential immunity that the highlighted comment referred to is the recent USSC case that put a sitting president above the law. 

Consider this: Between our rogue authoritarian republican USSC and the enraged, vindictive rogue dictator that Trump would be if he is elected, the threat to democracy, transparent governance (honest govt.), inconvenient truth, civil liberties and the rule of law would all be under deadly, lethal threat. But, even if Trump loses, the USSC is still there to keep blowing gigantic holes in our democracy! Power is flowing from democracy to authoritarianism.

I cannot make clearer how dismal our situation is. I wish I could.

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Slate reports about a terrifying decision from the hyper-radical authoritarian 5th Circuit appeals court Circuit. The 5th Cir. constitutes three states, TX, MS and LA. A panel of three authoritarian Trump appeals court judges just blasted a hole in laws that allow mail-in ballots that were mailed before election day but received after election day to be tossed out. Slate writes:

Three Trump Judges Just Issued a Shock Ruling 

That Could Wreak Havoc on the Election

On Friday afternoon, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit handed down a shock decision declaring that states may not count ballots that are mailed by Election Day but received shortly thereafter. By its own terms, the ruling applies only to Mississippi, throwing the legality of its voting procedures into question just 11 days before the election. Nationwide, however, 18 states and Washington, D.C., accept late-arriving ballots; the 5th Circuit’s reasoning would render all these laws illegitimate and void, nullifying hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of ballots. The court’s obvious goal, aside from destabilizing a close election, is to tee up a Supreme Court decision that could wipe out all these laws in one fell swoop.

The Republican National Committee manufactured this dispute as a test case to end the widespread practice of accepting ballots that come in after Election Day, but are postmarked by Election Day. (Republicans believe that these ballots are disproportionately likely to support Democrats.) The RNC filed its lawsuit in Mississippi because the state counts late-arriving ballots and falls within the 5th Circuit; conservative lawyers knew they could get a favorable ruling from the far-right court.* RNC lawyers argued that federal law requires all votes to be received by Election Day, not just cast by Election Day. And they claimed that this federal rule overrides, or “preempts,” state laws to the contrary.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr. sharply rejected this argument. He pointed out that under the Constitution, “the times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed” by the states, though Congress may “make or alter” the state’s laws. Congress has not prescribed specific rules for mail ballots, instead leaving those decisions up to the states. The fact that Congress created one “Election Day” does not mean that it intended to void ballots that are cast by that date but, for whatever reason, arrive shortly thereafter.

Now the 5th Circuit has disagreed. The three-judge panel that decided this case is made up of extremely far-right, ultrapartisan appointees of Donald Trump: Andrew Oldham, Kyle Duncan, and James Ho. In his majority opinion joined by Duncan and Ho, Oldham latched on to federal law setting out “the day for the election.” He then declared that this is “the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials.” Oldham asserted that a ballot is not actually “cast” until “the state takes custody of it”—a contested question on which federal law is silent. By fabricating this atextual rule, he was able to insist that late-arriving ballots are actually “cast” after Election Day.  

But the 5th Circuit has now created a vehicle for the justices to visit this issue after the election and potentially strike down nearly 20 states’ laws, making voting exponentially harder in the future.

One can clearly see the onslaught of lawsuits over this cannon blast at voting rights. Again, the intense hostility of radical right authoritarian Republicans (not conservatives) to free and fair elections and voting rights cannot be much clearer than this. Flimsy excuses, hypocrisy, flawed logic, flawed, bad-faith reasoning and cynical false assertions of facts are the basis on which Trump judges make their authoritarian anti-democracy decisions.

Q: As time passes and the authoritarian threat becomes even clearer than it was just a couple of years ago, does it feel more and more like bitter, unresolvable disputes over ideologies and beliefs that drove the US Civil War and WW2 were never settled? 

In my opinion key aspects of both the Civil War and WW2 are still being fought right now. Those wars never ended. 

That was 1980

What we have now has been a long time

 coming, but now here it is

Sam Alito: Knight of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George

Just when you think things could not get weirder, they get weirder. Above the Law reports on old but obscure news:

Sam Alito Got Knighted... Just Like The Founding Fathers 

EXPLICITLY MADE UNCONSTITUTIONAL

It turns out Sam Alito hates the Constitution as much as you thought he did 

The Intelligencer has a story today that actually happened several years ago but — not unlike Alito’s Upside-Down Flag nonsense — didn’t register with the public at the time. As we noted last week, Alito has been taking expensive gifts — as the conservative Supreme Court justices are wont to do! — from a right-wing German princess, but it turns out he’s been cultivating more ties to the European aristocracy.

It turns out the last time Donald Trump was president, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, author of the Dobbs decision setting women’s health care back a few centuries, added a knighthood to his own résumé, pledging an oath to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George. The knighthood, bestowed in 2017, wasn’t widely reported at the time, but the order’s website was updated in July with Alito’s investiture on the front page.

May we present, Sir Samuel of Blackacre! We don’t know his sigil, but it’s meant to be flown upside-down.

Alito’s “An Appeal to Heaven” flag is a reference to John Locke’s argument in favor of a right to rise up against monarchists. Alito himself accepted a knighthood from an order managed by the House of Bourbon–Two Sicilies. The grand prefect of the order’s son is a pretender to the Imperial Throne of France.

Thank Dog for right-wing German princesses and the European aristocracy! Someone has gotta maintain law, order and sanity in America!!

And, for the wonks in the herd:

Q: What is the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George?

A: The Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George is an ancient equestrian order with origins dating back to the time of Emperor Constantine. It is considered one of the oldest orders of knighthood, tracing its roots to Emperor Constantine after the appearance of the Cross at Saxa Rubra. The main purposes of the order are to propagate the Christian faith and glorify the Holy Cross. It is also involved in social welfare and charitable activities. .... The current Grand Master is H.R.H. Prince Charles of Bourbon Two Sicilies, Duke of Castro and Head of the Royal House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

 

Order of St. George

Highest military decoration 

of the Russian Federation

. . . . . . Gadzooks!! Alito is a Knight of the Russian Federation!! Unleash the aristocrats! . . . . . no wait, leash the aristocrats!

St. George engaging the dragon

Alito's Appeal to 

Heaven flag

A commentary on civics, journalism, the deep state and shocking ignorance

Michael Lewis, author of The Undoing Project (book review here), wrote a fascinating opinion for the WaPo (not paywalled):

Directions to a journalistic goldmine

The federal government had set aside a big pot of money for the candidates of both parties to staff their presidential transition teams. Trump and Hillary Clinton had both built massive teams of people ready to enter the 15 big federal departments and hundreds of smaller federal agencies to learn whatever was happening inside. A thousand or so Obama officials were waiting for them, along with briefings that had taken them six months to prepare. But then, days after the election, Trump simply fired the 500 or so people on his transition team. “Chris, you and I are so smart that we can leave the victory party two hours early and do the transition ourselves,” he told a perplexed Chris Christie, who’d assembled the team.

Then he appointed Rick Perry as his secretary of energy. In his own presidential campaign, Perry had called for the Energy Department’s elimination — and was forced, at his Senate confirmation hearings, to acknowledge that he’d had no real idea of what went on inside the Energy Department, but now that he’d spent a few days looking into it, he really did not want to eliminate it. At that moment, it became clear that none of these people, newly in charge of the United States government, had the faintest idea what it did. .... People capable of ruining panel discussions and dinner parties with their steady stream of opinions about American politics were totally flummoxed by the simplest questions about American government. Questions like: What do all those civil servants do all day inside the Agriculture Department? (They preserve rural America from extinction, among other things.)

This situation, though sad for the country, struck me as a happy journalistic opportunity. The outgoing Obama people had created what amounted to the most timely and relevant civics class ever, and no one had bothered to enroll. And so I signed up to audit it. .... At some point, I realized that several dozen humans could spend their lifetimes getting the briefings ignored by the incoming Trump administration, and so I stopped and wrote a series of magazine pieces about what I’d seen and heard. I then stapled the pieces together and published them as a book called “The Fifth Risk.” The pieces attracted more attention than just about any magazine articles I’ve ever written, and the book sold roughly 10 times more copies than I or anyone else imagined it would.

But even that wasn’t what was strange about the experience. What was strange was what happened next: nothing. .... I further assumed that after a book in which the central character is the Agriculture Department sold more than half a million copies, the market would correct. Clearly there was a readership that hungered to know more about whatever Donald Trump was neglecting. The supply would expand to fill the demand, the curiosity of the American public would be slaked, and I’d need to find something else to write about.

I was wrong. The recent series published in this newspaper [by Lewis and six other writers] — titled “Who is government?” — proves it. .... All six writers now have enjoyed the same experience that I had the first time around. Each has been surprised by how well it pays to write about federal bureaucrats. None required more than about five minutes to find a subject that made their socks go up and down. Each has more or less said to me: I cannot believe how good this material is — and how overlooked.

My original investment thesis — that the journalistic marketplace was just a bit slow to pick up on reader interest in this new existential threat to an institution everyone has long taken for granted — no longer really suffices. Everyone can now see the threat. [I wish that was true, but it is not] And so some other forces must be at work here. One possibility: Our media is less and less able to fund long-form storytelling, and these stories require time, money and space. Another: Our government — as opposed to our elected officials — has no talent for telling its own story. On top of every federal agency sit political operatives whose job is not to reveal and explain the good work happening beneath them but to prevent any of their employees from embarrassing the president. The PR wing of the federal government isn’t really allowed to play offense, just a grinding prevent defense. And the sort of people who become civil servants — the characters profiled in our “Who is government?” series — tend not to want or seek attention.  

You never know what effect any piece of writing will have. Writers write the words, but readers decide their meaning. My vague sense is that most readers have come away from this series with feelings both of hope (these civic-minded people are still among us) and dread (we’re letting something precious slip away). My own ambition for the series was that it would subvert the stereotype of the civil servant. The typecasting has always been lazy and stupid, but increasingly, it’s deadly. Even as writers grow rich proving it wrong. (emphases added)

I want to try to make and plead for at least some understanding of two points:

• The elites who drive America's radical right authoritarian, anti-government wealth and power movement are either mostly stunningly ignorant about the false claims they routinely make about government functions, they are mostly cynical liars, or they are a roughly even mix of the two. Rick Perry was obviously in the first category -- his ignorance was stunning. So was Trump. Sadly, Trump probably still is just about as ignorant as he was in 2016. I suspect most of the rest of the radical right authoritarian elites are not nearly so ignorant as Trump and Perry, but that could be wrong. Lewis makes a great point about the deep ignorance that drives the authoritarian MAGA movement. 

• A central target of the radical right authoritarian narrative is the alleged tyrannical, socialist/Marxist "deep state" full of corrupt shady bureaucrats working to oppress all of us. The dark free speech tactic amounts to harsh attacks on mostly honest professionals who know what they are doing and are trying their best to serve the public interest. The attacks include lies, slanders, insults, and loads of BS backed mostly by flawed reasoning or just cynical crackpottery.