Some Random Thoughts: Corrupting History & Whatnot

Voting the old-fashioned way - by mail

I mailed my old fashioned, horse and buggy days paper ballot in today. The dem party here let me vote on their primary ballot. The reps don't allow that for unaffiliated riff raff voters in California. I voted for mayor Pete. He’ll give those darn Russkies (including the president) a run for their money. Just can't vote for old white guys any more, unless of course there’s no choice in the general election. Hm. Looks like I’ll be voting for an old white guy in November. Sigh.

Faking history

Yesterday, those feisty folks at WBUR’s On the Media program broadcast a short segment about what’s going on at that hotbed of overheated politics and wild clambakes & sex orgies, the National Archives. What, the National Archives? Yes, the National Archives (NA). Turns out, the NA has been doctoring photos to make the historical record surrounding America's president look better, i.e., different, than it actually is. Oh, that naughty Donald the Sneaky. Will the dirty tricks never end? Woe is me. Forsooth and egad.

That wailing and gnashing of what’s left of my teeth aside, in a 9 minute broadcast segment, The Vanishing National Archives, OTM reports on the audacity of the NA to produce fake, pro-Trump history for posterity. It’s a total hoot.



The NA got caught and apologized for doctoring a photo of the 2017 Women's March in Washington, DC. The photo had been doctored to remove unflattering (disparaging) references to the president. The excuse was the NA didn’t want the little children of the future offended by naughtiness on protester’s signs. That’s just the beginning. The NA plans to allow millions of documents simply go away and never come back. The New York Times reports: “The National Archives is letting millions of documents, including many related to immigrants’ rights, be destroyed or deleted. .... But less appreciated is the fact that vital information is actually being deleted or destroyed, so that no one — neither the press and government watchdogs today, nor historians tomorrow — will have a chance to see it.”

Once again, a democratic norm has been crushed. It turns out that there is no enforcement mechanism in the Presidential Records Act, and the president is free to take all of his papers and burn them. When the NA tried to save some of the papers that the president had tried to destroy, which is his normal mode of operation, he fired them. The president hates leaving a paper trail, which as we all know, makes plausible deniability more fun and much easier to get away with. Be prepared for pro-Trump history books and real history books. A fight is brewing, to say the least.

Brandolini’s law of bullshit - a new law of human nature

A comment here a few days ago alerted me to a new fundamental law of nature. Here it is:

Discovery of this new law possibly came from Alberto Brandolini in a Tweet, but I’m not sure. My unpaid, illegal research minions are digging into the shrinking National Archives to see if there are any records left. Let’s hope the minions don’t get singed in the bonfires going on in the basement of the NA. Safety first.

The thing is, Brandolini’s law is true. It really is much harder, often impossible, to refute bullshit and lies than it is to generate it. In fact, bullshit and lies are so difficult to refute, that sophisticated speakers and politicians usually avoid trying to do so. Doing so is usually considered to constitute the grave rhetorical mistake called “stepping into an opponent’s frame.” As we all recall, this rhetorical issue has been discussed here before[1] in a delightful OP cleverly titled The Morality of Framing Issues in Politics. OK, it’s a dumb title. Whatever. With Germaine at the helm, you get what you pay for.

Anyway, stepping into an opponent’s frame is very much like stepping in something one needs to get off the bottom of one’s shoe after the neighbor’s dog left a deposit in an inconvenient location on the lawn. Oh, these are troubling times indeed. Ruffians spewing bullshit and lies and there's no good recourse for society but to absorb the social and economic damage. Woe is us.

Brandolini has it about right.

Bye for now facts fans.

Footnote:
1. Here's my scintillating blather about the rhetorical boo boo (mistake) called stepping into the opponent’s frame:
Frames can be very powerful. Some experts argue that politics for smart politicians is a matter of framing and reframing. Inexperienced politicians make the mistake of ‘stepping into their opponent's frame’, which significantly undermines their argument and power to persuade. If you make that mistake, this is what usually results:
1. You give free airtime to your opponent’s frame, including his images, emotions, values and terminology
2. You put yourself on the defensive
3. You usually have a heavier burden of proof to dislodge the opponent’s frame because lots of contrary evidence and explanation is needed to overcome a little evidence, including lies, that supports the frame
4. Your response is often complex and vulnerable because complicated responses to rebut simple frames are usually needed

Cyberwar Myths

The Washington Post published an opinion piece today on some common misconceptions about the endless cyberwar we have been in for years now.

Myth 1 - Cyberwar is overhyped and impossible: Contrary to the myth, cyberwar is both real and possible. It does influence geopolitical conflicts contrary to the myth. The common argument that squirrels cause more blackouts than cyberattacks is based on flawed reasoning. Very few cyberwar attacks are intended to cause blackouts or power plants to explode. Instead, most are designed to quietly obtain information or conduct espionage. Some do cause physical damage, but that hasn’t been the main focus so far.

Myth 2 - Cyberwar is mostly about big, destructive attacks on infrastructure and military targets: That is false. As noted above most cyberattacks are designed to quietly obtain information or conduct espionage. The WaPo comments: “Consider, for example, the extensive Chinese economic and military espionage campaign that has hit thousands of American firms and government agencies, prompting the Defense Science Board to warn that more than two dozen U.S. weapons systems have been compromised. Or take Russia’s activities in 2016. Those hacks did not do physical damage to a single computer yet injected themselves into the core of the American political debate.”

Myth 3 - The purpose of cyberwar attacks is easy to know: This is a big issue. WaPo writes: “The motivations behind other very destructive cyberattacks, like 2017’s NotPetya and WannaCry operations, remain opaque. In still other cases, like Russia’s 2018 operation against the Olympics in South Korea, nations have seemed to try to disguise themselves with false flags — the opposite of clear signaling.”

An excellent current example is Russian interference in the 2020 election to help Bernie Sanders. The Russians could be doing that to help the democrats nominate the candidate they believe the president has the best chance of winning against. Alternatively, they could be doing that to exacerbate divisions within the democratic party, making whoever is nominated weaker against the president. They could even be doing that to poison or discredit the Sanders campaign in the belief that Bernie would be a seriously threatening candidate against the president.

Myth 4 - A cyberattacker’s identity cannot be determined: This is also an important myth to dispel. WaPo writes: “In reality, governments like the United States are very good at figuring out who conducted cyberattacks, in part because they use their own hacking capabilities to spy proactively on other nations’ hackers. Even outside of classified settings, there is a robust private sector of industry analysts who study cyberattacks and piece together clues about who perpetrated them and how; examples include studies of Russian information operations, Chinese economic espionage, North Korean bank hacking, Iranian attacks on Middle East rivals, and U.S. espionage and counterterrorism hacking. From these sources, it’s possible to put together clear, convincing and compelling narratives of the past 20 years of cyber-conflict — and to find some great stories of spy vs. spy competition in the digital age.”

Many Americans still falsely believe that the Russians did not provide any significant help in the president winning the electoral college in 2016. The president himself continues to assert this blatant lie. To make matters worse, he is now acting to squelch the flow of information about current Russian election interference the from the US government to the public. He believes it is not in his interest for the American people to know what foreign adversaries are doing to US elections. Since the Russians are acting to help the president get re-elected, his attempts to squelch information flow to Americans is completely understandable. This action is full in accord with the president’s view of how politics should be done for his benefit, even if it damages democracy and the rule of law.

You say you want a revolution?

Edited:

Well, yes.  Some of us want to change the world.  You can count me in. 

I speak not of a bloody revolution, but rather of an evolution in America’s Capitalistic economic system.  It is not working so well for the vast majority of everyday people.  Costs in healthcare and medicines, child care, school tuitions, etc., are overwhelming.  Credit card and other bills just keep on piling up, in an effort to “stay afloat.”

With yesterday’s overwhelming Nevada victory for Senator Bernie Sanders (last I looked, only some 50% of the vote has been reported in), “the people” spoke up, en masse.

As Bernie puts it, “We are sick and tired of…”  You can fill in that blank.  I will fill it in as “We are sick and tired of the goddamn capitalistic greed.” 😡

Capitalism has failed the vast majority of people

Here in Capitalistic America, as the wealth inequality schism grows ever-wider by the year, we can easily see that Capitalism works quite selectively.  It can and does work beautifully for that “privileged 1%,” but it is not working very well for the other 99%.  They say almost half of the people out there wouldn’t be able to sustain an unforeseen $400 hit on their income.

During the Nevada Democratic Debate, multi-billionaire Mayor Bloomberg claimed he “worked hard for his money.”  Bernie responded, “You know Mr. Bloomberg, it wasn’t you who made all that money.  Maybe your workers played some part in that as well.” (see 50-second mark)  I guess that little bit of intellectual insight had been lost on Mr. Bloomberg, over his "raking in the money" years.

Question: Since it takes money to make money, who has gotten to take the most advantage of the “pot of capitalistic money?”  The “already haves and the well-connected” (1%), or the “working two jobs, likely at minimum wage, with no or few benefits” (99%)?

Make your case.

Thanks for posting and recommending.

What is a Lie of Omission?

Lying by omission is when a person leaves out important information or fails to correct a pre-existing misconception in order to hide the truth from others. ... Lying by omission is not always intended to be harmful; it is often thought of as an action undertaken to spare the recipient pain or embarrassment.


The New York Times and other reliable sources are reporting now that US intelligence agencies believe that the Russian government has been acting to help Bernie Sanders in the 2020 election. The point of Russia’s help for the Bernster is to help president Trump win re-election. The apparent logic is that Putin views Sanders as the weakest democrat who is a serious candidate, so Putin wants Bernie to win the democratic nomination.

That’s not a bad calculation. The Russians aren’t stupid. The Russian leadership wants to see the president re-elected because they believe that best serves their interests. The logic is clean.

That sleaze is not the point of this OP. But, it is the grist for it. This OP begins to look into what a political lie is. I've written on the difference between facts, truths and logic. Lies are a different topic entirely.

Here is what the NYT writes:

“WASHINGTON — Russia has been trying to intervene in the Democratic primaries to aid Senator Bernie Sanders, according to people familiar with the matter, and intelligence officials recently briefed him about Russian interference in the election, Mr. Sanders said on Friday.

In a statement on Friday, Mr. Sanders denounced Russia, calling President Vladimir V. Putin an “autocratic thug” and warning Moscow to stay out of the election.

“Let’s be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up and, unlike the current president, I stand firmly against their efforts and any other foreign power that wants to interfere in our election,” Mr. Sanders said.

He also told reporters that he was briefed about a month ago.

“The intelligence community is telling us Russia is interfering in this campaign right now in 2020,” Mr. Sanders said on Friday in Bakersfield, Calif., where he was to hold a rally ahead of Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. “And what I say to Mr. Putin, ‘If I am elected president, trust me you will not be interfering in American elections.’”

What is a lie?

There are at least two main kinds of lies. Lies of commission are statements or acts that are intended to deceive, knowing the facts contradict the statements or acts that the liar asserts as facts or truth. In my opinion, lies of omission are just as bad as lies of commission. They consist of intentionally hiding inconvenient truth that is usually inconvenient, unpleasant or harmful in some way.

After US Attorney General William Barr (1) refused to release the entire Mueller report to the American people and (2) lied about its content, it seemed to me that what Barr did constituted a lie of omission. The redacted Mueller report was released on April 18, 2019.

But what about the passage of time? It is not neutral in politics or in human life. The longer a lie of omission stands unchallenged, the more power its deceptive impact it has. I decided for myself, that lies of omission like what Barr spewed on the American people about the partially hidden Mueller report deserve to be counted as another lie each day that passes. Thus, if someone hides facts and/or truths for one day, they lie once. If they did that two days, they lied twice.

By the measure of one lie per day of hiding information the public deserves to know, Barr lied over 300 times about the Mueller report and as long as he keeps hiding it, he continues to lie.

That seems fair and balanced to me. If it isn’t, why isn’t it? What is the logic that says hiding information the public deserves to know isn't a lie every single day? Should the time window be every 12 hours? Every 48 hours? Every second? Every trillion years? If so, why use a different time period?

Bernie lied for a month

I presume that Bernie did not tell the public that the Russians were trying to help him because he understood that it would undermine his candidacy. The reasoning or logic is obvious: The Russians support what they believe to be the weakest democratic candidate to help their choice Trump. There’s nothing complicated about that logic.

If that logic more true than not, then I conclude that Bernie’s lies constitute a month's worth of lies, i.e., he lied about 30 times to the American people.

Q1: Did Bernie lie ~30 times?
Q2: Is it nonsense (or worse) to believe that a lie of omission over time does not constitute anything worse that the original lie done just once?
Q3: Is it impossible for a lie of omission to gain power or influence over time the longer it is not revealed?
Q4: What if the Russian interference story is just a cover to confuse people or generate cynicism and distrust, and if so, how do you know?
Q5: What do you think about what Hannah Arendt said about lies, deceit and propaganda, e.g., was she full of baloney?

'There need to be mass protests': Authoritarianism experts say time is running out for Americans to stop Trump

• Americans are running out of time to stop President Donald Trump's authoritarian slide, experts warned.
• "There need to be mass protests," a Yale philosophy professor and expert on fascism told Insider. "The Republican Party is betraying democracy, and these are historical times. Someone has got to push back."
• Since he was acquitted in the GOP-controlled Senate earlier this month, the president has overseen a White House purge of impeachment witnesses, and the attorney general has intervened in the trial of a Trump associate.
• Republicans have mostly sat back, with at least one senator conceding that Trump's behavior did not seem to have changed because of impeachment.
• "There is absolutely no reason for him to stop pushing. It goes against both his personality and his experience," Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, told Insider.

If Americans are concerned that President Donald Trump and Republicans are moving the US toward becoming a one-party, authoritarian state, they are running out of time to stop them, experts warned.

Trump has exhibited autocratic impulses since his 2016 campaign and from the moment he entered the White House.

The president has attacked virtually every democratic institution in the US when he's felt its actions were unfavorable to his agenda or public appearance. Meanwhile, he pushed traditional US allies away while openly embracing many of the world's most repressive leaders.

These trends have raised concern among top experts on authoritarianism, fascism, and democracy, but they've often said that the robust political system in the US, with its checks and balances and constitutional norms, has prevented Trump from becoming a full-blown authoritarian and doing whatever he wants.

Since Trump was acquitted in the Senate earlier this month after being impeached in the House over his dealings with Ukraine, there's been a White House purge of impeachment witnesses, and Attorney General William Barr has intervened in the trial of a close associate of the president, Roger Stone. And the experts' tone has changed dramatically.

'Someone has got to push back'

"The system is enabling Trump," Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who wrote "How Fascism Works," told Insider.

"There need to be mass protests," he said. "The Republican Party is betraying democracy, and these are historical times. Someone has got to push back."

"The deeply worrying moment is when you start to become a one-party state," Stanley added. "The Republican Party has shown that it has no interest in multi-party democracy ... They are much more concerned with power, with consolidating power."

Stanley said recent actions by Republicans and Trump were "straight from the literature on authoritarianism."

Only one Republican, Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, voted to convict Trump of abuse of power in his Senate impeachment trial. Romney was also one of just two GOP senators to vote in favor of an ultimately failed motion to call witnesses. (All 15 Senate impeachment trials before Trump's had witnesses.) With their vote, Republicans blocked potentially crucial testimony from the president's former national security adviser John Bolton.

Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, has since been excoriated by fellow Republicans and treated as a pariah.

Stanley said there should have been mass protests in the streets after the vote against witnesses, warning that the absence of significant public outcry served as "a further sign to the party in power that they can go ahead and do what they want."

Trump urged Ukraine, a vulnerable US ally, to dig up dirt on his political rivals during a reelection year — including on former Vice President Joe Biden, who until recent electoral setbacks was thought to be the leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. And Trump did so while withholding almost $400 million in vital, congressionally approved military aid from Kyiv as it fights a war against pro-Russian separatists.

There was a mountain of evidence that Trump directed a broad, complex scheme to essentially blackmail Ukraine into smearing his political opponents, but not all of the evidence was delivered under oath, because Republicans prevented key witnesses from testifying.

Several Senate Republicans decried Trump's actions toward Ukraine but still voted to acquit him. One such Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, conceded that she hadn't seen changes in Trump's behavior since his impeachment, despite her colleague Sen. Susan Collins of Maine recently suggesting that the president had learned a lesson.

"There haven't been very strong indicators this week that he has," Murkowski told reporters on Wednesday.

'There is absolutely no reason for him to stop pushing'

"From the moment he entered the Republican primary in 2015 to his impeachment five years later, Donald Trump has ignored advice to moderate and change and, in his view (which is largely correct), won. He has tested the boundaries of people and institutions several times and found them to be bendable and weak," said Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who's an expert on populism, extremism, and democracy.

"There is absolutely no reason for him to stop pushing," he added. "It goes against both his personality and his experience."

Mudde said the only question is whether there is still a breaking point for the Republican Party.

"Note that Trump has not changed the institutions, so the powers are still there," he said. "This is all about the courage and willingness of Republicans to stand up for the rule of law and to the president."

Since Trump's acquittal, he's ousted two key impeachment witnesses. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran, was pushed out of the National Security Council. Gordon Sondland, a Republican donor who gave $1 million to Trump's inauguration committee, was fired as the US's ambassador to the European Union.

Within a week, Barr intervened in Stone's trial, calling for a lesser sentence for the longtime GOP strategist than the one recommended by prosecutors who'd been working on the case.

On Twitter, Trump celebrated the controversial intervention, which led to the withdrawal or resignation of all four prosecutors working on Stone's case. "Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought," the president said.

'They'll do whatever they can to hold on to power'

While the president applauded the attorney general, Stanley described Barr as a "dangerous, authoritarian enabler," adding that Trump and those in his administration were not the only issues when it comes to an anti-democratic slide in the US.

"It's almost all of the Republican Party," Stanley said. "Mitch McConnell already showed that he has no loyalty to the rule of law when he denied Obama the right to appoint Supreme Court justices ... It's a much deeper problem."

He added: "We need conservatives and Republicans to stand up for the rule of law, and if we don't have that, it's over."

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University who's an expert on authoritarianism, told Insider that the resignations of the prosecutors over the interference with Stone's sentencing sent "a powerful message of protest."

"For Trump and Barr, though, this is likely 'good riddance to bad eggs,'" Ben-Ghiat said.

If Americans are truly concerned with Trump's "abuse of power," Ben-Ghiat said, the best strategy is for voters to mobilize and use "their electoral power to vote out these authoritarians while they still can."

But with a president who was just impeached on allegations that he solicited foreign election interference, and with Republican lawmakers who appear fully willing to enable his behavior, Stanley said he was not particularly optimistic about Election Day in November.

"I don't know what would happen in the absence of mass protests," Stanley said. "I'm not at all sanguine about the fairness of the upcoming elections."

He added: "As they've shown, they'll do whatever they can to hold on to power."

https://www.businessinsider.com/authoritarianism-experts-say-time-running-out-americans-to-stop-trump-2020-2

The Judge’s Blunt Warning to Americans

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. --- George Washington’s farewell address to the American people; portions that focus on the dangers of political parties and staunch partisanship, 1796


These are some of the comments that Judge Amy Berman Jackson made yesterday as she sentenced Roger Stone to 40 months in jail for committing seven felonies. She is speaking to Americans, the president and Attorney General William Barr. She reasonably anticipates that the reasons for Stone’s conviction will be spun into lies and propaganda about why Stone was sentenced to jail. This is a stark warning to Americans about the president and his friends and allies, and their arrogant anti-truth and anti-rule of law tactics and attitudes.

Jackson criticizes the president and others for blatant arrogance, contempt for truth and for promoting conspiracy theories about the Russia probe. In these things, she sees efforts by bad people to undermine both truth and democracy. A warning like this can’t be much clearer. The danger to democracy and the rule of law are crystal clear to those who can see it.

What the judge said

“At trial, the defense appropriately questioned Randy Credico’s credibility and Rick Gates’s credibility, but it was largely Stone's own emails and his own texts that proved the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. So what did the defense say to the jury on his behalf? So what? So what? Of all the circumstances in this case, that may be the most pernicious. The truth still exists. The truth still matters. Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn't, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy. And if it goes unpunished, it will not be a victory for one party or another. Everyone loses because everyone depends on the representatives they elect to make the right decisions on a myriad of issues -- many of which are politically charged but many of which aren’t -- based on the facts.”

“Everyone depends on our elected representatives to protect our elections from foreign interference based on the facts. No one knows where the threat is going to come from next time or whose side they’re going to be on, and for that reason the dismay and disgust at the defendant's belligerence should transcend party. The dismay and the disgust at the attempts by others to defend his actions as just business as usual in our polarized climate should transcend party. The dismay and the disgust with any attempts to interfere with the efforts of prosecutors and members of the judiciary to fulfill their duty should transcend party.”

“Sure, the defense is free to say: So what? Who cares? But, I’ll say this: Congress cared. The United States Department of Justice and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia that prosecuted the case and is still prosecuting the case cared. The jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. The American people cared. And I care.”

“I have received letters urging me not to silence an important voice in the public arena, but that will not be an element of this sentence in any way. I expect he will keep talking. And as you’ve just heard when I went through the elements of the offense, he was not convicted and is not being sentenced for exercising his First Amendment rights, his support of the President's campaign or his policies. He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the President. He was prosecuted for covering up for the President.” (emphasis added)