Pragmatic politics focused on the public interest for those uncomfortable with America's two-party system and its way of doing politics. Considering the interface of politics with psychology, cognitive science, social behavior, morality and history.
Etiquette
Friday, February 12, 2021
The Fascist Tyrant Wannabe Will Be Acquitted: What That Probably Means
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Conservative Lies and Hate Reached and Deceived Millions
Shows hosted by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other talk radio stars promoted debunked claims of a stolen election and urged listeners to “fight back.”Two days before a mob of Trump supporters invaded the United States Capitol, upending the nation’s peaceful transition of power and leaving at least five people dead, the right-wing radio star Glenn Beck delivered a message to his flock of 10.5 million listeners: “It is time to fight.”
“It is time to rip and claw and rake,” Mr. Beck said on his Jan. 4 broadcast. “It is time to go to war, as the left went to war four years ago.”Mark Levin, who reaches an estimated 11 million listeners a week, said in a Christmas broadcast that stealing elections “is becoming the norm for the Democrat Party” and called on his listeners to “crush them, crush them. We need to kick their ass.”Bill Cunningham, a syndicated host in Cincinnati, told listeners on Jan. 4: “I will never surrender and collapse and act as if it’s OK when hundreds of thousands have voted illegally.” On Jan. 5, as Trump supporters started to converge on Washington, Dan Bongino, the host of a popular podcast and nationally syndicated radio show, said that Democrats “rigged the rules to make sure that any potential outcome would go their way.”Leading radio anchors did not explicitly urge an assault on the Capitol, and Mr. Trump often spoke more brazenly than his media counterparts, including in a speech to his supporters in Washington just before the riot. But it was no accident that regular listeners to Mr. Limbaugh and others believed that a grave misdeed had occurred in the 2020 vote count.
On Dec. 16, Mr. Limbaugh — the country’s No. 1 radio host, with an audience of about 15.5 million a week — told listeners that Mr. Biden “didn’t win this thing fair and square, and we are not going to be docile like we’ve been in the past, and go away and wait till the next election.”
This type of push-and-pull — stoking listeners’ anger, then pulling back and disavowing the more extreme views voiced by callers — is typical of corporate right-wing radio hosts, whose success relies on provocation but whose multimillion-dollar paychecks depend on staying within the bounds of their publicly traded distributors.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Republican Radicalization Against Democracy
The republican party is radicalizing against democracy. This is the central political fact of our moment. Instead of organizing its coalition around shared policy goals, the GOP has chosen to emphasize hatred and fear of its political opponents, who—they warn—will destroy their supporters and the country. Those Manichaean stakes are used to justify every effort to retain power, and make keeping power the GOP’s highest purpose. We are living with a deadly example of just how far those efforts can go, and things are likely to get worse.And so the Biden era of American politics is shaping up as a contest between the growing ideological hegemony of liberalism, and the intensifying opposition of a political minority that has proved willing to engage in violence in order to hold on to power. This fight isn’t ultimately about policy, where the gaps are narrowing. It’s about whether the United States will live up to the promise of democracy—and on that crucial question, we’ve rarely been so divided.In 2020, some hoped that the colossal failures of the Trump administration and the shocking catastrophe of the coronavirus would usher in a similar landslide, but those hopes were disappointed. If COVID-19 and Donald Trump didn’t manage to produce a decisive result, it is hard to imagine what would. With structural polarization and high levels of party competition, blowout electoral victories are no longer a realistic path to achieving change. Instead, political movements win by making the controversial things they’re pushing part of the consensus. (emphasis added)
Yet the fight to democratize political power is precisely what is most necessary. Any progress toward that goal, any effort to push back against minoritarian control, will lead to bitter conflict. But there is no way to avoid that fight if we’re to defeat the growing faction that seeks to destroy majority rule. No substantive victories can endure unless democracy is refortified against its foes. That task comes first.
Actions taken by paramilitary groups in Michigan last year, emboldened by President Donald J. Trump, signaled a profound shift in Republican politics and a national crisis in the making.Following signals from President Donald J. Trump — who had tweeted “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” after an earlier show of force in Lansing — Michigan’s Republican Party last year welcomed the support of newly emboldened paramilitary groups and other vigilantes. Prominent party members formed bonds with militias or gave tacit approval to armed activists using intimidation in a series of rallies and confrontations around the state. That intrusion into the Statehouse now looks like a portent of the assault halfway across the country months later at the United States Capitol.
Tuesday, February 9, 2021
Regarding the Impeachment Trial
Former president Donald Trump will probably be acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial that is set to begin Tuesday.
But just because Trump’s defense is likely to succeed — by giving at least 34 senators a reason not to vote to convict — that doesn’t mean it’s good. On the eve of the trial, the defense team reinforced just how haphazard and strained its efforts have been.
Trump’s defense has rested on arguments that do little to address his culpability for allegedly inciting the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. It has argued that the proceedings themselves are unconstitutional and that Trump has a right to free speech — without focusing much on the established limits on such speech, which include incitement.While making their constitutionality argument, for instance, Trump’s attorneys repeatedly cite constitutional law professor Brian Kalt’s analysis — no fewer than 15 times, in fact. They note that Kalt has cited the words of founders such as Alexander Hamilton, saying that “Hamilton seemed to believe that removal was a required component of the impeachment penalty, which suggests that he viewed late impeachment as impossible.”
As Kalt has noted, though, the 2001 analysis they cite actually argued in favor of an impeachment and trial after an official was out of office. Kalt merely cited the evidence for both sides and then disputed arguments such as the one above.
President Donald Trump was “horrified” when violence broke out at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as a joint session of Congress convened to confirm that he lost the election, according to his defense attorneys.
Trump tweeted calls for peace “upon hearing of the reports of violence” and took “immediate steps” to mobilize resources to counter the rioters storming the building, his lawyers argued in a brief filed Monday in advance of Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. It is “absolutely not true,” they wrote, that Trump failed to act swiftly to quell the riot.
But that revisionist history [lies] conflicts with the timeline of events on the day of the Capitol riot, as well as accounts of multiple people in contact with the president that day, who have said Trump was initially pleased to see a halt in the counting of the electoral college votes. Some former White House officials have acknowledged that he only belatedly and reluctantly issued calls for peace, after first ignoring public and private entreaties to do so.But the decision by Trump’s attorneys to also assert a claim about Trump’s reaction that day in a footnote to their legal brief could give the House impeachment managers an opening as they prosecute their case. Among the possible witnesses who could rebut the contention that Trump moved quickly to rein his supporters are Republican senators who will now sit as jurors in the impeachment trial — some of whom have spoken publicly about their failed attempts to get the president to act expeditiously when his supporters invaded the Capitol.That same day, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) told conservative radio broadcaster Hugh Hewitt that it was “not an open question” as to whether Trump had been “derelict in his duty,” saying there had been a delay in the deployment of the National Guard to help the Capitol Police repel rioters.
“As this was unfolding on television, Donald Trump was walking around the White House confused about why other people on his team weren’t as excited as he was as you had rioters pushing against Capitol Police trying to get into the building,” he said, indicating that he had learned of Trump’s reaction from “senior White House officials.”
“This is not a trial of a president but of a private citizen. … This proceeding … violates the Constitution.” — Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in remarks on the Senate floor, Jan. 26, 2021“The theory that the impeachment of a former official is unconstitutional is flat-out wrong by every frame of analysis: constitutional context, historical practice, precedent and basic common sense. It’s been completely debunked by constitutional scholars from all across the political spectrum.” — Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), in remarks on the Senate floor, Jan. 26, 2021Scores of law professors, historians and pundits have weighed in as the Senate begins its trial of former president Donald Trump, who was impeached by the House for allegedly inciting insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.Our 2019 fact check was prompted by a tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a Trump ally who said that “you actually can impeach former presidents” and suggested former president Barack Obama get the treatment. (This came during Trump’s first impeachment, over his dealings with Ukraine.)
Now the shoe is on the other foot. In recent weeks, some of the same scholars we spoke to in 2019 about the Obama claim have firmed up their views when asked about Trump. For his part, Gaetz is now giving kudos to the “brilliance” of Paul’s floor remarks, in which the senator argued that impeaching former officials is unconstitutional. Go figure.
WWJD?
Work with me here on this hypothetical….
Assuming Jesus actually existed/exists, and assuming that Jesus could cast a modern-day vote in a U.S. presidential election:
Question: Do you foresee Jesus the man as voting Democratic, Republican, Independent, Other (give Party)?
Since you are not God (omniscient) and therefore can’t know in advance how Jesus would vote, provide the "circumstantial evidence" as to why you chose as you did. I.e., what evidence led you to your conclusion?
Thanks for hypothesizing and recommending.
Christian Propaganda: Fomenting Fear, Anger and Violence
The morning after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol interrupted but failed to stop congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election, The Dove Christian television network’s morning news program featured hard-right activist John Guandolo telling viewers that the insurrectionists showed “restraint” by not executing the “traitors” in Congress.
“I don’t see any other way out than a real armed counterrevolution to this hostile revolution that’s taking place, primarily driven by the communists,” said Guandolo, who trains law enforcement agencies to view Muslims as terrorist threats.These leaders and media outlets inflated the stakes of Trump’s re-election campaign and post-election efforts to “stop the steal” by portraying them as part of a spiritual war between good and evil. In their telling, Trump was the divinely anointed leader of the forces of light, and his opponents were agents of Satan bent on crushing religious freedom and destroying the American republic. Prayer and calls for spiritual warfare were blended with invocations of “1776.”Paula White, a longtime spiritual adviser to Trump, used her position as a White House aide and campaign spokesperson to engage in the fearmongering strategy to get conservative Christians to vote for Trump. “They want to take our churches,” she said at an Evangelicals for Trump rally last summer. “They want to take our freedoms. They want to take our liberties. They want to take everything.”At that same event, Atlanta-area megachurch pastor Jentezen Franklin warned that if evangelicals didn’t mobilize to keep Trump in power, they wouldn’t get a second chance to protect their freedom or their children’s future: “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”In September, Pentecostal televangelist and religious-right activist Rick Joyner announced on Jim Bakker’s television show that God has “seeded” the country with military veterans to head up Christian militias in preparation for civil war. In October, he assured his viewers that life for most Americans would go on pretty much as usual during the coming civil war because the militias would be focused on “inner cities.”
At a religious-right rally on the National Mall in September, Frank Amedia, a former Trump campaign adviser who founded the POTUS Shield network to wage spiritual warfare on Trump’s behalf, warned people not to stand in the way of God’s plans to return Trump to office, saying, “This is not a time to contend with God and his plan upon this nation and this Earth right now, for the fury of the Lord has gone out and shall accomplish that which he has said he shall do.”
When it became clear that Trump had lost, and that his response would be to deny the legitimacy of the election, most of his religious-right backers joined him. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and other right-wing leaders associated with the Council for National Policy—a secretive umbrella group of right-wing organizations—signed a letter in mid-December urging state legislatures to override voters and stating, “There is no doubt President Donald J. Trump is the lawful winner of the presidential election. Joe Biden is not president-elect.”Jericho March, organized by two Trump administration staffers who said God had given them visions to get Christians into the streets to protest “corruption” in the election, teamed up with religious-right activist Ed Martin and Stop the Steal activist Ali Alexander to organize a December 12 “prayer rally” on the National Mall. They called it “Let the Church ROAR.”
Among the roaring speakers was Stewart Rhodes, founder of the extremist Oath Keepers, who warned that if Trump didn’t use the military to stay in power, militias like his would be forced to engage in a “much more bloody war.” Metaxas, the rally’s master of ceremonies, was apparently not troubled by Rhodes’s threat, responding with a “God bless you” and telling the crowd that Rhodes was “keepin’ it real, folks.”California pastor Ché Ahn, a leader of the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, called the “stolen” election “the most egregious fraud” in U.S. history and said, “I believe that this week we’re going to throw Jezebel out … and we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.” (emphasis added)