tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55095092024-03-19T18:08:02.740-05:00Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves<p align="justify"><b>Highlight/right-click anything for Google info.<br><br>Search the blog: a search window is provided at the top of the left-side menu.
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</b></p>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.comBlogger6617125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-88269397268108537612021-02-02T05:59:00.000-06:002021-02-02T05:59:09.718-06:00An Investigative Reporter Returns To His Native India To Penetrate The Gigantic Phone-Scam Industry That Swindles Victims Around The World Of Billions With A Telephone And A Computer<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>From the US, Yudhijit Bhattacharjee returns to his native India to reveal a huge criminal enterprise that robs international victims of vast amounts of money without a gun — all it takes are a phone and a computer in an interconnected world. Operating out of large, even huge, call centers in India, mostly male swindlers make calls to unsuspecting victims who surrender access to their bank accounts in countless acts of cyber-robbery. And their make their escapes by simply ending a phone call with a click. If this is a (fair & balanced) exposure of a cowardly new world, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap 'Zine]<br />
Tracing The Call: Who's Making All Those Scam Calls?<br />
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee<br /><br />
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id="45" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">victims</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">wanted</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">weeks</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">work</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">year</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7yvkh74FIAahMgZ9frHXik8ZL5tSCpxugwcNn09UdA3kcmfEiCY6-NplriQ6fyyKQKjo_flxhV_NRu77j-0XxidXqptsAdJ1Zmnd3os6SxHUI1ttvm5l-AUoLX7JHfzjhA22JQ/s2048/Scam_call_center_Delhi_India.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-7yvkh74FIAahMgZ9frHXik8ZL5tSCpxugwcNn09UdA3kcmfEiCY6-NplriQ6fyyKQKjo_flxhV_NRu77j-0XxidXqptsAdJ1Zmnd3os6SxHUI1ttvm5l-AUoLX7JHfzjhA22JQ/s600/Scam_call_center_Delhi_India.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>One afternoon in December 2019, Kathleen Langer, an elderly grandmother who lives by herself in Crossville, TN, got a phone call from a person who said he worked in the refund department of her computer manufacturer. The reason for the call, he explained, was to process a refund the company owed Langer for antivirus and anti-hacking protection that had been sold to her and was now being discontinued. Langer, who has a warm and kind voice, couldn’t remember purchasing the plan in question, but at her age, she didn’t quite trust her memory. She had no reason to doubt the caller, who spoke with an Indian accent and said his name was Roger.<br /><br />
He asked her to turn on her computer and led her through a series of steps so that he could access it remotely. When Langer asked why this was necessary, he said he needed to remove his company’s software from her machine. Because the protection was being terminated, he told her, leaving the software on the computer would cause it to crash.<br /><br />
After he gained access to her desktop, using the program TeamViewer, the caller asked Langer to log into her bank to accept the refund, $399, which he was going to transfer into her account. “Because of a technical issue with our system, we won’t be able to refund your money on your credit card or mail you a check,” he said. Langer made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to log in. She didn’t do online banking too often and couldn’t remember her user name.<br /><br />
Frustrated, the caller opened her bank’s internet banking registration form on her computer screen, created a new user name and password for her and asked her to fill out the required details — including her address, Social Security number and birth date. When she typed this last part in, the caller noticed she had turned 80 just weeks earlier and wished her a belated happy birthday. “Thank you!” she replied.<br /><br />
After submitting the form, he tried to log into Langer’s account but failed, because Langer’s bank — like most banks — activates a newly created user ID only after verifying it by speaking to the customer who has requested it. The caller asked Langer if she could go to her bank to resolve the issue. “How far is the bank from your house?” he asked.<br /><br />
A few blocks away, Langer answered. Because it was late afternoon, however, she wasn’t sure if it would be open when she got there. The caller noted that the bank didn’t close until 4:30, which meant she still had 45 minutes. “He was very insistent,” Langer told me recently. On her computer screen, the caller typed out what he wanted her to say at the bank. “Don’t tell them anything about the refund,” he said. She was to say that she needed to log in to check her statements and pay bills.<br /><br />
Langer couldn’t recall, when we spoke, if she drove to the bank or not. But later that afternoon, she rang the number the caller had given her and told him she had been unable to get to the bank in time. He advised her to go back the next morning. By now, Langer was beginning to have doubts about the caller. She told him she wouldn’t answer the phone if he contacted her again.<br /><br />
“Do you care about your computer?” he asked. He then uploaded a program onto her computer called Lock My PC and locked its screen with a password she couldn’t see. When she complained, he got belligerent. “You can call the police, the FBI, the CIA,” he told her. “If you want to use your computer as you were doing, you need to go ahead as I was telling you or else you will lose your computer and your money.” When he finally hung up, after reiterating that he would call the following day, Langer felt shaken.<br /><br />
Minutes later, her phone rang again. This caller introduced himself as Jim Browning. “The guy who is trying to convince you to sign into your online banking is after one thing alone, and that is he wants to steal your money,” he said.<br /><br />
Langer was mystified that this new caller, who had what seemed to be a strong Irish accent, knew about the conversations she had just had. “Are you sure you are not with this group?” she asked.<br /><br />
He replied that the same scammers had targeted him, too. But when they were trying to connect remotely to his computer, as they had done with hers, he had managed to secure access to theirs. For weeks, that remote connection had allowed him to eavesdrop on and record calls like those with Langer, in addition to capturing a visual record of the activity on a scammer’s computer screen.<br /><br />
“I’m going to give you the password to unlock your PC because they use the same password every time,” he said. “If you type 4-5-2-1, you’ll unlock it.”<br /><br />
Langer keyed in the digits.<br /><br />
“OK! It came back on!” she said, relieved.<br /><br />
For most people, calls like the one Langer received are a source of annoyance or anxiety. According to theFBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the total losses reported to it by scam victims <a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2019_IC3Report.pdf">increased to $3.5 billion in 2019</a> [PDF] from $1.4 billion in 2017. Last year, the app <a href="https://truecaller.blog/2020/04/16/truecaller-insights-2020-us-spam-scam-report/">Truecaller commissioned the Harris Poll</a> to survey roughly 2,000 American adults and found that 22 percent of the respondents said they had lost money to a phone scam in the past 12 months; Truecaller projects that as many as 56 million Americans may have been victimized this way, losing nearly $20 billion.<br /><br />
The person who rescued Langer that afternoon delights in getting these calls, however. “I’m fascinated by scams,” he told me. “I like to know how they work.” A software engineer based in the United Kingdom, he runs a YouTube channel under the pseudonym Jim Browning, where he regularly posts videos about his fraud-fighting efforts, identifying call centers and those involved in the crimes. He began talking to me over Skype in the fall of 2019 — and then sharing recordings like the episode with Langer — on the condition that I not reveal his identity, which he said was necessary to protect himself against the ire of the bad guys and to continue what he characterizes as his activism. Maintaining anonymity, it turns out, is key to scam-busting and scamming alike. I’ll refer to him by his middle initial, L.<br /><br />
The goal of L.’s efforts and those of others like him is to raise the costs and risks for perpetrators, who hide behind the veil of anonymity afforded by the internet and typically do not face punishment. The work is a hobby for L. — he has a job at an IT company — although it seems more like an obsession. Tracking scammers has consumed much of L.’s free time in the evenings over the past few years, he says, except for several weeks in March and April last year, when the start of the Coronavirus Pandemic forced strict lockdowns in many parts of the world, causing call centers from which much of this activity emanates to temporarily suspend operations. Ten months later, scamming has “gone right back to the way it was before the Pandemic,” L. told me earlier this month.<br /><br />
Like L., I was curious to learn more about phone scammers, having received dozens of their calls over the years. They have offered me low interest rates on my credit-card balances, promised to write off my federal student loans and congratulated me on having just won a big lottery. I’ve answered fraudsters claiming to be from the Internal Revenue Service who threaten to send the police to my doorstep unless I agree to pay back taxes that I didn’t know I owed — preferably in the form of iTunes gift cards or by way of a Western Union money transfer. Barring a few exceptions, the individuals calling me have had South Asian accents, leading me to suspect that they are calling from India. On several occasions, I’ve tested this theory by letting the voice on the other end go on for a few minutes before I suddenly interrupt with a torrent of Hindi curses that I retain full mastery of even after living in the United States for the past two decades. I haven’t yet failed to elicit a retaliatory offensive in Hindi. Confirming that these scammers are operating from India hasn’t given me any joy. Instead, as an Indian expatriate living in the United States, I’ve felt a certain shame.<br /><br />
L. started going after scammers when a relative of his lost money to a tech-support swindle, a common scheme with many variants. Often, it starts when the mark gets a call from someone offering unsolicited help in ridding a computer’s hard drive of malware or the like. Other times, computer users looking for help stumble upon a website masquerading as Microsoft or Dell or some other computer maker and end up dialing a listed number that connects them to a fraudulent call center. In other instances, victims are tricked by a pop-up warning that their computer is at risk and that they need to call the number flashing on the screen. Once someone is on the phone, the scammers talk the caller into opening up TeamViewer or another remote-access application on his or her computer, after which they get the victim to read back unique identifying information that allows them to establish control over the computer.<br /><br />
L. flips the script. He starts by playing an unsuspecting target. Speaking in a polite and even tone, with a cadence that conveys <i>naïveté</i>, he follows instructions and allows the scammer to connect to his device. This doesn’t have any of his actual data, however. It is a “virtual machine,” or a program that simulates a functioning desktop on his computer, including false files, like documents with a fake home address. It looks like a real computer that belongs to someone. “I’ve got a whole lot of identities set up,” L. told me. He uses dummy credit-card numbers that can pass a cursory validation check.<br /><br />
The scammer’s connection to L.’s virtual machine is effectively a two-way street that allows L. to connect to the scammer’s computer and infect it with his own software. Once he has done this, he can monitor the scammer’s activities long after the call has ended; sometimes for months, or as long as the software goes undetected. Thus, sitting in his home office, L. is able to listen in on calls between scammer and targets — because these calls are made over the internet, from the scammer’s computer — and watch as the scammer takes control of a victim’s computer. L. acknowledged to me that his access to the scammer’s computer puts him at legal risk; without the scammer’s permission, establishing that access is unlawful. But that doesn’t worry him. “If it came down to someone wanting to prosecute me for accessing a scammer’s computer illegally, I can demonstrate in every single case that the only reason I gained access is because the scammer was trying to steal money from me,” he says.<br /><br />
On occasion, L. succeeds in turning on the scammer’s webcam and is able to record video of the scammer and others at the call center, who can usually be heard on phones in the background. From the IP address of the scammer’s computer and other clues, L. frequently manages to identify the neighborhood — and, in some cases, the actual building — where the call center is.<br /><br />
When he encounters a scam in progress while monitoring a scammer’s computer, L. tries to both document and disrupt it, at times using his real-time access to undo the scammer’s manipulations of the victim’s computer. He tries to contact victims to warn them before they lose any money — as he did in the case of Kathleen Langer.<br /><br />
L.’s videos of such episodes have garnered millions of views, making him a faceless YouTube star. He says he hopes his exploits will educate the public and deter scammers. He claims he has emailed the law-enforcement authorities in India offering to share the evidence he has collected against specific call centers. Except for one instance, his inquiries have elicited only form responses, although last year, the police raided a call center that L. had identified in Gurugram, outside Delhi, after it was featured in an investigation aired by the BBC.<br /><br />
Now and then during our Skype conversations, L. would begin monitoring a call between a scammer and a mark and let me listen in. In some instances, I would also hear other call-center employees in the background — some of them making similar calls, others talking among themselves. The chatter evoked a busy workplace, reminding me of my late nights in a Kolkata newsroom, where I began my journalism career 25 years ago, except that these were young men and women working through the night to con people many time zones away. When scammers called me in the past, I tried cajoling them into telling me about their enterprise but never succeeded. Now, with L.’s help, I thought, I might have better luck.<br /><br />
I flew to India at the end of 2019 hoping to visit some of the call centers that L. had identified as homes for scams. Although he had detected many tech-support scams originating from Delhi, Hyderabad and other Indian cities, L. was convinced that Kolkata — based on the volume of activity he was noticing there — had emerged as a capital of such frauds. I knew the city well, having covered the crime beat there for an English-language daily in the mid-1990s, and so I figured that my chances of tracking down scammers would be better there than most other places in India.<br /><br />
I took with me, in my notebook, a couple of addresses that L. identified in the days just before my trip as possible origins for some scam calls. Because the geolocation of IP addresses — ascertaining the geographical coordinates associated with an internet connection — isn’t an exact science, I wasn’t certain that they would yield any scammers.<br /><br />
But I did have the identity of a person linked to one of these spots, a young man whose first name is Shahbaz. L. identified him by matching webcam images and several government-issued IDs found on his computer. The home address on his ID matched what L. determined, from the I.P. address, to be the site of the call center where he operated, which suggested that the call center was located where he lived or close by. That made me optimistic I would find him there. In a recording of a call Shahbaz made in November, weeks before my Kolkata visit, I heard him trying to hustle a woman in Ottawa and successfully intimidating and then fleecing an elderly man in the United States.<br /><br />
Although individuals like this particular scammer are the ones responsible for manipulating victims on the phone, they represent only the outward face of a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. “Call centers that run scams employ all sorts of subcontractors,” Puneet Singh, an FBI agent who serves as the bureau’s legal <i>attaché</i> at the US Embassy in New Delhi, told me. These include sellers of phone numbers; programmers who develop malware and pop-ups; and money mules. From the constantly evolving nature of scams — lately I’ve been receiving calls from the “law-enforcement department of the Federal Reserve System” about an outstanding arrest warrant instead of the fake Social Security Administration calls I was getting a year ago — it’s evident that the industry has its share of innovators.<br /><br />
The reasons this activity seems to have flourished in India are much the same as those behind the growth of the country’s legitimate information-technology-services industry after the early 2000s, when many American companies like Microsoft and Dell began outsourcing customer support to workers in India. The industry expanded rapidly as more companies in developed countries saw the same economic advantage in relocating various services there that could be performed remotely — from airline ticketing to banking. India’s large population of English speakers kept labor costs down.<br /><br />
Because the overwhelming majority of call centers in the country are engaged in legitimate business, the ones that aren’t can hide in plain sight. Amid the mazes of gleaming steel-and-glass high-rises in a place like Cyber City, near Delhi, or Sector V in Salt Lake, near Kolkata — two of the numerous commercial districts that have sprung up across the country to nurture IT businesses — it’s impossible to distinguish a call center that handles inquiries from air travelers in the United States from one that targets hundreds of Americans every day with fraudulent offers to lower their credit-card interest rates.<br /><br />
The police do periodically crack down on operations that appear to be illegitimate. Shortly after I got to Kolkata, the police raided five call centers in Salt Lake that officials said had been running a tech-support scam. The employees of the call centers were accused of impersonating Microsoft representatives. The police raid followed a complaint by the tech company, which in recent years has increasingly pressed Indian law enforcement to act against scammers abusing the company’s name. I learned from Murlidhar Sharma, a senior official in the city police, that his team had raided two other call centers in Kolkata a couple of months earlier in response to a similar complaint.<br /><br />
“Microsoft had done extensive work before coming to us,” Sharma, who is in his 40s and speaks with quiet authority, told me. The company lent its help to the police in connection with the raids, which Sharma seemed particularly grateful for. Often the police lack the resources to pursue these sorts of cases. “These people are very smart, and they know how to hide data,” Sharma said, referring to the scammers. It was in large part because of Microsoft’s help, he said, that investigators had been able to file charges in court within a month after the raid. A trial has begun but could drag on for years. The call centers have been shut down, at least for now.<br /><br />
Sharma pointed out that pre-emptive raids do not yield the desired results. “Our problem,” he said, “is that we can act only when there’s a complaint of cheating.” In 2017, he and his colleagues raided a call center on their own initiative, without a complaint, and arrested several people. “But then the court was like, ‘Why did the police raid these places?’” Sharma said. The judge wanted statements from victims, which the police were unable to get, despite contacting authorities in the US and UK. The case fell apart.<br /><br />
The slim chances of detection, and the even slimmer chances of facing prosecution, have seemed to make scamming a career option, especially among those who lack the qualifications to find legitimate employment in India’s slowing economy. Indian educational institutions churn out more than 1.5 million engineers every year, but according to one survey fewer than 20 percent are equipped to land positions related to their training, leaving a vast pool of college graduates — not to mention an even larger population of less-educated young men and women — struggling to earn a living. That would partly explain why call centers run by small groups are popping up in residential neighborhoods. “The worst thing about this crime is that it’s becoming trendy,” Aparajita Rai, a deputy commissioner in the Kolkata Police, told me. “More and more youngsters are investing the crucial years of their adolescence into this. Everybody wants fast money.”<br /><br />
In Kolkata, I met Aniruddha Nath, then 23, who said he spent a week working at a call center that he quickly realized was engaged in fraud. Nath has a pensive air and a shy smile that intermittently cut through his solemnness as he spoke. While finishing his undergraduate degree in engineering from a local college — he took a loan to study there — Nath got a job offer after a campus interview. The company insisted he join immediately, for a monthly salary of about $200. Nath asked me not to name the company out of fear that he would be exposing himself legally.<br /><br />
His jubilation turned into skepticism on his very first day, when he and other fresh recruits were told to simply memorize the contents of the company’s website, which claimed his employer was based in Australia. On a whim, he Googled the address of the Australian office listed on the site and discovered that only a parking garage was located there. He said he learned a couple of days later what he was to do: Call Indian students in Australia whose visas were about to expire and offer to place them in a job in Australia if they paid $800 to take a training course.<br /><br />
On his seventh day at work, Nath said, he received evidence from a student in Australia that the company’s promise to help with job placements was simply a ruse to steal $800; the training the company offered was apparently little more than a farce. “She sent me screenshots of complaints from individuals who had been defrauded,” Nath said. He stopped going in to work the next day. His parents were unhappy, and, he said, told him: “What does it matter to you what the company is doing? You’ll be getting your salary.” Nath answered, “If there’s a raid there, I’ll be charged with fraud.”<br /><br />
Late in the afternoon the day after I met with Nath, I drove to Garden Reach, a predominantly Muslim and largely poor section in southwest Kolkata on the banks of the Hooghly River. Home to a 137-year-old shipyard, the area includes some of the city’s noted crime hot spots and has a reputation for crime and violence. Based on my experience reporting from Garden Reach in the 1990s, I thought it was probably not wise to venture there alone late at night, even though that was most likely the best time to find scammers at work. I was looking for Shahbaz.<br /><br />
Parking my car in the vicinity of the address L. had given me, I walked through a narrow lane where children were playing cricket, past a pharmacy and a tiny store selling cookies and snacks. The apartment I sought was on the second floor of a building at the end of an alley, a few hundred yards from a mosque. It was locked, but a woman next door said that the building belonged to Shahbaz’s extended family and that he lived in one of the apartments with his parents.<br /><br />
Then I saw an elderly couple seated on the steps in the front — his parents, it turned out. The father summoned Shahbaz’s brother, a lanky, longhaired man who appeared to be in his 20s. He said Shahbaz had woken up a short while earlier and gone out on his motorbike. “I don’t know when he goes to sleep and when he wakes up,” his father said, with what sounded like exasperation.<br /><br />
They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.They gave me Shahbaz’s mobile number, but when I called, I got no answer. It was getting awkward for me to wait around indefinitely without disclosing why I was there, so eventually I pulled the brother aside to talk in private. We sat down on a bench at a roadside tea stall, a quarter mile from the mosque. Between sips of tea, I told him that I was a journalist in the United States and wanted to meet his brother because I had learned he was a scammer. I hoped he would pass on my message.<br /><br />
I got a call from Shahbaz a few hours later. He denied that he’d ever worked at a call center. “There are a lot of young guys who are involved in the scamming business, but I’m not one of them,” he said. I persisted, but he kept brushing me off until I asked him to confirm that his birthday was a few days later in December. “Look, you are telling me my exact birth date — that makes me nervous,” he said. He wanted to know what I knew about him and how I knew it. I said I would tell him if he met with me. I volunteered to protect his identity if he answered my questions truthfully.<br /><br />
Two days later, we met for lunch at the Taj Bengal, one of Kolkata’s five-star hotels. I’d chosen that as the venue out of concern for my safety. When he showed up in the hotel lobby, however, I felt a little silly. Physically, Shahbaz is hardly intimidating. He is short and skinny, with a face that would seem babyish but for his thin mustache and beard, which are still a work in progress. He was in his late 20s but had brought along an older cousin for his own safety.<br /><br />
We found a secluded table in the hotel’s Chinese restaurant and sat down. I took out my phone and played a video that L. had posted on YouTube. (Only those that L. shared the link with knew of its existence.) The video was a recording of the call from November 2019 in which Shahbaz was trying to defraud the woman in Ottawa with a trick that scammers often use to arm-twist their victims: editing the HTML coding of the victim’s bank-account webpage to alter the balances. Because the woman was pushing back, Shahbaz zeroed out her balance to make it look as if he had the ability to drain her account. On the call, he can be heard threatening her: “You don’t want to lose all your money, right?”<br /><br />
I watched him shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Whose voice is that?” I asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”<br /><br />
He nodded in shocked silence. I took my phone back and suggested he drink some water. He took a few sips, gathering himself before I began questioning him. When he mumbled in response to my first couple of questions, I jokingly asked him to summon the bold, confident voice we’d just heard in the recording of his call. He gave me a wan smile.<br /><br />
Pointing to my voice recorder on the table, he asked, meekly, “Is this necessary?”<br /><br />
When his scam calls were already on YouTube, I countered, how did it matter that I was recording our conversation?<br /><br />
“It just makes me nervous,” he said.<br /><br />
Shahbaz told me his parents sent him to one of the city’s better schools but that he flunked out in eighth grade and had to move to a neighborhood school. When his father lost his job, Shahbaz found work riding around town on his bicycle to deliver medicines and other pharmaceutical supplies from a wholesaler to retail pharmacies; he earned $25 a month. Sometime around 2011 or 2012, he told me, a friend took him to a call center in Salt Lake, where he got his first job in scamming, though he didn’t realize right away that that was what he was doing. At first, he said, the job seemed like legitimate telemarketing for tech-support services. By 2015, working in his third job, at a call center in the heart of Kolkata, Shahbaz had learned how to coax victims into filling out a Western Union transfer in order to process a refund for terminated tech-support services. “They would expect a refund but instead get charged,” he told me.<br /><br />
Shahbaz earned a modest salary in these first few jobs — he told me that that first call center, in Salt Lake, paid him less than $100 a month. His lengthy commute every night was exhausting. In 2016 or 2017, he began working with a group of scammers in Garden Reach, earning a share of the profits. There were at least five others who worked with him, he said. All of them were local residents, some more experienced than others. One associate at the call center was his wife’s brother.<br /><br />
He was cagey about naming the others or describing the organization’s structure, but it was evident that he wasn’t in charge. He told me that a supervisor had taught him how to intimidate victims by editing their bank balances. “We started doing that about a year ago,” he said, adding that their group was somewhat behind the curve when it came to adopting the latest tricks of the trade. When those on the cutting edge of the business develop something new, he said, the idea gradually spreads to other scammers.<br /><br />
It was hard to ascertain how much this group was stealing from victims every day, but Shahbaz confessed that he was able to defraud one or two people every night, extracting anywhere from $200 to $300 per victim. He was paid about a quarter of the stolen amount. He told me that he and his associates would ask victims to drive to a store and buy gift cards, while staying on the phone for the entire duration. Sometimes, he said, all that effort was ruined if suspicious store clerks declined to sell gift cards to the victim. “It’s becoming tough these days, because customers aren’t as gullible as they used to be,” he told me. I could see from his point of view why scammers, like practitioners in any field, felt pressure to come up with new methods and scams in response to increasing public awareness of their schemes.<br /><br />
The more we spoke, the more I recognized that Shahbaz was a small figure in this gigantic criminal ecosystem that constitutes the phone-scam industry, the equivalent of a pickpocket on a Kolkata bus who is unlucky enough to get caught in the act. He had never thought of running his own call center, he told me, because that required knowing people who could provide leads — names and numbers of targets to call — as well as others who could help move stolen money through illicit channels. “I don’t have such contacts,” he said. There were many in Kolkata, according to Shahbaz, who ran operations significantly bigger than the one he was a part of. “I know of people who had nothing earlier but are now very rich,” he said. Shahbaz implied that his own ill-gotten earnings were paltry in comparison. He hadn’t bought a car or a house, but he admitted that he had been able to afford to go on overseas vacations with friends. On Facebook, I saw a photo of him posing in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and other pictures from a visit to Thailand.<br /><br />
I asked if he ever felt guilty. He didn’t answer directly but said there had been times when he had let victims go after learning that they were struggling to pay bills or needed the money for medical expenses. But for most victims, his rationale seemed to be that they could afford to part with the few hundred dollars he was stealing.<br /><br />
Shahbaz was a reluctant interviewee, giving me brief, guarded answers that were less than candid or directly contradicted evidence that L. had collected. He was vague about the highest amount he’d ever stolen from a victim, at one point saying $800, then later admitting to $1,500. I found it hard to trust either figure, because on one of his November calls I heard him bullying someone to pay him $5,000. He told me that my visit to his house had left him shaken, causing him to realize how wrong he was to be defrauding people. His parents and his wife were worried about him. And so, he had quit scamming, he told me.<br /><br />
“What did you do last night?” I asked him.<br /><br />
“I went to sleep,” he said.<br /><br />
I knew he was not telling the truth about his claim to have stopped scamming, however. Two days earlier, hours after our phone conversation following my visit to Garden Reach, Shahbaz had been at it again. It was on that night, in fact, that he tried to swindle Kathleen Langer in Crossville, TN. Before I came to see him for lunch, I had already heard a recording of that call, which L. shared with me.<br /><br />
When I mentioned that to him, he looked at me pleadingly, in visible agony, as if I’d poked at a wound. It was clear to me that he was only going to admit to wrongdoing that I already had evidence of.<br /><br />
L. told me that the remote access he had to Shahbaz’s computer went cold after I met with him on Dec. 14, 2019. But it buzzed back to life about 10 weeks later. The IP address was the same as before, which suggested that it was operating in the same location I visited. L. set up a livestream on YouTube so I could see what L. was observing. The microphone was on, and L. and I could clearly hear people making scam calls in the background. The computer itself didn’t seem to be engaged in anything nefarious while we were eavesdropping on it, but L. could see that Shahbaz’s phone was connected to it. It appeared that Shahbaz had turned the computer on to download music. I couldn’t say for certain, but it seemed that he was taking a moment to chill in the middle of another long night at work. ###<br /><br />
[Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer at <i>National Geographic</i> and the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/The-Dinner-Set-Gang/dp/B088XDW13S"><i>The Dinner Set Gang</i></a> (2020). He received a BTech (chemical engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-48860987146022426252021-02-01T07:11:00.002-06:002021-02-01T08:01:49.489-06:00Today, Tom Tomorrow's "Invisible Hand Of The Free Market Man" Explains Last Week's GameStop Bubble-Burst Among Freelance US Stock-Market Investors<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>The financial news last week was rocked by an upheaval in stock purchases and sales of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop">GameStop</a> stock by both day traders and large financial institutions. The best analysis of this market event was provided by <i>The Atlantic</i>'s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/why-everybody-obsessed-gamestop/617857/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=atlantic-weekly-newsletter&utm_content=20210131&silverid-ref=NTk3NjQ2NTU3NDM5S0">Derek Thompson</a>. And, of course, the email bearing today's <i>TMW</i> 'toon also contained the following explanatory message from Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins):<blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>It feels like it has been a long time since I tackled a complicated topic not directly involving specific politicians. Hell, it feels like it’s been a long time since I tackled a topic that didn’t involve Donald Trump. Writing this one reminded me of trying to get a handle on the subprime mortgage stuff in the late 00s. I went through a *lot* of drafts, trying to figure out how to approach this. And I understand that my summary of the situation leaves out a lot of details — for instance, I didn’t have room to discuss the main trading app, Robinhood, which shut down the day traders’ ability to purchase more Gamestop shares when things started getting out of control, under pressure from its business power Citadel, which has a separate hedge fund which helped bail out Melvin Capital, the fund that took the biggest hit during the bubble. The house always wins, one way or another.<br /><br />
Also the Reddit forum, Wall Street Bets, is apparently full of 4chan style nazi shitposters, which was another reason I wanted to counter the narrative of plucky outsiders pulling a digital Occupy Wall Street.<br /><br />
This story had a lot of complicated details.<br /><br />
There were a couple notes I definitely wanted to hit. Melvin Capital shorted 140% of Gamestock shares. Even if you accept shorting as a rational facet of the market, shorting significantly more shares than exist seems like … a problem?<br /><br />
And despite the narrative of a David and Goliath battle between small investors and giant hedge funds, other giant Wall Street firms profited enormously. Black Rock is reported to have made (I would not use the term “earned”) somewhere between one and two billion on the rise in Gamestop prices. And a plucky outsider named Elon Musk did, in fact, egg the whole thing on, on his Twitter.<br /><br />
The Invisible Hand is usually a mindless cheerleader for the free market — no matter what’s happening, he always explains that it shows the wisdom of the market at work. In this case I decided to portray him as a little worn out and exasperated from the whole thing, with a touch of implied pandemic fatigue as well (hence the masks). God knows we’re all feeling it.<br /><br />
Next week, I expect I’ll be back to seditionist Republicans, the impeachment of Donald Trump, or something else along those lines. But even though this cartoon was a bit of a struggle to write (and whether or not it was ultimately a successful effort), it was nice to have the luxury of taking a week off from the usual focus. Trump always sucked all the oxygen out of the room, and made it almost impossible to write about anything else.<br /><br />
Until next week,<br /><br />
Dan/Tom</blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="arial" size="+1"><b>And if you're confused by last week's financial news, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x TMW]<br />
The Irritable Hand Of The Free Market<br />
by Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJVEenv-SZ_MX8OCTtPaTBeHq4mW3m3-p3vlsT8ZyQHZnsp0Xfo1k3bf263PtPdrJfTWLVGSnf_-o7RzESOazrKCjC3clfAV8GfFWcFGyj8UDsujfF9UgPO85MLW_UWXgr-HYvZA/s2048/tomorrow_02_01_2021.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1933" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJVEenv-SZ_MX8OCTtPaTBeHq4mW3m3-p3vlsT8ZyQHZnsp0Xfo1k3bf263PtPdrJfTWLVGSnf_-o7RzESOazrKCjC3clfAV8GfFWcFGyj8UDsujfF9UgPO85MLW_UWXgr-HYvZA/s600/tomorrow_02_01_2021.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a>. The strip debuted in 1990 in the <i>SF Weekly</i>. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily <a href="http://www.thismodernworld.com/">political blog</a>, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 <a href="http://www.herbblockfoundation.org/">Herblock Prize</a> for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 This Modern World<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-9978491818265926062021-01-31T05:57:00.000-06:002021-01-31T05:57:15.104-06:00Risky Business: Predicting The Likelihood Of Success — Or Failure — At The Onset Of A Presidential Administration<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>In the waning days of the first month of the Biden Administration, the NY Times' Viper (Michelle Goldberg) surveys the beginnings of presidential administrations in US history with a positive conclusion. If this is (fair & balanced) comparison of US presidents at the beginning of their administrations, so be it.<br /><br />
PS: The source of this blog's <i>noms de stylo serpent</i> reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/liberties-i-have-a-nickname.html">this 2001 essay</a> by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).<br /><br />
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
The First Post-Reagan Presidency<br />
By The Viper (Michelle Goldberg)<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">seemed</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">sense</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud7"><a href="#tagcloud">Skowronek </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">think</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">told</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">took</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWYYUQ_EGM3Qk-tn9IyzgCimT0vz9Pj2HRXFwYTcp-rv0osCfuf_wfxMdYPaZ-S-EyoRlMq02ErA9Jtriwk1068p_bF41FZi29Me4sMKircAeggzV8YMGUmc1z2rm_keQS8Hoeow/s1280/post_Reagan_illustration.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWYYUQ_EGM3Qk-tn9IyzgCimT0vz9Pj2HRXFwYTcp-rv0osCfuf_wfxMdYPaZ-S-EyoRlMq02ErA9Jtriwk1068p_bF41FZi29Me4sMKircAeggzV8YMGUmc1z2rm_keQS8Hoeow/s600/post_Reagan_illustration.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>During <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump">Donald Trump</a>’s presidency, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/opinion/green-new-deal-trump.html">I sometimes took comfort</a> in the Yale political scientist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Skowronek">Stephen Skowronek</a>’s concept of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Leadership-Political-Time-Reappraisal-dp-0700617620/dp/0700617620/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=">political time</a>.”<br /><br />
In Skowronek’s formulation, presidential history moves in 40- to 60-year cycles, or “regimes.” Each is inaugurated by <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/transformative">transformative</a>, <a href="https://www.baylor.edu/political_science/doc.php/204050.pdf">“reconstructive” leaders</a> [PDF] who define the boundaries of political possibility for their successors.<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt">Franklin Delano Roosevelt</a> was such a figure. For decades following his presidency, Republicans and Democrats alike accepted many of the basic assumptions of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#:~:text=The%20New%20Deal%20was%20a,States%20between%201933%20and%201939.">New Deal</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan">Ronald Reagan</a> was another. After him, even Democrats like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton">Bill Clinton</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama">Barack Obama</a> feared deficit spending, inflation and anything that smacked of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover">big government</a>.”<br /><br />
I found Skowronek’s schema reassuring because of where Trump seemed to fit into it. Skowronek thought Trump was a “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/interview-stephen-skowronek/">late regime affiliate</a>” — a category that includes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter">Jimmy Carter</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover">Herbert Hoover</a>. Such figures, he’s written, are outsiders from the party of a dominant but decrepit regime.<br /><br />
They use the “internal disarray and festering weakness of the establishment” to “seize the initiative.” Promising to save a faltering political order, they end up imploding and bringing the old regime down with them. No such leader, he wrote, has ever been re-elected.<br /><br />
During Trump’s reign, Skowronek’s ideas gained some popular currency, offering a way to make sense of a presidency that seemed anomalous and bizarre. “We are still in the middle of Trump’s rendition of the type,” he wrote in an updated edition of his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Presidential-Leadership-Political-Time-Reappraisal/dp/0700617620"><i>Presidential Leadership in Political Time</i></a> (2011), “but we have seen this movie before, and it has always ended the same way.”<br /><br />
Skowronek doesn’t present his theory as a skeleton key to history. It’s a way of understanding historical dynamics, not predicting the future. Still, if Trump represented the last gasps of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics">Reaganism</a> instead of the birth of something new, then after him, Skowronek suggests, a fresh regime could begin.<br /><br />
When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee, it seemed that the coming of a new era had been delayed. Reconstructive leaders, in Skowronek’s formulation, repudiate the doctrines of an establishment that no longer has answers for the existential challenges the country faces. Biden, Skowronek told me, is “a guy who’s made his way up through establishment Democratic politics.” Nothing about him seemed trailblazing.<br /><br />
Yet as Biden’s administration begins, there are signs that a new politics is coalescing. When, in his inauguration speech, Biden touted “unity,” he framed it as a national rejection of the dark forces unleashed by his discredited predecessor, not stale <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/301735-gang-of-eight-plots-strategy-for-immigration-floor-fight">Gang of Eight</a> bipartisanship. He takes power at a time when what was once conventional wisdom about deficits, inflation and the proper size of government has fallen apart. That means Biden, who has been in national office since before Reagan’s presidency, has the potential to be our first truly post-Reagan president.<br /><br />
“Biden has a huge opportunity to finally get our nation past the Reagan narrative that has still lingered,” said Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_Khanna">Ro Khanna</a> [R-CA], who was a national co-chair of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders">Bernie Sanders</a>’s presidential campaign. “And the opportunity is to show that government, by getting the shots in every person’s arm of the vaccines, and building infrastructure, and helping working families, is going to be a force for good.”<br /><br />
A number of the officials Biden has selected — like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohit_Chopra">Rohit Chopra</a> for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gensler">Gary Gensler</a> for the Securities and Exchange Commission and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bharat_Ramamurti">Bharat Ramamurti</a> for the National Economic Council — would have fit easily into an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren">Elizabeth Warren</a> administration. Biden has signed executive orders increasing food stamp benefits, took steps to institute a $15-an-hour minimum wage for federal employees and contractors, and announced plans to replace the federal fleet with electric vehicles. His administration is working on a child tax credit that would send monthly payments to most American parents.<br /><br />
Skowronek told me he’s grown more hopeful about Biden just in the last few weeks: “The old Reagan formulas have lost their purchase, there is new urgency in the moment, and the president has an insurgent left at his back.”<br /><br />
This is the second Democratic administration in a row to inherit a country wrecked by its predecessor. But Biden’s plans to take on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the attendant economic disaster have been a departure from Obama’s approach to the 2008 financial crisis. The difference isn’t just in the scale of the emergencies, but in the politics guiding the administrations’ responses.<br /><br />
In <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Promised-Land-Barack-Obama/dp/1524763160/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr="><i>A Promised Land</i></a> (2020), the first volume of his presidential memoir, Obama described a meeting just before he took office, when the economic data looked increasingly bleak. After an aide proposed a trillion-dollar rescue package, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel">Rahm Emanuel</a>, Obama’s chief of staff, began “to sputter like a cartoon character spitting out a bad meal.” Emanuel, according to Obama, said the figure would be a nonstarter with many Democrats, never mind Republicans. In Obama’s telling, Biden, then vice president, nodded his head in agreement.<br /><br />
Now Emanuel, hated by progressives, has been frozen out of Biden’s administration, and the new president has come out of the gate with a $1.9 trillion proposal. In addition to $1,400 checks to most Americans and an increase in federal unemployment aid to $400 a week, it includes a national $15-an-hour minimum wage, something dismissed as utopian when Bernie Sanders ran on it in 2016.<br /><br />
What has changed is not just the politics but the economic consensus. Recently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/opinion/the-argument-biden-democrats-economy.html">I spoke to Jared Bernstein</a>, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, on “The Argument,” the Times podcast I co-host. When Biden was vice president, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Bernstein">Bernstein</a> was his chief economic adviser, and he said the meetings he’s in now are very different from those he was in during the last economic crisis.<br /><br />
Back then, Bernstein said, there was a widespread fear that too much government borrowing would crowd out private borrowing, raising interest rates. That thinking, he said, has changed. As Biden told reporters this month, “Every major economist thinks we should be investing in deficit spending in order to generate economic growth.”<br /><br />
It’s not just that the Democratic Party has moved left — the old Reaganite consensus in the Republican Party has collapsed. There’s nothing new about Republicans ignoring deficits — <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2009/11/the-emptiness-of-karl-rove/193628/">deficits almost never matter to Republicans</a> when they’re in power. What is new is the forthright rejection of <i>laissez-faire</i> economics among populist nationalists like Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley">Josh Hawley</a> of Missouri [R-MO], who joined with Sanders to demand higher stimulus payments to individuals in the last round of COVID relief.<br /><br />
That doesn’t mean we should be optimistic about people like Hawley, who wouldn’t even admit that Biden won the election, helping the new administration pass important legislation. But Republicans are going to have an increasingly difficult time making a coherent case against economic mercy for the beleaguered populace.<br /><br />
“This idea that the inflation hawks will come back — I just think they’re living in an era that has disappeared,” Elizabeth Warren told me.<br /><br />
However popular it is, Biden’s agenda will be possible only if Democrats find a way to legislate in the face of Republican nihilism. They’ll have to either convince moderates to finally jettison the filibuster, or pass economic legislation through reconciliation, a process that requires only a majority vote. Where Congress is stalemated, Biden will have to make aggressive use of executive orders and other types of administrative action. But he has at least the potential to be the grandfather of a more socially democratic America.<br /><br />
A moderate president, says Skowronek, can also be a transformative one. “It’s a mistake to think that moderation is a weakness in the politics of reconstruction,” he said, noting that both <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0032.105/--lincoln-s-critics-the-copperheads?rgn=main;view=fulltext">Abraham Lincoln</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Critics_on_the_left">Roosevelt</a> were “viciously” attacked from the left. “Moderation can stand as an asset if it’s firmly grounded in a repudiation of the manifest failure and bankruptcy of the old order. In that sense, moderation is not a compromise or a middle ground. It’s the establishment of a new common sense.”<br /><br />
There is, of course, no guarantee that Biden will fully rise to the moment. Skowronek has always expected that eventually American politics will change so much that the patterns he identified will no longer apply. “All I can say is that so many of the elements, the constellation of elements that you would associate with a pivot point, are in place,” he said. In this national <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir">nadir</a>, we can only hope that history repeats itself. ###<br /><br />
[Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist at this newspaper since 2017. She is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Goldberg/e/B001ITW0ZA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1540294954&sr=1-2-ent">author of several books</a> about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She received a BA (English) from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and an MS (journalism) from the University of California at Berkeley.]<br />
<br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-80134754497695613832021-01-30T08:05:00.000-06:002021-01-30T08:05:36.454-06:00Counterpoint — Yale Law Professor Emily Bazelon Provides A Discussion Of The Internet Freedom Of Speech Controversy Without Ideological Bias<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Not without trepidation, this blogger posted <a href="http://sapper.blogspot.com/2021/01/read-carefully-beware-of-right-wing.html">an essay yesterday</a> that examined the Internet freedom of speech controversy with a right-of-center orientation. Yesterday's essay was <i>Point</i> and today's essay (below) is <i>Counterpoint</i>. If this is (fair & balanced) adhereance to free and open discussion of an issue in a democracy, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap 'Zine]<br />
Why Is Big Tech Policing Speech? Because The Government Isn’t<br />
By Emily Bazelon<br /><br />
TagCrowd <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud">Cloud</a> provides a visual summary of the blog post below<br /><br />
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a{color:#395CAE}.tagcloud8{font-size:3.9em;color:#264CA2;z-index:2}.tagcloud8 a{color:#264CA2}.tagcloud9{font-size:4.2em;color:#133B97;z-index:1}.tagcloud9 a{color:#133B97}.tagcloud10{font-size:4.5em;color:#002A8B;z-index:0}.tagcloud10 a{color:#002A8B}.freq{font-size:10pt !important;color:#bbb}#credit{text-align:center;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.6em;font:0.7em 'lucida grande',trebuchet,'trebuchet ms',verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif}#credit a:link{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:visited{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:hover{color:white;background-color:#05f}#credit a:active{text-decoration:underline}// --></style><div id="htmltagcloud"> <span id="0" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">account</a></span> <span id="1" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Amazon </a></span> <span id="2" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">Amendment </a></span> <span id="3" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">American </a></span> <span id="4" class="wrd 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href="#tagcloud">executive</a></span> <span id="18" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Facebook </a></span> <span id="19" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">free</a></span> <span id="20" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">freedom</a></span> <span id="21" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">government</a></span> <span id="22" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">groups</a></span> <span id="23" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">ideas</a></span> <span id="24" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">including</a></span> <span id="25" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">law</a></span> <span id="26" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">leaders</a></span> <span id="27" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">lies</a></span> <span id="28" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Matze </a></span> <span id="29" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">media</a></span> <span id="30" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">news</a></span> <span id="31" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">newspaper</a></span> <span id="32" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Parler </a></span> <span id="33" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">platforms</a></span> <span id="34" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">posts</a></span> <span id="35" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">power</a></span> <span id="36" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">private</a></span> <span id="37" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">public</a></span> <span id="38" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">rules</a></span> <span id="39" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">social</a></span> <span id="40" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">speech</a></span> <span id="41" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">spread</a></span> <span id="42" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">States </a></span> <span id="43" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">suspending</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">tech</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">Twitter </a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">users</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">work</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">York </a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4mgZ2GJw7WcgWWsR36-P19OOfln02OeI94GaJCZk5tKS1FpT1U6L8auKzAMohnDbAcxlrphO55h_sdMNAjZO6wgFD_2bHC2BT3yS1yqSP-P4QWxboAzQYhaPqsetPTSiCNKn_Q/s2048/Deplatforming_controversy_illustration.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1073" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH4mgZ2GJw7WcgWWsR36-P19OOfln02OeI94GaJCZk5tKS1FpT1U6L8auKzAMohnDbAcxlrphO55h_sdMNAjZO6wgFD_2bHC2BT3yS1yqSP-P4QWxboAzQYhaPqsetPTSiCNKn_Q/s600/Deplatforming_controversy_illustration.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>In the months leading up to the November election, the social media platform <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler">Parler</a> attracted millions of new users by promising something competitors, increasingly, did not: unfettered free speech. “If you can say it on the streets of New York,” promised the company’s chief executive, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmatze/">John Matze</a>, in a June CNBC interview, “you can say it on Parler.”<br /><br />
The giants of social media — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube">YouTube</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instagram">Instagram</a> — had more stringent rules. And while they still amplified huge amounts of far-right content, they had started using warning labels and deletions to clamp down on misinformation about COVID-19 and false claims of electoral fraud, including in posts by President Trump. Conservative figures, including Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz">Ted Cruz</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Trump">Eric Trump</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Hannity">Sean Hannity</a>, grew increasingly critical of the sites and beckoned followers to join them on Parler, whose investors include the right-wing activist and heiress <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebekah_Mercer">Rebekah Mercer</a>. The format was like Twitter’s, but with only two clear rules: no criminal activity and no spam or bots. On Parler, you could say what you wanted without being, as conservatives complained, “silenced.”<br /><br />
After the election, as Trump sought to overturn his defeat with a barrage of false claims, Matze made a classic First Amendment argument for letting the disinformation stand: More speech is better. Let the marketplace of ideas run without interference. “If you don’t censor, if you don’t — you just let him do what he wants, then the public can judge for themselves,” Matze said of Trump’s Twitter account <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-poulos.html">on the <i>New York Times</i> podcast “Sway.”</a> “Just sit there and say: ‘Hey, that’s what he said. What do you guys think?’”<br /><br />
Matze was speaking to the host of “Sway,” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Swisher">Kara Swisher</a>, on January 7 — the day after Trump told supporters to march on the US Capitol and fight congressional certification of the Electoral College vote. In the chaos that followed Trump’s speech, the American marketplace of ideas clearly failed. Protecting democracy, for Trump loyalists, had become a cry to subvert and even destroy it. And while Americans’ freedoms of speech and the press were vital to exposing this assault, they were also among its causes. Right-wing media helped seed destabilizing lies; elected officials helped them grow; and the democratizing power of social media spread them, steadily, from one node to the next.<br /><br />
Social media sites effectively function as the public square where people debate the issues of the day. But the platforms are actually more like privately owned malls: They make and enforce rules to keep their spaces tolerable, and unlike the government, they’re not obligated to provide all the freedom of speech offered by the First Amendment. Like the bouncers at a bar, they are free to boot anyone or anything they consider disruptive. In the days after January 6, they swiftly cracked down on whole channels and accounts associated with the violence. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reddit">Reddit</a> removed the <a href="https://www.axios.com/reddit-bans-rdonaldtrump-subreddit-ff1da2de-37ab-49cf-afbd-2012f806959e.html">r/DonaldTrump subreddit</a>. YouTube tightened its policy on posting videos that called the outcome of the election into doubt. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TikTok">TikTok</a> took down posts with hashtags like #stormthecapitol. Facebook indefinitely suspended Trump’s account, and Twitter — which, like Facebook, had spent years making some exceptions to its rules for the president — took his account away permanently.<br /><br />
Parler, true to its stated principles, did none of this. But it had a weak point: It was dependent on other private companies to operate. In the days after the Capitol assault, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.">Apple</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google">Google</a> removed Parler from their app stores. Then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services">Amazon Web Services</a> stopped hosting Parler, effectively cutting off its plumbing. Parler sued, but it had agreed, in its contract, not to host content that “may be harmful to others”; having promised the streets of New York, it was actually bound by the rules of a kindergarten playground. In a court filing, Amazon provided samples of about 100 posts it had notified Parler were in violation of its contract in the weeks before the Capitol assault. “Fry ’em up,” one said, with a list of targets that included Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. “We are coming for you and you will know it.” On January 21, <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664.34.0.pdf">a judge denied Parler’s demand</a> [PDF] to reinstate Amazon’s services.<br /><br />
It’s unlikely the volume of incendiary content on Parler could rival that of Twitter or Facebook, where groups had openly planned for January 6. But Parler is the one that went dark. A platform built to challenge the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly">oligopoly</a> of its giant rivals was deplatformed by other giants, in a demonstration of how easily they, too, could block speech at will.<br /><br />
Over all, the deplatforming after January 6 had the feeling of an emergency response to a wave of lies nearly drowning our democracy. For years, many tech companies had invoked the American ethos of free speech while letting disinformation and incitement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/business/trump-china-censorship.html">spread abroad</a>, even when it led to terrible violence. Now they leapt to action as if, with America in trouble, American ideals no longer applied. Parler eventually turned to overseas web-hosting services to get back online.<br /><br />
“We couldn’t beat you in the war of ideas and discourse, so we’re pulling your mic” — that’s how <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archon_Fung">Archon Fung</a>, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, put it, in expressing ambivalence about the moves. It seemed curiously easier to take on Trump and his allies in the wake of Democrats’ victories in the Senate runoffs in Georgia, giving them control of both chambers of Congress along with the White House. (Press officers for Twitter and Facebook said no election outcome influenced the companies’ decision.) And in setting an example that might be applied to the speech of the other groups — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissident">foreign dissidents</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/8/2/20692327/sex-work-decriminalization-prostitution-new-york-dc">sex-worker activists</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter#:~:text=In%202013%2C%20Patrisse%20Cullors%2C%20Alicia,set%20of%20principles%20and%20goals.">Black Lives Matter organizers</a> — the deplatforming takes on an ominous cast.<br /><br />
<a href="https://canarymission.org/individual/Fadi_Quran">Fadi Quran</a>, a campaign director for the global human rights group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz">Avaaz</a>, told me he, too, found the precedent worrying. “Although the steps may have been necessary to protect American lives against violence,” he said, “they are a reminder of the power big tech has over our information infrastructure. This infrastructure should be governed by deliberative democratic processes.”<br /><br />
But what would those democratic processes be? Americans have a deep and abiding suspicion of letting the state regulate speech. At the moment, tech companies are filling the vacuum created by that fear. But do we really want to trust a handful of chief executives with policing spaces that have become essential parts of democratic discourse? We are uncomfortable with government doing it; we are uncomfortable with Silicon Valley doing it. But we are also uncomfortable with nobody doing it at all. This is a hard place to be — or, perhaps, two rocks and a hard place.<br /><br />
When Twitter banned Trump, he found a seemingly unlikely defender: Chancellor <a href="https://apnews.com/article/merkel-trump-twitter-problematic-dc9732268493a8ac337e03159f0dc1c9">Angela Merkel</a> of Germany, who criticized the decision as a “problematic” breach of the right to free speech. This wasn’t necessarily because Merkel considered the content of Trump’s speech defensible. The deplatforming troubled her because it came from a private company; instead, she said through a spokesman, the United States should have a law restricting online incitement, like the one Germany passed in 2017 to prevent the dissemination of hate speech and fake news stories.<br /><br />
Among democracies, the United States <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/free-speech.html">stands out for its faith</a> that free speech is the right from which all other freedoms flow. European countries are more apt to fight destabilizing lies by balancing free speech with other rights. It’s an approach informed by the history of fascism and the memory of how propaganda, lies and the scapegoating of minorities can sweep authoritarian leaders to power. Many nations shield themselves from such anti-pluralistic ideas. In Canada, it’s a criminal offense to publicly incite hatred “against any identifiable group.” South Africa prosecutes people for uttering certain racial slurs. A number of countries in Europe treat Nazism as a unique evil, making it a crime to deny the Holocaust.<br /><br />
In the United States, laws like these surely wouldn’t survive Supreme Court review, given the current understanding of the First Amendment — an understanding that comes out of our country’s history and our own brushes with suppressing dissent. The First Amendment did not prevent the administration of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams">John Adams</a> from prosecuting more than a dozen newspaper editors for seditious libel or the Socialist and labor leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs">Eugene V. Debs</a> from being convicted of sedition over a speech, before a peaceful crowd, opposing involvement in World War I. In 1951, the Supreme Court upheld the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_Party_leaders">convictions of Communist Party leaders</a> for “conspiring” to advocate the overthrow of the government, though the evidence showed only that they had met to discuss their ideological beliefs.<br /><br />
It wasn’t until the 1960s that the Supreme Court enduringly embraced the vision of the First Amendment expressed, decades earlier, in a dissent by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes_Jr.">Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.</a>: “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas.” In <i>Brandenburg</i> v. <i>Ohio</i>, that meant protecting the speech of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan">Ku Klux Klan</a> leader at a 1964 rally, setting a high bar for punishing inflammatory words. Brandenburg “wildly overprotects free speech from any logical standpoint,” the University of Chicago law professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_R._Stone">Geoffrey R. Stone</a> points out. “But the court learned from experience to guard against a worse evil: the government using its power to silence its enemies.”<br /><br />
This era’s concept of free speech still differed from today’s in one crucial way: The court was willing to press private entities to ensure they allowed different voices to be heard. As another University of Chicago law professor, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5509509/4998747265691292761">Genevieve Lakier</a>, <a href="https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/lawreview.uchicago.edu/files/Lakier_FirstAmendmentLochner_87_UCLR_1241.pdf">wrote in a law-review article last year</a> [PDF], a hallmark of the 1960s was the court’s “sensitivity to the threat that economic, social and political inequality posed” to public debate. As a result, the court sometimes required private property owners, like TV broadcasters, to grant access to speakers they wanted to keep out.<br /><br />
But the court shifted again, Lakier says, toward interpreting the First Amendment “as a grant of almost total freedom” for private owners to decide who could speak through their outlets. In 1974, it struck down a Florida law requiring newspapers that criticized the character of political candidates to offer them space to reply. Chief Justice Warren Burger, in his opinion for the majority, recognized that barriers to entry in the newspaper market meant this placed the power to shape public opinion “in few hands.” But in his view, there was little the government could do about it.<br /><br />
Traditionally, conservatives have favored that libertarian approach: Let owners decide how their property is used. That’s changing now that they find their speech running afoul of tech-company rules. “Listen to me, America, we were wiped out,” the right-wing podcaster <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bongino">Dan Bongino</a>, an investor in Parler, said in a Fox News interview after Amazon pulled its services. “And to all the geniuses out there, too, saying this is a private company, it’s not a First Amendment fight — really, it’s not?” The law that prevents the government from censoring speech should still apply, he said, because “these companies are more powerful than a <i>de facto</i> government.” You needn’t sympathize with him to see the hit Parler took as the modern equivalent of, in Burger’s terms, disliking one newspaper and taking the trouble to start your own, only to find no one will sell you ink to print it.<br /><br />
One problem with private companies’ holding the ability to deplatform any speaker is that they’re in no way insulated from politics — from accusations of bias to advertiser boycotts to employee walkouts. Facebook is a business, driven by profit and with no legal obligation to explain its decisions the way a court or regulatory body would. Why, for example, hasn’t Facebook suspended the accounts of other leaders who have used the platform to spread lies and bolster their power, like the president of the Philippines, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodrigo_Duterte">Rodrigo Duterte</a>? A spokesman said suspending Trump was “a response to a specific situation based on risk” — but so is every decision, and the risks can be just as high overseas.<br /><br />
“It’s really media and public pressure that is the difference between Trump coming down and Duterte staying up,” says <a href="https://hls.harvard.edu/dept/graduate-program/evelyn-douek/">Evelyn Douek</a>, a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “But the winds of public opinion are a terrible basis for free-speech decisions! Maybe it seems like it’s working right now. But in the longer run, how do you think unpopular dissidents and minorities will fare?”<br /><br />
<font size="+2">Deplatforming works</font>, at least in the short term. There are indications that in the weeks after the platforms cleaned house — with Twitter suspending not just Trump but some 70,000 accounts, including many <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon">QAnon</a> <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/influencer">influencers</a> — conversations about election fraud decreased significantly across several sites. After Facebook reintroduced a scoring system to promote news sources based on its judgment of their quality, the list of top performers, usually filled by hyperpartisan sources, featured CNN, NPR and local news outlets.<br /><br />
But there’s no reason to think the healthier information climate will last. The very features that make social media so potent work both to the benefit and the detriment of democracy. YouTube, for instance, changed its recommendation algorithm in 2019, after researchers and reporters (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html">including Kevin Roose at <i>The New York Times</i></a>) showed how it pushed some users toward radicalizing content. It’s also telling that, since the election, <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/01/preparing-for-inauguration-day/amp/?__twitter_impression=true">Facebook has stopped recommending civic groups for people to join</a>. After January 6, the researcher <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/aric-toler-132ab365/">Aric Toler at <i>Bellingcat</i></a> <a href="https://twitter.com/arictoler/status/1350990627035631618">surfaced a cheery video</a>, automatically created by Facebook to promote its groups, which imposed the tagline “community means a lot” over images of a militia brandishing weapons and a <a href="https://www.cpr.org/2021/01/28/woodland-park-man-indicted-by-dc-grand-jury-on-six-counts-for-role-in-u-s-capitol-riot/">photo of Robert Gieswein</a>, who has since been charged in the assault on the Capitol. “I’m afraid that the technology has upended the possibility of a well-functioning, responsible speech environment,” the Harvard law professor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Goldsmith">Jack Goldsmith</a> says. “It used to be we had masses of speech in a reasonable range, and some extreme speech we could tolerate. Now we have a lot more extreme speech coming from lots of outlets and mouthpieces, and it’s more injurious and harder to regulate.”<br /><br />
For decades, tech companies mostly responded to such criticism with proud free-speech absolutism. But external pressures, and the absence of any other force to contain users, gradually dragged them into the expensive and burdensome role of policing their domains. Facebook, for one, now has legions of low-paid workers reviewing posts flagged as harmful, a task gruesome enough that the company has agreed to pay $52 million in mental-health compensation to settle a lawsuit by more than 10,000 moderators.<br /><br />
Perhaps because it’s so easy to question their motives, some executives have taken to begging for mercy. “We are facing something that feels impossible,” said <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dorsey">Jack Dorsey</a>, Twitter’s chief executive, while being grilled by Congress last year. And Facebook’s founder and chief executive, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg">Mark Zuckerberg</a>, has agreed with lawmakers that the company has too much power over speech. Two weeks after suspending Trump, Facebook said its new oversight board, an independent group of 20 international experts, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/facebook-has-referred-trumps-suspension-its-oversight-board-now-what">would review the decision</a>, with the power to make a binding ruling.<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the-internet-needs-new-rules-lets-start-in-these-four-areas/2019/03/29/9e6f0504-521a-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html">Zuckerberg</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/jack/status/1328721291797360643">Dorsey</a> have also suggested openness to government regulation that would hold platforms to external standards. That might include, for example, requiring rules for slowing the spread of disinformation from known offenders. European lawmakers, with their more skeptical free-speech tradition (and lack of allegiance to American tech companies), have proposed requiring platforms to show how their recommendations work and giving users more control over them, as has been done in the realm of privacy. Steps like these <a href="https://superwuster.medium.com/liberals-and-conservatives-are-both-totally-wrong-about-section-230-11faacc4b117">seem better suited</a> to combating misinformation than eliminating, as is often suggested, the immunity platforms currently enjoy from lawsuits, which directly affects only a narrow range of cases, mostly involving defamation.<br /><br />
There is no consensus on a path forward, but there is precedent for some intervention. When radio and television radically altered the information landscape, Congress passed laws to foster competition, local control and public broadcasting. From the 1930s until the 1980s, anyone with a broadcast license had to operate in the “public interest” — and starting in 1949, that explicitly included exposing audiences to multiple points of view in policy debates. The court let the elected branches balance the rights of private ownership with the collective good of pluralism.<br /><br />
This model coincided with relatively high levels of trust in media and low levels of political polarization. That arrangement has been rare in American history. It’s hard to imagine a return to it. But it’s worth remembering that radio and TV also induced fear and concern, and our democracy adapted and thrived. The First Amendment of the era aided us. The guarantee of free speech is <i>for</i> democracy; it is worth little, in the end, apart from it. ###<br /><br />
[Emily Bazelon is a staff writer for <i>The New York Times Magazine</i> and a former senior editor at <i>Slate</i>. Bazelon also is a senior research scholar in Law and Truman Capote Fellow for Creative Writing and Law at Yale Law School. Her 2019 book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Charged-Movement-Transform-Prosecution-Incarceration/dp/0399590013"><i>Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration</i></a>, won the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> Book Prize in the current-interest category. And before that, Bazelon wrote <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sticks-Stones-Defeating-Rediscovering-Character/dp/0812992806/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr="><i>Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy</i></a> (2013). She is a graduate of Yale College (BA, English) and Yale Law School (JD) and was an editor of the <i>Yale Law Journal</i>.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-49987472656912927612021-01-29T07:26:00.000-06:002021-01-29T07:26:01.278-06:00Read Carefully — Beware Of Right-Wing Bias In This Essay<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>As this blogger burrowed deeper into today's essay for this blog, he discovered that the essay author, law professor Genevieve Lakier, used the descriptive term, <i>conservative</i> in a very loose and inaccurate way. For example, The Loser (of the 2020 election) is <u>not</u> a conservative; he has no respect for the norms and traditions of our government. He is a radical white supremacist and outspoken bigot — he wants to conserve nothing in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pluribus_unum#:~:text=E%20pluribus%20unum%20%28%2Fi%CB%90%20%CB%88,Latin%20for%20%22he%20approves%20the"><i>e pluribus unum</i></a> or anything that offends his racist sensibilities. Similarly, The Loser's minions are willing to destroy this country in order to save it (voiced by the US military in Vietnam, 1964-1973). If this is a (fair & balanced) renunciation of murky political labels, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x The Atlantic]<br />
The Great Free-Speech Reversal<br />
By Genevieve Lakier<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">social-media</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">speech</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Supreme </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">today</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">Twitter </a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">violated</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4vkkax1dgGVgqN3fbM3NeiV8fsd4BJkv9SRY8eQsodPl2d52Lido-Rlcqf9Qm34_BZuaPUStUtv5wz2MUolNYwtRRIsDkw5Qx6mqWYPj_1rlXh6sf1myPbsTEzW11YfXxePV8UQ/s2048/Article_I_illustration.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4vkkax1dgGVgqN3fbM3NeiV8fsd4BJkv9SRY8eQsodPl2d52Lido-Rlcqf9Qm34_BZuaPUStUtv5wz2MUolNYwtRRIsDkw5Qx6mqWYPj_1rlXh6sf1myPbsTEzW11YfXxePV8UQ/s600/Article_I_illustration.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>There is a rich historical irony to the fact that today, conservatives are the ones who argue most forcefully that the decisions by private companies to “deplatform” certain speakers threaten what President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump">Donald Trump</a> described in 2020 as the “<a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/">bedrock</a>” American right to freedom of speech. Until very recently, this was an argument made almost exclusively by those on the left.<br /><br />
The decision by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/opinion/trump-twitter.html">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/28/facebook-board-overturns-content-decisions-463433">Facebook</a>, and a host of other social-media outlets to ban Trump from their platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol intensified conservatives’ long-standing concerns that the powerful tech industry is violating their free-speech rights. Trump encouraged and amplified these arguments when he issued a (largely symbolic) <a href="https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/">executive order in May 2020</a> declaring that “free speech is the bedrock of American democracy,” and insisted that “in a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey.”<br /><br />
The deplatforming of the president appeared to many conservatives to offer vivid proof that these companies are just as dangerous to freedom of speech as Trump had claimed. Steve Daines, a Republican senator from Montana, took to Twitter to attack “Big Tech” <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveDaines/status/1347725221818736643">for “censoring [Trump] and the free speech of American citizens</a>.” Trump’s trade adviser, <a href="https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6222839853001#sp=show-clips">Peter Navarro, claimed</a> that the platforms’ decision to restrict speech “threatened our democracy.” And on the floor of the Capitol building, newly sworn-in Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/qanon-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-wore-censorship-face-mask.html">wore a mask</a> bearing a single word—censored—in stark white letters. Many liberals, meanwhile, insisted that the decision to deplatform the president had nothing to do with freedom of speech, at least not as protected by the First Amendment.<br /><br />
This is something of a reversal. Indeed, the idea that private actors, not just government officials, might threaten the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, as well as the other rights protected by the Constitution, was first suggested by big-government liberals, whom contemporary conservatives love to hate. In the early 20<sup>th</sup> century, progressive legal scholars such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_S._Cohen">Felix Cohen</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lee_Hale">Robert Hale</a> argued against the notion that the Constitution protects rights including freedom of speech from only government action. Private corporations wield tremendous power over individuals’ lives and fortunes, and to overlook that power when interpreting the meaning of constitutionally protected rights, Cohen and Hale believed, would make no sense.<br /><br />
This argument eventually found favor with progressive justices on the Supreme Court during the New Deal and led the court to conclude—as it did in the 1946 decision <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/326/501"><i>Marsh</i> v. <i>Alabama</i></a>, for example—that the First Amendment could prevent private corporations from excluding speakers from property they owned and controlled when doing so was necessary to ensure that “the channels of communication remain free.” In later decades, although the Court struggled to define exactly when and under what circumstances the First Amendment applied to private actors, it continued to insist that it did sometimes apply. In 1968, for example, the great liberal lion, Justice <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurgood_Marshall">Thurgood Marshall</a>, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/391/308">wrote an opinion</a> that held that a shopping mall’s private owner could not exclude protesters from the mall’s passageways without violating their First Amendment rights. Only after President <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon">Richard Nixon</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon_Supreme_Court_candidates#Politics">appointed four pro-business conservative justices</a> did the Supreme Court reject this view of the First Amendment, and <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/424/507">insist</a> that private corporations have no constitutional obligation to grant access to their property to speakers they dislike, no matter how powerful those corporations might be.<br /><br />
When Trump and other conservatives complain that the decision to remove the president from popular platforms violates his freedom of speech, they place themselves in strange company. They acknowledge, albeit only implicitly and perhaps opportunistically, that early-20<sup>th</sup>-century progressives were correct to worry about private power’s threat to constitutionally protected liberties.<br /><br />
This recognition is welcome, if overdue. For decades now, nearly all of the important forums of mass communication in the United States (radio and television stations, newspapers and magazines, movies and, yes, social-media platforms) have been privately owned. Given this state of affairs, private companies’ decisions about what speech to allow or exclude from their property obviously have the capacity to limit the free and open debate that sustains American democracy. The difficult thing is figuring out what to do about it.<br /><br />
In recent weeks, <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/1348654736791244807">some conservatives have suggested</a> that courts should impose the same First Amendment duties on today’s social-media companies that the <i>Marsh</i> v. <i>Alabama</i> Court imposed on a private owner of a company town. In principle, this approach makes a lot of sense. Just like the company town in Marsh, Twitter and Facebook today provide an important forum for public conversation and debate. They represent, as Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cornyn">John Cornyn</a> [R-TX] has argued, the new “public squares” of the internet age.<br /><br />
In practice, however, extending the rule from <i>Marsh</i> to social media would effectively make the nine justices on the Supreme Court (many of whom have, by all appearances, <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2013/08/elena-kagan-supreme-court-justices-haven-t-gotten-to-email-use-paper-memos-instead.html">a poor grasp</a> of the basic mechanisms of digital technology) the final arbiters of freedom of speech on social media for 330 million Americans. One might doubt whether the Court is best positioned to assess how free-speech principles translate to this new technological environment. Even if one doesn’t doubt that, the Supreme Court has evinced no desire to extend its holding in <i>Marsh</i> to new kinds of private property. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/17-1702">If anything, the opposite</a>.<br /><br />
Rather than imposing First Amendment duties on the powerful private companies that operate today’s virtual public squares, <a href="https://knightcolumbia.org/content/the-free-speech-black-hole-can-the-internet-escape-the-gravitational-pull-of-the-first-amendment">some on the left have argued</a>, the best option for preserving freedom of speech on social media is to allow the companies to self-regulate, by creating internal speech policies that limit their ability to pick and choose what speech to allow on the platform. This is an idea that, unlike the probably doomed idea of reviving Marsh, is already being put into practice.<br /><br />
Over the past few years, social-media companies have expended considerable effort developing internal policies that <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules">they claim</a> are designed to ensure that “all people can participate in the public conversation [on the platforms] freely and safely.” Instead of exercising the unbounded freedom that post-Nixon First Amendment cases give them to exclude whomever they like from their platforms, companies such as <a href="https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/">Facebook</a> have declared themselves bound by a principled, though not legally mandated, duty to promote freedom of speech on their platforms, and have developed policies that allow speech to be removed, flagged, or hidden only when it satisfies certain conditions. These policies also provide limited <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/346366453115924">due-process rights</a> to those regulated by them.<br /><br />
When they banned Trump, the platforms took care to justify the decision by reference to these policies. Twitter, for example, <a href="https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html">provided a detailed explanation</a> of why Trump’s speech violated its policy against glorifying violence and therefore could be removed despite the company’s general preference for “the public [to] hear from elected officials and world leaders directly.” Mark Zuckerberg <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10112681480907401">made a similar argument</a> to explain why Facebook was banning Trump until the end of his presidency, and <a href="https://about.fb.com/news/2021/01/referring-trump-suspension-to-oversight-board/">just recently Facebook asked</a> its court-like <a href="https://oversightboard.com/">Oversight Board</a>, established a few months ago to provide independent oversight of its speech-regulating decisions, to evaluate whether the ban violated the company’s policies.<br /><br />
These efforts to justify Trump’s deplatforming by reference to social-media companies’ internal speech policies—and in particular, Facebook’s willingness to have that decision reviewed by an independent, quasi-judicial Oversight Board—suggest that the project of platform self-regulation is gaining traction. The important question facing internet users in the United States and around the world is whether the platforms’ self-regulation will be sufficient to protect the important democratic and expressive freedoms that the American free-speech tradition cares about.<br /><br />
There are reasons to be skeptical that self-regulation will be enough. Perhaps the primary reason is the fact that, notwithstanding their presumably sincere commitment to freedom of speech, social-media companies are, in the end, for-profit entities that offer a forum for speech in order to make money. Will they protect expressive freedom even when it conflicts with corporate profits? Conversely, outside the extraordinary circumstances of the Capitol invasion, will they take down genuinely harmful speech that brings readers to their platforms? Past history suggests that the answer to both of these questions will be no. Certainly the often–<i>ad hoc</i> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/05/technology-202-twitter-response-trump-coronavirus-diagnosis-highlights-inconsistencies-company-handling-abuse/">inconsistent decision making</a> that the platforms demonstrated during the 2020 election campaign is alone concerning.<br /><br />
Given all of this, it is worth considering a third option that has been used in the past, and could once again be used, to protect expressive freedom from private power: <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/315">laws requiring</a> that the private media companies governing the mass public sphere abide by basic nondiscrimination and, often, due-process obligations. Even when the First Amendment intruded further into the private sphere than it does today, statutory nondiscrimination and due-process requirements were lawmakers’ primary tools to ensure that the private companies that controlled the telegraph and telephone wires, the radio and television airwaves, and the cable networks did not use their power to discriminate in favor of certain political viewpoints, or otherwise undermine the vitality of public debate. The most famous, and controversial, example of these laws was the Fairness Doctrine, which imposed extensive, if vague, nondiscrimination duties on radio and television broadcasters, and to an extent, cable-television companies, from the 1930s until the late ’80s, when Ronald Reagan’s FCC repealed it. But the Fairness Doctrine is only one example of a much wider array of media nondiscrimination laws, many of which continue to ensure, to this day, that, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3689972">as one senator put it in 1926</a>, the “few men” who control the “great publicity vehicles” of radio and television [<i>sic</i>, broadcast TV began in 1947] do not limit the range of ideas and viewpoints that the public can hear.<br /><br />
In this context as well, a significant shift in political attitudes has occurred. For much of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, conservatives were the ones who railed against the constraints that federal laws like the Fairness Doctrine imposed on private media companies, and liberals and progressives defended these policies against attack. Today, however, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/328e7cbf1c0c425aabf006ac0f6923bf">many conservatives argue</a> for the need to impose statutory nondiscrimination duties on social-media companies, while many liberals express alarm about the constraints such bills would impose on the freedom of private companies.<br /><br />
Although some of the bills that have been proposed to rein in social-media companies’ power are certainly <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/6/26/18691528/section-230-josh-hawley-conservatism-twitter-facebook">poorly drafted</a> and could easily be abused by self-interested politicians, advocates on the left should not give up on the possibility of using regulation to protect freedom of speech on the platforms. Designing nondiscrimination rules that can work effectively in social media’s new technological environment will be no easy feat. But that does not mean it cannot be done. There is no reason Congress could not impose minimum procedural requirements on the platforms when they act to remove their users’ speech.<br /><br />
All of which is to say that the debate about free speech on social media should not be viewed primarily as a debate about whether the social-media companies violated Trump’s freedom of speech when they banned him, or whether they violate anyone else’s freedom of speech when they make thousands of similar decisions every day. Instead, it should be viewed primarily as a debate about what freedom of speech means on social media, and, perhaps most importantly, about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/magazine/free-speech-tech.html">who gets to decide</a>—courts, corporations, or legislatures. That liberals and conservatives have switched perspectives on these questions in recent years reflects the extraordinary political fluidity, and perhaps possibility, of the current moment.<br /><br />
However the political alignments work out, Trump’s deplatforming illuminated a basic insight worth keeping in mind: Private companies not only participate in the marketplace of ideas but also determine to a significant extent who else can participate in it. We should not take comfort in the fact that the speech-regulating decisions by Big Tech companies do not and cannot violate the First Amendment as it is currently understood. Conservatives are correct to be worried about the threat that the private platforms pose to freedom of speech, even if this makes them more like big-government liberals than they might be willing to acknowledge. Those big-government liberals should realize as much, and act accordingly. ###<br /><br />
[Genevieve Lakier is an assistant professor of law and a Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching Scholar at the School of Law of the University of Chicago (IL). Her research explores the connections between culture and law. She is currently engaged in a long-term project exploring the cultural history of the First Amendment, and another project exploring the changing role of the state in the regulation of sex.
Between 2006 and 2008, she was an Academy Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International and Area Studies at Harvard University (MA). She also clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand of the Southern District of New York and Judge Martha C. Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Lakier received an AB (anthropology) from Princeton University (NJ), an MA and PhD (anthropology) from the University of Chicago, and a JD from the New York University School of Law (NYC).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The Atlantic Monthly Group<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-22511021102889652822021-01-28T04:14:00.000-06:002021-01-28T08:50:41.565-06:00Thomas Jefferson Declared That The Admission Of Missouri In 1820 Filled Him With The Terror Of Hearing A Firebell In The Night — When You Think Of The January 6, 2021 Capitol Riot, Do You Hear A Loud, Clanging Sound?<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>If you thought 2020 was a bad year in terms of dangerous threats to every man, woman, and child in the United States, January 6, 2021 demonstrated that the horrors were with us still. The awfulness and terrible choices loom even larger as January 2021 draws to a close. If this is a (fair & balanced) suggestion that we are facing another Worst Hard Time on an endless loop, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x The New Yorker]<br />
Biden’s Vital But Fraught Battle Against Domestic Terrorism<br />
By David Rohde<br /><br />
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text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1269" data-original-width="1671" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrHniQxL8EiIzyB3KG0QJb0PHNrBmV6maSIeI8vntChO2oezP-tsD7jeat_PG8ZEAM79qN0t8w8V3m_hyphenhyphenHD0EBSSb7k-Gg9ao5XWoYTEs3uQ-2ra4ttkAKOIn8zp0Iqw_tclrO_w/s600/proud_boys_ashamed_boys_and_girls_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>President <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a>, in his Inaugural Address, made a vow of a kind that few Presidents have in American history. He warned of “a rise of political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism,” which, he pledged, “we must confront and we will defeat.” On Friday, his third day in office, Biden ordered US intelligence officials, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security to assess the threat posed by violent domestic extremists and to develop ways to counter them. “The rise of domestic violent extremism is a serious and growing national threat,” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jen_Psaki">Jen Psak</a>i, the White House press secretary, said. “The Biden Administration will confront this threat with the necessary resources and resolve.”<br /><br />
That mission is likely to be one of the most vital, complex, and fraught in the history of American law enforcement. As the second impeachment trial of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> approaches, federal officials are monitoring online chatter about assassinating members of Congress or attacking them outside the Capitol. Intelligence officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/world/europe/capitol-far-right-global.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage">are concerned</a> about online coördination between white supremacists in this country and in Germany. Over all, terrorist attacks and plots <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states">have risen sharply</a> in the United States since 2013, and the majority of them were carried out by homegrown right-wing extremists. Democrats blame Trump for legitimizing, emboldening, and <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/global-right-wing-extremism-networks-are-growing-the-u-s-is-just-now-catching-up">failing to crack down</a> on far-right groups such as the Proud Boys throughout his Presidency. They maintain that his monthslong disinformation campaign about the election results incited <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/25/among-the-insurrectionists">the January 6<sup>th</sup> insurrection</a> at the US Capitol. Democrats in Congress who experienced the attack are demanding that Biden act.<br /><br />
Some members of Biden’s team have investigated domestic terrorism in the past, notably <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland">Merrick Garland</a>, his nominee for Attorney General, who led the prosecution of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh">Timothy McVeigh</a>, an anti-government militia member who killed more than a hundred and fifty people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The new Secretary of Defense, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Austin">Lloyd Austin</a>, vowed in his confirmation hearing to “rid our ranks of racists and extremists.” And military and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/police-capitol-riot-extremists/2021/01/24/16fdb2bc-5a7b-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html">law-enforcement officials</a> are investigating the role of active and former military members and police officers in the Capitol attack. An <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/21/958915267/nearly-one-in-five-defendants-in-capitol-riot-cases-served-in-the-military?utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_source=twitter.com">NPR analysis</a> of court records found that one out of every five people criminally charged so far in the assault had served or is currently serving in the military, yet veterans make up just seven per cent of the population. (Last year, <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/01/14/the-military-knows-it-has-a-problem-with-domestic-extremists-white-supremacists/">a <i>Military Times</i> poll</a> found that a third of active-duty members had seen “signs of white supremacist or racist ideology in the ranks.”)<br /><br />
Trump supporters immediately dismissed the Biden Administration’s effort as an attempt to smear and silence them. Adopting the same narrative of grievance and conspiracy that Trump rode to power, Senator <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/rand-paul">Rand Paul</a> [R-KY], a likely 2024 Presidential candidate, said that Biden had slandered conservatives in his Inaugural Address: “If you read his speech and listen to it carefully, much of it is thinly veiled innuendo, calling us white supremacists, calling us racists, calling us every name in the book.” The Fox News host <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson">Tucker Carlson</a> declared that Biden, intelligence officials, and Big Tech companies were unleashing a “new war on terror,” that is “focussed inward on the people of this country.”<br /><br />
On Sunday, Biden’s homeland-security adviser, Dr. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Sherwood-Randall">Liz Sherwood-Randall</a>, told me that the Administration’s policy would be measured and nonpartisan, and would respect citizens’ constitutional rights. “We’ve built a team that has deep experience in balancing the need to address national security threats with the need to protect civil rights and civil liberties, and our work will be informed by both the lessons of history and the challenges we face today.” Previous FBI campaigns to counter domestic threats have resulted, on a number of occasions, in civil-rights abuses. In the nineteen-sixties, the bureau’s director, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover">J. Edgar Hoover</a>, driven by bigotry and by a <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-martin-luther-king-jr-surveillence-wiretap-report-j-edgar-hoover-780630">false claim</a> that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Communist, ordered agents to illegally surveil, smear, and harass him. Separately, the CIA spied on anti-Vietnam War activists. In the nineteen-nineties, a botched FBI raid on a religious cult in Waco, Texas, which killed dozens of members of the group, vastly expanded the ranks of far-right militias in the United States. After the 9/11 attacks, agents profiled Muslim Americans, conducted illegal surveillance of mosques, and, according to defense lawyers, used paid informants to entrap defendants and exaggerate the threat that they represented.<br /><br />
Current and former federal law-enforcement officials say that it is possible for the Justice Department and the FBI to aggressively enforce the law and deter further violence while avoiding the abuses of the past. They say that First Amendment free-speech protections that bar law-enforcement officials from investigating or surveilling Americans on the basis of their statements or their political beliefs must be honored, even when those statements or beliefs are blatantly racist or include talk of insurrection. “The key guidance is that investigations are only to be undertaken of groups advocating or engaging in violence—not simply for their speech or beliefs,” <a href="https://fbiretired.com/agent/thomas-baker/">Tom Baker</a>, a former FBI official, told me. “It may be tempting to ‘take the gloves off,’ but investigative attention has properly focussed on their actions, not on their speech.”<br /><br />
Yet experts on online radicalization say that law-enforcement approaches to domestic extremism are growing antiquated. American politics, laws, and technology firms have failed to recognize the power of instant communication in the digital age. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Donovan">Joan Donovan</a>, an expert on disinformation at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, says that the Trump era has shown that online disinformation can contribute to radicalization, and confronting that challenge is a core part of countering extremism. “The fact of the matter is that Trump can shape reality when he has access instantly to a hundred and fifty million people,” Donovan said. “These are not toys. The more we misunderstand the coördinating power of social media, the more we’re going to mistakenly frame it as simply a free-speech issue.” The insurrection, she noted, “was a command-and-control situation, where people thought they were part of an army going to save the Commander-in-Chief.”<br /><br />
The <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/fbi-agents-association/about/">FBI Agents Association</a>, which represents fourteen thousand current and former agents, supports updating federal law to create tough penalties for acts of domestic terrorism. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/opinion/white-supremacy-terrorism.html">Some former agents</a> have also called for new laws that would allow the federal government to declare certain groups domestic terrorist organizations. But civil-liberties organizations, including the ACLU, oppose stronger laws, claiming that the FBI has the powers it needs to pursue far-right groups but has, instead, gone easy on them. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_German">Michael German</a>, a former FBI agent and a fellow at the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brennan_Center_for_Justice">Brennan Center for Justice</a>, opposes additional domestic-terrorism statutes, in part, he told me, because “the problem is not as complicated as the FBI pretends.” He added, “Law enforcement deprioritizes the investigation and prosecution of white supremacist and far-right violence through policy and practice, not a lack of authority.”<br /><br />
One point on which the experts I spoke to agreed was that the practices, rules, and norms currently used in criminal investigations and trials must be applied to cases of violent domestic extremism. Any hint of leniency, excess, secrecy, or political bias could play into conspiracy theories and fuel further extremism. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidlaufman/">David Laufman</a>, a former senior official at the Justice Department who helped coördinate its responses to the 9/11 attacks, said that law-enforcement officials should “maximize the level of detail in the evidence that they have gathered showing that criminal acts occurred and that nothing about this is political.” He added that prosecutors should be “making it clear that these cases are about holding Americans to account who resorted to violent acts in subversion of our government and in violation of law.”<br /><br />
A current senior law-enforcement official told me that a mandate from Biden and Congress to crack down on domestic extremist violence is welcome. But the official, who asked not to be named, cautioned that federal and state law-enforcement officials have no legal authority—and little desire—to be drawn into targeting specific ideologies or types of speech. “Our concern is the violence. Our concern is the conduct. Remember, hate speech is protected speech,” the official said. “You don’t want law-enforcement overreach. We’ve learned the lesson.” The official added that elected leaders could play a central role in combatting domestic extremism: “A lot of this depends on our political leadership, if there’s an effort to bring down some of the temperature.”<br /><br />
Trump showed how easy it is to exploit First Amendment protections and the power of social media in order to mount politically effective disinformation campaigns. The question is what lesson American political leaders will take away from the Trump era. One path involves a prolonged, enormously complex, and politically sensitive effort to enact reforms that protect free speech but set guardrails for the digital age. The other involves the continued embrace of trafficking in disinformation and conspiracy theories for short-term political gain. The danger of the latter could not be clearer. ###<br /><br />
[David Rohde is an executive editor of the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/">digital version</a> of the magazine. He is a former reporter for Reuters, the <i>New York Times</i>, and the <i>Christian Science Monitor</i>. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, in 1996, for stories that helped expose the Srebrenica massacre during the war in Bosnia, and, in 2009, he shared a Pulitzer Prize with a team of <i>Times</i> reporters for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is the author of, most recently, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1324003545/?ots=1&slotNum=0&imprToken=f0bba408-e97d-71e7-590&tag=thneyo0f-20"><i>In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America’s ‘Deep State’</i></a> (2020). See his other books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001HMTK42?_encoding=UTF8&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=date-desc-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader">here</a>. Rohde attended Bates College (ME) before transferring to Brown University (RI), where he received a BA (history).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New Yorker/Condé Nast Digital<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-33848061863217963242021-01-27T09:37:00.000-06:002021-01-27T09:37:54.487-06:00Roll Over, T. Boone Pickens — Meet The Biggest Wheeler-Dealer In The US Petroleum Industry: Vicki Hollub... (An Oilwoman)<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Probably, the most famous corporate raider in US financial history was T. Boone Pickens and his M&A (Management & Acquisitions) record was mixed — some acquisitions succeeded and others failed. Today's essay recounts the initial events in the 21<sup>st</sup> century for a distaff version of T. Boone Pickens — Vicky Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum Corporation that ended in failure. Is Vicky Hollub going to fade into obscurity or will she come back with a successful acquisition? If this is a (fair & balanced) question about the US fossil fuel (petroleum) industry, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x Texas Monthly]<br />
The Oilwoman — How The Most Hyped US Oil Merger In A Decade Went Bust<br />
By Mimi Swartz<br /><br />
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<span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">Walker </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Wirth </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">woman</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">worked</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">world</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">year</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9GyK7tORHUrWk6-ZVB_Z-4AZHJ9VfWw8jQtpKCV-_C8iLtYVR_d8BxW9xv0Xx4dFeELtnp_WMKrkdakBRYFL9GOAKEroz37UMnuJ6SJIlSJHNTQD9ZGmvrz5lCUE8IfsEyhxl_Q/s2048/Occidental+Petroleum_CEO_Vicki+Hollub.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1137" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9GyK7tORHUrWk6-ZVB_Z-4AZHJ9VfWw8jQtpKCV-_C8iLtYVR_d8BxW9xv0Xx4dFeELtnp_WMKrkdakBRYFL9GOAKEroz37UMnuJ6SJIlSJHNTQD9ZGmvrz5lCUE8IfsEyhxl_Q/s600/Occidental+Petroleum_CEO_Vicki+Hollub.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>It was the kind of clear, crisp spring day that made people happy they lived in Houston—azaleas in bloom, the landscape aswirl in pink and coral and scarlet. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicki_Hollub">Vicki Hollub</a>, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, strode triumphantly into a <a href="https://www.woodlandsresort.com/meet/meetings/conference-services/">Woodlands conference center</a> for a meeting of her newly expanded corporation last March. Not quite five and a half feet tall, dressed in one of her innocuous knit suits, she hardly looked the part of the oil and gas tycoon. But less than a year earlier she had out-oilmanned just about every oilman there was.<br /><br />
Hollub had engineered a $38 billion takeover of Anadarko Petroleum, which had made Oxy, as Occidental is commonly known, the dominant player in Texas’s <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/boomtown/">Permian Basin</a>, itself the dominant region in the booming domestic oil market of 2019. Hollub, who happened to be the first female head of an oil company so large, believed she had consummated the deal of the century, a “transformative” one, in the parlance of the day—a deal that would catapult Occidental, a second-tier oil company, into the first rank: gaining on Exxon, breathing down the necks of giants like Chevron, Shell, and BP in an energy-independent “Saudi America.”<br /><br />
For her <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nerve#3"><i>cojones</i></a>, Hollub was dubbed “Big Oil’s Big Dealmaker” by <i>Bloomberg Businessweek</i>. The Motley Fool investing website <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/08/30/is-occidental-sinking-far-below-deepwater.aspx">described her move</a> as “attempting to pull off one of the greatest 21<sup>st</sup>-century acquisitions in upstream oil and gas.” CNN Business <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/10/business/vicki-hollub-occidental-risk-takers">announced</a>, “She went head-to-head with an oil company five times the size of her own. And won.”<br /><br />
Oxy had come from behind to best the much larger Chevron, with an eleventh-hour cash infusion of $10 billion from none other than Warren Buffett. Critics were baying that Hollub had overpaid; with the addition of Anadarko’s debt, the deal was valued at $58 billion. The specter of layoffs loomed. And now, inside an airless, windowless conference room, the former Anadarko—now Oxy—employees present were understandably restive. The meeting was supposed to be celebratory, but many were curious about how, exactly, the new company would get itself to Hollub’s proposed “next level.” She understood their anxiety. Trust, she believed, was a crucial element of leadership. And caring. A leader has to really care about a company’s employees.<br /><br />
Hollub was a sturdy woman, an engineer by training, “more comfortable in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomex">Nomex</a> coveralls,” according to one colleague, than in designer clothes. She wore her brown hair sheared short. She had a small, winning gap between her teeth. People routinely described her as “down-to-earth.”<br /><br />
She delivered a forward-looking pep talk that day, but during a later presentation, an exec from her investor-relations department motioned her over. Leaning in, he whispered the bad news: Just hours after the opening of that day’s OPEC meeting in Vienna, the Saudis and the Russians were escalating a dispute over production levels and flooding the market. Oil prices were cratering, as was Oxy’s stock price. Hysterical shareholders were jamming the phone lines.<br /><br />
With that, tremors shook the world Hollub had envisioned, tiny cracks spreading through a foundation she had laid with great determination. The following week, the tremors became a quake: the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a Pandemic. “We knew things were looking grave with respect to demand,” Hollub would recall.<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Texas_Intermediate">West Texas Intermediate crude</a> had been selling in the range of $60 a barrel in January. In March the price dropped closer to $30. On April 20, it had collapsed to a <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/oil-should-we-be-worried/">devastating, never-in-a-million-years negative $37.63</a>, due to a trading panic. Oxy stock, worth $47 a share in January, had dropped by March 9 to about $12 and would stay in that cold, dark nether region for months.<br /><br />
“It’s when our world turned,” Hollub told the women-in-energy group <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Petro">Pink Petro</a> last May, in a rare interview.<br /><br />
She followed that statement with a stunned, war-weary smile, one that suggested she could not believe that things could go so wrong so fast. Hollub had followed the oil patch rules—looked on the bright side, <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=betting%20on%20the%20come">bet on the come</a>—and entangled herself in one of the biggest, boldest, no-good, very-bad oil field dramas in decades.<br /><br />
Even worse, she was the star.<br /><br />
“Everybody calls me Vicki,” the 61-year-old Hollub said warmly when we met on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications">Zoom</a> in October. She wore a standard-issue CEO flak jacket—knit, in cerise—but despite her uniform and despite her total compensation, which in 2019 was nearly $16 million in total (though valued by the company as $4.4 million in realizable pay), Hollub still came off as one of the least imperial leaders of the corporate class. She lacked the name-brand accessorizing and pointillist grooming favored by her well-heeled contemporaries. She does not live in a corporate mogul-hood like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Oaks,_Houston">River Oaks</a>, opting instead for Galveston. (She lived for years on Tiki Island, which isn’t even the fanciest part of town.) Although Hollub name-checked the pope and POTUS in conversation, her accent betrays her small-town roots, as does her eager demeanor. There are no stories of Hollub clawing her way to the top. She is often described as “nice,” which is not a term typically applied to CEOs of either gender.<br /><br />
Hollub’s niceness has made friends and associates, however judgmental in private, reluctant to hurt her feelings by speaking on the record. Some went so far as to suggest to me that it was too soon to write critically—or even analytically—about a high-ranking woman in any business, that discussing one woman’s mistake could hurt all women. Hollub is further protected by a vigilant communications department and by the fact that a significant number of departing employees were required to sign stringent nondisclosure or non-disparagement agreements in exchange for severance. (“I cannot answer that question because my answer would not be flattering,” was one former executive’s response to my queries.)<br /><br />
But Hollub’s passionate pursuit of Anadarko is a story worth excavating, one about a woman who has made her way in an exceptionally male-dominated business and one that sheds light on the industry as a whole. Gender aside, its leaders are struggling through not just a cyclical downturn but an existential crisis with respect to the future of energy. (Exxon was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dow-jones-exxon-mobil-pfizer-raytheon-replaced-salesforce-amgen-honeywell/">booted out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average</a> in August, replaced by a software company, Salesforce.) Hollub, like her CEO peers, has had to figure out how to keep her company alive at a time of declining fortunes, climate stress, and public disdain.<br /><br />
Hollub’s is a classically American, pulling-herself-up-by-her-bootstraps story: she was born in Bessemer, Alabama, a largely segregated, blue-collar suburb of Birmingham. Her mother worked in a diner and then proved herself a super saleswoman at the new Sears store. Her father, a self-taught carpenter, built a successful home-and commercial-remodeling business. She was their second child and only daughter. As with so many Southern families, football was more passion than pastime in Hollub’s home, but she wasn’t a Southern belle aspiring to be a cheerleader. Instead, she idolized the legendary University of Alabama [UA] coach <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Bryant">Bear Bryant</a>—she read everything she could about him, analyzed his plays, and memorized his leadership tips like a catechism. “My first memory in life, just about, is listening to Alabama football on the radio . . . and then on television,” she told me. When her dad got tickets from his boss, the family went to see games the Crimson Tide played in Birmingham. Hollub loved shopping for a new crimson dress every year. “Back then, as you know, people dressed up to go to the games.”<br /><br />
As a teenager Hollub mastered the French horn, a notoriously difficult instrument, and played in the marching band at UA, which at least got her onto the field. She graduated in 1981 with a mineral engineering degree and was hooked on the oil business after getting her first look at a rig. She started out in Mississippi, working for California-based Cities Service, which Occidental bought a year later.<br /><br />
“I love the company,” Hollub told me, with a bracing sincerity. At the time of the Cities Service purchase, Oxy was still led by the famous and infamous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer">Armand Hammer</a>, who had taken charge of the modest concern in 1957 and, over the next three decades, turned it into one of the first global exploration juggernauts. Hammer also outdid his Texas counterparts in the living-large department: he collected art, befriended everyone from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin">Vladimir Lenin</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush">George H. W. Bush</a>, was targeted as a possible Russian spy by FBI director <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover">J. Edgar Hoover</a>, and charmed a succession of wives and lovers.<br /><br />
His handpicked successor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_R._Irani">Ray Irani</a>, followed Hammer’s lavish lead. Born in Lebanon and trained as a chemist—a PhD, he liked being called “Dr. Irani”—he worked at Oxy for more than twenty years; he became CEO in 1990, several months before Hammer’s death. Fluent in Arabic and enamored of the Middle East, Irani seemed to adopt Saudi royalty as role models, sending the company plane to pick up board members for meetings in exotic locales, building his own impressive art collection, and installing fourteen bathrooms in his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bel_Air,_Los_Angeles">Bel Air</a> mansion.<br /><br />
Despite the excesses, Occidental thrived. Irani “was blessed to have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Chazen">Stephen Chazen</a> as his CFO,” said <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Djerejian">Edward Djerejian</a>, a former US ambassador to Syria and Israel who served on the Oxy board for nineteen years. “Steve is one of the best financial minds in the energy business.” Wry, slightly awkward, and self-deprecating in the way of people who know just how smart they are, Chazen, who became CEO in 2011, was the anti-Irani. He was unflappable, maybe because during the Vietnam War he’d worked with mine-sniffing dogs to find and disarm booby traps.<br /><br />
Oil companies had spent decades prospecting across the globe, but by the end of the century, the trend was to pull back, shed riskier ventures, and play to Wall Street’s passion for steady returns. Caution—a word not previously associated with the oil business—became the rule, and Chazen modeled this new breed, who had little use for the <a href="https://www.energyfunders.com/wildcatting/">wildcatter’s high</a>, the volatility that could pay off in spades or land you in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_11,_Title_11,_United_States_Code">Chapter 11</a>. He dumped dicier Hammer and Irani positions in the Middle East, sold off extraneous businesses (horse breeding, meat processing), and turned his back on exploration. It was, he believed, too risky, a sentiment that kept the company robust through oil’s ups and downs. The Oxy dividend was as dependable as the sunrise, making the company a Wall Street darling.<br /><br />
Hollub rose in Chazen’s shadow. For a few decades, she moved around the world, to countries including Russia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, where she managed operations in the Amazonian jungle. As her duties expanded from technical to managerial, she remained the good soldier, packing up and saluting with every new order. Often the only woman on-site, Hollub was a capable, approachable manager—she learned the names of almost everyone who worked for her and gave at least the appearance of being open to input. Much has been made of her ability to talk football with her coworkers.<br /><br />
Unsurprisingly, Hollub’s personal life remained secondary. An early marriage was followed by an early divorce. She never had children, and she didn’t remarry until 2001, to an independent oilman, <a href="https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/legacy/obituary.aspx?n=bruce-patrick-vige&pid=180144840&fhid=20668">Glenn Vige</a>. The two topics that seem to animate her most are football and the nuts and bolts of her profession. Seeming relieved to finally go off script during our Zoom interview, Hollub lit up as she gave me a mini course on fracking, in which “you’ve been able to create artificial fractures that connect with a natural frack system, and so you’ve created a really highly conductive route from the reservoir rock to the wellbore through the natural fractures into the induced fractures. Now, so you drain all of that. And then, when all of that’s drained, what you’re doing is you’re pulling from the reservoir. . . .”<br /><br />
Listening to her, it was tempting to ignore the events of the past year and succumb to the idea that technology can tame oil’s volatility, that <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Steady%20Eddie">Steady Eddies</a> like herself have replaced the much beloved larger-than-life characters of yore. That the oilman’s legendary optimism can still prevail in a far more complex world.<br /><br />
No one had a deeper faith in those assumptions than Vicki Hollub.<br /><br />
The 75,000-square-mile swath of West Texas and New Mexico known as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_%28North_America%29">Permian Basin</a> ranks as the United States’ largest oil-producing region, its output supercharged by the <a href="https://www.texasmonthly.com/tag/fracking/">fracking boom</a> of the 2010s. In April 2019, it generated 4.1 million barrels a day, which made it the largest producing area in the world at the time, surpassing Saudi Arabia’s vast <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghawar_Field">Ghawar field</a>. If you are in the oil business, this arid, sparsely populated swath of Texas is the place to be. The future may lie in greener sources of energy—including the wind and solar farms that are slowly rising in and around the Permian—but leaders of the biggest oil companies maintain that the world will depend on fossil fuels for at least three more decades [30 years and declining]. So the calculus is pretty simple: get into the most productive spot as fast as you can.<br /><br />
It was Chazen who as CFO in 2000 presciently steered Oxy in that direction: he spent $3.6 billion to buy what was then the largest oil producer in Texas, <a href="https://www.ogj.com/general-interest/companies/article/17215077/occidental-to-buy-altura-energy-for-36-billion">Altura [Energy]</a>. The move did not inspire confidence. Analysts claimed that Altura’s wells in the Permian were played out, that Oxy had taken on too much debt in order to invest in a region that was finished.<br /><br />
A decade later, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing">fracking</a> took off in the Permian, and Occidental was suddenly the holder of the most leases in the most productive area of the country. US crude prices surged to “We’re all going to Disneyland!” prices of $147 a barrel in 2008 and, with the exception of one dip later that year, continued to rise. It was assumed that fracking, which could get more oil out of the ground at a lower cost, meant bigger profits. Suddenly, everyone wanted in. Wall Street investors lined up with fistfuls of cash to back new independents, while the majors, late to the game, rushed to buy up whatever small companies they could.<br /><br />
At the time, Hollub, like Oxy’s leases, was perfectly positioned. She was one of the few female executives in the company and, for that matter, in the business. Under Chazen’s direction, she worked on the company’s Permian expansion starting in 2007, and from 2009 until 2011, while based in Bakersfield, California, she was manager of operations for the region. No one at Oxy knew the place better.<br /><br />
Hollub also benefited from a well-publicized power struggle between Ray Irani and his board. Occidental’s market capitalization rose from $5.5 billion to $80 billion during his tenure, and Irani believed that his compensation should rise accordingly. He made $76 million in fiscal year 2010 alone, more than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Tillerson">Rex Tillerson</a>, the CEO of much-larger Exxon. Outraged, two major pension fund stockholders pushed for his ouster, and in 2011 the Oxy board finally had to urge Irani to resign. His severance was $38 million. He remains a poster child for excessive CEO pay.<br /><br />
Enter Chazen, who doubled the company’s profits in his first year as CEO and in 2014 moved Oxy’s headquarters from Los Angeles to Houston, the capital of the U.S. energy business. By then oil prices were tanking. Demand had fallen globally, and Saudi Arabia was flooding the market, trying to drive prices so far down that it would be unprofitable to produce in the United States. But Oxy remained stable under Chazen’s cautious leadership, to the delight of Wall Street and shareholders. CEOs, Chazen liked to say, should be prepared for the volatility that was inherent in the oil business. “There’s a whole bunch of risks you can take in the oil business, . . . but you can’t take every risk,” <a href="https://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/1676/">he told an audience</a> at Rice University during that very bad year.<br /><br />
He had transformed a loopy independent into a modern corporation of near-mythic stability. In two decades the value of the Oxy dividend had increased more than 2,000 percent, and it went up every year. Equally important, the company was positioned for the next era, not just technologically but culturally. In an unusual move for an oil exec, Chazen had opened Oxy to more people of color and more women. The head-down, hardworking Hollub rose higher than any of them: in 2012 she became executive vice president of operations, overseeing projects across the globe, and in December of 2015 she won the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_operating_officer">COO</a> job.<br /><br />
Chazen’s days as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_executive_officer">CEO</a> were numbered: after the battle royale with Irani, the board imposed a mandatory retirement age of 68. As Chazen, then 67, neared the end of his tenure, he and Djerejian, who’d replaced Irani as board chairman, decided it was time for a woman to run the show. Hollub’s moment had arrived. She was, after all, a forty-year company . . . woman. “Vicki was not only a rising star but a star with a very modest lifestyle,” Djerejian said. “She was humble.”<br /><br />
No one seemed bothered that unlike most modern-day CEOs, Hollub was largely unfamiliar with the financial world. Chazen would stay on for a year as her guide. Anyway, Hollub was smart. She would rely on experts. She would never do anything crazy.<br /><br />
There wasn’t a lot of fanfare accompanying Hollub’s appointment to the CEO job in 2016.<i> Arabian Business Magazine</i> <a href="https://www.arabianbusiness.com/the-most-influential-woman-in-oil-gas-industry-occidental-s-vicki-hollub-620137.html">called her</a> “the most influential woman in the oil and gas industry,” but the energy sector loves “colorful” characters, and Hollub was not that. An editor at the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> told me that the paper had almost canceled an in-depth profile of Hollub after she became CEO “because she was so boring.” There was also a question of whether she was really in charge, given Chazen’s continued presence.<br /><br />
Yet once Hollub stepped into the C-suite, the company seemed to awaken from a slumber. There was talk of big plans, transformative plans—a breath of fresh air, after Chazen’s restraint. Hollub gave the company a greener gloss by expanding work on carbon capture, a new process that takes CO<sub>2</sub> out of the air so that it can be used for fracking—and can be purchased by airlines and other companies to offset their carbon emissions. Meetings were purposeful and tight; Hollub was not going to be anyone’s warm and fuzzy mentor, male or female. As CEO, Hollub seemed different from her predecessor—and her previous self. She was more certain, more direct. More like a <i>guy</i>. Said one executive of the hearty confidence Hollub displayed on the listening tour she took when she became CEO: “I thought, ‘Damn, she knows what she wants. She’s got the biggest <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=grow%20some%20balls">set of balls</a> in the company.’ ”<br /><br />
Hollub would need them. She took charge during a new period of volatility: Wall Street investors—many of whom wouldn’t know a drill pipe from a pipe organ—had finally figured out that fracking math didn’t compute. It was expensive and therefore dependent on high oil prices—the threshold was different for different companies, but most needed the price to stay above $50 or so a barrel, ideally above $60. Although fracking could revitalize old wells and elicit astounding results from new ones, a swift drop-off in production was often seen after just a few months. Then, the hapless owner had to borrow more to drill new wells to pay back debt still owed on the initial investment. Meanwhile, the laws of supply and demand kicked in: at any given level of oil consumption, more production meant lower prices and, in turn, lower profits. Investors pulled back; smaller companies washed out, while bigger companies, better equipped to weather inevitable downturns, moved to solidify their positions, often by gobbling up smaller businesses. No one wanted to give up on the Permian—the oil there could be produced more cheaply than in most other fracking locations because of the composition of the rocks, the virtual absence of exploration costs, and technological advances that fall under the rubric of EOR, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery">enhanced oil recovery</a>. But now the risks were higher and the outcome less assured.<br /><br />
Amid the chaos, Hollub held steady. Unlike other oil companies, Oxy endured the 2016 slump without the typical layoffs—she told <i>Fortune</i> they were “damaging” and “demotivating”—and without breaking with oil company dogma: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy">renewables</a> were coming on, but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel">fossil fuels</a> would continue to power the world and be spun into roofing shingles and workout tights. For Hollub, the Permian was a long-term insurance policy.<br /><br />
There is disagreement both inside and outside the company as to whether Occidental was a serious takeover target at that time. Among its attractions were low debt, good management, and those positions in the Permian, where the majors were still prospecting like ravenous locusts. Arguably, Occidental found itself in an eat-or-be-eaten situation, and Hollub’s decision was to brandish her knife and fork.<br /><br />
Buying another company could make Occidental so big that it would be invulnerable to outside attack, while also making it a stronger player in the energy world. And so Hollub set her sights on the Woodlands-based <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anadarko_Petroleum">Anadarko</a>. On paper, merging with Anadarko made sense: with the addition of its assets in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, Occidental could become the largest operator in the Permian and the third-largest US oil company.<br /><br />
By the early 2000s Anadarko had become one of the world’s biggest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies, active not just in the US but in Algeria, Canada, Qatar, and Venezuela. Its swashbuckling executives saw themselves as carriers of the wildcatter torch. You might say that some of them were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_Too_movement">pre–#MeToo white guy</a> world-beaters who loved their gold Rolexes and could be a whole lot of fun if you weren’t too fussy about gender issues. (In 2017 sexual harassment problems surfaced in the company’s Denver office, where, according to complaints from former employees, a supervisor “joked” to women that the best way to get promoted was to provide oral sex. Subsequently, the obligatory sexual harassment classes were instituted, and nondisclosure agreements were signed.) The looming, mirrored-glass corporate headquarters in the Woodlands was a two-towered Shangri-la, with two sprawling gyms, one reserved just for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrossFit">Crossfit</a> and another containing an indoor basketball court. There was a massive sculpture of majestic stags out front.<br /><br />
A potential buyer might have sensed a lot of fat on the bone and some sleepiness around operations. Anadarko “had tremendous properties but did not maximize value for shareholders,” said <a href="https://uh.edu/uh-energy/about-uh-energy/energy-fellows/blog-posts/ed-hirs/">Ed Hirs</a>, an energy fellow at the University of Houston. Hollub was certain that combining Anadarko’s positions with Oxy’s operating expertise was the road to glory.<br /><br />
She first contacted Anadarko CEO R. A. (Al) Walker informally about a potential merger in July 2017. By then she had studied the synergies that would make Oxy and Anadarko a good pair; she’d also been inducted into the invitation-only All-American Wildcatters Association, an exclusive club that counted among its members <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Boone_Pickens">T. Boone Pickens</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt">Bunker</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herbert_Hunt">Herbert</a> Hunt, fracking pioneer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mitchell">George Mitchell</a>, and <a href="https://www.fluor.com/about-fluor/leadership/james-t-hackett">former Anadarko CEO James Hackett</a>, who had personally backed her nomination.<br /><br />
None of this impressed Walker, who had not started out as an oilman. He was a banker—a former energy investment banker for the Swiss multinational <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBS">UBS</a>—which, in the get-your-hands-dirty world of oil and gas operators, was not necessarily a winning credential. The handsome, wavy-haired, golf-tanned North Carolinian struck some as the consummate Southern gentleman, reserved and a stickler for propriety. Others saw him as a cold fish, interested only in money. That he never made Houston home, flying back and forth to his family in San Diego on weekends, suggested he wasn’t in it for the long haul.<br /><br />
Walker had previously served as CFO and COO of the company, then took charge in 2012, when Hackett stepped down as CEO to attend Harvard Divinity School. Like Hollub, Walker understood the narrowing choices for oil and gas companies that were not named BP, Chevron, Exxon, or Shell. He tried the expansion route with a 2015 attempted takeover of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Corporation">Apache Oil</a>, but when that effort failed, he became more interested in finding a buyer for his company.<br /><br />
Still, Walker didn’t want to sell to just anyone. Up in the thin-aired stratosphere of top-tier CEOs, the corporate head who sold to a larger company was a hero, while the one who sold to a smaller firm was a jackass. Also, certain observers believed, Walker didn’t want to sell his company to a woman. And as time went on, he really didn’t want to sell it to Vicki Hollub.<br /><br />
It’s hard to determine just how much of a role gender dynamics would play in the ensuing drama. Hollub is the wrong person to ask: she insists that in her career at Occidental, she never felt discriminated against. “Oxy, in my view, gave people the opportunity to do whatever they wanted to do. . . . If you were up to the challenge and you wanted a challenge, it was there,” she told me. “And there were, to me, no biases about who got what. If you were willing to do it, you could go do it.” Still, I wondered to what extent her industrious, sports-stat-quoting, “boring” personality had served as a kind of camouflage in the testosterone-heavy world of oil and gas. When she joined the company, there was one other female engineer along with a handful of female geologists, Hollub told me. Currently, one of every five employees in the oil and gas industry is female, and only 2 percent of its executives are women, versus 25 percent at other Fortune 500 companies. Anadarko had six female executives, while Occidental did not provide the requested numbers.<br /><br />
More important, Hollub didn’t appear to have the background or the disposition for a searing corporate battle. For a woman who had spent her life climbing the corporate ladder, she could be strikingly naive; she seemed to take people at face value instead of questioning their motives. She was also an engineer by training and attitude: once she made a decision, it was hard to change her mind. And she was hobbled by her limited financial knowledge. After Chazen left Occidental, Hollub relied on an in-house financial team that many saw as second-rate, entrusting the Anadarko acquisition bid to them rather than using experienced dealmakers from outside investment firms. This, one person told me, “is like having your mother as your wedding planner.”<br /><br />
Walker, in contrast, was a deal guy, far more attuned to the vicissitudes and subtleties of finance than, say, a new fracking method. Because takeover battles occur in the boardroom and not the oil field, he held a substantial advantage.<br /><br />
In August 2017, a few weeks after her initial approach, Hollub met with Walker to press her case. According to one source close to the negotiations, Walker didn’t take her seriously. He did not see the “synergies” that she saw. He all but begged Hollub not to make a formal offer that he would have to present to his board. But in the weeks that followed the August meeting, she did just that, assembling a formal offer to buy Anadarko in an all-stock transaction for $61 a share, a generous 23 percent premium over Anadarko’s then share price of $49.88.<br /><br />
A reluctant Walker had just one concern before taking the offer to the board: the proposed deal would dilute the value of Oxy stock and would require approval from Hollub’s board and shareholders. He was skeptical. (Or, as one person involved in the transaction said, “Your shareholders are gonna throw up all over this.”)<br /><br />
Walker sensed amateurism and responded accordingly. He told Hollub that he just didn’t believe that the companies’ “asset profiles and strategies” were compatible, according to filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hollub, after receiving her board’s support, sweetened the pot, offering an unspecified proportion of the purchase price in cash. Maybe, she suggested, it was time to sign some nondisclosure agreements and get to know each other better.<br /><br />
With little enthusiasm, Walker took the proposal to his board and to a flotilla of expensive, paid-by-the-hour advisers, and the unanimous answer, promptly delivered to Hollub, was thanks, but no thanks. Anadarko was not convinced that she had the cash on hand or that she could deliver on her promised near-term business plan. What if oil prices dropped below $40 a barrel? Could Oxy afford to keep drilling? And wouldn’t the Oxy stock that Hollub was offering drop in value? So no.<br /><br />
The world of oil company executives is small and gossipy, and it wasn’t long before Walker heard that Hollub was claiming she could operate Anadarko’s wells more efficiently than he had. True or not, this was not the kind of criticism a proud CEO wants to hear. When Hollub asked for another get-together, Walker declined. Undeterred, Hollub raised her offer in January to $76 a share. She also asked to meet with Anadarko’s executive team and its board, which trudged into another session to consider Hollub’s latest proposal—and turned Oxy down again.<br /><br />
A year went by, and here one might picture Walker hiding behind potted plants whenever he attended the same industry functions as Hollub. A lot of CEOs would have given up at this point. But Hollub had a Zen master’s ability to brush off insults, at least when she was pursuing a goal. She pressed on.<br /><br />
Then, in February 2019, someone new arrived on the scene: the board chairman and CEO of Chevron, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wirth">Michael K. Wirth</a>. Anadarko had caught his eye too. Chevron was five times larger than Oxy, on track to overtake Exxon as the biggest US producer in 2020. Wirth was a tall, thin, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preternatural">preternaturally</a> <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=copacetic">copacetic</a> leader with steel-blue eyes and an excellent reputation. He was also a man.<br /><br />
Walker, who had been so diffident toward Hollub, was suddenly electrified. A sale to Chevron would be a huge win. Everyone from a janitor to the largest stockholder would profit from its might. And Walker wouldn’t look too bad either. Almost immediately, there was talk of signing nondisclosure agreements and sharing each other’s books. On Valentine’s Day, the two captains of industry met to discuss their mutual affection. Chevron’s offer was lower than Oxy’s—$64 a share, 25 percent in cash, the rest in stock—but this was Chevron.<br /><br />
In late March, Hollub, who had gone on believing, according to one source, that Walker was still pondering her overtures, cornered him at an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Petroleum_Institute">American Petroleum Institute</a> conference in Austin. Once again, she started talking marriage, presumably unaware that Walker had become deeply involved with Chevron. He did not feel obliged to tell her that he was, well, dating someone else. The talks between Anadarko and Chevron continued quietly; one negotiating point concerned a termination fee—what Anadarko would have to pay Chevron if another suitor showed up with a better deal after preliminary papers had been signed. The amount? A piddling $1 billion.<br /><br />
Around that very time, Hollub presented yet another offer for Anadarko, one that was not significantly different from the $76 a share she had offered fourteen months earlier, with the majority payment still essentially in stock. One can only imagine Walker letting out a sigh that echoed across the Permian. At an event, an eavesdropper heard Walker and Wirth sniggering about Hollub like middle schoolers.<br /><br />
Nonetheless, with Oxy’s return as a serious bidder, Walker was obligated to alert Chevron to the existence of competition. The Chevron team was not happy—<i>Oxy? You’ve got to be kidding!</i>—and threatened to withdraw its proposal.<br /><br />
From Anadarko’s perspective, Hollub was gumming up the works. She ran further afoul of Walker when she came back with a deal that proposed reducing the purchase price to $72 a share, in exchange for other concessions. Walker was miffed, according to a source close to the negotiations. Hollub eventually went back to $76 and bumped up the percentage of cash.<br /><br />
Walker was on a tightrope, caught between one company that he and his board did not want to merge with offering more money to their shareholders, and one that everyone was hot to trot with offering less. For the next few weeks, the Oxy and Anadarko teams met to hash out their differences. Hollub didn’t know she was competing with Wirth; what she did know was that in the end she was unable to reach Walker by phone. The Oxy team assumed he was holding out for more money.<br /><br />
Finally, in April, the Anadarko board unanimously decided in favor of Chevron because, in the minds of its members, Chevron’s was a safer deal than Oxy’s. Wirth agreed to shell out $33 billion, his offer still firm at $65 a share. Just before the deal was signed, the Anadarko executives boosted their own compensation; Walker’s golden parachute was estimated to be at least $43 million. The two companies executed the merger agreement on the night following the board meeting, and the press release went out the next morning. At one point in our interview, I asked Hollub whether she believed Walker had treated her with respect. She thought it over. “I think Al Walker and I had a good relationship and had had a lot of communication leading up to the week before they had a deal with Chevron,” she said. Then she thought some more and added, “I would say that they were respectful up to the time when I sort of lost communication with them, about a week before the deal was announced.”<br /><br />
Hollub was on Interstate 45, driving into work in her Jeep, when she found out. “It was shocking to hear on the radio,” she told me. She almost drove off the road.<br /><br />
Every deal has its point of no return. Many bidders would have folded their tents with the announcement of the Chevron/Anadarko merger, consoling themselves with the idea that there would be other prospects. But for Hollub, who believed with a near-religious fervor in the opportunities that a combined Oxy and Anadarko might exploit in the Permian, surrender was not an option.<br /><br />
There are those who claim, sympathetically, that she was in over her head. Others assert that she got talked into a bad decision by her deal guys and her enablers, the outside bankers and lawyers brought in as the negotiations progressed, who would profit regardless of the outcome. There is also the theory that Hollub became <i>infatuated with the deal</i> [emphasis suplied], a fever responsible for myriad corporate disasters. (Jerry Levin’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/11/business/media/11merger.html">2000 sale of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Warner_Cable">Time-Warner</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL">AOL</a></a> is probably the most famous in modern times.) Deal fever tends to come on when the pressures and pleasures of pulling off something big—the exhausting but passionate negotiations! A history-making win!—overwhelm common sense. As T. Boone Pickens once put it, “When you want to make a deal real bad, you will make a really bad deal.”<br /><br />
It’s also possible that Hollub was royally pissed off.<br /><br />
She fired her first salvo on April 24, when her team finally went public with her tortured, two-year courtship, beginning what <i>Forbes</i> called “the bidding war of the summer.” Hollub hit the business cable shows to talk up the benefits of the merger and, in a rather aggrieved press release, announced a new offer for Anadarko: a 50–50 cash/stock transaction, up from the previous offer of 40–60, at $76 a share. The Anadarko board did not believe she could win shareholder approval for the deal fast enough. They could lose Chevron, which was growing impatient, while Oxy dithered. They sent Hollub packing again, as Oxy’s stock, which had been slipping from the eighties since October 2018, teetered into the sixties, a sign of market displeasure.<br /><br />
Hollub and her team concluded that Walker’s demurrals were all about cash—if she had enough of it, she could close the deal fast, without a shareholder vote to release any stock. Maybe not the best way to run a company, but the clock was ticking. Thus began a fevered search for coin.<br /><br />
By then <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_America">Bank of America</a> was advising Occidental, and the bank’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, suggested connecting Hollub with a major bank shareholder: the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett">Oracle of Omaha</a>, Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of the holding company Berkshire Hathaway. He always needed places to invest his mountains of cash, and he was one of the country’s biggest investors in energy. Plus, Buffett’s endorsement would burnish the deal to a high gloss.<br /><br />
Although Buffett usually avoided hostile takeovers, when Hollub called, he seemed far more enthused to hear from her than Al Walker had ever been, a reaction that might have unnerved someone better schooled in mergers and acquisitions (or more familiar with Buffett’s shrewdness). “Sure—when can you be here?” he asked her on a Friday. Her reply: Sunday morning at ten.<br /><br />
What happened next was initially portrayed in the business media as a feat of corporate derring-do. That same Friday, Hollub and senior VP Oscar Brown jetted to Paris for a dinner meeting with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Pouyann%C3%A9">Patrick Pouyanne</a>, CEO of the French oil giant <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_SE">Total</a>. The idea was to presell Anadarko’s African assets to Pouyanne for $8.8 billion—another unconventional way of raising cash. With little risk to Total, Pouyanne gave them a tentative yes—contingent on the Oxy/Anadarko deal going through, of course. Hollub and Brown flew back to Houston that same night.<br /><br />
Then it was on to Omaha the next day, April 28. According to Hollub, the white-haired, wizened Buffett greeted them at the door to his headquarters, a nondescript office building. He was casually dressed in a sweater. Brown and Hollub wore business suits. The meeting also included Buffett’s CFO, and the whole thing lasted about an hour, an amount of time that perhaps should’ve set off alarm bells but that Hollub took as proof of Buffett’s genius. “I doubt there’s any topic that anybody could go in and talk to him about that he doesn’t already know just about everything,” she told me. Hollub and Brown got back on the plane with a commitment of $10 billion in cash; in exchange, Oxy would grant Berkshire preferred stock that would pay an 8 percent dividend—common shareholders received at most 5.3 percent. Hollub had made Buffett a 10 percent owner of Occidental overnight. Soon enough, the media caught on. <i>Forbes</i> would label Buffett’s rate “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2019/04/30/warren-buffett-backs-oxys-vicki-hollub-in-57-billion-bid-for-anadarko-petroleum/?sh=216bd1027a47">near-usurious</a>.”<br /><br />
Rounding out the offer with a $21.8 billion <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_loan">bridge loan</a> from Bank of America and Citigroup, Hollub was ready to bid $38 billion (effectively $58 billion, since Oxy would be taking on Anadarko’s existing debts) to Chevron’s $33 billion. Hollub, according to one person close to Occidental’s final push, forced Walker’s hand: “It became an offer they couldn’t refuse because it was mostly cash.”<br /><br />
Having publicly announced the presale to Total and declared that Oxy was ready to close the deal, Hollub now held a very big, very public gun to Walker’s head: he would have to explain to his shareholders why Chevron’s offer of $65 a share was better than Oxy’s cash-heavy offer of $76.<br /><br />
After an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to get Wirth to raise his price, Walker had no choice but to take the money and run. On May 9, 2019, Anadarko agreed to become a part of Occidental Petroleum. After two years of passionate pursuit, Hollub had won. But so had Walker and his team, since more than a hundred million dollars would be walking out the door with Anadarko senior management. Nor could Wirth be considered the loser: his consolation prize was the $1 billion termination fee—and Oxy was now on the hook for it.<br /><br />
If Hollub expected widespread <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/kudos"><i>kudos</i></a> for pulling off the largest US oil and gas merger since Exxon acquired <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XTO_Energy">XTO</a> for $41 billion in 2009, she would soon be disappointed. Wirth declared in his walkaway statement that “winning in any environment doesn’t mean winning at any cost.” Team Oxy read his words as sour grapes, but the market agreed with him. At the company’s annual meeting in May, major mutual fund adviser T. Rowe Price labeled the deal “extraordinarily expensive” and threatened to vote against the board slate. David Katz, the president of Matrix Asset Advisors, who was not among the largest Oxy investors but was one of the frankest, feared a loss to his institutional clients, which he had invested in Oxy (but no longer does). “When Chevron walked away, that should have been a real clear sign that you are paying too much,” he said, echoing a near-universal sentiment. In several letters to the Oxy board, Matrix implored them to stop the deal: oil prices could fall, and the losses to investors could be devastating; even if prices remained stable, the company that had historically been so fiscally sound would be hobbled with debt for years to come. Hollub would not be moved. Even a threat by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moody%27s_Investors_Service">Moody’s</a> to downgrade Oxy’s credit rating had no effect. Added Katz, “[Hollub’s] attitude was ‘[Anadarko] was my company, Chevron had no right to buy it, and I’m going to do everything to get this done.’ ”<br /><br />
At the Oxy shareholder meeting in May, Hollub declared that her critics had confused Occidental’s determination with desperation. “We approached this deal from a position of strength,” she said. Oxy would cover Buffett’s premium by becoming the largest producer in the Permian. She had tons of Anadarko’s foreign assets to sell. No worries!<br /><br />
The market was not impressed. Occidental stock slid that May to a nearly ten-year low of about $50 a share. Back in September of 2018 it had been worth around $82. Now that seemed like a long time ago.<br /><br />
Hollub’s problems were just beginning. As early as May 2, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Icahn">Carl Icahn</a> had begun buying up Oxy stock, amassing shares worth around $1.6 billion. The grizzled businessman, then 83, who usually had “corporate raider” affixed to his name, had caused his share of eye rolling over the years. Even so, his purchases were a sign that all was not well at Occidental. The buzzard was circling.<br /><br />
Whether he really thought the Anadarko deal was catastrophic, or just sensed weakness and therefore an opportunity to disrupt and profit, Icahn sliced and diced Hollub, publicly expressing what others were saying privately. “She just rushed out in a panic,” he told CNBC of Hollub’s eleventh-hour pilgrimage to Omaha. He was furious about the deal and the lack of a shareholder vote and began lobbying for changes in Occidental’s governance. He filed a lawsuit in late May. By overpaying for Anadarko, he alleged, Hollub and her board had put the company at risk. It was as though she believed that oil prices would never fall. He noted that Oxy’s stock price had declined 33 percent since Hollub took over, while she received $40 million in compensation. The company’s entire management team, in Icahn’s view, was nothing but a $100 million band of parasites. He demanded that board chairman <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gene-batchelder-4b1325135/">Eugene Batchelder</a> and several other board members be replaced with people of his choosing.<br /><br />
Hollub fired back, maligning Icahn’s board choices and Icahn himself. And so it went, throughout the summer and fall. Instead of enjoying victory, she was still at war. Oil prices hit a high of $61 in December 2019 but then started slipping. To begin servicing the company’s debt, she called for voluntary resignations; in January 2020 the layoffs she had avoided in the past became mandatory. At the same time, Hollub was jetting across the world, trying to unload Anadarko’s non-Permian assets in order to begin paying down Oxy’s debts. (The Algerian government refused to approve the sale of Anadarko’s wells to the French at Total, which came as no surprise to those familiar with the history of bitter conflict between the two countries.)<br /><br />
In March 2020, the stream of bad news became a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsunami">tsunami</a>; as countries all over the world sent their citizens into lockdown and demand for gasoline plummeted, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude sank to $20 a barrel. Permian operators who couldn’t cover their costs started shutting in wells.<br /><br />
Oxy stock tumbled further, bad news for everybody except Icahn, who proceeded to scoop up more shares at fire-sale prices. Within a matter of days he owned 9.9 percent of the company. Around the same time, Hollub was obliged to slash the beloved Oxy dividend from 79 cents a share to 11. The board, which until then had remained loyal, began to waffle. Icahn dispatched vitriolic letters to shareholders, while oil prices kept plunging, briefly hitting that horror-movie number of −$37.63 in April.<br /><br />
Hollub maintained her game face: less than five months after acquiring Anadarko, Oxy had already repaid $7 billion in debt, she announced. But by then the business press had already started reporting her demise (“Vicki Hollub’s Occidental Tenure Is Nearing Its End,” <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/gauravsharma/2020/03/16/be-it-via-shareholders-revolt-or-a-chevron-2-for-1-bid-vicki-hollubs-occidental-tenure-is-nearing-its-end/?sh=27accec94fb2">predicted</a> <i>Forbes</i>), while the influential Twitter group of energy short-sellers, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-twitter/troll-no-more-energy-twitter-groups-big-short-on-shale-comes-good-idUSKCN21W0E7">#EFT</a>, gloated. (“Turns out your blue-collar employees don’t like it when you fund your future cash severance payment by cutting their salaries,” noted <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-twitter/troll-no-more-energy-twitter-groups-big-short-on-shale-comes-good-idUSKCN21W0E7">#EFT’s <i>de facto</i> leader</a>, who goes by the tongue-in-cheek handle “Mr. Skilling.”) Hollub had made a few earnest but poorly considered public pronouncements—that her “experience with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mergers_and_acquisitions">M&A</a> was very limited,” that she coped with stress by kayaking on Galveston Bay—and now those were being used against her in the court of public opinion.<br /><br />
Then came the final humiliation. If Chazen were brought back as board chairman, according to sources close to the deal, Icahn would be satisfied, and he claimed that he would not force Hollub’s resignation in that case. (As Icahn told others, she was as good at operations as she was horrible at M&A.) In one version of the story, Hollub resisted, then capitulated. In another, she welcomed him with open arms: “Vicki wanted him to come back,” claimed a Hollub loyalist. Housecleaning began apace, as most of the executives associated with the deal were either fired or assigned to new positions. Board chairman Batchelder was gone in a flash, along with three other board members who were replaced to appease Icahn. In a video speech to employees announcing more job cuts, Hollub looked haggard, barely glancing up from her script.<br /><br />
Amid the wreckage, one question was unavoidable: Was it worth it? Al Walker and other Anadarko executives got out while the getting was good; Walker left with a hundred million dollars, while his executive team walked off with two hundred million more. Bankers and lawyers on both sides also took home a hefty payday for bringing the Oxy/Anadarko shotgun marriage to the altar. (Estimates ranged from $100 million to $170 million in financing fees for the banks alone.) Even Chevron’s jilted Michael Wirth walked away with his $1 billion breakup fee, then turned around and bought Noble Energy, a far smaller and cheaper company with Permian assets as well as leases in a massive gas field in the eastern Mediterranean. And while Occidental has calculated that Hollub’s realizable compensation fell to $4.4 million in 2019, primarily because of the company’s lower stock price, it reported her total compensation as $15.9 million, a figure that independent compensation experts said more accurately represented her pay.<br /><br />
Employees and shareholders of Oxy did not fare as well, as retirement nest eggs and college savings evaporated. “She destroyed tens of billions of dollars of shareholder value,” Matrix’s David Katz said, his disgust still evident almost a year later. “She destroyed more value in oil and gas than any CEO out there.”<br /><br />
Last November, Hollub had to face her shareholders again. Her third-quarter report could qualify as good news only if you considered it good news that Occidental still existed. It had lost $3.8 billion in the third quarter alone, but, as Hollub pointed out, that was smaller than the $8.4 billion loss in the second quarter. She was characteristically sunny, despite the skepticism of analysts on the call: she had paid down $8 billion in debt and hoped to sell $10 billion to $15 billion more in assets over the next year, despite, she said, “2020 possibly being the worst market for asset divestitures in the history of our industry.” Occidental could break even with oil prices as low as in the thirties, she claimed.<br /><br />
Will Vicki Hollub be forgiven her sins? Like all leaders of the fossil-fuel industry, Hollub knows her business faces a slow but certain decline. Speaking at the <a href="https://www.energyintelligenceforum.com/">Energy Intelligence Forum</a> last October, she made headlines by declaring that the planet would reach peak supply before peak demand and that production would never grow as it had in the past. And, she announced, she intended to shift more of Oxy’s emphasis to carbon capture—storing CO<sub>2</sub> and selling carbon offsets to other companies. She was already forming partnerships and setting up shop. Plans were underway to build a storage facility on a hundred-acre site in the Permian, with groundbreaking scheduled for 2022. But carbon capture, like drilling for fossil fuels, is very expensive, and we don’t yet know whether it will prove effective. “That’s going to require capital too,” noted UH’s Ed Hirs. “It really depends on what Uncle Warren’s going to let her do.” By going this route, Hollub, like many of her fellow CEOs, is buying time rather than making the difficult, transformative shift to producing more energy from renewable sources. In the meantime, oil prices at this writing are hovering in the fifties, and if they hold, Hollub could land on her feet. “In spite of vastly overpaying, it could still work out for her. I’ve seen it happen before and I certainly hope it happens again,” Icahn told me.<br /><br />
Forgiveness has long been the wildcatter’s elixir. As one retired oilman dryly noted of Hollub’s on-the-job training, “It’s tough to do big deals when your first big deal is as CEO.” Despite Oxy’s execrable stock price and Moody’s downgrade of Oxy’s debt rating to near-junk status, Hollub was a keynote speaker at a prestigious international oil conference last November, and in the same month she aced a fluffy interview with energy guru <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Yergin">Daniel Yergin</a>. In 2020 she was in position number 50 on <i>Forbes</i>’s list of the World’s Most Powerful Women, just slightly behind her 2019 ranking of 47—maybe because she’s proved that a woman can fail as spectacularly as a man, then move on.<br /><br />
And, going forward, she can still lean on the advice of her childhood spirit guide. “If you never lose, you won’t know how to act,” Bear Bryant once said. “If you lose with humility, you can come back.” ##&35;<br /><br />
[Mimi Swartz, the author, with Sherron Watkins, of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Power-Failure-Inside-Story-Collapse/dp/0385507879/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr="><i>Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron</i></a> (2003), is an executive editor of <i>Texas Monthly</i>. Previously, she was a staff writer at <i>Talk</i>, from April 1999 to April 2001, and a staff writer at <i>The New Yorker</i> from 1997 to 2001. Prior to joining <i>The New Yorker</i>, she worked at <i>Texas Monthly</i> for thirteen years. In 1996 Swartz was a finalist for two National Magazine Awards and won in the public interest category for “Not What the Doctor Ordered.” She was also a National Magazine Award finalist for her November 2005 issue story on tort reform, titled “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” and won the 2006 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest, Magazine Journalism, for the same story. In 2013 she won her second National Magazine Award (again in the category of public interest), for “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives,” a compelling look at the state of women's health care in Texas. Over the years, Swartz’s work has appeared in <i>Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic</i>, and the <i>New York Times</i>’ op-ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Political-Writing-2006/dp/B001G8WHB0"><i>Best American Political Writing 2006</i></a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Best-Amer-Sports-Writing-American/dp/0618751165"><i>Best American Sportswriting 2007</i></a>. She has been a member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Institute_of_Letters">Texas Institute of Letters</a> since 1994 and she received a BA (English) from Hampshire College.]<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-57683959533901055572021-01-26T08:40:00.000-06:002021-01-26T08:40:10.380-06:00Today, A Review Of School Daze After The Capitol Riot Of 2021 <p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>When the blogger encountered today's essay about school children all the way to college students and January 6, 2021. The blogger had a flashback to his three successive US history classes at the <i>Collegium Excellens</i> after the attacks on 9/11/2001. The blogger pushed the content planned for that days' classes to the side. Instead, he said to each class: "Let's talk about the attacks on the World Trade Center in NYC and the Petagon in Washington, DC." And the blogger got out of the way and only pointed to students who raised their hands to speak in order, one at a time. After each of the three classes, students paused on their way out to thank the blogger for giving them an opportunity to discuss the events that arrested everyone's attention. The blogger cannot imagine what it must have been like to be in classrooms for second-graders, middle-schoolers, high-schoolers, or other college classrooms. However, the NY Fishwrap's Amelia Nierenberg gave the blogger the reactions in the nation's classrooms at all levels in the days after January 6, 2021. If this is (fair & balanced) review of US classrooms after January 6, 2021, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
After The Capitol Was Stormed, Teachers Try Explaining History In Real Time<br />
By Amelia Nierenberg<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">turned</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">union</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">used</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">violence</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">weeks</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">white</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZnkiM-91WNFc9OCIVPUIuOF7D4FZU1f6rstM-Uc24-PaHCbKy7WkxpxWa4j5H_ATnMbfrtOf4_jU_z-faMOG22azwSKgKe9FwTE5TmXOcC7qpdMRgNa2rNJudsYzZ8Dt3aSgPfw/s2048/Tracy_Merlin_teaches_2nd_graders_about_capitol_riot.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1366" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZnkiM-91WNFc9OCIVPUIuOF7D4FZU1f6rstM-Uc24-PaHCbKy7WkxpxWa4j5H_ATnMbfrtOf4_jU_z-faMOG22azwSKgKe9FwTE5TmXOcC7qpdMRgNa2rNJudsYzZ8Dt3aSgPfw/s600/Tracy_Merlin_teaches_2nd_graders_about_capitol_riot.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>To explain the tumultuous events of recent days, Tracy Merlin used an analogy her second-grade class would understand: the eternal struggle between dog people and cat people.<br /><br />
“Let’s say that half of the country thinks dogs are the best, and half of the country thinks cats are the best,” said Ms. Merlin, who teaches in Broward County, FL. “But then it just turns out that the dogs won the election.”<br /><br />
“Do you think that people can still like cats and that maybe there can be some conversation?” she asked. “They can still like cats,” ventured Ander, 8, his blue headphones clamped over his ears.<br /><br />
Ms. Merlin scanned the sea of little heads floating in their individual squares. “Do you think it’s OK for the cat people to break into all the pet stores when they’re upset?” she asked.<br /><br />
“No,” Ander said. “Because that’s illegal.”<br /><br />
A riot at the US Capitol. The second impeachment of Donald J. Trump. And, despite it all, a transfer of power. The events of the past few weeks have been mind-boggling for many adults.<br /><br />
How, then, to explain them to students, be they preschoolers meeting on socially distanced circle rugs or college students peering anxiously into seminar videochats?<br /><br />
Across the United States, educators have rerouted their syllabuses toward the news. They have turned to science fiction, Shakespearean tragedy and the fall of Rome in search of parallels to help their students process the often frightening and surely historic events.<br /><br />
“When I was a kid, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster"><i>Challenger</i></a> blew up,” Ms. Merlin, 46, said the day before the inauguration of President Biden. She remembers exactly what she was doing when the space shuttle exploded after liftoff in 1986 — just as her parents remember exactly what they were doing when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.<br /><br />
“I don’t know if this is this generation’s moment,” she continued. “But I know there are things that stick with them from a very young age. If I can let them know that it’s important to know about what is happening around you, and be informed, and have the facts, then I feel like I’ve done my job.”<br /><br />
College students have needed help framing these turbulent weeks, too.<br /><br />
On Wednesday, the morning of the inauguration, 180 students logged on to <a href="https://history.ufl.edu/directory/current-faculty/389-2/">Steven G. Noll</a>’s introductory American history class at the University of Florida. The lecture topic was post-Civil War Reconstruction.<br /><br />
Professor Noll, 68, easily plucked out uncomfortable parallels to the present.<br /><br />
“Words matter,” he said. What were once called “riots” that culminated in the killing of newly freed and enfranchised Black people are now called “massacres,” he said.<br /><br />
He showed a picture of a stone monument in Louisiana, <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/01/24/small-louisiana-town-two-monuments-white-supremacy-stand-public-ground">erected in the memory of three “heroes</a>,” who in 1873, the monument said, “fell in the Colfax riot fighting for white supremacy.” Those rioters killed 150 Black people.<br /><br />
He said that carrying the Confederate flag, as one of the Trump supporters in the mob that took over the Capitol on January 6 was photographed doing, tells us “that they are fighting for white supremacy.”<br /><br />
The night of the Capitol riot, many of Melissa Deokaran’s middle school students in Washington, had lain awake, some hearing Trump supporters shouting in their alleys. At least three have parents in the DC National Guard who went to protect the Capitol.<br /><br />
So the day after, Ms. Deokaran used her Latin class to discuss the etymology of “invasion,” “insurrection” and “<i>coup</i>.” Then on Thursday, after Mr. Biden had assumed office, Ms. Deokaran taught the root of “inauguration,” “resilient” and “union.”<br /><br />
“I think it’s important for us to understand what a union means and what it means to be unified,” Ms. Deokaran, 32, told her class. In Latin, she said, “it means ‘one.’ In English, union means being ‘joined as one.’”<br /><br />
Across the country, schools occupy a fraught political space. The ways that children learn history, civics and literature can shape the votes they will one day cast. Teachers work hard to ensure their classrooms are safe for everyone to express opinions and disagree.<br /><br />
But the Pandemic has eroded that four-walls privacy. Teachers have had to navigate the political passions of their communities in a time of intense division. Parents with strong opinions might be nearby as students learn virtually — and objecting to characterizations of polarizing events.<br /><br />
“I’ve had constant meetings and emails and such with a fairly aggressive contingent of parents that feels very strongly about the way that I am dealing with these issues in my classroom,” said James Mayne, who teaches at a Seventh-day Adventist school in Clark County, WA, that he said leans conservative.<br /><br />
On Thursday, Mr. Mayne asked his 11<sup>th</sup>-grade US history students to compare Mr. Biden’s inaugural speech with Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural. Then he opened the floor for discussion, steering students toward the struggles both presidents faced in reuniting the country.<br /><br />
“I would have a very difficult time finding ground with white supremacists,” said Jordan, 16.<br /><br />
“White supremacists are an extreme part,” retorted Talia, 16, who called herself a liberal. “I have a bunch of people on the other side of my life that are <i>not</i> racists. They may have a bad way of explaining things sometimes, but in their hearts they are good people and they love everyone.”<br /><br />
If you cannot look past language, Talia said, you cannot find middle ground.<br /><br />
In politically conservative or even just politically mixed places, some schools have shied away from political discussions. Some school districts, like <a href="https://bangordailynews.com/2021/01/17/news/bangor/bangor-schools-wont-show-inauguration-in-classrooms-over-fears-of-violence/">Bangor, Maine</a>, did not broadcast Mr. Biden’s inauguration because <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/some-schools-are-refusing-to-show-students-the-inauguration-this-year/2021/01?utm_source=nl">they feared violence</a>. And teachers who live in divided areas must work hard to avoid seeming biased.<br /><br />
Alyssa Kelly teaches 11<sup>th</sup>- and 12<sup>th</sup>-grade English in a conservative-leaning, rural district about 35 miles southwest of Bangor.<br /><br />
The day after the riot, one of her students, a vocal Trump supporter, came to class confused. He had spent the evening trying to parse memes, sound bites and his social media feeds. He just wanted a straight answer.<br /><br />
What had actually happened, he asked. After they spoke about it as a class, Ms. Kelly said, he was frustrated with how his fellow Trump supporters had acted.<br /><br />
“I am not necessarily confident that if he hadn’t had the space to wrestle with his own ignorance for a minute — in a way I didn’t judge him at all — he would have got to the same conclusion,” Ms. Kelly said. “I didn’t have to say anything political, really. I just had to unpack it for him, or help him unpack it.”<br /><br />
Ms. Kelly, who teaches in a majority-white district, hung a print of “<a href="https://www.nrm.org/2014/02/golden_rule/#post/0">Golden Rule</a>,” a Norman Rockwell piece depicting a racially and religiously diverse group of people under the American flag. When her students turn to say the Pledge of Allegiance, she hopes they remember who else lives in the country.<br /><br />
“My students are going to graduate and, most likely, remain in their homogeneous perspectives and convenient, familiar contexts,” Ms. Kelly said. “This is one last chance to remind them that befriending someone who disagrees with you is actually possible.”
<br /><br />
To scythe through confusion, several teachers said they used a three-part query system: What do I know? What do I think I know? And what do I want to know? Whenever possible, they directed discussions back toward the curriculum, using primary sources as a guide.<br /><br />
The day after the Capitol rampage, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-hicks-93ab47b5/">Nicole Hix</a> turned class discussion in her Advanced Placement world history class toward the violence. Instead of asking her students at a private Catholic school in Houston to analyze documents from the reign of Louis XIV, Ms. Hix asked them to discuss recent pictures, headlines and tweets, just as they would any other primary source.<br /><br />
“When it got awkward, I moved on,” Ms. Hix, 46, said. “It was a tough day. It was hard to swallow. A lot of them didn’t have questions, so I turned it into an Advanced Placement skills day.”<br /><br />
One student, Sophia, said her peers kept their heads down and their mouths closed. She answered direct questions but mostly steered clear of sharing her opinion.<br /><br />
“It’s our age,” said Sophia, 15. “We don’t want to lose any friends, but we also have beliefs. We can all tell that it’s very tense.”<br /><br />
Back in Ms. Merlin’s second-grade class, she directed the discussion about cats and dogs toward the riot at the US Capitol. It had happened two weeks before — eons in second-grade time.<br /><br />
“We saw a lot of violence,” said Ms. Merlin, a local activist for gun violence prevention. “Do you girls and boys remember the pushing and the shoving? How did that make you feel?”<br /><br />
“It was kind of sad to see that,” Logan, 8, said. “They could probably talk to people and just sort of figure this out, instead of breaking into the Capitol.”<br /><br />
“What is something that you have to do with your ears when the other person is talking?” Ms. Merlin asked.<br /><br />
Sierra, who is 7, unmuted herself. “You need to listen,” she said. ###<br /><br />
[Amelia Nierenberg is a newsletter writer on the Coronavirus Schools Briefing. A member of the inaugural class of <i>New York Times</i> Fellows, she started as a reporter on the Food desk, writing about the intersections between food and culture, climate, business, the arts and identity. She came to <i>The Times</i> from Dakar, Senegal, where she was an Overseas Press Club fellow in the West Africa bureau of The Associated Press. Previously, she interned at <i>The Boston Globe</i> and was part of a team that investigated the failings of local public schools, a project that was a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Local Reporting. Nierenberg received both a BA and an MA (intellectual history) from Yale University (CT).<br /><br />
Anemona Hartocollis (<i>The Times</i> national higher education reporter) contributed to this article.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-3853456679550459632021-01-25T06:24:00.001-06:002021-01-25T07:02:01.040-06:00Today, Meet "A Confederacy Of Organized Hypocrites" (With Apologies To John Kennedy Toole) <p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>In the email that delivered today's "This Modern World" 'toon, the 'toonist — Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) also wrote:<blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>There’s a song I heard on the radio at the neighborhood cafe on Hugo Street that I used to hang out in back in my San Francisco days, and this is going back 20-some years, but I was in a very transitional place in my life and a lyric stuck in my head: this is the end of something, or the start of another life. I’ve tried googling it and I’ve never managed to track that song down, but I still think of that line when I find myself moving through another liminal space. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, or just relieved to no longer have monsters running the government, but “life in the stupidverse” doesn’t quite seem to apply anymore. A cartoonist friend suggested “life in the not-quite-as-stupidverse,” but that didn’t feel quite right either (though if Republicans continue to be Republicans, it may well be where I land). But for this week’s installment of this particular recurrent format, I decided on “liminalverse.” The end of something *and* the start of another life.<br /><br />
A few notes about this one: Joe Biden has an *extremely* bland face. His most defining characteristic to my eye is his smile, but obviously I can’t have him smiling in every panel, or he’ll look like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Pence">the white-haired guy standing behind Donald Trump</a>. So I figure my caricature of him is going to be a work in progress. I’m happier with my latest attempt at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley">Josh Hawley</a> though. And the woman standing next to him is, of course, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Boebert">Lauren Boebert</a>, member of the House freshman Q caucus. (I realize in retrospect I haven’t done much with Q Anon over the years — to borrow the title of one of my older books, there was Too Much Crazy elsewhere. Now that their prophecies of a mass roundup and execution of Democrats have failed to materialize, it will be interesting to see if they just fade away, or morph into something else.)<br /><br />
The real <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_%28media%29">easter egg</a> in this cartoon, to me, is the drawing of Donald Trump in disguise in the final panel. Initially I was just going to give him a fake moustache and sunglasses, and then it clicked that I could portray him as Andy Kaufman’s obnoxious lounge singer alter ego, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Clifton">Tony Clifton</a>. I’m not sure if anyone will even pick up on that, but I figure the image works either way.<br /><br />
It’s a strange feeling to be filing a cartoon with a little more confidence that the news cycle won’t explode on Saturday night or Sunday morning, forcing a rewrite. I mean, knock on wood. But hopefully I’ll be able to transition back to the sort of work schedule I had pre-Trump, when I could wrap up a cartoon during the workweek and not have to keep one nervous eye on the news for the weekend. It didn’t happen this week, of course, given the midweek inauguration, and attendant uncertainties -- I finished this one just a few minutes ago. But hopefully things will be somewhat less crazy for awhile.<br /><br />
There are still enormous problems in this country — Pandemic, systemic racism, police violence, GOP obstructionism, and on and on. We are not going to be within several football fields of “normal” for a very long time, and normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be anyway. But just for a few days here, I’m going to enjoy the strange sense of quiet, with Trump out of office and banned from Twitter. It feels like someone has been camped outside of my home for years blasting loud music, like when they were <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Noriega#Capture">trying to drive Noriega out of his compound</a>, and suddenly the plug has been pulled and there’s just this blessed silence. I still find myself scrolling past a tweet from some representative or senator and reading it as if Republicans are still in charge, and then I remember — we’re in a different life now. What that means, remains to be seen.<br /><br />
Until next week,<br /><br />
Dan</blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
Today, the second presidential impeachment in US history commence in the US House of Representatives and the Loser probably will face trial in the US Senate in early February. In Congress, a veritable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_chorus#Dramatic_function">Greek Chorus</a> of followers/supporters of The Loser are reciting a litany of hypocritical assertions about the Dems' second impeachment that has destroyed "the political harmony" that has existed in the near-quarter-century since the R's impeached William Jefferson Clinton in 1998. In Texas, there is a saying about hypocrisy and untruth — "<a href="https://youtu.be/2KhDjMNElE0">That dog won't hunt</a>." If this is a (fair & balanced) description of political hypocrisy, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[TMW]<br />
The Liminalverse<br />
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrSAKxMhSHkUW9052ONkFrncWFlPjCcoFkCZ89jaPMYO-KTzEKXh4jRVQmEp6izjNkDErFr6YdD_c2gjpdOACVTlXHs84kDz4Hzr4Io_5p8cp_MXp-tfgskeqo9cgq_3ASgThGA/s2000/tomorrow_01_25_2021.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1883" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIrSAKxMhSHkUW9052ONkFrncWFlPjCcoFkCZ89jaPMYO-KTzEKXh4jRVQmEp6izjNkDErFr6YdD_c2gjpdOACVTlXHs84kDz4Hzr4Io_5p8cp_MXp-tfgskeqo9cgq_3ASgThGA/s600/tomorrow_01_25_2021.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a>. The strip debuted in 1990 in the <i>SF Weekly</i>. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily <a href="http://www.thismodernworld.com/">political blog</a>, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 <a href="http://www.herbblockfoundation.org/">Herblock Prize</a> for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 This Modern World<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-79939262178021745122021-01-24T03:41:00.001-06:002021-01-24T06:03:18.021-06:00This Isn't A Joke, But A Pair Of Hibernian Poetry Lovers Walked Into A Blog...<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>This blogger overslept on Inauguration Day 2021 and missed the ceremonies while trying to prepare his place for an initial visit by a Home Healthcare Nurse and so he has caught replays of the 2021 Inauguration since then. However, the best reconsideration of that event, in the blogger's humble opinion, is today's essay by the NY Fishwrap's Eags (Timothy Egan). Both Eags and President Joe Biden are of Irish descent and so this blog might be Irish for the day — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_go_bragh"><i>Erin go Bragh</i></a>. If this is (fair & balanced) appreciation of the wisdom and beauty of the Irish contribution to civilization, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
A President Can Govern In Poetry<br />
By Eags (Timothy Egan)<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">stirring</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">tear</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">tidal</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">trillion</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">used</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">wave</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">whose</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWwom9j0yRRwC_QGwh-i8-joX2zDdYZEMDUaNfOR_SywS1gmeaEsb7ETvzjd7KJr6LNlZssKDKQ42tTmLbHV6b9jn_tUDRsesNjqDiNnpB1fRSEkkIScn-2X8QCr_hmfx2ou3gA/s2048/2021_Inaugural_Poet_Amanda_Gorman.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNWwom9j0yRRwC_QGwh-i8-joX2zDdYZEMDUaNfOR_SywS1gmeaEsb7ETvzjd7KJr6LNlZssKDKQ42tTmLbHV6b9jn_tUDRsesNjqDiNnpB1fRSEkkIScn-2X8QCr_hmfx2ou3gA/s600/2021_Inaugural_Poet_Amanda_Gorman.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>One line you didn’t hear in Joe Biden’s big-hearted Inaugural Address was one of his favorite bits of Irish verse — a yearning for the rarest of convergences, when “hope and history rhyme,” by the Irish Nobel laureate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney">Seamus Heaney</a>.<br /><br />
Throughout the monumental tragedies of his life — the loss of a wife and baby daughter in an auto accident, the death of a son to brain cancer, and his time in the cellar of political despair after two unsuccessful presidential campaigns — Biden has returned to the healing power of Irish poetry.<br /><br />
On Tuesday, as he gave a tearful goodbye to Delaware by <a href="https://www.irishpost.com/news/joe-biden-quotes-james-joyce-in-emotional-farewell-speech-in-delaware-201807">quoting James Joyce</a>, Biden said his colleagues in the Senate used to kid him for always citing Irish poets. “They thought I did it because I’m Irish,” he said. “I did it because they’re the best poets in the world.”<br /><br />
He may have to revise that assessment after listening to the uncommonly wise <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Gorman">Amanda Gorman</a>, who followed in the footsteps of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost">Robert Frost</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou">Maya Angelou</a> at the inaugural podium. Her poem, “<a href="https://youtu.be/Wz4YuEvJ3y4">The Hill We Climb</a>,” was medicine for a sick nation.<br /><br />
But Biden should not put on the posterity shelf the young poet’s stirring lines — “For there is always light/ if only we’re brave enough to see it/ if only we’re brave enough to be it” — or Heaney’s call for the near impossible. Why not reverse the political aphorism, and govern in poetry after campaigning in prose?<br /><br />
As he took the oath in front of a Capitol that only days before was under the siege of a mob of the misinformed, in a country deadened by a pandemic, the oldest man ever elected president should remember that in the home of his ancestors, poetry is the language of politics.<br /><br />
Biden is known for his empathy, his lingering at the rope line to hear one last story of a life taken too early, his tendency to tear up when recalling a loved one who’s died. But he also has something that leaders from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela">Nelson Mandela</a> to <a href="https://www.knowol.com/knowledge/abraham-lincoln-power-of-people/">Abraham Lincoln</a> had — a belief in the power of why not? That’s the province of poets, not <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=wonk">policy wonks</a>.<br /><br />
Heaney was thinking of Mandela, newly released from prison as <i>apartheid</i> crumbled in South Africa, and the centuries-old hatreds clinging to Northern Ireland, when he wrote “The Cure at Troy,” and <a href="https://youtu.be/vc3gyAFCLuA">the stanza oft-quoted by Biden</a>:<br />
<blockquote>History says, don’t hope<br />
On this side of the grave.<br />
But then, once in a lifetime<br />
The longed-for tidal wave<br />
Of justice can rise up,<br />
And hope and history rhyme.</blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>Biden is aiming big, with a $1.9 trillion rescue package. He plans $1,400 checks for most Americans, subsidies for child care and aid for renters facing eviction. He <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/20/biden-ready-immigration-bill-inauguration-460585">has submitted a plan</a> to offer 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States a path to citizenship.<br /><br />
The new president wants to raise taxes on corporations, strengthen labor unions, expand Obamacare with a public option, stall the existential threat of climate change and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/biden-climate-plan.html">spend $2 trillion on energy and infrastructure</a>. On Day 1, he rejoined the community of nations who’ve agreed to the Paris climate accord.<br /><br />
He envisions a Rooseveltian campaign to get 100 million COVID vaccine shots into the arms of Americans in his first 100 days. There will be ramped-up testing, contact tracing and mobilization of at least 100,000 people to conquer the virus.<br /><br />
It’s a full plate, with long odds. For starters, how does a president who sees the essential goodness in everyone deal with a party whose base doesn’t even believe in the legitimacy of his presidency? How does he bring the conspiracy theorists back to planet Earth, and cool the tribal passions that fueled the insurrection on January 6?<br /><br />
If Biden and Congress succeed at the big ideas, and not just the reversal of wrongful executive orders or unpopular legislation, he will be fondly remembered, even if he serves only one term. What’s more, he may even able to bring enough fresh air into our toxic political atmosphere to realign things.<br /><br />
If he fails, well, I’m sorry to remind you that most Irish poetry is rooted in despair, in a country whose currency for centuries was misery. Still, in Ireland, poets have moved the masses to uprisings and greatness — most notably, the Easter 1916 rebellion that eventually helped lead to a free Ireland.<br /><br />
Thus, on Wednesday, the first message from the Irish president <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Higgins">Michael D. Higgins</a> to Biden <a href="https://twitter.com/PresidentIRL/status/1351946532887678979">contained a quotation</a> from the poet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O%27Donohue">John O’Donohue</a> — “Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning.”<br /><br />
In his struggle to overcome his stutter, Biden famously recited the poems of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats">William Butler Yeats</a> in front of a mirror. He has used Heaney’s aspirational lines again and again — in a <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1321807498492354561?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1321807498492354561%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconversation.com%2Fwhen-hope-and-history-rhyme-joe-biden-quotes-an-irish-poet-to-inspire-healing-in-america-149721">viral campaign video</a>, and his acceptance speech last summer at the Democratic National Convention, and at a 2013 meeting on the US-Korea relationship in Seoul.<br /><br />
There were flashes of words that could stand as poetry in Biden’s Inaugural Address. He lamented the “lies told for power and for profit,” and said, “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire.” The most memorable line was a simple one, that “we must end this uncivil war” that pits Americans against one another.<br /><br />
If he’s lucky, a commodity oversubscribed to the Irish, Biden will catch a “longed-for tidal wave” that could usher in an age when poetry is not without power. ###<br /><br />
[Timothy Egan is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the American West, and politics at the <i>NY Fishwrap</i>. Egan — winner of both a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 as a member of a team of reporters who wrote the series "How Race Is Lived in America" and a National Book Award (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Worst-Hard-Time-Survived-American/dp/061834697X"><i>The Worst Hard Time</i></a> in 2006) — graduated from the University of Washington with a BA ( journalism), and was awarded a doctorate of humane letters (<i>honoris causa</i>) by Whitman College (WA) in 2000 for his environmental writings. Egan's most recent book is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pilgrimage-Eternity-Canterbury-Search-Faith/dp/0735225230/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1558876022&sr=8-1"><i>A Pilgrimage to Eternity</i></a> (2019). See all other books by Eags <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Egan/e/B000APEFME/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1">here</a>.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-28674559452486571572021-01-23T06:31:00.002-06:002021-01-23T06:34:27.710-06:00President Joe Biden Needs To Find A Way To Move Beyond A 4-Year Dumpster Fire<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>The US Navy slang acronym, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle">KISS</a>, is a rock-solid recommendation for the 46<up>th</sup> POTUS when he speaks to the nation or to members of his administration and Congress. And it is most important to never resort to repetitive lies (untruths) as a governing technique. If this is (fair & balanced) advice to attain good government, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x The Atlantic]<br />
Boring Is Better — Biden Must Prioritize Science And Durable Facts Over Flimflam<br />
By John Dickerson<br /><br />
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a{color:#395CAE}.tagcloud8{font-size:3.9em;color:#264CA2;z-index:2}.tagcloud8 a{color:#264CA2}.tagcloud9{font-size:4.2em;color:#133B97;z-index:1}.tagcloud9 a{color:#133B97}.tagcloud10{font-size:4.5em;color:#002A8B;z-index:0}.tagcloud10 a{color:#002A8B}.freq{font-size:10pt !important;color:#bbb}#credit{text-align:center;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.6em;font:0.7em 'lucida grande',trebuchet,'trebuchet ms',verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif}#credit a:link{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:visited{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:hover{color:white;background-color:#05f}#credit a:active{text-decoration:underline}// --></style><div id="htmltagcloud"> <span id="0" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">address</a></span> <span id="1" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">administration</a></span> <span id="2" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">ahead</a></span> <span id="3" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">assertion</a></span> <span id="4" class="wrd 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href="#tagcloud">regulate</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">republican</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">required</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">return</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">staff</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">work</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbk5-dGji5oxDbxOCgggHtFU9_faMvf2etwWoTNEpra-WoctXFxEFYfi1fCKpNNpw9CEuCq-lJWPRBgpjXIIic8IOW9OcYHUX0a9EHnAZ17WZ25DoYbfMKeT1mzynI1gicgHcQQ/s1200/Boring_Biden_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="954" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbk5-dGji5oxDbxOCgggHtFU9_faMvf2etwWoTNEpra-WoctXFxEFYfi1fCKpNNpw9CEuCq-lJWPRBgpjXIIic8IOW9OcYHUX0a9EHnAZ17WZ25DoYbfMKeT1mzynI1gicgHcQQ/s600/Boring_Biden_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a> has a real shot at being a boring president. It will require constant work. Many forces of commerce and human nature are arrayed against him, and countless obstacles stand in his path. But if the country is lucky, entire days will pass without the president's activities agitating the public mind.<br /><br />
Success in the presidency can be measured in many ways. After Donald Trump, a new one might be the ability to thin the ranks of the <a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/agog">agog</a>. We need a president who can reset the norms of the office and address our current crisis over the nature of truth, giving the public the information it deserves. Biden can show those who didn't vote for him that he respects them enough to seek to persuade, rather than drowning them out with untested assertions.<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge">Calvin Coolidge</a> famously set out to be boring. According to his secretary, he did not wish to “go ahead of the majestic army of human thought and aspiration, blazing new and strange paths.” As he prepared to leave office, the 30<sup>th</sup> president boasted, “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been the minding of my own business.”<br /><br />
But the boredom that this moment calls for is not the monotony of a limited agenda, nor the purposeful dullness of placidity. Biden will have to manage historic challenges. The ride will be bumpy. Plus, he's loaded reams of executive orders and legislation into the chute for immediate dispersal when he moves to the other side of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolute_desk">Resolute Desk</a>.<br /><br />
It is precisely because his to-do list is so long that boredom is required. I'm using the term in the same sense as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Panetta">Leon Panetta</a>, who I interviewed about the presidency a few years ago. "A rational, experienced president is going to be very, very boring,” said the former Defense secretary, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency">CIA</a> director, and White House chief of staff.<br /><br />
Panetta's remark came as a preamble to a discussion of the skills and attributes required to master the modern presidency: prioritizing what is important, not what is consuming the Twitter hive mind; avoiding dead-end fights with opponents trying to bait you; and focusing on the distant consequences of immediate action, or distant problems that can only be addressed by planning today. Like, say, a Pandemic.<br /><br />
A president who tries to fit this mold might not keep the country riveted, but he will be effective. A presidency based on ratings or the trill of the news alert, by contrast, is as distinct from the vital requirements of the job as "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_%28American_TV_series%29">The Apprentice</a>" was from the habits of effective corporate governance, or "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_%28American_TV_series%29">The Bachelor</a>" is from nurturing relationships.<br /><br />
Such a presidency would return the executive branch to its role of informing the public. Briefings, charts, and a parade of forgettable public officials can explain to the citizens of the country—or, more likely, their representatives in the press—what is being done in their name. America showed a distinct preference for this approach during the Pandemic. Governors who simply laid out what they knew became heroes. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci">Anthony Fauci</a> inspired such blooming affection throughout the land by explaining what he knew—and where he’d been wrong—that people planted signs thanking him in front of their azalea bushes.<br /><br />
The public craves information. This is the basic lesson of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention">CDC</a> guidelines and emergency-management books: Information, even when it ultimately proves flawed, gives people a sense of control over their lives.<br /><br />
As we saw during the Trump administration, holding a press conference is not the same as informing the public. It is possible, it turns out, to achieve a net reduction in public knowledge with a press conference. Instead, a boring administration must put governing ahead of campaigning, using information to instruct, educate, and build on accumulated knowledge, and not to spin and create a politically favorable refuge. Governing prioritizes science and durable facts, while campaigning prefers flimflam. The only objective of campaigning is surviving the next news cycle, while governing is good for actual survival.<br /><br />
No presidency will be free of political interest or confirmation bias, but a presidency that puts persuasion over assertion, facts over piffle, has a chance to achieve real successes. In the Trump years, where the lie was the president's basic unit of measurement, fantasy pushed out reality. But while assertion thrilled the crowds at rallies, it did no good against the Coronavirus, or in restoring economic confidence. Insisting that it’s safe to return to bars and restaurants might convince the home team, but boosting consumer confidence requires persuading the entire country. Lots of people need more than CAPS LOCK when the hospital-admittance rate is <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/h/hockey-stick-chart.asp">going up like a hockey stick</a>.<br /><br />
The <a href="https://businessbuddhacoaching.com/blog/everyday-enlightenment">habits of the Enlightenment</a>, like proportioning the evidence to the size of the claim, delivered us things like electricity and penicillin. Returning to them now won't work immediate wonders, but it will make a difference.<br /><br />
The great battle of our time is the fight between reality and fantasy. Election officials, judges, experts in the field, and Trump officials with actual knowledge about such matters all agreed that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Nevertheless, the president and the majority of his party asserted a different reality. Thousands showed up to do battle for that position. Fantasy propelled an insurrection.<br /><br />
As the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inauguration-2021-the-task-for-joe-biden-and-for-america/">historian Jill Lepore points out</a>, the January 6 insurrection highlights the stakes of our current <a href="https://madison.com/ct/opinion/mailbag/richard-cherwitz-our-country-is-in-an-epistemological-crisis/article_297c76c7-ae24-5546-8cbb-8116da72bef0.html">epistemological crisis</a>. The American experiment was founded on the idea that knowledge could be accumulated, analyzed, and acted upon, that problems and threats could be dispersed with brainpower. Thomas Jefferson, in his inaugural address, waved away those who would promote disunion or challenge republican government “as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” At the moment, reason could use a hand.<br /><br />
A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Friday">just-the-facts-ma’am</a> presidency would return to an important American tradition: Presidents are supposed to cool public passions, not inflame them. As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Madison">James Madison</a> wrote in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._49"><i>Federalist No. 49</i></a>, if a president whips up the crowd, “the passions… not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment. But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman">President Truman</a> reaffirmed this principle during his tenure: “You can’t divide the country up into sections and have one rule for one section and one rule for another, and you can’t encourage people’s prejudices. You have to appeal to people’s best instincts, not their worst ones. You may win an election or so by doing the other, but it does a lot of harm to the country.”<br /><br />
We have seen the harm in the partisanship that prevented Republican leaders from disputing that the election was stolen, even though they knew it wasn't and knew what damage that lie could do. An argument for inching the presidency away from fantasy, is obligated not to engage in the fantasy that facts can provide a solvent to tribalism. Even the most exquisitely boring president will not be able to use facts, briefings, and patient explanations to fully overcome the incentives of politics and partisan media. At the moment, as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/republicans-are-already-rewriting-trump-years/617715/">McKay Coppins writes</a>, those incentives are encouraging Republicans to pretend they "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/09/here-are-some-trump-tweets-that-people-havent-seen/">didn't see the tweet</a>" of the entire Trump presidency, so that they can continue playing to the same base.<br /><br />
However, we have seen what the other route brings. If a president is ever to build bridges to the other party, it will not be through insults and baseless assertions that must be taken on faith. That president must help those lawmakers make a case to their constituency. The apocalyptic image of the Biden administration held by many conservatives is at least one barrier to their ability to do so. One way Biden can soften that image is to show voters who did not support him that he cares enough about what they think to seek to persuade and explain to them.<br /><br />
In the end, the biggest reason to be boring is that surprises are coming. Sticking to the basic, unexciting requirements of the job prepares a president for the excitement ahead. In 2001, President George W. Bush's staff talked about how he was going to be an A4 president, not always in the center of the day's news on page A1 of the newspaper. Then the attacks of 9/11 put him on A1 for the remainder of his two terms. A White House needs to plan for that day, establish orderly operating routines, and allow staff to work unclenched by the fear that the boss is going to ping-pong off in some zany direction. Boring!<br /><br />
If you have read this far, I have not bored you—or, perhaps, you have found boredom interesting. This is good news. We, too, have to play our part in lowering the temperature of our current political moment. We could do with fewer hot takes, more suppleness in our public debates, and a recognition that the president's job is not necessarily defined by whatever we just read, or even whatever is pelting us in the news cycle.<br /><br />
Sometimes, by staying out of the way, a president can create space for our attention to turn elsewhere. ###<br /><br />
[John Dickerson is a contributing writer at <i>The Atlantic</i> and a correspondent for "60 Minutes." He is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hardest-Job-World-American-Presidency/dp/1984854518/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1611398676&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+Dickerson&s=books&sr=1-1"><i>The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency</i></a> (202). See his other books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/John-Dickerson/e/B001JS635I?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1611399010&sr=1-1">here</a>. Dickerson received a BA (English) with distinction from the University of Virginia.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The Atlantic Monthly Group<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-37992117788398921802021-01-22T11:29:00.000-06:002021-01-22T11:29:09.754-06:00In The Mid-1960s, A TV Series — "Lost In Space" Had A Catchphrase That Needs To Be Updated To — "Danger, USA, Danger!"<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b><i>The New Yorker</i>'s national security specialist, Robin Wright, has written an essay that deserves a title that reads."Code Red, USA, Code Red." We are in danger at this very moment from a grave threat, short of war, to the United States of America. If this is a (fair & balanced attempt at a national alert, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x The New Yorker]<br />
Biden Faces More Aggressive Rivals And A Fraying World Order<br />
By Robin Wright<br /><br />
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In a recent conversation, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Scarlett">Sir John Scarlett</a>, the elegant former spymaster of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, pondered the foreign-policy challenges facing <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/joe-biden">Joe Biden</a> when he enters the White House—and the jarring differences since he left it four years ago. The bottom line, Scarlett told me, is that America’s adversaries are now “more assertive, aggressive, and self-confident.” Many of the threats were building in 2017, but they have escalated exponentially. As Biden returns to power, the variety and depth of hazards facing the United States—from nations and non-state militias, jihadi terrorists, drug lords, criminal syndicates, and hackers—are greater than at any time since the US became a superpower after the Second World War.<br /><br />
Biden has one advantage. He’s widely viewed as an internationalist, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-seven-pillars-of-bidens-foreign-policy">having travelled extensively</a> to crisis and war zones and conferred with more than a hundred foreign leaders during his decades in the Senate and White House. But, on the eve of his own Inauguration, spymasters and generals long experienced with global crises are anxious about America’s ability to lead a world in disarray and deathly ill. They also wonder whether other nations will be as eager to collaborate with the United States as they were when Biden was last in office. “We will reclaim our credibility to lead the free world,” Biden told reporters last month. “And we will, once again, lead not just by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” A lot has changed, however, because of the erratic and egocentric policies of Biden’s predecessor. Adversaries have also found more imaginative ways to exploit America’s internal turmoil and withdrawal from the international stage. Both allies and adversaries feel fewer constraints. The rules and institutions of the international order have weakened.<br /><br />
From the beginning of the republic, not one of America’s forty-five previous Presidents has had it easy when he took office. Poor George Washington had to create the Presidency in a war-ravaged nation that was little more than a political experiment with limited financial resources, raging feuds among the Founding Fathers, and no international presence. America was so polarized when Abraham Lincoln took office that South Carolina had already seceded, and Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee soon followed. Woodrow Wilson simultaneously faced the First World War and the influenza pandemic, which killed more than a half million Americans <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-much-is-the-coronavirus-infecting-world-leaders-and-disrupting-governments">and almost felled him</a>, too. Franklin Roosevelt inherited the Great Depression and was then confronted by the Second World War.<br /><br />
Biden inherits a mess on both the domestic and international fronts, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/coronavirus">compounded by a Pandemic</a> that has produced mass death, rampant unemployment, and a global economic crisis. America was popular when he and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a> left office; its standing has plummeted since then. In his first weeks, Biden must make decisions on the final withdrawal from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an expiring arms treaty (and the last one) with Russia, an eroding nuclear accord with Iran, and how to begin to mend the fraying world order. “The Biden Administration is going to face a unique set of circumstances that, taken together, are going to make their challenges ever more daunting than I remember in any previous transition,” John Brennan, the blunt-talking former CIA director, told me.<br /><br />
Two decades into the twenty-first century, Biden also takes over as the barometers of power have shifted, as is most evident in the rivalry between the United States and China. The great-power competition has only intensified over the past four years. Beijing is ambitiously flexing traditional military muscle across East Asia, but its reach is even wider because of its global influence through Huawei, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/huawei-chinas-controversial-tech-giant">the world’s leading seller</a> of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-terrifying-potential-of-the-5g-network">5G technology</a>. China’s edge <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/04/is-an-iron-curtain-falling-across-tech/">threatens to create a digital iron curtain</a> that could soon force nations to choose between Chinese and American technology. China’s burgeoning capabilities <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/12/23/china-tech-giants-process-stolen-data-spy-agencies/">give it an advantage in espionage</a>, too. China is on track to become the world’s largest economy—overtaking the United States—by 2028, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-economy-idUSKBN29000C">according to a new report</a> by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, in London. That’s five years earlier than previous estimates. Ironically, the report warned, China, the epicenter of COVID-19, is widely viewed around the world as having responded more effectively than the United States to the coronavirus. “The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have certainly tipped this rivalry in China’s favour,” the report said. China’s preëminence is no longer down the road; it’s in front of us.<br /><br />
What really worries the former spymasters, however, is the type of “hybrid war” that blurs the lines between war and peace and is a growing danger in the twenty-first century. The term was popularized in an article by <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/07/03/west-fears-russia-s-hybrid-warfare.-they-re-missing-bigger-picture-pub-79412">General Valery Gerasimov</a>, chief of the Russian General Staff, published in 2013. A hybrid war, Scarlett said in an e-mail, “inflicts the kind of economic, social, or physical damage which in the past would have required the use (and inherent risks) of military force.” It features a fluctuating—and often deniable—mix of cyberattacks, espionage, undercover or mercenary military adventures, disinformation campaigns on social media, and covert financial and economic subterfuge that work together to undermine confidence in specific governments or types of governance.<br /><br />
The use of hybrid tactics predates Gerasimov, but the term certainly explains a lot about what countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are doing as Biden takes office. Vladimir Putin is more determined than ever to assert Russian power on the global stage, Scarlett and Brennan noted, evident in Russia’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/946776718/u-s-scrambles-to-understand-major-computer-hack-but-says-little">SolarWinds hack</a> of governments, technology firms, and research institutes <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russian-government-spies-are-behind-a-broad-hacking-campaign-that-has-breached-us-agencies-and-a-top-cyber-firm/2020/12/13/d5a53b88-3d7d-11eb-9453-fc36ba051781_story.html">on at least three continents</a> over the past year. In the United States alone, Russia’s foreign-intelligence service covertly penetrated the Pentagon, Treasury, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Energy, and National Institutes of Health for nearly a year before the stealth technology was detected. The damage will take months to evaluate, U.S. officials concede. The penetration may still be mutating or adapting despite its detection. That’s impressive for a country that, much diminished after the seven decades of Soviet power, now has an economy about the size of Italy’s.<br /><br />
Russia’s hack—named after the IT firm that provided software to the US government and hundreds of US and foreign companies—illustrates how the tools and tactics of adversaries have also changed as Biden takes office. For all their destructive potential, nuclear weapons are not the most immediate threat anymore, nor are conventional wars between countries as likely as they once were. In US Central Command, the volatile theatre stretching across the Middle East and South Asia, where America still has thousands of troops, General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., cited “Costco drones” as a growing weapon of choice among non-state actors. “I remain extremely concerned about the small, unmanned platforms that are very inexpensive, that you can buy and operate cheaply,” he told me. They both spy and carry weapons. “That’s a new plane that’s come in over the last four to five years.”<br /><br />
In hybrid wars, resource-poor nations are honing asymmetric skills that allow them to inflict immeasurable damage on major powers like the United States, Scarlett added. North Korea is about the size of Mississippi, with a much smaller economy. Yet, over the past four years, its cyberattacks have been more disruptive to the United States, short-term, than its nuclear or missile programs, which are simultaneously accelerating. North Korea’s Bureau 121, which carries out hacking operations, has grown from a staff of a thousand experts in 2010 to six thousand in 2020, the US Army chronicled in a <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7038686-US-Army-report-on-North-Korean-military.html">three-hundred-page report</a>, in July. Many <a href="https://www.securityweek.com/us-army-report-describes-north-koreas-cyber-warfare-capabilities">now operate outside the hermit nation</a>, in Belarus, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia.<br /><br />
“It seems like every year, every month, every day there are new technological advancements in the digital domain that just underscores how important that domain is to our security and our prosperity,” Brennan, the author of a new memoir, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Undaunted-Against-Americas-Enemies-Abroad/dp/1250241774?ots=1&slotNum=0&imprToken=42bb9573-2b89-f33f-6b1&tag=thneyo0f-20&linkCode=w50"><i>Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad</i></a> (2020), told me. “It is overwhelmingly now the environment where most human activity takes place. So it’s going to be the venue of interaction, but also for confrontation and for disagreements and for tension.”<br /><br />
Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, before the advent of either personal computers or cell phones, and two decades before the public had access to the worldwide Web. Almost a half century later, he takes office at a time when there is still no national consensus on the appropriate role of government—particularly the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency [NSA]—in dealing with cyber issues that pit national security against privacy and civil liberties. The American legal system has yet to come to terms with the digital age, Brennan said.<br /><br />
America’s forty-sixth President also faces a long slog proving that Washington can again be a reliable partner—and that it won’t keep whipsawing on policies from one Administration to the next. “Biden is not going to be able to build back the United States’ dominant role on the world stage,” Brett Bruen, the White House director of global engagement during the Obama Administration, told me. “Instead, we will continue to struggle for influence and to shore up our credibility.”<br /><br />
In his first weeks, Biden should expect nations large and small to probe his responses and fortitude. Putin could test Biden with more aggressive steps on Ukraine or Belarus. Other authoritarians could as well. “In North Korea, Kim Jong Un may decide again to test the Biden Administration with a nuclear test, as he did in the early days of the Trump Administration,” Brennan warned. China could be more aggressive on Hong Kong or Taiwan. “It’s always been ambiguous when it comes to the aid of Taiwan if China really decides to assert itself. How is the Biden Administration going to respond?”<br /><br />
The stakes go beyond Biden. America’s reputation and future place in the world are also at risk. “Allies now question whether the American democratic system can deliver at home and abroad,” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lute">Doug Lute</a>, a retired lieutenant general who was the US ambassador to nato and served on the National Security Council in both the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, told me. Biden will now have a harder time forging the coalitions required to counter flash points in security, economics, health, or climate, which increasingly intersect.<br /><br />
America’s acrimonious political divide, far deeper than it was in 2017, will make any Biden initiative on the world stage more difficult to sell at home. More than eighty per cent of Trump voters still believe that Biden did not legitimately win the election, according to a recent <i>Economist</i>/YouGov poll. More than three-quarters of Republicans and Democrats also have less respect for people in the rival party than they did four years ago, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/politics/elections-reckoning/">a separate survey</a> by Public Opinion Strategies reported. The most troublesome scenario for Biden, Lute warned, “is a self-absorbed, gridlocked American democracy that opens the door to international competitors and disruptors.” ###<br /><br />
[Robin Wright is a contributing writer for <i>The New Yorker</i> (online) and has written for the magazine since 1988. Her first piece on Iran won the National Magazine Award for best reporting. A former correspondent for the Washington Post, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, and the Sunday Times of London, she has reported from more than a hundred and forty countries. She is currently a joint fellow at the US Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She has also been a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as at Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Wright's most recent book book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rock-Casbah-Rebellion-Islamic-concluding/dp/1439103178"><i>Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World</i></a> (2011, 2012), was selected as the best book on international affairs by the Overseas Press Club. See her other books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Robin+Wright+Rock+The+Casbah&s=date-desc-rank&qid=1564662571&ref=sr_st_date-desc-rank">here</a>. Wright received both a BA and an MA (history) from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; she was the first woman appointed as the sports editor of <i>The Michigan Daily</i> as well.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New Yorker/Condé Nast Digital<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-38371010935249057722021-01-21T10:20:00.000-06:002021-01-21T10:20:19.015-06:00Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder Sees The Events Of January 2021 As A Confirmation Of His Belief That "The Past Enlightens The Present"<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Recognizing that discussions of January 6, 2021, and its meaning for the United States are at risk of becoming ho-hum and yesterday's news, this blogger has always strived to bring essays to this blog that are well-written and not trite. And today's essay by Yale history prof Timothy Snyder shines a bright, hot light on the events of January 6, 2021 and after. If this is a (fair & balanced) appeal to readers to engage in critical thinking and avoid 1/6/21-fatigue, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
The American Abyss — What Comes Next?<br />
By Timothy Snyder<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">voters</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">votes</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">win</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">work</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">world</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">years</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYIuI3r4iGb8kZv_MvoY_1oTGEiOVs_CIepdPB1k5QbtEaeK1dC-hbj-Su4lA6fB7AYcqqgY_syUgLPTYuucGJo8_-ptIboZSDfC6EGguEm_Vc7y2wups6cKgpi12yBV4mF2t1sg/s1268/sociopath_candidate_sociopath_voters_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYIuI3r4iGb8kZv_MvoY_1oTGEiOVs_CIepdPB1k5QbtEaeK1dC-hbj-Su4lA6fB7AYcqqgY_syUgLPTYuucGJo8_-ptIboZSDfC6EGguEm_Vc7y2wups6cKgpi12yBV4mF2t1sg/s600/sociopath_candidate_sociopath_voters_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>When Donald Trump stood before his followers on January 6 and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/trump-speech-capitol.html">urged them to march on the United States Capitol</a>, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.<br /><br />
Even when he won, in 2016, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/us/politics/donald-trump-congress-democrats.html">insisted that the election was fraudulent</a> — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/magazine/trump-voter-fraud.html">he spent months claiming</a> that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.<br /><br />
People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.<br /><br />
In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mcconnell-backs-trump-impeachment.html">Mitch McConnell [R-KY], indulged Trump’s lie</a> while making no comment on its consequences.<br /><br />
Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on December 30, when <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/us/politics/josh-hawley-trump-election-challenge.html">Senator Josh Hawley [R-MO] announced</a> that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on January 6. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/03/us/politics/trump-cruz-election-fraud.html">Ted Cruz [R-TX] then promised his own support</a>, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.<br /><br />
Yet for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence [R-IN], in charge of the formal proceedings, to pervert them. And on January 6, he directed his followers to exert pressure on these elected representatives, which they proceeded to do: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/06/us/trump-mob-capitol-building.html">storming the Capitol building</a>, searching for people to punish, ransacking the place.<br /><br />
Of course this did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how could Congress be allowed to move forward? For some Republicans, the invasion of the Capitol must have been a shock, or even a lesson. For the breakers, however, it may have been a taste of the future. Afterward, eight senators and more than 100 representatives voted for the lie that had forced them to flee their chambers.<br /><br />
<i>Post-truth is pre-fascism</i>, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.<br /><br />
Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Stanley">philosopher Jason Stanley</a> has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.<br /><br />
My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat"><i>coup</i></a>, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.<br /><br />
Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear <i>Lügenpresse</i> (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.<br /><br />
Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.<br /><br />
Some of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of aspiring authoritarians in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. In Poland the right-wing party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/europe/hungarian-leader-rebuked-for-saying-muslim-migrants-must-be-blocked-to-keep-europe-christian.html">for his country’s problems</a>. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “<a href="https://idanlandau.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/arendt-truth-and-politics.pdf">the fabric of factuality</a>.” [PDF]<br /><br />
One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.<br /><br />
In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/trump-voters-stolen-election.html">that he had won an election</a> that in fact <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/us/politics/biden-electoral-college.html">he had lost</a>. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.”<br /><br />
The force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and of experts but also of local, state and federal government institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.<br /><br />
Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jordan_%28American_politician%29">Jim Jordan [R-OH]</a> spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.<br /><br />
On the surface, a conspiracy theory makes its victim look strong: It sees Trump as resisting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, the pedophiles, the Satanists. More profoundly, however, it inverts the position of the strong and the weak. Trump’s focus on alleged “irregularities” and “contested states” comes down to cities where Black people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people.<br /><br />
It’s not just that electoral fraud by African-Americans against Donald Trump never happened. It is that it is the very opposite of what happened, in 2020 and in every American election. As always, Black people <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/04/upshot/voting-wait-times.html">waited longer than others</a> to vote and were more likely to have their votes challenged. They were more likely to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html">suffering or dying from COVID-19</a>, and less likely to be able to take time away from work. The historical protection of their right to vote has been removed by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/magazine/voting-rights-act-dream-undone.html">Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in <i>Shelby County</i> v. <i>Holder,</i></a> and states have rushed to pass measures of a kind that historically reduce voting by the poor and communities of color.<br /><br />
The claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American history.<br /><br />
When Senator Ted Cruz announced his intention to challenge the Electoral College vote, he invoked the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compromise_of_1877#:~:text=The%20Compromise%20of%201877%20was,and%20ending%20the%20Reconstruction%20Era.">Compromise of 1877</a>, which resolved the presidential election of 1876. Commentators pointed out that this was no relevant precedent, since back then there really were serious voter irregularities and there really was a stalemate in Congress. For African-Americans, however, the seemingly gratuitous reference led somewhere else. The Compromise of 1877 — in which Rutherford B. Hayes would have the presidency, provided that he withdrew federal power from the South — was the very arrangement whereby African-Americans were driven from voting booths for the better part of a century. It was effectively the end of Reconstruction, the beginning of segregation, legal discrimination and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws">Jim Crow</a>. It is the original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest brush with fascism so far.<br /><br />
If the reference seemed distant when Ted Cruz and 10 senatorial colleagues released their statement on January 2, it was brought very close four days later, when Confederate flags were paraded through the Capitol.<br /><br />
<i>Some things have changed</i> since 1877, of course. Back then, it was the Republicans, or many of them, who supported racial equality; it was the Democrats, the party of the South, who wanted apartheid. It was the Democrats, back then, who called African-Americans’ votes fraudulent, and the Republicans who wanted them counted. This is now reversed. In the past half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black voters, as low as possible. Yet the common thread remains. Watching white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who deserves representation.<br /><br />
The Democrats, today, have become a coalition, one that does better than Republicans with female and nonwhite voters and collects votes from both labor unions and the college-educated. Yet it’s not quite right to contrast this coalition with a monolithic Republican Party. Right now, the Republican Party is a coalition of two types of people: those who would game the system (most of the politicians, some of the voters) and those who dream of breaking it (a few of the politicians, many of the voters). In January 2021, this was visible as the difference between those Republicans who defended the present system on the grounds that it favored them and those who tried to upend it.<br /><br />
In the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement">Tea Party</a>), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans is not made smaller but simply diverted to serve a handful of interests.<br /><br />
At first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of experience in politics and his open racism made him a very uncomfortable figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief, McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the rich.<br /><br />
Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally. He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a truly big lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that he might lose something.<br /><br />
Yet Trump never prepared a decisive blow. He lacked the support of the military, some of whose leaders he had alienated. (No true fascist would have made the mistake he did there, which was to openly love foreign dictators; supporters convinced that the enemy was at home might not mind, but those sworn to protect from enemies abroad did.) Trump’s secret police force, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/opinion/portland-protests-trump.html">the men carrying out snatch operations in Portland</a>, was violent but also small and ludicrous. Social media proved to be a blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_%28social_network%29">Gab</a>. But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing. Trump could make some voters believe that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring institutions along with his big lie. And he could bring his supporters to Washington and send them on a rampage in the Capitol, but none appeared to have any very clear idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.<br /><br />
<i>The lie outlasts the liar</i>. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?<br /><br />
On January 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big lie only grew bigger.<br /><br />
The breakers and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the division within the Republican coalition became visible on January 6. The invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives doubled down on the big lie. Some, like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Gaetz">Matt Gaetz</a> [R-FL], even added their own flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s supporters but by his opponents.<br /><br />
Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.<br /><br />
As Cruz and Hawley may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain. Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights, which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud, only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations, allegations all the way down.<br /><br />
The big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception of the Alabama senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Tuberville">Tommy Tuberville</a> [R-AL]) that they are participating in a sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.<br /><br />
If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on January 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.<br /><br />
Trump’s <i>coup</i> attempt of 2020-21, like other failed <i>coup</i> attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a <i>coup</i> to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.Trump’s <i>coup</i> attempt of 2020-21, like other failed <i>coup</i> attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. <br /><br />
Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.<br /><br />
Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.<br /><br />
When that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie, demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if those were the circumstances of January 6, 2025?<br /><br />
To be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a short time, to a moment of self-questioning. Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.<br /><br />
America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes. ###<br /><br />
[Timothy Snyder is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. He is the author, most recently of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089G6PW9N/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1"><i>Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary</i></a> (2020), a memoir of his own near-fatal illness reflecting on the relationship between health and freedom. See other books by Timothy Snyder <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Snyder/e/B001H6N9K4%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share">here</a>. He received a BA (history and political science) from Brown University (RI) and a DPhil (modern history) from Oxford University (UK) and was a British Marshall Scholar as well.]<br />
<br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-16786920684883922572021-01-20T05:22:00.000-06:002021-01-20T05:22:52.043-06:00The Horror Of January 2021 Continues<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Well — surprise, surprise — the Impeached (But Not Convicted) Lyin King/WPE (Worst President Ever) has managed a hat trick: twice impeached and Worst President Ever in a single term of office. The narcissistic sociopath can revel in the cesspool of history. Of course, his reality TV training taught him to create a worshipful following. Just 3 days ago, NBC News reported that the ILK<sup>2</sup>/WPE received an <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/poll-trump-approval-remains-stable-republicans-unmoved-after-capitol-violence-n1254457">87% approval rating</a> from voters in his party. If this is (fair & balanced) political anxiety about the next presidential election in 2024 , so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x The Atlantic]<br />
Impeaching Trump Was An Act Of Self-Defense<br />
By Russell Berman<br /><br />
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tagcloud9"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Van </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">vote</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">week</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">white</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">York </a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv9Y4p_kISs-y7yzm4D6gaWsxq0TOAAIsEdXAnnepJ3y0ibbby0a84bejFHtSy7OUyrP_hXwS3MVXYEQQ9S6Fusxu9czP0som-ZV_LzvKz0x5-lyaX8KfnDyMNX4CmGWER6q0MnQ/s1800/Second_Impeachment_Toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1359" data-original-width="1800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv9Y4p_kISs-y7yzm4D6gaWsxq0TOAAIsEdXAnnepJ3y0ibbby0a84bejFHtSy7OUyrP_hXwS3MVXYEQQ9S6Fusxu9czP0som-ZV_LzvKz0x5-lyaX8KfnDyMNX4CmGWER6q0MnQ/s600/Second_Impeachment_Toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Schakowsky">Jan Schakowsky</a> of Illinois, a 12-term veteran of Congress, was holed up in her office when the mob arrived. Thousands of MAGA diehards had followed President Donald Trump’s call to march to the Capitol to protest the certification of the Electoral College vote. “It was like a declaration of war against the United States, issued by the president of the United States,” Schakowsky told me.<br /><br />
When she returned to Washington yesterday to impeach a president she holds personally responsible for the attack, she didn’t wear her members’ pin in public. The threat against lawmakers is ongoing—a reality driven home for Democrats like Schakowsky in a briefing they heard on Monday night, when leaders of the Capitol Police told them of a plot by insurrectionists to surround the Capitol, the White House, and the Supreme Court ahead of next week’s inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.<br /><br />
So when congressional Democrats voted today to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection, they believed they were acting to remove “a clear and present danger” not only to American citizens and democracy at large, but to themselves specifically. And the fear that Democrats have following the assault on their Capitol extends beyond Trump to their own House colleagues. After impeaching Trump, Democrats are likely to pursue punishments against Republican members—including Representatives <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gosar">Paul Gosar</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Biggs">Andy Biggs</a> of Arizona, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Brooks">Mo Brooks</a> of Alabama, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Boebert">Lauren Boebert</a> of Colorado—who either spoke at last week’s rally or applauded the rioters who stormed the Capitol. Brooks addressed the same rally as Trump and told the crowd, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” Boebert tweeted during the attack that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been removed from the House chamber, infuriating Democrats who saw the tweet as a signal to rioters of the speaker’s whereabouts.<br /><br />
“Absolutely they should be expelled,” Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondaire_Jones">Mondaire Jones</a>, a New York Democrat who took office just 10 days ago, told me. Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikie_Sherrill">Mikie Sherrill</a> of New Jersey said last night that she saw Republican members, whom she did not name, leading “reconnaissance” tours of the Capitol the day before the attack. Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> of New York <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/13/aoc-capitol-mob-republicans-death/">detailed her terror</a> to more than 100,000 of her Instagram followers, saying that she felt unsafe being in the same room with “white supremacist” members of Congress who she feared could disclose her location to rioters. “I had a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die,” Ocasio-Cortez said. Democrats were already angry at Republicans for refusing to wear masks while they hid together from the mob; three members in that room have since tested positive for COVID-19. And last night, Boebert and other GOP lawmakers clashed with the Capitol Police after Pelosi ordered metal detectors to be placed near entrances to the House chamber.<br /><br />
The drive to impeach and remove the president in the final days of his term gained momentum overnight, when five House Republicans declared their support for impeachment and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment.html">multiple outlets reported</a> that Senate Majority Leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell">Mitch McConnell</a> was open to voting to convict Trump. The chances that the evenly divided Senate will muster 67 votes to convict the president are higher than when House Democrats impeached Trump a little over a year ago. But even if Trump won’t leave office a minute before his term ends at noon on January 20, congressional Democrats—and at least a handful of Republicans—are bent on ensuring that he leaves in shame.<br /><br />
Several lawmakers told me they see the impeachment of Trump for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol as both a tool and a message. It’s a tool that the Senate can use to oust the president in the final days or even hours of his term if Trump acts again to stir up violence against Congress, pardons the rioters, or takes reckless military action. And failing that, they said, impeachment represents a message of accountability that Democrats are determined to send not only to Trump but also to the nation and the world: The president’s encouragement of the riot that left at least five people dead would not go unpunished.<br /><br />
“This was an attack on the Capitol,” Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cicilline">David Cicilline</a> of Rhode Island, a co-author of the single article of impeachment the House is considering, told me by phone yesterday. “The notion that we would simply say, ‘Oh, you know, this was an effort to overthrow the government, a coup and insurrection against the government, but he’s going to be gone in 12 days so we should just overlook it’ is completely unacceptable.”<br /><br />
In 2019, Democrats took weeks to draft and build support for the impeachment of Trump over his personal plea for Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden. Not a single Republican backed impeachment the first time, but 10 voted with Democrats today—making this the most bipartisan impeachment of a president in American history. The breakaway Republicans include the chair of the party’s House caucus, Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Cheney">Liz Cheney</a> of Wyoming, who said Tuesday “there has never been a greater betrayal” by a president of his oath of office. The House last night approved a nonbinding resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to initiate the process of removing Trump through the Constitution’s Twenty-Fifth Amendment—a step that could be done immediately but would require support from a majority of the Cabinet—but Pence has ruled out such an effort.<br /><br />
Democrats have scoffed at suggestions by Republicans, and yesterday by Trump himself, that impeachment would further inflame divisions and undermine Biden’s pledge to “heal the soul of the nation.” Indeed, among the many unprecedented aspects of the current crisis is that lawmakers acted against a man who they believe unleashed not just an invasion of the seat of government, but an attack that put them in physical danger, their lives at serious risk. The sense of personal fear that pervades Congress extends to Republicans as well: Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Crow">Jason Crow</a> of Colorado, a Democrat, told MSNBC this morning that GOP lawmakers confided to him that they were “afraid for their lives” if they voted for impeachment. Despite the plots that Democrats have learned about, Biden told reporters earlier this week that he was “not afraid” of taking his oath outside the Capitol, on the same dais that rioters defiled last week and could threaten again. Schakowsky wasn’t so sure. “If I were him,” she told me, “I’d stay inside.”<br /><br />
Democrats are demanding that the Senate reconvene immediately to hold an impeachment trial, but they’ll need McConnell’s backing to end a recess scheduled through January 19. And McConnell told the Democratic leader, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer">Chuck Schumer</a>, on Wednesday that he would not call the chamber back early, meaning that the trial will not begin until after Biden is sworn in the next day. Democrats would then be faced with the prospect that an outgoing president who craves attention would dominate the national spotlight days or even weeks into Biden’s term. A Senate trial could further delay the confirmation of Biden’s Cabinet and undermine his public pledges to turn the page on the Trump era and move rapidly to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. Some House Democrats, including Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Clyburn">James Clyburn</a> of South Carolina, the party whip and a close Biden ally, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/clyburn-says-trump-impeachment-trial-could-be-delayed-until-after-n1253660">had suggested</a> the House pass the article of impeachment but hold off on sending it to the Senate until after Biden’s first 100 days.<br /><br />
As the House prepared to vote, that option appeared to be off the table. Democrats were buoyed by the surprising news that McConnell might turn against Trump—a move that could serve as a permission slip for Senate Republicans to follow and potentially lead to a conviction. “If McConnell supported conviction, you’d likely see a lot more,” Democratic Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Van_Hollen">Chris Van Hollen</a> of Maryland told me shortly after <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/mitch-mcconnell-trump-impeachment.html"><i>The New York Times</i> reported</a> that the GOP leader was considering it. Even before that news broke, Van Hollen told me that based on conversations he had had with Republican colleagues, it was clear to him that the number voting to convict the president would exceed the single GOP senator, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> of Utah, who backed Trump’s removal a year ago. Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Sasse">Ben Sasse</a> of Nebraska has sharply criticized Trump’s role in last week’s assault, and Senators <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Murkowski">Lisa Murkowski</a> of Alaska and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Toomey">Pat Toomey</a> of Pennsylvania have said he should resign. “All I can predict now is that there will be more than before, but how many, we just don’t know,” Van Hollen said.<br /><br />
A conviction in the Senate, even if it came after Trump had left office, still carries with it an additional sanction enticing to Democrats and possibly quite a few Republicans: The Senate could vote to punish Trump by barring him from holding office and preventing him from running for president ever again. “That’s a lot more than symbolic,” Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conor_Lamb">Conor Lamb</a> of Pennsylvania told me. “In almost any other scenario I would say, ‘Well, tough, we just got to go out and beat him the old-fashioned way.’ But I think he proved with this attack last week that he just simply should be disqualified from even seeking that office.”<br /><br />
For Democrats in the House, however, that consequence is beyond their control. The vote today was their final chance to affix one more infamy on Donald Trump’s legacy, to send him out of the White House not with a wave but with a kick. “It’s important,” Schakowsky told me, “that he be disgraced.” ###<br /><br />
[Russell Berman is a staff writer at <i>The Atlantic</i>, where he has covered politics since 2014. Before that, he was a staff writer for <a href="https://thewire.in/"><i>The Wire</i></a> in 2014. He was the Congressional correspondent for <a href="https://thehill.com/"><i>The Hill</i></a> from 2010-2014. In 2009, Berman wrote and produced segments for "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_McLaughlin_Group">The McLaughlin Group</a>" on Maryland Public Television. He received a BA (journalism and history) from New York University (NYC).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The Atlantic Monthly Group<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-6396951304049816412021-01-19T10:05:00.000-06:002021-01-19T10:05:38.121-06:00The NY Fishwrap's Cobra (Maureen Dowd) Bites Last & Makes It Count Because The US Capitol Has Played A Major Role In Her Life<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Today, The NY Fishwrap's Cobra (Maureen Dowd) offers a monumentalizing elegy for the recently desecrated US Capitol building. Dowd's late father, Mike Joseph Dowd (Michael was the perferred given name of the eldest of the Dowd siblings), was known as "Captain Mike" among officers in the US Capitol Police force and so, the riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, is personal to The Cobra. If this is (fair & balanced) excellent political/personal commentary, so be it.<br /><br />
PS: The source of this blog's <i>noms de stylo serpent</i> reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/liberties-i-have-a-nickname.html">this 2001 essay</a> by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).<br /><br />
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
Trump’s Capitol Offense<br />
By The Cobra (Maureen Dowd)<br /><br />
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a{color:#395CAE}.tagcloud8{font-size:3.9em;color:#264CA2;z-index:2}.tagcloud8 a{color:#264CA2}.tagcloud9{font-size:4.2em;color:#133B97;z-index:1}.tagcloud9 a{color:#133B97}.tagcloud10{font-size:4.5em;color:#002A8B;z-index:0}.tagcloud10 a{color:#002A8B}.freq{font-size:10pt !important;color:#bbb}#credit{text-align:center;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.6em;font:0.7em 'lucida grande',trebuchet,'trebuchet ms',verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif}#credit a:link{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:visited{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:hover{color:white;background-color:#05f}#credit a:active{text-decoration:underline}// --></style><div id="htmltagcloud"> <span id="0" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">American </a></span> <span id="1" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">calls</a></span> <span id="2" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">Capitol </a></span> <span id="3" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Congress </a></span> <span id="4" class="wrd 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<span id="18" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">hate</a></span> <span id="19" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">heal</a></span> <span id="20" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">house</a></span> <span id="21" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">job</a></span> <span id="22" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">knew</a></span> <span id="23" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">loved</a></span> <span id="24" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Martin </a></span> <span id="25" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">meant</a></span> <span id="26" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Michael </a></span> <span id="27" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Mike </a></span> <span id="28" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">mob</a></span> <span id="29" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">page</a></span> <span id="30" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">police</a></span> <span id="31" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">president</a></span> <span id="32" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">protect</a></span> <span id="33" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">round</a></span> <span id="34" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">security</a></span> <span id="35" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">seeing</a></span> <span id="36" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Senate </a></span> <span id="37" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">small</a></span> <span id="38" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">something</a></span> <span id="39" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">thought</a></span> <span id="40" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">told</a></span> <span id="41" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">took</a></span> <span id="42" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">top</a></span> <span id="43" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">trial</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud9"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">walked</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">Washington </a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">white</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">worked</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">years</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglTL0Gq3o_mE_GBj8CE355LT4BjgNMzimtHBxK358He35k14HeRonM2fhcHDTqjZeH59yudCnzcYKMm7J700AqxWQnLMKgL9S10BudJ4KTUu8gRF8beW35prberJh4qMc-pUg1_A/s1280/Weeping_DC_statue_Capitol_Dome_backqground.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="854" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglTL0Gq3o_mE_GBj8CE355LT4BjgNMzimtHBxK358He35k14HeRonM2fhcHDTqjZeH59yudCnzcYKMm7J700AqxWQnLMKgL9S10BudJ4KTUu8gRF8beW35prberJh4qMc-pUg1_A/s600/Weeping_DC_statue_Capitol_Dome_backqground.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>Even as a small child, I knew I was seeing something tremendous.<br /><br />
I didn’t know that the light in the dome meant that Congress was in session. I didn’t know that the statue with the feathered headdress on top was not a Native American but a goddess of freedom.<br /><br />
I only knew that we were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue at night to pick up my father from work at a gleaming shrine. His job was to guard it.<br /><br />
We thought of that as the family business: keeping the Capitol safe.<br /><br />
We all worked there during summer breaks. My two oldest brothers, Michael and Martin, were pages in the 1950s. Peggy and Kevin worked in the mailroom. Later, I was an intern to a congressman from Syracuse.<br /><br />
Every time I walked the marble halls, a star-struck 17-year-old, I thought to myself: This is where my father walked <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-riot.html">when he protected the Capitol</a>.<br /><br />
We brimmed with reverence, even through moments of irreverence. Michael had to pull a brass spittoon off the foot of an inebriated senator, and Martin had to lie to wives of senators about where their husbands were. My brothers’ page duties included fetching water for Prescott Bush, delivering mail to Richard Nixon, checking if JFK wanted the top of his red-and-white convertible put up when rain threatened, and seating Jackie Kennedy in the visitors’ gallery.<br /><br />
My sister has a room dedicated to pictures of us, beaming on the same Capitol steps desecrated a few days ago, as well as paintings and replicas of the Capitol.<br /><br />
For the last 13 of his 40 years on the DC police force, my dad was a plainclothes detective in charge of Senate security. He oversaw eight other detectives. The Capitol Police was a separate, smaller agency then, more like security guards.<br /><br />
“Captain Mike,” as he was known, loved that job, and Hill denizens loved him, and his brogue. He had a small office on the east side of the building right inside the door, near where the mob swarmed Wednesday. He had a bad memory for names, so men were always called “Big Shot.”<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_United_States_Capitol_shooting">My mom told me about the terrifying hours on March 1, 1954</a>, when Puerto Rican nationalists invaded Congress and fired round after round down from the spectators’ gallery above the House floor. Five congressmen were wounded. My father raced over from the Senate and wrested a .38-caliber pistol from one of the shooters. My mother stood frozen in our house, waiting for news.<br /><br />
My dad marked the man’s gun by carving his initials with a penknife on the handle. At the trial, when the defense lawyer superciliously grilled Mike Joseph Dowd about how he could be sure that the gun in evidence was the same one used in the crime, Dad told him to look on the bottom of the handle. There was the “MJD.”<br /><br />
He respected politicians based on their humanity, not their ideology.<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-riot.html">Donald Trump’s</a> inhumanity, his sick torrent of lies and incitement, came to its inevitable, shameful end on Wednesday, when a mob smeared blood, excrement, hate and death all over the Capitol.<br /><br />
At least Trump put my conservative siblings and me on the same page for once. We agreed — seeing the mob crash in; seeing lawmakers fearing for their lives, crouching and hiding and making calls to plead for the cavalry to come from any of the myriad federal and local police forces here, as Confederate flags waved— that this was a heartbreaking disgrace. It would have enraged my father.<br /><br />
Not only was a Capitol policeman killed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/us/brian-sicknick-police-capitol-dies.html">after being hit by a fire extinguisher</a> [another <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/10/another-capitol-police-death-officer-dies-by-suicide-after-responding-to-pro-trump-riot/?sh=1718abac70dd">US Capitol Police officer committed suicide</a> after returning home from the Capitol Riot], the entire security apparatus meant to protect our democracy failed. Was the pathetic response to the anarchy engineered by Trump? It would not be the first time he sabotaged the government he was running. He was not even moved to protect his own <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lick%20spittle">lickspittle</a>, the vice president, who was in the chamber when it was attacked.<br /><br />
In New York, Donald Trump was a corrupt Joker who <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a12030857/donald-trump-bonwit-teller/">took cudgels to the historic friezes on Bonwit Teller</a>. In Washington, he became something evil. He took cudgels to history itself, to our institutions, decency and democracy.<br /><br />
He draped his autocratic behavior in the American flag. Surrounded by Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, FDR, MLK, and monuments to our war dead, this coward whipped up a horde of conspiracists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and gullible acolytes to try to steal an election for him. He said he would march to the Capitol with them, but he didn’t, of course. He watched his insurrection on TV, like the bum [as LeBron James <a href="https://youtu.be/4ZLGy8VkWM4">claimed earlier</a>] that he is.<br /><br />
Donald Trump is ruined, along with his repellent family. Even Twitter had finally had enough, suspending its leading arsonist after allowing him to fan the flames for years. The House might well impeach him, and he deserves it, though the Senate might not have the time or inclination to toss him out.<br /><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley">Josh Hawley</a>’s political future evaporated in a cloud of tear gas, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz">Ted Cruz</a> reinforced why everyone hates him.<br /><br />
Only two days after the Trump mob followed orders to engage in seditious “<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/watch-giuliani-demand-trial-by-combat-to-settle-election.html">trial by combat</a>,” as the execrable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani">Rudy Giuliani</a> put it, the <u>White House</u> put out a statement: “As President Trump said yesterday, this is a time for healing and unity as one Nation.”<br /><br />
We will heal, once the rough beast in the White House slouches off. Something wicked this way goes. ###<br /><br />
[Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Dowd joined <i>The New York Times</i> as a reporter in 1983, after writing for <i>Time</i> magazine and the now-defunct <i>Washington Star</i>. At <i>The Times</i>, Dowd was nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, then became a columnist for the paper's editorial page in 1995. Dowd's first book was a collection of columns entitled <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bushworld-Enter-Your-Own-Risk/dp/039915258X/ref=pd_sim_b_1"><i>Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk</i></a> (2004). Most recently Dowd has written <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Year-Voting-Dangerously-Derangement-American/dp/1455539252/ref=la_B001IXQBMO_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518368328&sr=1-1"><i>The Year of Voting Dangerously: The Derangement of American Politics</i> </a>(2017). See all of Dowd's books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Maureen-Dowd/e/B001IXQBMO">here</a>. She received a BA (English) from Catholic University (DC).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-83814034959672325942021-01-18T08:24:00.001-06:002021-01-18T17:53:39.487-06:00Just When We Thought 2020 Was A Bad Year & We Were Done With All That, January 2021 Has Proved To Be Even Worse & The Month Is Barely Half Over<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>In the e-mail that brought today's "This Modern World" 'too, Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) also wrote:<blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>This is the last cartoon I will write under the presidency of Donald Trump (unless he wins another term in 2024, but I’m going to let that be a problem for another day). I wanted to write a piece that marked the transitional moment, but obviously there was no way to summarize the awfulness of the past four years in a single cartoon. I know that I am barely scratching the surface here, and that there are countless things I left out — no need to write me to tell me what I “forgot”! This is gestural rather than inclusive. I do not believe the burden is on people who despise Trump for extremely good reasons to reach out and make nice with the side that tried to delegitimize the election, overturn the results, and incited an armed insurrection. There are 20,000 National Guard troops in DC right now, sent there to protect us from one of our two major parties. The GOP will try to shrug it off and carry on as usual, and why not? They got away with it after George W. Bush left the country in tatters. I don’t know if the Trump legacy will be as easy to shake off, but the bar is continually lowered and our standards constantly shifting for the worse. I am hopeful, at least, that we might have a marginally competent government in charge of the covid response, moving forward. I realized with some horror after the election that we were basically going to have to wait out the next three months before anyone addressed the pandemic with any seriousness or urgency, and that’s exactly what happened, but maybe things are about to shift? I have no idea what happens next, I just feel like we are all shipwreck survivors who have managed to drag ourselves up on a beach somewhere. The Capitol riot laid bare the sheer depravity of Trumpism and the right wing echo chamber. I hope it is a stain that never washes out of the Republican party, but I have been doing the work I do for too long to be overly optimistic about that.<br /><br />Until next week, when Donald Trump will be a private citizen facing countless lawsuits, possible bankruptcy, and a post-presidency impeachment trial....<br /><br />
Dan/Tom</blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="arial" size="+1"><b><br /><br />January 2021 is barely half over and it has felt like a continuation of horrible 2020. This blogger's gloomy prognosis is being confirmed day-by-day. The hopeful wish for better days to come is very shaky as we begin the bottom half of January 2021. If this is (fair & balanced) legitmate pessimism, so br it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x TMW]<br />
The End Of An Error<br />
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsodexaBzfHKzwzc7NZRrXemHzekwIR6e0gUg0WJ4UfiCNAOimImVE7GwyzPyanZZOvVkw1QcH84u7r9-LJKe3D1SMxPeEarHS8U0PjafUUBhS_mCMqZvANyuw0k86Zt6jT6oZvg/s2000/tomorrow_01_18_2021_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1853" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsodexaBzfHKzwzc7NZRrXemHzekwIR6e0gUg0WJ4UfiCNAOimImVE7GwyzPyanZZOvVkw1QcH84u7r9-LJKe3D1SMxPeEarHS8U0PjafUUBhS_mCMqZvANyuw0k86Zt6jT6oZvg/s600/tomorrow_01_18_2021_toon.jpg"/></a></div><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a>. The strip debuted in 1990 in the <i>SF Weekly</i>. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily <a href="http://www.thismodernworld.com/">political blog</a>, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 <a href="http://www.herbblockfoundation.org/">Herblock Prize</a> for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 This Modern World<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-54400619773780398692021-01-17T09:59:00.001-06:002021-01-17T09:59:49.369-06:00The NY Fishwrap's Viper (Michelle Goldberg) Reviews The Aftermath Of January 6. 2021 — A Day That Will Live In Infamy Alongside December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>This blog is proud to represent a review of another day of infamy in the history of the United States — January 6, 2021, by the NY Fishwrap's Viper (Michelle Goldberg). She writes, not snark, but with righteous anger at the US Capitol Riot of January 6, 2021. If her essay is a (fair & balanced) example of patriotic writing, so be it.<br /><br />
PS: The source of this blog's <i>noms de stylo serpent</i> reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/liberties-i-have-a-nickname.html">this 2001 essay</a> by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).<br /><br />
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
The Inevitable<br />
By The Viper (Michelle Goldberg)<br /><br />
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</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">United </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">violence</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">violent</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">vote</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">week</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">years</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbv1BGzNIt6jDgXd8iyXxvabUkoRTO_jJOfLBNjcDomGm-kOLenQyWO-Dtq36sHHvFykmSkH47R9sunrDnt4TLQJowMGDCwOqO1RLIJ3Z1sscFpFFNwQZxZm7Npi9EDPRSAoekQ/s2048/photo_of_rioters_storming_the_US_+Capitol_1_6_2021+by.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1878" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHbv1BGzNIt6jDgXd8iyXxvabUkoRTO_jJOfLBNjcDomGm-kOLenQyWO-Dtq36sHHvFykmSkH47R9sunrDnt4TLQJowMGDCwOqO1RLIJ3Z1sscFpFFNwQZxZm7Npi9EDPRSAoekQ/s600/photo_of_rioters_storming_the_US_+Capitol_1_6_2021+by.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>The House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment report quotes, at length, the speech that Donald Trump gave to his devotees on January 6 before many of them stormed the Capitol, baying for execution.<br /><br />
“We’ve got to get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren’t any good, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Cheney">Liz Cheney</a>s of the world, we got to get rid of them,” said President Trump. He urged his minions to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the place where Congress was meeting to certify the election he lost: “Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong.”<br /><br />
A week later, Representative Cheney (R-WY), the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, would vote to get rid of him, joining nine of her fellow Republicans in backing impeachment. “The president of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” she said in a statement, adding, “There has never been a greater betrayal by a president of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”<br /><br />
Trump now becomes the first president in American history to be impeached twice. Half of all presidential impeachments since the Republic began have been impeachments of Trump. This latest impeachment is different than the first, and not just because it was bipartisan. It culminates a week in which Trump has finally faced the broad social pariahdom he’s always deserved.<br /><br />
When a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman [<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/liebengood-capitol-police-death/2021/01/10/3a495b84-5357-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html">a second Capitol Police office committed suicide</a> after returning home on 1/6/21] and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.When a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.When a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol, killing one policeman [a second Capiotl and pummeling others, it also tore down a veil. Suddenly, all but the most fanatical partisans admitted that Trump was exactly who his fiercest critics have always said he was.<br /><br />
Banks promised to stop lending to him. Major social media companies banned him. One of the Trump Organization’s law firms dropped it as a client. The coach of the New England Patriots rejected the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the PGA pulled its namesake tournament from a Trump golf course. Universities revoked honorary degrees. Some of the country’s biggest corporations, along with the US Chamber of Commerce, pledged to withhold donations from congressional enablers of his voter fraud fantasy. Bill de Blasio announced that New York City would end contracts with the Trump Organization to run two ice rinks and other concessions worth millions annually.<br /><br />
Trumpists often whine about being ostracized — Melania Trump being snubbed by <i>Vogue</i> seems a particular sore point — but watching all these institutions reject the president now is a reminder of how many didn’t do so earlier.<br /><br />
At the beginning of the president’s reign, I expected this moment of widespread repudiation to come quickly. But Trump survived the special counsel investigation. He survived his first impeachment. When he seemed poised to retain his political influence even after losing a presidential election, I despaired of a reckoning ever coming at all. “When this is all over, nobody will admit to ever having supported it,” <a href="https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1151669588808986624?s=20">David Frum tweeted in 2019</a>. Two weeks ago, that seemed like wishful thinking.<br /><br />
There’s a bleak sort of relief in the arrival, after everything, of <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=comeuppance">comeuppance</a>. The question is whether it’s too late, whether the low-grade insurgency that the president has inspired and encouraged will continue to terrorize the country that’s leaving him behind.<br /><br />
“This was an armed violent rebellion at the very seat of government, and the emergency is not over,” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, told me. “So we have to use every means at our disposal to reassert the supremacy of constitutional government over chaos and violence.”<br /><br />
The siege of the Capitol wasn’t a departure for Trump, it was an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apotheosis">apotheosis</a>. For years, he’s been telling us he wouldn’t accept an election loss. For years, he’s been urging his followers to violence, refusing to condemn their violence, and insinuating that even greater violence was on the way. As <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/03/13/exclusive-president-donald-trump-paul-ryan-blocked-subpoenas-of-democrats/">he told <i>Breitbart</i> in 2019</a>, in one of his characteristic threats, “I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”<br /><br />
January 6 wasn't even the first time Trump cheered an armed siege of an American capitol; he did that last spring when gun-toting anti-lockdown activists stormed the Michigan statehouse. Later, after news emerged of a plot to kidnap and publicly execute Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/27/politics/trump-gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-michigan/index.html">Trump said</a>, “I mean, we’ll have to see if it’s a problem. Right? People are entitled to say maybe it was a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”<br /><br />
It is shocking that Trump didn’t act when Congress could have faced a mass hostage-taking, or worse. It is not surprising.<br /><br />
Throughout his presidency, Republicans pretended not to hear what the president was saying. For the last few months, Republican election officials in Georgia have spoken with mounting desperation of being barraged with death threats as a result of Trump’s ceaseless lies about the election, but national Republicans did little to restrain him. There was no exodus away from the president and his brand when, during the debates, he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”<br /><br />
The far right took heart from the president’s winks and nods, retweets and outright displays of support. “Donald Trump, ever since his campaign, throughout his four years in office, has done nothing but pander to these people,” <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/08/dhs/">Daryl Johnson</a>, a former senior intelligence analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, told me.<br /><br />
Now a private security consultant, Johnson was caught in a political tempest during the Obama administration, when, at DHS, he wrote a report warning of a “resurgence in right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity,” including efforts to recruit veterans. Republicans were apoplectic, seeing the report as an effort to brand conservatives as potential terrorists. Johnson’s unit was disbanded and he left government.<br /><br />
Under Trump, political pressure on federal law enforcement to ignore the far right would only grow. After a white supremacist killed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/el-paso-shooting.html">23 people in a Walmart in El Paso in 2019</a>, Dave Gomez, a former FBI supervisor overseeing terrorism cases, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-faces-skepticism-over-its-anti-domestic-terror-efforts/2019/08/04/c9c928bc-b6e0-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html">told <i>The Washington Post</i></a> that the agency was “hamstrung” in trying to investigate white nationalists. “There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,” said Gomez.<br /><br />
The violent far right appears to have been emboldened by the experience of being treated as valued constituents. “The problem existed before him, but it’s really flourished even more under his administration,” Johnson said of Trump.<br /><br />
This is a departure from previous patterns, Johnson said: Right-wing extremist activity usually abates during Republican administrations, when conservatives feel less existentially threatened. But Trump kept the far right’s paranoia and sense of grievance at a constant boil, and gave them permission to act. The people at the Capitol who said they were there because the president wanted them to be weren’t necessarily delusional.<br /><br />
But there’s no reason to believe that the threat will recede when Trump is gone. Johnson believes it’s going to get worse, and he’s not alone. A <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/14/intelligence-bulletin-trump-domestic-violence-extremists/">recent federal intelligence bulletin warns</a>, “Amplified perceptions of fraud surrounding the outcome of the General Election and the change in control of the Presidency and Senate,” along with fear of what the new administration has in store, will “very likely will lead to an increase in DVE violence.” DVE stands for “domestic violent extremists.”<br /><br />
Already, Washington looks like a war zone. Joe Biden’s inauguration next week will be closed to the public. Representative Peter Meijer, one of the 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment, said on MSNBC that <a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1349747027438153734?s=20">he and some of his colleagues are buying body armor</a>: “Our expectation is that someone may try to kill us.”<br /><br />
The end of Trump’s presidency has shaken American stability as even 9/11 did not, and that’s before you factor in around 4,000 people a day dying of COVID-19.<br /><br />
Making Trump face consequences for trying to overturn the election will not, by itself, stop the disorder he’s instigated. But it may be a precondition for making the country governable. “The time to stop tyrants and despots is when you first see them breaking from the demands of law,” said Raskin. Trump, he said, “has been indulged and protected for so long by some of his colleagues that he brought us to the brink of hell in the Capitol of the United States.”<br /><br />
An animating irony of Trumpism — one common among authoritarians — is that it revels in lawlessness while glorifying law and order. “This is the central contradiction-slash-truth of authoritarian regimes,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU historian and the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strongmen-Mussolini-Present-Ruth-Ben-Ghiat/dp/1324001542"><i>Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present</i></a> (2020). She cited Mussolini’s definition of fascism as a “revolution of reaction.” Fascism had a radical impulse to overturn the existing order, “to liberate extremism, lawlessness, but it also claims to be a reaction to bring order to society.”<br /><br />
The same is true of Trump’s movement. Central to Trump’s mystique is that he breaks rules and gets away with it. To reassert the rule of law, said Ben-Ghiat, “showing the world that he cannot in fact get away with it” is crucial.<br /><br />
That is part of the work of the second impeachment. This impeachment may be as much a burden for Democrats as for Republicans; a Senate trial would surely postpone some of the urgent business of the Biden administration. It has gone forward because Democrats had no choice if they wanted to defend our increasingly fragile system of government.<br /><br />
The very fact that Raskin will lead the prosecution of Trump in the Senate is a sign of the solemnity with which Democrats are approaching it. As you’ve perhaps <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/jamie-raskin-trump.html">read by now</a>, Raskin recently suffered the most gutting loss imaginable. Tormented by depression, his 25-year-old son, “a radiant light in this broken world,” as <a href="https://repraskin.medium.com/statement-of-congressman-jamie-raskin-and-sarah-bloom-raskin-on-the-remarkable-life-of-tommy-raskin-f93b0bb5d184">Raskin and his wife wrote in a eulogy</a>, took his own life on Dec. 31, “the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020.”<br /><br />
Raskin buried his son on January 5, the day before he went to the Capitol to count the electoral vote. His youngest daughter didn’t want him to go; he felt he had to be there but invited her and his other daughter’s husband to come with him. When the mob breached the building, Raskin was on the House floor, and his daughter and son-in-law were in an office with his chief of staff. “The kids were hiding under a desk,” he said. “They had pushed as much furniture as they could up against the door, but people were banging at the door.”<br /><br />
That day, Raskin began working with his colleagues to draft both an article of impeachment and a resolution calling on Mike Pence to invoke the 25<sup>th</sup> Amendment.<br /><br />
I asked him why, after all he’s endured, he wanted to lead the effort to bring Trump to trial. “I’ve devoted my life and career to the defense of our democracy and our people,” said Raskin, who was a constitutional law professor before he was a congressman. Then he said: “My son is in my heart, and in my chest I feel him every day. And Tommy was a great lover of human freedom and democracy and he would want me to be doing whatever I’m asked to do to defend democracy against chaos and fascism.”<br /><br />
It is not yet clear who Raskin will be up against. Prominent law firms have refused to represent Trump in his postelection legal fights, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-14/trump-struggles-to-build-legal-team-as-impeachment-trial-nears"><i>Bloomberg News</i> reports</a> that lawyers who have defended the president in the past don’t want to do so anymore. For four years, as Trump has brought ever more havoc and hatred to this country, many have wondered what it would take to dent his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impunity">impunity</a>. The answer appears to be twofold: Committing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition">sedition</a>, and losing power. ###<br /><br />
[Michelle Goldberg has been an Opinion columnist at this newspaper since 2017. She is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Michelle-Goldberg/e/B001ITW0ZA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1540294954&sr=1-2-ent">author of several books</a> about politics, religion and women’s rights, and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual harassment issues. She received a BA (English) from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and an MS (journalism) from the University of California at Berkeley.]<br />
<br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-25195159714745784612021-01-16T15:41:00.000-06:002021-01-16T15:41:04.240-06:00The Loser Finally Faces Realty — Although There May Be One Last Gasp Of Unreality (National Violent Demonstations) On January 20, 2021<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>The NY Fishwrap's Krait (Gail Collins) is a Queen of Snark (along with Maureen Dowd and Michelle Goldberg) and her Loser snark-infusions are classics in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre"><i>genre</i></a>. <b>Be careful in snark-infested waters</b> is a good watchword. If this is (fair & balanced) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invective">political invective</a>, so be it.<br /><br />
PS: The source of this blog's <i>noms de stylo serpent</i> reference to the three women on the NY Fishwrap's Op-Ed staff began with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/opinion/liberties-i-have-a-nickname.html">this 2001 essay</a> by The Cobra (Maureen Dowd) who's been joined by her distaff colleagues: The Krait (Gail Collins), and — most recently — The Viper (Michelle Goldberg).<br /><br />
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
Trump Swings And Misses — Talk About A Bankrupt Presidency<br />
By The Krait (Gail Collins)<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">thought</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">told</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">vice</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">vote</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">years</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEKfUz34wPghS7ul0fZZviS5VX9N83F5s-BjjuRhW2BViOhkA15MO6flq9Dmv8_y_CXdAYV3NgU_-2TZVnV6Ug9y2iy3lVjL5WnjBooLLHsE4UoHGTDGn1_n6SlDmb3p02MCjxA/s2048/reality_defeats_tRump_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1589" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghEKfUz34wPghS7ul0fZZviS5VX9N83F5s-BjjuRhW2BViOhkA15MO6flq9Dmv8_y_CXdAYV3NgU_-2TZVnV6Ug9y2iy3lVjL5WnjBooLLHsE4UoHGTDGn1_n6SlDmb3p02MCjxA/s600/reality_defeats_tRump_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>So which do you think gives Donald Trump more pain — being the first doubly impeached president in history or being fired as host of that big golf tournament?<br /><br />
The president has certainly had a bad time since he revved up his supporters right before they stormed the Capitol last week. The fact that now he’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/trump-statement-violence.html">being praised for telling them not to riot again during the inauguration</a> is a pretty good measure of how pathetic his reputation has gotten.<br /><br />
And it’s sort of wonderful <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/business/trump-brand-capitol-mob.html">to hear reports</a> that the thing that’s crushed him most is the PGA’s decision to move its 2022 championship games to someplace other than the Trump National Golf Club.<br /><br />
Plus he’s been barred from Twitter. If investigators could just figure out some way to impound Trump’s televisions, that’d be the end of him for sure.<br /><br />
We’ve been watching this drama ever since Trump refused to acknowledge he lost the election and went on a completely loony, unprecedented campaign claiming the vote had been fixed by Biden supporters. A multitude of his manic followers thronged to Washington, where Trump advised them, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”<br /><br />
Imagine his shock when they rushed to the Capitol in rage.<br /><br />
Even some of the president’s avid supporters in Congress were terrified by the mob smashing toward the rooms where they were cowering. (And, in the case of some right-wing Republicans, breathing heavily without benefit of a mask.)<br /><br />
“He lit the flame,” said the third-ranking Republican in the House, Liz Cheney. On Wednesday, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/business/trump-brand-capitol-mob.html">10 of Trump’s own party members voted with all the Democrats</a> to impeach him again.<br /><br />
The White House responded with a video of Trump saying that “violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country,” which is … a good thought.<br /><br />
A day earlier, he went to Alamo, Texas, where he figured he could counter the flood of bad publicity by reminding people of his great triumph in building a wall <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system">across about 450 miles of the 1,954-mile border</a> with Mexico. Most of which already had barriers. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/27/border-wall-texas-cost-rising-trump/">Costing taxpayers billions of dollars</a>, none of it paid by Mexico.He took approximately one minute of his trip to defend his indefensible actions on January 6.<br /><br />
“People thought what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump told reporters.<br /><br />
Now quoting “people” is very Trumpian, but who do you think he specifically had in mind? Anybody besides his family and Rudy Giuliani? One of the more terrible aspects of Trump’s dwindling presidency is that Rudy is left as the guy with the chief executive’s ear.<br /><br />
Everybody from Lehigh University to Shopify has announced it’s terminating relationships with the president. Really, you get the impression a lot of people are just rooting through their offices, trying to find some minor Trump connection they could announce they’re severing.<br /><br />
Trump isn’t exactly mending broken relationships. Fresh from the violence-packed assault on the Capitol by his crazed supporters, he’s managed to disparage almost everyone who hasn’t broken into a federal office building on his behalf. Even Vice President Mike Pence.<br /><br />
Pence is an excellent example of how hard it is to satisfy the president. His great sin was refusing to pretend that Trump hadn’t lost the election. As a result, Trump happily listened to that crowd of rabid backers yelling “Hang Mike Pence.” And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mike-pence-trump.html">he reportedly told the vice president</a> that he was going to “go down in history as a pussy.”<br /><br />
Possible post-presidential employment: a new reality game show called “<i>Patriot or Pussy</i>.” [emphasis supplied]<br /><br />
He’s got to think of something to do. Trump’s advisers seem to have finally gotten him to accept the fact that after next week, he won’t be president. He will no longer be able to set national policy, or carry out the parts of the job he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/us/politics/trump-turkey-pardon.html">seemed to find genuinely rewarding</a> — like pardoning turkeys.<br /><br />
Retirement, in the sense of living off his savings, is probably not an option. The president has spent all his adult life trying to tie his name to the idea of incredible riches. In truth it was mainly incredible borrowing. Now the rats — OK, be fair, the financiers — are leaving the sinking ship and he’s surrounded by debt disasters. The banks that have lent him tons of money want it back.<br /><br />
<i>Deutsche</i> Bank, which the Trump Organization <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/trump-deutsche-bank-rosemary-vrablic.html">owes about $330 million</a>, has retreated from the relationship. The loans — personally guaranteed by the president — start coming due in 2023, by which time we presume the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/nyregion/trump-taxes-cy-vance.html">Manhattan district attorney will have finished those investigations</a> into insurance, bank and tax-related fraud.<br /><br />
Where does he go from here? Having your reputation in tatters is sort of a problem when your major life success has been selling the rights to use your name. He’s always bragged about his years and years of running the Central Park ice-skating rink — except that the city wants to take that away, too.<br /><br />
Ditto the merry-go-round, which might make Trump the first business mogul who can’t hang onto a carousel deal.<br /><br />
And there probably isn’t a whole lot of demand in the gambling business for a man who can run a casino into bankruptcy.<br /><br />
Maybe he’ll go back to his roots and start searching for a Barack Obama birthplace in Kenya.###<br /><br />
[Gail Collins joined the <i>New York Times</i> in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an op-ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the <i>Times</i> editorial page.Her most recent book is<a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-Stopping-Us-Now-History/dp/0316286540/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=77996716469733&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&keywords=no+stopping+us+now&qid=1572005719&sr=8-1"> <i>No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History</i></a> (2019), See other books by Gail Collins <a href="https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B000APTGV4?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=date-desc-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader">here</a>. She received a BA (journalism) from Marquette University (WI) and an MA (government) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.]<br />
<br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-8092347873522142492021-01-15T14:52:00.000-06:002021-01-15T14:52:50.357-06:00Before The Impeachment Trial Begins (Whenever That Might Be), You Can Prepare For The Solemn Event With The Background Information In Ms. Edmonson's 2021 Impeachment Primer<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Sorry for the late appearancce of the January 15, 2021 post to this blog. An interruption occurred, but peace, quiet, & order have been restored in the blogger's sanctum. If this is a (fair & balanced) illustration of "Better Late Than Never," so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
Why Remove Trump Now? A Guide To The Second Impeachment Of A President<br />
By Catie Edmondson<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">told</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud8"><a href="#tagcloud">trial</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">tried</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud8"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">United </a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">vote</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">week</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSqbOgv0N59o3NkLCnoHpYLgJQsFb70N6qneQTJlc3SiZikQgz5iR9kUG80IDG_yht8xIAhqaIF7QSOsHkQWB71ei476SVWPMbLXh1Burft0aDWHYa_dRYI3S869COdkChgwfaXA/s1400/mnecken_prophecy_fulfilled_irfan.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSqbOgv0N59o3NkLCnoHpYLgJQsFb70N6qneQTJlc3SiZikQgz5iR9kUG80IDG_yht8xIAhqaIF7QSOsHkQWB71ei476SVWPMbLXh1Burft0aDWHYa_dRYI3S869COdkChgwfaXA/s600/mnecken_prophecy_fulfilled_irfan.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/13/us/trump-impeachment#trump-impeachment-vote-house">second impeachment of President Trump</a>, coming a week after he egged on a mob of supporters to storm the Capitol, is taking place with extraordinary speed and testing the bounds of the process itself while also raising questions never contemplated before. Here’s what we know.<br /><br />
<font size="+2">Impeachment is one of the Constitution’s gravest penalties.</font><br /><br />
Impeachment is one of the weightiest tools the Constitution gives Congress to hold government officials, including the president, accountable for misconduct and abuse of power.<br /><br />
Members of the House consider whether to impeach the president — the equivalent of an indictment in a criminal case — and members of the Senate consider whether to remove him, holding a trial in which senators act as the jury. The test, as set by the Constitution, is whether the president has committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”<br /><br />
The House vote requires only a simple majority of lawmakers to agree that the president has, in fact, committed high crimes and misdemeanors; the Senate vote requires a two-thirds majority.<br /><br />
<font size="+2">The charge against Trump is ‘incitement of insurrection.’</font><br /><br />
<a href="https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/articles-impeachment-trump-xml/b0422e292cebafda/full.pdf">The article</a> [PDF], drafted by Representatives <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/david-cicilline-impeachment-manager.html">David Cicilline</a> of Rhode Island, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/ted-lieu-impeachment-manager.html">Ted Lieu</a> of California, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/us/politics/jamie-raskin-impeachment-manager.html">Jamie Raskin</a> of Maryland and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Nadler">Jerrold Nadler</a> of New York, charged Mr. Trump with “incitement of insurrection,” saying he is guilty of “inciting violence against the government of the United States.”<br /><br />
The article cited Mr. Trump’s weekslong campaign to falsely discredit the results of the November election, and it quotes directly from the speech he gave on the day of the siege in which he told his supporters to go to the Capitol. “If you don’t fight like hell,” he said, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.”<br /><br />
<font size="+2">Proponents say impeachment is worthwhile even though Trump has only days left in office.</font><br /><br />
While the House moved with remarkable speed to impeach Mr. Trump, the Senate trial to determine whether to remove him cannot begin until January 19, his final full day in office. That means any conviction would almost certainly not be completed until after he leaves the White House.<br /><br />
Democrats have argued that Mr. Trump’s offense — using his power as the nation’s leader and commander in chief to incite an insurrection against the legislative branch — is so grave that it must be addressed, even with just a few days remaining in his term. To let it go unpunished, Democrats argued, would set a dangerous precedent of impunity for future presidents.<br /><br />
“Is there little time left?” Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steny_Hoyer">Steny H. Hoyer</a>, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, said during the debate. “Yes. But it is never too late to do the right thing.”<br /><br />
Republicans, many of whom voted to overturn the election results, have claimed that going through the impeachment process so late in Mr. Trump’s term will foster unnecessary division and that the country should move on from last week’s siege.<br /><br />
<font size="+2">The biggest consequence for Trump could be disqualifying him from holding office again.</font><br /><br />
Conviction in an impeachment trial would not automatically disqualify Mr. Trump from future public office. But if the Senate were to convict him, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/us/trump-senate-presidency.html">Constitution allows a subsequent vote to bar an official</a> from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”<br /><br />
That vote would require only a simple majority of senators. Such a step could be an appealing prospect not just to Democrats, but also to many Republicans who either have set their sights on the presidency themselves or are convinced that it is the only thing that will purge Mr. Trump from their party. Senator <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mcconnell-backs-trump-impeachment.html">Mitch McConnell</a> of Kentucky, the Republican leader, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mcconnell-backs-trump-impeachment.html">is said to hold the latter view</a>.<br /><br />
There is no precedent, however, for disqualifying a president from future office, and the issue could end up before the Supreme Court.<br /><br />
<font size="+2">The Senate trial won’t start until after Biden becomes president.</font><br /><br />
Democrats who control the House can choose when to send their article of impeachment to the Senate, at which point that chamber would have to immediately move to begin the trial. But because the Senate is not scheduled to hold a regular session until January 19, even if the House immediately transmitted the charge to the other side of the Capitol, an agreement between Senate Republican and Democratic leaders would be needed to take it up before then.<br /><br />
Mr. McConnell said on Wednesday that he would not agree to do so, meaning that the article could not be taken up until the day before Mr. Biden is sworn in. Since time is needed for the Senate to set the rules for an impeachment trial, that means the proceeding probably would not start until after Mr. Biden was president, and Democrats had operational control of the Senate.<br /><br />
“Given the rules, procedures, and Senate precedents that govern presidential impeachment trials, there is simply no chance that a fair or serious trial could conclude before President-elect Biden is sworn in next week,” <a href="https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/mcconnell-statement-on-senate-schedule-jan-2021">Mr. McConnell said</a>. “In light of this reality, I believe it will best serve our nation if Congress and the executive branch spend the next seven days completely focused on facilitating a safe inauguration and an orderly transfer of power to the incoming Biden administration.”<br /><br />
The trial could consume the Senate during Biden’s first days in office.<br /><br />
Once the Senate receives the impeachment charge, it must immediately take up the issue, as articles of impeachment carry the highest privilege. Under rules in place for decades, impeachment is the only issue the Senate can consider while a trial is underway; it cannot simultaneously consider other legislative business.<br /><br />
But Mr. Biden has asked Mr. McConnell whether it would be possible to alter that rule, allowing the Senate to conduct Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial on a parallel track to consideration of his cabinet nominees, splitting its days between the two. Mr. McConnell told Mr. Biden he would consult with the Senate parliamentarian on whether that would be possible.<br /><br />
If such a bifurcated process were not possible, House Democrats might choose to hold back the article to allow Mr. Biden time to win confirmation of his team before a trial got underway.<br /><br />
The Senate could hold a trial for Mr. Trump even after he has left office, though there is no precedent for a president being tried after his term is over. Other government officials who were impeached have been tried after they departed.<br /><br />
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/25/us/politics/ukraine-transcript-trump.html">Only two presidents other than Mr. Trump have been impeached</a> — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson">Andrew Johnson</a> in 1868 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton">Bill Clinton</a> in 1998 — and both were ultimately acquitted and completed their terms in office. ###<br /><br />
[Catie Edmondson is is a Washington, DC-based reporter for <i>The New York Times</i> covering Congress, with a focus on foreign policy. From June 2018-January 2019, she was a James Reston Reporting Fellow at the <i>Times</i>. She previously interned at <i>The Boston Globe</i> and the <i>Milwaukee Journal Sentinel</i> before joining the <i>Times,</i>. Edmonson received a BA (English) from Barnard College (NYC) where she was the editor-in-chief of the <i>Columbia Daily Spectator</i> (campus newspaper). [<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Fandos">Nicholas Fandos</a> contributed reporting for this essay.]<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-76050872881611078112021-01-14T07:23:00.000-06:002021-01-14T07:23:33.217-06:00As If There Weren't Enough Messes Already — Now We Must Witness The First Do-Over Impeachment In US History<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Well, the hope that 2021 would be an improvement over 2020, as far as "bad years" go, didn't even last for a week in January 2021. So, easy come — easy go, according to the lament of the unlucky. Mark Twain wrote at the end of Chapter 28 in "Huckleberry Finn" (1884) — "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/28/magazine/on-language-you-pays-yer-money.html#:~:text=Mark%20Twain%20used%20the%20saying,and%20you%20takes%20your%20choice!">You pays your money and you takes your choice</a>." Well, as Bette Davis said in "All About Eve" (1950): "<a href="https://www.looper.com/35545/movie-lines-youve-misquoting/">Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride</a>." If this is a (fair & balanced) assessment of 2021 — the year of the second impeachment of POTUS 45, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[x The Atlantic]<br />
This Impeachment Is Different<br />
David A. Graham<br /><br />
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a{color:#395CAE}.tagcloud8{font-size:3.9em;color:#264CA2;z-index:2}.tagcloud8 a{color:#264CA2}.tagcloud9{font-size:4.2em;color:#133B97;z-index:1}.tagcloud9 a{color:#133B97}.tagcloud10{font-size:4.5em;color:#002A8B;z-index:0}.tagcloud10 a{color:#002A8B}.freq{font-size:10pt !important;color:#bbb}#credit{text-align:center;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.6em;font:0.7em 'lucida grande',trebuchet,'trebuchet ms',verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif}#credit a:link{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:visited{color:#777;text-decoration:none}#credit a:hover{color:white;background-color:#05f}#credit a:active{text-decoration:underline}// --></style><div id="htmltagcloud"> <span id="0" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">almost</a></span> <span id="1" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">already</a></span> <span id="2" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">American </a></span> <span id="3" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">approval</a></span> <span id="4" class="wrd 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href="#tagcloud">enough</a></span> <span id="18" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">fall</a></span> <span id="19" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">far</a></span> <span id="20" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">floor</a></span> <span id="21" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">GOP</a></span> <span id="22" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">happen</a></span> <span id="23" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">House </a></span> <span id="24" class="wrd tagcloud7"><a href="#tagcloud">impeachment</a></span> <span id="25" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">inauguration</a></span> <span id="26" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">leader</a></span> <span id="27" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">leave</a></span> <span id="28" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">McConnell </a></span> <span id="29" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">members</a></span> <span id="30" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">occurs</a></span> <span id="31" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">overturn</a></span> <span id="32" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">party</a></span> <span id="33" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">politics</a></span> <span id="34" class="wrd tagcloud7"><a href="#tagcloud">president</a></span> <span id="35" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">ranks</a></span> <span id="36" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">rating</a></span> <span id="37" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">removal</a></span> <span id="38" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">reports</a></span> <span id="39" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">represented</a></span> <span id="40" class="wrd tagcloud7"><a href="#tagcloud">Republican </a></span> <span id="41" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">require</a></span> <span id="42" class="wrd tagcloud7"><a href="#tagcloud">Senate </a></span> <span id="43" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">shift</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">support</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">toward</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud5"><a href="#tagcloud">trial</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">uncertainty</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">voted</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGzkcTl9bZU4U37sfuvMLvSVYZ2lfWAPb8VL3jUUdm8L7qkWAHQb6ho9bxE6LGvm6KRoiBK_6rvEsnCBFdxws8sobuH9jodXA34jOGLXtmDffboFo_pay32YxFb0b3XbrfmVzIiA/s2048/Impeachment_II_photo.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGzkcTl9bZU4U37sfuvMLvSVYZ2lfWAPb8VL3jUUdm8L7qkWAHQb6ho9bxE6LGvm6KRoiBK_6rvEsnCBFdxws8sobuH9jodXA34jOGLXtmDffboFo_pay32YxFb0b3XbrfmVzIiA/s600/Impeachment_II_photo.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>Maybe the second time’s the charm.<br /><br />
This afternoon, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump">Donald Trump</a>, the third president in American history to be impeached, became <i>the first to be impeached twice</i> [emphasis supplied]. The House of Representatives voted 232–197 to impeach Trump for inciting the attempted <i>coup</i> on January 6 and for trying to overturn <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden">Joe Biden</a>’s election as president. The matter now goes to the Senate, where a trial is unlikely before Biden’s January 20 inauguration. No president has ever been convicted and removed.<br /><br />
Almost exactly a year ago, the nation found itself in a position that was very similar and yet completely different. The Democratic-led House had impeached Trump, but the final result was a foregone conclusion: The Senate, led by Republicans, would quickly bury it and acquit the president. The votes would come almost entirely along party lines. Trump would remain president.<br /><br />
No matter what happens now, Trump will leave the presidency by January 20. But the circumstances of his departure and his future in politics are up in the air, because we don’t yet know what will happen in the Senate. It is not clear where Senator Majority Leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_McConnell">Mitch McConnell</a> stands, nor how he might manage his caucus. It is not clear if GOP senators will break with Trump. It is not clear when a Senate trial will begin. It’s not clear who will defend Trump in a Senate trial or how the trial will run.<br /><br />
The cause of this uncertainty is a tectonic shift in the Republican Party—not as large as one might hope or expect, given what occurred on January 6, but still enough to shake up impeachment. Last fall, only a few members of Congress in both chambers crossed party lines. Three House Democrats voted against impeachment, and one almost immediately became a Republican. One former Republican representative voted to impeach, but he’d already had to leave the party over his criticism of President Trump. In the Senate, only Republican Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a> broke ranks.<br /><br />
Today, however, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956621191/these-are-the-10-republicans-who-voted-to-impeach-trump">10 House Republicans voted to impeach</a>. Most prominently, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Cheney">Liz Cheney</a> of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the caucus, has been an outspoken advocate of the move. Meanwhile, Minority Leader <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McCarthy_%28California_politician%29">Kevin McCarthy</a>—who took part in attempts to overturn the election on January 6—opposed impeachment, but did not whip his members’ votes, and warned Republicans not to attack colleagues who support impeachment, for fear it could put their lives in danger.<br /><br />
These Republican votes made the impeachment the most bipartisan in history, but they did not change the outcome. The real action will be in the Senate. Once again, the odds that Trump will be convicted seem long, but this time, Republicans are much more open to the question. Conviction requires a two-thirds vote. (If Trump were convicted, it is likely he would also be barred from holding office in the future, which would require only a majority of the Senate in a second vote.)<br /><br />
Yesterday evening, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/us/politics/mcconnell-backs-trump-impeachment.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20210113"><i>The New York Times</i> reported</a> that McConnell “has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party.” Other outlets matched that reporting; <a href="https://www.axios.com/mcconnell-trump-convict-impeachment-trial-99246975-8c02-47f4-90d3-14a23c00afd1.html"><i>Axios</i></a> says McConnell is in fact leaning toward conviction. (His wife, former Department of Transportation Secretary <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Chao">Elaine Chao</a>, resigned from the administration after the attempted coup.) In a letter to colleagues today, however, <a href="https://twitter.com/JulieNBCNews/status/1349448698556776448">McConnell said</a> he had not made a decision about how to vote.<br /><br />
Parsing these reports is difficult. Such stories don’t get out without McConnell and people around him wanting them out, for whatever reason. The powerful Republican leader is sending a message, but it isn’t clear what he’s signaling, or to whom. McConnell’s support for conviction would be essential to any effort to convict. While the past month <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/mcconnell-trump-senate-election/617539/">has already shown the cracks in his normally rock-solid control</a>, the 17 Republicans needed to convict will not break ranks without his go-ahead, but his support might encourage senators who have long disliked or even loathed Trump privately to turn on him publicly.<br /><br />
Don’t hold your breath, though. There’s a gap <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Gorge">the size of the Red River Gorge</a> between McConnell world releasing trial balloons and the senator publicly stating his support for removal, much less actively encouraging colleagues to join him. But senators who turn on Trump might find themselves pushing on an open door. While Trump’s loyal supporters are furious over the second impeachment, the White House itself seems paralyzed. The president, rendered practically speechless by the suspension of his Twitter account, has said almost nothing, and there’s been no media blitz by what’s left of the rest of his administration. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-trump-impeach/2021/01/12/5e873dd0-54ed-11eb-a08b-f1381ef3d207_story.html"><i>The Washington Post</i> reports</a> that the White House counsel is not preparing for impeachment, and that the president’s legislative-affairs team is not contacting lawmakers.<br /><br />
This leaves the president effectively defenseless. If a trial occurs after Inauguration Day, it isn’t clear who would defend Trump. He has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-lawyers/trump-may-turn-to-giuliani-again-to-defend-against-impeachment-idUSKBN29F0MV">reportedly considered</a> hiring Rudy Giuliani, <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-wont-pay-rudy-giuliani-election-legal-work_n_5fffa763c5b6c77d85ecbe46">whose efforts on Trump’s behalf</a> have so far been disastrous—he helped precipitate the first impeachment—and who participated in the same rally that incited the riot, calling for “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_combat#:~:text=Trial%20by%20combat%20%28also%20wager,was%20proclaimed%20to%20be%20right.">trial by combat</a>.”<br /><br />
The reasons this impeachment is so different are plain enough. First, Trump already lost his reelection campaign, which neuters his threat to Republican officeholders. Back then, they were terrified that getting crosswise with the president could doom their careers—and though this hardly represented courage, they were probably right, given how he’d torpedoed other Republican critics. To be sure, Trump has promised to campaign against GOP officials who did not back his attempt to overturn the election, but his invincibility was already punctured, and has been sapped further by last week’s disaster.<br /><br />
Second, the fact that the attack targeted Congress has sowed fury and resentment among members. It’s one thing to look on as Trump attacks, or encourages attacks, on others. It’s another to see insurrectionists marching through your chambers and trying to harm you.<br /><br />
Third, public opinion has shifted. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/impeachment-incredibly-popular/603661/">As I wrote in December 2019</a>, the first impeachment was far more popular than any of the political discourse might have suggested. Once again, there is strong support for impeachment, but there is also a material shift in feelings about Trump. For four years, the president’s approval rating was one of the stranger indicators in American politics. Trump was wildly unpopular—but he was also enduringly popular with a strong minority of the public, which meant that while his approval rating was always low, it had a floor. Many observers wondered what could ever break the floor. January 6 may finally have done that. Polls show bipartisan revulsion toward the president, with <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/13/trump-approval-rating-poll-458602">his approval falling to historic lows</a>.<br /><br />
Whether this will be enough to attain a conviction for Trump won’t be clear for some time. As the Trump era comes to an end, it is one last parting gift of roiling uncertainty that he leaves the nation. ###<br /><br />
[David A. Graham is a staff writer at <i>The Atlantic</i>, where he covers US politics and global news. Graham previously edited <i>The Atlantic</i>'s politics section and also has reported for <i>Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal</i>, and <i>The National</i>. He received a BA (history, Islamic studies, and Arabic) from Duke University (NC).]<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-22737485327324854802021-01-13T07:40:00.002-06:002021-01-13T09:47:33.469-06:00Yale's Timothy Snyder Suggests That No One Should Be Executed For "3 Question Marks" In A Tweet, But This Blog Responds WIth A Demand That An Individual Who Tries To Overthrow The Government Of The United States Of America Should "Go To The Wall" Without Delay<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b><i>The Washington Post</i> republished an Opinion essay written on July 30, 2020 by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder in the days after January 6, 2021. The essay originally was prompted by a demand to "Delay The 2020 Election" made by the eventual Loser before the vote that followed on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Finally, on March 6, 2021, the US Congress began the process of verifying the Electoral Vote certificates from each state in the United States of America. Simultaneously, after decrying unproven and imaginary election fraud, The Loser assembled a mob of deluded followers and directed them to go to the US Capitol Building and halt the Electoral Vote certification so that their Loser might remain in power. The unthinkable riot took place with the deaths of two US Capitol Police officers (one at the hands of the rioters and the other by his own hand after returning home after the riot was quelled) and four of the invading rioters. Damage was done to the US Capitol itself and offices were looted by the rioters. It was one of the ugliest events in this nation's history and 1/6/2021 takes its place with 9/11/2001 and 12/7/1941 as the lowest moments for the United States of America. If this is a (fair & balanced) description of acts by <i>domestic enemies</i> on 1/6/2021 as opposed to the acts of <i>foreign enemies</i> on 9/11/2001 and 12/7/1941, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x WaPo — DC Fishwrap]<br />
Trump’s ‘Delay The Election’ Tweet Checks All 8 Rules For Fascist Propaganda<br />
By Timothy Snyder<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">faith</a></span> <span id="18" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">fascist</a></span> <span id="19" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">fraudulent</a></span> <span id="20" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">harder</a></span> <span id="21" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">historical</a></span> <span id="22" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">history</a></span> <span id="23" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">humiliation</a></span> <span id="24" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">inaccurate</a></span> <span id="25" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">lie</a></span> <span id="26" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">mail</a></span> <span id="27" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">manufacture</a></span> <span id="28" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">others</a></span> <span id="29" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">people</a></span> <span id="30" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a 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href="#tagcloud">simply</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">true</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">tweet</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">tyrants</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud10"><a href="#tagcloud">voting</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">world</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcmMhkHWduuyrgF1gHB5CvKkFaZpJ3f8VNR2-mIKbj91qVyfS7hkKszssROXHTcw_jifSdgIef-7mESxrSuE5DyTbJoHIO2pYKIY230egY4VmIaT8MluV1fzBZ51aDoISadVbHQ/s1268/sociopath_candidate_sociopath_voters_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfcmMhkHWduuyrgF1gHB5CvKkFaZpJ3f8VNR2-mIKbj91qVyfS7hkKszssROXHTcw_jifSdgIef-7mESxrSuE5DyTbJoHIO2pYKIY230egY4VmIaT8MluV1fzBZ51aDoISadVbHQ/s600/sociopath_candidate_sociopath_voters_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>Just before 9AM on July 30, 2020, President Trump wrote this and pinned it to the top of his Twitter feed: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”<br /><br />
With this tweet, the president both revives fascist propaganda and exploits a new age of Internet post-truth: He follows a trail blazed by fascists, but adds a twist that is his own.<br /><br />
A fascist guide to commentary on elections would have eight parts: [1] contradict yourself to test the faith of your followers; [2] tell a big lie to draw attention from basic realities; [3] manufacture a crisis; [4] designate enemies; [5] make an appeal to pride and humiliation; [6] express hostility to voting; [7] cast doubt on democratic procedures; and [8] aim for personal power.<br /><br />
<font size="+0">With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???<br />
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020</font><br /><br />
Trump achieves all eight with admirable concision in this one tweet. He decries voting by mail, but praises absentee ballots, which are nothing else but voting by mail. The blatant contradiction, the test of faith for the true believer, is there right at the beginning, a gatekeeper for the rest of the tweet.<br /><br />
The big lie, in all capitals, is that the coming elections will be the most inaccurate and fraudulent in history. Historically speaking, the greatest source of inaccuracy and fraud in our elections is the suppression of African American votes, which is bad now but has been much worse. Of course, this is not at all what Trump means, and that is the point of a big lie: to replace a familiar reality with a nonexistent problem.<br /><br />
Tyrants in general and fascists in particular like to manufacture crises. Something that is true but of limited significance is transformed into an emergency that requires breaking all the rules. So, true, it does take time to count ballots, and some states do it better than others. But the claim that this requires an extraordinary step such as delaying an election is a manufactured crisis.<br /><br />
The cleverness of the manufactured crisis is that it plays out at the level of emotions rather than facts. If people accept it, they put their emotions in the service of the tyrant. The next move, made in the next sentence of the tweet, is to invoke humiliation. The “great embarrassment” has not happened and will not happen, but if we choose to feel humiliated, we then look for the wrongdoer.<br /><br />
This has been the siren song of tyrants: Some shady enemy has done us wrong, and we must restore our honor. In this tweet, the enemy is implicit: Someone has made voting improper, unsafe and insecure. From the context, it is clear that what is meant is that Democrats have tried to make voting easier. In fact, paper ballots are the most proper, safe and secure way to vote.<br /><br />
The basic substance of the message, then, is a call to resist voting and question democratic procedures. In that way, the final three traditional fascist objectives are achieved. Citizens are supposed to forget about their individual right to cast a ballot and doubt the familiar procedures of democratic elections, while the president simply remains (as he imagines it) in power.<br /><br />
So we circle back to the grand contradiction. The president claims to defend voting but does so by expressing the desire to have elections indefinitely delayed. He blames others for the risks we face and the problems, although it is his own White House and his Republican allies in the Senate who have blocked legislation that would extend voting at home and block intervention from abroad. He calls for dramatic action to resolve a nonexistent problem and suggests a power he does not actually have.<br /><br />
This is where the differences with historical fascists begin. Fascists believed in responsibility: a terrible responsibility, as they understood it — the need to destroy an old decadent world in the name of a new racial paradise, to drown democracy in blood, to fight wars for territory abroad, to set the world on fire. Trump has no such visions and no sense of responsibility, terrible or otherwise. He simply prefers to stay in power and have a comfortable life. He expresses just enough fascism to make this possible.<br /><br />
Hence the “just asking” part of the tweet, at the end, expressed as “???.” Whenever anyone asks about a tweet’s authoritarian character, the response of Trump and his minders will be that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/30/what-trump-has-said-about-delaying-election-or-not-accepting-its-results/?hpid=hp_politics-right-4-0_politics-latest-feed%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans">he was just posing a question</a>. This makes it harder for his critics to pin him down, but also harder for his allies to take him seriously. No one goes to the wall for three question marks. ###<br /><br />
[Timothy Snyder is the Bird White Housum Professor of History at Yale University and the author, most recently of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Road-Unfreedom-Russia-Europe-America/dp/0525574468"><i>The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America</i></a> (2018). See other books by Timothy Snyder <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Snyder/e/B001H6N9K4/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1">here</a>. He received a BA (history and political science) from Brown University (RI) and a DPhil (modern history) from Oxford University (UK) and was a British Marshall Scholar as well.]<br />
<br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-61117979179237217382021-01-12T10:54:00.000-06:002021-01-12T10:54:12.570-06:00Mimi Swartz Gets It — Senator Rafael E. (Ted) Cruz (R-TX) Wears $1,000 Suits & He's Still A Low-Life Thug Wearing An Expensive Suit <p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>In the 1870s, William M Tweed (known as Boss Tweed), the leader of the most powerful political machine in New York City became the target of editorial cartoons by Thomas Nast (1840-1902) in <i>Harper's</i> magazine. Tweed reportedly grumbled, "I don't care what they write about me..., it's those damn pitchers" (pictures). In 2021, if US Senator (Rafael E. (Ted) Cruz saw the editorial cartoon by Daryl Cagle (below), Cruz might echo Boss Tweed. Senator Cruz is depicted as monkey using a toilet with poor control: all of the doo-doo is on the floor or the walls surrounding the toilet. The excrement is labeled, Nast-style), with all of the scandalous political maneuvers undertaken by Cruz. Of course, this blogger thought, "Ted Cruz actually <i>is</i> doo-doo personified." Today's essayist, Mimi Swartz, avoids <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatology">scatology</a> and uses a more deft virtual knife blade on the junior Senator from Texas. If this is (fair & balanced) political invective, both historic and current, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
Never Forget What Ted Cruz [R-TX] Did<br />
By Mimi Swartz<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">Texas </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">thug</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">toe</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">voter</a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">warning</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKgQIbOLe_HMkDrmAOCPI7LmAhrbN5y0afafX4tJDaAuUQpWwVxhlKw8Y2pGpUzeRquTUUeEABufBlEWQgpgbFfBVEqFwspklb2elZnbso4nCYxqM-OFJdnMviih8kqneNItmLFQ/s1125/anti_Cruz_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="914" data-original-width="1125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKgQIbOLe_HMkDrmAOCPI7LmAhrbN5y0afafX4tJDaAuUQpWwVxhlKw8Y2pGpUzeRquTUUeEABufBlEWQgpgbFfBVEqFwspklb2elZnbso4nCYxqM-OFJdnMviih8kqneNItmLFQ/s600/anti_Cruz_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>When I was growing up, I was often reminded that people with fancy educations and elite degrees “put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.” This was back in the early 1960s, before so many rich Texans started sending their kids to Ivy League schools, when mistrust of Eastern educated folks — or any highly educated folks — was part of the state’s deep rooted anti-intellectualism. Beware of those who lorded their smarts over you, was the warning. Don’t fall for their high-toned airs.<br /><br />
Since I’ve been lucky enough to get a fancy enough education, I’ve often found myself on the other side of that warning. But then came January 6, when I watched my Ivy League-educated senator, Ted Cruz, try to pull yet another fast one on the American people as he fought — not long before the certification process was disrupted by a mob of Trump supporters storming the Capitol and forcing their way into the Senate chamber — to challenge the election results.<br /><br />
In the unctuous, patronizing style he is famous for, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/ted-cruzs-full-electoral-vote-speech/2021/01/06/fb43b312-3558-43cf-a769-25f0e7b2bd69_video.html">Mr. Cruz cited</a> the aftermath of the 1876 presidential election between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden. It was contentious and involved actual disputes about voter fraud and electoral mayhem, and a committee was formed to sort it out. Mr. Cruz’s idea was to urge the creation of a committee to investigate invented claims of widespread voter fraud — figments of the imaginations of Mr. Trump and minions like Mr. Cruz — in the election of Joe Biden. It was, for Mr. Cruz, a typical, too-clever-by-half bit of nonsense, a cynical ploy to paper over the reality of his subversion on behalf of President Trump. (The <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2021/01/1876-election-most-divisive-united-states-history-how-congress-responded/#close">horse trading after the 1876 election helped</a> bring about the end of Reconstruction; maybe Mr. Cruz thought evoking that subject was a good idea, too.)<br /><br />
But this tidbit was just one of many hideous contributions from Mr. Cruz in recent weeks. It happened, for instance, after he supported a lawsuit from Texas Attorney General <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Paxton">Ken Paxton</a> (under indictment since 2015 for securities fraud) in an attempt to overturn election results in critical states (it was supported by other Texan miscreants like US Representative <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Gohmert">Louis B. [Louie] Gohmert</a> of Tyler, TX).<br /><br />
The esoteric exhortations of January 6 from Mr. Cruz, supposedly in support of preserving democracy, also just happened to occur while <a href="https://twitter.com/ec_schneider/status/1346912385815072770">a fund-raising message was dispatched in his name</a>. (“Ted Cruz here. I’m leading the fight to reject electors from key states unless there is an emergency audit of the election results. Will you stand with me?”) The message went out around the time that the Capitol was breached by those who probably believed Mr. Cruz’s relentless, phony allegations.<br /><br />
Until last Wednesday, I wasn’t sure that anything or anyone could ever put an end to this man’s self-serving sins and long trail of deceptions and obfuscations. As we all know, they have left his wife, his father and numerous colleagues flattened under one bus or another in the service of his ambition. (History may note that Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), himself a breathtaking hypocrite, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/26/politics/lindsey-graham-ted-cruz-dinner/index.html">once joked</a>, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”)<br /><br />
But maybe, just maybe, Mr. Cruz has finally overreached with this latest power grab, which is correctly seen as an attempt to corral Mr. Trump’s base for his own 2024 presidential ambitions. This time, however, Mr. Cruz was spinning, obfuscating and demagoguing to assist in efforts to overturn the will of the voters for his own ends.<br /><br />
Mr. Cruz has been able to use his pseudo-intellectualism and his Ivy League pedigree as a cudgel. He may be a snake, his supporters (might) admit, but he could go toe to toe with liberal elites because he, too, went to Princeton (<i>cum laude</i>), went to Harvard Law School (<i>magna cum laude</i>), was an editor of the <i>Harvard Law Review</i> and clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Mr. Cruz was not some seditionist in a MAGA hat (or a Viking costume); he styled himself as a deep thinker who could get the better of lefties from those pointy headed schools. He could straddle both worlds — ivory towers and Tea Party confabs — and exploit both to his advantage.<br /><br />
Today, though, his credentials aren’t just useless; they condemn him. Any decent soul might ask: If you are so smart, how come you are using that fancy education to subvert the Constitution you’ve long purported to love? Shouldn’t you have known better? But, of course, Mr. Cruz did know better; he just didn’t care. And he believed, wrongly I hope, that his supporters wouldn’t either.<br /><br />
I was heartened to see that our senior senator, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cornyn">John Cornyn</a>, benched himself during this recent play by Team Crazy. So did seven of Texas’ over 20 Republican members of the House — including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Roy">Charles E. (Chip) Roy</a>, a former chief of staff for Mr. Cruz. (Seven counts as good news in my book.)<br /><br />
I’m curious to see what happens with Mr. Cruz’s check-writing enablers in Texas’ wealthier Republican-leaning suburbs. Historically, they’ve stood by him. But will they want to ally themselves with the mob that vandalized our nation’s Capitol and embarrassed the United States before the world? Will they realize that Mr. Cruz, like President Trump and the mini-Cruz, Senator <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley">Josh Hawley of Missouri</a>, would risk destroying the country in the hope of someday leading it?<br /><br />
Or maybe, just maybe, they will finally see — as I did growing up — that a thug in a sharp suit with an Ivy League degree is still a thug. ###<br /><br />
[Mimi Swartz, a long-time executive editor at <i>Texas Monthly</i>, also is a <i>NYT</i> contributing Op-Ed writer. She is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ticker-Quest-Create-Artificial-Heart/dp/0804138001/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr="><i>Ticker: The Quest to Create an Artificial Heart</i></a> (2018). See her other books <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mimi-Swartz/e/B001HD20O8/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1">here</a>. Swartz received a BA (English) from Hampshire College (MA).]<br />
<br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-66660402774888277182021-01-11T07:50:00.002-06:002021-01-11T13:05:54.804-06:00The World's Greatest Democracy?? (Punctuation Marks Added To 'Toon Title For Emphasis)<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Along with today's TMW 'toon, the delivery email contained the following message from Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins):<blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
Holy crap, that was a week. Some of you thought last week’s cartoon was too dark? I think it was a lighthearted romp, compared to what we just went through. I mean, I’ve been predicting that none of this would end well since Trump was elected, and I was still unprepared for the sight of MAGA dumbasses literally storming the Capitol of the United States of America. If there’s any bright side to this, it is that the Trump era ends in utter ignominy. We’ve had four years of people rationalizing him, justifying him, telling us to take him seriously but not literally, etc. On his way out the door, he made it utterly clear what he is, what his followers are, and what the entire GOP has been enabling, and I think it’s a stain that won’t wash out easily.<br /><br />
Of course, we had good news last week too. I didn’t even dare hope that Warnock and Ossoff would both win their runoffs, but they did, and Democrats control the Senate, and I sure do like the sound of “Senate MINORITY Leader Mitch McConnell.” A lot of things will be a lot easier and I hope Biden doesn’t waste the opportunity.<br /><br />
And finally, Trump has been kicked off Twitter (and a bunch of other social platforms)! It should have happened years ago, but I’ll take the win — it means that he won’t have any easy conduit for insurrection in his post-presidency, which I fully expect to be awful. After last Wednesday, I doubt he’s even going to be especially welcome on Fox News. He’s certainly not going to get the “oh he’s a nice guy after all” treatment George W. Bush received over the years. It’s a small silver lining to a terrible day, but it’s not nothing.<br /><br />
The only “process” note I have on this week’s cartoon is about the third panel. I realized as I was trying to finish this cartoon on a tight deadline (talk about backloaded weeks!), that Josh Hawley simply wasn’t going to be recognizable without a big label reading ‘JOSH HAWLEY,’ and that’s not really a thing I do in my cartoon. I thought about having him in his signature pose from the famous photograph where he’s raising his fist in support of the soon-to-be-insurrectionists, but it didn’t make sense in the context of the panel. So I settled on having Ted Cruz address him by name.<br /><br />
Until next time…,
Dan/Tom
</blockquote></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="arial" size="+1"><b>That is the cartoonist's reaction to the events of January 6, 2021, and thereafter. The 'toonist had a stronger reaction to the events of January 6, 2021 — Revulsion, Nausea, & Anger With The Scum That Exists In Our Midst. If this is (fair & balanced) visceral hatred for the more than 75 MILLION WHO VOTED FOR, OR SUPPORTED, <u>THE</u> <u>LOSER</u> IN THE 2020 ELECTION PLUS THE WISH THAT ALL OF THEM BE STRIPPED OF US CITIZENSHIP & EXPELLED TO RUSSIA WITH THEIR LEADER, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>
[x TMW]<br />
The World's Greatest Democracy<br />
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6M9GXiw7gPlHCcZAZlTCVVJLQFgZb8GkhqnetTnYc-sHjCzTS9Pxh__aXwVyf9806Lnwy8Wc0wWvOIKP3lanr9_8HR_Y_GQSifHfbeHmDVeceHt2qQj1QyjCi4MWVM98qqyxfAA/s2000/tomorrow_1_11_2021.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="1888" data-original-width="2000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6M9GXiw7gPlHCcZAZlTCVVJLQFgZb8GkhqnetTnYc-sHjCzTS9Pxh__aXwVyf9806Lnwy8Wc0wWvOIKP3lanr9_8HR_Y_GQSifHfbeHmDVeceHt2qQj1QyjCi4MWVM98qqyxfAA/s600/tomorrow_1_11_2021.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow." His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the US, as well as on <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/">Daily Kos</a>. The strip debuted in 1990 in the <i>SF Weekly</i>. Perkins received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily <a href="http://www.thismodernworld.com/">political blog</a>, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. More recently, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 <a href="http://www.herbblockfoundation.org/">Herblock Prize</a> for editorial cartooning. Even more recently, Dan Perkins was a runner-up for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 This Modern World<br /><br />
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>..
<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-80910349498468329282021-01-10T10:19:00.000-06:002021-01-10T10:19:55.438-06:00The Missing Key Factor — If Only There Had Been A Winfield Scott At The US Capitol On January 6, 2021 <p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>Historian Edward (Ted) Widmer offers a corrective to the claim that the US Capitol was the scene of destructive violence and loss of life on January 6, 2021 for only the second time since British forces sacked early Washington, DC in the War of 1812. The Capitol was threatened in January 1861 by Southerners who were bent on preventing the Electoral Vote Certification that would make Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) the 16<sup>th</sup> POTUS as a result of his victory in the election of 1860. The key difference was the Commanding General of the US Army, Winfield Scott, in overseeing the defense of the US Capitol in January 1861 and the failed defense of the Electoral Vote certification in January 2021. If this is a (fair & balanced) comparison of the Electoral Vote processes in 1861 and 2021, so be it.
</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[x NY Fishwrap]<br />
The Capitol Takeover [In 1861] That Wasn’t<br />
By Edward L. (Ted) Widmer<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">tried</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">United </a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">vice</a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">Virginia </a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">waiting</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud3"><a href="#tagcloud">Washington </a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">willing</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtPs_jYM-5fztnoZKndb0THV-K7HlFbvsYAUEUCP5n6zsEFnZNEbJHr1DvCarX0mwmy0iuuJA9H68k-8jb8ljF8f8fiEZoQ3sdyMJiehhK_ksnVnNK95AXvp356Jo7atw3xEUSQ/s1024/US_Capitol_under_construction_1861.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="691" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDtPs_jYM-5fztnoZKndb0THV-K7HlFbvsYAUEUCP5n6zsEFnZNEbJHr1DvCarX0mwmy0iuuJA9H68k-8jb8ljF8f8fiEZoQ3sdyMJiehhK_ksnVnNK95AXvp356Jo7atw3xEUSQ/s600/US_Capitol_under_construction_1861.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>In the confusion that followed Wednesday’s desecration of the Capitol, it was widely reported that the last time the building was stormed was in 1814. That overlooked a desperate day in 1861, nearly as lethal to democracy. On February 13, a mob gathered outside the Capitol and tried to force its way in to disrupt the counting of the electoral certificates that would confirm Abraham Lincoln’s election three months earlier.<br /><br />
The key difference between then and now is that the building was guarded by men who were prepared for the onslaught. Nerves were on edge as the day began, with all eyes on Washington, and families trying to get into the galleries to watch the proceedings. In the days before the count, rumors had been spreading across the capital that armed militias might sweep in from Virginia and take over the Capitol or the entire District of Columbia.<br /><br />
Virginia’s former governor Henry Wise was openly calling for an invasion, and many diary accounts and newspaper articles of the time expressed fear that some kind of takeover was imminent. In <i>The New York Times</i>, <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1861/02/14/78651365.html?pageNumber=1">a reporter mentioned</a> “plots to take the city, blow up the public buildings, and prevent the inauguration of Lincoln.” Another article described “the blowing up of the Capitol” as a distinct possibility. The central edifice of the government — home to Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and all federal records — was a tinder box waiting for a match.<br /><br />
But the militias had not reckoned with the determination of General Winfield Scott, an aging war hero charged with the defense of the capital. Scott was a proud Southerner, born near Petersburg, VA, seven years before the cornerstone of the Capitol was laid in 1793, well before there was a city surrounding it. But above all, he was a patriot, in the original sense of a word that has been abused in recent days.<br /><br />
Scott had served his country since the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who personally interviewed him for his first commission, and even if infirm (he could no longer ride a horse), he knew treason when he saw it. With military dispatch, he stationed soldiers around the Capitol and left no doubt what he would do to any violent miscreant who tried to come into the building to spoil the electoral count.<br /><br />
Colorfully, Scott warned that any such intruder would “be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder and fired out the window of the Capitol.” He added, “I would manure the hills of Arlington with the fragments of his body.”<br /><br />
On the morning of February 13, large numbers of people streamed into Washington, determined to prevent the ceremony that would confirm Lincoln’s election. Already, they seemed dangerous, “a caldron of inflammable material,” ready for “revolution,” as one observer noted. But when they reached the Capitol, they were prevented from entering unless they had a special pass.<br /><br />
Blocked by the soldiers, the anti-Lincoln crowd grew angry and taunted Scott with insults: “Free state pimp!” “Old dotard!” “Traitor to the state of his birth!” But to be accused of “treason” by thugs who were contemptuous of the electoral process was a price Scott was quite willing to pay. Through his careful preparation, he may have saved the Republic, even before Lincoln arrived to save it in his own way.<br /><br />
Though the worst of the crowd was kept outside, tempers nonetheless flared inside the House chamber. Pro-Southern members of Congress were in a foul mood and tried to vent their unhappiness in any way they could. When a secessionist senator from Texas, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wigfall">Louis Wigfall</a>, asked Scott if he would dare to arrest a senator for treason, Scott exploded: “No! I will blow him to hell!”<br /><br />
Still, the murmurs continued. A Virginia congressman, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscoe_Russell_Hunter_Garnett">Muscoe Garnett</a>, kept accusing Lincoln of “tyranny,” even though Lincoln had not even arrived yet. While the chaplain was praying, Garnett stormed out, loudly denouncing the proceedings and stamping his feet.<br /><br />
Hauntingly, a reporter in <i>The Times</i> said that the tantrum resembled the histrionics of a famous Shakespearean actor, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junius_Brutus_Booth">Junius Booth</a>, celebrated for portraying the title character in “Richard III” (a favorite play of both his son, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth">John Wilkes Booth</a>, and of the incoming president). The younger Booth would play the role 115 times over his career. Lincoln’s love of the play was so profound that he left visitors dazzled by his impromptu performances from memory.<br /><br />
There were reasons Americans felt a special tie to “Richard III,” with its cautionary tale of a cunning schemer, willing to be “subtle, false and treacherous” in his desperate pursuit of power and popularity: Democracy was already turning up demagogues with depressing regularity; Lincoln’s earliest speeches had denounced this defect.<br /><br />
For all of their virtues, the American people were not immune to the charm of would-be autocrats, ready to promise anything. There was no shortage of such types among the leading secessionists, which is why governing the Confederacy proved to be far more difficult than launching it. Lincoln’s rhetorical modesty — he hardly ever referred to himself — was a breath of fresh air after the most overheated decade in memory.<br /><br />
In 1861 as in 2021, the actual documents were important. On Wednesday, quick-thinking staffers grabbed the boxes holding the electoral certificates during the tumult. In 1861, the boxes were preserved as well, despite the fact that they were entrusted to the person most likely to benefit from their destruction.<br /><br />
Each of the state electoral certificates had been duly sent to the president of the Senate — the vice president of the United States, Kentucky’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Breckinridge">John C. Breckinridge</a>. Breckinridge was also the defeated candidate in the presidential election, and the one who had carried the hopes of the Deep South. If he had chosen to misplace the certificates, the election might have been thrown into Congress, where Lincoln, as a stranger to Washington, was at a disadvantage.<br /><br />
The crucial moment came when the certificates were delivered from the Senate to the House, where the ceremony was held. Several commentators mentioned how fragile democracy seemed at this moment, with two ordinary boxes holding the hopes of the nation. Many in the room were waiting for a spark — a witness felt “hot treason … seething beneath the quiet exterior.”<br /><br />
To his credit, Breckinridge behaved honorably and delivered the certificates, presiding over his own defeat. He would go on to serve the Confederacy, but on this day he remembered his older duty to the United States, much as Vice President Mike Pence did this week.<br /><br />
It had been a close call. For hours afterward, “a howling, angry mob” prowled the streets of Washington, issuing streams of profanity. In New York, a lawyer, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Templeton_Strong">George Templeton Strong</a>, confided to his diary: “This was the critical day for the peace of the capital. A foray of Virginia gents … could have done infinite mischief by destroying the legal evidence of Lincoln’s election.” Because of another Virginian, they were prevented from doing so.<br /><br />
Three weeks later, Lincoln was able to enter the same building and deliver the words from the East Portico that we never tire of quoting, about “the mystic chords of memory” that unite all Americans, especially when we are touched by “the better angels of our nature.” Without a firm stand on February 13, it is unlikely he would have arrived.###<br /><br />
[Edward Ladd (Ted) Widmer is an historian, writer, librarian and musician who served as a speechwriter in the Clinton White House. Widmer was appointed lecturer on history and literature at Harvard University from 1993 until 1997. From 1995 until 1997 he played guitar and vocals in a Boston hard rock band, the Upper Crust. From 1997 to 2001, he worked in the White House as a special assistant to President William (Bill) Clinton, foreign policy speech writer and Senior Advisor for Special Projects, which involved advising on history and scholarship related issues. He later conducted extensive interviews with Clinton while the former president was writing his autobiography. He was the first director of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.V._Starr_Center_for_the_Study_of_the_American_Experience">C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience</a> from 2001 to 2006 and an associate professor of history at Washington College (MD) from 2001. On July 1, 2006, he was appointed Director and Librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University (RI). From 2012 to 2013, Widmer was a senior advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In October, 2016, Widmer was appointed Director of the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/programs/john-w-kluge-center/about-this-program/">Kluge Center</a> at the Library of Congress. In 2018, he joined the faculty of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Macaulay_Honors_College">Macaulay Honors College-CUNY</a>. Most recently, he has written <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Verge-Thirteen-Days-Washington/dp/1476739439"><i>Lincoln on the Verge: Thirteen Days to Washington</i></a> (2020). See other books by Widmer <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Books-Ted-Widmer/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ATed+Widmer">here</a>. He received an AB, an MA, and a PhD (all degrees in history) from Harvard University (MA).]<br /><br />
Copyright © 2021 The New York Times Company<br /><br />
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<br /><br />Copyright © 2021 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</b></font></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/SappersFairBalancedRantsRaves" title="Subscribe to my feed" rel="alternate" title="Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves</a></div>Neilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11131409157282045841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5509509.post-24233325427470930042021-01-09T09:51:00.000-06:002021-01-09T09:51:03.568-06:00LeBron James Was Correct, In 2017, To Call The 2020 Election Loser A Bum, But In 2021, He Would Rightfully Call The Loser A TRAITOR<p align="justify"><font color="#006600" face="comic sans ms" size="+1"><b>On July 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Roseberg were executed by electric chair for treason in delivering classified information to the Soviet Union which enabled that government to detonate its first atomic bomb. Hmmm. The electric chair has been eliminated from the US laws that punish treason, but the US has reinstated death by firing squad in its stead. If this is a (fair & balanced) call to send The Loser of the 2020 Election And His Minions to the wall to face firing squads, without blindfolds, so be it.</b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>[x The New Yorker]<br />
Trump’s Reckoning—And America’s<br />
By Susan B. Glasser<br /><br />
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href="#tagcloud">statement</a></span> <span id="44" class="wrd tagcloud2"><a href="#tagcloud">support</a></span> <span id="45" class="wrd tagcloud6"><a href="#tagcloud">Trump </a></span> <span id="46" class="wrd tagcloud4"><a href="#tagcloud">votes</a></span> <span id="47" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">war</a></span> <span id="48" class="wrd tagcloud1"><a href="#tagcloud">Washington </a></span> <span id="49" class="wrd tagcloud0"><a href="#tagcloud">win</a></span> </div><div id="credit">created at <a href="https://tagcrowd.com">TagCrowd.com</a></div><!-- end tag cloud : generated by TagCrowd.com : please keep this notice --><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h9a9zw-iKUDxP8y0i-OpArIyT2_c1wuFDKhsl-Dg92xhTwVfvvL01u3zZkyr-2EPOtM37b2kWPpcKPoHvjc-RyN7MjHbSba38g7vmTh_1Q1ik8qBTlSu8ZE5qh3HyNU4Bjlw0A/s1125/McDonald_Lies_Count_Sign_toon.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="843" data-original-width="1125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h9a9zw-iKUDxP8y0i-OpArIyT2_c1wuFDKhsl-Dg92xhTwVfvvL01u3zZkyr-2EPOtM37b2kWPpcKPoHvjc-RyN7MjHbSba38g7vmTh_1Q1ik8qBTlSu8ZE5qh3HyNU4Bjlw0A/s600/McDonald_Lies_Count_Sign_toon.jpg"/></a></div></b></font></p><p align="justify"><font color="#660000" face="arial" size="+1"><b>At 3:40 AM on Thursday, after the longest, most terrible twenty-four hours of a long and terrible four years, Congress finally did its duty. <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> hadn’t stopped it. The rampaging mob chanting Trump’s name hadn’t stopped it, nor had the dozens of Republican members who had joined Trump’s <i>coup</i>. It was worth staying up all night to see Vice-President <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/tag/mike-pence">Mike Pence</a> reading out the electoral results that ended Trump’s Presidency—and his own Vice-Presidency—once and for all. “Joseph R. Biden, Jr., of the state of Delaware, has received three hundred and six votes,” Pence said. A grudging statement from Trump himself soon followed. “There will be an orderly transition on January 20<sup>th</sup>,” the statement said. It was done.<br /><br />
That this moment came two months after the election in which Biden decisively beat Trump, and after <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/this-violent-insurrection-is-what-trump-wanted">a bloody riot inside the Capitol</a> itself, made it all the more urgent and terrifying. This is the first time in America’s history that a losing incumbent President has refused to accept the outcome of an election. Let us pray that it is the last. A deeply divided Congress has now rebuffed the President and ratified the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trump-and-republicans-in-congress-could-still-jeopardize-the-election">Electoral College’s results</a>, but only after the Capitol was <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-capitol-invaders-enjoyed-the-privilege-of-not-being-taken-seriously">invaded by the rioters he called forth</a>. The predawn vote to reaffirm Trump’s defeat will not erase the shame of Wednesday’s violence. The blame for this disaster—an insurrection incited and cheered on by an American President—rained down, swiftly and properly, on Trump himself. But it was not just about him. Congress had been defiled by a mob that was of his making—but also of theirs.<br /><br />
For four years, Trump has made war on the constitutional order, on the institutions of American democracy, and on anyone who stood in his way. Almost all of the Republicans on Capitol Hill let him do it. They aided and abetted him. They voted to acquit him of impeachment charges. They endorsed him for reëlection and even acceded to his request not to bother with a Republican Party platform. The Party’s ideology, henceforth, would be whatever Trump wanted it to be. When Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, bragged about Trump’s successful “hostile takeover” of the Republican Party, he was, in a toxically untruthful Administration, for once telling the truth.<br /><br />
Even after Trump decisively lost the election, Republicans across Washington went along with him as he spread lies and conspiracy theories, filed baseless lawsuits, and raged when judges threw them out, as they did again and again. When Trump called for a final reckless coup against the constitutional order, many were willing to follow him even to this legal, political, and moral dead end—cynical opportunists like <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Resign-Senator-Cruz-Your-lies-cost-15857293.php">Ted Cruz</a> (R-TX) and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/08/josh-hawley-consequences-losing-book-deal/">Josh Hawley</a> (R-MO), in the Senate, and a majority of House Republicans, including their leader, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/08/kevin-mccarthys-spin-impeachment-gives-away-big-gop-scam/">Kevin McCarthy</a>, of California. But now not all. Trump had finally found the red line beyond which at least some in his party would not pass. “The Republican Party has been put in a state of civil war,” the <a href="https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1346883358979207168?s=20">GOP strategist Karl Rove said</a>, on Fox. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/donald-trump-broke-gop-trumpism-capitol-455718"><i>Politico</i> called it</a> “the day that Trump broke the GOP.”<br /><br />
Republicans had accepted the “perfect” phone call with Ukraine, the Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin, the “love” letters with Kim Jong Un, the monetizing of the Presidency for Trump’s personal gain, the unseemly firings and policy <i>diktats</i> by tweet, the politicization of the Justice Department, and the menacing war against the journalistic “enemies of the people.” But now Trump had demanded that they actually overturn the will of the voters, something that Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell could not and would not do.<br /><br />
“My oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted,” Pence said in a statement, shortly before 1 PM on Wednesday, when he took the chair to preside over the special joint session at which the Electoral College’s votes would be received and counted by Congress.<br /><br />
Soon after, McConnell gave a speech that was, although four years late in coming, clear and piercing in its painful truth about the danger that he only now, belatedly, acknowledged. “I will not pretend such a vote will be a harmless protest gesture while relying on others to do the right thing,” he said, chiding his Republican colleagues who chose to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional assault on the legitimacy of America’s election. And then all hell broke loose.<br /><br />
It’s hard to remember how Wednesday began, now that it is over amid piles of broken glass and shattered reputations. In Georgia, the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/campaign-chronicles/trump-and-the-gop-lost-georgia-and-black-voters-won-it">final votes were being counted</a> in two Senate runoff elections, and it was increasingly clear that Democrats—aided by Trump’s campaign to undermine faith in the election—were going to win both of them. The Senate, as a result, would be split fifty-fifty for only the fourth time in history, giving Democrats a fragile majority based on the tie-breaking vote of the incoming Vice-President, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/07/politics/kamala-harris-first-vice-president-female-black-south-asian/index.html">Kamala Harris</a>. Both Pence and McConnell were on the verge of finally breaking with Trump over the election to certify the Electoral College results and, with them, Trump’s defeat. “The reckoning is finally arriving,” one of the biggest <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign">Never Trump Republicans</a> messaged me. It seemed like a good morning.<br /><br />
Down on the Mall, Trump’s protest mob seemed pathetic and not all that numerous as his supporters waited for their leader and listened to ranting, incoherent speeches from the likes of <a href="https://www.axios.com/rudy-giuliani-violence-condemns-fcd96f75-8b71-41c9-a2c3-5a0ad133951c.html">Rudy Giuliani</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/eric-trump-republicans-2022/index.html">Eric Trump</a>, and <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/08/kimberly-guilfoyle-ripped-for-call-to-fight-and-sexy-dance-in-video-before-capitol-attack/">Kimberly Guilfoyle</a>. When Trump began speaking, just before noon, he rambled on about missing ballots and his border wall and lots of other things. “We will never give up,” he said. “We will never concede.” He vented fury at Pence’s forthcoming betrayal and urged the crowd to march on the Capitol. It did.<br /><br />
The next few hours were a violent blur for the history books. Four [current count: 5] people died. Tear gas wafted through Statuary Hall, along with rioters swathed in Trump regalia. Both the House and the Senate chambers were breached. A man paraded a Confederate flag through the congressional corridors. “Insurrection in Washington,” the CNN chyron said. And later: “Trump silent as pro-Trump mob storms Capitol.” “This is what the President has caused today, this insurrection,” <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney">Mitt Romney</a>, the lone Republican senator to consistently stand up to Trump, <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/01/06/burgess-owens-rallies/">told a <i>Times</i> reporter</a>, with fury in his voice. At one point, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Cheney">Liz Cheney</a>, the only senior House Republican leader who refused in advance to go along with Trump’s <i>coup</i>, phoned in to Fox News. “There is no question that the President formed the mob. The President incited the mob. The President addressed the mob. He lit the flames. This is what America is not,” she said.<br /><br />
It was an unforgettable day that many, for various reasons, may try to forget. But I will remember Trump shouting into the cold wind as the clock hit the appointed hour of 1 PM, urging his supporters to march on the Capitol, egging them on, inciting them with his hatred and grievance. I will remember the Trump flag, not the American flag, hanging off the Capitol balcony, and the fact that the rioters wore Trump’s name on their shirts and hats. And I will remember his video, as those rioters rampaged through the halls of Congress. “We love you,” Trump told them. This actually happened.<br /><br />
As night fell and law enforcement finally regained control of the Capitol, the man who had spent months campaigning on “LAW & ORDER” said and did nothing. Washington wondered whether this was, finally, belatedly, an ending of sorts for the President: Would the Republicans who had signed up for Trump’s <i>coup</i> abandon their unconstitutional objections to the Electoral College? Would Pence, having finally broken with Trump and said that he would do his duty to certify Trump’s electoral defeat, join with other members of the Cabinet to invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment and remove Trump from office?<br /><br />
Some Democratic House members started to demand a second impeachment, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Squad_%28United_States_Congress%29#:~:text=It%20was%20initially%20composed%20of,and%20Rashida%20Tlaib%20of%20Michigan.">other members of the Squad</a>. The <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/06/trump-impeachment-capitol-riots-455693">count was up to more than three dozen</a> by late in the evening, according to <i>Politico</i>. Could Trump become the first President to be impeached twice? Would he? And, if he was, would there finally be twenty Republican senators willing to end this madness by convicting him in a trial? There are still two weeks to go until Biden’s Inauguration. There is a sense that anything could happen.<br /><br />
The longest of days did not end with answers to many of those questions, but at least it ended with Congress back at work, doing the job that the Constitution demands of it. Pence reconvened the Senate soon after 8 PM. He lectured the rioters. “You did not win. Violence never wins,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/electoral-vote">he said</a>. “Let’s get back to work.” There was applause. “Our job is to convene, to open the ballots, and to count them. That’s it,” <a href="https://www.kuer.org/politics-government/2021-01-06/utahs-congressional-delegation-decries-protests-violence-at-u-s-capitol">Mike Lee, of Utah</a>, a staunch Trump supporter, said. And, of course, he was right. Everyone knew it—not least the cynical Republican senators who were determined to pretend otherwise and triggered this exercise in the first place. Support for their <i>coup</i> in the Senate collapsed quickly. Cruz and Hawley began the day with perhaps thirteen votes. But there were only six left, including Cruz’s own, by the time the votes were actually counted on Cruz’s objection to Arizona’s electoral certificate. Ninety-three senators voted it down, and it is very hard to get ninety-three senators to agree on anything anymore.<br /><br />
Even <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/01/07/lindsey-graham-capitol-certification-sot-vpx.cnn">Lindsey Graham</a>, the South Carolinian whose reinvention from Trump-basher to Trump-lover has been one of Trump-era Washington’s minor dramas, finally broke with the President. Sounding oddly jovial, or, perhaps, liberated, <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/south-carolina/article248331565.html">Graham said</a>, “Count me out. Enough is enough. I’ve tried to be helpful.” Graham mocked the hollow pretensions of his colleagues, who claimed to be making a principled objection that would somehow grant Pence the power to unilaterally “disenfranchise a hundred and fifty million people.” And then Graham concluded with the words that might have mattered, that might have actually helped to avoid this mess, had he uttered them two months ago, when he should have: “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected and will become the President and the Vice-President of the United States on January the 20<sup>th</sup>.”<br /><br />
But it was all too late. Although Graham and Pence and McConnell abandoned Trump, many others did not. Nearly a hundred and forty House Republicans supported the objections to the lawfully certified results from Pennsylvania. Five Republican senators joined Cruz and Hawley, even after the Capitol was taken by force for the first time since the British invaded in 1814. On his way out, Trump is leaving destruction—literal, not metaphorical—in his wake. What wreckage will tomorrow bring? ###<br /><br />
[Susan B. Glasser is a contributing writer for newyorker.com, where she writes a twice-monthly column on life in Trump’s Washington. She is <i>Politico</i>’s chief international-affairs columnist and the host of its weekly podcast, “The Global <i>Politico</i>.” Glasser has served as the top editor of several Washington publications; most recently, she founded the award-winning <i>Politico</i> magazine and went on to become the editor of <i>Politico</i> throughout the 2016 election cycle. She previously served as the editor-in-chief of <i>Foreign Policy</i>, which won three National Magazine Awards, among other honors, during her tenure. Before that, she worked for a decade at the <i>Washington Post</i>, where she was the editor of "Outlook" and national news. She also oversaw coverage of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, served as a reporter covering the intersection of money and politics, spent four years as the <i>Post</i>’s Moscow co-bureau chief, and covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kremlin-Rising-Vladimir-Putins-Revolution/dp/0743264312"><i>Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and the End of Revolution</i></a> (2005), which she co-wrote with her husband, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Baker_%28author%29">Peter Baker</a>. Glasser received a BA <i>cum laude</i> (government) from Harvard University (MA).]<br /><br />
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