Politics & Rule
- Data Vampires: Going Hyperscale (October 7, 2024)
- Data Vampires: Opposing Data Centers (October 14, 2024)
- Data Vampires: Sacrificing for AI (October 21, 2024)
- Data Vampires: Fighting for Control (October 28, 2024)
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“Trusted with kids, not with a vote…” (DC Vote, 2006), Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010650572/; “Both will save your life. Only one has a vote in Congress…” (DC Vote, 2006), https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010650571/. ↩︎
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Ike Allen, “A History of Congress Messing With DC: 50 years of home rule—and federal meddling," Washingtonian, November 8, 2023. ↩︎
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President Biden will allow Congress to overturn new D.C. crime law, NPR, March 2, 2023. ↩︎
An Old Putin Meme – 'Weaponizing Ridicule'
Here is a once popular meme in Russia that the thin-skinned Putin banned, thereby making it more popular (artist unknown). This is one of the examples that J. Michael Waller offers in “Weaponizing Ridicule” (Military Review, Sept.–Oct. 2017). His findings, it seems to me, are relevant to how we could deal with the big orange lump.
“Minneapolis Assault on Transgender Women Sparks Rally,” Transvitae, November 20, 2024. 🏳️⚧️
In Minneapolis, two transgender women were violently attacked, prompting a rally and raising fears within the trans community amid President Trump’s re-election. As concerns over rising transphobia grow, community leaders emphasize solidarity, self-defense, and advocacy to protect the rights and safety of transgender individuals.
'Digital Vampires': Four-Part Podcast Series
I highly recommend the following series from Paris Marx’s Tech Won’t Save Us. It underlines the stakes of the podcast’s overarching theme and even sheds light on the extreme right-wing turn among some of Silicon Valley’s ultra wealthy.
Tech Won’t Save Us challenges the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that tech is inherently political and ignoring that has serious consequences.
The principle that a commander has an obligation to punish war crimes by his subordinates is not a progressive development of the law promoted by the advocacy community. Instead, the duty to punish stands out as an ancient legal norm interwoven into the domestic law of the United States and which the United States has incorporated into international legal instruments.
Dunno which nomination freaks me out the most, but if the Senate GOP bows to the recess appointments demand, we are in for a world of hurt. Will we be able to hang on until the midterms, when there’s a chance to begin picking up the pieces? More people are vulnerable than realize it. 😱
Separation of Powers or One-Man Rule?
The GOP will have the House too?! If so, the question becomes, does the GOP party leader, the orange dementor, control both chambers of Congress? Or will some of these folks remember that they control a separate branch of government? In the Soviet Union, the General Secretary of the Communist Party ran the show. Is that what the GOP wants? Or are they just enjoying a ride on the winning candidate’s coattails? I’m sure lots of them can be kept in line with threats of physical harm or the release of komprimat, and others could be bought off with spending largesse (read: corruption) by the government and by would-be beneficiaries of government contracts.
Wild cards: How narrow is the GOP majority in the House? Will GOP replacements for the big rotten cheese’s cabinet picks be able to beat Democrats in those districts?
On deck: “Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn,” documentary, dir. Ivy Meeropol (HBO 2020). Will probably have to take this in installments, given the subject matter. 📽️
Have moved from sadness about the November 5 result to frustration and now anger.
Besides acting as a windfall for the privatized segment of our mass incarceration system, mass deportations will offer plenty of opportunities for bribery, blackmail, denunciation, vigilantism, even enslavement.
Does Putin understand the United States? I'm inclined to think not, even if he's got Trump as a person pretty well sized up.
I can’t help but think that the Kremlin once again misunderstands the situation, as they did in February 2022. Sure, the next U.S. president likes rubbing elbows with “tough guy” dictators, and the guardrails of expertise and institutions mean nothing to him; nevertheless, he won’t be completely free to do as he pleases. Think of the old guard Republicans who know what’s at stake in Europe. Enough of them were able to convince the guy in Mar-a-Lago to tell Mike Johnson to finally approve funds for Ukraine earlier this year. More importantly, even if his supporters are gung-ho America Firsters, they feel threatened by China, Putin’s close ally. If they haven’t put two and two together about the global ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, their obsession with tariffs has everything to do with China, Russia’s closest supporter.
In fact, will the jumping, hooting, squealing Mr. Cybertruck’s interests in China throw a spanner in his current machinations to treat our government like an extension of his personal business interests? Mr. Orange-in-a-Suit’s supporters are expecting action on China, and their guy with the tie needs their adulation—not to mention their votes in the 2026 midterms. Besides, how open will his oil guys be to welcoming Russia back to legitimate global oil and natural gas markets while prices are low? I can’t claim to know all the variables, and I know the occupant of the White House matters a great deal. Still, as unpredictable, unscrupulous, inhumane, and disloyal as Mr. Bad Hairpiece is, he will not be operating in a vacuum free from the influence of powerful players calling in their chits.
Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the Russian terrorist-in-chief and his security apparatus have already proven how blinkered they were about Ukraine, not to mention the unity NATO has projected. It is equally nonsensical for the Kremlin to think of NATO as a collection of American-led satellite states, pace Russia’s rabid propagandists Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Soloviev. Why should the Kremlin understand the United States any better, if it can’t even acknowledge Ukrainian agency? And just how well would the next U.S. president respond to threats, when Putin realizes that flattery won’t get him what he wants in Ukraine.
Worried about Mr. Orange Face's Effect on The Military
How effective will the American military be after the next administration wreaks havoc on the Pentagon so that the president might have the loyalists he needs in order to command them as he sees fit, including even direct them against the American people? How much material and moral corruption will these measures lead to? May the military’s talent pool be deep and ethical enough to survive the corrupting onslaught of what’s coming. Mr. Huge Crowd’s pardoning of war criminals last time round suggests how little he understands military morale and discipline. We know what he thinks of expertise, and he paid no price for disrespecting our fallen.
Imagining Some of the Worst: Domestic Edition
I doubt I’ll have the bandwidth to follow the machinations in Washington’s halls of power, as I did during the previous administration. I got out of the habit under the current one because I was exhausted, didn’t feel threatened, and ended up living a twelve-hour drive away. And now I want to focus on the parts of my life and world where my individual agency, talents, and interests might be leveraged for things more constructive, more life-affirming.
First, though, I’ll allow myself to imagine some of the worst coming our way, just to get the darkness out of my mind and into words: the destruction of the regulatory state and of our public medical, environmental, climate, and weather research infrastructure; the violent and cruel erasure of entire communities; the enslavement, indentured servitude, or other forms of abusive exploitation of people without papers under the “protection” of unscrupulous employers, landlords, neighbors, and government agents; the creation of a new generation of Hoovervilles inhabited by people with no health insurance, no immunizations, and pensioners whose Social Security checks and Medicare benefits no longer keep them housed; preventable contagious diseases killing our children; lawfully mandated medical malpractice killing girls, women, and trans men with the bad luck to become pregnant; the loss of LGBTQ+ family, friends, and community members to exile, to self-harm, and to the violence of bullies given license by their chosen leader; the possibility that insulin might grow out of my reach; the knowledge that Medicare will never cover the costs of help with elder care while I still need such help, and while private equity funds squeeze what they can out of old folks homes, leaving them woefully understaffed, their populations vulnerable to contagious disease, inattention, and abuse.
It doesn’t have to go this way, not even under the next president. But do we think a GOP-controlled Senate will respect the filibuster the next time around, if they manage to get the House too? Isn’t that just one more convention that the next president can demand they drop? And have any of them demonstrated even the slightest willingness to defend their institution, sure in the knowledge that they are part of a separate branch of government? GOP representatives in the House are no better, as they demonstrated during the previous president’s two impeachments.
American presidents have enormous amounts of power, and now, it seems, controlling the party and the mob will give the next president even more. Or will some Republican legislators put their constituents ahead of the slash-and-burn ideologues? What groups will they decide government might have a role in protecting? Of course, the House could still flip Democratic. Some Republicans could develop a conscience. Or the ambitions, incompetence, and contradictory aims, values, and beliefs of Orange Face’s supporters could lead to lots of friendly fire and delays.
Caveat: the GOP marched in lockstep to regain the presidency, but we have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. It’s possible they prefer to carry out dissent internally. It’s also a sure thing that Mr. Red Tie will keep all eyes on himself, with lots of help from the media, while the poisons are concocted in Congress and in other parts of the executive branch.
Postmortems of the Harris–Walz campaign make little sense to me at this moment. They did their damndest. Moreover, any campaign in 2028 will be dealing with a changed country and electorate. Besides, we don’t even have all the data yet.
The few people I saw in the grocery store this evening were looking kind of shell-shocked. It’s possible I’m projecting, but we did have high turnout in the town against the orange sack of suit.
Scholz’s speech on dropping Lindner was impressive.🇩🇪 So was the timing.🇺🇸 I had been despairing in the face of his long-running timidity vis-à-vis Ukraine.🇺🇦 He isn’t offering Ukraine a way out of Western restrictions on weapon types or joining NATO, but it’s an important signal and a lifeline.
Again??? 💔 The only way we get through this is if we ignore the orange clown’s dangerous, immoral antics as much as possible and keep our eyes on what happens in actual governance in general and in our communities and states in particular. The man is not just dangerous, he’s dangerously distracting.
GOP takes the Senate?!?! There would be no brakes on the orange ass’s appointments. Should not have looked at this tonight. Too many thoughts.
Broadcasting Election Results and Taking Opinion Polls in 1872
The illustrated British weekly The Graphic published these two fascinating images of U.S. election technologies in 1872. Explanations from the publication follow.
“The Electoral Magic Lantern” aka Broadcasting Results (top)
“Mammoth stereopticon”, at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-Second Street. “By means of a stereoscopic apparatus and magic lantern, the telegrams [of election results] are rapidly copied on a glass plate, and then put in the apparatus. Large crowds assemble till early in the morning, to watch the returns, which are shown on the wall of some building, covered with a large white sheet."–from source periodical.
“Taking Votes in a Railway Car” aka Polling Voter Intentions (bottom)
“It is a common thing to take votes in the railway carriages during election campaigns, though strictly speaking, it is not so much taking a vote as ascertaining approximately which candidate will have the best chance. Each passenger enters the name of his choice on a piece of paper, and a gentleman, generally a politician, takes his hat and collects the votes. Bets are offered and taken, and after the scrutiny animated discussions arise, each man endeavouring to persuade his opponents."–from source periodical.
Source: Wood engravings by Paul Frenzeny (artist) and Francis Sylvester Walker (delineator), The Graphic, November 30, 1872, via The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library Digital Collections. (Higher resolutions available.)
On November 5 we will find out just how strong we are. We will each choose on which side of the historical ledger to record our names. On the one hand, we can stand with those throughout our history who maintained that some people were better than others and had the right to rule; on the other, we can list our names on the side of those from our past who defended democracy and, by doing so, guarantee that American democracy reaches into the future.
– Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, November 3, 2024.
“Confessions of a Republican” (LBJ 1964 Presidential campaign commercial) https://youtu.be/LiG0AE8zdTU 🗳️
I’m daring to hope that pollsters are gonna have some ‘splaining to do after Harris whups Trump’s ass on Tuesday. 🥊
DC Residents Still Have No Vote in Congress
For more than 25 years, I had no representation in Congress because I lived in DC. That’s changed because of my caregiving responsibilities, so it will be bittersweet on Tuesday when I cast a straight Democratic ballot in Conway, NH. Yes, I have representation now, but that doesn’t change anything for my wife, friends, and former colleagues and neighbors in DC. A territory in the United States with more than 700,000 residents,1 DC has more people than Vermont and Wyoming. That’s why its license plates read “Taxation without Representation.” Other DC PR work has included these 2006 posters.2
Rubbing DC residents' noses in it, representatives sent by the rest of the country interfere in the city’s local life.3 In particular, Republicans who don’t approve of local measures or have a social experiment in mind can interfere with local policies. I remember school vouchers and condoms for high school students. Democrats are not immune to such behavior either, however, as this 2023 tweet by President Biden demonstrates.4
I support D.C. Statehood and home-rule—but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the Mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings.
If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did—I’ll sign it.
What Are We to Do with Our Democracy?
American billionaires who intervened in their newspapers' endorsements know that the orange guy is a vindictive prat, unlike Harris. Nonetheless, their actions and Musk’s murder of Twitter ought to lead to legislation that limits or undercuts the concentration of media ownership, regardless of who the owners support. We cannot become another oligarchy à la Autocracy, Inc.
I suspect, though, that this is a fight for another day, if ever. The electorate needs Harris to come through on important bread-and-butter issues first; Harris will need to work coalitions in Congress to increase pressure on Russia’s terrorist regime; and on and on.
It seems as if there is always a big and urgent need. So how do we address the fundamentals, including not only media concentration but also campaign finance, gerrymandering, Supreme Court oversight, the Electoral College, a primary system that favors ideological purity over substance, minority rule by those who win only a plurality of votes, and statehood for DC and for any other territories who desire it? Where do we start?
If Republicans were really concerned about media bias, that could form a basis for bipartisan work on media concentration. The past decade or so has shown, however, that they do not want free and fair discussions. Recently, “free speech” absolutists have given the lie to that notion with Twitter’s metamorphosis into X(itter), which followed on the heels of “alternative facts” and a cultural shift that privileges personal belief over all forms of evidence. Consider, too, the pressure to ban books and not teach darker chapters of our history.
So where or how do we start? Republicans' singular focus on attaining power in the states, in the judiciary, and in the federal government paid off, at least in the short term. They ended Roe; they’ve come close to establishing presidential immunity; and they have big plans to blow up most of our remaining institutions. They’ve also enabled the blossoming of unregulated militias with freely available assault rifles.
My hope is that enough Americans see through the orange one’s grift to put an end to his ambitions for a second term once and for all. I would then like to see Harris appointees hold the worst of the conspiring putschists and domestic terrorists to account in timely fashion so as to delegitimize that kind of opposition. But how do we get from there to a culture that rewards candidates who respect the Constitution and their fellow human beings enough to get the people’s work done?