From Paul Thornton of the LA Times: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âI know the story of Trumpâs march to a third GOP nomination barely registered among those whoâve closely followed political news since 2015 â but still, please let it surprise you. Please let the fact that a man who tried to topple American democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, is now the second-most likely person to lead it after noon on Jan. 20, 2025, shake you to your core. German democracy held out for nine years after Hitlerâs Beer Hall Putsch in 1923; Trumpâs likely nomination puts us on course to halve the time it took Germany to empower (or in our case, re-empower) its fascist leader of a failed coup.â
It was a bad week for Trump and a good week for Biden. Trumpâs week was bad enough that he may soon be renting Mar-a-Lago from E. Jean Carroll. Also, it shows us that Trump can lose to an 80-year-old. On to cartoons.
Bidenâs âbadâ economy continues to set records:
Elephant reacts badly to Decemberâs GDP numbers:
When it comes to Trump, the Elephant is all talk and no tusk:
House Republicans say immigration deal is dead on arrival:
Why isnât the media covering Abbottâs insurrection?
(We will not publish a Saturday Soother this week, but there will be a Sunday cartoons column)
In doing research for this weekâs Fascism in America column, Wrongo came across this from Rick Perlstein:
âAnd I think…what…we have in the United States: a very weak political establishment, but a civil society underneath it thatâs looking for a kind of expression. And the expression that itâs taking is pathological….Because the party system is unable to answer the demands they have.â
A weak political establishment means that Congress can barely get out of its own way. Our political institutions have become ineffectual. The current Congress is setting records for inaction:
âThe 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history, with just a couple dozen laws on the books at the close of 2023…â
This void is being filled by judicial or political opportunists. This is even true when the US Supreme Court hands down a decision that Republicans donât like. From the Texas Tribune:
âThe US Supreme Court…ordered Texas to allow federal border agents access to the stateâs border with Mexico, where Texas officials have deployed miles of concertina wire…..For now, it effectively upholds longstanding court rulings that the Constitution gives the federal government sole responsibility for border security.â
Last October, Texas sued the federal government after Border Patrol agents cut some of the wire strung along the Rio Grande, arguing the Department of Homeland Security destroyed the stateâs property and interfered in Texasâ border security efforts. But in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court vacated a previous injunction from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented Border Patrol agents from cutting the wire.
So what does a sovereign state like Texas do in response? Itâs governor Greg Abbott, issued a âStatement on Texasâ Constitutional Right to Self-Defense,â following calls by numerous Texas Republicans to resist the high courtâs order. Abbottâs statement says that he had invoked his state’s “constitutional authority to defend and protect itself” which “is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”
OK, is it secession time anybody?
Houston Public Media quotes Charles âRockyâ Rhodes, teacher of constitutional law at South Texas College of Law in Houston:
“That’s a real blow to our separation of powers and the way that this country has governed itself….There have been situations in the past where governors and state officials have defied the Supreme Court, but that has led to constitutional crises.”
Teddy Rave, at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law, another constitutional law expert, described the calls to defy the high court’s order as unconstitutional and dangerous:
“The last time that I’m aware of that this kind of defiance actually happened was resistance to desegregation orders after Brown v. Board of Education….The Supreme Court didn’t take it kindly and issued a unanimous decision in Cooper v. Aaron explaining that states need to follow its constitutional rulings.”
But since itâs Texas, wonât the Supremes give the Republican governor a hall pass to run amuck over the Constitution? Maybe so, maybe no. The decision was 5-4, meaning that two of the six conservative Supreme Court justices said Abbott had to comply. Could one switch sides? Certainly.
What can Biden do if Abbott refuses to comply with SCOTUSâs decision? He could federalize the Texas National Guard, which is what happened in Arkansas in 1957, when the then-governor Faubus tried to defy court orders allowing Black students to attend white schools in Little Rock.
Much like Abbott, Faubusâs fight was politically motivated. Faubus used the Arkansas Guard to keep blacks out of Central High School largely because he was frustrated by his political opponentsâ success in using segregationist rhetoric to whip up support with white voters.
That eventually led President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard to effectively remove them from Faubus’s control. Eisenhower then sent the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to protect the black students and enforce the federal court order. The Arkansas National Guard later took over those protection duties, and the 101st Airborne returned to their base.
There seems to be a growing movement in Texas to fight the SCOTUS decision. A Texas nationalist urged Abbott to militarize the Texas State Guard if Biden federalizes the Texas National Guard. The Texas State Guard cannot be federalized. It has about 1,900 personnel, substantially smaller than the roughly 23,000 members of the Texas National Guard, but Abbott could attempt to beef up its headcount.
The Hill is reporting that Trump has urged states to deploy National Guard troops to Texas in support of Abbott. Various Right-wing twitter accounts are reporting that 25 Republican states have signed a statement supporting Texas against the Supreme Court. It’s not certain as Wrongo writes this is if these reports are true, but a presidential candidate and the governors of several states challenging the federal government seems an awful lot like the beginning of an insurrection.
Their joint statement isn’t in support of Texas, it’s in support of treason. This is what America has come to. Itâs also symptomatic of the Supreme Courtâs inability to check radical Trump-placed judges in lower courts who issue rulings with devastating consequences for democracy and human rights. States have no constitutional prerogative to nullify federal law. This principle was established during the nullification crisis of the 1830s and the Southern resistance to desegregation during the Civil Rights era. Nor, under the Constitutionâs supremacy clause, can states interfere with the lawful exercise of federal authority. This rule is one of the oldest and most entrenched in all of our Constitutional law.
We often talk about Constitutional crises, and this could easily become one if Abbott and his enablers try to limit by force the US Border Patrol’s access in the upcoming days.
Itâs also a test for Biden in an election year. Will he have to put down another insurrection by Republicans? If he does, what will be the political fallout?
Lenticular clouds over Mt. Washington, with Mt. Washington Hotel in foreground, Bretton Woods, NH – January 2024 photo by Terri Stinn
âThose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.â– George Santayana
âWe are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.â– Gore Vidal
Wrongo and Ms. Right watched an American Experience offering on PBS called âNazi Town USAâ. The video tells the story of the German American Bund, (Bund) a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that at its peak in the late 1930s, had some 100,000 US members.
The Bund (bund is German for âorganizationâ), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organizationâs goals were wider: To create a âsocially just, white gentile-ruled United Statesâ and a âgentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.â
He sounds nice. The US in the 1930s was a hotbed of the fascist-curious. Coming out of WWI and heading into an international economic depression, America was as polarized as it had been since the Civil War. There were racist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and anti-democratic viewpoints that werenât quietly whispered but were yelled. Americaâs greatest threat, many feared, were the Communists. Millions, (including members of Congress), belonged to the KKK. Father Coughlin was on the radio. Henry Ford had financed the publication of âThe International Jew,â an antisemitic tract. And in New York, the Bund was fomenting a coup, and filling Madison Square Garden with followers. In Yaphank, a town on Long Island, tract homes for Bund members were going up on Adolf Hitler Street.
According to historian Bradley W. Hart, who gives commentary in the documentary:
âThis was a period of incredible turmoil in the US. You have the Great Depression, you have people who have lost everything….At this moment…you have…people like Hitler and Mussolini, who are preaching hate and preaching that they have a solution to the real pain that people are feeling, itâs inevitable, unfortunately, that some will be attracted to that message.â
The Bund was just one of hundreds of right-wing and fascist-friendly groups in the US in the 1930s. The video linked above includes a chilling clip (@12:39 minutes) of Italyâs then-Prime Minister Mussolini, reaching out to his fascist friends in America: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âI am very glad to be able to express my friendly feelings towards the American nation, my fellow citizens who are working to make America great…â
For Wrongo, that revealed a shocking throughline to 2016, and then on to America today.
The Bund had chapters all across the country. Their high point was holding a Swastika-bedecked rally attended by 20,000 at Madison Square Garden in 1939. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, despite instructions from FDR, had little interest in investigating the Bundâs head, Fritz Kuhn. Hoover was far more concerned with Communism. Back then, âJewish Communismâ was a catchphrase used by Kuhn.
Doesnât that sound disturbingly familiar? And you then learn that Kuhn supporters beat up a demonstrator who ran on stage, are you surprised that we see the same at Trump rallies today? Subsequently, Charles Lindbergh emerged as head of a supposedly non-partisan group, âAmerica Firstâ that urged the US not to oppose Hitlerâs war in Europe.
Trump embraced the âAmerica Firstâ rubric starting right after his inauguration.
After Nazism and Fascism were defeated in Europe in WWII, there wasnât much of a reckoning inside the US with those who were Fascists or Nazis. There was a wish to simply forget about the fractious politics of the 1930s. Kuhn was deported to Germany, and the Bund collapsed.
But the Bund members and fellow travelers didnât disappear. They simply blended back into the social fabric of Americaâs towns. And the ideas certainly didnât disappear, theyâre still with us today. Weâre seeing them re-emerge not just in the US but also throughout Europe. There will always be citizens who when they see a threat, prefer having a strongman around to uproot it.
Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, offers this:
âEarly last month, he echoed the…language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are âpoisoning the blood of our country.â
Nichols quotes from Trumpâs talk in Claremont, NH:
âWe will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.â
As the New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in the WaPo about the same speech, Trump is populating this list of imaginary villains (which she sees as a form of projection) in order âto set himself up as the deliverer of freedom. Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.â
Itâs possible that Trump doesnât really understand what heâs saying. But when he uses terms like âverminâ and expressions like âpoisoning the blood of our countryâ, weâre not required to spend a lot of time trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And you can be certain that the people around Trump completely understand what heâs saying.
Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a fascist, even if heâs too ignorant to label what he is. Heâs naturally gifted at propaganda and heâs demonstrated amazing political power with his Big Lie. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.
Fascism is back in America, whether we call it by its name or not.
Sunset, Roan Mountain, TN – January 2024 photo by Arpana Goyal
Itâs time to talk about immigration. Immigration is a huge political football not only in the US, but throughout Europe. In all cases, the hard political Right is anti-immigration while the political center and left continue to try to duck the issue wherever possible.
Immigration is an extremely complicated issue that will figure prominently in our 2024 election. So far, the debate has been largely one-sided, with Republicans on the attack, and Democrats in a defensive crouch. In essence, the arguments break down to this: Democrats want more money to process the historic immigrant backlog while Republicans want to stop people from coming here in the first place. The politics of this for Dems are fraught.
But before we get to the 2024 election, the subject of immigration and the US southern border is already at center stage in the continuing effort to fund the government beyond the current Continuing Resolution that could end with another possible government shutdown in early March.
The complicating issue for avoiding a government shutdown is Bidenâs request for funding for Ukraine. The MAGA House Republicans, including Speaker Johnson (R-LA), oppose the money for Ukraine and say that they wonât approve Bidenâs request without dealing with the crisis at the border. From Dan Pfeiffer: (brackets by Wrongo)
âTo summarize, Johnson demands a border bill in exchange for passing Ukraine aid; the White House and Senate [are] work[ing] on a border bill; Johnson opposes the bill without even seeing it, despite repeatedly declaring that the âcrisis at the borderâ is the House GOPâs top priority.â
When Ukraine aid became a Democratic policy priority, it pushed Republicans who were once advocates of the Ukraine war effort to abandon their support.
The Republicans see the border crisis as a huge political vulnerability for Biden and want to keep the issue in limbo until after the election. Polling bears this out. A January  CBS News/YouGov poll shows that the number of Americans who say the situation at the border is a âcrisisâ has gone up 7 points since May of last year:
Thereâs no question the Right has used their propaganda apparatus to put the situation at the border on the radar screen for voters. The chart below shows that in the NYT/Siena college poll, Biden is lagging Trump on who is trustable on immigration:
The biggest reason for the shift seems to be the surge of illegal immigration during Bidenâs term. Many would-be migrants correctly believe that as long as they can reach US soil, they will be able to stay for years.
Letâs look at some numbers for October 2022 â September 2023 (the US fiscal year):
There were 3.1 million attempted crossings at the US Southern border in 2023. Of that total, an estimated 600,000 entered undetected. That leaves 2.5 million migrants that were âencounteredâ by the US border patrol, over two and a half times the number just four years ago. 83 percent of the encounters occurred between US ports of entry, often in remote locations like the Sonoran Desert. Over half a million were expelled under Title 42, a policy enacted under Trump that allowed border officials to expel migrants without a deportation hearing. The Biden administration lifted that policy in May 2023.
Of that 2.5 million, 1.9 million were âprocessedâ under Title 8 of the immigration Law, covering asylum, visas, refugees and deportations.
Of that 1.9 million, 1.5 million became new immigration court cases in 2023.
This has caused a huge jump in the backlog of immigration court cases. Today, it takes an average of 3 years to complete an immigration case in the US, largely due to the fact that the backlog per judge now stands at 4,500 cases, up from around 1,000 cases in 2020.
Science tells us that you canât put two pounds of shit in a one pound bag, so despite the wringing of hands on the part of the US political Left, immigration must be addressed. For the past few months, the White House has been trying to find a compromise with Republicans in hopes of reaching a deal on border security. But so far, the talks between the designated negotiators in the Senate (Chris Murphy D-CT, James Lankford, R-OK, and Kyrsten Sinema, I-AZ), havenât found an agreed path forward.
Presuming the details of any Senate deal are within the range of what would be acceptable, getting a border deal and passing aid for Ukraine and Israel would be the best outcome for Biden and the Democrats. Dems might be forced to play the cards as theyâre dealt. Biden should take the deal and declare a victory for bipartisan politics.
The biggest shift is that the Democrats are reluctantly realizing that they are holding to a losing position. Many asylum claims are bogus and are simply people looking for a better economic life. We need to make policy about how many immigrants the US should be looking to bring into the country every year. That policy should balance the number of immigrants with our ability to help them get started on a fruitful life.
That still would be a pretty large number. It just canât be infinite.
Time to wake up Democrats! Weâre headed for the first presidential election rematch since 1956. Both candidates are unpopular and both are also extremely well-known to voters. That means for the first time in forever, a clear understanding of the policy stakes of an election will be important. That makes our immigration policy important.
To help you wake up, listen to âWhy Do We Build The Wall?â from the 2019 Broadway play âHadestownâ. The song was written by AnaĂŻs Mitchell, and this is from her 2010 album âHadestownâ. Note that this song was written in 2010, long before Trump or any politician had any interest in building a wall:
Sample Lyric:
Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty,
And the wall keeps out the enemy,
And we build the wall to keep us free.
Thatâs why we build the wall;
We build the wall to keep us free.
Thereâs an abundance of good cartoons this week. But before we get to them, letâs spend a few moments on the multi-year disaster in the US Department of Education (DOE). From NPR:
â…the US Department of Education is going to review the loan histories of most federal student loan borrowers….And the reason, in the department’s own words, is to, quote, “remedy years of administrative failures that effectively denied the promise of loan forgiveness to certain borrowers.” This review is expected to trigger loan forgiveness for tens of thousands of people and bring millions more closer to having their loans erased.â
More: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âFor years, income-driven repayment was badly mismanaged by Ed and its loan servicers, making it really hard for borrowers to access. And so hardly anyone has qualified for that forgiveness.â
Finally: (brackets by Wrongo)
âOur investigation in April showed some [loan] servicers weren’t keeping track of how close borrowers were to loan forgiveness. Also, some borrowers weren’t getting credit for all their payments, or they were even losing months of credit when they were transferred from one servicer to another. After our reporting came out, members of Congress called for an investigation. And later that month in April, the department announced this big retroactive overhaul that’s now getting started.â
This amounts to $5 billion in forgiveness for 74,000 borrowers. When people talk about how the government is terrible, they should be talking about the decades of mismanagement at US DOE. On to cartoons.
The destruction of Gaza wonât win the US any friends in the Middle East:
Biden declares the Houthis terrorists:
GOP intransigence on funding for Ukraine continues:
Iowa win means Republicans fall in behind Trump:
The GOP still singing the same old tune:
S&P hits record high, but Bidenâs still too old:
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has crunched the latest Social Security Administration (SSA) wage data. It shows the average American workers haven’t made much money since the 1970s:
âThe latest SSA data demonstrates how vastly unequal earnings growth has been between 1979 and 2022. Over that period, inflation-adjusted annual earnings for the top 1% and top 0.1% skyrocketed by 171.7% and 344.4%, respectively, while earnings for the bottom 90% grew just 32.9%.â
That’s 33% over 43 years, less than 1% per year. The largest share of total earnings in the US economy have accumulated at the top of the wage ladder. The EPI is describing  âlabor market earningsâ, the pay (including benefits) of the 80% of workers who are not managers or supervisors at work. For decades before 1980, these workersâ hourly pay largely tracked economy-wide productivity growth.
When productivity growth slowed significantly, hourly pay growth collapsed even faster, leading to a growing gap between these typical workersâ pay and overall growth. That difference in missing pay for typical workers went to workers at the top or to business owners.
The EPI study shows that if youâre in the bottom 90% of wage earners, youâve seen annual wage growth of less than 1% per year over the past 43 years. If youâre in the âupper middle classâ things were very different. Hereâs a chart from EPI:
Average wages in the 95th to 99th percentile have almost doubled, from $120K to $234K (all figures are in 2022 dollars). But this leaves out the real winners, the top 1%. Average wages for them went from $289K in 1979 to $786K in 2022. But even this huge growth is eclipsed by the wages of the top .1%, which increased an astounding 344%, going from $634K to $2.82 million.
Note that the data are for average annual wages which for the bottom 90% were $40,845 in 2022. Data on average wages are all thatâs available, but itâs misleading. The MEDIAN wage for all workers is around $34k. That means half the bottom 90% are making LESS than 34k. Also, median household income is around $76k; which is two people working in the same household.
The media and the rest of us really have no idea how little the average person is earning.
And this is just income from wages. People at or near the top of the pyramid own the vast majority of the equity capital in the US â the top 10% of households own 85% of the total corporate stock owned by households.
The economic debate in America since the 1880s has been between those in favor of lightly regulated heavily financialized consumer capitalism, with some very modest income redistribution, sufficient â barely â to keep the losers in that economy from starving or freezing to death.
The other side are the Republicans who think England in the Industrial Revolution, is a model for what America ought to look like today. And Chaseâs CEO Jamie Dimon says we should listen to Republicans more. Heâs specifically talking about NATO and immigration.
And this has been the GOPâs pitch forever:
Democrats need to address the negative impacts of US wage distribution as part of their 2024 pitch to keep the presidency, and return to controlling the House and Senate in November.
The Fields of Wrong are covered in snow, mostly due to temperatures being below freezing for the past several days. We had a tree fall into the road during the big windstorm last Sunday. Now it sits, snow-covered, on our property waiting for our next chain sawing event.
Itâs Saturday, and professional football will be all over the television for the rest of the weekend. Good luck to those of you who follow one of the remaining eight teams. Itâs time for our Saturday Soother, where we  try to forget about the Red Sea, the New Hampshire primaries and funding the government, and instead try to calm ourselves for a few moments. Hopefully weâll be in better shape to launch into the roller coaster ride of next weekâs horrors.
Take a few minutes and grab a chair by a window. Now, watch and listen as John Williams is persuaded to conduct the National Symphony Orchestra in a performance of his “Imperial March” from Star Wars during a gala to celebrate his 90th Birthday.
There are many seriously talented people on the stage, including track star Florence Joyner, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Steven Spielberg, violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, and Star Wars actor, Daisy Ridley. Williams is 91, still going strong, and an example to those who think young Biden is too old to run again. Bravo, Maestro:
Itâs been three years since the Insurrection on Jan. 6. One of the determining factors of the outcome of 2024 presidential election will be whether the cases against Trump for his role in the Insurrection are decided before the election on November 5th of this year. Itâs just 303 days away. That isnât a lot of time, and there remains only a small possibility that Trump will be convicted and sentenced to prison for his role in fomenting either the violence at the Capitol or in the stolen documents case before November.
Wrongo no longer expects that either of the political cases against Trump will be decided by then.
Hopefully you realize that if those cases are still pending on Nov. 5 and Trump wins the election, the US government will withdraw from them, eliminating the possibility of Trump ever being convicted.
The failure of the DOJ to see the past four years as an asset that had to used quickly and decisively before it was used up by the Trump teamâs procedural appeals, is unforgivable. This also applies to the DOJ efforts to try the downstream Jan. 6 insurrectionists. From the NYT:
âAs of December, about 1,240 people had been arrested in connection with the attack, accused of crimes ranging from trespassing, a misdemeanor, to seditious conspiracy, a felony.â
Another 350 cases are still pending. Thatâs out of a total of nearly 3, 000 people who have been identified as Jan. 6 insurrectionists. So far, around 170 people have been convicted at trial, two people have been fully acquitted, and about 710 people have pleaded guilty. More than 450 of them were sentenced to jail time, ranging from a handful of days to more than 20 years.
Yet the instigator of all that happened that day remains free. And his public still support him. Here is a chart from the WaPo that shows how the view of Trumpâs responsibility for the Jan. 6 insurrection have changed over time:
The survey also found that over a third of Americans now believe Bidenâs election was illegitimate compared to a December 2021 WaPo survey. Republicans are also less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were âmostly violentâ. Only 18% of them believe the people who entered the Capitol on 1/6 were in that category. They are less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack.
This prove that Mark Twain was right: you can indeed fool some of the people all of the time.
A few months ago, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) released its annual American Values Survey. Buried inside their extensive report was a very alarming finding:
âOne-third of Republicans and 46% of people who think the 2020 election was stolen believe that âtrue American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country.ââ
This is a dangerous powder keg: An increasingly unhinged former President, and a Republican base that believes violence may be the only way to preserve America as they know want it.
When Wrongo speaks about âdreadâ in the political sense, his biggest fear in 2024 is the powder keg weâre sitting on. If Trump loses again, we are certain to see more political violence from the Right. And if he wins? No one should think there is a zero chance of violence against Trumpâs political enemies.
This brings to mind a quote from Churchill, who when speaking about countries appeasement of Hitler said:
âEach one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.â
That is clearly true for many Republicans and most of the media.
A lot of Democrats are down in the dumps these days. They are frustrated with the lack of progress on some issues (immigration) and by the never-ending cycle of bad polling on Bidenâs popularity. Some were hoping to vote for a younger or more progressive Democrat this time around.
Those feelings are legitimate, and it is incumbent on Biden and his campaign to persuade people why they must exercise their voting power against the dark forces on the Right. Democracy canât function when people intend to use force as a means to bring about their idea of justice. Itâs even worse when they are excused after their behavior.
This is the reason to unify and mobilize the disparate Democrats, Independents and anti-Trump Republicans. The use of force on Jan. 6 and the possibility of using more force this year to get an unconvicted Trump back in the White House and keep him there, isnât democracy. This is the time and place to stop Trump’s rolling Insurrection.
Biden recognizes this and kicked off his 2024 political campaign in Valley Forge, PA on Friday. Biden sees Valley Forge as a symbolic connection between his efforts to “heal the soul of the nation” and George Washington’s undaunted spirit during the American Revolution hundreds of years ago.
His second speech will be at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, where white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black parishioners as they welcomed him to pray with them in June 2015.
âSomething that stays with me, that few commentators ever mention: Trump came down his gilded escalator to declare his presidential candidacy just one day before the Charleston massacre. It would probably be too daring for Biden to make that connection, but I always do.â
Bidenâs campaign theme of âpreserving democracyâ isnât compelling, or âmade for TV.â But it is precisely what the nation needs as it stares into the abyss of a potential second Trump term as president. Like Biden, Trump has made promises. Heâs promised his followers that, if re-elected, âI will be your retribution.â
As with Biden, we should take Trump at his word: He will exact retribution and act as a dictator on day one of his second term. These competing promises of Trump and Biden tell us all we need to know about the choice we face in the 2024 election.
On to our first Saturday Soother of 2024. Here at the mansion of Wrong, weâre ready for tonightâs snow. Weâre also looking forward to next weekend when we will have all of our 12 grandchildren here for a belated Christmas party. Since they span the ages of 15-32 and are spread all over the country, this is the first time ever that they will be in the same space.
Itâs something that Wrongo and Ms. Right are looking forward to with great anticipation.
Today, letâs try to forget the dread and the likelihood that Trump will never be convicted for his crimes of Insurrection. Instead, grab a comfy chair by a window where, if you are in the Northeast, you can watch the falling snow.
Now watch and listen to the London Gay Symphony Orchestra play âLa Calindaâ from Deliusâ third opera âKoangaâ, written between 1896 and 1897. Koanga is reputed to be the first opera in the European tradition to base much of its melodic material on African-American music. Delius spent time as a young man working in Florida. Here is âLa Calindaâ conducted by Christopher Braime at St. Giles Cripplegate in February 2017:
Manhattan Beach Pier, CA – December 31, 2023 photo by Michael Franich
Welcome to Wrongoâs first column of 2024. Letâs dispense with the reviews of last year and the forecasts of this year. Letâs try to describe what weâre all feeling as we say so long to the presidential campaign of 2023, and welcome in the presidential campaign of 2024.
Whatâs the overwhelming feeling that comes to mind for Americans when thinking about the upcoming presidential election? Dread, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll:
âThe survey of 1,636 US adults…offered respondents seven emotions â three positive, three negative, one neutral â and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign.
Dread, the most negative option, topped the list (41%), followed by exhaustion (34%), optimism (25%), depression (21%), indifference (17%), excitement (15%) and delight (5%).â
Hereâs the relevant chart:
More:
âIn total, a majority of Americans (56%) chose at least one of the three negative feelings (dread, exhaustion or depression), while less than a third (32%) picked at least one of the three positive feelings (optimism, excitement or delight).â
Wrongo test marketed the idea that âdreadâ was the watchword for 2024 at a New Yearâs breakfast with people who span the political spectrum. They universally hated it, but after a short discussion felt it was arguably, the dominant feeling that they had about what will/might happen in 2024.
âWe are feeling an acute sense of loss….But what do you call the feeling of watching your society being taken over by fanatics, monsters, and lunatics? How about the feeling of watching democracy crash and burnâremember, itâs declining by the stunning rate of about 10% a decade, putting its extinction within our lifetimes.â
Psychology Today gives us a frame to think about dread in their 2023 article, âHow to Overcome the Sinking Feeling of Dreadâ: (emphasis by Wrongo)
âA sense of dread may be due to an abstractly internalized experience of external volatility called âdisembeddingâ….This phenomenon refers to our ability to interact with one another without having to make face-to-face contact. The result is an overabundance of information that comes our way. It becomes abstracted and metaphorically slips through the fingers of our minds in trying to grasp what it is. With a few clicks through an Instagram feed, scrolling through Twitter, or even just opening your web browser to search for something, your brain becomes a dartboard for world news.â
More:
âWhen one experiences this, there are often repeated attempts to secure a firm base. People will reassert their values as moral absolutes, declare other groups as lacking in value, draw distinct lines of virtue and vice, be rigid rather than flexible in their judgements, and punitive and excluding rather than permeable and assimilative….Another consequence of disembedding is the possibility of scapegoating: the underclass, racial minorities, new-age travelers, addicts, people with unusual behaviors, and other vulnerable social groups risk being singled out and demonized as the source of societyâs problems.â
Dread makes us less tolerant of differences, and as a result, we punish them. This is the emotional backdrop for 2024, and the road ahead looks murky as hell. And facts increasingly donât matter, since whichever side posits a fact, the other has a prepared rebuttal that says the source (even if its official statistics) are misleading if not outright lies.
The NYTâs Krugman notes that overall, the countryâs in pretty good shape. The challenge is that people so far continue to blame Biden for the chaos and ugliness that Trump and his cult are creating: (brackets by Wrongo)
âThe big question…was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news….Americaâs resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, [but] so has the pessimism of the public.â
The big question going forward is whether the grim narratives will prevail over our relatively sunny reality when we get to the 2024 election. Unfortunately, we are bathing in the hideous cultural nastiness caused by the Republican Right and itâs spread despair throughout the country.
Overcoming that mood (and the dread people feel) isnât going to be easy, but disaster is certain if you give up. Individually, we each can do more than we think we can to keep America in good hands.
Start by no longer buying into the bullshit spewed by the mainstream media, in particular, the NYT. Their both sides coverage of Trumpâs crooked behavior demonstrates their inability to let us know how real his threat is to the public.
The rest of the corporate mediaâs coverage is the same, with a few exceptions. Donât overlook outlets abroad which had good reputations for thorough and unbiased reporting. In the age of the internet with translation capability at your fingertips, itâs not absurd to look outside of the US news rut for different perspectives.
As long as the GOP can paint the Democrats as the bigger enemy, Independent and anti-Trump Republican voters have an out; they can justify staying on the sidelines. The mainstream media’s complicit role in broadcasting the GOP strategy canât be overstated. And the Democratic Party leadership’s long-term paralysis in the face of this simple equation is one reason why weâre in the situation we are in now.
Stop ascribing superpowers to the GOP. The Republican Party is a hot mess.
No matter what you read, act! Make a plan and act. It can be surprisingly easy to become a thought leader on the local level. Inside both Parties, the leaders are the people who show up and do the work. Thatâs it, thatâs all it takes to begin making change happen. Show up, do the work.
Weâre heading into what will be the toughest part of an existential fight for this democracy. Itâs going to be an ugly, messy show, one that is certain to add to those feelings of dread. Plan on it and then show up to do the work it will take to beat back the fascists.
Think about the toll Americans will endure in 2024. How many women will die of complications from a pregnancy they couldnât end? How many trans persons will give up because they canât live as human beings with autonomy over their bodies? How many persons will die from Covid this coming year because of right-wing propaganda supported by elected GOP officials? How many futures will be shortened because children may not get the food, health care, or education they need?
How many families will be split up because they couldnât find shelter?
Our message when weâre doing the work has to be about unity. Itâs clear right now that Democrats are splintering in all directions. Some donât want Biden because heâs pro-Israel. Young people find Biden to be too old. Some feel heâs too middle-of-the-road. We all need to remember American novelist Rebecca Solnitâs mantra:
Dory with lights, Ogunquit, ME – December 2023 photo by Eric Storm Photo
This is the last Wrongologist column of the year because tomorrow is the first day of 2024. Cartoon lovers shouldnât worry, there are a few cartoons at the end of this post. We will spend tomorrow attending a New Yearâs Day concert of Baroque music at the auditorium of a local prep school.
You will see plenty of year-end reviews of what happened in 2023, most of which will concern what went wrong. So no need to recapitulate the bad news here. Despite all that, 2023 also was a year with significant positive developments:
We engineered a soft landing for the economy, meaning that we didn’t have a recession and the widespread unemployment that would have come with it.
The US will end 2023 with one of the largest annual drops in homicides on record (-12.8%), according to AH Datalytics
In 2022, the insured share of the US population reached 92% (a historic high). Private health insurance enrollment increased by 9 million individuals and Medicaid enrollment increased by 6.1 million individuals.
US healthcare spending as a percentage of the GDP was lower last year than it was 6 years earlier. Health care spending grew by 4.1%, and the share of GDP devoted to health care fell to 17.3%, lower than the 18.2% share in 2021.
The WHO approved a new and affordable malaria vaccine. More than 600,000 people died of malaria in 2021, with children under 5 years representing 80% of malaria deaths in Africa. The US still reports about 2,000 malaria cases each year. The majority of them are contracted abroad.
Two sickle cell disease treatments gained FDA approval. Sickle cell is a debilitating condition that affects around 100,000 Americans, most of them Black. One is the first medical treatment to be based on the gene-editing tool CRISPR.
Sweden and Finland joined NATO. Germany is no longer dependent on Russian oil and natural gas.
The Webb Telescope made huge advancements in human understanding of the Cosmos.
And finally, as Wrongo has written elsewhere, today, despite his best efforts, he turns 80!
The Christmas season brought our family one piece of arguably bad news. On both sides, we are a blended family. That means the holiday season can bring quality time with extended family members who do not share your political and/or cultural sensibilities. But no worries, itâs just one day, except when it isnât.
One of our kids while participating in a âYankee Swapâ of gifts, wound up with an autographed copy of Ted Cruzâs book, âUnwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in Americaâ. Imagine having to act excited with this as your New Yearâs read. As expected, there are many 5-star reviews on Amazon, but Wrongo wants to quote this one:
âA most difficult book to read. Almost never do I feel inclined to post a book review on a public site, yet I am compelled to do so here. Practically everything Cruz expresses outrage over are previously debunked, decades old tropes.â
Your mileage may vary. Wrongo OTOH, participated in a different Yankee Swap, receiving a grandsonâs â75 songs that changed my lifeâ along with a written description of each. A fantastic gift!
Here are the cartoons of the week. Gov. Haley canât figure out the word puzzle:
The Elephant resolves to begin this year like last year:
The new baby doesnât look so cuddly:
Enjoy the peace and quiet of this New Yearâs holiday. Thereâs plenty of time to be nervous about the other 364 days.
