Weinstein. Why do Conservatives (and quite a few Democrats think) the D’s have a “Harvey Problem“?
Is it a surprise that Democrats took money from someone who turned out to be despicable? Yes. But isn’t the real question what the Democrats did with the money?
Conservatives want you to believe that Democratic political contributions are like holy water, where one unsanctified drop spoils the whole font. There is no excusing Weinstein, and if the D’s were doing helpful things for this scumbag, that’s inexcusable. But there is nothing inherently wrong with taking/using Weinstein’s money before they found out how deplorable he is:
Trump thinks the press writes disgusting things. His friends agree:
The GOP believes in a few things, more or less:
Iran, DACA, ACA, EPA. Trump’s plans are working just perfectly:
(There will not be a Monday Wake Up Call column tomorrow, you are on your own! There will be a Tuesday Wake Up, however.)
A few last thoughts on the controversy about kneeling during the National Anthem. This is by David French at the National Review, not some liberal snowflake:
If we lose respect for the First Amendment, then politics becomes purely about power. If we no longer fight to secure the same rights for others that we demand for ourselves, we become more tribal, and America becomes less exceptional.
A comparison for your consideration: A year ago, Colin Kaepernick knelt for the Anthem, and then pledged to donate $1 million to American citizens in oppressed communities. He has donated $800k so far. In the past eight months, now deposed HHS Secretary Tom Price has sat on chartered jets, stealing $1 million from American citizens.
And who do most Americans think is a real patriot?
On to cartoons. Trump’s helping hand for Puerto Rico is insufficient:
Trump’s tax plan looks like it will cost $2.4 TRILLION, but he alone can fix it:
Trump moves on in his quest to make America great:
With so many pre-existing conditions, the GOP should insist they are included in Trumpcare:
Fish Drying in Shenzhen, China earlier in September. Shenzhen is home to Foxconn, Apple’s iPhone manufacturer. It is about 30 min. from Hong Kong.
Our national nightmare; The Apprentice: POTUS Edition, has the Donald regularly turning up the outrageousness. It is frightening how easily many of us are manipulated by his antics, because we are intellectually lazy. Wrongo was happy to see Nicolle Wallace coin a new term for what Trump is pedaling:
Weaponized Patriotism. Isn’t Trump’s effort to equate standing for the National Anthem to “patriotism”, weaponizing patriotism? If you follow Trump’s ideas, all that really matters are the symbols. This was Trump on Saturday:
Wouldn’t you like to see one of these [NFL] owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. He’s fired!
He then went on to state that any player so exercising free speech should be “fired” and unemployable at their career job. Trump added that he believes fans should walk out if players don’t stand for the anthem:
If you see it, even if it’s one player…Leave the stadium.
Phony patriotism is a strong argument to use against a population that is ignorant of civics.
The refusal to stand for the playing of the National Anthem causes Trump and his fellow travelers, (who all profess to understand, and believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights), to claim that the NFL players’ expression is disrespectful and intolerable.
What are we saying when we say that someone “disrespected the flag,” or “disrespected the country,” when they choose to not stand for the National Anthem? The flag is a piece of cloth that represents many complex things, including the Constitution.
If we let Trump deny this expression of resistance, we are creating a situation where all of our rights are just privileges that can be denied on a whim. Trump can’t be allowed to say, “I believe in the 1st Amendment, but not for people who kneel during the National Anthem”.
If Trump’s reaction to Colin Kaepernick is unchallenged, Trump gains the position of defining which actions are “respectful” for Americans. But, it is a very American thing to resist, or rebel against what we perceive to be the symbols of the government’s abuses of power.
It may be disrespectful, but it must be tolerated.
This is today’s America: People allow their perceptions to control them. And who controls perceptions controls the people. Many Americans equate the flag and the National Anthem with patriotism. And according to Trump, patriotism means you support the government, and you support our foreign wars. Anything less is “un-American”.
But one can love his country while hating his government, or some of its actions. This phony form of Trumpist patriotism is a weapon against independent thinking. It’s a weapon that keeps people ignorant of the underlying problems that make our government ineffective.
Time to wake up America! We are a free people, and most of us want to stay that way. We need to look for the story behind the story when someone equates not standing for the Anthem with “unpatriotic”. Perhaps it is just Trump’s politics. Perhaps he is trying to deflect people from thinking about his latest struggling effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, or how Trump is bungling the effort to blunt North Korea’s aggression.
To help us wake up, here is the late Liam Clancy with “The Patriot Game”. The song is about the death of a young man during a campaign by the Irish Republican Army during the 1950s. He bought the story:
The words were written by Dominic Behan, brother of Brendan Behan. Dominic was angry that the Clancy Brothers cleaned up the lyrics by removing this verse that referred to head of government, Eamon de Valera:
This Ireland of mine has for long been half free,
Six counties are under John Bull’s tyranny.
And still de Valera is greatly to blame
For shirking his part in the patriot game.
Bob Dylan stole the song, turning it into “With God on Our Side”, and Dominic Behan wanted to fight Dylan physically for the theft.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Rovinji, Croatia – photo by brotherside. Rovinji is a tourist resort and fishing port, situated on the Adriatic Sea. It is bilingual, with both Italian and Croatian spoken here.
Just over a third of Americans (37%) in 2017 say news organizations generally get the facts straight, unchanged from the last time Gallup asked this question in 2003. But…major partisan shifts in beliefs on this topic have emerged over the past 14 years. Republicans’ trust in the media’s accuracy has fallen considerably, while Democrats’ opinions on the matter have swung in the opposite direction.
49% of college graduates say the news media generally get the facts right, compared with 36% of Americans who attended college, but didn’t graduate. 28% of those with no more than a high school education agree that the media get it right.
But education makes little difference in Republicans’ beliefs about the news media’s credibility. Among Republicans with at least a college degree, only 18% say the media gets the facts straight, similar to the 12% of Republicans without a college degree who say the same.
Republican’s trust in the American news media has fallen steadily from 2003 to today. The numbers are striking: Republicans’ trust plunged from 35% in 2003 to 14%, while Democrats’ trust in America’s news media increased from 42% in 2003, to 62% today.
Gallup first polled on media trust in 1998. Back then, more than half of both Republicans (52%) and Democrats (53%) believed news organizations generally got the facts straight. Here is a Gallup graph:
Both groups’ belief in the accuracy of the media fell dramatically in 2000, possibly due to bad election-night projections of the 2000 presidential election. Some networks first declared Al Gore, and later, George W. Bush the winner, before ending the night with no official winner. When surveyed a month later In December 2000, just 23% of Republicans said news organizations generally get the facts straight, a 29-percentage-point decline in the two years after the 1998 survey.
The next big Republican shift downward began in 2003. What happened in 2003? The reporting about WMD (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq on GW Bush’s watch. The media either lied, or suppressed the findings by IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) that there were no WMD in Iraq. That lie helped move us into an unjustified war that had catastrophic results for both the Middle East and for America.
The paradox is that the Republicans’ distrust grew after that, while Democrats’ views improved. Perhaps the Republicans were angry that the press eventually reported the truth. Perhaps Democrats forgave the press after they finally reported the truth, turning their anger to George W. Bush for lying us into war.
And our Monday discussion of Sen. Lindsay Graham’s false meme that “Obama failed to unite us” can be linked to this as well. The Republicans lack of trust in the news media has led to their willingness to dismiss facts as “fake news”, enabling things like Graham’s lie.
That willingness empowers distortion of the truth as a “go-to” strategy in the GOP’s politics of persuasion.
Given the Gallup findings, Trump’s frequent attacks on the media may have been as much his taking advantage of GOP attitudes, as his creating a poor Republican view of the press by his use of the “fake news” meme.
On the Democratic side, their increased confidence in newspapers may be a counter-reaction to Trump’s criticisms. Gallup found in June that the percentage of Democrats who have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers nearly doubled from 2016, rising from 28% to 46%.
The overall finding that a solid majority of the country believes major news organizations routinely produce false information may have disastrous consequences for our democracy. It is at least related to Americans’ diminished trust in US institutions, and our rising cynicism about the American political system, and our elected officials.
Democracy is impossible unless both our politicians and the press are honest.
Here is “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” originally from the musical, “Hamilton”. This isn’t the version you hear in the musical. This version is from the “Hamilton Mixtec”, performed by K’naan, featuring Residente, Riz MC & Snow Tha Product:
Takeaway Lyric:
It’s really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants,
“Immigrant” has somehow become a bad word.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Public Policy Polling (PPP) conducted a national poll after Charlottesville. Trump voters said they would rather have Jefferson Davis as President than Barack Obama by 45%/20%, while Obama won that question 56/21 with the overall electorate. Draw your own conclusions about Republicans and Trump voters.
PPP asked what racial group faces the most discrimination in America, and 45% of Trump voters said its white people, while 17% said Native Americans. Only 16% of Trump voters picked African Americans.
When asked what religious group Trump voters think face the most discrimination in America, 54% said it was Christians, followed by 22% for Muslims and 12% for Jews. Overall, 89% of Americans have a negative opinion of neo-Nazis to 3% with a positive one, and 87% have an unfavorable opinion of white supremacists to 4% with a positive one. Just 11% agreed with Trump that it’s possible for white supremacists and neo-Nazis to be ‘very fine people,’ to 69% who say that’s not possible.
PPP published the survey on August 23rd. The margin of error is +/-3.3%.
Trump vows to stay in Afghanistan:
Our Navy forgets to steer the boats:
Texas changes its tune about the federal gummint:
Trump threatens government shutdown:
Charlottesville showed us there are vermin down below:
Some think total eclipses are a bad omen, but views differ:
Luecantha by Philip Grausman, at Grounds for Sculpture, New Jersey – photo by Wrongo
Wrongo and Ms. Right have been away, including visiting the Grounds for Sculpture. While we were on the road, Der Trump spoke at a “Trump for President” rally in Phoenix, where he committed to pardoning former Sheriff Joe Arpaio. You remember Joe Arpaio, the guy that defied a court order to stop racially profiling Latinos, the guy who was found guilty of contempt of court when he wouldn’t stop the profiling? What would it mean to pardon Arpaio? It would once again show that Trump doesn’t respect judges, or the law.
He also promised to cause a government shutdown if Congress didn’t fund the cost of his border wall. Wasn’t Mexico supposed to be paying for that?
They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history. And our weak leaders do it overnight. These things [statues] have been here for 150 years, for 100 years. You go back to a university and it’s gone. Weak, weak people.
Whatever could Trump mean when he speaks about “our culture”? He’s aligned himself with America’s neo-Confederates. He wasn’t talking to the entire nation, he was talking to the Phoenix crowd and to his supporters around the country. If there was any doubt that Trump was staking a claim for neo-confederates and white nationalists, consider his conclusion:
We are Americans and the future belongs to us. The future belongs to all of you. This is our moment. This is our chance. This is our opportunity to recapture our dynasty like never before.
The “Americans” he is talking about are not all Americans, and what dynasty could he be referring to? It isn’t a Democratic or Republican dynasty. It’s an uninterrupted record of unquestioned white supremacy that was disrupted and can only now be “recaptured.”
Is this just a political stance, or does he truly believe what he says? Hard to know. What is unambiguous is that he’s now leading a neo-Confederate movement that sees white nationalists and white supremacists as “good American people”. What is now clear is that Trump is speaking only to the white Americans whose forebears founded this country.
Who should remake the country, you know, and make it great again? He’s talking to his base, which includes White Supremacists, White Nationalists, the militias, the Klan and the American Nazis. They are the ones he says should remake this country, not that it was all that great 150 years ago.
Think this is wrong? He’s tripled down on including these groups as part of his base since his gaffe at Charlottesville, so now we have to believe that he really means it.
From the New Yorker’sDavid Remnik: (parenthesis and brackets by the Wrongologist)
During his speech in Charlotte (before the election in November 2016)… [President]Obama warned that no one really changes in the Presidency; rather, the office “magnifies” who you already are. So if you “accept the support of Klan sympathizers before you’re President, or you’re kind of slow in disowning it, saying, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ then that’s how you’ll be as President.”
Somebody was smart enough to know what would happen if Trump was elected.
Trump is willing to leave identity groups like people of color, feminists, minority religions like the Jews, and the LGBTQ, to the Democrats. In TrumpWorld, they bring you the fake news. They brought you the trade agreements that took your jobs away. They let Mexicans and Muslims into your country.
In Phoenix, he called journalists “sick people.” He accused the news media of “trying to take away our history and our heritage”. He questioned the media’s patriotism:
I really think they don’t like our country…I really believe that. And I don’t believe they’re going to change..
Trump isn’t worried about his lies. Its the MSM who are liars, and their stories are all fake. When Trump delegitimizes the news and media organizations, it is every citizen’s duty to resist.
Control the media, control the people.
The last word goes to Booman:
So, like in the Civil War…and the Civil Rights Era, it’s time for Americans to do battle. This time, our own president is the enemy
You need help getting the truth out, and so does Wrongo. For inspiration, let’s listen to the Beatles song “Help!” from the album and film of the same name. “Help!” was number 1 on both the UK and US singles charts in late summer 1965. John Lennon always said that it should have been played at a slower tempo, so here is “Help!” covered by Deep Purple, live in Denmark in 1968:
If you guys feel like you’re losing out, fucking work harder. I don’t know what to tell you. If you’re a white supremacist, if you think you’re the master race, how come we’re kicking your ass so easily? You’re the master race! How come you’re not winning everything? Why aren’t the Olympics dominated by you? You’re the master race. What do you have left? Golf and tennis, maybe, maybe. And even then, the first black people you came across, you’re like, ‘We can’t play this game anymore.’ Williams sisters, Tiger Woods. O.K.
Suppressing political violence is a matter of will. It requires that we rise above our tribal loyalties and defend the political system that is at the heart of America.
Trump is having trouble keeping members of his advisory councils:
Trump uses wrong finger:
Is the Confederate Flag about heritage? Absolutely:
Orchha, on the banks of the Betwa River, India – photo by Arian Zwegers cc 2.0
Quite the week: After threatening nuclear war with North Korea, musing about invading Venezuela, and equivocating over Charlottesville, Trump folded two advisory councils and then decided against forming a council on Infrastructure. He also Twitter-attacked more Republican senators than Democrats this week, a bad strategy for someone who can’t be sure what Special Counsel Mueller may come up with.
But, according to a Survey Monkey poll as reported by Axios, Trump’s statements about Charlottesville have overwhelming support of Republican voters. Survey Monkey asked whether people agreed with a verbatim quote from President Trump on Tuesday:
You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent
Republicans agreed with the Trump comment, 87%-11%. Democrats disagreed, 83%-15%. Independents disagreed, 59%-39%.
When we no longer agree on basic facts, civil debate is impossible.
This is a dangerous moment. America is split. We need to stop fighting about the little things. Wrongo usually is against “slippery slope” arguments, but will make an exception in the case of our Civil War history: What is the objective of removing Civil War statues and monuments? Will their removal change the historical record of slavery?
Of course not. How would supporters of removal say we should polarize the continuum of history? What would be next? Removal of history books that mention the Confederacy or former slave owners?
One of Wrongo’s favorite histories of the Civil War is “A Diary from Dixie” by Mary Boykin Chestnut. It is a day-to-day diary of her experience as a southern partisan during the Civil War. Most Civil War historians have read and consulted it in the preparation of their own work. Should we burn the book because it was written by a slave-holding partisan?
Of course not.
Many want to draw a red line regarding slavery and the Civil War, and that is totally understandable. But where to draw it? Can it be drawn in a way that keeps our children in touch with our past, even the sordid bits?
We need to own our history.
We should ignore the false moral equivalencies mentioned by Trump, such as Lee and Washington. Both owned slaves, so statues of Washington must go too. It is true that both owned slaves, but Washington fought to build this country, while Lee fought to destroy it in support of slavery.
Some have pointed to the fact that Jews would never let Auschwitz, Dachau or Buchenwald be taken down. This is another false equivalency. Auschwitz is maintained not to celebrate Nazism, but to show its horrors.
Maybe that IS the lesson: Add interpretation to the Confederate monuments: Make them say that we do not want anyone to forget what happened, and that we want to make sure it can never happen again.
It’s Saturday, so we MUST get some distance between where we are as a country now, and where we need to be.
Wrongo’s prescription? Brew a cup of Brooklyn’s Toby’s Estate El Ramo Columbian coffee. El Ramo means the bouquet in Spanish ($14 for 12oz.), close the door, and put on your over-the-ear headphones. Now, listen to G.P. Telemann’s “Concerto in G major for Viola, Strings and Basso continuo, TWV 51:G9”.
Wrongo and Ms. Right heard it last week at the final summer concert of the New Baroque Soloists at the Washington Meeting House in Washington, Connecticut. Here it is performed live by the Remember Barockorchester, in the Unser Lieben Frauen Church, Bremen, on November 21st, 2015:
There’s a depressing overtone to Charlottesville that suggests the arc of history is the energy behind the story. Is the nation’s soul about to be divided as it has been many times before? Americans get two chits: One for the ballot box, and another for the soap box. Many people feel compelled to use both. The existential question is how best to use them.
The Charlottesville incident left a woman dead, and many others badly injured from a car-ramming. It has the flavor of a “first shot” in a new civil war. And the president’s criticisms of counter-protesters in Charlottesville seem to be far outside the mainstream. Frank Bruni, NYT:
We’re stuck for now with a morally bankrupt plutocrat for president, someone so defensive and deluded that he’s urging more nuance in the appraisal of neo-Nazis.
Still, many Republicans have been reluctant to condemn Trump’s Charlottesville rhetoric. The right would do well to excise any association with the Hitlerites who chanted “blood and soil” in their torch-lit pseudo Nuremberg rally in Virginia. America remains the land of the free and the home of the brave, but Nazis? Nein, Danke.
We have two conflicts arising from Charlottesville:
Does every group still have the right to assemble (peacefully) and speak their minds?
What are we to do about the symbols from our divided past?
The 1st Amendment protects most speech, but not the sensibilities of those who are exposed to it. Some speech is guaranteed to be offensive. America has lived with neo-Nazis, the KKK, et al for Wrongo’s entire lifetime, and has survived it, no matter how odious. Even the ACLU assisted the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville.
But there are recognized limits. No one has a right to incite violence. Individuals have no right to defame someone. Some of the limits are easier to define than others: The concept of inciting a riot can lead to a subjective reading of the facts and the application of nebulous standards.
Today’s wrinkle are the armed demonstrators. They imply that a peaceful assembly could be placed at grave risk at any moment. It shouldn’t be difficult to foresee that local people will come out to confront neo-Nazis and white supremacists that are marching in their town. That creates even greater risk of physical violence, and requires that local police are well-trained and disciplined.
Second, there are Confederate statues all over America. The white supremacists who went to Charlottesville to “protect” Lee’s statue need to hear that we will not re-litigate the Civil War. The south’s and the nation’s history are what they are. The Civil War should be given due weight, learned from, pondered, and not shunted aside. Are Robert E. Lee’s existence, deeds, and historical relevance news to anyone?
A suggestion: In Bulgaria, the USSR monuments were removed and placed in a single museum park. The museum’s collection covers the period 1944 to 1989, from the introduction of communism in Bulgaria, to the end of the totalitarian regime. Herding those statues into one place makes a statement that speaks loudly about the era, and how the USSR deprived Bulgarians of their rights.
Maybe a few such statue parks could have a similar effect here.
Let’s not get sidetracked from the most important issue before us: How we remake the US economy so that it provides a decent standard of living and expanding opportunity to as many people as possible.
There are plenty of “deplorables” who would benefit from universal health care, inexpensive college tuition for their children, infrastructure that worked, and good-paying jobs. Uniting the US population around programs that achieve these goals would do much to subdue the angry ethnic divisions that these “political entrepreneurs” are trying to foment.
Moreover, this program is not of the right or the left.
It’s a path toward political stability and a better society – one that would allow people the opportunity to develop into contributing, thoughtful citizens, capable of fully participating in the Republic.
Ok, a tune to help you think about peaceful assembly and whether the statues should stay or go. Here is Depeche Mode with “Where’s The Revolution” from their 2017 album “Spirit”. Wrongo didn’t know they were still working, much less producing relevant tunes:
Takeaway Lyric:
You’ve been kept down
You’ve been pushed ’round
You’ve been lied to
You’ve been fed truths
Who’s making your decisions?
You or your religion
Your government, your countries
You patriotic junkies
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Boy Scouts, Priebus out, Mooch in power, Sessions on the ropes, GOP fumbles Repeal and Replace. Hard for the White House to have had a worse week than we just saw. Let’s hope it gets better. The worst thing this week was how the supposedly non-political boy scouts cheered or booed just when Trump wanted.
Whatever did the Donald say to the Boy Scouts?
Spicer and Priebus are out. Who’s next through the revolving door?
The foul-mouthed Scaramucci is the new Trump front man:
GOP is on to their next idea:
Expect the GOP and McConnell to be back at what they do best very soon:
