Category: Politics of Fear

Are We Having a Border Crisis?

The Daily Escape:

Dead Horse State Park, Moab, UT – 2020 photo by Schmats1

From Pew Research:

“The US Border Patrol apprehended nearly 100,000 migrants at the US-Mexico border in February, the tenth consecutive month of increased apprehensions and a return to levels last seen in mid-2019.”

Is this a self-inflicted wound by Biden, another Republican effort to drive a wedge into Biden’s political support, or both? Since the next 20 months will be a battle royal for control of the last two years of Biden’s term, how Biden handles the immigration issue has huge political consequences.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) flipped his seat in November 2020, but he must face voters again in 2022. Immigration could easily be a powerful wedge issue against him, threatening the Democrats’ control of the Senate.

Texas elects a governor in 2022, and while Texas isn’t really in play, last November we saw Latino voters in Texas edging away from the Democrats, toward the Republicans. Residents of these border states experience unauthorized immigration directly; and it’s clear that many Texas Latinos embrace enforcement-minded views on immigration, even while empathizing with the reasons migrants want to come to America.

Republicans assume that they’ve hit on a strategy to beat Democrats in 2022 by saying that the President’s immigration policies have led to a surge of migrants crossing our southern border. But here’s a chart from the Pew Research article showing that’s not the whole story:

Apprehensions peaked in May 2019, then dropped precipitously through April 2020, and have risen ever since, including under Trump in 2020. Today they are at about 73% of the high point that occurred under Trump, but way above that of prior years.

It’s important to remember that migration is seasonal. Border apprehensions have typically peaked in the spring, before declining during the hot summer months that make migration more dangerous. That pattern started to change in 2013, when the mix of new arrivals shifted from being predominantly from Mexico to being from the countries of the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). The migrants also changed to predominantly families and unaccompanied children.

But now, according to Pew Research, those patterns are starting to reverse:

  • Around 42% of those apprehended at the southwestern border in February were of Mexican origin, up from 13% in May 2019, the most recent peak month for monthly apprehensions.
  • People from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras accounted for 46% of apprehensions in February, down from 78% in May 2019.
  • The number and share of single adults being apprehended at the border has also increased dramatically.

It isn’t clear whether these trends will continue, but it’s possible that February’s spike in apprehensions could also be a return to the seasonal nature of migration.

Republicans are saying that the current spike in border apprehensions is entirely a result of policy changes by the Biden administration. Here’s what Biden has changed according to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas:

  • The majority of those apprehended at the southwest border (71%) are single adults who are being expelled under the CDC’s authority to manage the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Families apprehended at the southwest border make up 20%. They are also currently being expelled.
  • Unaccompanied children make up 10% of the current spike. They are not expelled but are brought to a Border Patrol facility and processed for transfer to HHS while they await placement with a sponsor. These children go through immigration proceedings if they are able to present a claim for relief under the law.

What this says is that when Republicans and some in the media throw around scary numbers about a surge of more than  100,000 “illegal crossings” in February, what they’re not telling you is that approximately 90,000 of those migrants (single adults and families) were apprehended and expelled.

Still, 10,000 kids are a giant task to house, feed, and process. That’s why as a group, they are overwhelming current shelter capacity. On Wednesday, Ambassador Roberta Jacobson, the White House coordinator for the southern border, said in Spanish: “The border is not open.”

The Biden administration has struggled to find the right message but hasn’t abandoned enforcement. It removed almost 1,000 Haitian nationals in February.

Politicians criticizing what’s happening with Biden’s policy need to show us what specific change Biden implemented that they think is causing the current spike. They need to explain what should be done instead.

But, of course, they won’t do that. It is much easier to simply claim that Biden is implementing an “open border” policy, something that is complete nonsense.

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Monday Wake Up Call – March 1, 2021

Sorry that we didn’t have Sunday cartoons. For the first time in 11 years writing this little blog, Wrongo couldn’t find much that was worthy of publishing, except this one:

The NYT reported that around one-third of America’s military have declined to take the Covid vaccine. The reluctance is largely among younger troops, and that it’s a warning about the potential hole in the broad-scale immunity goals for the country. Here is what’s known: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Roughly one-third of troops on active duty or in the National Guard have declined to take the vaccine, military officials recently told Congress. In some places, such as Fort Bragg, N.C., the nation’s largest military installation, acceptance rates are below 50%.”

The Defense Department doesn’t collect data on who fails to take the shot, but says: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…there is broad agreement that refusal rates are far higher among younger members, and enlisted personnel are more likely to say no than officers. Military spouses appear to share that hesitation: In a December poll of 674 active-duty family members conducted by Blue Star Families, a military advocacy group, 58% said they would not allow their children to receive the vaccine.”

Although hundreds of thousands of military members have received shots so far, taking the vaccine is voluntary for military members, since it’s only been approved for emergency use by the FDA. If it becomes a standard, approved vaccine, the military can order troops to take the shot.

The rule limiting the Pentagon’s authority to mandate vaccinations unless they’ve been approved by the FDA was designed to protect soldiers from being treated as medical guinea pigs by Uncle Sam. Troops cited the military’s use of an anthrax vaccine in the late 1990s which was believed to cause adverse effects as evidence that the military should not be on the front lines of a new vaccine.

There are many other examples from LSD experiments to radiation exposure that have been visited on America’s military in our lifetimes. But this is an example of a good rule that’s produced a possibly bad outcome, since the vaccine has already been given to nearly 50 million Americans.

This shot doesn’t quality as “experimenting” on the military, but rules are rules and vaccine skeptics within the ranks are taking advantage. Mandating compliance is likely to bring other problems. The NYT says:

“In some ways, vaccines are the new masks: a preventive measure against the virus that has been politicized.”

We’ve written about how the military is moving rightward politically. Most of the reasons quoted by the Times for not getting vaccinated sound more like the QAnon party line than what we hear in civilian society.

More from the Times, quoting a 24-year-old female airman in Virginia who said she declined the shot even though she is an emergency medical worker:

“I would prefer not to be the one testing this vaccine”….She also said that because vaccine access had become a campaign theme during the 2020 race for the White House, she was more skeptical, and added that some of her colleagues had told her they would rather separate from the military than take the vaccine should it become mandatory.”

The NYT says in the article that the military’s vaccine skepticism is simply a reflection of the society at large. They quote  Dr. Michael S. Weiner, the former chief medical officer for the Defense Department:

“At the end of the day, our military is our society….They have the same social media, the same families, the same issues that society at large has.”

What’s happening in the military is like what we’re seeing across the entire US: There’s a higher percentage of older people taking the vaccine, and that percentage trends down with age.

According to the latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 77% of Americans 65 or over have either gotten a shot or plan to do so as soon as possible. But just 41% of Americans aged 18-29 say the same.

The military traditionally operates in confined quarters. On ships, in barracks, or at a duty station where there’s little room for social distancing. There soon may be enough military anti-vaxxers where they can cause issues with readiness. There was a Covid outbreak on a navy ship that infected 1,100 crew members, about 20% of the ship’s crew.

Time to wake up America! Returning to nearly normal will take a few things: First, keeping your distance from others who may have the virus; it doesn’t spread easily at distance. Second, taking FDA-approved precautions like getting the shots. Or third, at least wearing a mask.

If you won’t do any of those three, you risk yourself, your family and the rest of us.

To help you wake up, listen to Hennessey the Band do their song “8 Men“:

Sample Lyric:

8 men have all the money.

8 men have more than half of the money than everyone else in the world has combined.

8 men control the economy.

8 men have all the wealth.

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Saturday Soother – January 30, 2021

The Daily Escape:

View of Torrance, CA from Palos Verdes, CA – January 2021 photo by Gary W. Stuart. A perfect reason to live in Palos Verdes, where Wrongo and Ms. Right lived for 10 years: Views of ocean and mountains on a rare crystal clear LA winter day. The San Gabriel Mountains in the background are ~35 miles away.

We’ve had a few bitter cold days on the snow-covered fields of Wrong. Friday morning, it was 6° with a 20+mph wind, making it a tough walk for the dog.

The emotional temperature is also icy in DC.  There is a growing rupture between Republicans who insist that the deadly Capitol riot was not the work of Trump supporters, and who insist on carrying concealed weapons onto the floor of the House, and Democrats who say they are afraid they’ll be harmed by those very same Republicans.

Since Republicans refuse to hold their colleagues accountable, some House Democrats have started refusing to work with some of their GOP counterparts, specifically those who favored the election sedition and who refuse to wear masks.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) is moving her office away from the office of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Greene and her staff are berating and harassing the Congresswoman and her staff because they wear masks. Bush said:

“I’m moving my office away from hers for my team’s safety,”

Three weeks after the attack on the Capitol, and two weeks after the disgraced president was impeached for the second time, the GOP is wallowing in a debate over impeachment, trutherism, and… Jewish space lasers?

Yes to the Jewish space lasers: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is also a gun-toting’ QAnon disciple elected by the same Georgians who elected Biden. She says that California’s Camp Fire was started by a laser beam fired from space by “Rothschild Inc.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), sums up THE issue of 2021:

There were plenty of jokes made about the space lasers, but one thing that isn’t a joke is the palpable fear by Democrats who have to deal with this lunacy every day. We learned that the new acting head of the Capitol Police wants a wall around the Capitol:

“Vast improvements to the physical security infrastructure must be made to include permanent fencing”

The acting head of the Capitol Police has no faith that we can satisfactorily explain to Republican-Americans that Biden was fairly elected. That his victory was reasonably large. That Trump and most of his enablers lied continually about the outcome of the election.

She thinks the only option is to put fences and razor wire around the Capitol to discourage people whose minds have been poisoned, from attacking it again. And our government may well follow her recommendation. We can’t harden a free society. Whatever you fence off will be “safe” while other places are open to attack. As Jonathan Last says,

“The fences and razor wire at the Capitol are the physical manifestation of the Republican lie. Every time you see them, remember Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz and…the hundreds of elected Republicans across the country who created this lie.”

The tragedy of Trump is that words and deeds, no matter how reckless or disconnected from the truth, carry no political consequences.

Organizer Bree Newsome translated Republicans’ current attitude:

“Sorry we tried to assassinate you & overthrow the election. We didn’t expect it to fail & create this awkwardness between us. Let’s move forward & get back to normal with us blocking any legislation you introduce while we continue to feed a racist terrorist movement. Love, GOP”

We live in disturbing times, but we must find ways to let go of the anger and fear, at least for a few moments on a Saturday. Outdoor activities are not recommended when the wind chill is below zero, so pick up that long read that you’ve been putting off, settle into a comfy chair and get going!

To help get you started, brew up a vente cup of Dafis Abafita Natural Ethiopia ($21.50/12 oz.) from Topeka Kansas’ PT Coffee Roasting Co. The roaster says you can taste mulberry, cocoa nib, tangerine zest, and agave syrup in the cup. Sounds like that cup is doing a lot of work!

Now put on your Bluetooth headphones and listen to “Born in the Right Country” by the group River Whyless, from the mean streets of Asheville, NC. This song is a powerful and elegantly drawn statement about racism in America. It’s a must-watch:

Sample lyric:

I’ll tell you baby a secret
Manufactured truth is easy to sell
When you own the factory
And you own the hearts of the clientele

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Trump’s Mass Radicalization of the Right

The Daily Escape:

Bentonite Hills, Cathedral Valley, Capitol Reef NP, UT – photo by BonsailLXIV

Donald Trump exits the presidential stage today, and not a minute too soon. In a sense, we’re very lucky that he was limited to one term. His mass radicalization of the far right of the Republican Party took just four years to become the Party’s mainstream, and to start an armed insurrection.

Throughout his term, he behaved as if Democrats, immigrants, Black Lives Matter protesters, Blue state residents, and the press had seized the country from Real Americans, the Trump voters. Since the election in November, he’s blanketed the nation with the Big Lie that the election was stolen.

Trump used mass radicalization to build a huge group of followers. The feedback loop was clear: Trump projects omnipotence, while the followers yearn for someone who has all the answers. Some would call it a “lock and key” relationship.

On January 6th, his followers stormed the US Capitol believing they were supposed to seize it for Trump. What is striking are two characteristics his followers seem to show. First, they display global grievance: They are angry at nearly everything outside of a fixed group of ideas and concepts like “freedom”, the Constitution, gun ownership and hatred of “socialism”.

Second, they have an overwhelming sense of entitlement: They alone are the arbiters of right and wrong. They have the right to be the judge and jury if something needs redress. If they commit a violent act, it’s the other side that’s responsible for inciting them.

Domestic terrorism analysts are concerned about the security implications of millions of right-wing Americans buying into baseless claims. The line between mainstream and fringe is vanishing, with conspiracy-minded Republicans now sitting in Congress and marching alongside armed extremists in their spare time.

These self-proclaimed “real Americans” are cocooned in their own news outlets, their own social media networks and, ultimately, their own “truth.” They support bogus claims like the November election was rigged, the coronavirus is a hoax, and liberals are hatching a socialist takeover.

Jason Dempsey, a military analyst notes that too many people are turning to force as a response to fears about political divisions:

“…they’re carrying guns and wearing body armor…We’ve got to get past that and be wary of the idea of militarism that doesn’t lead to a common conception of service, but leads to the kind of tribalism where we have to protect ourselves and our families by force against those we disagree with.”

Nobody expects this mass radicalization to go away when Trump’s out of office. As Arie Kruglanski, a University of Maryland professor who’s written extensively about radicalization says:

“We don’t trust the government. We don’t trust the Congress. We don’t trust the Supreme Court. We don’t trust now the science. We don’t trust medicine. We don’t trust the media for sure….So who do we trust? Well, we trust our tribe. We trust conspiracy theories that tell us what we want to hear.”

The danger of insurrection is here, and probably, thanks to Trump, will stay here for a long time.

QAnon, proliferated last year. The Q followers insist that Trump was all that stood between us and a “deep state” cabal that was running a global sex trafficking ring and harvesting a chemical from children’s blood.

The cherry on the top was the myth that the presidential election had been stolen: 33% of Republicans say they believe that the QAnon theory about a conspiracy among deep state elites is “mostly true.” And 36% of registered voters think voter fraud has occurred to a large enough extent to affect the election outcome.

The QAnon conversation online pivoted from taking down the global cabal to “Stop the Steal.” So when Trump invited supporters to Washington for mass demonstrations on Jan. 6, pro-Trump agitators and QAnon believers saw it as a demand for action.

Who believes in conspiracy theories? Those who have negative attitudes to authority, who feel alienated from politics, and who see the modern world as unintelligible. Conspiracy theory believers are often suspicious and distrustful, and see others as plotting against them. They struggle with anger, resentment, and other hostile feelings as well as with fear. They have lower self-esteem than nonbelievers, and need external validation to maintain their self-esteem. Belief in conspiracy theories often also goes along with belief in paranormal phenomena, and weaknesses in analytic thinking.

Trump, has created what James Meek calls “a self-contained alternative political thought space.” Loyalty to Trump is now a social identity for many people. So if Trump says that the 2020 election was rigged, why would a Trump loyalist disagree?

At the same time, Trump both sows and leverages a growing mistrust of institutions. Only 35% of Americans feel “a lot of trust” that what scientists say is accurate and reliable. Educators and media who try to tell the truth, aren’t useful weapons against conspiracy theories, because they simply become targets of the conspiracy theorists.

Let’s give the last word to Paul Krugman:

“Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left—which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe—the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences.”

When Richard Nixon resigned and Al Gore conceded, pundits and politicians smugly reassured us that things were fine because there were no tanks or soldiers in the streets, proving that the system worked.

How’s that working out for us this time?

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – End of an Error Edition

How about some good news for a change?

Flint Michigan may finally get some justice: Former governor Rick Snyder was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty in his handling of Flint’s water crisis. Six others were also charged, including the former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the state’s former chief medical executive. They were both charged with involuntary manslaughter related to the deaths of Michiganders.

Wrongo was delighted that Biden named Jaime Harrison as Chair of the DNC. His commitment to retail funds raising and voter turnout should help change the Democrat’s chances of winning in the southern states. Harrison has done what others haven’t — organizing and getting out the vote in marginalized communities, zip code by zip code. If Harrison can keep the Party’s energy high, we may have a chance to keep the majority and win more seats in both Houses in 2022.

Oh, and TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY IS OVER, very soon. On to cartoons.

The empty promises of the past four years:

Members of Vanilla ISIS are being brought to justice:

It shouldn’t be this way:

Even GOP Congresscritters were scared:

The impeachment game:

NOW you’re ready to heal?

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Saturday’s (Not much of a) Soother – January 16, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Foster Bridge, Cabot, VT – photo by Michael Blanchette photography

Predictions for the year ahead are probably pointless, but 2021 could easily include more domestic terror. Biden’s inauguration will look like an armed takeover of the US Capitol, because the new president must be protected from a potential return of the mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan.6.

That group included some very serious, most likely, coordinated people who had temporary restraints and a plan. Reuters reports that US prosecutors said in a court filing that rioters intended:

 “…to capture and assassinate elected officials.”

The Trump Coupists believed that the election had been stolen, and that democracy in the US had been overthrown. It was, therefore, their duty to right the wrong that had been done, including taking captive those most responsible like Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. The WaPo says the mob got within 100 feet of Pence’s hiding spot:

“If the pro-Trump mob had arrived seconds earlier, the attackers would have been in eyesight of the vice president as he was rushed across a reception hall into the office.”

This is a Republican problem. Here’s polling data from Quinnipiac, who surveyed 1,239 registered voters nationwide, from January 7-11:

  • 73% of Republicans say Trump is protecting, not undermining, democracy.
  • 70% of Republicans say Republicans who voted to block electors were protecting, not undermining, democracy.
  • 73% of Republicans say there was widespread voter fraud in 2020.

So what will these 50+ million Republicans out of the 74 million Trump voters who think they are disenfranchised, do? Their numbers are more than sufficient to sustain a domestic insurgency. They are geographically diverse, many are armed to the teeth. They believe they are part of a Trump movement, and it is their patriotic duty to fight in order to restore US democracy. From David Brooks:

“You can’t argue with people who have their own separate made-up set of facts…It’s a pure power struggle. The weapons in this struggle are intimidation, verbal assault, death threats and violence, real and rhetorical. The fantasyland mobbists have an advantage because they relish using these weapons, while their fellow Christians just want to lead their lives….The problem is, how do you go about reattaching people to reality?”

A distinct possibility for 2021 is a low grade insurrection, led by heavily armed true believers of the Trump movement. The challenge for America is whether these true believers can be deprogrammed and return to reality.

A return to reality requires all of us, but specifically Republicans at the local, state and federal levels to reject the Big Lie fomented by Trump. Republicans need to look in the mirror. The FT’s Janan Ganesh says: (paywalled, emphasis by Wrongo):

 “Whether we date it to the congressional midterm election of 1994, or Barry Goldwater’s White House bid in 1964, or the McCarthyite 1950s, the party has not policed its right flank for a long time. The Republican portrayal of government as inherently malign is hardly new….The impugning of opponents’ legitimacy did not commence with president-elect Joe Biden’s this winter.”

Few of us know insurrectionists. We see them on TV as armed, angry brainwashed people eager for a second Civil War. We’re all unsure if deprogramming will work, because it rarely works for cult members.

We need brave Republicans who will speak out against the tyrant, and the Big Lie, regardless of the threats.

If the Big Lie persists, America could then be faced with mutually exclusive, and terrible choices: One is to become a police state. We could see more cameras, security checkpoints near state capitols, combined with more social media suppression and expanded no-fly lists. But if there are millions of armed true believers, they won’t be easily suppressed. We could face a long term insurrection, one that will not be put down, short of imprisoning many more millions of Americans.

Whether the trained and armed groups of (mostly) white men scattered all over the country, many of whom are currently in police forces or on military active duty, will coalesce sufficiently to conduct periodic quasi-terrorist actions is difficult to say. But even in the very red states where the Trump movement is powerful, there are urban centers. Those cities are much less red. And few in the Trump movement will want their family and friends getting killed for the cause.

Second, we can try peacefully to encourage the insurrectionists into the mainstream by making our politicians cut out the BS. And by creating a better society. A decent, livable America is currently out of reach for many. In that sense, we all could profit by working to make America great again.

Let’s climb down from all of the recent hysteria, and enjoy a brief moment of Saturday Soothing. Here is the Cadenza from “Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto”, with Canadian Chris Coletti on solo trumpet, conducted by Paul Haas with the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, in October 2017. His playing is remarkable:

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Demographic Analysis of Pro-Trump Congressional Districts

The Daily Escape:

Three Sisters, Goblin Valley State Park, UT – photo by jonnyboy_wanderlust

As Wrongo writes this, the House has voted for a second Trump Impeachment. The process began with votes on rules and procedures. Most Republicans argued that impeachment would be divisive. That’s rich, given that for four years they have supported and encouraged the divisive lies and actions of Donald Trump.

But now, it’s suddenly critical that we “heal.” Of course it is.

A majority of House Republicans objected to the certification of Electoral College votes from the swing states of Arizona and Pennsylvania. Even more Republicans voted against the House motion to ask Mike Pence to begin the process required by the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

Now it’s on to a second impeachment. A grand total of ten House Republicans (out of 211) voted along with all House Democrats to impeach Trump. According to the WaPo, McConnell has decided not to convene the Senate for an emergency trial, meaning the trial will fall to the newly Democrat-controlled Senate after January 20.

Back to the House Republicans: Jacob Whiton wrote an interesting demographic and economic analysis of the constituencies represented by the 139 House Republicans who objected to the certification of at least one state’s Electoral College results. His aim is to clarify the demographics of where right-wing authoritarianism has taken root. Overall he found that:

“The Republican Party’s most Pro-Trump House members have been elected by…white homeowners in the fast-growing exurban fringe. They feel the social status traditionally associated with their identity as white Christians is being degraded and that left wing political movements pose a threat to their livelihoods and political power. In reaction, they have lashed themselves to a movement within the Republican Party led by President Trump that seeks to defend the privileges of property-owning white Americans in our political system, economy, and public life.”

The districts represented by the most committed Pro-Trump Republicans are fast-growing, rapidly diversifying suburbs. Places where inequalities between white homeowners and their non-white neighbors have been shrinking, and where low voter turnout has helped deliver reliable Republican victories.

Residents of objectors’ districts are more than twice as likely as residents of other Republican districts to live in “sparse suburban areas.” These districts are among the fastest-growing districts in the country, with population growth outpacing that in districts represented by Democrats or other Republicans over the last 20 years.

Almost all of this growth has been among non-white groups, specifically Latinos and Asian Americans, resulting in a dramatic shift in the demographic composition of these districts:

In the objectors’ districts, residents under the age of 18 are 3.6 times more likely to be Hispanic and 1.6 times more likely to be Black or Asian American than those over the age of 65. This means that in these districts, debates about Social Security and Medicare, public education and housing are highly polarized.

District constituents of the Republican objectors tend to have the lowest levels of formal educational attainment. In their districts, on average, 68% of white homeowners do not have a four-year degree and their median home value is the lowest:

Whites in Republican objectors’ districts are considerably more likely to own their own home and earn higher incomes than other racial groups, except for Asian Americans. But White homeowners’ perception of loss of status relative to upwardly mobile Hispanic and Asian American households is a key social context which is driving Trumpism’s nativist politics.

White evangelical Christians have been Trump’s most unwavering base of support. In more than half of Republican objectors’ districts, evangelicals account for at least a fifth of constituents, making them far more likely to represent evangelicals in Congress than other Republicans or Democrats.

White evangelical Protestants stand far apart in their politics. The Public Religion Research Institute’s 2020 American Values survey found that they are the only group where a majority expresses a preference for living in a country “made up of people who follow the Christian faith”.

They are the only group for whom abortion and terrorism rank in their top three most important issues. They are also the least likely to agree that President Trump has encouraged white supremacist groups, although a majority of Americans overall do.

Whiton found that workers in the Republican objectors’ districts are more likely to be employed in sectors of the economy Trump has routinely identified as most threatened by the political left: mining and oil and natural gas extraction, heavy manufacturing, and law enforcement.

Whiton concludes with a note of optimism: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The fact that Republican objectors command the least popular support among their own constituents of any congressional elected officials in the country is both a testament to their effectiveness in entrenching their own power and also the foundation on which we must ground our hopes for political change to end minority rule.”

Perhaps we should focus our voter turnout activities in these Republican objectors’ districts.

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For My Friends, Anything. For My Enemies, the Law

The Daily Escape:

“Life in 2022” – 1962 painting by Walter Molino. A foretelling of COVID?

Attorney General Bill Barr thinks that there has been too much expression of First Amendment rights:

“Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.”

Break a window and go to jail for sedition, for conspiracy to overthrow the government through violence? Barr also went after the mayors:

“The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown…”

It used to be a Republican article of faith that “The government closest to the people serves the people best.” No longer. America is filled with king Trump’s enemies. They’re everywhere! By suggesting possible prosecution of a Democrat, Ms. Durkan, Barr is taking aim at an elected official whom Trump has attacked repeatedly.

Barr then jumped into the deep end of the pool on Wednesday. Addressing a Constitution Day meeting hosted by the conservative Hillsdale College, Barr suggested:

“…that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the ‘greatest intrusion on civil liberties’ in history ‘other than slavery.’”

Would Barr also have been against food and gas rationing, and other measures necessary to help win WWII?

Health and safety regulations have always been around. And they are well established in American law, see Jacobsen v. Massachusetts, which said in a case about mandatory vaccinations, that individual liberty isn’t absolute, and is subject to the police power of the state.

Barr went on to say that the Supreme Court had determined that the executive branch had “virtually unchecked discretion” in deciding whether to prosecute cases:

 “The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether….That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.”

He was telling his federal prosecutors to start prosecuting protests as something akin to treason. And he can do all of the above, as long as he’s Trump’s AG.

The AG is a politician who is supposed to be apolitical in enforcement of the law. But not Bill Barr. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Trump lost.

Back to the sedition thingy. The federal sedition law is rarely invoked, but the wording has wiggle room. It says that sedition can occur anytime two or more people conspire to use force to oppose federal authority, hinder the government’s ability to enforce any federal law or, unlawfully seize any federal property.

That could include a plot to break into and set fire to a federal courthouse.

The WSJ quotes Jenny Carroll, a University of Alabama law professor, who says that turning to statutes like sedition would mark an escalation in the government’s effort to quell the violence:

“There are all these different statutes the government can use if they are worried about things like property damage….If you start charging those people, even if you don’t get a conviction, it may make people think twice before going out to exercise their right to free speech.”

Do yourself a favor, and don’t read the WSJ comments. There’s a fine line between the expression of antigovernment sentiment, which is protected speech under the First Amendment (even if it included discussions of violence), and a plot that presented an imminent danger sufficient to justify a charge of sedition.

No one can justify property damage, looting or killings, but more than 93% of the protests in the US this summer were peaceful, according to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which monitors political upheaval worldwide. They looked at 7,750 protests from May 26 through Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

But if Barr gets to define “force” his way, everyone will get to go to jail.

For Bill Barr, the crime is to oppose the regime. Those who enable Trump, by definition, can’t be criminals, and so do not deserve punishment. If they are prosecuted like General Flynn, Paul Manafort, or Roger Stone, they should be pardoned, or their prosecutions withdrawn. Accordingly, those who oppose the regime are the real enemy. They deserve prompt and merciless retribution.

Barr could have delivered his new testament in Minsk or Manila, not at an American college.

These people must go.

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Keep Your Foot on the Gas

The Daily Escape:

Landscape Arch, Arches NP, Moab UT – 2020 photo by wmartin2014

There are 48 days to go until the election, and nobody who wants Trump retired can relax. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows Biden leading Trump in four swing states, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Wining them could guarantee a Biden victory.

But, there were scary findings for Biden in the survey: In those four states, a larger share of voters said “addressing law and order” was a more important campaign issue to them than “addressing the coronavirus pandemic”.

Biden is perceived by some to be weak on crime, despite his lifetime legislative record that says just the opposite. But, while he’s been clear about his stance on rioting and looting, he hasn’t said it often enough to penetrate the consciousness of many voters: A majority of poll respondents said Biden “hasn’t done enough to condemn violent rioting.” Even 27% of his supporters agreed with that answer.

We’ve talked about Biden needing to be simultaneously on both offense and defense. He needs to do better with the perception of weakness around protests, looting and violence, and the future of policing. He hasn’t talked about it often enough, and that’s one reason why the campaign hasn’t turned into a rout.

If Biden fails at this messaging, the 2020 election will turn out to be uncomfortably close.

Ed Kilgore wrote about the uncomfortably close election of 1876, just 11 years after the end of the civil war. It was the closest the country has come to war over a presidential election:

“Republican Rutherford B. Hayes defeated Democrat Samuel Tilden by a single electoral vote after a dispute that wasn’t resolved until the eve of Hayes’s inauguration in March of 1877.”

Legal battles broke out in three southern states over both the presidential contest, and about which party controlled the state governments. Both Parties sent competing slates of electors to Washington from all three. More from Kilgore:

“As the time neared in January 1877…tensions rose around the country and in Washington. Democrats were particularly motivated given their candidate’s apparent popular vote margin (ultimately judged to be three percent) and threatened “Tilden or War.”

A compromise was reached days before the end of Grant’s administration, under threat of violence. Republican Hayes pledged to withdraw the remaining Federal troops in Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida, effectively ending Reconstruction in the south. That allowed southern Democrats to agree to Hayes as president.

Funny how history works: The Dems in 1876 represented the old plantation owner’s class, pro-slavery, and later, the ‘black codes’. The Southern Dems hold on the Democratic Party ended with LBJ passing the voting rights and civil rights acts with Republican help in the 1960’s. Subsequently, Nixon’s Southern strategy made the south a Republican stronghold.

But we’ve also had close elections since then. Paul Campos says:

“Over the past 60 years, six of the fifteen presidential elections in the USA have been extremely close. These elections ended up being basically coin flips — if they had been held a few days earlier or later, or if the weather had been different on Election Day, etc., the result could easily have changed.”

Campos outlines six recent close elections:

Kennedy over Nixon: The first of three presidential elections in the 40 years prior to 2000, in which the winner almost lost the popular vote. Kennedy won by about 100,000 votes out of nearly 69 million cast.

Nixon over Humphrey: This was a three-way contest in which votes for George Wallace were almost enough to throw the presidential election into the House of Representatives. That would have elected Hubert Humphrey, since if Nixon hadn’t won California, he wouldn’t have commanded a majority vote in the Electoral College.

Carter over Ford: Ford made a huge comeback in the weeks immediately before the election, but lost Texas and Mississippi, which were extremely close, with the Electoral College going 297 for Carter and 240 for Ford. Reagan didn’t campaign for Ford, which probably cost the Republicans the presidency.

Bush over Gore. You know how this one came out. Gore said at the time that there was no intermediate step between the Supreme Court and armed rebellion.

Bush over Kerry: Bush won the popular vote by three million, and the Electoral College by 286 to 251. A few tens of thousands of votes in Ohio separated Kerry from winning.

Trump over Clinton: This one wasn’t as close as Campos says.

But, flipping any one of these elections would have had enormous consequences for subsequent US history.

This should keep us all up at night, working hard that to ensure that it doesn’t happen again in 2020. There were lots of optimists in 2016. We need to be more realistic this time around.

We need to register the unregistered, and get out the vote.

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Trump’s “Don’t Panic” Moment

The Daily Escape:

Bear Hat Mountain, from Hidden Lake Trail, Glacier NP. WY – 2020 photo by jwatkin13

From Trump, regarding why he didn’t tell the truth about the pandemic, as quoted in Woodward’s book:

“Well, as you said, in order to reduce panic, perhaps that’s so,” Trump said when asked if he downplayed the severity of the pandemic. “The fact is, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I love our country, and I don’t want people to be frightened. I don’t want to create panic, as you say. Certainly I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy.”

It’s worth remembering that Trump refused to sit for an interview with Robert Mueller, but gave Bob Woodward 18 hours of interviews, all on tape. Some are already saying that Woodward either faked the recordings, or as Trump said, that the pandemic is Woodward’s fault for not alerting the nation sooner:

Trump doesn’t even believe his own bullshit. Like another Republican president (GW Bush), he lied, and people died. That we now know that Trump completely understood the dangers of COVID-19, lends credibility to reports that Trump and Kushner stalled on Federal Coronavirus action once they concluded that mostly residents of blue states would be the ones to die in significant numbers.

Some criticize Woodward for sitting on this knowledge, but Wrongo doubts this revelation will have a large impact on the election. It certainly won’t change the minds of any of Trump’s true believers. They will vote for him even if they’ve also decided that he’s an appalling human being.

Why? Because he delivered on judges, taxes, deregulation, and made the right noises on cultural issues like abortion. They like how he never apologizes, and how he blames his shortcomings on others. Those who think Trump is a terrific president will find ways to dismiss any inconvenient facts.

That Trump said he “didn’t want to create panic” is classic gaslighting. Donald Trump’s entire political career is based around trying to create enough panic to win elections. As he explained to Woodward and a colleague in a 2016 interview:

“Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”

Here are a few highlights of Trump fear as an electoral strategy:

  • Flight 93 election: 2016 was the Flight 93 election. Either you charge the cockpit or you die. Trump, your presidential candidate, may get into the cockpit and not know how to land the plane. There are no guarantees, but if he doesn’t try, your other option is Hillary Clinton. That’s Russian roulette with an automatic pistol. With Trump, at least you get to spin the cylinder and take your chances.
  • Mexican rapists
  • Caravans
  • American Carnage
  • Muslims
  • Antifa
  • Black people moving to the suburbs
  • Law & Order!

Creating panic is Trump’s signature move. It’s ridiculous to think that this one time, he was genuinely trying to avoid panic. But will knowing what he did matter in 2020? Has he gone too far to reel back in enough Republican and swing state electoral votes?

The Democrats hope that his willful minimizing COVID back at a point when something really could be done to head it off, will convince some Republicans not to vote for Trump. That depends on whether a significant number of them are sufficiently disgusted to leave the top line on the ballot blank or simply stay home.

Still, Woodward’s revelations matter. They may or may not affect the outcome of the election. They will certainly affect history’s judgment on Trump’s presidency. He’s been caught in a lie he can’t ignore nor dismiss, and his callous disregard for the welfare of all Americans has been fully revealed.

Will it make a difference to voters that Trump is an accessory to the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans?

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