Retribution, Revenge and Retaliation

Since Hunter Biden isn't running for office I have refrained from commenting about his legal troubles and how the Trumpublicans have attempted to use his problems to smear the President. 

Before I get into Hunter's legal issues, past drug use and accusations of corruption, let's take a minute to look at his qualifications. It's been suggested that he was unqualified for any of the board positions that he held and only offered employment because he was the son of Joe Biden. Actual qualifications of lack of them aside, does anyone really believe that Hunter Biden is the first child of a prominent politician to be offered a lucrative job? Of course there was an expectation that he would take advantage of his proximity to power to express his opinions to his father. There's nothing illegal or unethical about that. People in all manner of businesses make use of their relationships to lobby those who have the means to make their life easier. Is there an expectation that politicians live in a bubble and not talk to any of their friends and relatives? But was Hunter Biden's only qualification that he was Joe Biden's son? He was a graduate of Harvard, so he received a top-notch education. Those of us who make a living producing something tangible tend to suspect that those who's business is more opaque aren't really working, and that there's something shady involved. Hunter's first job after graduating from Harvard was as a consultant to MBNA Bank and eventually rose to the rank of Executive Vice President. What was a typical day like for someone in those positions? I have no idea, but there's thousands of people with similar titles and they can't all be sitting back with their feet up on their desks sipping martinis. After leaving MBNA he served in the Commerce Department focusing on ecommerce policy in the Clinton administration. President George W. Bush appointed him to the Amtrack board. He founded a lobbying firm and served on the board of World Food USA, a charity that supported United Nations food sustainability efforts. He created investment and advisory firms, including a company devoted to advising companies on how to escaped their business into foreign markets. Around 15 years ago he began serving on various boards of foreign based companies. He joined the board of the Ukrainian firm Burisma in 2014 (more on that later). Hunter Biden started or was part of many successful companies; the suggestion that the millions of dollars that he earned was necessarily due to corruption is based on wishful thinking on the part of those who wish to undermine his father. 

Hunter Biden made a very convenient target. He is a recovering from a drug addiction which was fueled by the generous salary he received for his many successful ventures. This made it easier for those who opposed President Biden to believe that there couldn't possibly be anything legitimate about his businesses and therefore there must be corruption involved. When the contents of his laptop were leaked they showed a video record of much of his debauchery. Republican House members delighted in showing images in committee hearings. But all any of this proves is that Hunter Biden was a successful businessman who made terrible choices in his personal life. 

Hunter Biden first became widely known due to Donald Trump's attempt to undermine Joe Biden's presumed presidential run by alleging that then Vice President Biden pushed to have Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired to protect his son, who was on the board of Burisma, a company that Shokin was supposedly investigating. The problem with Trump's narrative was that Shokin wasn't investigating Burisma and that Biden's pressure to have Shokin removed was President Obama's decision and was supported by the European Union leadership. Burisma's executives, far from relieved to have Shokin gone, were worried that whoever the new prosecutor was would dig into their affairs. Trump and his supporters claimed that Hunter was on the board of Burisma for no other reason than to influence Joe Biden to get Shokin fired, while he was actually hired to assist Burisma with creating corporate governance best practices. All of this came to a head in 2019 as Trump attempted to strong arm Ukrainian President Zelenskyy into opening an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma in exchange for military aid. Trump was impeached for this. 

Much has been made of the several dozen "shell companies" that members of the Biden family (mainly Hunter and Joe's brother James) utilized in their various businesses. The term "shell company" sounds devious somehow, and it's meant to. Another, more accurate, term is "Limited Liability Company", or "LLC". An LLC can be owned by a single owner, multiple owners, a partnership, or another LLC. They are sometimes referred to as "flow-through entities", i.e. the profit or loss "flows through" to the owners. There is nothing nefarious about someone's income moving through multiple LLCs. Sometimes different aspects of a business need to be kept separate for legal or accounting reasons; there may be tax benefits; one LLC may have a different set of owners than another. It's a common business practice - in my job at The State Department of Revenue I see it all the time. The Republicans are painting a perfectly ordinary business practice as prima facie evidence of corruption. 

Presidential candidate Trump has made no secret of his intention to turn a second Trump term as a vehicle for retribution, revenge and retaliation. The recent announcement that the House of Representatives has opened an impeachment inquiry is nothing more than that. Trump was impeached, therefore Biden must be impeached. The difference between the two is that despite suspicions of corruption all through Trump's term, no action was taken to impeach Trump until something solid and undeniable came to light. The extorting phone call to Zelenskyy wasn't alleged, it wasn't suspected, it was real: Trump himself released the transcript. The question was not whether the threats had occurred, but whether the threat was sufficient grounds to impeach. The committee investigations and now the impeachment inquiry are nothing but fishing expeditions. They are starting from the conclusion that President Biden was and is corrupt and are interpreting every dollar in the bank as evidence of that imaginary corruption. 

The Tinfoil Hat Caucus in The House is using what it perceived as a weak link, President Biden's son Hunter, in order to take the president down. But the "weak link" isn't playing along. Hunter, remembering how the Republicans misrepresented (okay, lied about) the testimony of his former partner Devon Archer when he testified behind closed doors, is refusing to testify unless it's public. He is fighting back and not allowing them to control the narrative. He is being charged with felonies that for anyone else would be slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanors - to get to the president. His not-so-squeaky-clean past his being put on display - to get to the president. 

Retribution, revenge and retaliation. The Republican legislative agenda.

Breaking the Idols - Iowa Style

Surely the story about the religious extremist vandalizing a Satanic Temple display in Iowa State Capitol has not escaped your notice. Iowa, like Nebraska, allows groups to apply for space to put up displays in the public area of the State House. I don't know all of the requirements, but, in accordance with First Amendment principles, Iowa does not exclude displays by religious groups that the majority may disapprove of. There's a school of thought that a government building should have no religious displays in it, but some jurisdictions have compromised and allowed any and all religions to apply for display space. That's where the Satanists come in.

There's an old joke that asks "What do you call a person who believes in (a literal) Satan?" - the answer? "A Christian". Satan is a figure from the sacred books of the Abrahamic religions. He appears by name in the Book of Job, is equated with "The Devil" of the gospels and epistles, and is known as Shaitan in the Quran. The various groups known as Satanists, despite what Christians may think, don't worship, believe in, honor, or otherwise acknowledge the existence of a literal Satan. The Satanic Temple, the group that put up the display in Iowa can be described as a humanist religion. They have "Seven Principles" - the first is "One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason." The other six can be found here on their website. Looked at dispassionately, they sound pretty good! "Satanic" (as well as atheist) groups have often petitioned state and local governments to have their statues or other displays erected alongside Christian displays in order to counter placement of religious imagery. The most well-known of the proposed retorts to government sponsored religion was the Oklahoma Baphomet Statue. Oklahoma had placed a sculpture of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the State Capitol. There were legal challenges based on the First Amendment's establishment clause. Among the challenges was an application by The Satanic Temple to place a 9-foot tall statue of Baphomet next to the Ten Commandments. Eventually the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that no religious statues could be placed on government property and the Ten Commandments monument was moved and the Baphomet statue found another home. 

What The Satanist Temple and similar groups around the country aim to accomplish is not to promote Satanism in public spaces, but to stop the exclusive promotion of Christianity in those same spaces. The thinking is that if government is going to ignore the First Amendment, let's force them to ignore it in favor of all religions - the unpopular ones being most effective at making the point. While some jurisdictions have gone the inclusive route, others have eliminated all religious displays, as well as religious prayers. That's the point. 

The background to the Iowa vandalism isn't any different than similar situations. Iowa allows groups, including religious ones, to apply for display space for a limited time. Around this time of year there is usually a nativity scene. The Satanic Temple applied for, and received approval to place their display in the Capitol. Before the actual destruction of the display, social media was abuzz with complaints about it. Most of these complaints appeared to be ignorant of the fact that the Satanic Temple display was a response to the presence of Christian displays, which had been there every holiday season for several years; the complainers angrily demanding that nativity displays be erected to counter this Devil worship (as they put it) even though they had been. It was characterized as offensive and blasphemous - which was the point. 

Fast forward to Michael Cassidy, a failed state legislative candidate from Mississippi, who traveled to Des Moines in some kind of Old Testament idol-smashing fantasy in order to destroy what he considered a blasphemous image. What's disturbing about this isn't that someone vandalized a temporary display. People break stuff all the time. It's how mainstream the vandal is and how much cheerleading he is receiving from the ranks of Christians. 

Cassidy's initial statement was that his destruction of property was a "peaceful protest". This isn't simply a lack of awareness of his actions, but a deliberate statement. During the BLM protests of 2020, it has been documented that the vast majority of protests did not include violence or property damage. The small percentage that did received recurring coverage in the media and the reproach of right wingers. MAGA oriented commenters would juxtapose an image of rioters looting and burning with the caption "peaceful protest", mocking the protesters' perceived hypocrisy. Apologists for the January 6th insurrection began calling it a peaceful protest. (Sometimes to suggest that no violence actually occurred, other times to point out that they were no worse than BLM protesters 6 months earlier). Trump would call campaign rallies that flouted Covid restrictions as "peaceful protests", playing to his supporters' belief that BLM protests were sanctioned despite the pandemic. Calling destruction of property a "peaceful protest" is clearly a "F You" to anyone who might view his actions in a negative light. 

Cassidy's action itself is not an attack on the First Amendment. It's simply an act of vandalism that is apparently being dealt within the Iowa legal system. He was charged with fourth degree criminal mischief, which could result in a sentence of one year and a fine of $2,560. If he's a first offender I doubt he'll see jail time. He should be treated just like anyone else who has done similar things. The people who defaced Confederate statues faced similar charges, as did the man who used his car to destroy the Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma a few years ago. Cassidy got his 15 minutes of fame. He's this year's Kyle Rittenhouse without going through the trouble of shooting people. No, what is disturbing is the response. 

Social media isn't the real world, but in many ways it's a reflection of it. In the run up to the 2016 election I saw many posts by rabid Trump supporters, as well as cheerleaders for people like Cliven Bundy. I dismissed a lot of these posts as not representative of the nation as a whole. But after seeing how Trump received more than enough votes to be elected in 2016 and how his brand of the politics of hate reflected in local politics as well as national, I realized that social media is a reliable barometer of how people are thinking in this country. Social media has been full of comments by people who believe that Cassidy was justified in his actions. Their rationale is what's scary, and that there are enough right wing politicians and judges who agree that's scarier. 

Christians have every right to the opinion that Satan is the evil antagonist against God. They even have the right to ignorantly believe that organized Satanism isn't about worshipping a literal Satan. Or that their religion, or their version of their religion is the only true one. What they don't have the right to do is insist that our laws and practices conform to their opinions and beliefs. The initial outcry against the Satanist display in Iowa was ignorant on several counts. It was ignorant of the fact that it was a response to previous and current religious displays, and it was ignorant of what The Temple of Satan really was. After Cassidy's vandalism the justification for his action was mainly based on a misapprehension that The Bible was the governing document of the United States, not the Constitution. A recurring theme was that Satanism either wasn't a "real" religion and should be "allowed" to call itself a religion. This was often based on the mistaken belief by people who understood that Satanism was actually a Humanist organization that a religion must have a god or other supernatural component. Those who thought The Satanic Temple were literal Satan worshippers were of the opinion that Satanism shouldn't be recognized as a "real" religion because "Satan is evil". Others pointed at "liberalism" for promoting evil. All those in support (to be fair, there were a lot of rebuttals and denouncements of Cassidy's actions too) had one thing in common: they believed strongly that they could determine whether a religion was legitimate and even when it was "evil". If that part wasn't bad enough, they further believed that the government should be an arbiter of what is a legitimate religion. Confronted by the clear constitutional stance that the government could do no such thing, they were unmoved, doubling down that the First Amendment didn't apply to what they considered evil. 

If this were just a bunch of amateur constitutional "scholars" I'd be less concerned. But Republican politicians have been more willing lately to push a strictly Christian agenda, and the Supreme Court has been more willing to allow things like public prayer at government sponsored events. Members of Congress have been open about wanting to return the country to overt de jure Christian dominance. A Congresswoman recently declared herself a Christian Nationalist (no, a Christian Nationalist isn't simply a patriot who happens to be a Christian). Like the argument that I made the other day about there being no compromise with abortion opponents because they have no intention of stopping short of a full, no exceptions ban, Christian Nationalists have no intention of compromising on their goal of turning us into a theocracy. A few politicians have weighed in with support for Cassidy, notably Governor DeSantis of Florida, but I'm sure that others will come out of the woodwork. Seeing enough ground level support, "destroying the idols" will be the next campaign slogan. (Look for it to take up some time in the Nebraska legislature's next session - I hope I'm joking)

When they tell you what they're going to do - believe them.

There is No Compromise

 As the situation in Texas should make clear to anyone with at least enough brain matter to tip a postal scale, abortion opponents are not interested in any sort of compromise. The draconian restrictions passed in a number of states all have medical exceptions - broadly to protect the life of the mother. Texas at least has made clear that in reality there are no exceptions. Texas is so serious about banning abortion that a number of jurisdictions are criminalizing the use of state roads to leave Texas for the purpose of getting an abortion. Private citizens, even those who have no connection to the woman seeking an abortion, can sue anyone who assists a woman in securing an abortion. Even when a court granted a woman the permission to get an abortion, and specifically immunized her doctor from prosecution, the Texas Attorney General announced that he would go after any hospital where the abortion took place. The Texas Supreme Court subsequently overruled the judge and the woman had to flee the state. Nowhere in the sanctimonious posturing was there any acknowledgement that the fetus has close to a zero chance of surviving, and that the life and even the future ability of the woman to have children was at stake. No, the focus, over and above all else, was that the fetus must be born. 

And that's the heart and soul of the matter. The die-hard anti-abortionists believe (or at least say that they believe), that abortion is murder. That the fetus, from the moment of conception, is a human being, with all the rights attendant with that status. If they believe that abortion is actually murder, why would be even consider that they would in the long run consider anything short of a total ban, with no exceptions? Look at something that seems reasonable, an exception if the life of the mother is in peril. To them, they are being asked to actively kill one human being (the fetus) in order to save the life of another human being (the mother). They see allowing the pregnancy to proceed doesn't necessarily kill the mother (at least not actively), and they leave it up to God. 

And there it is. Religion.

Whether you think abortion is the ending of a fully functional human life or not is an opinion, and the anti-abortion opinions are mostly informed by religion. 

Let me digress for a moment and talk about "the science". Religious people often attempt to bolster their religious views by appeals to science. Not content to be guided by their faith, they have to "prove" that it's "right". I have been told by anti-abortionists that "science" has concluded that a fetus is alive. I don't think anyone is claiming that a fetus isn't alive. But the question is: "in what sense is it alive?". But the question that cannot be answered by anyone, including scientists, is at what point does an embryo become a human being? At conception? That bundle of cells should be considered to have all the rights of a human being? That point is necessarily a matter of opinion. Science can't help us. 

The consensus, even among the pro-choice, is that if a fetus can live outside the womb, then it is a person, and even under Roe vs. Wade, few abortions took place after 20 weeks, and even fewer after 24. 

The funny thing about religious opinion is that it's not the opinion of every religious person or every religion. It's the position of a strict segment of Christianity, including Catholics, Fundamentalists, and Evangelicals. Even within Christianity, there is no mention of abortion in the Christian part of the Bible (aka The New Testament). However, Christians also base their religion on the Torah and the Prophets (which the Christians call The Old Testament)  and it is very clear that, although abortion is not specifically mentioned, the penalty for killing a person is death, while the penalty for killing a fetus is a fine. Obviously the God of the Old Testament did not consider a fetus a person. People today who oppose abortion because they think God is opposed to it, haven't read their own holy book. 

I'm not opposed to people who think abortion is killing a person. They have every right to hold that opinion. They should seek to persuade people to see things their way (maybe by knocking on doors.). They should make alternatives to abortion available. But no matter how deeply held their religious opinions are, no one who doesn't share those beliefs should be compelled to adhere to those beliefs. And that's what's happening. They're attempting to convince us that it's what "the people" want. But even in a conservative state like Nebraska, at best those want to ban abortion are a little less than 50% of the population. When Roe vs. Wade was struck down the anti-abortion talking point was that it should be up to a vote of the people, but states with gerrymandered Republican legislative majorities ignored the opinion of a majority of their people, and even when referendums affirmed the retention of abortion rights, the minority-in-power attempted to circumvent the clearly stated will of the majority. National politicians abandoned their earlier commitment to "let the states decide" and started talking about a national ban. 

And if you think the religious zealots will not impose more of their religious beliefs if they get the chance, or that they are aiming for nothing less than a total, no exceptions abortion ban, you have not paid attention to the words from their own mouths.

Insurrection Videos

The January 6th Insurrection - when did it start? Without a doubt it started months before election day as Trump repeatedly alleged that the election would be rigged against him. He insisted that the only way he could lose would be if the election was stolen. He made false claims about the security of mail-in ballots among other things, and spent months priming his followers to be outraged if he lost. 

There's some doubt in my mind about whether Trump really believed what he was saying. Was he dazzled by the usually huge crowds that his rallies attracted, comparing them to Biden's campaigning from his home or appearing at sparsely attended events? Did he believe his own press releases? Was he truly surprised on election night as his early lead slipped away? Of course the phenomenon of early results skewing Republican while the later counted mail-in votes favored Democrats was predictable and was in fact predicted. Many states did not allow for mail-in and absentee ballots to be counted until election day votes had been tallied. Whether or not Trump believed what he was saying is irrelevant. Aside from the fact that what Trump believed about anything didn't always bear any resemblance to reality, there is a process to how we conduct our elections - refusing wholesale to accept the results of a national election is not part of that process.

(It is true that there have been challenges to electoral votes in the past, including by Democrats. The alternate slate of Hawaiian electors in 1960 for example. All of those challenges were pro forma and did not include the sustained attacks on the electoral system that we saw in 2020 and 2021. It is also true that Secretary Clinton, after her 2016 loss, complained about election interference, but did not engage in a sustained effort to reverse the results)

In order to understand how Trump's whining about his "landslide win" being stolen translated into an attack on the U.S. Capitol, you have to understand how Trumpism is indistinguishable from a religious cult. Like the typical follower of a religious cult leader, a Trumpist believes without question anything their leader says, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They excuse every and all wrongdoing by their leader. They ascribe to him qualities that he clearly does not have. He is viewed as a messianic figure. After Trump Myung Moon railed against "The Steal" for two months following the election, culminating in a speech railing against "The Steal" on the day that Congress would be certifying the electoral votes, the literal last chance to overturn the results of the election, with thousands of loyal Trumpists foaming at the mouth, what did he think would happen?

Trump is famous for implying things, suggesting them, rather than coming out and giving orders. It is well known that he avoids putting things in writing. Nowhere in his January 6th speech does he explicitly command (or even ask) his cultists to storm the Capitol or engage in violence in order to get Congress to not certify electoral votes that went to Biden. But Henry II didn't command any of his minions to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury when he said "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?", yet his knights understood what he wanted and killed Beckett anyway. The Trumpists in Washington on January 6, 2021 sure believed that he wanted them to "Stop The Steal" by any means possible and believed that they were doing his will when they forced their way into the Capitol. His isolated phrase encouraging them to go to the Capitol "patriotically and peacefully" was clearly at odds with the mood of his followers. It's clear that he wanted to intimidate Congress into decertifying enough Biden votes to ensure his re-election. 

Twice recently raw footage from security cameras and police bodycams on January 6th has been released. A limited amount of footage to Tucker Carlson and recently more complete footage released by Speaker of The House Johnson. Trump apologists are focusing on scenes showing Trumpists milling around the Capitol, peacefully interacting with police, and even shots of police holding the door for them as they entered. Trumpist media insists that this "proves" that January 6th was nothing more than a peaceful protest and that those who were inside the Capitol that day were guilty of nothing worse than trespassing. They claim that all those who were convicted and imprisoned are political prisoners. Those scenes of nonviolence are real. They aren't AI creations. They are accurate representations of some of what happened that day. Of course, not all. 

Before looking at actions, let's look at intent.

Everyone who was at Trump's speech that day, even those who did not march to the Capitol or go inside, was there because they believed that the democratically decided election should be overturned. It's clear that at least some in the crowd planed to use violence to achieve their aim, and some intended to track down Vice President Pence or Speaker Pelosi - fortunately Capitol Police were able to evacuate members of Congress to safety. Despite Trump's one line about being "peaceful and patriotic", most of his followers clearly didn't believe he was serious about that part, but that he was serious about "taking back our country" - and fighting to do it. They intended whether by violence or simple persuasion, to convince Congress to overturn an election. 

Once they arrived at the Capitol grounds the violence began. The overran the barricades, attacking the  police officers manning them. They broke windows and doors to get into the Capitol itself, attacking more police officers who tried to keep them out. While there has been no evidence that any of them had firearms, many used flagpoles, truncheons and weapons taken from the police to batter their way in. There is video footage of all of this. Enough that hundreds of participants have been arrested, charged and convicted of various crimes. How to explain the apparent difference between the battle outside and the quiet inside? The apologists' stories have changed multiple times. It wasn't really Trump supporters, it was Antifa. Or it was the FBI. Or the ones inside were a different group than the ones outside. Or there were FBI or Antifa agents provocateurs riling people up. Or the whole thing was an FBI false flag "to take Trump down". 

Is it really that complicated? 

Without a doubt the Trumpist mob was ready to do something, but they had no direction. Their cult leader, Trump, went back to The White House despite promising to march with them. Trump's legal strategy was disjointed and directionless, and his goals for January 6th were no less so. Some of his allies in Congress would challenge electoral votes in "blue" states, but that was about it. Trump got them excited about "taking back their country", but was vague about what that would entail, so they used their imaginations and envisioned themselves as uber-patriots. They knew that they had to get to the Capitol, so they crashed their way through the outer barricades. Some of them fought their way into the Capitol itself. The National Guard, which had been on hand during Black Lives Matter protests, was nowhere to be seen, so the police were outnumbered and overwhelmed. Once the mob got in, what did they do? Some of them engaged in petty theft and vandalism. Some of them went searching for members of Congress, but they and Vice President Pence had been successful evacuated. So what did they do? They meandered aimlessly through the halls of Congress, taking selfies. Why? Because they had no Plan B and their leader was nowhere to be found. 

The newly released video changes nothing. A mob invaded the Capitol while Congress was doing duty to certify the electoral votes, itself a largely symbolic, procedural, action. The election was over and their guy lost, but they couldn't accept it, because their cult leader wouldn't accept it. They had a vague goal that was not tied to an actual plan, and they were thwarted because what plan they did have was unrealistic; based on a fantasy of how things really were done. They foolishly listed to their false messiah and got crucified. 

An Absence of Thought

There's various theories about when politics got as bad as it is now, but there's no question that now, it's a mess. 

I've said it before, but the main reason is that the majority of voters do not want to weigh the issues, do not want to consider policy  alternatives,  do not want to think. A large percentage just want to be entertained. Cast your mind back to Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. How often did you hear him talk about how acting presidential was boring? How he avoided any substantive discussion of policy or any specific plans? No, his whole schtick consisted of rolling out empty applause lines and mocking his opponents. Rather than dismissing him as a clown, 46% of the electorate voted for him. 

Even after watching him stumble through four years of incompetence and ignorance, more people voted for him in 2020 than did in 2016. He was lucky, during his first three years, that there were no major new wars and the economy was still on the upward trend started in Obama's second term. His one big challenge, the Covid pandemic, he mismanaged so badly, providing no leadership and undermining his own team at every turn, that hundreds of thousands likely died who might have lived.  His legacy in that crisis was to give cover to conspiracy theorists and fringe anti-vaxxers who turned public health measures into political footballs. His main accomplishment, pushing the pharmaceutical companies to get a vaccine out in record time, was overshadowed by his encouragement of the nutjob caucus. 

Now, we're a few months before the first candidate selection contests for the 2024 election, and Trump is looking like the favorite to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, despite there being saner and arguably more effective candidates available. Of the declared Republican candidates, all would champion a typical conservative agenda, with the added bonus of not seeking revenge against every perceived "enemy" and turning the presidency into his personal fiefdom. 

All because voters don't want to think.

They are acting strictly emotionally. 

They feel like their guy is getting attacked and that it reflects on them. They don't want to admit that they were horribly wrong, so they believe every implausible word that comes out of his mouth. Because to believe otherwise reflects terribly on them. 

There's still no plan. Other than exacting retribution upon his foes. And one mistake he won't make if he's re-elected: that's appointing anyone who isn't 100% personally loyal to him. 

"I Stand With..." - Competing Narratives

The trouble with "standing with" either Israel or Palestine, i.e. the free-from-discomfort version of "standing with" entails on social media, is that you come face to face with the competing narratives that make up the story of what caused the causes of all the bloodshed. If you "Stand With Israel", do you stand with the government that has systematically oppressed Palestinian's? If you "Stand With Palestine", do you support the horrible actions of Hamas on October 7th? Maybe you just "stand with" the families of the killed and abducted that day, but your "stand" is sure to be misinterpreted as support for an increasingly fascistic, apartheid, regime. If you merely "stand with" the oppressed Palestinian people, who have virtually no rights, whether or not they participate or support terrorism, you'll be viewed as a cheerleader for terrorism. It's not simple, no matter what partisans for either side say. No matter what atrocity either side commits, they can always find an earlier atrocity by the other side to justify their actions. 

In addition to justifying bloodshed, each side trots out maps and other "evidence" to back up their side's claim to the land. Here's a map that tries to show that Israel has been systematically stealing Palestinian land since 1947:

The problem with the first map on the left is that it implies that all of that green land was occupied by Arabs. It does do a pretty good job of showing, in white, areas of Jewish majority settlement though. The downward pointing triangle in the south is the Negev desert, a sparsely populated (by Jews or Arabs) literal desert. Giving it to the nascent Jewish state was no prize. Some similar maps discard entirely the white areas, suggesting that there was no significant Jewish presence in Palestine. The truth is, no matter whether the population was Jewish or Arab, neither group owned Palestine, it had been part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries. After World War I, the British took over administration of the area, which originally included what is now Jordan. The second map indicates the borders of the United Nations plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Note that, other than the Negev, the border roughly follow the areas in the first map designated a "Jewish" land. (Reminds me of those post-election county maps in the United States). The borders were intended to award majority Jewish areas to the Jewish state and majority Arab areas to the Arab state. But the Arabs would not accept the plan, and with the support of neighboring Arab nations, attacked the newly formed State of Israel. The third map is accurate in that Israel now controlled more land than the U.N. plan called for, but those green areas do not represent a Palestinian State, the West Bank and Gaza were occupied, not by Israel, but by Jordan and Egypt respectively. Another war, in 1967 resulted in Israel taking those lands from Egypt and Jordan. The fourth map is broadly accurate in that it represents the encroachments by Jewish so-called settlers who have been little by little building Jewish "settlements" in the West Bank, supposedly Palestinian Arab territory. 

On the other side, those who believe that the Palestinians have no claim to the land sometimes base it on the fact that there never was a nation called Palestine. There's a social media post making the rounds:

A crash course on history of the so-called 'PALESTINIAN STATE'
1. Before Israel, there was a British mandate, not a 'Palestinian state.'
2. Before the British Mandate, there was the Ottoman Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
3. Before the Ottoman Empire, there was the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, not a 'Palestinian state.'
4. Before the Islamic state of the Mamluks of Egypt, there was the Ayubid Arab-Kurdish Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
5. Before the Ayubid Empire, there was the Frankish and Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a 'Palestinian state.'
6. Before the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, not a 'Palestinian state.'
7. Before the Umayyad and Fatimid empires, there was the Byzantine empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
8. Before the Byzantine Empire, there were the Sassanids, not a 'Palestinian state.'
9. Before the Sassanid Empire, there was the Byzantine Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
10. Before the Byzantine Empire, there was the Roman Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
11. Before the Roman Empire, there was the Hasmonean (Jewish) state, not a 'Palestinian state.'
12. Before the Hasmonean state, there was the Seleucid Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
13. Before the Seleucid Empire, there was the Empire of Alexander the Great, not a 'Palestinian state.'
14. Before the empire of Alexander the Great, there was the Persian empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
15. Before the Persian Empire, there was the Babylonian Empire, not a 'Palestinian state.'
16. Before the Babylonian Empire, there were the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, not a 'Palestinian state.'
17. Before the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, there was the Kingdom of Israel, not a 'Palestinian state.'
18. Before the Kingdom of Israel, there was the theocracy of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, not a 'Palestinian state.'
19. Before the theocracy of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, there was an agglomeration of independent Canaanite city-kingdoms, not a 'Palestinian state.'
20. Actually, in this piece of land there has been everything, EXCEPT A 'PALESTINIAN STATE.'
A little more history for those wanting to 'restore Palestine'.
In 132 AD the Emperor Hadrian resolved to stamp the Jews and their religion out of existence. He sold all Jewish prisoners into slavery after the revolt of Bar Kokhba, forbade the teaching of the Torah, renamed the province Syria Palaestina, and changed Jerusalem’s name to Aelia Capitolina. He renamed Israel to wipe out the national identity of Israel and the Jews.
So if you are looking to 'restore Palestine to the Palestinians', you should consider giving it back to the Jews. After all, the Jews are called "Jews" because they are the indigenous people from Judea.

The first time I saw this I was taken aback at how utterly stupid it is. (The very first line of this idiocy should make you stop and think - the name of the British Mandate was Palestine) Not that it's historically inaccurate, the chain of rulers of the area are, as far as I can tell, correct, it's just irrelevant to now.  No one is claiming that there existed a Palestinian State that Israel somehow caused to cease to exist. No one is claiming that they are trying to restore a Palestinian state. The Arab inhabitants of the area, as well as the neighboring Arab nations, saw the creation of a Jewish state in the midst of a mostly Arab land as akin to invasion, an imposition of something foreign. Of course Jews had lived in what is now Israel and Palestine for millennia, but pre-World War I they accounted for around 3% of the total population. Due to decades of immigration, at the time of Israel's independence, it was still only around 35%. It's very easy to see how indigenous Arabs would be dismayed that another culture would be supplanting theirs. They're not demanding a return to an earlier political status, but to self-determination in a land that most of them have lived in for generations, if not centuries. 

The part of the narrative that appeals to the Bible doesn't help. If you believe that the creator of the heavens and the Earth gave you a plot of land (which according to Israeli hardliners includes the West Bank) it's hard to be convinced otherwise. It doesn't matter that you didn't have physical possession of that land for close to 2000 years, God still gave it to you, so everyone else is wrong! The unequivocal support for Israel by most American politicians is also based on the Bible - the "End Times" can't start until the nation of Israel has been re-established. Americans who have no use for Jews in particular are big supporters of a Jewish nation because it jibes with their apocalyptic worldview. But it's not like the Palestinians aren't hardheaded either. Despite their opposition to a Jewish state in their midst, Israel as a sovereign nation is a fact. Palestinian leaders had multiple opportunities for their own sovereign nation, but turned down the opportunity each time. They're as irrational in their demands as the Ultra-Orthodox settlers are in claiming that the West Bank is theirs because it's really "Judea and Samaria". 

These competing narratives have had the effect of legitimizing anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred. Hate speech and violent actions by those who conflate Jews with the Israeli government and pro-Palestinians with Hamas, has intensified. Bigots look for any excuse to exercise their bigotry. 

I feel sorrow for the Israelis as well as the foreign nationals who were brutally murdered on October 7th. I'm saddened at the continued oppression by the Israeli government of ordinary Palestinians and the unbelievable death toll due to the retaliation against Hamas that affects all of Gazans. But I certainly don't "stand" with either the Israeli government or Hamas. And I don't support us once again getting involved in the never-ending mess in that small patch of real estate. 

Hamas & Israel

Don't mistake anything that I say in this blog post as supporting the actions that Hamas took a few days ago. They can, without equivocation, be classified as war crimes. 

What did Israel's leaders think was going to happen?

I'm not talking necessarily about the horrible way that Israel treats the Palestinians, or how the government encourages the so-called settlers to usurp more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank. All of these are legitimate grievances and can certainly cause Israel to be seen as the bad guy in the region. 

No, I'm talking about how Israel gave Hamas free reign in Gaza. 

Hamas is a terrorist group masquerading as a government. They managed to win a legislative election in 2006 and after an internal Palestinian struggle with Fatah took control of Gaza while Fatah remained in control of the Palestinian government in the West Bank. They repudiated previous agreements between The Palestinian National Authority and Israel and maintained the position that Israel did not have a right to exist. They made it plain that they were not interested in compromise or negotiation. They used their position as the de facto government of Gaza to regularly attack Israel. Prior to Hamas' taking power in Gaza the Israeli government withdrew all of their military forces from Gaza, while blockading its borders and coasts. No real effort was made to constrain Hamas' actions. 

In short, Hamas was pretty clear about their goals and Israel's government pretended that all that vitriol and violence was contained. 

What did they think was going to happen?

There are people out there claiming that Israel is entirely responsible for the massacres, the murder and rape of civilians and the many atrocities that have been perpetrated by Hamas in the last few days. They claim that this attack was a natural and reasonable response to the many grievances that Palestinians have against Israel. I understand the anger that ordinary Palestinians feel - being relegated to a status even below that of second-class citizens, being denied their own nation while at the same time being denied citizenship in Israel itself. But natural and reasonable? Hamas functions not as a government that is using violence to defend itself and advance the well-being of its people, but as a terrorist group that is using the government to prop up and legitimize its terrorist bloodlust. 

Are Israel's hands clean?

I don't want to engage in false equivalency, but Israel exists and has every right to defend itself and to create a state security system that protects its citizens. Unfortunately, the very steps that it has deemed necessary to protect itself push down the millions of Palestinians who live in the no-man's land of the Occupied Territories. Ordinary Palestinians will be angry and out of that anger will be born groups like Hamas who exploit that anger in order to engage in horrific attacks such as we have seen. It's a vicious circle that has no clear end in sight. We can encourage Arab-Muslim states in the area to normalize relations with Israel, moderate Palestinians can reach accommodation with Israel, but there will always be those who view any compromise as capitulation. There will always be something like a Hamas.

What did the world think was going to happen?

One of the arguments made by many Palestinians is that Israel has no right to even exist, that it was created by Europeans with no regard for the people who actually lived there. Well does it? If the answer is no, then neither does Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, or Kuwait - all nations in the area that were created by the whims of British and French diplomats without regard for the ethnic groups who lived in these areas. All of these nations had been part of the Ottoman Empire and had never been distinct nations, at least in the way we view nations today. People like the Kurds did not get their own country, and other groups straddled the new national borders. Right or not, all of those nations, including Israel, do exist. It's a fact of twenty-first century geopolitics. 

But why was Israel caused to exist?

In the mid-to-late 1800’s in the United Kingdom and the United States there arose new interpretations of the Bible’s Book of Revelation. It would surprise many Evangelicals today that Christians haven’t always believed in “the rapture” or that the horrors in the last book of the Bible should be viewed as literal predictions for the future, or that this view of Revelation was new. One of the common threads among the different strains of "end times" theology is that the reestablishment of the nation of Israel was a necessary step toward the events in Revelation. The influence of those who held this view in the pre-World War I British government was critical in the moves that were made to create a Jewish state in the Middle East, preferably in the area where the Biblical Israel flourished. It's an oft-overlooked motivation for the creation of a Jewish homeland, especially one in the area of Biblical Israel: Britons and Americans, who routinely discriminated against Jews at home, wanted an "Israel" to exist in order to speed up the end times calendar. It's a significant reason for Evangelical support for Israel today. 

The problem was quite distinct from other efforts to create a nation-state to conform to a specific ethnic group. For example, if the French & British had decided to create Kurdistan from the remains of the Ottoman Empire, there were already a lot of Kurds living in the area. In Europe, after the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up, there were concentrations of various peoples living in the areas that became their countries. When the British and French gained control of the region after World War I there were only about 24,000 Jews in Palestine, around 4% of the population.  Even right before Israel declared its independence in 1948 the Jewish population was only around 30%, and this after decades of the British encouraging unrestricted immigration. 

The British had been awarded the "mandate" of Palestine by the League of Nations, which originally included what is now Jordan. They separated "Transjordan" from Palestine to (1) reward an ally in the war with his own kingdom (they did the same with another ally in Iraq) and (2) reserve the smaller area, west of the Jordan, as a Jewish state. The British eventually withdrew and the United Nations drew up a map that divided the area into Jewish and Palestinian states. The Jewish state would include areas where there was a Jewish majority. Look at a map of the United Nations plan, the Jewish state included most of the coastline and the Negev desert (anticipated expansion). As small as this was, in order to fit most Jews into the proposed Jewish state, areas that were not majority Jewish, but had a significant Jewish majority, were included. The proposed Palestinian state included what we know as the West Bank, Gaza and significant portions of what is now Israel proper. A Jewish government-in-waiting declared independence, and several Arab states declared war on Israel, angrily denying that the Jewish state had a right to exist. Israel defeated them. Many Palestinians fled their homes - Palestinians say they were driven out, Jews say they left on their own - but many lived in refugee camps for many years.  

Many people are under the mistaken impression that the Israeli occupation of The West Bank and Gaza began at this time, in 1948. These areas were occupied, but not by Israel. The West Bank was held by Jordan and Gaza by Egypt. A Palestinian state should have been established right then and there, but the Palestinian leadership and their allies in neighboring Arab countries wanted it all. So from 1948 through 1967, when the Arab nations attacked again, the Palestinian territories were occupied by other Arab states. Israel's occupation began in 1967. Both sides were operating with alternative versions of the truth. The Jews of Israel believed that the tiny sliver of coastland plus an empty stretch of desert wasn't too much to ask for and the Palestinians saw land that they and their ancestors had lived in for centuries being appropriated without their consent. There really wasn't any overlap between the two extremes. Of course, once Israel's existence had been established de jure they were going to defend themselves, from both their Arab neighbors and from within their own borders and the occupied territories. Of course, when you think your ancestral land has been taken and given to usurpers, it's natural to resist. It's unreasonable to believe that Israel, now in it's 75th year is going to disappear, it's just as unreasonable to believe that there won't be resistance to the continued presence of a Jewish state in the region. There have been many, many, attempts at peace and compromise. The closest attempt came in 2000, when the establishment of a Palestinian state was so close, but Arafat, the Palestinian leader, rejected the terms, the latest in a long line of insistence by Palestinian leadership on an all-or-nothing deal - which was never going to happen. Their intransigence hardened the position of Israeli leadership, who doubled down on oppression of Palestinians, and encouraged Jewish settlers to encroach on Palestinian land in The West Bank, further motivating Palestinian violence which further incited Israeli violence...the cycle continued until there appears to be no end in sight. Neither side has any motivation to be conciliatory or open to negotiations any longer - that will only anger their own people who will see them as appeasers and traitors and the other side who will see them as weak and exploitable. 

As much as I like to hold out hope for a peaceful future based on compromise, I just don't see it happening.

What did we think was going to happen?

Anti-Democracy

It's pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention to politics that the United States Constitution, while providing for representative government, is a decidedly anti-democratic document. It was written in decidedly undemocratic times. Although the power of monarchs had been diluted over the previous century, the ruling classes represented only a small sliver of the population of any European country. The Constitution provided for the officers of the government to be elected, but did not define who would be allowed to do the electing. Individual states set the qualifications to be met by anyone who wanted to vote, and most of them restricted the franchise to white male landowners. Descendants of the original inhabitants and enslaved people were not even considered "people", let alone allowed to vote. Even that restricted electorate was not trusted fully by the founders. The Electoral College system provided a check against "the people" making the "wrong" choice when electing the president. 

The Founders were men of their time. This is not to say that it was morally right to hold the positions that they did, just that it was not unusual. It was perfectly normal in that time to look down upon non-White people as "lesser races", or to believe that it was the natural order for the élite to rule and the common folk to be ruled. 

But times changed. People changed. 

Few seriously believe that only the élite should get to make the decisions for the rest of us, that women should have no rights, that certain people were not "people" within the meaning of the law. We have, in so many ways, moved beyond the ethics and morals of eighteenth century society. So why do we still deify the men who instituted the framework of a nation based on eighteenth century ethics and morals and worship the document that they created?

The Constitution provided within itself a means to change it. In addition to the first ten amendments we collectively refer to as The Bill of Rights it has been amended seventeen times. A few of those of been procedural: changing the way the Vice President is chosen, providing for the direct election of Senators, changing the date a new presidential term begins, limiting a president to two terms; others were hugely consequential: outlawing slavery, prohibiting the denial of voting rights due to gender; and of course alcohol prohibition and its subsequent repeal. 

Changes have been made, but antidemocratic features still persist.

The equal representation of each state in the Senate, where every state, no matter its population, receives two Senate seats, gives small states a voice well out of proportion to their population. The makeup of the House of Representatives is capped at 435 members, despite the overall U.S. population continuing to rise. Since each state is guaranteed at least one representative, no matter how small the population, the population of Congressional districts vary between around 500,000 to over 900,000. This discrepancy carries over to presidential elections where a state's electoral votes equal the total number of members in the House of Representatives plus two Senators. 

In addition to Constitutional hedges against democracy, there are institutional features that have resulted in two of the last four presidents being elected despite not receiving the most votes. All but two states award all of their electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most votes in their state. Not the candidate who receives a majority of the votes. A third candidate other than those of the two major parties will cause the "winner" to have less than 50% of the votes. Nationwide, one candidate losing by a wide margin in some states while winning narrowly in others can result in the loser actually winning. Like I said, it's happened twice recently. 

There is no Constitutional requirement that it be done this way. My home state of Nebraska allocates one electoral vote for the winner in each Congressional district, and two for the statewide winner. In recent elections one electoral vote has gone to the Democrat, even though the Republican took around 60% of the total vote. Maine has a similar system. There's nothing to prevent a state allocating electoral votes this way, or even proportionally. Strict proportionality would have given the Democrat two votes in Nebraska if he had garnered 40% of the total vote. 

Primaries in most states are even worse. Statewide offices sometimes have a runoff provision, where the top two vote getters compete head-to-head, but in other states the "winner" could conceivably receive as little as 35% of the vote if there are enough candidates. This is especially true in presidential primaries. In most states the candidate with the most votes (again, not a majority) receives all or most of the delegates. Currently two small, white, rural states, Iowa and New Hampshire hold their contests first. Numerous candidates then drop out, mainly due to funding drying up for the losers. A nationwide primary day, with either ranked choice or a runoff, would give primary voters an opportunity to vote for their preference equally across the country. The way it stands now in the later primaries most of the initial candidates have dropped out. 

One way in which changing mores and societal consensus had been taken into account was the judicial doctrine of the Constitution as a living document. The opposing positions are Textualism and Originalism. These are two judicial approaches that adhere to the text itself. Textualism is the more strict and unbending version, basing court cases on what the Constitution says right in the text, no more, no less. Originalism is a slightly more flexible position, where the debates surrounding the writing of the Constitution, as well as the meaning of the words therein are used to interpret it. Living Document interpretation takes the view that evolving standards and mores should color how we view the Constitution. An example is the establishment clause of the First Amendment. A strict reading of the text indicates that establishment of religion is prohibited. An originalist might take into account that the Founders had a specific definition of "establishment" in mind and did not intend to prohibit government involvement in generic Christianity. Living Document jurists take into account that Christianity isn't the only religion observed in this country and that "establishment" in our times would include any action that privileges or endorses any religion. 

Unfortunately, due to a death and a retirement during Trump's term and the refusal of the Senate to consider a nomination during Obama's second term, there is a solid Originalist majority (or at least when it suits them) on the Supreme Court. 

For a long time the arc of progress in this country has been toward more democracy. More people enfranchised, fewer barriers to voting, less decision-making in the smoke-filled back rooms. But lately this has been reversed, at least among the White, Christian, "conservative" electorate. Realizing that their hold on the democratic process has been eroded due to demographics they now proudly champion the anti-democratic features of the system. Who hasn't heard the retort "We're a Republic, not a Democracy" from some knucklehead on social media? Or the insistence that a system like the Electoral College is a necessary feature of a republic?  Gerrymandered state legislatures pass laws that make it more difficult to register to vote and eliminate polling places in majority Democratic areas. These same legislatures pass laws that a majority of their citizens are against, and draw electoral maps that guarantee their legislative majority despite receiving a minority of the votes. 

All is not lost, but it's getting more difficult to preserve majoritarian government in the face of the tyranny of the minority.

Term Limits

If you ask people whether they support term limits most will say that they do. They look at the politicians who have been in office for decades and think that the answer is obvious - throw the bums out! They look at Senators like Diane Feinstein who doesn't seem like she is "there" all then time and is in and out of hospitals with multiple physical afflictions; they see Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who twice has frozen in mid-sentence, seemingly having a stroke right in front of everyone. A number of members of Congress as well as the two likely presidential major party candidates are around 80 years old. Even when you ignore age, some politicians seem to get elected and never go away. President Joe Biden has a combined 40+ years of elected office, interrupted for only four years between his term as Vice-President and his election as President. 

Seems like an ironclad argument for term limits? 

I disagree. 

We already have a way to term limit an office holder: elections. 

We have legislative term limits in Nebraska. In my view it is not a net positive. With frequent turnover in the Unicameral, we have no institutional memory, we have no real understanding of how things work. Being in a job where I have to implement decisions that the legislature makes, I regularly see how the legislators don't know how to write laws and how it's the lobbyists and special interests who have the real power. 

So, if there are regular elections (members of the House of Representatives are up for election every two years) why do the same people keep getting elected while at the same time we decry the fact that the same people keep getting elected? The short answer is that people are stupid. Even the voters who aren't stupid are often lazy. I understand the tendency in the general election to stick with "your team". There is enough difference between Republicans and Democrats at the national level and increasingly at the state and local level, that most people will vote for their team no matter who is running. But what about primaries? Yes, the parties tend to support the incumbent, even if not overtly, in the primaries, but how often do voters do any research into the various candidates, other than draw conclusions from their campaign ads? It's extremely rare for an incumbent to get "primaried"; it happens so infrequently that it's big news when it happens. In an era when it's possible to get relevant information about a candidate on a granular level, there's no excuse to be ignorant of the relevant strengths of primary candidates. But unless there is some scandal that can't be explained away, the incumbent gets the nomination and more often than not they're running in a "safe" district and are guaranteed reelection. 

Stop being stupid. Stop being lazy. Term limit the bums by voting them out!

Debates? Huh! What's It Good For? Absolutely Nothin'

President Biden and Former President Trump are both being criticized for not participating in debates in preparation for the presidential primaries. Traditionally, incumbent presidents haven't done so. In the case of former presidents, there haven't been any precedents in the modern era, but it's reasonable for Trump to demur - we shouldn't have any doubt as to his positions on anything - the man never shuts up. 

But is the presidential debate, at least in its current form, good for anything? I think the obvious answer is "no". 

Firstly, the "debates" are not really debates. At best, the moderator asks a question and the candidate does his or her best to respond with a rambling non-answer. The tougher the question, the more obfuscating the response. The only real useful information is if the candidate's answer reveals ignorance of the subject. Otherwise we're getting canned mini-speeches that we've already heard in interviews, rallies and other public appearances. 

But how else are we going to find out about a candidates fitness for office? Well, we don't find out now, as I have said. When we have people running for high office with zero political experience, we're going to get an unknown quantity, no matter how well, or how poorly they do in a debate. When a senator or governor is running for president, they have a record to run on - either their knowledge of foreign policy or the big national issues in the case of a senator, or the ability to work with a legislature and oversee a bureaucracy in the case of a governor. Running a business is a completely different skill set with entirely different consequences for getting things wrong. 

The way debates have devolved into "gotcha" sessions has just made things worse. Candidate Trump turned the Republican primary debates in 2015 and 2016 into a circus. Voters responded to crude put-downs over reasoned policy positions. 

Granted, determining who will be the best candidate is difficult. There's a lot of information, misinformation and disinformation to sort through. The current two-party system, where everyone is funneled through the two major parties doesn't make it any easier. But let's stop pretending that debates mean anything.

False equivalency: abortion rights & vaccinations

Scrolling through "X" (the site formerly known as Twitter) and came across this nonsense: 

I was talking to a friend on the phone and she said she could never vote Republican because they want to take away abortion.”

I said “what’s so horrible about that?”

She said women should have the right to decide what happens to their own bodies.

ME: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine? HER: That was different, that was saving lives.

ME: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.

SILENCE.

Lavern Spicer is a Black woman running as a Republican for a House seat from Florida. She's what the Republicans love: someone from a traditionally Democratic demographic who is conservative and pushes pro-Trump, pro-conservative, politics. Of course no demographic is going to be a voting monolith. But it seems to me that the small number of Black conservatives someone how think that they speak for the masses who vote differently. But I didn't come here this morning to talk about Black Republicans, but the disingenuous argument many conservatives you to counter the pro-choice argument of "my body, my choice". 

Keep in mind that the anti-abortion movement has never been concerned about a woman's right to control what happens to her own body. Most conservatives, until the rollout of the Covid vaccine, never had a problem with mandatory vaccination. In most school districts proof of vaccination for mumps, rubella  and measles is required and the military has a longer list of required vaccinations. Other than a fringe movement of anti-vaxxers, most people had no problem with getting themselves or their children vaccinated. Most people trusted the medical consensus that universal, or near universal, vaccination against some diseases was in the public interest, and went along. Most people didn't demand to know what was in the MMR vaccine or refuse to get vaccinated because they didn't understand how it worked. 

Any time an anti-abortion advocate brings up this argument, pro-choice people should refuse to engage. It's a rhetorical trap. They didn't care about anyone's bodily autonomy until masking became mandatory in public spaces, and the whole question of to-mask-or-not-to-mask became political and infected by the fringe conspiracy theorists. How would I respond to the following question?

Them: Did you feel that way when the government FORCED you to wear a mask and get the vaccine?

Me: That's a red herring. You're making a bad faith argument. You want to engage me in a discussion about abortion? If so, I'm not going to respond to goalpost moving and false equivalencies. 

How about the follow up?

Them: Not killing unborn babies is saving lives too.

This is an anti-abortion cheerleader's go-to response to anything. Any Democratic Party supported program that purports to help people, especially children, is met with that response. We supposedly don't care about children because we support killing them. The anti-abortion folks count on this response shutting us up. Of course killing babies is wrong. How could anyone argue with that? They maintain that "science" has proved that a fetus is alive. But is that relevant? Sperm is alive, an ovum is alive, cancer cells are alive. The question is whether a fetus is a person. And the answer to that cannot be determined by science. It's an opinion, mostly driven by religious belief. Catholics and Protestant Evangelicals believe that a fetus is a person starting at conception. Other Christians, not to mention members of other faiths and people with no faith, believe differently. The position that a fetus is a person, or not a person, is a religiously-based opinion which those with different opinions should not be compelled to abide by. 

So the response should be: whether or not a fetus is a "baby" is your opinion, likely based on your religious faith, which I am under no obligation to share. Whether a pregnant woman is a person is not disputed, so her opinion is the only one that should carry any weight.  

Don't let them define the boundaries of the discussion. 

Losin' Donnie's Latest Indictment

Gaslighting and whataboutism continue unabated! 

I know I have discussed Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election previously, but in light of the latest criminal indictment, it's time to revisit the whole sordid mess. 

Let's start out by stating that it's always appropriate to insist on recounts in close elections. Some of the states in 2020 had margins of victory that fell within the statutory requirements for a recount. It's also always appropriate to point out problems: voter suppression, disinformation, issues with voting machines or procedural quirks. If there are problems we should want to fix them. And there have been instances other than the 2020 election where legitimate issues were raised, and others where there was pure grandstanding.

In 2018 Stacey Abrams ran for governor of Georgia. During the run up to the election and afterwards, Abrams accused Kemp, her opponent, of voter suppression. At the time Kemp was the Georgia Secretary of State, the official who oversaw elections in the state. While Abrams stated that Kemp was "not a legitimate governor", accusing him of cheating and rigging the election, she eventually moderated her rhetoric and founded Fair Fight Action, an advocacy group for fair election laws, achieving significant changes in the way Georgia's elections were run, including the methods which the Secretary of State's office maintained voter rolls. 

In 1960 Vice President Nixon was running for president against Senator John Kennedy. It was clear that Kennedy had won the election, the only state's electoral votes that were in doubt were Hawaii's. The initial count showed Nixon winning by around 140 votes, which triggered an automatic recount. However, the cutoff date for states to cast their electoral votes had arrived, so the 3 Republican electors cast their votes for Nixon. At the same time, the Democratic elector-nominees also met and armed with documents claiming that Kennedy had won the state, signed the paperwork and sent it off to Washington as if Kennedy had prevailed. The difference between 1960 and 2020 was that a recount was still underway in Hawaii, which Kennedy ended up winning. The Democratic electors then submitted a new set of documents. In addition, a judge in Hawaii ruled that the newest set of electoral votes were valid and they were certified by the Republican governor. 

Republican Representative Lee Zeldin charged that Democrats, in every recent election when a Republican was the winner, Democrats objected to the certifying of electoral votes. This is partially true, in that Democratic House members objected to certifying some votes in the 2000, 2004 and 2016 elections, only in 2004 was there a Senator who joined in. The objections went nowhere. In each case the losing Democratic candidate had conceded. 

The 2000 election garnered the most complaints by Democrats, mainly due to the action by the Supreme Court stopping a recount in Florida. The problems with Florida's ballots, it's tabulating processes and alleged voter suppression are too numerous to go into now, but suffice it to say many Democrats were unhappy with the decision by the Supreme Court to end manual recounts in several counties. There were challenges to certifying Florida's electoral votes, as well as accusations by many Democrats that Bush was an illegitimate president. 

In 2016 there was clear evidence of Russian attempts to influence the election in favor of Trump, confirmed by the Mueller Report, although there was no evidence that the Russians took any action to change votes or hack voting machines. Nonetheless many Democrats claimed that Clinton would have won absent that interference. Despite that belief Clinton conceded and accepted the results of the election. 

In all of the above examples, and many others that I have not mentioned, including objections by Republicans, the losing candidate, as well as the vast majority of the losing party, made no organized or significant attempts to change the results of the election. In most instances the majority of Americans were unaware of the sour grapes complaining by losing candidates and their supporters. Any challenges to vote totals or objections addressed specific problems with the voting. The difference with the 2020 election are several.

The attempt to subvert the democratic process predated the actual election by many months. Long before the first vote was cast Trump was claiming, very publicly, and without evidence, that the election would be rigged against him. He refused to answer questions about his willingness to ensure a peaceful transition if he lost. He used this same tactic in 2016, but he won, obviating any need to push that narrative. The months leading up to Election Day were an unending litany of nebulous accusations questioning the integrity of the election process, insisting that the only way he could lose the election was if it were rigged against him. He alleged repeatedly that mail-in and early voting, which had been expanded due to the pandemic were not only subject to manipulation, but were guaranteed to be hijacked by his opponents. 

None of this was born out by any evidence. How could there be? The election hadn't happened yet. 

One of the results of Trump's attack on the integrity of early and mail-in voting was that his supporters mostly opted to vote in person on Election Day, while many Democrats availed themselves of the alternative methods. This led to the entirely predictable scenario where in-person ballots, which in most states had to be counted before any absentee, early, or mail-in votes, showed an early lead for Trump in the so-called battleground states. The equally predictable, and predicted, outcome was that Trump's lead began to erode as the Biden-heavy ballots from before Election Day began to be tallied. This was when the first of Trump's concrete actions to subvert the democratic process made its appearance. 

Seeing his lead erode as the night moved on Trump made public statements calling for the vote counting to be stopped, claiming that only votes counted on Election Day were valid. He claimed that thousands of votes were "dumped" into the count in several states, implying that they were "fake" ballots. He asked aides to "just announce that I won, and I'll do the rest". He then embarked on a two-prong attack on the election results. He used his bully pulpit to assert that he had not in fact lost, that he won the election, "by a lot" or even "by a landslide". He pointed fingers at "crooked" election officials, the Democratic Party, and the media, accusing all of them of conspiring against him. If I haven't mentioned yet that there was no evidence...well, there was not a shred of evidence. He also sent his lawyers into courthouses around the country challenging the results, mainly in the close states where he lost. Despite his chest thumping about a rigged election, none of the lawyers alleged fraud, what they were challenging were a variety of procedural and legal issues. They alleged that Pennsylvania's mail-in voting regulations were illegal, which if they had won the case, tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians' votes would have been thrown out.  In many of the cases what was alleged as suspect practices were in fact normal and routine (and secure) vote counting and ballot handling procedures. In others their allegations were based not on something that had been observed to have occured, but speculation on what could have happened. 

In December Trump moved on from court cases to attempting to directly overturn the election. He contacted Republicans across the country, urging them to reverse their states certification. A publicized phone call to Georgia Governor Kemp indicates that he asked the governor to "find" precisely the number of votes that would make him the winner in Georgia. A conference call with over 300 Republican officials has him asking for them to find ways to reverse their states certification of the results. He received the cooperation of nearly 150 Republican members of Congress who would object to the certification of the electoral votes of states where Trump lost a close race. On that same day that Congress was tasked with formally accepting the states' electoral votes, Trump held a rally where he whipped his supporters into a frenzy, pushing them to take back the country, to march on the Capitol and make their voices heard. In retrospect his supporters point to one phrase in his speech where he urges them to do it "peacefully and patriotically" as some kind of exoneration, which in context is more like a "who shall rid me of this turbulent priest?" moment. But he's not been indicted for inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The previous examples of groups or individuals contesting or refusing to accept election results, or claiming winners to be illegitimate, in my opinion were sore loser scenarios, where no substantive attempt was made to change the results. In contrast, Trump did more than just complain, he took concrete steps to overturn an election that he unquestionably lost. That he knew he lost. He has been charged with conspiring to defraud the United States by way of undermining the election results; the method for doing this that he is charged with is knowingly using false claims of election fraud. Here is the entire indictment https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23893878-trump-dc-indictment

Between now and the trial we will be subject to a tsunami of false claims, gaslighting, rewriting of history and everyone's favorite - whataboutism, to show that Trump was justified in his actions because the election was stolen. That he was acting within his rights constitutionally and morally. But it comes down to the fact that there isn't and never has been any evidence that there was election fraud and Trump knew it, if there had been his lawyers would have presented that evidence in court. 

Do I think it's a slam dunk that he will be convicted? Or if convicted he'll see one day in prison? The jury very literally is out on those questions. But it's way past time that the legal system is addressing Trump's scofflaw ways.

The Politics of Revenge

Donald Trump could have been an entirely normal Republican President. It would have been easy (at least for a normal person who wasn't a narcissist) to put his divisive, hateful rhetoric behind him and just get down to the business of governing. He started off on the right foot, thanking Secretary Clinton for her many years of government service and sounding downright humbled by his election win the day after the election. Progressives among the Democrats would have still opposed his policies, which differed little from run-of-the mill Republican fare, but anyone attacking his personality flaws would have just sounded petty. He could have appointed experts who knew their field, rather than loyalist yes-men and -women. The economy, for the most part, continued to improve (even though it was largely a continuation of the trends started at the end of Obama's second term) giving him bragging rights and making him look good. He made it through three years without an external crisis, and the crisis of the pandemic would have challenged any president. Even with Covid rampaging through the country, he could have been re-elected if he had handled it differently. I give him credit for pushing the pharmaceutical industry to come up with a vaccine, which was produced in record time. But he sunk himself, first by pretending it wasn't a problem, then by projecting false hope about how quickly it would go away, then by undermining his own experts instead of coordinating a consistent narrative - and supporting half-baked conspiracy theories. It was about him and not about the hundreds of thousands who were dying. 

Trump's constant stream of personal attacks, unseriousness about his responsibilities, ignorance and public incompetence, as well as his apparent belief that he could flout the norms, and even the law, was what got him impeached twice and made him the subject of multiple civil and criminal indictments. His public comments were often virtual confessions to various crimes! It's as if he has been daring the justice system to do something about his actions. I'm not saying there isn't a political component to the numerous investigations, but the idea that it's "election interference" as many Republicans say, is ridiculous. A glitch in our election laws allows someone who is under indictment, or even has been convicted and imprisoned, to run, be elected, and serve as President. Nothing prevents it. Whether it's true or not, it's an article of faith among Democrats that they'd rather run against Trump than any of the more traditional conservative Republicans. Someone like Sen. Tim Scott or former Gov. Nikki Haley might receive votes from conservative leaning independents who would never vote for Trump. Even some moderate Democrats who have never supported Biden might cast a vote for a Republican in that case. Trump on the ballot will mean that Biden will win. Probably. 

Despite the obvious fact that the investigations into Trump are justified, (in most cases Trump doesn't deny doing what he is accused of, just that he "did nothing wrong") Republicans are rewriting history to claim that the impeachments were unjustified (even unconstitutional) as are the various investigations into documents, January 6th and his alleged financial crimes. They have taken up Trump's cry of "witch hunt" and have set out on a mission of revenge and retribution. The majority of the business that the House of Representatives is engaged in is "investigations" where they badger and shout at witnesses who don't say the things that they have already decided is the truth. Republican politicians obsess over the President's former drug addict son, making allegations based on assumptions about his business dealings and further assuming that, just because they don't know everything about those business dealings, they must by corrupt. Sitting members of the House of Representatives routinely refer to "The Biden Crime Family", as if that's a settled fact. They have created a Committee on "The Weaponization of Government" that does nothing but weaponize government. 

If by some horrible twist of electoral fate Trump is elected in 2024, and Congress is back in the hands of the Republicans, Trump has stated that that he is "your retribution". We'll see what a politicized Department of Justice really looks like.