#genuinely I don’t think Trump like. cares that much. he’s never been a foreign policy guy other than isolationism and pissing off Iran

[imagitory]

Obama was no trump, but he want spectacularly great either. All he did was fix the economy, let gay ppl get married, and try (and fail) to give us healthcare. Not that those things aren’t good, but he had 8 YEARS. And that’s all he did? The Obama cult on this site just needs to calm down

...Anon, I’m really sorry, but...I couldn’t completely bite back a laugh at that second sentence. XD; I’d say “fixing the economy” is a pretty significant feat, eight years or no -- and I’d say there are many gay Americans who are very happy that the Supreme Court decided to honor their civil rights and allow them to marry, regardless of what state they lived in. I’d also say that there are many, many people with preexisting health conditions who are rather happy that the Affordable Care Act became a thing -- if nothing else, when the Republicans tried to repeal “Obamacare” after Obama left office, they pissed off quite a lot of their constituents, who didn’t love the thought of being denied the coverage they received under Obama’s law, and ultimately those Republicans had to back down. And admittedly there are other significant net positives that one could point to as being part of Barack Obama’s legacy, such as ending the War in Iraq, repealing the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, and giving the FDA the power to regulate the tobacco industry, as well as more understated things like acting and adding onto President Bush and Clinton’s policies on pandemic responses so that we weren’t affected by the H1N1/Swine Flu pandemic like other countries were. (I don’t think we could truly appreciate this until seeing how thoroughly Donald Trump has mismanaged things with Covid-19.) Then of course there’s just the fact that Obama acted infinitely more presidential and professional than his successor Donald Trump and (I would also argue) his predecessor George W. Bush did, in the way that he was incredibly well-spoken, intelligent, methodical in his word choices, and very cognizant of how other countries viewed him and therefore America and the people he represented. There are polls showing that internationally America was more respected under Obama than in Bush or especially Trump’s tenures, and that’s because Obama actively engaged in rational, respectful, diplomatic foreign policy more than either of those two Republican presidents.

I’m not going to act like Barack Obama was a perfect president or anything -- there are plenty of things I wish he’d fought harder for, like universal health care and gun control legislation at the federal level, and there are things he did I really didn’t approve of, like the shift toward drone strikes as a replacement to having troops on the ground. And yes, he had eight years as opposed to Trump’s four...but doesn’t that in itself say something? He did enough for the American people in four years to have earned a second term -- and honestly, I’ll take eight years under Barack Obama before eight years under George W. Bush any day of the friggin’ week, considering that Bush ran our economy into the ground and got us engaged in two wars in the Middle East, while Obama saved the economy and pulled us out of one war and started the withdrawal out of the second. And of course Donald Trump has already done more than enough damage in four years: I would hate to see what he could do if he somehow had gotten more time.

I honestly have never seen any sort of “cult-like” devotion toward Obama the way I most assuredly have for Trump despite his laundry list of failures and debilitating character flaws...but if people are a little over-dramatic in their love for Obama, I’d say they might have some cause, considering what we got after Obama’s departure. Nostalgia is an understandable and inevitable thing, and I think after we came under Trump’s watch and were able to look back at Obama’s presidency with hindsight, we realized how much we’d taken for granted.

Obama would laugh and make fun of himself at the White House Correspondents’ dinner -- Trump flat-out refused to host the dinner at all, and he absolutely cannot take a joke made at his expense. Obama got emotional during speeches, such as after the shooting at Sandy Hook -- I have never once seen Trump show any genuine emotion or tears for anyone other than himself. Obama would tell the American people when things were going to be hard, but still give us hope by explaining what we’d have to do to face the problem -- Trump only ever expresses confidence that things will work out or that he’ll take care of it, with no specifics or insight. Obama planned things out -- Trump flies by the seat of his pants. Obama was cool, calm, and collected -- Trump is hot-tempered, petty, and vindictive. Obama allowed photographers inside the White House outside of the standard press conferences, so they could take candid photographs of the First family -- Trump never has. Barack and Michelle Obama were openly affectionate with each other -- Donald and Melania’s lack of chemistry and affection has been pretty obvious since day one. The Obamas had a dog! The Trumps have no pets.

Even if one’s view of Obama is a bit rosy, I think it’s kind of an understandable rosiness, given where we are as a country. In my opinion, the nostalgia surrounding Obama is a helluva lot more justified than the nostalgia that’s popped up around presidents like Ronald Reagan.

[madamspeaker]

agir1ukn0w: I’ve found that there’s a pretty wide divide between how pretty much everyone on this site views Johnson and how my mom views him. I think she acknowledges that he’s not a perfect prime minister by any means, but because he expressed that he hated having to deal with Trump and was apparently an ok mayor of London she’s more inclined to think better of him. I wish I knew every reason why people here hate people in England, because it just seems like a more complex situation (even tho there are undoubtedly some more black and white scenarios) And like, my mom is a really intelligent woman, she’s pretty progressive for someone who grew up in the heart of Republican territory (Kansas) and is now an Independent, she believes emphatically in climate change and hates Trumps guts. It may just be that she’s an independent that makes her less inclined to see Johnson as a truly awful PM like a lot of people do. I just can’t ever argue with her about these things because she gets her info from British news sources and no one here cites any of theirs, though I believe that at least half of it must have some basis in fact otherwise people wouldn’t be dying on this Johnson-hating hill in such large numbers. I hope I don’t sound like a boot-licker or whatever, I’m just genuinely trying to get to the bottom of why everyone hates this guy.

I am predisposed to loathe Tory Prime Ministers in general, although I can say that as much as I detested his government, I didn’t really mind John Major. Perhaps because for all his faults and the general awfulness of the party he lead, you got the sense that Major appreciated the seriousness of the job, that he understood the weight of it - that it wasn’t some gig to wing your way through, and he helped secure the Good Friday Agreement for Northern Ireland. He was a serious man (ignoring that insane episode with Edwina Currie) who understood legacy. You get no sense of that at all with Johnson, no sense that he understands anything beyond the title of the briefings he is presumably given, and from the looks of things never reads. He darts from one thing to another, one whim to the next, there’s no belief system governing anything he does other than the “what benefits Boris personally” ideology. That’s why he backed Brexit. It wasn’t because he had some ideological belief that the EU was bad for the UK (hell he wrote more than a few pro-EU articles for the Torygraph before he decided his career prospects looked better by flipping sides), it was because he looked at the referendum and made a calculation as to what side of the argument would most benefit him. He’s Trump to a degree, but far, far, FAR more dangerous. Trump is an unpleasant personality - he’s oafish, poorly spoken, he’s unattractive, and has no self awareness of any of this. Johnson is far more dangerous because he is aware of it, and he plays on these aspects of himself - he’s deliberately unkempt, he babbles, he plays up the clown aspect because he knows that it disarms people, they are so distracted by the exterior - the messy hair, the disheveled suits, the bumbling word salads for speeches, that a lot of people don’t see him as being capable of true evil and corruption. Trump looked and sounded like an idiot villain, whereas to a lot of people Johnson just seems like an idiot - and he’s not. The whole exterior is a calculation to mask a maliciously ambitious man, whose only concern is himself, and who has managed to rather easily convince a great swathe of England to go with him because like Trump, he is openly all those things that middle-Englanders have always been, but until 2016 was not acceptable to admit - like being racist - but unlike Trump, Johnson wraps up the racism in much more palatable ideas like animal welfare bills, and supporting climate change policies - so everyone who votes for the Tories can pretend that they’re really doing so because they want to have green and clean energy, and not because they really hate anyone who isn’t white and has a “foreign” accent. If you want to see the real Boris Johnson, look no further than the “let the bodies pile up” comment he made (and corroborated by several sources) before the second lockdown last year. The bubbling clown that appears on television doesn’t seem the sort who would say that, but the ambitious charlatan who lied to the Queen so he could get Parliament prorogued to try and stop any attemps to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal would. That whole thing is now widely forgotten, but it goes to his ruthless nature - he lied, abused centuries of precedent and history to try and get a “no deal” that would benefit him and his friends. In the end it was the Supreme Court that stopped him in his tracks there. But just as Trump’s disregard for procedure and rule of law has had little negative effect on how his supporters see him, the same applies to Johnson, because fundamentally he gives his base what they want - a license to be racist. All these people chanting about taking back power from the EU so as to make the UK Parliament sovereign (which it always was btw) are weirdly silent when Johnson undermines that very same UK Parliament, when he tries to by-pass it, when he tries to stop elected MPs having a say. It’s almost like it has nothing to do with EU power and everything to do with them liking the guy who compares Muslim women in niqabs to postboxes, and refers to Black people as “'piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. And if there wasn’t enough reason to detest him for the racism, and the horrific attitude to Covid deaths, we have his utterly cavalier attitude to Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement. He either genuinely seems to think he can just wing his way through a situation that requires a super sensitive touch, or he just doesn’t give a fuck if people start bombing each other again, all thanks to Brexit, his grand scheme. Either is pretty unforgivable. To be so lazy as to assume things will just work out no matter what you do, or to just not care if things do go wrong. Men and women spent years getting to the point of the GFA being signed, and to be fair to every Prime Minister since Major, they all took it seriously and understood the need to protect that agreement. Johnson, I doubt he’s even read it (and it’s not that long). That is why I detest him. That is why I want him gone, and I want him tried for negligence over how he has handled Covid. He’s an insidious and corrupt asshole, whose put on clownish buffonery masks what a terrifying and evil leader he is.

[cuntess-carmilla]

genuine question, not loaded or sarcastic or anything, just wondering if i fucked up with my vote: do you think it would have been better if we voted for another four years of trump? i thought i was helping the whole world by voting biden, especially in regards to climate change... but if i was wrong.. idk. would it had been better for everybody if we kept trump?

I may be wrong but if the information I read was correct and I'm remembering correctly, I'm afraid Biden never really promised to do much or anything about the environment, and considering he assures billionaires that "nothing will change", I get the feeling I'm likely correct.

Even with how dangerous Biden is (and not just for people from the 3rd world) I don't automatically resent Americans who voted for him, especially when it comes to non-white Americans.

I can sympathize with the stress of having a president that doesn't even attempt to hide how much he fucking hates your very existence and considering the US's history of extreme anti-communism, censorship, repression, and liberal brainwashing, most Americans aren't too well prepared to see much beyond democrats vs republicans, to realize the dems are actually pretty fucking right-wing, etc. I understand too that Biden's campaign made sure to not be too loud about his imperialist goals so that only specific interest groups would engage with that side of his campaign while the majority of other Americans wouldn't even consider his foreign policy.

Every imperialist state relies on not informing their people of the extent of the crimes they're committing unless it's dripping in propaganda justifying their bloodshed. That's why so much of, for example, British and Japanese youth don't know much about their countries' imperialist history. They're simply not taught about it OR they're taught that it was benevolent. Same happens with Americans. And probably Spaniards too but I wouldn't know for sure because you'd have to fucking pay me to willingly engage with a Spaniard enough to find out.

The Americans I do resent are the ones who knew (who aren't that many), and the ones who had they known, wouldn't have cared (and that's a huge majority of Americans, as evidenced by the reactions to me being afraid of getting nuked). By "wouldn't have cared" I don't even mean "everyone who would've still voted for Biden", I mean "everyone who would've still voted for Biden without at least some mixed feelings because they THINK (incorrectly, unless they're VERY privileged) that it's gonna benefit them so fuck the rest of the world".

All of that said, I'm afraid every single well-meaning American vote is always wasted at the end of the day. Think about it, Biden's biggest selling point was that yeah, he's evil but he pretends to be less evil is less evil. Almost nobody voted FOR Biden, they voted for or against Trump. That's a disgrace of a candidate. Basically a chicken could've ran against Trump and won too just because it wasn't Trump.

It's not that I'm saying people should've voted for Trump, I'm saying that every single US president is inevitably going to be a bloodthirsty warmongerer, Trump simply was a mediocre lazy one by comparison and that may have lessened the repercussions of US imperialism for a minute or so for the rest of us.

Sounds pretty hopeless, right? Well, that's exactly what they want. They want you to think that then there's no point in anything, because then you won't do anything.

Which is why I've been trying to say to Americans who genuinely care about anyone but themselves (admittedly, not that many Americans) that whether they vote or not, and who they vote for, is nearly irrelevant, BUT that there's so much more they could be doing instead of waiting four years at a time to choose between two equally horrid leaders.

Political activity isn't limited to voting and meaningless gestures. That's what your empire has worked very hard to convince you of, that that's all there is to politics and I guess that's why you guys are so heavily polarized between thinking voting within bourgeois "democracy" is the most revolutionary thing ever (as to not lose your sanity) and thinking that since voting has no power, then you have no power (having been blinded to the possibilities beyond electoral politics).

Take action. Blow up some shit. Fight. Be drastic. (And I, for once, don't mean this in a condescending or angry tone) DO something.

[thedreideldiaries]

Hey, friends! I thought I’d take this opportunity to expound in my political choices a bit - specifically to give some context for my choice of Sanders over Warren. Note for a few of my followers who know me elsewhere: this is copied over from other social media, so if it sounds familiar that is why.

First, I want to reiterate that I like Warren. So, if anyone reading this is torn between her and any of the other clowns who have thrown their sorry hats into the ring, then please: do me and the rest of the world a favor, stop reading this right now, and go ahead and give Warren your vote. I won’t be mad. Promise. If you’re on the fence between Warren and Sanders, though, then I implore you to read on.

Okay, is it just us in here? Cool.

For my friends torn between Warren and Sanders (like I was at the beginning of the primary), I’ve tried to distill my reasoning. As you know, a lot of the discourse surrounding Warren’s campaign constructs her as a younger, female version of Sanders. If I believed that, I’d be solidly in her corner, but a few differences between them make this simply not the case. Here are the ones I find most salient:

1. Let’s look at Bernie’s base. As much as we love to talk about representation in politics, a candidate’s demographic background tells us nothing about who they’re going to fight for. Their voting base, on the other hand, tells you who has placed their confidence in that candidate’s promises.

A good proportion of Warren’s supporters are white college graduates (young and old).

By contrast Bernie’s base is overwhelmingly working class, non-white, urban, and, perhaps most tellingly, young. You could attribute that to naivete, but I think something else is going on here: the demographic group with the most to win or lose from this election are people under 30. We’re the ones who will have to live with the most devastating effects of climate change, and we’re tired of the so-called adults in our lives not taking that rather pressing concern seriously. We don’t care if our candidate is old or young - we care if they listen. Which brings me to:

2. The Youth. Young people in America are disillusioned with democracy - not because we’ve decided it’s not a good idea, but because we’ve literally never seen it in action. We live in a corporate plutocracy where the financial barriers to running for office have rendered most politicians ridiculously out of touch. And Sanders, more than any other candidate in the primary, knows how to talk to young people.

And look - I’m planning to vote for whoever wins the primary. But if 2016 is anything to go by, if the youth demographic doesn’t get a candidate they can get behind, they won’t vote strategically for the lesser of two evils. They’ll stay home, and given what the Democratic party has done for them over the past 20 or so years, I can’t say I blame them.

3. The same goes for his endorsements. I’d be out of my lane if I spent too much time talking about what Sanders wants to do for people of color, but I think it’s telling that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar - three politicians showing real determination to shake things up in Washington - all chose Bernie over Warren. I think it’s telling that AOC cited his campaign, not Warren’s, as her inspiration for running for office (if anyone’s a female Sanders, it’s not Warren - it’s AOC).

4. Sanders is, quite simply, the genuine article. He’s fought for important causes (climate justice, healthcare, workers’ rights) since long before they were cool. He’s *not* perfect, but criticisms of him rarely touch his political history.

Warren’s record of activism is, by contrast, unimpressive. She used to be a Republican corporate lawyer, and while I absolutely respect that someone can change their mind about politics, and I applaud her for doing so, it worries me that what changed her mind wasn’t the Iran-Contra scandal, or the AIDS crisis, or the brutal crushing of the labor movement. It was the realization that Republicans were doing capitalism wrong. I can’t exactly argue with that (show me a Republican politician who truly supports a free market and I’ll eat my beret*), but it doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

*This is a joke. I do not have a beret.

5. Warren’s a capitalist; Sanders is a democratic socialist, and I think the difference is important. Warren supports a wealth tax, and she wants everyone to have healthcare, and I appreciate that she has the guts to talk about those things on national television, but at the end of the day, she’s a proud capitalist who believes the system needs to be corrected, not overhauled.

Sanders is a self-professed democratic socialist, and has built a popular movement around that label. And honestly, I’m not too worried about redbaiting. Yes, it’s a common Republican tactic, but the sentiment of “yes I would vote for Democrats but not for Socialist democrats” is a rare one, if it exists at all. And if it works against any of the primary candidates, it’ll work against all of them. They used anti-Commmunist rhetoric against Obama, for goodness’ sake. Look how much of an advocate for the working class he turned out to be.

Courting the centrist vote is a waste of time. Tiptoeing around conservatives alienates left-wingers and doesn’t actually sway Republicans. It’s a bad move strategically, in that it makes us look like cowards, and morally, because it means not getting very important things done.

Sanders doesn’t want to play the game better. He wants to start a whole new game. Warren’s economics platform seems to boil down to “50s but less racist,” and while that sounds nice, it’s just not possible. We can’t go back there - we have automation now, not to mention a global economy the likes of which we barely dreamed of in the 1950s, and it’s not realistic to try to make that happen again. We need something new.

6. People over party. In a lot of ways, Warren reminds me of the best parts of The West Wing. I like that show, but it was a comforting fantasy - a vision of what the Democratic Party could have been like with a little more gumption and a lot more luck. It never happened because the Democratic party and politics aren’t like that in real life. I have confidence in Sanders because his loyalty isn’t to the Democratic Party. It’s to the American people. He’s proved that over and over again over the course of his political career.

7. Bernie is an organizer. The “not me - us” slogan is very telling. Democracy is participatory. We don’t just need a candidate with a plan to fix everything. We need a candidate with a plan who acknowledges that the people hold the real power. We need a candidate who respects the will of the people and inspires them to get involved. We can’t win this election and stop thinking about politics. We never get to stop thinking about politics. We need someone who can inspire people to keep fighting.

The heart attack was a big deal, but the truth is, it’s never been about Bernie as an individual. His immediate reaction after getting out of the hospital was “I’m lucky to have healthcare; everyone should have healthcare; let’s get back to work.” That, more than anything, has given me the confidence that Bernie wants his policies to last long after he’s gone.

Also, people regularly have heart attacks and live another several decades. This is *literally* why we have vice presidents. If Sanders can get elected and pick a good VP and a cabinet (plus, you know, fill any Supreme Court vacancies that happen to arise over his tenure), his health won’t matter as much, because we don’t need a messiah right now. We need a resurgence of participatory democracy. We need more AOCs to take the stage. We need young people at the polls, not just in 2020, but beyond that.

8. I don’t like to talk about electability for a couple of reasons. One: centrists love to bring it up, usually in the service of talking about how policies they have zero stake in will never work. Two: Trump was supposed to be unelectable, and we all saw how that turned out.

That said: Warren’s currently polling third, which is not a great place to be. And while I don’t share some people’s cynicism about Warren, I have to agree that her response to Trump’s attacks has not impressed me. I’m confident that if Trump attacks Sanders, Bernie won’t take the bait, because he’s so on-message you can’t get him off-message. Like I said: he had a heart attack and immediately spun it back into the healthcare conversation.

And the polls are clear: head to head, Sanders beats Trump. Warren’s chances are far dicier.

9. And the most important issue, without which nothing else really matters: the climate crisis. I’d love it if we could wait for the country’s ideas to catch up to Sanders’ socialist rhetoric, but the truth is we are running out of time. I’m voting for Sanders because I have two nieces under 5 years old and a nephew who was just born, and I want them to grow up on a habitable planet, and they won’t get a chance to vote on that. I’m doing it because I want to have kids of my own someday, and while I absolutely respect the choice of anyone deciding to reproduce right now, I don’t have the emotional energy to raise a family during an apocalypse. And while I like Warren, and she’s expressed support for a Green New Deal, Sanders is the only candidate I trust to both beat Trump in the general and put his foot down to the DNC and their ilk.

10. Foreign policy!

First of all: guess who else hates American Imperialism? That’s right; it’s Bernie Sanders. Significantly, he has the guts to bring up America’s habit of meddling in Latin America’s democratically elected governments, which is something you pretty much never hear about from pretty much any other candidate.

https://www.vox.com/2019/6/25/18744458/bernie-sanders-endless-wars-foreign-affairs-op-ed

Foreign policy came up a lot during 2016 primary, with Clinton’s supporters trotting out the bizarre argument that a long history of hawkish policies is better than no policies at all. What with all that, I was surprised to learn that Sanders is actually quite well-traveled and has a long history of trying to mend fences between the U.S. and other world powers: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy/470019/

When it comes to climate change and foreign policy, Sanders acknowledges not only that it requires innovation (let’s not forget his early and vehement support for the Green New Deal), but also international cooperation. From the link below:

“To both Sanders and his supporters around the world, it is impossible to fight climate change without international cooperation. To that end, a group called the Progressive International was announced at a convention last year held by the Sanders Institute, a think tank founded by the presidential contender’s wife and son.

“The network of left-wing politicians and activists hopes to fight against "the global war being waged against workers, against our environment, against democracy, against decency,” according to its website.”

He’s also popular with left-wing leaders around the world, and it’s those kinds of politicians who we need to get us out of the climate crisis.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/04/bernie-sanders-global-popularity-1254929

And finally, to stray briefly into comparison: again, I like Warren, but even so, I like her better domestically than internationally. The progressivism she touts at home comes up short abroad. I’m sure you’ve heard about it already, but I think it’s worth remembering that Warren voted for Trump’s military budget in 2017; Sanders didn’t. She talks a lot about peace, but her history on foreign issues looks pretty similar to that of other centrist democrats. This is a problem not only in terms of American Imperialism, but also because the U.S. military is one of the world’s leading causes of climate change. Her voting history and her cozy relationship with defense contractors have me pretty worried. This article goes into more detail about her history with various foreign powers as well as her general attitudes on American imperialism:

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/elizabeth-warren-foreign-policy

We all pretty much knew what we were getting with Clinton. Warren worries me not only because she seems to align with the rest of the party on our endless foreign wars, but because she keeps her support for the military-industrial complex behind a facade of progressive rhetoric that reminds me of the early Obama years. We can’t be let down like that again. Even if we ignore the devastating human cost, the planet doesn’t have time.

Further Reading - obviously I don’t agree with everything in every one of these pieces, but they offer a leftist critique that often goes missing from other, more superficial problems people bring up about Warren.

The polling bases of the primary candidates: https://www.people-press.org/2019/08/16/most-democrats-are-excited-by-several-2020-candidates-not-just-their-top-choice/pp_2019-08-16_2020-democratic-candidates_0-06/?fbclid=IwAR2G8np2q9N4P6DArdI-gPhA5Wp_SYDZPKQDpDhxVZ4YbwnAEmFd65swMOA

An interesting take on Warren’s policies vs Bernie’s movement: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/04/elizabeth-warren-policy-bernie-sanders-presidential-primary?fbclid=IwAR14wWjYDNuNMrXN7YjVFFFHXmoMWKpDVqBcbPBlQUUrA354iIyRAbKXG30

An opinion piece on the contrast between them:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-democratic-party-elite-2020-presidential-race?fbclid=IwAR3vA54QveM2cCTxQ2BbVXh_IICgTxweKVBLMRjhSFyyAdspnibJ50seDjY

Another one:

https://forward.com/opinion/432561/the-case-for-bernie-sanders-the-only-real-progressive-in-the-race-sorry/?fbclid=IwAR1vwONZ7azJQcoeo_KYNYiJ8ekzHhJsZ4Ms0UzDHI59j7Q6oio-5uJOGcI

Warren’s political history:

More about that from a different source:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/why-criticize-warren?fbclid=IwAR0NTP0cRbSnr-a6HCuxE-4SCJZEqU2EAL1Gnx70FME-9UMBg-xYE5t7g7Y

A prequel to the former (beware - this one’s scathing as heck):

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/09/the-prospect-of-an-elizabeth-warren-nomination-should-be-very-worrying?fbclid=IwAR03d5I5j72s4kQC9wgRSrXnbmWsp_9HUvRWBZwzcfsT9RsZP-lSAX4aPz0

[arcticdementor]

People capable of feeling shame would not have immediately followed up the Russiagate hoax fiasco with another transparently phony—and in “substance” nearly identical—attempt to remove President Trump from office, overturn the 2016 election, and shower deplorable-Americans with contempt and hatred. But our ruling elites have no shame.

That is not to say, however, that they are entirely cynical. The means by which they’ve so far tried to crush the Trump presidency may be nasty and illegitimate, but our overlords are 100% convinced of the righteousness of their cause, and of themselves. Hence they do not even need recourse to the cliché that the ends justify the means. The means are good because the end is sacred; they cannot countenance even the thought that the means might be suspect or (ahem) trumped up.

Near the beginning of his epic history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides distinguishes the “publicly voiced” causes of that conflict from the war’s “truest cause, though least in speech.” We may—indeed, must—subject the “impeachment” coup to the same bifurcated analysis.

…

But let’s drill down a bit. If we are to take the current “publicly voiced” cause at face value, then we may say that the entire Washington establishment, plus most of the country’s elites, are trying to remove the president from office on the basis of an anonymous individual’s private opinion of the content of one phone call he heard about second or possibly even thirdhand. A phone call, let’s remember, of which we have extensive notes that almost, but not quite, constitute a transcript—in other words, whose content everyone in the country can examine for himself.

…

Back to the Ukraine call. The second question President Trump asked the Ukrainian president is another “publicly voiced” cause to seek his removal. That question regarded a specific instance of a well-known Washington-insider phenomenon. It is a measure of how insouciantly our elites accept and even welcome the immense corruption of our government that they raise not a single eyebrow at the phenomenon that underlay the president’s question: exactly how is it that well-connected Americans with no particular or relevant skill sets can “earn” enormous sums of money for doing, essentially, nothing?

We all know how, of course. They’re not, exactly, doing “nothing.” They’re providing access—in some instances directly, in others prospectively. When a company or bank or hedge fund or real estate developer or foreign government slides big payments over to someone close to someone who might soon be president, they know what they’re doing, and they know—from experience—that the investment is sound. Tom Wolfe coined the term “favor bank” to explain how “the law” really works in the Bronx County criminal justice system. You do favors expecting to have favors done in return. There are no written contracts or enforcement mechanisms, but the system “works” because people know it’s in their interest to honor it. In modern international politics, to pay someone a few million to do “nothing” is to expect to be paid back somehow. The payees know this, and endeavor to make good, lest they risk future payments.

Understand this plainly: Trump may well be impeached, ostensibly, for asking about this corrupt arrangement. But no one is ever impeached for engaging in it. Nor can our elites, who almost all benefit from this system one way or another, muster the integrity to do, or even say, anything against it.

…

Another, deeper cause for the current show trial is less “publicly voiced” than beclouded with pretentious misdirection, because the president’s enemies know that, were they to state it clearly, the American people would scoff in their faces. Our foreign policy priesthood is 100% certain that the United States must take the side of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. President Trump has expressed skepticism about the wisdom of such a commitment. He wonders why the conflict is our problem, when a not-inconsiderable number of European countries closer to the issue demand action from us but do very little themselves. He worries about the possibility of the United States getting drawn into war with Russia. And he’s concerned that, given historic corruption in Ukraine, American aid there may not be well spent.

…

This may be true, though—nothing against Ukraine—I don’t think so. The country just isn’t that important to us for the same reason that Canada and Mexico are not that important to Russia. But even if I’m wrong about that, the above statement is still fundamentally an opinion—the opinion of someone not entitled to make policy. He is surely welcome to state his opinion, when appropriate to do so as part of his official duties and within the chain of command, but that’s it as far as his opinion goes. Actual policy—the question of whether “a strong and independent Ukraine is critical to U.S. national security interests”—is well above his paygrade, properly decided by the president, his cabinet and senior advisors, and members of the Senate who advise and consent on cabinet secretaries and treaties. At least, that’s how the parchment on which the charter of our liberties is written says it’s supposed to work.

…

What on earth is “[t]he U.S. government policy community”? This is not made clear in the statement, but from the context it would appear to be something like the “deep state” we are elsewhere told does not exist except in the minds of fevered “conspiracy theorists.” Elite conventional wisdom appears to have evolved into: “The deep state is not a thing—and thank God it’s there to save our democracy!”

…

But whether epistemologically unassailable or complete madness (in the real world, it’s more likely than not to be incoherent mush), “interagency consensus” is not policy—or at least it’s not supposed to be. It may help inform policy, but elected and appointed officials—and in a unitary executive, that ultimately means the president—alone get to make policy. The presupposition of our country director—and his like-minded peers in the deep state—is the opposite: policy is made in and by the “interagency,” whose decrees are holy writ that it is illegitimate for the president to challenge.

…

If this isn’t proof positive that the “deep state” is real, then what would be? Here we have an unelected cabal trying to take down the elected president, ostensibly over an issue that the American people have never voted on and don’t care about but which the “the U.S. government policy community” insists is so important that a democratic election must be overturned for its sake. Actually, to the extent that the American people have voted on this issue, in electing a man who very clearly promised to reduce American commitments abroad, they voted against the  “U.S. government policy community consensus.”

Yet the “interagency” somehow believes that its decrees are democracy and that it’s somehow “undemocratic” to question them. This is how it’s possible for so many of Trump’s enemies to impugn him as an enemy of “democracy,” sanctify their patently undemocratic attempts to unseat him, and portray themselves as democracy’s saviors. As Christopher Caldwell put it recently in these pages, according to this understanding

democracy [is] a set of progressive outcomes that democracies tend to choose, and may even have chosen at some time in the past. If a progressive law or judicial ruling or executive order coincides with the “values” of experts, a kind of mystical ratification results, and the outcome is what the builders of the European Union call an acquis—something permanent, unassailable, and constitutional-seeming. [“What Is Populism?” Fall 2018]

Aid to Ukraine has been decided! Debate over! No more votes and no changes! That would be “undemocratic”!

…

It is no accident or coincidence that the only three presidents who have fundamentally challenged the administrative state—and questioned its song sheet, the “U.S. government policy community consensus”—have been dogged by “scandal” and threatened with impeachment: Richard Nixon by Watergate, Ronald Reagan by Iran Contra, and now Trump. (Whatever you think of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it was emphatically not driven or supported by the administrative state, which protected him at every turn.) Trump would likely take this as small consolation, but it’s a measure of how much he’s feared that his enemies are running this play against him now, rather than simply trying to defeat him next year. Which more than suggests they doubt they can.

Simply based on what we know so far, the whole thing looks engineered, like those “lawfare” cases in which clever lawyers and activists find sympathetic plaintiffs, carefully choose friendly venues, and file lawsuits not to redress specific, genuine injustices but to force changes in policy—anti-democratically, it goes without saying. That’s the real reason nobody with firsthand knowledge came forward but left it to a distant “whistleblower” to get this train started: because those driving it understand that, by pitching the matter out to an agency covered by a whistleblower statute, with a formal whistleblower process, they could begin the transformation of this inherently political process into a technical, legal matter. This supposition only gains support from reports of “collusion” (what else can one call it?) between the “whistleblower” and Democratic congressional staff. The parade of witnesses in secret testimony also looks carefully orchestrated.

The secrecy has partly ended—but only after the Democrats gathered its fruits and shaped them into a “narrative” to spoon-feed to the public. The playbook is the same one that failed with the Russia hoax: selectively leak to create a fog, a miasma of vaguely negative-sounding “facts” or allegations that seem ominous but also too complex and in-the-weeds for ordinary folk to follow. Then publicly “confirm” those leaks as the authoritative account of the “scandal.” None of the actual facts adds up to any actual wrongdoing, but the hope is that regular people won’t notice and won’t listen to those who do. Leave it to us experts: we know wrongdoing when we see it! If the actual specifics of what we’re alleging don’t actually appear to you to amount to “treason, bribery, [or] other high crimes and misdemeanors,” as the Constitution’s Article II, section 4 requires, that’s only because you’re not an expert.

…

It worked against Nixon. It almost worked against Reagan. But let’s be clear: if it works this time, there are only three possible outcomes:

First, deplorable-Americans will meekly accept President Trump’s removal, in which case the country as a self-governing republic will be finished; the elite coup will have succeeded, their grip on power cemented. With all due respect to the vice president, this is not the way—these are not the people on the backs of whom—he should wish to enter the Oval Office. And I am confident he will not.

Second, deplorable-Americans will revolt at the ballot box and punish the elites in a series of elections that put in power serious statesmen intent on rooting out corruption and reestablishing democratic accountability.

Or, third, deplorable-Americans’ attempt to set their government aright via ballots will not avail, as it has not so often in the past; they will realize that it has not, conclude that it never will, and resolve by any means necessary to get out from under the thumbs of people who so obviously hate them and wish to rule them without their consent.

Only one of these possibilities is healthy for the continued survival of republican government as currently constituted.

Oh, and let’s also be clear about something else: if the Republicans “collude” with this sham and force the removal of a president whose approval rating within his party hovers north of 90%, and whose voters scarcely understand—much less agree with—the “case” against him, they will destroy the party forever. I don’t often make predictions, because I’m not good at it, but this one is easy. They will have removed all doubt that they are anything but ruling class apparatchiks, adjuncts, and flunkies of the administrative state from which they take orders.

[phaylenfairchild]

Lying In Wait: Mike Pence Prepares To Take The Presidency

There is no question, Vice President Mike Pence is the worst of the two evils.

While Donald Trump may be a chest thumping, ego maniacal womanizer who brags about his nuclear button, laments over his small hands and has become a international meme, the Man behind the curtain is much more dangerous.

As nations around the globe laugh at the antics of Trump, whether because of his outrageous twitter attacks against celebrities, lying about his inauguration attendance or rambling about covfefe, we in America have accepted that he is no more relative to national strategy or politics than a potato.

Thus far, in his 13 months as President, Trump’s only personal success has been embarrassing himself before a world audience on a daily basis. Our plight as a country has become a running joke to so many who seem bizarrely detached from this new reality in which we are trying to adapt. It has more to do with social media desensitizing us to the nightmarish consequences of tragedy than simple indifference. We’re used to seeing pictures of dead immigrant children washed up on beaches and bodies piled up on top of rubble after a horrific bombing in Aleppo. Human beings have put on an emotional armor that has conditioned them to be unaffected, mostly to protect themselves from slipping into a sense of hopelessness and defeat. “Thoughts and prayers” via a few quick keyboard strokes have substituted genuine reactions to the suffering of others we witness with alarming frequency.

This unsettling separation of ourselves from dangerous truths and inevitable consequences is partly how a man like Donald Trump became President. While many voted for him, purely motivated by an impractical rage against the establishment, others did it for the comedic value. Republicans didn’t believe it could happen until they were suddenly faced with him as their newly minted nominee. Democrats were lulled into a sense of absolute security by gallup polls, expert commentary and news coverage which declared Hillary Clinton as a guaranteed landslide winner… so millions didn’t even bother to vote.

Partisan politics have destroyed democracy. We’re no longer hearing topics debated on senate floor; Instead politics are the new Superbowl and you’re either team Democratic Donkeys or Republican Elephants. Americans are divided by Red and Blue and they are ferociously loyal to their color. Social issues are irrelevant. So are economics, foreign relations, civil rights and the most basic of all, common sense. It is more important to win than to be right, regardless of the damage done in the process or pursuit of “Winning.” A surprising number of people who voted for Trump have experienced voter regret, realizing that the delight the thought they’d take from seeing him give ‘snowflake liberals’ a sharp upper-hook, was also dealt to them. Some are smart enough to feel betrayed. Others are so blindly devoted to their own team that they don’t mind being a casualty of it, as if they view themselves as a willing- and necessary sacrificial lamb required for the political Gods to destroy the other side and favor theirs.

Unfortunately, for Republicans, it was Trump they found occupying their political God seat. They’ve watched in sheer terror as he, and the unqualified lackeys he has appointed to power positions, have disassembled America’s perception of fairness, progress and priority.

In an unusual partnership, Donald Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence, has been unusually quiet throughout most of the their reign so far. While Trump spent time in his first year campaigning for his next Presidential bid in 2020, Pence rarely made public or media appearances, and when he did, he was tactful rather than defensive; well practiced in dodging the damning questions hurled at him regarding his boss. It’s clear that Pence maintains a far more Presidential demeanor that Trump, manicuring his responses and speeches instead of vomiting his words all over the podium.

It has been speculated that inner-circle Republicans have anticipated Trump’s impeachment from the onset. Trump and his campaign have been beleaguered by legal troubles since he took the oath of office. Allegations of collusion with Russian entities and election tampering, obstruction of justice, failing to divest from his business investments, misuse of campaign funds, accusations of sexual misconduct and even extramarital affairs with multiple adult film stars remain ongoing. Yet, while Trump takes to twitter at 4 am to ridicule celebrities, foreign leaders even those players on his own team, Pence remains quietly on the sidelines as Trump slowly self destructs.

Pence’s visible distance from Trump isn’t incidental, but an act of self preservation. Nearly 40 White House staff have resigned or been fired since Trump assumed power, falling on the sword of Special Investigator Robert Mueller who has been tasked with examining Trump and his closest allies. Four Trump advisers were arrested before the incoming administration could decorate their new offices.

Pence never comments on these circumstances, instead leaving White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to volley questions from Democratic colleagues and the media. Pence is meticulous about where he steps on a lawn full of droppings, and the suggestion has been made that his actions are fully premeditated. Having his eye planted firmly on the throne, he understands he must avoid getting dirty.

The Atlantic reported last month in an article called “God’s Plan For Mike Pence” that Pence’s wife, Second Lady Karen Pence, finds Donald Trump’s behavior “Vile.” Indeed, she would given that she and her husband are deeply convicted to their Christian religion. That alone made the Trump/Pence coupling extremely odd, especially considering Trump’s reckless attacks on women and his vulgar, brash behavior. Meanwhile, Pence is a polished politician, whose voting history and on-the-record comments as Governor of Indiana reveals someone with unwavering faith- to a disturbing degree.

Pence has voted against marriage equality. He voted to to uphold the archaic military policy of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. When asked about his stance on gay rights, Trump intercepted the inquiry to say, “Don’t ask that guy, he wants to hang them all.” He has voted against a women’s right to sovereignty over their own body. He has neglected the needs of people of color in Indiana, contributing to a political system that imprisons more black men than it provides access to school. He condemned anti-racism efforts- even walked out of an NFL game where the players knelt peacefully to protest inequality and police brutality afflicting the black community. Pence has never spoken out against the alt-right activists that have violently attacked minorities, but sat back while Trump defended the self-described white supremacists as “Some very fine people.” Pence is known to keep the company of White Nationalists.

Pence has a very specific definition of America and who it belongs to. In Pence’s vision, the only citizens deserving of opportunity, justice and equality are white, male, straight, cisgender and christian. His history of actions and remarks provide irrefutable evidence that he believes anyone who slips outside these boundaries are second class citizens.

Much of what drives Pence is his radical religious extremism. Although Pence keeps a very low profile, we do know that he has weaponized his religion to harm people who do not share his world views. As governor he signed the Freedom Of Religion Bill which began by allowing radicals like himself to discriminate against LGBT people without consequence. As a result, he received intense push-back from democrats and progressives alike and he was forced to implement amendments that included LGBT residents of the state. Unhappy with having to compromise his belief system as Governor, once he became Vice President, he counseled Trump on the founding of the new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, which achieves what he failed to do as governor- sanction abuse and discrimination against LGBT Americans by any individual who wishes to deny them service or treatment based on religious or moral objection. The department allows medical professionals to deny care to LGBT identifying people with no consequence, even if they die as a result of their neglect.

According to new reports, Pence was also the one who drafted the new ban that disqualifies Transgender identifying individuals from enlisting in the military. Not a surprise considering ex-White House Aide, Omarosa Manigault Newman, who, like so many others before and after, was fired by John Kelly for misusing the White House car service claimed that working in Trump’s administration as a the only Black woman on staff was both isolating and disturbing. She stated that she could not reconcile the gross mishandling of racial issues by the Trump administration and stay silent. In fact, as the only Black Republican who had access to Trump and Pence, many people of color saw her as a traitor who refused to represent their interests and instead sold them out. After her dismissal, she came forward stating that she was prevented from discussing the topics that were relevant with the president because other staffers deliberately kept her away.

Soon after leaving the white house, she returned to her roots on reality television with CBS’s Big Brother where to spoke about the possibility of Pence moving into the Oval Office;

“Can I just say this? As bad as y’all think Trump is, you should be worried about Pence. We would be begging for days of Trump back if Pence became president.” — Omarosa Manigault Newman

Omarosa made claims about a sort of White hierarchy in the administration where diversity did not exist in its upper ranks. The White House could not prove her wrong. Communications director Sarah Sanders found no evidence to the contrary when, during a press conference, she was grilled about the accusation. It seems The White House is now a literal representation of the inhabitants.

Mike Pence Posted a Selfie of The House Of Representatives

The 2016 Democratic Interns vs The 2018 Republican Interns — Spot the difference

We cannot fault any man or woman for their personal faith. After all, in America, we have the freedom to choose which system of belief to follow, if any at all. It becomes problematic when a radical Christian, like Pence, from his position begins implementing laws, bans and limitations on innocent Americans because he believes he is serving his God’s purpose. Last I checked, we still had a separation of Church and State, albeit weakly enforced and slowly dying.

Omarosa continued to provide insight on life with Pence in the White House; “He’s extreme. I’m Christian. I love Jesus, but he thinks Jesus tells him to say things.” When the topic turned to immigration, things even got more terrifying;

“I’ve seen the plans- the round-up plan is getting more and more aggressive. The crackdowns are happening and they’re aggressive. They’re intentional and they’re going to get worse.” — Omarosa Manigault Newman

Pence never responds to the accusations of racism, elitism, misogyny, bigotry or his radicalism. Instead, we have to unearth the dark reality of Pence’s nature from inside sources, past comments and his voting record. He allows his actions to speak for themselves and will not risk further qualifying his tumultuous past by addressing it. It could put thorns in his path to the presidency.

And he believes, as do many others in the administration, that he will assume the Presidency. Despite Donald Trump appearing to be made of teflon, it’s starting to wear thin. As the scandals and controversies, arrests and indictments pile up around Donald Trump, Pence is patiently lying in wait, biding his time, watching as Trump digs himself a hole that he’ll never climb out of.

Today the Republicans are starting to discuss Donald Trump’s impeachment. It begs the question; Has this been the Pence plan from the beginning? While he has been responsible for ghostwriting some of the most discriminatory, hate-motivated legislation in decades that have been attributed to Trump, that seems to have been intentional. Pence and co. have been content in allowing Trump to take the flack, because he’s not intelligent enough to understand he’s being puppeteered. He’s like an obnoxious little kid begging to play a video game, so his elders unplug the remote and let him think he’s playing while they discreetly maintain control. There’s no way Trump could independently come up with all of the damaging, religious rhetoric from a golf course. In 2018, he has taken more than 15 vacations.

Pence, however, has stayed at the White House, drafting up the future of America under his Presidency.

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[missrosienorris]

The Election that is Bad, Part 3

CW: lots of politics, mentions of ableism, a hint of racism and abusive behaviour, also a little corona at the end

Statement of potential privileges and biases: Translucently white. Finnish, and thus less directly affected by US elections, although I’d argue the whole world should be concerned about them. AFAB enby. Probably a gray ace with no gender preference, but frankly I’m not quite sure wtf I am. Rather far left but haven’t found an appropriate ideological label. University educated. Middle class. Young-ish (is 30 still young?) My mental health is ass.

So, I’ve already made a few posts about the US presidential election and the shit it’s stirring up, which is why I’m now giving the series a name. In this post I’m going to lengthily bitch about some arguments between Biden and Sanders supporters that I’m currently seeing a lot, and I’m already planning another post that’ll be a more personal rant about how I’ve had to make a purge in my parasocial relationships because so so so many of the people I follow have morphed into dicks during this election season (or perhaps revealed themselves to be dicks, I can’t assess which one from afar).

In this post I won’t be discussing Biden or Sanders themselves or their policies all that much, but I will summarize where my allegiances lie here for the record, not that my opinion is likely to surprise anyone who’s read any of my stuff before:

I think Biden’s policies suck, albeit not as much as Trump’s but that’s a low bar to clear. I think he’s a neoliberal and a sleazeball, I don’t like his incoherent speaking style or his proneness to temper tantrums and were I American, I’m not sure I could bring myself to vote for him in the general even for harm reduction purposes (but to make it crystal clear, I would never vote Trump either, it would be third party or blank in that case). I think he will lose to Trump if he is the nominee.

I have a soft spot for Sanders despite being way to the left of him, he’s a socdem at best and I’ve never voted for a socdem in my life. However, in a US context, he would be a major step to the left, his policies are alright, and he’s way more coherent than Biden. Some people on the left flanks say he’s too nice and that’s probably true, socdems tend to be like that, but my lizard brain finds the niceness endearing even though I think it’s politically not ideal. I would vote for him in a heartbeat and I have given him money (funneled through a clothing vendor, so yeah I’m a foreign interference Russian bot). I think his chances to beat Trump would be better than Biden’s. Not great, mind you, Trump has quite an advantage going into the general and I’m not sure he’s beatable, although I sure hope he is.

Alright, now then, onto my long-ass rant about bad political arguments.

So, at the time I’m writing this, it sure looks like Biden will be the Democratic nominee, the race isn’t called yet but it’s looking pretty hopeless for the Sanders campaign. Consequently, the Bidenists are looking for everyone to rally around Biden and the Berners are pissed and/or discouraged and many of them are considering not voting or voting third party (and I guess some are considering voting Trump, but I genuinely think that group is real small and I’m ignoring them because fuck anyone who would do that).

Now, there are arguments for both of these stances that I find understandable. Like, I get the Bidenist argument that Trump is worse and therefore a vote for Biden is harm reduction, and I get the concern for the supreme court. I’m not convinced by these arguments, but I get them. On the flip side, I'm very sympathetic to the arguments that Biden is corrupt and awful, and that while Trump may be worse in the short term, voting for Biden will tell the Democratic party that they can keep putting up shitty status quo nominees and progressives will just take it, and thus the party won’t change and more people will be hurt by that in the long run. This is probably the position I’d take if I were in the US, as stated above.

Either way, these types of arguments from either side are pretty reasonable, but they’re not really the ones I’m hearing the most, at least not on the ol’ internet. What I’m hearing is a lot of crap, and I’m now going to list said crap and bitch about it.

1. Biden has dementia and keeping him in the race is elder abuse.

I want to get this real oof one out of the way first, because I drag Biden a bunch and will continue to do so, but this I don’t like. Yeah, the guy is incoherent when he speaks and lashes out a lot, but we shouldn’t be armchair diagnosing him or accusing anyone of abuse without proper evidence of that. I think it’s fair to criticize him for the way he behaves and to point out that Trump will definitely use that against him, but leave health assessments to professionals. Also, I get that a presidential candidate must be scrutinized more than the general public, but some of the stuff y'all are writing about people with cognitive disabilities is like super ableist and not cool. Don’t call people soup brains, for example, that’s trash behaviour.

2. Not voting in the general/voting third party is a vote for Trump.

Hey fuck off, no it’s fucking not. A vote for Trump is a vote for Trump. I get voting strategically, I really do, but the people who choose not to vote strategically are not voting for Trump. Doesn’t matter what the reason is, if you don’t vote for Trump you don’t vote for Trump and are not to blame for Trump. It’s unbelievably shitty to accuse people of being equal to Trump supporters if they don’t line up behind a particular other candidate.

3. Sanders supporters who won’t vote for Biden in the general are making that choice out of pettiness and/or childishness.

This is some ad hominem bullshit and also kinda contrary to the whole “unite the party behind Biden” thing, you don’t typically woo voters by calling them pissbabies. Especially young people don’t tend to respond well to frumpy people condescendingly telling them to grow up. Also it’s usually not true. Most people I know of that aren’t voting for Biden have well rounded reasons why, typically that they think voting for Biden would make things worse in the end. And unless someone tells you why they’re not voting for Biden, you don’t really know their reasons, so assuming “petty and childish” reflects more on you than it does on them.

4. Anyone who WOULD vote for Biden in the general is either a not a real progressive or a “low information” voter.

Shut up about that. Trump is a nightmare and many feel that four more years of him would be so disastrous that they’d rather take four years of Biden as the lesser of two evils. Being super scared of Trump and going the harm reduction route is not a sign that you’re uninformed or not progressive enough, I may disagree with it but not for that reason. The “low information” thing also seems to be directed at minorities a lot, which is kinda gross. Talk about voter suppression and try to reach out to people, absolutely, but sort of implying that minorities are ignorant is not a good look to have.

5. I was for Warren and now I’m for Biden because Sanders supporters are abusive.

I don’t have as strong an opinion on this one as the other ones, I just feel like it’s a super weird take to jump from supporting (relatively) progressive policies to supporting whatever it is Biden’s got going on because some of the Bernie crowd are kinda dicks (which I’m not denying by the way, I’ve seen them, I just feel like policy is more important). As I stated above, I’m not about to start accusing anyone of being a fake progressive or whatever, I’m just saying it’s a little weird and if there are any Warrenites out there who would like to explain it to me that would be swell. Preferably explain it civilly, since many of the #WarrenToBiden types I’ve seen have been surprisingly abusive themselves considering their stance on the whole Bernie bro thing.

6. Not voting for Biden in the general is a sign that you’re privileged and aren’t that affected by the vote, and that you don’t really care if minorities suffer another four years of Trump. Or the converse, voting for Biden in the general is a sign that you’re privileged and aren’t that affected by a continuation of the status quo, and that you don’t care if minorities suffer in the long run.

This argument can just fuck off whatever side it comes from. It’s another ad hominem attack and super reductive, both the people rallying behind Biden and the #NeverBiden people are a diverse bunch. Some are privileged, some are not, and this generalization helps no one. Especially cringe is when someone who is decidedly not part of a minority of any kind makes this argument, which I’m seeing A LOT of. I’m all for identity politics, but this ain’t it.

7. Sanders has said he will support Biden if Biden is the nominee, so you should too.

Why? Sanders isn’t flippin’ Jesus, it’s completely possible to support him and still disagree with him on occasion. I’m not quite satisfied with his explanations considering his record on guns, for example, nor do I think he should co-opt the term “democratic socialist” when he’s really just a socdem (although it is admittedly very funny to see conservative Americans freaking out over the mention of socialism). It’s not weird to not be a sycophant, personality cults are not a good thing.

You know, I’ll probably come up with like 100 more bad arguments I’ve seen floating around once i press the “Post” button, but it’s 3 AM and this post is already dragging even by my standards so maybe I’ll release another one of these at a later date. Until then, please wash your hands, stay safe if you belong to a risk group, and if you don’t belong to a risk group, don’t be a fuckface and hoard the supplies they need or endanger them by not following recommendations to limit the spread. I’ve had a probably-just-a-cold this week and you bet your ass I haven’t left my apartment even once just in case it wasn’t just a cold and I ended up murdering a grandma. Just don’t be pricks.

[benrleeusa]

[Ilya Somin] The Perils of Zero-Sum Worldviews on the Left and Right

The awful ideology of the perpetrator of the recent terrorist attack in New Zealand is one of many examples of how far-right nationalists and far-left socialists have more in common than we often think. Both worldviews rest on the dangerous assumption that the we are locked in a zero-sum game in which some groups can only succeed and prosper at the expense of others.

Some may find it surprising that the perpetrator of the recent horrific New Zealand terrorist attack that killed fifty Muslim worshipers in two mosques, combined seemingly right-wing nationalism with seemingly left-wing socialism and environmentalism. He hates nonwhite immigrants to Western nations, but also hates capitalism and capitalists, and believes that we must take draconian measures to stave off environmental catastrophe. People who perpetrate "lone wolf" terrorist attacks often have strange and idiosyncratic ideas. But in this case, the terrorist's worldview is less unusual than it might seem. A similar combination of views is evident in many xenophobic nationalist movements, both past and present. Socialists and nationalists have their differences. But they also have much in common, including a zero-sum view of the world.

Anti-immigrant nationalist parties in Europe often combine hostility to nonwhite immigration with support for extensive government control of the economy. That's true of such cases as the National Front in France (now renamed as the "National Rally") and the AfD in Germany. Such parties often also often blame immigrants for real and imagined environmental degradation, just as the perpetrator of the New Zealand attack does. Numbers USA, one of the most influential anti-immigration organizations in the US, has similar views, including advocating coercive population control and blaming immigrants for environmental degradation.

Similarly, the perpetrator of the New Zealand attack argues that environmentalism and immigration restriction "are the same issue [because] the environment is being destroyed by over population, we Europeans are one of the groups that are not over populating the world. The invaders are the ones over populating the world. Kill the invaders, kill the overpopulation and by doing so save the environment." Some influential far-left environmentalists have also advocated coercive population control, including defending China's cruel "one child" policy.

In the early twentieth century, the Nazis promoted an even more extreme form of racial nationalism, and combined that with even more extreme government control over the economy. Hitler advocated extermination of the Jews and the conquest of other European nations primarily because he had concluded that that was the only way Germans could survive and prosper in a zero-sum world.

Racial nationalists and socialist far leftists share a common zero-sum view of the world under which some groups can succeed and prosper only at the expense of others. It is easy to see how that sort of world view often leads adherents to believe that drastic action - including violence - is essential to ensure that the "right" people end up as winners in this crule zero-sum world. I discussed this crucial commonality in greater detail here:

Psychologists find that people are often naturally suspicious of "out groups" different from their own, and therefore more likely to suspect them of nefarious activities of various kinds...

Many Americans worry about our trade deficit with Japan or Mexico in a way that few do about New York's trade deficit with Iowa, or their personal trade deficits with their local supermarket. This, despite the fact that economists across the political spectrum recognize that none of these deficits actually say anything meaningful about our economic performance.

In addition to helping stoke fear of out groups, ignorance also exacerbates prejudice by contributing to the perception that the world is a zero-sum game. As Donald Trump likes to put it, nations like Mexico and Japan are "winning" and the United States is "losing" because they sell more goods to us than we do to them. Similarly, if Group A is doing well, it must be at the expense of B, C, and D. Understanding the fallacy of such thinking requires some knowledge of basic economics, and often also some reasonably careful reflection about the evidence...

The Nazis held a particularly extreme version of the view that the world economy is a zero-sum game. But more moderate – yet still dangerous – versions of the same world-view remain common on both right and left.

Zero-sum thinking need not always lead to racial and ethnic hostility, or xenophobia. It is also often channeled in other directions, such as hostility to the wealthier members of one's own ethnic group or society. In some cases, it leads to a combination of both fear of foreigners and fear of the wealthy.

For example, unexpectedly popular Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders echoes Donald Trump's hostility to international trade, while simultaneously arguing that ordinary Americans can only be economically successful by redistributing vast wealth from "the 1 percent." Until recently, he also expressed considerable hostility towards immigration, denouncing the idea of free migration of labor as a plot by "the Koch brothers" and other malevolent billionaires, which would impoverish the working class and end up "doing away with the concept of a nation state."

Still, zero-sum thinking often leads to fear of out groups, such as foreigners or minorities. If the world is a zero-sum game, we often naturally assume that our only recourse is to ensure that "our" group ends up among the "winners" rather than the "losers," as Trump might put it. Although often associated with the nationalist right, such thinking is not limited to any one side of the political spectrum. In both America and Europe, left-wing political movements have often been susceptible to it, as well – a pattern evident in the hostility of many early-twentieth century Progressives to immigrants and racial minorities, and in the recent rise of left-wing anti-Semitism in Europe.

Fortunately, most nationalists and socialists aren't willing to go so far as to personally commit acts of terrorism. But all too many are willing to advocate large-scale coercion that inflicts great harm on large numbers of people, in order to ensure that they and their preferred causes don't end up as losers in a zero-sum world. Everything from barring migrants fleeing horrible oppression, to separating immigrant children from parents in order to deter them from entering, to coercive population control, to massive expropriation of property, and repression of "capitalists" in order to transfer the nation's wealth to "the people." The list can easily be extended.

There is no easy way to combat zero-sum thinking on either the left or the right. Both have deep roots in a combination of political and economic ignorance and basic human psychology, which makes us susceptible to "in group-out group" hostility. But perhaps the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that most of our economic and social interactions do not have to be zero-sum games in which gains for one group must come at the expense of another.

Far from enriching natives, immigration restrictions often end up undermining their freedom and prosperity as well as that of potential immigrants. Standard economic estimates indicate that free migration throughout the world would double world GDP, with many of the gains going to natives, not just migrants. Natives lose the gains from trade with immigrants, and also suffer from the civil liberties violations inherent in efforts to keep out and deport migrants. Rich and poor are not locked in a zero-sum game either. To the contrary, they can prosper together through mutual exchange, and historically often have.

Pollution and global warming are genuinely serious problems. But addressing them does not require massive coercion or keeping millions of people in poverty. Historically, increasing wealth has actually led to reductions in pollution (after an initial increase early in the process of industrialization), as wealthy societies can more easily afford to invest in reducing pollution. Even when it comes to the particularly difficult challenge of climate change, there are ways to combat that simultaneously increase prosperity rather than stifle it. They include reducing regulatory obstacles to using nuclear power, cutting back on zoning restrictions that make it hard to build denser housing, and offering prizes for the development of new "clean" energy technologies. Where regulation is needed to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, it should take the the scalpel form of a revenue-neutral carbon tax, rather than the meat cleaver of coercive population control and government takeovers of huge portions of the economy.

It would be naive to imagine that zero-sum games never occur. But they are far less common than either the far left or the nationalist right imagine. The more people come to understand that, the better.

NOTE: Because perpetrators of terrorist attacks often undertake them in large part to gain fame and media attention for themselves and their ideas, I have refrained from mentioning the name of the man who committed the New Zealand attack or linking to his "manifesto." I have instead linked to this helpful summary of his ideas, by James Peron. However, both the name and the manifesto are easily found online, for those who wish to read it for themselves.

[politicalfilth-blog]

Trump Vs The Intel Community What We Need To Know

In this video, we give you the latest breaking news on Trump tweeting out his displeasure with the intelligence community? What is it we the people need to know?

Article – https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30/politics/trump-intel-chiefs-foreign-policy-iran-isis-north-korea/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0XlIgceAuw0t92gPs89dLtF-8WF3cDEw444MSfGqlO2hZtVuXCbrFgklM

Video link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0AUvhJ0-I4&t=1s&fbclid=IwAR3DsKyUBIk_OdKFZDtag0TxB46Pj7BzoU69ES6cM-4IvwdlTtOV7XZRx18&ab_channel=WeAreChange

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Transcript

Welcome back beautiful amazing human beings and in this specific video I wanted to talk about the bigger truth behind the verbal War that’s happening right now between US President Donald Trump and the US intelligence agencies know as we know Trump’s relationship with the Intel Community hasn’t been the best one with him previously comparing the leaks that were coming out about him from the intelligence Community Action to Nazi Germany now this of course makes many people speculate about a deep state.

Surely the situation is a lot more complicated as we’re going to document in this video not as clear-cut as you think by the way that sponsored by you what you checking on your t-shirts will you get what you could probably just click in a description or the probably images below this video where you could click purchase some new merchandise especially the new t-shirts that we have right now and be a part of the direct user support for this Independent Media Channel know a lot of the information that we’re going to be talking about today actually relates to a video that we just made a couple days ago criticizing a mainstream media news article that said that us intelligence agencies quote or saying that Russia and China are plotting to interfere in the 2020 elections this video will be available in the description so you can get a better context and understanding of what’s Happening Here No I was actually going to grab a news article surrounding this specific case and critique it but honestly there’s so much disinformation and propaganda around that. Tissue that it’s going to be important for me to actually do deep dive into this and show you a series of Articles and evidence so you understand this very confusing situation unfolding now and of course it all starts with the dni chief coming out and hearings that are happening right now in the Senate intelligence committee where the heads of key intelligence agencies are coming out and publicly rebuking US President Donald Trump on his assertions about Isis Iran North Korea and climate change while course also warning that China and Russia will interfere in the 2020 election of course our allegations coming out in these hearings from the US intelligence Community which of course is something with the mainstream media is eating up and loving because it is Donald Trump’s policies that are being criticized where he is actually in my opinion doing the right thing which specifically withdrawing troops from Syria trying to withdraw. Trips from Afghanistan and starting. Dialogue and also and also reaching out to a bigger piece DeLand denuclearization with North Korea now of course Donald Trump is being attacked because of this by the very predominantly War happy mainstream media.

And it is important to note here that this information is coming from the same intelligence community that has often times been caught red-handed lying to the American people specifically when it comes to the bigger context of war and conflict usually lying to get us into these problems why off course at the same time faking intelligence to keep us in there and prolonged East Conference conflicts which of course big profit motives for big Industries especially the military industrial complex and this is why a lot of people are characterizing what’s happening now as a war and then attack by Donald Trump supposedly against these intelligence communities which clearly disagree with each other on key American policy other very interesting part here in the bigger contradiction here that’s important for you to understand is the very fact that Donald Trump isn’t that big of a piece neck as. Think he is and verbally with this entire situation unfolding verbally he has come out and said that the intelligence Community hasn’t been tough enough on Iran chastising that intelligence Community for not being as hawkish as he wants them to be characterizing them as being soft on Iran which as we know has been an Israeli Saudi Arabian and a neocon dream to invade for a very long time engaging and in a cup.

What’s that country so I think it’s fair to conclude here with a lot of people are coming to the conclusion of is that this is not.

Pro-war vs. anti-war argument or bigger conflict in fight that’s happening here cuz this is a more confusing one about which Wars should and shouldn’t be fought and it’s fascinating to see the US intelligence Community come out verbally and say that they do not believe that Iran is currently undertaken quote Key activities needed to produce a nuclear bomb and assessment which of course is totally contradicting Trump’s Administration and of course the bloodthirsty demon-like creature John Bolton Trump advisor and picked Trump advisor Donald Trump issued set the intelligent people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of and that they are making trouble all over the Middle East and Beyond was just caught a potential danger in conflict and if you’ve been watching our previous geopolitical breakdowns on this channel. A lot more to this bigger call for conflict with Iran and that these comments are not only not genuine but also not in the best interest of the United States but of course for some of our key allies but regardless of those facts I think the one constant that we do have here is the fact that the mainstream media no matter what just wants War just ultimately wants blood once boots-on-the-ground wants us intervention with even some mainstream media journalists like Max Booth insinuating that the United States needs to be in Syria and Afghanistan for as long as three hundred years the mainstream media at the same time is urging Democrats to get past their hatred of Donald Trump’s you back.

Donald Trump’s Administration Zephyr tat quote democracy in Venezuela who are literally characterizing Donald Trump as the next Hitler yes you should definitely trust this man with quote pushing the goals of democracy with a coup d’etat in a foreign country also having the power to take away your second amendment at the same time as well.

Cognitive dissonance on a lot of these never trumper’s is absolutely insane and their virtues and goals are becoming more apparent and that of course is just the promotion of a conflict that does not need to happen no out of the ridiculous amount of candidates running on the Democratic party against Donald Trump in 2020 the only Democrats that owes regime-change efforts in.

Venezuela or of course Bernie Sanders and of course Tulsi gabbard that says that the United States should stay out of Venezuela personally seeing a lot of the bees on the ground in Caracas Venezuela I could say for sure I am not a fan of Nicolas Maduro nor his regime and I do hope that the people of that country rise up against their government but in my opinion it needs to be done independently of foreign interference for a very specific reason which I will mention at the end of this video because again I believe it’s the logical safe smartest thing to do in this particular situation.

And unlike the mainstream media like the New York Times what you’re literally there’s even an opinion piece right now talking about how the US government should bribe the Venezuelan military while at the same time also praising the government of Pinochet of Chile a ridiculous article that is just a laughable now of course Donald Trump’s actions when it comes to this very specific issue in Venezuela has actually garnered him praise not only amongst Democrats but also of course the mainstream media actions like this.

And specifically Donald Trump selecting Elliott Abrams who literally as assistant Secretary of State covered up massacres and other human rights violations at the Reagan Administration engineered in Latin America before as literally the man took quote bring back democracy to Venezuela and he of course would be characterized as a deep State asset which I think is fair to call him that since he played a major role in most of the Gospel e acts committed by US foreign policy within the past 40 years I think it’s pretty clear here that you know people who actually care about supposed democracy don’t plot coup de ta’s abroad.

That’s a very fair statement to make sure and of course while the media and some government officials are throwing the word around democracy like they actually care about the will of the people or what the people think which is just laughable we have course also have John Paul and that’s kind of more direct here there’s just even admitting yeah there’s actually great us interest in Venezuela’s oil capabilities Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves totaling.

297 billion barrels to the point where even China significantly invested in that country an estimated 70 billion dollars that chime hand it over to Venezuela. Of course demanded to be repaid back in oil and of course with apps.

Mismanagement and horrible government policies by Maduro But Country still is.

Starving starving why of course he eats empanadas during National addresses has actually gained weight and released Instagrams with salt baked now of course this larger issue with Venezuela is not just about democracy and oil it’s also with other key geopolitical issues and larger attainments and financial institutions like the u.s. petrodollar but regardless of this kind of bigger dispute he’s having with the intelligence community’s the United States and its allies is still sending its troops to neighboring countries and of course tential plans with specifically Israeli soldiers coming to Brazil and US soldiers according to a notepad. John Bolton portrayed obviously very openly to the media allegedly US troops going to Columbia of both of countries that I was documenting weeks ago or even openly talking about invading Venezuela video that you can see on our Channel but for me this is not the right move and I. Free with other statesman’s like Ron Paul.

Who says we must leave Venezuela alone and to be the worst option of course here is war and direct us intervention because even the threat of that has been galvanising a lot of support for Maduro and a lot of the sanctions and a lot of this bigger economic war and also unfair play with a history of US intervention in Latin America that has been atrocious by the historical record all of those combinations combined are still leaving support for Nicolas Maduro in that country and are one of the fundamental reasons why he is still in power and still has some support as seen by this video with a large demonstration all wearing red supporting him and in my own personal belief and Analysis from studying this and looking at this and also being on the ground in Venezuela the geopolitical situation will look completely different if it wasn’t for the US pudding. Snows in there and the current situation that is unfolding wouldn’t be there because there wouldn’t be an excuse to prop up a Monday. So I guess that’s just my analysis I could be completely wrong and if you think I’m wrong let me know why in the comments section I always look forward to learning from you engaging in a bigger dialogue because that’s what journalists her supposed to do I have my own thesis you might have your own prove me wrong I look forward to actually doing what a lot of these mainstream media companies don’t do and that’s not only just not being a shield but also having the comment section open which conveniently a lot of big organizations don’t anymore as it’s becoming more obvious about the direct interest that they serve.

Yeah thanks for supporting me especially through our t-shirt store allowing us to be truly independent working for you the American people and of course people are the world because if it wasn’t I want to be here that’s why.

Love you guys thank you again so much watching stay tuned for a lot more here on youtube.com.

Are change.

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from We Are Change https://wearechange.org/trump-vs-the-intel-community-what-we-need-to-know/

[avanneman]

John McCain, Paul Ryan, and the Myth of the Virtuous Republican

John McCain is one of those guys who, when he dies, people say “he was the last of a dying breed.”

No one will ever say that about Paul Ryan.

John McCain was a genuine war hero, a man who preferred to face hardship, torture, and even death rather than abandon his comrades. Paul Ryan has the suit, haircut, and soul of a TV personality. Yet both ended their careers kissing Donald Trump’s ass. Strange! More than strange!

It could justly be said—and often was—that John McCain approached politics with the mindset of the fighter pilot he used to be, an adrenaline junkie who wanted to see every issue as a struggle of good against evil, or at least us against them, which, in his mind, constituted the same thing. He was always wanting to go to war, wars in which, he was sure, the good guys always won and everyone’s problems were settled once and for all. My most vivid memory of McCain is video showing him striding around Baghdad in an armored vest, surrounded by heavily armed troops, with assault helicopters circling overhead, and proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”.

McCain made himself a national figure in the 2000 Republican primaries by wowing the national press corps with his war stories, young men and women stunned to be in the presence of a man who’d seen and endured things they, with their pampered backgrounds, could not even begin to imagine. This was a man!

And so he was, but as a senator he wasn’t so much. McCain was furious—well beyond furious—at George Bush because he believed, with some reason, that he’d been done out of the Republican nomination by some seriously subterranean backstabbing during the South Carolina primary, which may well be true, but one can also wonder how deliberate noncombatant Georgie W. beat a war hero in what is often regarded as the most militaristic state in the union.

McCain continued to cultivate the press in defeat, playing the beloved role of “maverick”, charging like a bull at a variety of issues, but never really succeeding at anything. For McCain, the passionate display of “passion” was its own purpose and end. His was not to reason why, and he never did.

Yet however harshly one wishes to criticize McCain, his ultimate obsequiousness to Trump remains baffling. Trump publicly ridiculed McCain’s heroism. Why wasn’t McCain at the Democratic Convention, standing beside Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy views were almost identical to his own, and proclaiming her “America’s Choice”? What kept the proud maverick in such humiliating harness?

Well, as I say, I’m baffled. Perhaps he was intimidated by the Republican base, which had shifted so heavily against the “free trade, open borders” orthodoxy to which he had always subscribed.

But, in fact, there was always a bit of smoke and mirrors when it came to McCain’s “bipartisanship”. He had a knack for choosing issues, like campaign reform and immigration reform, that never, or rarely, managed to make it into law.1 On tax and spending issues, he almost always voted the straight party line, never giving an inch to either Clinton or Obama, though he did draw back a little from the “burn the house down” efforts of the newly elected Tea Party Republicans to drive the federal government into default—though probably more because he was worried about the possible impact on defense spending, which was the only fiscal issue he really cared about.2

But as for “leadership”, McCain was almost always absent. He voted in favor of removing President Clinton from office and, most infamously, brought Sarah Palin and her brand of “Americanism” into the national spotlight for the first time. And when the country really needed some bipartisan leadership, during the first onslaught of the Great Recession when Obama took office, McCain said, and did, nothing.

What’s remarkable about Paul Ryan is that, for a long time, he received press almost the equal of McCain’s, with far less substance. While McCain’s warrior ego was always front and center, deciphering Paulie’s slippery humility has always been a chore. He eagerly promoted—and the press eagerly bought—his Wisconsin Boy Scout demeanor. His incessantly repeated claim to be a “wonk” was, I think, deliberately designed to insulate him from the continuing bro-ha-ha3 over “social issues”—abortion, homosexuality, the “war against Christmas”, etc.—that so obsessed most ambitious Republicans. Paulie always looked east, towards Wall Street, but I’ve never been sure of his motivation. Was he gunning for the presidency? Then why stay in the House?

For many years, Ryan was sort of a hero—or perhaps fig-leaf—to many Republicans. In fact, to “recovering Republicans” like (former) conservative broadcaster Charles Sykes (author of How the Right Lost Its Mind), WashPost columnist and long-time Literature R Us whipping boy George F. Will, and former Republican strategist Rick Wilson (author of Everything Trump Touches Dies), who, unlike the first two, is deeply disappointed in the “new Paulie,” Ryan is (or was) a true hero. Nonpartisan centrists like Josh Barro are also deeply disappointed in the Ryan reinvention, which I will demonstrate—at length–is not new at all.

Sykes, in his book, gives us a taste of the true Paulie believer:

Whatever you might think of his policies, Paul Ryan is inarguably the most formidable intellectual leader the Republican Party has had for decades. For years, he was known for his dogged advocacy of budget and entitlement reform in opposition from his party’s establishment. His rise from conservative backbencher to Speaker could have been seen as one of the great success stories of the conservative movement. “I spent more time, I’d say, in the backbench than the leadership,” Ryan told me during a conversation on my last radio show. “The party really tried to isolate me a number of years ago and tried to explain to our members, ��do not touch what Ryan is talking about, don’t deal with these fiscal issues, these entitlements, it’s political suicide.” And I just decided instead of trying to win the argument internally, I tried to win it externally, and that took hold,” he explained. “What happened, really, was the 2010 election, I think. The 2010 election brought all these, sort of Tea Party conservative Republicans into office.”

I suppose it’s possible to pack more self-serving nonsense into one paragraph than Paulie (and Sykes) just did there, but it isn’t easy. Ryan was always an eager self-promoter, though, as I say, it’s a bit of a mystery—again with the mystery! Republicans are mysterious!—exactly who Ryan was trying to sell himself to. Ryan has spent nearly all his adult life working in politics, either as a legislative aide or a congressman, and has claimed that all he wanted was to be chair of the House Budget Committee, but I don’t quite believe that. He has always appeared to me to have national aspirations, but for what? If you want to be president, you have to get out of the House, and, as far as I know, Ryan never showed interest in running either for governor or senator. If he wanted money, sure, a Budget Committee chair can retire after five or six years and make $2 or $3 million a year as a big-time lobbyist, but why bust your ass in your fifties for $2 or $3 million a year when you could have been making $20 or $30 million a year on Wall Street in your twenties?

So is Ryan telling the truth when he claims that he’s just a wonk, just wants to make the world a better place via free-market capitalism? No, he isn’t. To coin a phrase, he’s a big fat liar. Ryan lists the late Rep. Jack Kemp as his mentor and role model. Kemp was perhaps the most passionate advocate of the holy gospel of supply-side economics this side of George Gilder. Both men believed that the absolutely unfettered free market would solve all of mankind’s ills. Ryan was/is also a disciple of the legendary Ayn Rand, the Queen of Mean, saying that he frequently reread Ayn’s exercise in übermenschlichkeit, Atlas Shrugged, but, grudgingly aware that Ayn’s atheism and frequently expressed hostility to the Catholic Church (Ryan was raised a Catholic) didn’t sit well with the evangelical set, pulled in his horns just a bit, so to speak, and more recently pronounced himself a big fan of supposed big thinker Yuval Levin, who celebrated the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2010, so hailed by Ryan as essentially his work (“I just decided instead of trying to win the argument internally, I tried to win it externally, and that took hold”), with a piece for the National Interest entitled “Beyond the Welfare State”.

According to Ryan, Levin “does a very good job of articulating why these are good ideas and the right way to go and how they’re philosophically connected with one another and consistent.” Indeed, Levin has made a career out of pretending to be a student of Edmund Burke, but back in 2011 he sounded a lot more like Herbert Hoover, making a multi-pronged assault on the welfare state: “The reason is partly institutional: The administrative state is dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety. The reason is also partly cultural and moral: The attempt to rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility has undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government. But, in practice, it is above all fiscal: The welfare state has turned out to be unaffordable, dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.”

Despite his “the bottom line is the bottom line” pitch, Levin was not at all shy about making Randy/Hooverian generalizations about the welfare state as the source of modern-day moral collapse:

This is the second major failing of this vision of society [the first is that it is grossly inefficient] — a kind of spiritual failing. Under the rules of the modern welfare state, we give up a portion of the capacity to provide for ourselves and in return are freed from a portion of the obligation to discipline ourselves. Increasing economic collectivism enables increasing moral individualism, both of which leave us with less responsibility, and therefore with less grounded and meaningful lives.

Moreover, because all citizens — not only the poor — become recipients of benefits, people in the middle class come to approach their government as claimants, not as self-governing citizens, and to approach the social safety net not as a great majority of givers eager to make sure that a small minority of recipients are spared from devastating poverty but as a mass of dependents demanding what they are owed. It is hard to imagine an ethic better suited to undermining the moral basis of a free society.4

In other words, it is not only means-tested welfare programs that are morally corrupting—and it is these that the general public thinks of (and often resents) as “welfare”—but Social Security and Medicare as well. In fact, they’re the really bad ones!

Unsurprisingly (but predictably) Levin doesn’t have the courage to follow his own argument and simply eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Instead, he’d make them means-tested. Most people would still get some retirement assistance (but why wouldn’t this still be “bad”?), but most people—the middle class in particular—wouldn’t get as much. And everyone would have to buy their own health insurance, with some assistance from the federal government to cushion the blow: “This approach would seek to let people be active consumers, rather than passive recipients of benefits — which would be good both for the federal budget (since consumer pressure in a free market keeps costs down far better than price controls) and for the character of our nation.” Naturally, the less expensive social programs, such as Head Start, would be trimmed and, ultimately, one could hope, be eliminated, since they simply waste money and make us more dependent.

It’s “interesting” to look both backwards and forwards with regard to Levin’s manifesto, looking backwards first to Ryan’s own conduct in office when, as he pictured it, he was more or less howling in the wilderness, rejected by the Republican establishment and forced, basically, to take it to the streets. Because what did Ryan do? He voted for every budget-busting Bush proposal, starting with the massive, and massively unnecessary and counter-productive, Bush tax cuts, which turned a $172 billion surplus in 2001 into a $210 billion deficit in 2002 (using 2014 dollars), and continuing through all the “unnecessary” (not to mention morally corrupting) social programs like No Child Left Behind, which added billions in education spending, through the ultimate budget-buster, the disastrous invasion of Iraq (the bold Mr. Levin makes no mention of defense spending at all in his manifesto) plus the ultimate outrage, a new entitlement program, adding billions to the Medicare tab yearly to cover prescription drugs, with no provision for funding whatsoever! Mr. Ryan, one has to say, believes that words speak louder than actions.

Supposedly, the 2010 election brought “Paul Ryan” Republicans into Congress. This is nonsense. As Ryan and Levin surely noticed, the Republicans’ ace in the hole in the 2010 election was Barack Obama’s decision, via the Affordable Care Act, not to talk about cutting Medicare, but to actually cut it—something that, of course, neither Ryan nor Levin ever talked about. Over and over again, Republicans promised never to cut “a dime of Grandma’s Medicare”, and of course they never did. Ryan and Levin “proposed” to cut Medicare 10 years down the line, which is rather like promising to go on a diet in 10 years,5 but as for the present, hey, nothing’s too good for Grandma! And Social Security, presumably the most corrupting program of all, at least in Levin’s philosophy, would never have lost a dime under Ryan’s proposals.

The one entitlement Ryan was always willing to cut was, of course, Medicaid, cutting spending for the poor, not to balance the budget but rather to hand out tax cuts to the rich, which was always the first priority of all.6 Ryan produced a variety of budget plans that were supposed to produce a balanced budget in X number of years, but they were always phony, with the popular provisions, like reduced tax rates, spelled out, while the unpopular ones, like “base broadening” (elimination of tax exemptions and other “loopholes”) left for further discussion. Medicaid would be cut immediately (it was somehow “fair” to cut benefits for the poor immediately, but not to do the same to the middle class, i.e., “Grandma”), and further spending cuts would be made in “domestic discretionary spending”, which had expanded enormously under Bush from 2001 through 2008, under legislation for which Ryan had repeatedly voted. But these cuts, like the “base broadening”, were left unspecified, to be worked out in further negotiation. In other words, Ryan would spell out the popular provisions, which would, in fact, expand the deficit dramatically, and the leave it to the Democrats to repair all the damage he had created. It would be the Democrats who would have the responsibility for balancing the budget, not Paul Ryan.

It was all a shell game, as Paul Krugman and others repeatedly pointed out, a mere partisan hustle, but it made moderate Republicans like Sykes and Will and Wilson proud. We’re serious! We’re fiscally responsible! We’re still the party of ideas! We’re not like those crazy Democrats, who are turning us into Greece!

Well, that was then. When the era of Trump dawned, Ryan was clearly in a quandary. His Wall Street buddies, whose willing servant he had always been, had no use for Trump’s bad ass, xenophobic, race-baiting populism. But Trump had the votes, so Ryan caved. And once he started, the caving never stopped.

To be fair, Ryan caved to everybody, everybody with power. He finally got his chance to cut Medicaid in the course of overturning the Affordable Care Act, but in his eagerness to both help the rich, by eliminating one of those opprobrious Obamacare abominations that actually increased taxes on innocent millionaires/billionaires, and stick it to the poor by denying health insurance to millions, he overreached himself. “It’s curious,” Republican health care maven Avik Roy opined, “that extending tax cuts [to the rich] was a higher priority for the House than addressing the fact that the bill will make insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans.” Actually, it isn’t, but fortunately the naked hypocrisy of it all caused three Republican senators, including John McCain, greatly to his credit, to gag and Obamacare was granted another day.

Yes, Paulie was denied on that occasion, but he was not denied on his tax bill, where the hypocrisy was even greater, but with so much money on the table, well, what’s a little nudity among friends? I mean, this is the way God made us!

As originally crafted, Ryan’s tax bill was revenue neutral, thanks to a “controversial” provision, a “border tax adjustment” that would have brought in $1.5 trillion over 10 years, that was furiously opposed by most corporate outfits, including Koch Inc. Ryan could have said to them, “okay, guys, you don’t like my proposal. So how are we going to make this thing revenue neutral?” But he didn’t say that. Both Ryan and the Koch folks, who had been shouting, shouting, shouting “It’s the deficit, stupid!” for eight long years, turned around and added a cool $1.5 trillion to the deficit at a minimum7 and celebrated! And then followed that up with a budget-busting spending package with both massive and entirely unnecessary increases in defense spending and equally large increases for “domestic discretionary spending”, which Republicans supposedly hate!

Charles Wilson (remember him?) at least had the honesty to be openly ashamed. Writing in his book Everything Trump Touches Dies, Wilson wrote

The bill does nothing to reduce the complexity, expense, opacity, and general brain-frying shittiness of the tax code for ordinary Americans. So much for our “Do your taxes on a postcard!” rhetoric. The tax code, baroque and ludicrously convoluted before, is even more baffling unless you can afford a fleet of corporate tax attorneys and consultants.

A prominent tax lobbyist I know wrote, “This is almost too easy. Even I feel dirty.” This person literally sat in the majority leader’s office crafting parts of the tax bill, laughing all the way to the bank. The members of the House and Senate who voted for this 479-page bill had only a few hours to consider it. I asked this lobbyist at the time what the job-creation effect would be from the corporate tax cut, and he replied, “How the fuck do I know? Something? Maybe?”

This is the legislation Paul Ryan “crafted”, or at least put his name to, and this is the legislation that John McCain voted for, a massive change to the U.S. tax code to which the U.S. Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative body, had zero input. The bill was written for them by Paul Ryan and a gaggle of lobbyists, and they contributed nothing. Decades of lying and deceit came to their full fruition. This was Paul Ryan’s achievement, and John McCain’s submission made it possible.

For whatever reason, the election of Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 essentially drove the Republican Party mad. Both the elite and the base were seized by a compulsive need to destroy Clintonism by any means necessary. The base seethed with paranoid rage against blacks, Hispanics, feminists, homosexuals–“the other”–while the elite sought to manage the monster and perpetuate itself first with tax cuts and “culture war” then with the intoxicating self-righteousness of a real war in the Middle East.8 But the elite discredited itself with disasters both home and abroad, and the triumph of the Tea Party signaled the collapse of elite power. For eight long years during the Obama Administration Paul Ryan served as the mask of Republican corruption. But now we see–as if it were hidden before–that the mask is as corrupt as that which it concealed.

McCain first became an advocate of campaign reform perhaps as an ass-covering measure, when he was identified as one of the “Keating Five”—five senators who aggressively promoted the interests of savings and loan hustler Charles Keating. Later, after his defeat by George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican presidential primaries, McCain was widely, and accurately, suspected of wanting to “get” evangelical groups who helped Bush defeat him. On immigration reform, McCain, like both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (and, pretty much, myself), was a strong advocate of the “open borders” approach favored by Wall Street. The same could be said of Paul Ryan as well, but Ryan did not dare cross the rabid Republican base—much stronger in the House than the Senate—on this one. ↩︎

In what was very likely a fit of pique rather than common sense, McCain voted against George Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. It was rare for McCain to care about deficits, unless a Democrat was in office. ↩︎

Word accepts this spelling, because it accepts “bro” as a word (as well as “ha”). I find it hard to believe that I typed “bro-ha-ha” but apparently I did, if only because Word will correct “brohaha” to “brouhaha” rather than “bro-ha-ha”. I guess I was really drunk. ↩︎

Levin, who is Jewish (he was born in Israel), titles his discussion of the shortcomings of the welfare state “The Passing of an Illusion”. In 1927, Sigmund Freud published a withering critique of Christianity under the title The Future of an Illusion. You don’t have to be a Freudian (cause I sure ain’t one) to suspect that Levin unconsciously—but not consciously—echoed Freud’s title. ↩︎

Back in the eighties, when Ronald Reagan introduced Americans to “modern deficits” (Reagan doubled the size of the entire national debt in eight years, in constant dollars, although an expanding economy meant that as a percentage of GNP the increase was only 43%), Congress enacted several elaborate deficit reduction packages. All of them employed the same strategy: cosmetic cuts to get Congress through the next election, followed by “real” cuts afterwards. Inevitably, after the next election, the new Congress would “discover” that the “real” cuts were in fact “crazy” ones, and rewrite the legislation to push the new “real” cuts to after the next election. The notion that the Congress elected in 2010 could “force” the Congress elected in 2020 to make massive, and massively unpopular, cuts in Medicare is ludicrous. ↩︎

Levin, in his paper, briefly explains that he wants a simplified federal tax policy, with low rates. Despite his supposed obsession with soaring deficits, he doesn’t even discuss the possibility of raising taxes to reduce them, probably because he knows that would work, as it did under Clinton, and he doesn’t want to balance the budget on the backs of the rich. ↩︎

The bill made tax cuts for the rich permanent but set the tax cuts for the middle class to expire in 10 years. Now Republicans are “proposing” to make them permanent. This is probably an election-year gambit, but if it works, what are they going to do? Say they were lying? ↩︎

For many evangelicals, the events in the contemporary Middle East are a direct continuation of the events of the Bible–God’s Will in action. ↩︎

[theconservativebrief]

Sen. John McCain is gone. And perhaps the people who will miss him most are his colleagues in the Senate.

With a 30-year tenure in Congress, not to mention his 2008 presidential run, McCain’s legacy as a former prisoner of war turned public servant has long been revered and rehashed time and time again. And his independent streak — most recently evident in his 2017 vote to sink the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and his vocal critiques of Trump — is certainly part of that legacy.

But though we know a lot about John McCain’s public actions, we know a lot less about him as a friend and colleague. For those who have worked closely with him in the Senate, his broadly held reputation as a “maverick” is far too simplistic.

“He’s got this gruff exterior that he sort of uses to keep people off balance. He’s a genuinely decent, sensitive person,” says Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX).

We spoke with 11 senators while he was still alive to ask them about what they think is most misunderstood about the iconic Republican lawmaker. Here’s what they had to say.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Lindsey Graham

How consistent he’s been no matter who’s in power. That he’s been in a pain in the ass to Republicans and Democrats and a valuable ally to presidents based on issues, not based on personality. He will cross his party for something he believes in, and he will fight a Democrat when he thinks they’re wrong.

I think some people on the right think he hasn’t been conservative. He has. But conservatism alone is not what drives John McCain. On foreign policy, it’s the security of the nation. And when he finds a reliable ally on the Democratic side, he works with them.

Li Zhou

Do you think the maverick title he’s been given is an accurate way of describing him?

Lindsey Graham

What we call a maverick today used to be the standard for the Senate of yesterday.

Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham answer questions from the media outside the White House after a meeting with President George W. Bush on July 11, 2007. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Li Zhou (via email)

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Elizabeth Warren

John is willing to take on his own party, whether it’s popular or not. He’ll go toe to toe with anyone, including with the president of the United States.

Li Zhou

What has surprised you most about him while working alongside him?

Elizabeth Warren

John and I disagree on a lot of things, but we also agree on some things too. John wants to break up the big banks that crashed our economy 10 years ago, and he’s held the Trump administration accountable for embracing [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin and weakening our alliances. He’s also really, really funny.

Sens. John McCain and Elizabeth Warren chat prior to Sen. John Kerry’s confirmation hearings for secretary of state on Capitol Hill on January 24, 2013. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Jeff Flake

One thing that’s misunderstood is that people assume he just does national or international issues, but he’s very much informed and involved on Arizona issues. That’s water, land use, mining, Indian issues.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

John Kennedy

Based on the 17 months that I have been around Sen. McCain, some people think that Sen. McCain loses control of his temper. Based on what I’ve seen, he does get very, very passionate. You might call it anger; I call it giving a motivational speech. But he feels deeply about things, and I’ve heard some criticism of him like, “Well, he just flies off the handle for no reason.”

That’s not true; that’s not true. He does get very passionate about something that he believes strongly. And I’ve never met a greater patriot.

Some people don’t like his politics. I disagree with some of his votes. I disagreed with his vote on the Obamacare repeal. He’s a patriot.

Li Zhou

Why do you think there are these perceptions that he can’t handle his temper?

John Kennedy

Because he gets mad a lot. But he doesn’t get mad for no reason. We’ve all met people who if they don’t get their own way, they throw a tantrum. That’s not John McCain. When he sinks his teeth into something because he thinks it’s right, he’s going to fight for it. I mean, he survived five years in a cage. He’s tough as a boot and he loves his country.

Li Zhou

Is there anything else that surprised you about working with him?

John Kennedy

He’s very approachable. He was nice to me from the very first day. He never acted like he was one of the Founding Fathers. You can talk to him like a regular person. He treated me as an equal from day one. I didn’t feel like an equal! I mean, this is John McCain. But he treated me like an equal.

He can be very funny. I sat next to him when we’ve had a couple of speakers come to the Senate, and the running commentary from the senator under his breath is pretty interesting.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Tim Kaine

Well, I think what you can initially misunderstand is that he’s pretty gruff and he’s tough.

He’ll want to get into an argument with you, and I think most of us who are on the committee have had that experience, where you’ve been in the middle of a big argument with him. But, what you’ll realize after is that he wants you to argue with him. He’ll like you better if you do.

I accidentally got into an argument with him at a hearing once over the carrier programs. … He was going after the programs, and I was doing my bit trying to, you know, make my case. He started interrupting me, and we ended up in this significant argument, but I held my ground. And I always felt like once I did, then he was like, “That’s a good guy. I’ll be his friend.”

He’s very tough. He’s tough on witnesses. He is a colleague — if he thinks you’re wrong, he’s going to tell you bluntly right to your face, in no uncertain terms, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a good colleague. So I would say sometimes that the gruff exterior can fool people.

He’s just really a great colleague.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) with Sen. John McCain, left, on the Senate subway on Capitol Hill on January 8, 2015. Andrew Harnik for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Rob Portman

I think being in public life as long as he has, and been written about as extensively as he has, he’s pretty well-understood.

I’m a friend of his, and I’ve worked very closely with him. I played the role of Barack Obama in the debate prep with him. In 2008, when he was our candidate, I traveled the country with him. I wasn’t in office at the time, so I took six weeks off from my law firm and just, you know, helped him.

I had known him for many years, but we got to be friends in a different way. Cindy [McCain’s wife] will never forgive me because my job was to get under his skin.

Li Zhou

What surprised you about that?

Rob Portman

He’s just a very principled, patriotic person. I don’t think that’s misunderstood, though. His heart is in the right place. He is a passionate person who sometimes expresses it in passionate ways, but it’s always with the right intent.

Li Zhou

Do you think the maverick title he’s been given is an accurate way of describing him?

Rob Portman

I’m not sure maverick is right. He does what he thinks is right, and sometimes that’s not conventional. Sometimes it’s conventional and he thinks that’s the right way to go. He’s not a maverick for maverick’s sake.

Then-Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and adviser Rob Portman board a flight in Columbus, Ohio, on September 29, 2008, Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

John Cornyn

I think his big heart. He’s got this gruff exterior that he sort of uses to keep people off balance. He’s a genuinely decent, sensitive person.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Patty Murray

Oh, gosh. I think people know his passion, his ability to fight for what he believes him, his ability to be a leader in a tough time. Things that we all really respect.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Bill Nelson

I am a great fan of John McCain, so I don’t think it’s misunderstood that he speaks his mind and I admire that quality. And that’s why I’m a big fan of his.

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Cory Gardner

I don’t think this is misunderstood. Emotions matter greatly in John McCain’s decision-making. … That’s a great statement of passion for our country.

Li Zhou

What are some of the key lessons you’ve taken away from serving alongside him?

Cory Gardner

Just being serious about every issue. There’s no one single issue that can trump the seriousness with which every issue presents itself. You can’t let some issue slide just because you’re interested in this issue over here. Every matter is important, whether it’s a tax issue, a defense issue — every issue deserves the incredible attention to detail that McCain gave it.

From left: Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and John McCain (R-AZ) pose for a photo around Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) as they arrive for President Trump’s inauguration ceremony on January 20, 2017. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Li Zhou

What do you think is most misunderstood about Sen. McCain?

Sheldon Whitehouse

That he’s actually a real jerk. [smiles]

Li Zhou

Do you think he deserves the title of maverick that he’s been anointed with over the years?

Sheldon Whitehouse

I think he probably does, but I think his real contribution has not been as a maverick; it has been as an international standard-bearer of American values. Traveling the world to all its corners, to countries that most Americans have never heard of, meeting with the opposition, standing up for free press.

He’s been a true American beacon to the world, and I think that’s the best way to remember him, not just as a maverick.

Sen. John McCain speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill on November 14, 2017. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Original Source -> We asked 11 senators what’s most misunderstood about John McCain

via The Conservative Brief

[hellofastestnewsfan]

There is a temptation, when a new presidential administration comes into office, for its members to assume everything the previous administration did was idiotic, and that a wiser course of action would have been to do the precise opposite. We saw this in 2017, for example, when President Trump and some of his aides had an almost pathological obsession with the former president’s team and policies. But the Obama administration, too, seemed overly eager to distinguish itself from the Bush administration in its early years.

The problem is that presidential administrations are almost always filled with talented, hard-working people, and it’s a mistake to reflexively jettison whatever it was they decided upon for policy. And so those of us who left the last administration—who have been all too ready to criticize this new one—should keep an open mind regarding the things this administration might be doing well. It’s perhaps especially important to look for these things when each new day brings a fresh irresponsible tweet or poorly staffed policy decision. With that in mind, and writing as someone who is genuinely concerned about the soul of the Republic, here are four things I think the Trump administration got right in 2017.

The fight against the Islamic State

I’ve always admired the way the Bush administration approached the financial crisis in 2008, when it cast aside a lot of conservative orthodoxy to bail out banks and spend what was necessary to stabilize the markets. The Obama administration, for its part, largely carried on the good work that had been done.

The same can be said for the Trump administration and the fight against the Islamic State. I wrote a year ago that the Trump administration would preside over the defeat of the Islamic State, because anyone with even a passing understanding of the conflict knew the momentum was on the side of the coalition by the end of 2016. That said, give Donald Trump some credit for keeping the Obama administration’s campaign plan and field commanders in place. Are you angry he’s now claiming credit for what the previous administration accomplished? Well … who cares? The Islamic State has been largely defeated, and that’s what is most important.

(Also, as an important aside, don’t be so quick to blame him for the spike in civilian casualties we saw in 2017: My gut always told me the civilian casualties would get worse as the campaign moved to Mosul and Raqqa—the last two urban strongholds of the Islamic State. It’s also entirely possible civilian casualties during the Obama administration were worse than previously thought.)

Critical national-security appointments

Okay, the less that is said about the state of the State Department, the better. Aside from that, the personnel situation in the critical national security departments and agencies looks a lot better.

At the Department of Defense, the balance of power between the uniformed and civilian leaders is still heavily weighted toward those in uniform. That’s somewhat natural at the start of any administration, but it’s more pronounced in this one, where the secretary has run the Department more like a combatant command and less like a government department. (No surprise, since his last major command was U.S. Central Command or CENTCOM—civilians at the Pentagon jokingly refer to it as “Pentacom” now.) It’s also worth noting that it’s taken a lot of time—too much time—for key civilian billets to be filled. But a lot of the civilians that have been hired have been great selections, with several particularly talented individuals coming into the building in the latter half of the year, and I believe that in 2018 they will begin to prove their worth to a secretary who isn’t used to having so many civilians working for him. As for the secretary himself, by all accounts, he has forged a tight relationship with the president and continues to provide wise counsel. The Pentagon thought it hit the cabinet secretary jackpot in January of 2017, and it still feels that way a year later.

Mike Pompeo has also grown close to the president, and that’s especially important given his role as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is in the customer service business, and it serves one customer over everyone else. If Mike Pompeo has to spend half his day at the White House explaining the world to the president, well, that’s not ideal, but it’s fine.

And H.R. McMaster had always been seen as a future national-security adviser. Since being selected as such to replace Mike Flynn, he has empowered some seriously talented individuals beneath him, from Nadia Schadlow and Fiona Hill to the Bajraktari Brothers, Ylber and Ylli—two of the most important and best people in the federal government you’ve likely never heard of. Nadia wrote the recently published national security strategy, while Fiona Hill has been fighting the good fight on Russia. Ylber and Ylli, meanwhile, are among those who understand how to actually get things done in government, which is something this administration needs more of, having disqualified so many previous Republican officials from serving after they criticized the president during the election.

Picking sides in Saudi Arabia

Another administration would have hedged its bets on Mohammed bin Salman. Not this one. This one has—with very few exceptions—largely endorsed the young crown prince’s reform agenda and claim to the throne.

And I don’t think that’s unwise. I think that’s a highly defensible strategic decision.

First, if Mohammed bin Salman ascends to the throne, he could be the king for half a century. The United States will want a close relationship with him. Second, the economic and social dynamism in the Kingdom is real. Sorry folks, it is. The reflexive cynicism about Saudi Arabia you find among most Western observers of the region has blinded us to what is going on there. Tom Friedman’s interview with Mohammed bin Salman may have been cringe-worthy for its obsequiousness, but Friedman wasn’t all wrong: the reform agenda—to include the crackdown on corruption—is broadly popular, and we should all be rooting for a more liberal and economically diverse Saudi Arabia. (Besides, the alternative is a nightmare for U.S. interests and global security.)

That having been said, my question for the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia is the same one I have for it with regard to Israel: It’s great that personal relations are better, but what exactly does the administration intend to do with them? With Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration’s message to the Saudis should be the following: You are embarking upon one of the most ambitious economic and social programs the world has ever seen. You need as few external distractions as possible. So stop obsessing about Iran—let us do that—and wind down your engagement in Yemen and your spats with Qatar and Lebanon as soon as possible. Focus on the Kingdom.

Asking dumb questions

Apparently Donald Trump made all of his generals and diplomats explain to him, in detail, why the hell we need all these thousands of troops and bases abroad.

Good!

I don’t mind when senior decision-makers ask dumb questions or float dumb ideas (so long as they don’t ultimately choose them). Doing so forces everyone to review their initial assumptions—which may not have been reviewed in some time—and rearticulate why we have been doing business as usual for as long as we have been doing it. (Besides, my rule for policy-making has always been that if I can’t quickly explain a policy’s merits to a family dining in a Cracker Barrel back home in Tennessee, I probably need to revisit the policy in question.)

In this case, politicians need to be reminded that there is an actual cost to asking the U.S. military and others in security-related departments or agencies to be doing all of the things they ask them to do. Yes, our global footprint far outstrips that of any peer competitor. But no one is asking France or China to deter both Iran and North Korea—both of which are 6,000 miles from the continental United States.

If you want the U.S. government to do less abroad, great. But until you tell the Department of Defense and its sister departments and agencies where they’re allowed to start assuming more risk, don’t complain about the price tag.

from The Atlantic http://ift.tt/2CVoaVH

[realestate63141]

Why Half of the Country Will Never Be Satisfied With the President

Why do millions of white working class and middle class people believe that Donald Trump cares about them? originally appeared on Quora - the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.. Answer by Curtis Lindsay, musician, on Quora:

Why do millions of white working class and middle class people believe that Donald Trump cares about them? On the surface of it, it really is mystifying.

I was a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, and I remember well how most middle-American adults in my life thought and spoke of Donald Trump at that time. He was a Manhattanite billionaire playboy who couldn't stay off talk shows and tabloids. His name and image were synonymous with obscene wealth and a decadent lifestyle. He treated women badly, it was known. Small business people, farmers, and factory workers rolled their eyes at Donald Trump. His values could not have had less to do with theirs. Many probably hated him and everything he stood for.

There's always talk of how those politicians who are career attorneys with Ivy League pedigrees, hail from upper-crust families, and maybe vacation in the Hamptons or the French Riviera are maybe a bit out of touch with common people.

But here we have a real estate tycoon for whom the Reagan years were one long limousine ride, an unapologetic egomaniac who delighted in throwing his name up in lights, and a guy who made a television career out of firing people on camera: one would think such a person would represent a whole higher echelon of "out of touch."

So, yeah -- how did this man transform himself into the populist savior of the working class?

Maybe a good place to start is by summarizing the viewpoints of two different people on the state of America: mine, and my father's, which I feel I can represent with a reasonable degree of accuracy, though far from perfectly.

I am a professional classical musician and arts administrator in my mid-thirties. I had some childhood training in conservatories, and I have a college degree in music and philosophy. I make it a point to travel outside the U.S., though not that often.

When I go down to the local taqueria, I place my orders and make small talk in poor but earnest Spanish. It's natural for me be to curious about other cultures, enthusiastic about diversity.

As a boy, I ran around the neighborhood with black kids from families less affluent than mine. My friends throughout grade school included kids from India, Vietnam, Germany, the works. My friends and colleagues in adult life are a diverse bunch, too. Many of my closest friends are gay or trans, and my sexuality has been pretty fluid for most of my life.

My earnings place me in the lower middle class; I work a full-time job plus somewhere between one and three part-time jobs at any given time, as musicians often do. I am unmarried with no children, and plan to stay that way. I love kids, but am not interested in offspring.

I don't align strongly with either of the nation's major political parties.

My view is that the U.S. is run almost entirely in the interests of its very wealthiest citizens, some of whom exert undue influence on the government at every level and hamper its operations much as a cancer hinders the operations of tissues and organs in the body.

I am extremely sympathetic to the ideals of democratic socialism. I think that poverty is most often, though not always, the result of inadequate opportunity and socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and that extreme wealth is most often, though not always, the result of privilege rather than the natural reward for genuine hard work in a spirit of convivial cooperation.

It seems self-evident to me that the neo-feudal influence of increasingly powerful and cannibalistic corporations is directly responsible for the engagement of the United States in aggressive geopolitical posturing and resource wars, which are represented to the public as patriotic endeavors; for the failure of the U.S. to divert any portion of a truly corpulent defense budget to the better care of its citizens and its health and education infrastructures; for the extreme reliance of the American populace on credit; and for the refusal of the U.S. to regulate its economy with the imperfect but at least vaguely functional common sense exercised by comparable industrial nations.

The U.S. isn't run by sinister moguls in a smoky backroom enclave. Rather, plutocracy and oligarchy are predictable outcomes of the kind of socioeconomic principles on which the nation was founded to begin with. I can't see that capitalism and democracy are compatible without an awful lot of intercession, is the gist of it. I think that the market is chaotic and unreliable as a governing force, because the market is made in the image of a chaotic and unreliable population. Try as we might, we don't always know what is in our best interests, since our "needs" are now often manufactured by marketers.

I believe that the electoral system in our republic is such that it guarantees a near-total lack of diversity in viewpoints and approaches, and strongly encourages politicians to say and do whatever it takes to win over the necessary constituent base -- without then providing meaningful incentive for them to commit to genuine matters of policy with any degree of integrity.

I believe that the mass media in our country specialize not so much in informing the populace impartially as in creating and nurturing two opposing camps and then allowing each to bathe perpetually in whatever it is that they want to hear, ensuring the division of the nation into factions which are ideologically hostile toward one another and do not communicate with one another. It makes for great ratings. This is evidenced most acutely in questions of civil liberty and tolerance, which allow candidates to make great hay from simple hot-buttons, but indeed manifests in various ways throughout virtually every aspect of American life.

My father's view, as best I am able to represent it, is quite different.

He is a small business owner with no college degree, a father of five children by two marriages, and an extremely intelligent and down-to-earth individual whose ceaseless, gritty hard work and carefully managed business decisions have, even in the face of dire adversity at times, enabled his children to pursue their dreams in a way that he, to a great extent, could not.

His earnings place him in the upper middle class. He believes that he could have done even better for himself and his family, had politicians not been continually trying to steal his money.

Dad was always completely financially supportive of me, well above and beyond the call. But he never took much interest in me personally, and feels fundamentally that he and I have nothing in common. For my part, I have sadly done very little in life to disabuse him of that notion. We bonded over certain things when I was very young, and those are some of my most treasured memories; by the time I graduated high school, we were living on different planets. I was a rebellious hellion.

He loves his grandchildren and spoils them ridiculously. It's wonderful to watch.

He has never traveled outside the United States, and his daily life has, for pretty much all of my memory, been divided almost expressly between work and sleep.

Dad grew up on family farms, and his best friends were his cousins. In that place and time, white people and black people did not readily socialize on equitable terms. That's how he was taught to experience the world. He identifies strongly with George Wallace's stand against racial integration -- or did at one point, at least -- and believes, in a very general sense, that black people somehow want for free what white people have somehow achieved through hard work and sacrifice.

I should add that Wallace did not resonate with Dad because he detests black people. He does not. Dad liked Wallce because he believes that the federal government is essentially evil, and that nearly every imaginable issue ought to be handled by the states.

For Dad, integration was not the inexorable march of justice. It was the federal government telling him and his peers how to live, and turning Alabama into Ohio.

He believes that wealth is usually, but not always, the result of acumen and discipline, and that poverty is usually, but not always, the result of laziness and a sense of entitlement.

He judges the U.S. government to be corrupt and incompetent by nature, and that its officers make a living by sucking their subjects dry, the pursuit of which is their sole guiding interest. Environmentalism is, in his mind, only the latest and hottest money-making scheme in Washington.

He believes that the electoral system in the country exists to protect middle-class common sense and hard work from the self-congratulatory solipsism of the Hollywood and New York liberals, most of whom are criminals unaccountable to the law.

He'd tell you that the mass media exists solely to express the viewpoints of wackos who live in an alternate universe and are his ideological enemies.

Dad says that the United States is being overrun by Muslims and other foreign minorities. He'd say that most of the war activity of the United States in the past couple of generations has been carried out solely for the just purpose of crushing those who wish his country doom; now, that Great Other is in his neighborhood, waiting to take everything he has from him.

I'd guess that, in his view, homosexual and trans people are weak and psychologically flawed persons with an addiction to the attention of others -- they are not so much immoral as tragically afflicted, and he is okay with them as long as he doesn't have to think about them too much. Certainly he does not think they need to be "converted." He would say that such an approach is ridiculous, I bet.

Finally, he believes that the presidency of Barack Obama represented the ultimate ascendancy of anti-American traitors and their foreign hordes, and that a Clinton presidency would have maintained an identical agenda: enslaving white, middle-class Americans for the benefit of wealthy, crooked foreigners and their cohorts on the American coasts. He aligns with the Republican Party with perfect consistency, and has at least since I was born, at about the time of Reagan's first election.

You can probably see that I would never have voted for Donald Trump, and perhaps you can understand why I voted for Clinton only with great reluctance, primarily as a means of attempting to stop Trump from creating a billionaire theme park out of his drained swamp.

I am actually willing to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt on some of his economic positions, as shaky as I feel them to be on the whole; but I am sorely afraid for the future of civil liberties, cultural tolerance and integration, environmental health, and foreign policy under the strictly for-profit federal government that he is creating.

Likewise, you can probably surmise that my father was an enthusiastic Trump supporter. Quite beyond my ready comprehension, he esteems Donald Trump to be a selfless patriot who has recanting and given up his decadent billionaire lifestyle to serve the interests of the America That Time Forgot.

Dad is not a religious man, and he is probably elated to have been presented with a candidate who has built a platform mostly, if not entirely, devoid of religious sanctimoniousness, and otherwise using language which is almost perfectly aligned with his own worldview.

I've often felt that there are certain thinkers and movers in the American political spectrum whose views align reasonably closely with my own, but who are not really willing to go far enough to act upon them. I'm guessing that, until now, Dad has felt that pretty much no one in U.S. politics understands his frustrations.

That's all it takes. Donald Trump, however genuinely or disingenuously, has broadcast a clear message on the precise frequency to which my father and many people similar to him have long been listening in hopes of hearing something other than static. Under the right conditions, that's all you need to turn a delirious demagogue into the most powerful man on Earth.

Being blessed with two eyes, two ears, and a memory--and not hungering for a the "simpler times" that my father surely must--I see Trump for what he is: an opportunistic charlatan who cared only about November 8, 2016 and the ways in which the results of that day will benefit him personally. His only concern is winning, as he has written in print numerous times over the years.

True to form, most of the actions he has taken in his first few days in power have smacked of symbolic vindictiveness, a pouting child's revenge.

My opinion of Secretary Clinton is somewhat higher, but not a great deal higher, truth be told. I believe that she uses the insecurities and uncertainties of minorities and the poor to similar personal and political advantage, often quite superficially. I believe she is equally ruthless, in her own way.

If the progressive movement in the United States does not learn to engage and speak to the people that disagree with its tenets without making them feel like backwards simpletons, it will never move forward without then having to take two steps back.

If progressives do not learn to create fresh common ground and alliances with those whom they are told hate them and all they represent, then I think the future of the nation is a bleak one.

Electoral politics has unfortunately become a zero-sum sportsball game in our country. No more than half the nation's people feel, at any given time, that their interests are being represented. So greater inclusiveness and depth of relation are needed, I think, if genuine progress is to be made and sustained.

This is not an easy task. Ideological warfare has already taken its toll; the way forward is not clear. I think it will necessarily involve much original thought on the part of a people no longer as accustomed to such intricacies as perhaps they once were.

I've been sheltered from a number of the realities that my parents had to face in their lives. It's not difficult for me to appreciate them, but it is almost impossible for me to understand them. I am sure my parents can't fathom why it is that I want certain people and things in my life, and why I'm oblivious to certain matters that, for them, are nothing short of crucial.

I know many people my age, and younger, who feel themselves to be in similar generational disarray.

It is truly difficult for Dad and me to be in the same room when politics is in the air, and not for any lack of love. My journey through Trump's America begins with looking for a way to change that.

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