He Opposes Violence without Equivocation

 

This is not rocket science.  Our current potus only makes such statements from a potus seem as if they are.  Many query what would Biden do?  Well for one thing he would not pour gasoline on conflict at every opportunity.  He would attempt to dampen conflict, reduce the stridency.  Lead the entire country not vocal minorities from any side.
 

We Must Do Better

Race is America is a fraught topic.  Literally it has been so since our earliest days as a nation else our constitution would not have defined a black person as worth 3/5 a person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise).  Progress has been made but in many respects we have never recovered from this original barbarous compromise.

Race is a topic one approaches with trepidation but here goes.

This summer's protests, violence and resulting backlash repeat a cycle we have experienced over and over.  A cycle with similar results- not enough progress and the majority asserting its political will over the minority as the majority reacts with fear, grievance and resentment communicated through the ballot box (a place where the majority has an inherent advantage).  I would strongly recommend reading Rick Perlstein's books documenting the political environment of the 1960s ("Before the Storm" and "Nixonland") or perhaps if one wants to focus more narrowly on Chicago "American Pharoah" a biography about Richard Daley.  I cannot imagine what it would have felt like if the violence which occurred in the 60's had been amplified by social media the way they are today.

I get violence is not the answer.  This a photo taken from my balcony of looters pillaging a coffee shop in the middle of the night 8/11.

MLK got violence was not the answer.  Famously in his speech accepting the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize he called the award:

 "a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression...”

But MLK did not operate in a vacuum.  He spoke in this interview a couple of years later of why violence might arise and also why race and ethnicity are flawed comparisons for some.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K0BWXjJv5s

It is entirely feasible to oppose gratuitous violence and oppose Maoist cultural revolution like BS such as below:

BUT to also have tremendous empathy for the heartfelt emotional pleas from the folks below:

The NBA is interesting.  It is an industry unlike most others, as it is an African American dominated industry.  Everyone from the players who have tremendous power (like say the star leaders at an investment bank or law firm), to the management to the ownership respect that without African Americans there is no league in its current manifestation.  This respect is prevalent not because so many AAs are the star players, but the managers and even owners as well.  In other words it is like most industries except the roles of AA and whites are flipped.

The republicans are now in full throated, unabashed "instill fear, fan resentment and encourage grievance" mode.  It appears to be their best and perhaps only hope to reverse their electoral challenges.

My hope is that Doc River's question does not fall on deaf ears.  No responsible party condones violence but I perceive far too many of my fellow citizens cowering in the face of short term violence, the vast majority of which only impacts them vicariously and using it as an excuse to avoid confronting the long-term systematic racism permeating our nation.  This has been a dynamic repeated far too many times in our history.  It plays into the hands of demagogues and scoundrels.

What is the antidote?  Perhaps a leader who gets the pursuit of justice, liberty and security is not a zero sum game to be traded one for the other:

As opposed to a leader who embraces division, fear and grievance.  We have had leaders who embraced white backlash and law and order (see Nixon, Richard; Wallace, George amongst others) but never one who has embraced so cynically and with such apparent heartfelt gusto.  Here is to hoping for better.

We Must Compete

Gabby Giffords represents someone who is willing and able to compete.  Someone when faced with adversity persevered.  Gabby Giffords represents the best of America.  The better parts of our nature.

Something that has struck me hard over the past several years is the unwillingness of too many Americans to compete.  They seek to build walls and "bring back the 'good ole days"  They claim to be strong.  They wrap themselves in the our flag.  They yell and pound the table. They embrace conspiracy. They seek to bask in the efforts and accomplishments of their predecessors.  Ultimately they are weak whilst claiming the opposite.  They do not represent the resiliency and strength of America. They wallow in grievance and resentment. They do not want to compete.  

Donald J. Trump, his enablers and too many of his supporters represents the worst parts of our nature.  Selfish, insecure, defensive, fundamentally weak.  We can and will do better.  America remains strong and resilient.

Donald J. McCarthy

Yesterday we wrote of Trump's syntactical style.  Today we bring up a character from the way back machine- Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican Wisconsin).  Memories of McCarthy and his associated era of paranoia regarding communist infiltration into the U.S. government and culture have now mostly receded beyond living memory.  But the dynamic and the lives ruined without cause was not a proud one for the U.S.  McCarthy and our current Potus share numerous characteristics.  As the article relates toward the article's end, a mediocre, alcoholic senator who served but a couple of terms did damage, a Potus is and can do immeasurably more harm.  Folks speak of today's environment with social media and political polarization being rife for controversary and innuendo.  The 1950s had no online technologies and a relative level of bi-partisanship vastly different than today and yet we begat a McCarthy.  Perhaps the resentments and grievances perceived to fuel today's politics really are not that new merely lying in wait for a demagogue to embrace and fan them.

Conveniently if unsurprisingly, our Potus yesterday when asked about yet another birther trope instead of disowning it, he in his inimical way (see yesterday's post) just fanned it.  He is a propagandist on the level of Joseph Goebbels.  

From New Yorker:  

“… he had a reputation as a scofflaw. He had exaggerated his war record…Questions had been raised about whether he had dodged his taxes and where his campaign funds had come from…He plainly had no ethical or ideological compass, and most of his colleagues regarded him as a troublemaker, a loudmouth…

…The other senators on McCarthy’s subcommittee stopped attending the hearings, since McCarthy dominated everything, and so it became his personal star chamber. He could subpoena anyone...and was answerable to no one…

McCarthy was a bomb-thrower—and, in a sense, that is all he was. He would make an outrageous charge, almost always with little or no evidentiary basis, and then he would surf the aftershocks. When these subsided, he threw another bomb. He knew that every time he did it reporters had two options. They could present what he said neutrally, or they could contest its veracity. He cared little which they did, nor did he care that, in his entire career as a Communist-hunter, he never sent a single “subversive” to jail. What mattered was that he was controlling the conversation.

McCarthy had the support of a media conglomerate, the Hearst papers, which amplified everything he said, and he had cheerleaders in the commentariat, such as the columnists Westbrook Pegler and Walter Winchell, both of whom reached millions of readers in a time when relatively few households (in 1952, about a third) had a television set. He tried to block a hostile newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal, from his press conferences, and he egged on the crowds at his rallies to harass the reporters.

Right from the start, McCarthy had prominent critics. But almost the entire political establishment was afraid of him. You could fight him, in which case he just made your life harder, or you could ignore him, in which case he rolled right over you. He verbally abused people who disagreed with him. He also had easy access to money, much of it from Texas oilmen, which he used to help unseat politicians who crossed him.

To his supporters, he could say and do no wrong. Tye quotes the pollster George Gallup, in 1954: “Even if it were known that McCarthy had killed five innocent children, they would probably still go along with him.” His fans liked that he was a bully, and they liked that he scandalized the genteel and the privileged.

…What distinguished McCarthy’s claims was their outlandishness. He didn’t attack people for being soft on Communism, or for pushing policies, like public housing, that were un-American or socialistic. That is what ordinary politicians like Richard Nixon did. McCarthy accused people of being agents of a Communist conspiracy. In 1951, he claimed that George Marshall, the Secretary of Defense, the former Secretary of State, and the author of the Marshall Plan, had been, throughout his career, “always and invariably serving the world policy of the Kremlin.” Marshall, he said, sat at the center of “a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.”

Even Republicans were aghast. Marshall was almost universally regarded as a selfless public servant and a model of personal probity. The leader of the Party’s conservative wing, Robert Taft, expressed regret that McCarthy had overstated his case. But that was about as far as most Republicans had the nerve to go. Nothing came of McCarthy’s attack. For McCarthy, though, the important thing was that he had said something that was manifestly preposterous and had got away with it. He must have realized that he could get away with anything.

McCarthy lied all the time. He lied even when he didn’t need to lie…When he didn’t have any facts to embellish, he made them up. He found that, if he just kept on repeating himself, people would figure that he must be onto something.

He was incapable of sticking to a script. He rambled and he blustered, and if things weren’t going his way he left the room. He was notoriously lazy, ignorant, and unprepared, and he had a reputation for following the advice of the last person he talked to. But he trusted his instincts. And he loved chaos. He knew that he had a much higher tolerance for it than most human beings do, and he used it to confuse, to distract, and to disrupt.

…he preferred eternal damnation to admitting that he had ever been wrong.

…Tye wisely does not propose to draw many lessons for today from the story of McCarthy’s career. Our demagogue is far more dangerous than a senator who was not very popular even in his own state. Ours is the President, and he has henchmen running the State Department and the Justice Department who are dedicated to clearing a legal path for him to eliminate whoever stands in his way. The Trump Administration has done serious damage to the entire executive branch. It will take a long time to repair it.

But what is puzzling about McCarthy is also puzzling about Trump. Once McCarthy was in a position of power, he was incapable of modifying his behavior. He could not shut it off, even when everyone around him was begging him to. He had a single explanation for everything, and the only way he knew how to do his job was by threatening and prevaricating. Trump, too, is a one-trick pony. He says the same things on every issue and in response to every crisis.

Voters get tired of one-trick ponies. Not every civil servant with progressive views can be a spy, despite McCarthy’s insistence, just as not every story Trump finds unflattering can be fake, and not every investigation he dislikes can be a hoax. Endlessly recycled charges lose their sting. That is what happened to McCarthy. It was not that the public decided that Communists were not a real danger. They just got sick of the constant snarling and browbeating. They wanted it to go away.

When Joseph Welch arrived in Washington for the famous hearings, some of the people involved in the Army’s defense were shocked that he did not seem to have studied the case. They worried that he was unprepared. But Welch knew that he could not beat McCarthy on the facts, because McCarthy would just make up new facts. He saw that the only way to destroy McCarthy was to give him the opportunity to destroy himself. He let McCarthy rant and bully and interrupt for thirty days, and then, as the clock was winding down, he closed in for the kill. It was pure rope-a-dope, and a lesson, possibly, for Joe Biden…”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/joseph-mccarthy-and-the-force-of-political-falsehoods

How He Does It

Certainly it has been frustrating for many of us to watch a person we regard as personally foul and politically despicable gain office and then continue to hold the fawning loyalty of too many.  One thing I have mentioned to friends over the past few years is the one clear skill I give him credit for which is he understands PR and he is a highly effective carnival barker.  The way by which Trump communicates is central to his success.  The Economist breaks down his syntax.  His use of phrases reflects several of his core communication tenets which make him quite effective (or perhaps more descriptively dangerous).

1) He simplifies complex issues into soundbites (MAGA is an example and regardless of what one thinks of him or its implications it will go down as an historically impactful slogan)

2) He exhibits supreme and unwavering self-confidence and self-belief

3) He NEVER admits error

4) He always acts with a swagger that enraptures his supporters

If one had read much history and steps back to think of those leaders in the past who have used these techniques some pretty scary examples come to mind...

From the Economist:

"His linguistic quirks reveal the salesmanship that has made his career"

“Underpinning Mr Trump’s distinctive language is an extreme confidence in his own knowledge..Mr Trump creates his own “reality distortion field”. One of his signature tropes is “not a lot of people know…” He has introduced the complicated nature of health care, or the fact that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president, as truths that are familiar only to a few. A related sound-bite is “nobody knows more about...than I do”. The fields of expertise Mr Trump has touted this way include campaign finance, technology, politicians, taxes, debt, infrastructure, the environment and the economy.

His critics have often attributed this to narcissism, but a complementary explanation is that it is also one of his strengths—salesmanship. In Mr Trump’s framing, he is in possession of rare information. He is therefore able to cut a customer a special deal “not a lot of people know” about. Should you be tempted to take your business to a competitor, he will remind you that “nobody knows more about” what is on offer than he does.

And how does he convince listeners he really does know what he’s talking about? His language constantly indicates self-belief. …Mr Trump rarely hesitates and hardly ever says “um” or “uh”. When he needs to plan his next sentence—as everyone must—he often buys time by repeating himself. This reinforces the impression that he is supremely confident and that what he’s saying is self-evident.

Perhaps the most striking element of Mr Trump’s uncompromising belief in his sales technique can be glimpsed in an unusual place: his mistakes. Mr Trump is often presented as a linguistic klutz, saying things that make so little sense that his detractors present them as proof of major cognitive decline.

All people make some slips and stumbles…Mr Trump regularly makes errors but his signature quality, by contrast, is to lean into them. Take a recent interview with Fox News, in which he talked about governors’ differing attitudes towards masks. Some are keener than others about requiring people to wear them to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Or, as Mr Trump put it, “they’re more mask into”.

What is remarkable is not the mistake. It is easy for anyone to go down a syntactic blind alley. Many people will say something like “they’re more mask” and then realise there is nowhere to go. The sentence, in linguists’ terms, requires “repair”, which usually involves backtracking. Unless, that is, you are Mr Trump, in which case you confidently intone “into” and move on, giving no hint of trouble.

This refusal to concede blunders shows up in more serious ways, of course, such as the president’s unwillingness to take responsibility for his administration’s missteps during the pandemic. It also helps explain two mysteries. The first is the odd disjunct between words that seem nonsensical on the page and a stage presence that enraptures audiences—it is Mr Trump’s assertive persona that convinces more than his words.

The second is how this works on his fans. In a recent survey conducted by Pew, Americans were asked to rank Mr Trump and Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, on a number of characteristics. The trait for which Americans give Mr Trump the highest mark is telling. Despite a notably light schedule and a stated disdain for exercise, the president’s incessant speaking style is almost certainly the reason he received a good score on one quality in particular: 56% of voters, and 93% of his supporters, describe him as “energetic”.

https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2020/08/08/donald-trumps-language-offers-insight-into-how-he-won-the-presidency

Times They Have Changed

 

Would say the above is true.  But how much have times changed that choosing a woman of color is the safe pick instead of bold.  To me this is a sure sign of progress. 

River North Looting Round 2

Could say many things about these looting experiences.  But will leave it at I am very sad for my city.  Will say the folks getting arrested at 7 am outside the Nordstrom's (see the photo with the escalator) still trying to loot indicates pretty severe stupidity but then of course the judgment exhibited by all concerned is lacking.  Things were quiet last night (as they should be on a Sunday night especially with thunderstorms passing through), then at 1 am or so the looting caravans showed up and went straight through until 5 am.  The bottom photo from our balcony was taken at 4:23 am, all those cars were looters having a final go at the retail shops in on the ground floor of our building.  The photo above with the broken window is one of the stores in our building.  The top photo is the coffee shop across the street as the looters did their looting.  The middle photo above was also from our balcony when a police was hit with a bottle I believe.  The guy with the bottle of Johnnie Black down below was really starting to run out of gas by 6 am when I took the photo.  ATMs are sturdy machines, the one in the photo was from Walgreens.  Final note whatever the freaking strategy is of the authorities, they need to revise it as it is not working (and I hear all kinds of rumors most of which make no sense to me hence my lack of comment on the performance of the authorities).

The Economic Data in Perspective

McBride with his usual balanced take on recent economic releases with the graphs that keep the numbers in perspective.  The headline number shows job growth but the job drops in March/April were epically bad hence we are far far away from normal.

https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2020/08/july-employment-report-18-million-jobs.html

https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2020/08/comments-on-july-employment-report.html

And this chart for BofA/US Treasury shows how fast the ending of the federal unemployment supplements is manifesting.  Given on-going weak aggregate demand related to Covid most of these folks will struggle to obtain employment. Without the supplements the unemployed spending will drop quickly creating further unemployment.  This would be why amidst weak aggregate demand fiscal stimulation in the form of unemployment supplements is a very proven way to mitigate recessionary spirals.

So Biden Is a Marxist? Perhaps It Is the Other Guy

Folks have been calling the Democrats Marxists for decades.  For instance, Goldwater said JFK was a Marxist.  Most folks making the assertion would not recognize Das Kapital if it smacked them in the nose or tell the difference between the lumpenproletariat and Lumpy Rutherford.  Nevertheless, it continues.  I recently was told by someone very sincerely that he would be voting for Trump as Biden is a Marxist.

But I have a question.  Or actually Bryan McGrath the Conservative Wahoo does- former naval officer, Reagan lover who posits:

Since when is such dirigiste action from a US Potus considered acceptable?  Seriously?

The Republicans Are Trapped in an Orange Box

Back in October 2016 just after the release of the "grab her by the pussy" tape, Ms. Blogger asked how could the Republican party politicians stick with a person like Trump.  I responded because he has a strangle hold on the Republican base.  I was right and he still does, arguably now even more so.  

We have all encountered the Trumpian tribe via friends, family or social media.  Deep into his one term presidency, Trump has pursued an unwavering strategy of stoking the resentment and grievance which energize this tribe.  The tribe appears utterly resolute in its loyalty at this point.  I see decreasing efforts on tribal or non-tribal members to engage at this point.  We all appear to have settled into a mutual disdain.  I have no doubt that Trump could literally do as he bragged and shoot someone and his tribe would not waver.  The opinions of the non-tribal members especially someone like say me are not only not of interest but vociferously resented.

That said I mention his one-term presidency as I firmly believe (putting aside voter suppression and who knows what other chicanery may emerge around the election) that Trump is steering his party into a box with no exit door.  It is no more complex than a feverish base comprising 30% of the electorate can dominate primaries and even drive our national government (whilst abetted by cynical allies) but ultimately in a remotely fair general contest 30% is not sufficient.  As the following article covers, there is no room in the current iteration the Trumpian party for dissent else its adherents will tune out or turn on the less slavish Republicans leaving them in no mans land electorally.

From Rolling Stone:

"…while pockets of Republican resistance have roasted Dear Leader, elected officials in D.C. and...the consultant class have remained steadfast…

These swamp creatures were never the biggest Trumpers in the first place…So why, as Trump’s numbers plummet, are these establishment RINOs continuing...to protect someone who is politically faltering...

 I reached out to…former allies and rivals who still consult for Republican candidates at the highest levels of Senate and House races... I asked them to speak candidly…How is the president’s performance impacting their candidate?...And finally, why in the hell aren’t they more pissed at this incompetent…

 …their answers were one part Stockholm Syndrome, one part survival instinct. They all may not love the president, but most share his loathing for his enemies on the left, in the media, and the apostate Never Trump Republicans with a passion that engenders an alliance with the president, if not a kinship. And even among those who don’t share the tribalistic hatreds, they perceive a political reality driven by base voters and the president’s shitposting that simply does not allow for dissent…

…in 2006, Republican candidates could strategically distance themselves from an unpopular president without facing a mutiny within the ranks. That won’t work in 2020…“There are practical realities — we ran a bunch of red district primaries, and it would come back that the number one issue for 80+% of Republican primary voters was loyalty to Donald Trump. I’m not making that number up,” a respondent told me.

 Several consultants pointed to the situation that Sen. John Cornyn faces in Texas to illustrate the problem. They indicated that internal polling shows Trump either tied or very slightly ahead in the Lone Star State…Cornyn’s “quietly in trouble.” But rather than addressing this by creating some strategic separation from Trump to solidify the historically conservative Dallas and Houston suburbs where Trump is bleeding out, Cornyn has become a Mr. Trump fan girl, echoing his virus denial and defending the attack on nonviolent protestors in Lafayette Square.

Why? According to one: “You have 25% of the state is rural and Trump gets like Saddam Hussein level numbers here. 87% in 25% of the state…

This same calculus pervades no matter the race, no matter the district, no matter the geography: The operatives insist that the pro-Trump zealotry the president’s supporters demand makes it far more difficult for candidates to win over anyone else…

…The idea of separating from Trump is so verboten in GOP circles that the best consultants won’t even talk about talking about doing it in mixed company, for fear of being stigmatized, and thus losing potential client work on other campaigns.

…Trump “sucks the oxygen out of the room from every other candidate” to such a degree that you “can’t run independent of him,” as one put it.

…’We haven’t worked for anybody who seriously thinks the guy has it all together,” said one consultant.

But what I found was that, underneath that surface level eye-rolling at Trump and hat-tipping to the record on judges, there was an emotional alliance with the president that is deeper than they might let on in mixed company. A compartmentalization of the badness of the orange man, set aside in favor of a deep and visceral hatred of the president’s enemies…”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-reelection-chances-2020-house-senate-candidates-biden-1024862/

Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose: We Complain and Worry about Our Awful Times

The Huntley Brinkley Report aired for the final fifty years ago last week.  I am old but that was so long ago I cannot even remember it directly.  But Huntley Brinkley back in the day were a go to for news (along with Walter Cronkite) in a time when folks actually made time in their evenings to watch a news show.  And back then the news shows actually showed reporting as opposed to today's quick videos slathered in cheap talking head opinions.

What struck me watching the clip though were Huntley and Brinkley's references to the criticisms they received from viewers and the lamentations that the news emanating from the world was so awful.  So awful in fact that Huntley signed off with a plea that folks exercise patience as times were bound to improve.

So 2020 has its challenges, where they ultimately rank in the big scheme remains to be determined. But fear not, folks in 1970 believed they were living through a shit show as well.  Yet fifty years later here we here....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYf3eyRjfYA

As a special bonus this video also popped up of a Dick Cavett show with Huntley around the time of his retirement.  Huntley commenting on his plans is interesting but see him sharing a stage with Janis Joplin and Raquel Welch makes it memorable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9yj3E02i1s

Every Potus Must Have Grace- Bush Had It, They All Have Until Now

Certainly I (along with a few others I suspect) ponder why is Trump so awful.  Not awful like W. Bush's policies but like awful as a human being.  It strikes me that he lacks grace.

Grace has numerous definitions some religious some secular but sticking with the latter would include:

"to honor people by taking part in something"

"the quality of being pleasantly polite, or a willingness to be fair and honest"

W. Bush was an poor president because his policies were bad.  But the man has grace (and humor).  He exhibited both in his eulogy to the late John Lewis this week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BPHye-3XY0

Many remarked at the grace displayed not only by Bush but several others at the Lewis service.  It is inconceivable that Trump would have done so.  In fact he could not even bring himself to honor Lewis by visiting his casket while it lay in the cupola at the Capital.

Every president going back at least as far as FDR had grace, even Nixon had it.  Grace is a requisite of leadership and we have become rightly accustomed to it from our presidents. It enables a partisan from one party to demonstrate empathy and respect for those from the other party.  It also is calming and a palliative in times of crisis and stress.

When it is absent as it is now, a void is created.  Partisanship worsens, stress increases and ultimately anger results.  We need, in fact must have. a president with grace.

Another point.  This photo was taken recently while Trump played catch with former Yankee closer Mariano Rivera.  It struck me because it is the first photo I recall in which Trump actually appeared to be enjoying himself and genuinely smiling.  Usually his smile is more of a sneer typically whilst denigrating someone or something.  So I would add another requisite- a Potus should possess joyfulness.