Month: December 2016

Strongman cult

by digby

Back in September of 2015 I wrote my first piece for Salon about Trump’s weird Putin fixation. All the other GOP candidates were shaking their fists at the Russian leader and Trump alone was saying how much he liked the guy.

Keep in mind that he won saying this stuff. And it’s not that hard to figure out why.  Here’s a piece of that article:

We just had a debate in which the candidates were variously vowing to “punch Russia in the nose” and to shoot Russian planes out of the sky. Perhaps the most bellicose was Chris Christie who has long criticized President Obama for being soft, saying a few months back, “I don’t believe, given who I am, that [Putin] would make the same judgment. Let’s leave it at that.” Evidently, “who he is” is so macho that Putin will roll himself into a ball and have a good old fashioned cry if Christie looks at him sideways.

Mitt Romney tweeted furiously about Trump’s coziness with Putin and his former advisers were all up in arms throughout the week-end calling him a “seriously damaged individual.” Trump responded by saying, “they’re jealous as hell because he’s not mentioning” them.

Trump doesn’t care one whit about any of this carping. His reasoning is clear in this one comment:

“He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country.”

Later he said, “I think that my words represent toughness and strength.”

Trump understands the base of the GOP a lot better than Mitt Romney and the Sunday talking heads. These GOP base voters like Putin. Like so much else, Trump is just channeling an existing right wing phenomenon. Marin Cogan at National Journal wrote about the right wing Putin cult two years ago:

Putin­phil­ia is not, of course, the pre­dom­in­ant po­s­i­tion of the con­ser­vat­ive move­ment. But in cer­tain corners of the In­ter­net, ad­or­a­tion for the lead­er of Amer­ica’s No. 1 frenemy is un­ex­cep­tion­al. They are not his coun­try­men, Rus­si­an ex­pats, or any of the oth­er re­gion­al al­lies you might ex­pect to find al­lied with the Rus­si­an lead­er. Some, like Young and his read­ers, are earn­est out­doorsy types who like Putin’s Rough Rider sens­ib­il­ity. Oth­ers more cheekily ad­mire Putin’s cult of mas­culin­ity and claim re­l­at­ive in­dif­fer­ence to the polit­ic­al stances — the anti-Amer­ic­an­ism, the sup­port for lead­ers like Bashar al-As­sad, the op­pres­sion of minor­it­ies, gays, journ­al­ists, dis­sid­ents, in­de­pend­ent-minded ol­ig­archs — that drive most Amer­ic­ans mad. A few even ar­rive at their Putin ad­mir­a­tion through a strange brew of an­ti­pathy to everything they think Pres­id­ent Obama stands for, a re­flex­ive dis­trust of what the gov­ern­ment and me­dia tells them, and polit­ic­al be­liefs that go un­rep­res­en­ted by either of the main Amer­ic­an polit­ic­al parties…

[T]he Obama’s-so-bad-Putin-al­most-looks-good sen­ti­ment can be found on plenty of con­ser­vat­ive mes­sage boards. Earli­er this year, when Putin sup­posedly caught — and kissed — a 46-pound pike fish, posters on Free Re­pub­lic, a ma­jor grass­roots mes­sage board for the Right, were over­whelm­ingly pro-Putin:

“I won­der what photoup [sic] of his va­ca­tion will the Usurp­er show us? Maybe clip­ping his fin­ger­nails I sup­pose or maybe hanging some cur­tains. Yep manly. I can’t be­lieve I’m sid­ing with Putin,” one wrote. “I have Pres­id­ent envy,” an­oth­er said. “Bet­ter than our met­ro­sexu­al pres­id­ent,” said a third. One riffed that a Putin-Sarah Pal­in tick­et would lead to a more mor­al United States.

Is it any wonder that Trump is saying he’s “honored” that Putin thinks highly of him?

But the pearl clutching about all this Putin love from the other presidential candidates is seriously hypocritical. They may not be tapping into the macho Putin cult as directly as Trump, but they are very much on Putin’s authoritarian wavelength. Just like Putin they are very upset at the idea gay people might have equal rights and they are prepared to use government power to discriminate against them:

Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and Mike Huckabee vowed to push for the passage of the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), legislation that would prohibit the federal government from stopping discrimination by people or businesses that believe “marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman” or that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

The pledge is supported by three conservative groups: the American Principles Project, Heritage Action for America, and Family Research Council Action.

Apparently, Bush, Graham, Paul and Trump, have also publicly expressed support for FADA. In the name of freedom, of course, just as the old Soviets would have done. These liberty lovers may shake their fists and pretend they are in opposition to Putin’s tyrannical ways, but when you get down to it they’re all on the same page.

And the rest of us should probably stop laughing and start paying attention according to a warning from someone who knows what she’s talking about, Maria Alekhina, aka Masha of Pussy Riot:

“When Putin came to his first term or second term, nobody [in Russia] actually thought that this is serious. Everybody was joking about it. And nobody could imagine that after five, six years, we would have a war in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, and these problems in Syria,” in which Russia has become involved.

“Everybody [is] joking about Donald Trump now, but it’s a very short way from joke to sad reality when you have a really crazy president speaking about breaking every moral and logic norm. So I hope that he will not be president. That’s very simple.”

Strongman cults of the likes of Putin and Trump are often dismissed as silly and unserious at first. And then, all at once, it’s too late.

I think Democrats should recognize that they may not find Americans as disturbed by all this as they might think …
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Trump’s America
by Tom Sullivan

Image by Jesus Solana via via Wikimedia Commons.

Man is a pattern-seeking animal:

We see faces in ink blots, madonnas in toast and in stains on buildings. We find animal shapes in the clouds and in the stars. We read messages in palms and tea leaves. And after a tragedy, we ask reflexively, “Why did this happen?” As if there is a why.

Sometimes, shit just happens. But for pattern-seeking animals that’s an unsatisfactory answer. A month after November 8, the American left is still casting about for reasons Donald Trump pulled out an Electoral College win while losing the national popular vote by close to 3 million votes. The short answer is it was a perfect storm. A shift in any of a number of different factors might have changed the outcome and prevented Trump’s election. Over the weekend, Russian interference is getting its moment in the spotlight. The media has already had its turn, and it’s not done.

Neal Gabler suggests the fascination with Ayn Rand’s glorification of self has corroded America’s moral center over the decades. He cites a July 1961 essay in which Gore Vidal warns of just that:

She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who hate the ‘welfare state,’ who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts.

They did. Since then, her acolytes have endowed study programs in business schools across the country to spread her gospel and harden even more. Over time, Rand’s views on the virtue of greed and the “immorality” of right-wing guilt “became the guiding spirit of the governing party of the United States,” abetted by a media that prided itself on being values-neutral. Gabler writes:

To identify what’s wrong with conservatism and Republicanism — and now with so much of America as we are about to enter the Trump era — you don’t need high-blown theories or deep sociological analysis or surveys. The answer is as simple as it is sad: There is no kindness in them.

That assessment will find lots of sympathy on the left. It might be more accurate, however, to say conservatives believe, in spite of what Jesus taught them, in the sort of moral accounting George Lakoff describes. In Jesus, you may be saved by faith, not works, but don’t expect the same from me. In this life, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. This is the natural order. Salvation is earned; punishment and reward are the ways a just universe balances its books. Every human interaction becomes a transaction. Showing kindness is reserved for the deserving and/or a way of building credit for when you yourself need it. And great wealth like Trump’s? God’s seal of approval.

Thus goes the bizarre amalgam of Horatio Alger, Ayn Rand, and Jesus Christ that passes for Christianity among many Americans. But while the “neutral” press felt justified in focusing attention on the extremists of the Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights era, Gabler asks,”[W]hat happens when those extremists who advocate a bizarre morality that elevates selfishness and deplores altruism commandeer one of our two major political parties?” The media went silent. It “dared not question Republican opposition to anything that assisted the disempowered and dispossessed.” Gabler contiunues:

Read those Ayn Rand quotes to your children as moral instruction, and you will see how far we have fallen. This is Republican morality. This is Trump morality. And the media, loath to defend traditional American values in an increasingly hostile conservative environment, let it happen. That is what value neutrality will get you.

Gabler recommends fighting back with a “kindness offensive.” He even suggests building a political movement around it:

“There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth,” Tolstoy said. Going forward, that could be the basis for a politics. And we must press our media to understand that they can only restore the values they once took for granted by doing what the best of them did during the civil rights era: observe events through a moral lens. Appealing to our worst selves is usually a winning strategy, as it was for Trump. The media must remind us of what it means to be our best selves. This should be their new mission: a media in opposition. It should be unrelenting, regardless of the right-wing blowback.

Gabler wraps up with a joke about how under this ascendant morality Americans are more interested in ensuring the undeserving — lower caste Irresponsibles (my term) — “get nothing than in making sure that they themselves get something.” Economic experiments offer several explanations why, in political terms, people vote in ways that harm themselves. This is “Trump’s America.”

What people believe is the “natural order” has had a hand in some of the most barbaric offenses in human history and helped prop up some of humanity’s most longstanding and egregious prejudices. Ironically, this gut belief in the morality of the natural order has led to a political movement to kill the environment in the name of a deadly sin.

Research on infants shows that they are by nature not Randian objectivists, but compassionate little egalitarians. Two years ago, I wrote here:

What strikes me is how this research echoes something paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey said about Turkana Boy in speculating about the development of compassion in early Man:

Bipedalism carried an enormous price, where compassion was what you paid your ticket with. You simply can’t abandon somebody who’s incapacitated because the rest will abandon you next time it comes to be your turn.

There but for the grace of God. Compassion has an evolutionary advantage, Leakey suggests. Perhaps it is what helped us rise above the law of the jungle.

The irony is that a libertarian-leaning conservative posted the Mother Jones article on Bloom — “Science Says Your Baby Is a Socialist” — to a Facebook forum as a tweak to lefties (socialist babies, I suppose). In fact, it would seem that a movement that sneers at being your brother’s keeper in organizing human society is hardly an accomplishment, cultural, political, or evolutionary.

But here we are. Resist.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Blu Xmas: Best re-issues of 2016, Part 2

By Dennis Hartley

Last week, I shared some of my picks for the best Blu-ray reissues of 2016, in the event you were looking for gift ideas. For you procrastinators out there, I’ve dug up a few more. But first, a gentle reminder. Any time of year you click a link from this weekly feature as a portal to purchase any Amazon item, you help your favorite starving bloggers get a nickel or two in the creel. Most titles are released concurrent with an SD edition, so if you don’t have a Blu-ray player, don’t despair. So here you go…in alphabetical order:

In a Lonely Place (The Criterion Collection) – It’s apropos that a film about a writer would contain a soliloquy that any writer would kill to have written: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Those words are uttered by Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a Hollywood screenwriter with a volatile temperament. He also has quirky working habits, which leads to a fateful encounter with a hatcheck girl, who he hires for the evening to read aloud from a pulpy novel that he’s been assigned by the studio to adapt into a screenplay (it helps his process). At the end of the night, he gives her cab fare and sends her on her way. Unfortunately, the young woman turns up murdered, and Dix becomes a prime suspect (mostly due to his unflagging wisecracking). An attractive neighbor (Gloria Grahame) steps in at a crucial moment to give him an unsolicited alibi (and really spice things up).

A marvelous film noir, directed by the great Nicholas Ray, with an intelligent script (by Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North, from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes) that is full of twists and turns that keep you guessing right up until the end. It’s a precursor (of sorts) to Basic Instinct (or it could have been a direct influence, for all I know). Criterion’s 2K transfer is outstanding. Extras include a slightly condensed 1975 documentary about Ray.

Lone Wolf and Cub (The Criterion Collection Box Set) – Generally speaking, I don’t gravitate toward ultra-violent films, but this manga-inspired series from Japan (6 features released between 1972 and 1974) is at once so shockingly audacious yet intoxicatingly artful, that any self-respecting cineaste has got to love it…for its sheer moxie, if nothing else. As critic Patrick Macias writes in the booklet that accompanies Criterion’s box set:

“[…] the Lone Wolf and Cub series contains some of the best sword-slinging, Buddhist-sutra-spouting samurai fiction ever committed to celluloid, enriched with the beauty of Japan’s natural landscape and seasoned with the vulgarity of its pop entertainment…”

Erm, what he said. Admittedly, the narrative is minimal, and the basic formula for all the sequels is pretty much established in the first installment: A shogun’s executioner (played throughout by the hulking but surprisingly nimble Tomisaburo Wakayama) loses his gig and hits the road as an assassin-for-hire, with his toddler son (Akihiro Tomikawa) in tow. Actually, he’s pushing the kid around in a very imaginatively weaponized pram (as one does). These films are almost beyond description; but they are consistently entertaining.

Criterion does the usual bang-up job on image and sound with crisp 2K digital restorations on all six films. The hours of extras includes a hi-def print of Shogun Assassin, a 1980 English-dubbed reedit of the first two films. A real treat for movie buffs.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (The Criterion Collection) – Some have called this 1971 Robert Altman gem an “anti-western”, but I’ve always thought of it as more of a “northwestern”. The setting is a turn-of-the-century Pacific Northwest mining town called Presbyterian Church. To call this burg “rustic” is an understatement; there’s definitely some room for urban improvement. All it takes is an entrepreneurial visionary, like gambler John McCabe (Warren Beatty) who rides into town one blustery day to find his fortune. He quickly gleans that the most assured way to profit off the motley (and mostly male) locals would be to set up a brothel. The only thing he lacks is business acumen, which (lucky for him) soon arrives in the person of an experienced madam (Julie Christie). Once the two cement a (mostly) professional partnership, their enterprise really takes off…until evil corporate bastards intervene, in the form of a ruthless and powerful mining company.

As he had done with the war movie genre with his surprise 1970 hit M*A*S*H, Altman likewise turned the western on its ear with this entry. Thanks to the great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, the film is imbued with an immersive naturalism that wasn’t replicated until…well, Zsigmond (!) photographed Michael Cimino’s western Heaven’s Gate nearly 10 years later (interestingly, Cimino’s film shares a similar “little guy vs. the Big Corporation” theme). Altman’s use of Leonard Cohen’s music remains one of the most wonderfully symbiotic marriages of sound and vision in American film (even more poignant now with Cohen’s recent passing). The new 4K transfer is stunning. Extras include a new making-of doc, and an Altman commentary track recorded in 2002.

One-Eyed Jacks (The Criterion Collection) – Marlon Brando only directed one film…but it’s a doozey. A “western” with numerous beach scenes and artful shots of crashing surf? That’s only a sampling of the unique touches in this off-beat 1961 drama (which began as a Stanley Kubrick project). It was widely panned, but has come to be anointed as a near-classic. It shares more commonalities with film noir than John Ford; not only in mood and atmosphere, but in its narrative (adapted by Guy Trosper and Calder Willingham from Charles Nieder’s novel), which is a brooding tale of crime, obsession and revenge (which puts it in league with western noirs like Johnny Guitar and Day of the Outlaw).

Brando plays a suave bank robber who (unwittingly) takes the fall for his partner-in-crime/mentor (Karl Malden) after a botched heist. After doing hard time, Brando sets off in search of his old “friend”. The relationship between the two men is decidedly Oedipal (the Malden character is even given the helpful surname “Dad”). It’s one of Brando’s most charismatic performances (naturally, he gives himself plenty of choice close-ups), with some excellent support from Malden, Katy Jurado, Ben Johnson, and Slim Pickens.

Criterion’s edition is a godsend for fans of the film, as it represents the first proper (and fully sanctioned) video transfer for home consumption. The film had fallen into the dreaded “public domain” for a number of years, resulting in a number of dubious DVD and Blu-ray editions all basically working with the same washed-out print. But now, with a restored print and beautiful 4K transfer, you can clearly see why DP Charles Lang’s work earned the film an Academy Award nomination (if not a win) for Best Cinematography. Extras include a Martin Scorsese introduction and several film essays.

The Quiet Earth — (Film Movement Classics) – In the realm of “end of the world” movies, there are two genre entries in particular, both from the mid-80s, that I have become emotionally attached to (for whatever reason). One of them is Miracle Mile (my review), and the other is this 1985 New Zealand import, which has garnered a huge cult following.

Bruno Lawrence (Smash Palace) delivers a tour de force performance, playing a scientist who may (or may not) have had a hand in a government research project mishap that has apparently wiped out everyone on Earth except him. The plot thickens when he discovers that there are at least two other survivors-a man and a woman. The three-character dynamic is reminiscent of a 1959 nuclear holocaust tale called The World, the Flesh and the Devil, but it’s safe to say that the similarities end there. By the time you reach the mind-blowing finale, you’ll find yourself closer to Andrei Tarkovsky’s territory (Solaris).

Director Geoff Murphy never topped this effort; although his 1992 film Freejack, with Mick Jagger as a time-traveling bounty hunter, is worth a peek. Film Movement’s Blu-ray features a gorgeous 2k transfer, and a commentary track by critic Odie Henderson and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (although-even Tyson can’t explain that ending!).

# # #

Here’s a few additional gift ideas for you…there are some enticing Blu-ray reissues due out between now and Christmas, and all are available for pre-order: The Twilight Zone: The Complete Series , The Roddenberry Vault,
The Asphalt Jungle (Dec. 13), Dreamscape(Dec. 13), Roma(Dec. 13), and Hitchcock/Truffaut (Dec. 20).

More reviews at Den of Cinema

–Dennis Hartley

The letter that changed the world


by digby

I’m just putting this out there for the record. As Nate Silver points out here, a handful of votes in across several states are what made the difference in this last election and the reason it happened was because of James Comey.

Clinton “should have” won by 20 points, just to be sure, and should have been a different person and should not have tempted fate by even running in the first place when she knew the media was determined to take her down at long last. She should have known that she could not win. All of those things are true and in retrospect she probably wishes she hadn’t bothered and had let Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders face that odious homunculus handed freak from outer space.

Nonetheless, she came close to winning with almost three million more people, voters, choosing her over said odious, homunculus handed freak from outer space and there’s no evidence that failing to campaign more in certain states would have made the difference. What made the difference was the most powerful lawman in the nation smearing her in the last week of the election.  There are many reasons we can point to, but that is the one that nobody can dispute because the polling in both campaigns showed the drop. 

Here’s where we are:

A lesson for everyone

by digby

I guess we all know why Trump had that satanic look on his face now, don’t we? He never had any intention of nominating him. He just wanted to make him grovel before him. Then he stuck the shiv in and twisted it.

Any rival or opposition who tries to co-opt him is going to meet the same fate. He’s not “someone we can work with.” He’ll use you, but you will be his lackey.
I hope Democrats pin this picture on their wall and look it every morning.

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Leveraged to the hilt

by digby

Josh Marshall wrote this last week and I think he might just be right. He’s talking about Trump’s massive conflicts of interest and his outright refusal to divest. And he surmises something that makes sense to me:

Maybe he can’t divest because he’s too underwater to do so or more likely he’s too dependent on current and expanding cash flow to divest or even turn the reins over to someone else.

Late this afternoon we got news that Trump will remain as executive producer of The Apprentice, now starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. That is, quite simply, weird. The presidency is time consuming and complicated, even for the lazier presidents. Does Trump really need to do this? Can he do it, just in terms of hours in the day? Of course, it may simply be a title that entitles him to draw a check. But does he need the check that bad?

The idea that Trump is heavily leveraged and reliant on on-going cash flow to keep his business empire from coming apart and collapsing into bankruptcy was frequently discussed during the campaign. But it’s gotten pretty little attention since he was elected.

Here’s something else.

After Trump got into that scuffle with Boeing, reporters asked about his ownership of Boeing stock. Trump replied that he’d already sold that stock. So there was no problem. But there’s a bit more to it than that.

According to his spokesman, Trump sold all of his stock back in June, a portfolio which his disclosures suggest was worth as much as $38 million. Trump told Matt Lauer that he sold the stock because he was confident he’d win and “would have a tremendous … conflict of interest owning all of these different companies” while serving as President.

Now, c’mon. Donald Trump sold off all his equities more than six months before he could become president because he was concerned about conflicts of interest? Please. That doesn’t pass the laugh test.

But consider this. During the primaries Donald Trump loaned his campaign roughly $50 million. Over the course of the spring, as it became increasingly likely he’d be the nominee, that loan became increasingly conspicuous. Donors were wary of donating big money because they didn’t want him to use it to pay himself back for that loan. Many suggested that he might not actually be able to part with that money. It became a big issue and Trump refused to forgive the loans.

It was only in June that Trump finally gave in and forgave the loan; this was confirmed in the June FEC disclosure that came out in late July. Who knows why Trump sold off all his stock holdings? Maybe he just had a feeling. Maybe he thought the market was too hot. Maybe he just had a spasm of prospective ethical concern. But let’s be honest. The most obvious explanation is that forgiving that debt from his campaign required him – through whatever mix of contingencies – to free up more cash, either for the campaign or personal expenses or perhaps to have a certain amount of cash on hand because of terms of other debts. It does not seem plausible at all that the timing is coincidental.

Since we don’t have Trump’s tax returns, there’s just a huge amount we don’t know about his businesses. What we do know is that Trump appears to wildly exaggerate the scale of his wealth and exhibit a stinginess that is very hard to square with a man of the kinds of means he claims. A heavily leveraged business, one that is indebted and dependent on cash flow to keep everything moving forward, can be kind of like a shark. It has to keep moving forward or it dies.

Perhaps Trump simply doesn’t feel like he can trust anyone else to keep the whole shambling enterprise afloat. More plausibly, and consistent with Trump’s history over the last couple decades, Trump’s business is dependent on an ever expanding number of deals not just to grow but to stay afloat at all. It is certainly plausible that if Trump simply sold off his company in toto, he’d be in debt. Maybe there wouldn’t be anything left to put in a blind trust.

I don’t actually believe he sold his stock back in June. But if he did, this is the most plausible reason he did it.

It’s entirely possible that the whole thing is a sham and that he actually needs the boys to sell  “the President Brand” in order to keep his alleged empire afloat.  It always stuck me a suspicious that any billionaire would need to sell steaks and an airport conference room scam like Trump University. It doesn’t make sense. A billion dollars works for itself. You don’t have to do anything to become richer. Why would you get involved in a penny ante scheme like that — or any of the penny ante real estate “branding” deals he’s been involved in over the past few years if you didn’t need the money?

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Your vocabulary word of the day: Kakistocracy

by digby

Learn it, memorize it. It’s going to be important:

Kakistocracy:

Kakistocracy is a term meaning a state or country run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was first coined by English author Thomas Love Peacock in 1829, but was rarely used until the 21st century.

The word comes from the Greek words kakistos (κάκιστος; worst) and kratos (κράτος; rule), with a literal meaning of government by the worst people.[3] Despite its Greek roots, the word was first used in English, but has been adapted into other languages. Its Greek equivalent is kakistokratia (κακιστοκρατία), Spanish kakistocracia, French kakistocracie, and Russian kakistokratiya (какистократия).

English author Thomas Love Peacock first coined the term in his 1829 novel The Misfortunes of Elphin, with kakistocracy meaning the opposite of aristocracy (aristos in Greek (ἄριστος) means “excellent”).[8] In his 1838 Memoir on Slavery, U.S. Senator and slavery proponent William Harper compared kakistocracy to anarchy, and said it had seldom occurred due to the “honor” of human nature

“Anarchy is not so much the absence of government as the government of the worst — not aristocracy but kakistocracy — a state of things, which to the honor of our nature, has seldom obtained amongst men, and which perhaps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of the French revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most horrid flame. 

In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned—to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence.”

American poet James Russell Lowell used the term in 1876, in a letter to Joel Benton, writing, “What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people,’ or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?” 

Usage of the word was rare in the early part of the 20th century, but regained popularity in 1981. Since then it has been employed to negatively describe various governments around the world. It was frequently used by conservative commentator Glenn Beck to describe the Obama Administration.

The word returned to usage during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In February 2016, writer David Clay Johnston wrote that the United States was in danger of becoming a kakistocracy, “America is moving away from the high ideals of President Kennedy’s inaugural address — ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ Instead we see politicians who say they love America, but hate the American government.”

In May 2016, academic and blogger Amro Ali argued that kakistocracy was a word that needed to be revived, as the word had long fallen out of circulation and there was a pressing case to rehabilitate it as “stupidity in governance needs to be treated as a political problem, and kakistocracy can best capture this problem.” After an analysis of the word, the author concluded that “either kakistocracy gets used and thoroughly examined or a Trump presidency will force us to do so.”

In August 2016, Dan Leger of Canadian newspaper The Chronicle Herald predicted that a Trump victory in the U.S. presidential election would require renewed usage of the term “kakistocracy,” writing: “The kind of government he offers are so off the wall that words fail, or at least modern words do. So one from the Greek past has been revived to describe what the Trump presidency would mean, in the unlikely event he should be elected.” Leger compared the 2016 election with that of 1968, which featured two unpopular candidates. He wrote that after Richard Nixon won, he “established a kakistocracy of corruption, misuse of power and scandal lasting until he was driven from office in 1974.”

Yeah well, we ain’t seen nothing yet …

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by digby

I have no idea what’s true and what isn’t on this story. Tom does a nice job of laying it out in the post below.  I will just say that there have been a couple of elements that have always struck me as very strange in all this. The first is the involvement of Paul Manafort in the campaign which never made a lot of sense. He was known at the time of hire to be a guy who was involved with some very nefarious international figures, most recently in Ukraine and going all the way back to Ferdinand Marcos. He worked for free so it wasn’t about the money and he wasn’t a great friend of Donald Trump, although they had been acquaintances. His reputation was … not good.

He is said to still be advising the campaign, although not officially. He was asked about that yesterday and he said he wasn’t “active in the transition” whatever that means.

The other weird thing that has always stuck in my mind was this story:

While the original version of the Republican Party platform is not public and unavailable, news outlets reported that it contained language that included arming Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The version that passed, however, softened the language, saying America will provide “appropriate assistance” to Ukraine and “greater coordination with NATO defense planning.”

When Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort about how much influence Trump in changing the platform, Manafort denied any involvement. (Read about Manafort’s connections to pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians here).

Todd then asked where the idea came from, and added, “Everybody on the platform committee had said it came from the Trump campaign. If not you, who?”

Finally, Todd pressed the matter, asking if anyone on the Trump campaign wanted that change, to which Manafort answered: “No one, zero.”

So did Trump and his campaign influence the change? It’s hard to know for sure, and that’s why we’re avoiding putting this question on the Truth-O-Meter. But the evidence does suggest that Trump’s campaign was involved.

Trump said in an interview on ABC that he personally had nothing to do with the change, but did not give a clear answer to whether or not his campaign was involved.

George Stephanopoulos: “Then why did you soften the GOP platform on Ukraine?”

Trump: “I wasn’t involved in that. Honestly, I was not involved.”

Stephanopoulos: “Your people were.”

Trump: “Yeah. I was not involved in that. I’d like to — I’d have to take a look at it. But I was not involved in that.”

Stephanopoulos: “Do you know what they did?”

Trump: “They softened it, I heard, but I was not involved.”

As you can see, Trump says, “Yeah,” in response to a query that his campaign was involved. But it’s not clear if that’s the answer to a question, or just Trump filling space.

After these questions, Trump hints at why the platform may have changed .

“The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” Trump said. 

Independent reporting does seem to undercut Manafort’s denial of any involvement.

“The Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the new Republican platform won’t call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Republican foreign policy leaders in Washington,”  reported Josh Rogin in the Washington Post.

The column relies largely on the account of Diana Denman, a platform committee member from Texas and former Ted Cruz supporter, who proposed an amendment during a national security platform meeting to arm Ukraine against Russia. (Attempts to contact those at the meeting were unsuccessful.)

The article says that amendment was tabled after pro-Trump delegates were urged by Trump staffers to water down the provision. On Aug. 1, 2016, Rogin reiterated his point after Manafort and Trump both denied that they were involved.

In another article by Rogin, Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis weighed the costs of providing assistance to other nation states while speaking to European diplomats at the International Republican Institute.

“It’s okay to go out here and load your mouth up and say stuff and say, ‘Yeah we are going to come to your aid, we’re going to provide you arms, we’re going to come out and do all these things. But nobody has taken the time to think this through to its logical conclusion,” Clovis said. “What are the costs going to be to the United States, not just in Ukraine but also in NATO and also around the world?”

Other reports from people involved in the platform process say the Trump campaign was involved.

Maine delegate Eric Brakey told the Daily Beast he supported the change, which was pushed in part by the Trump campaign.

“Some staff from the Trump campaign came in and… came back with some language that softened the platform,” Brakey told the Daily Beast. “They didn’t intervene in the platform in most cases. But in that case they had some wisdom to say that maybe we don’t want to be calling… for very, very clear aggressive acts of war against Russia.”
Another delegate, Rachel Hoff of Washington, D.C., told the Daily Beast that it was “my understanding that it was Trump staff,” behind the change in language.

Steve Pifer, a foreign policy senior fellow and the Brookings Institute, said the United States has been directly involved with Ukraine by providing a fair amount of assistance to the country.

A Los Angeles Times article also said Trump “surrogates” intervened during the platform meeting. The other news articles about this situation site the Washington Post as evidence that Trump was involved, but it’s hard to use those news reports as evidence in this fact-check.

There were numerous stories about unnamed Trump observers — not representative delegates, which would be normal — at the platform committee intervening in this process, demanding changes and being on the phone the whole time getting guidance from afar. Perhaps this wouldn’t have been unusual except it’s reported that this is the only reported time this happened.

It struck me as weird at the time. It’s true Trump was running on an anti-NATO platform and was pretty clearly seeking to completely change the world global order with a new tilt toward an American Russian alliance against Western Europe and China, with a particular anti-Muslim focus. He is so inarticulate and stupid that it was hard to sort out what he was talking about at any particular moment but when you look at the whole of his campaign it was pretty clear that this is where it was going.

But this was a very specific move to tell someone that a Trump administration would lift the economic sanctions that are biting the Russian oligarchs hard at the moment. I don’t know who they were trying to tell but it wasn’t the American people.

Anyway, this story isn’t going away. Trump’s damaged goods in so many respects it’s hard to see how he’s going to function. He’s grotesquely corrupt and unqualified. But we knew that already. This story, as Tom illustrates below, implicates the entire Republican Party.

And it certainly raises questions about James Comey’s actions in the 10 days before the election when he chose to drop his letter about the Anthony Weiner laptop so close to the election that the Clinton campaign did not have time to recover. When Comey did that he was sitting on this much bigger bombshell and chose to do something that would damage the Clinton effort. That says everything.

The possibility of Russian government interference in the election is a huge deal. If they did it with the intention of electing Trump — and we only know this from unnamed CIA officials saying they know that the Russians also hacked the RNC and other GOP officials and those emails were never released — I’m not sure how Trump ever recovers whatever small shred of credibility he had. This political crisis is becoming overwhelming and I’m unsure where it’s going to end up.

But personally, as a civil libertarian, I remain most offended by the actions of the FBI and James Comey. He is the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country, and unlike Russians, he’s sworn to uphold the constitution and be an unbiased actor in our political system. What he did was unconscionable on every level. This Russian story just adds another layer to the historic ignominy of his behavior.

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With a little help from his druzya
by Tom Sullivan

Lots of Twitter buzz last night over news of a secret CIA report that concludes Russian hacking ahead of the election intended not only to undermine confidence in America’s election process, but also to help Donald Trump win the presidency. The CIA briefed “key senators” in a closed-door meeting this week, the Washington Post reports:

Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, according to U.S. officials. Those officials described the individuals as actors known to the intelligence community and part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and hurt Clinton’s chances.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on an intelligence presentation made to U.S. senators. “That’s the consensus view.”

The report comes on the heels of news that Obama ordered a “full review” of Russian interference with the 2016 elections. Please read the entire report, but carefully. The Post continues:

The CIA presentation to senators about Russia’s intentions fell short of a formal U.S. assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies. A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

Somebody(s) in those briefings wanted this information leaked. Or the briefers gave their briefings expecting this information would be leaked. So before everyone rushes out to check for Russians hacking their woodpiles, Marcy Wheeler urges some caution:

Remember: we went to war against Iraq, which turned out to have no WMD, in part because no one read the “minor disagreements” from a few agencies about some aluminum tubes. What we’re being told is there are some aluminum tube type disagreements.

Let’s hear about those disagreements this time, shall we?

The New York Times added that the intelligence assessment that Russia has trying to help Trump came with “high confidence” despite the unspecified “minor disagreements” noted above. The Times reports:

They based that conclusion, in part, on another finding — which they say was also reached with high confidence — that the Russians hacked the Republican National Committee’s computer systems in addition to their attacks on Democratic organizations, but did not release whatever information they gleaned from the Republican networks.

In the months before the election, it was largely documents from Democratic Party systems that were leaked to the public. Intelligence agencies have concluded that the Russians gave the Democrats’ documents to WikiLeaks.

According to the Post, the actors who transmitted the hacked documents were not Russian government officials, but middlemen. “Moscow has in the past used middlemen to participate in sensitive intelligence operations so it has plausible deniability.”

One other key item to note: Seeking to craft a bipartisan public response to “the threat posed by unprecedented meddling by a foreign power in our election process,” the White House first brought this information to Congress in mid-September where it went to die.

Mitch McConnell argued against maintaining united front on US's belief that Russia tried to swing election:https://t.co/e5UeBAW8qm pic.twitter.com/Zl1Gfh2vmO— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) December 10, 2016

One thing you can always count on, though: Mitch McConnell acted like Mitch McConnell.

Trump cultists will of course ignore this story (unless they threaten the reporters). Because Make America Great Again for kleptocrats. Not that I’ve seen anything to provoke the following tweet, but give them time.

Why are the same angry young men who tweet the most about revolution now telling us to shrug & get over a foreign power deciding presidency?— Elias Itzkovitz (@eliasisquith) December 10, 2016

Friday Night Soother: sloths FTW

by digby

I think we need some baby sloths tonight. And a good stiff drink:

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