Month: October 2017

But not to last: Blade Runner 2049 (***½)

By Dennis Hartley

(Please note before reading: I have kept my review of Blade Runner 2049 as spoiler-free as possible; however, be advised of a “spoiler alert” regarding certain aspects of Blade Runner, the original 1982 film…in the slim chance you’ve never seen it, yet still plan to).

****************

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found in every phylum and order including the arachnida.

—from “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick

What truly defines “being human”? Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote that “existence precedes and rules essence”. One must assume that he was talking about human beings, because after all, he was one, offering his (“its”?) definition as to what “being human” is.

Which begs this question: what sparks “existence”? To which people usually answer some “thing” or some “one”. I opened my 2015 review of Neill Blomkamp’s Chappie with this quote from the mathematician/cryptologist I.J. Good (an Alan Turing associate):

Let an ultra-intelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man…however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultra-intelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion’, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus, the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.

Such questions and suppositions form the core of Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi noir about a dystopian near-future where the presence of commercially manufactured “replicants” (near-humans with specialized functions and a built-in 4-year life span) has become routine. Should there ever be a need to ascertain whether “someone” is a human or a replicant, a procedure called the “Voight-Kampf” test is administered. In essence, this series of questions (in conjunction with careful monitoring of autonomic physical responses like heart rate) determines whether or not the subject has empathy for others.

In one scene, “blade runner” Deckard (Harrison Ford), whose job is to hunt down and “retire” aberrant replicants, reluctantly indulges the creator/CEO of the company that manufactures them by giving the test to the CEO’s assistant (a woman Deckard has no reason to suspect as being anything but human). When “Rachel” (Sean Young) does turn out to be a replicant, the usually unflappable Deckard is agog; once he’s informed “she” (an advanced prototype) is completely unaware she’s not an employee of the company but rather its “product”, he’s perplexed. “How could it not know what it is?” he demands.

In The Philosophy of Neo-Noir (edited by Mark T. Conard), there is an essay with a unique angle on the film by Judith Barad, called “Blade Runner and Sartre”. She writes:

Although the replicants of Blade Runner are engineered to act and reason as humans, they can’t choose their own essence. This inability is, in Sartre’s view, what differentiates any manufactured being from humans. The replicants fulfill a certain function; as members of a series, they didn’t choose their essence. […]
To be human means to create oneself–the emotions one chooses to feel, the beliefs one chooses to retain, and the actions one chooses to perform. […]

In Sartre’s terms, Deckard thinks of replicants as things that exist only to fulfill the essence, the purpose created for them by human beings. At the same time, he is unaware that he has allowed his society to program this belief, a prejudice, into his mind. […]

Blade Runner and Sartre urge us to escape this programming and become authentically human.

If you are a fan of the film, you are likely aware that the biggest unanswered questions left hanging after the credits rolled regarded the two lovers on the lam: a) Was Rachel’s “authentically human” sense of empathy programmed…or was she truly the breakthrough that her “creator” seemed to infer by his cryptic comment that she was “special”? and b) the biggie I’ve seen people nearly come to blows over: Was Deckard himself a replicant?

Questions…

I imagine the most burning question you have about Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is: “Are all the ‘big’ questions answered?” Don’t ask me. I just do eyes. Which is to say, this is a difficult film to review without risking spoilers, so I am not going into any great detail on plot points (the least I can do for those of you who have made it this far into my “review” and are starting to worry you’ve stumbled into a Philosophy 101 class).

I can assure you that I am not a replicant, because when I originally heard someone was going to tackle a sequel to such an idiosyncratic classic with a loyal cult following, I was fully prepared to have empathy for whoever ended up at the helm. Ridley Scott was originally slated to do it himself, but for whatever reason or circumstance ended up as producer, with Villeneuve directing. I can’t help but speculate that he felt the same pressure that Peter Hyams surely experienced making 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

As implied in the title, the story is set 30 years after the events in the original film. The protagonist is a blade runner named “K” (Ryan Gosling) who, like Deckard, works for the LAPD. Newer-model replicants are more docile (like electric sheep?). However, there are still enough of the older, buggier models lurking out there in the ether to warrant keeping the blade runners on active duty. This is evidenced right out of the gate, as we watch K being left with no choice but to “retire” a truculent gentleman out in the boonies.

When K detects skeletal remains in a shallow grave on the recently retired replicant’s property, it sets off an investigation that catches the keen interest of many parties, from K’s commanding officer at the Department (Robin Wright) to the powerful CEO of the monopolistic android-manufacturing Tyrell Corporation (Jared Leto). And yes, one Rick Deckard as well (Harrison Ford). What ensues actually has less in common with the original Blade Runner…as it does with Children of Men, Logan’s Run, and Angel Heart.

Bad news first? The storyline is not as deep or complex as the film makers undoubtedly want you to think. The narrative is essentially a 90 minute screenplay (by original Blade Runner co-scripter Hampton Fancher and Michael Green), stretched to a 164-minute run time. But the “language” of film is two-fold, aural and visual; and the visual language of Blade Runner 2049 is mesmerizing. This is due in no small part to the artful eye of cinematographer Roger Deakins (Sid and Nancy, Stormy Monday, Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, A Beautiful Mind, Skyfall, et.al), who really knocks it out of the park.

While I alluded to the lengthiness of the film (and you will need to clear some time), I was never bored. In fact, I savored the leisurely pace and immersive visuals; so many sci-fi films these days are needlessly assaultive on the eardrums and jarringly flash-cut so as to induce vertigo (keep in mind that cerebral sci-fi films like Kubrick’s 2001 and Tartovsky’s Solaris were panned upon initial release as being slow-moving or overlong).

Gosling delivers another one of his Steve McQueen-ish performances (which some might call deadpan…but it works). In addition to Ford (who has 10 minutes or so of screen time), there is a cameo that should delight fans of the original (and his origami skills have not waned). Leto’s choices are…interesting; they may have better served him as a Bond villain; ditto for his “henchwoman” (played with aplomb by Sylvia Hoeks), recalling Famke Janssen’s “Xenia Onatopp” in Goldeneye. Ana de Armas does the best she can as a holographic companion that feels lifted from Steve De Jarnatt’s 1988 film Cherry 2000.

All in all, Villeneuve has made a sequel that faithfully adheres to the ethos and the physical universe of the original film. It doesn’t necessarily add anything to the original; nor on the other hand does it diminish its “stand-alone” status. You may not find answers to all of those questions I discussed earlier, but you may find yourself still thinking about it long after the credits roll. After all, as the acrobatic “Pris” declared in the 1982 film (by way of quoting Descartes), “I think, therefore I am.” Isn’t that what makes us human? OK, that character was a replicant, but that’s beside the point. At least she “lived”, right?

But then again, who does?

Previous posts with related themes:

Computer Chess
Marwencol
Max Headroom
Robot and Frank
9
Metropolis (Anime version)
Prometheus

On Facebook
On Twitter

–Dennis Hartley

What white nationalists? Where? Here?

by digby

The values voters summit is this week-end and it’s featuring all their favorite leaders.

For five years, Susan Blake has driven 14 hours from her home in South Florida to Washington, D.C. for the Values Voters Summit. The annual trip allows the 59-year-old small business owner to meet other Christians and to hear Republican lawmakers talk about their faith and their efforts to push legislation that aligns with her religious beliefs.

And for the first time this year, Blake said she was excited to hear the president address the event. “It feels good. It feels like we have taken our power back,” Blake told ThinkProgress. “I love President Trump. He’s really evolved… He has a biblical worldview now as opposed to just a billionaire’s worldview.”

Trump has a complicated relationship with Christian nationalists, who have looked past his questionable personal history, including his multiple marriages and many allegations of sexual abuse, and helped propel him to the White House. As he spoke on Friday, religious voters gave him multiple standing ovations and said they’re also willing to look past his indiscretions.

Trump’s presidency has also brought a slew of nontraditional Republicans in the White House, including many from Breitbart News. The self-described “platform for the alt-right,” Breitbart has published stories that claim birth control makes women unattractive and crazy, that gay rights make us dumber, and that fat-shaming “works,” among myriad other fringe claims.

This week, it was revealed in an investigation by BuzzFeed News that Breitbart Executive Chairman Steve Bannon helped direct white supremacist and Nazi beliefs into the mainstream. As an adviser to Trump, Bannon capitalized on simmering resentment, hate, and racism, elevating white supremacist voices and feeding their beliefs into the White House.

Bannon will speak to the the summit on Saturday, along with Sebastian Gorka, a man who aired his Islamophobic beliefs in Breitbart before serving as a White House national security adviser until August.

Christian voters attending the summit told ThinkProgress Friday they’re excited to hear from both men, who they don’t see as propagating hate speech. Just one of the attendees ThinkProgress spoke with was aware of Bannon’s connection to racist groups.

“I don’t think that Steve Bannon or anybody at Breitbart is hateful,” Blake said. “I don’t know where people come up with this.”

Summit attendees also dismissed evidence that Bannon and others at Breitbart worked with the billionaire Mercer family both to get Trump elected and to mainstream white nationalist ideology.

“Maybe I’m just naive,” Blake continued. “From what I know of Steve Bannon and listening to Breitbart News, I don’t see them as white nationalists.”

“I do not support the white nationalist, alt-right, KKK, whatever you want to call them,” said Martha Boneta, the executive vice president for Citizens for the Republic, a group founded by former President Ronald Reagan. “They are not a part of my belief systems or my values and I unequivocally condemn them. Anybody that has anything to do with those groups I want nothing to do with.”

Boneta said she had no knowledge of Bannon and other Breitbart staff members’ connection to the people she says she condemns.

“I absolutely don’t believe that they’re affiliated with them,” she said. “I’ve never heard them speak about any of these groups in favor of them. I’ve never heard them encourage hateful actions. I don’t attribute them to these hate groups.”

Mandeville, Louisiana-resident Denise Hopkins called it “absolute nonsense” that Bannon gave a platform to white nationalists.

“You know what’s emboldened neo-Nazis?” she countered. “Eight years of the previous regime saying ‘all white people are terrible and you have to pay back for what someone did 200 years ago’ and stir up racial stuff.”

But some attendees took note of Bannon’s presence on the schedule and his connection to hate groups. Nathaniel Lance, the advocacy and communications manager for International Christian Concern, said he frequently doesn’t support the things that Bannon and Gorka say.

“Obviously they have a right to speak. I have no issue with that,” he said. “As long as the group is not endorsing their comments. Now I understand that having them here speaking is kind of a tacit endorsement, and so that makes me a little uncomfortable.”

They believe what they want to believe. As long as he isn’t gay, I guess they’re fine with anything he does. And even then, at this point I think they’d probably all roll with that too. Many of them read Breitbart obviously and have no problem with Milo. Michael Flynn feted him like a rock star.

It’s all just depressing as hell because we all know that there are many Democrats looking for ways to appease these people by selling out people of color and women (or at least telling them to go sit in the back of the bus and be quiet) so they can appeal to these people. It won’t work. It never works. They are right wing extremists in every way, not just religious conservatives. You can’t break them off with appeals to their “traditional morality” because they don’t believe in it themselves. It’s obviously a pose. But you knew that. Look at Ted Haggart, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker — pretty much all of them.

.

.

Comedy gold

by digby

This is real:

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release 

October 13, 2017

President Donald J. Trump Proclaims October 15 through October 21, 2017, as National Character Counts Week

NATIONAL CHARACTER COUNTS WEEK, 2017

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

We celebrate National Character Counts Week because few things are more important than cultivating strong character in all our citizens, especially our young people.  The grit and integrity of our people, visible throughout our history, defines the soul of our Nation.  This week, we reflect on the character of determination, resolve, and honor that makes us proud to be American.

As President Reagan declared, “There is no institution more vital to our Nation’s survival than the American family.  Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished.”  Character is built slowly.  Our actions — often done first out of duty — become habits ingrained in the way we treat others and ourselves.  As parents, educators, and civic and church leaders, we must always work to cultivate strength of character in our Nation’s youth.

Character can be hard to define, but we see it in every day acts — raising and providing for a family with loving devotion, working hard to make the most of an education, and giving back to devastated communities.  These and so many other acts big and small constitute the moral fiber of American culture.  Character is forged around kitchen tables, built in civic organizations, and developed in houses of worship.  It is refined by our choices, large and small, and manifested in what we do when we think no one is paying attention.

As we strive every day to improve our character and that of our Nation, we pause and thank those individuals whose strength of character has inspired us and who have provided a supporting hand during times of need.  In particular, we applaud families as they perform the often thankless task of raising men and women of character.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 15 through October 21, 2017, as National Character Counts Week.  I call upon public officials, educators, parents, students, and all Americans to observe this week with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirteenth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand seventeen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-second.

DONALD J. TRUMP

No words against Dear Leader

by digby

They’re getting more explicit about it. I posted this before:

But this is where it’s really going. Bannon says that you can’t criticize or mock the Commander in Chief while we have “kids” in the field.

Bannon slams GOP senators for not denouncing Corker, who “has mocked and ridiculed a commander-in-chief when we have kids in the field.” pic.twitter.com/IkHXj5BOsA

— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) October 14, 2017

First of all, Bannon and Trump had no trouble criticizing the last president, who also had “kids” in the field. But charges of hypocrisy are a waste of breath because these people don’tcare about that.

What’s more important is the fact that Bannon is now conflating criticizing the president with criticizing the troops, which is what Bannon and his fellow authoritarian white nationalists see as the underlying message of the anthem protests. The players aren’t just disrespecting the flag, they are disrespecting the military and the military is headed by Donald Trump. Therefore, they are disrespecting our Dear Leader.

.

They knew he was a snake before they let him in

by digby

I came across this and thought it was interesting:

Trump, card
By Maureen Callahan April 3, 2011

Just as in 2000, 2004 and 2008, Donald Trump says he’s seriously considering running for president.

Among other things Donald Trump has said he was going to do: buy and revive Tavern on the Green (2010); buy the New York Mets (2011); he claims to be “a billionaire, many times over,” yet lost a libel suit in 2009 against an author who asserted Trump was only worth between $150 million and $200 million. “We proved our case,” Trump insisted.

He has long boasted that he “screwed” Moammar Khadafy out of a substantial amount of money, which he then gave to charity, when the dictator attempted to rent space from Trump in 2009 — a highly dubious assertion he’s never backed up.

In May 2005, Trump announced — at a splashy news conference with gleaming built-to-scale models — his plans to reconstruct the Twin Towers, one foot higher than they were, and, in the process, destroy Daniel Libeskind’s Freedom Tower, now currently under construction.

That same month and year, the indefatigable egoist founded Trump University, which he described as “about knowledge, it’s about a lot of different things,” and said, “at Trump University, we teach success . . . it’s going to happen to you.” In 2010 the Better Business Bureau gave the online school a “D-” and he was forced to change the name to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.

In fairness, he did follow through on pronouncements to save Central Park’s Wollman Rink (now the Trump Wollman Skating Rink), and the late Ed McMahon’s home from foreclosure in 2008. He grew up watching McMahon, he said, and it was a sentimental choice. Of the dilapidated Wollman Rink, he wrote in 1987, “I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it.”

For such a self-proclaimed shrewd entrepreneur, one who likes to present himself as a three-dimensional thinker and negotiator nonpareil, Donald Trump seems to be driven by nothing so much as his id. (In response to Spy magazine’s go-to qualifier of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian,” Trump told Page Six, “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”)

Perhaps this is why few people in politics — despite the speech at CPAC, despite his numerous talk-show appearances, despite his booking at Iowa’s Lincoln Day Dinner in June — can agree on the level of Trump’s seriousness about a run for the Republican nomination. Is he really considering the cost he’ll bear, financially, physically and mentally? Or is this just another publicity stunt from the man who’s compared himself to P.T. Barnum?

“He’s made these feints before,” says Pat Choate, the economist who ran with Ross Perot in 1996. “He’s an interesting character. I hope he’s not running.”

“I think he has a good shot at the nomination,” says former Clinton adviser Dick Morris. “Ten or 12 years ago, when he flirted with it, he wasn’t that serious. I’m hearing from people in the business that he’s serious.”

“I think it’s just ego- and fame-driven, which is fine,” says James Joyner, founder and editor-in-chief of the online journal Outside the Beltway. “It wouldn’t make him the first in this town.”

“I know some of the people around him who are drilling down,” says former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, “and I think it’s something he’s genuinely interested in.”

A key GOP player in New York State, who would speak only off the record, says Trump’s recent cawing reminds him of something.

“In 1988, late in the election cycle, I got a call [from his people]: ‘How quickly can you get “Trump for President” signs done?’ We did them overnight. The next day we got a call: ‘Forget about it.’ I’ve been in politics a lot of years, and I’ve always found him to be a pompous ass.”

Aside from the hyper-inflated persona and repeated flirtations with a run, the difficulty in taking this Trump bid seriously can be boiled down to one thing: the birther stuff.

It’s been going on for weeks now, Trump hitting every talk show he can to discuss his serious doubts about where Obama was really born and is he really a Muslim, why can’t anyone remember knowing him as a child. The GOP establishment isn’t happy about it. Even Bill O’Reilly mocked Trump’s assertions, and aside from Morris — who thinks the birther talk “is within the foul lines” — everyone else who spoke with The Post thinks it’s a major tactical mistake.

“Politically, it’s truly dumb to do that,” says Choate, “because Barack Obama was born in the United States.”

“His attempt to appeal to the hard right with this birther nonsense that I can’t imagine he believes — he just comes across as such as clown, such a phony,” says Joyner.

Former RNC chair Steele concedes that the birther stuff “makes me chuckle,” but doesn’t think it undercuts Trump’s seriousness as a candidate, or further damages the brand of a party whose most compelling figures — Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann — are also its most divisive.

“He’s thinking he’s hitting one out of the park,” says Steele. “But look, Donald — you don’t have to prove how conservative you are by making these extreme statements.” (According to a CNN poll released this week, 42% of Republicans do not believe Obama was born here.)

In June 2008, Obama released his birth certificate, which was verified by Hawaiian state officials in October 2008 and June 2009. Yet: “I want Obama to show his birth certificate,” Trump said to the ladies of “The View” a few weeks ago. “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?”

This, by the way, from a man who said in 2008 that George Bush was a “terrible” president who “stinks,” and said that candidate Obama “has done an amazing job — he came from nowhere.” Right after Obama’s election, Trump surmised that Obama “has a chance to go down as a great president.”

Curiously, Trump’s never been asked to explain why, in the span of just 2 1/2 years, he’s gone from cheering Obama as America’s next great hope to publicly theorizing that he’s a secret Muslim terrorist just waiting for the go signal. (The Post tried, but Trump didn’t respond to our requests for an interview.)

One insider has an interesting theory: “I think, quite frankly, Trump’s not comfortable talking about all these other issues — foreign affairs, wars, the economy. What he lacks in substance, he makes up for with all these ancillary issues.”

And these ancially issues only contribute to Trump’s down-market approach to a possible run for president. It’s odd, given that Trump’s personal brand is built on outsized luxury, gilded everything. Living as we have with Trump all these years, most New Yorkers find him crass, gauche and self-aggrandizing. But to a large swath of middle America, the Trump name is associated with a pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic: He’s a man who made it, lost it, then made it again. He’s raised three children, none of whom have ever done anything publicly embarrassing. His penchant for obnoxious statements can also be read as refreshingly candid straight-talk — a stark contrast against the professorial Obama.

So while it’s not very presidential to be getting into it with Whoopi Goldberg on daytime TV, or injecting yourself in the melodrama that is Charlie Sheen, or simultaneously pimping the catfights on your reality show, Trump may be playing a longer game. After all, why come out so vehemently against same-sex marriage if not to appeal to voters in the Bible Belt? Is he willing to take a short-term hit in liberal New York to woo the conservative base?

“This is always the case with a celebrity coming into politics,” says Joyner. “They start out as a cipher, but as you run, you transform into an ordinary politician and take stances, alienate people. In terms of business dealings, I don’t know that branding yourself as a right-wing Bible Belt Christian Republican does you that well in New York City.”

Trump’s made some other, less glamorous tactical errors. In early March, Trump sent Michael Cohen, a vice president of the Trump Organization, to Iowa. A political neophyte, Cohen was nonetheless tasked with putting out feelers, seeing what kind of response Trump would generate. Cohen flew in on Trump’s private 727, a potential violation of Federal Election Commission regulations (at an estimated cost to the company of $125,000, the flight would exceed legal contributions).

“To show up in a chartered plane with TRUMP splashed across the side and not expect people to ask how it was funded — that’s just stupid,” Choate says.

Cohen also failed to return repeated messages from the New York Republican County Committee, which wanted Trump to speak at their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. Trump has since chosen to speak at the dinner — in Iowa.

“I was pissed off,” says Dan Isaacs, the committee chairman and issuer of said invites. “That’s not how you do things. He’ll never hear from me again.”

Cohen’s no longer advising Trump on a bid.

The sudden sidelining of Cohen — who’s described by one politico as “brusque, alienating, egocentric — perfect for the Donald” — has led some GOP operatives to believe Trump’s serious. One top GOP consultant told The Post that several possible candidates feel the same way and have begun oppositional research on Trump.

He’s also reportedly in conversation with Roger Stone, the highly controversial GOP strategist who worked for Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes. Former Reagan official Tom Pauken, now chairman of the Texas Workforce Commission, says he regularly gets emails from Stone touting Trump as the next president, which, Pauken says, make him laugh.

“I told Roger that I have a better chance of being president,” Pauken says. “I got no response.”

Trump’s also reached out to Tony Fabrizio, a top Republican strategist who worked on Bob Dole’s ’96 campaign. When asked if he thinks Trump really, truly means it this time, Fabrizio grasps for a politic answer: “Um . . .” He laughs. “Um . . . I get the sense that he’s more serious than he’s been in the past. Though I’m a firm believer in ‘Trust, but verify.’ ”

Ultimately, most everyone who spoke with The Post — Morris being the lone exception — believes Trump won’t run: that he doesn’t possess the self-discipline, isn’t interested in what it would take to acquire foreign policy bona fides, that he’ll never, ever disclose his financials.

“Successful businessmen generally think that because they’ve mastered one field, they can master the other,” says Fabrizio. “That’s not necessarily the case. For Trump to be successful” — even if he loses — “he has to run as though he wants to be successful. More will be expected of him. And Donald raises his own expectations unnecessarily.”

He just didn’t want to go up against Romney, a real plutocrat who would rival him as the big businessman or the incumbent with a high approval rating who had humiliated him in front of the media. He instinctively realized the terrain was much more favorable in 2016, especially in the general going up against an older women the media loathed and whom he could openly portray as being weak and inferior. And he could blatantly play the race card in ways that wouldn’t cause as many problems as it would have if he’d had to personalize it against a sitting president.

And it worked.

.

The bully using the bully pulpit

by digby

Thanks Trumpie!

The NFL players who have been kneeling during the national anthem as a way to protest police brutality aren’t winning any new fans, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds. But they are, increasingly, making their point to the public.

Asked to identify from a list the main reason for the players are protesting from a list, a 57 percent majority of Americans surveyed said it was in response to “police violence.” That’s up from 48 percent in a HuffPost/YouGov poll taken in late September. (Respondents were allowed to select multiple options.)

The percentage of self-described football fans who say they believe the protests are meant to target police violence has risen to 66 percent, a 13-point increase.

Just 26 percent of the public now considers the protests to be in large part against President Donald Trump, down from 40 percent in the previous survey. As before, relatively few ― 14 percent in the latest poll, and 12 percent in September ― agree with the Trump administration’s assertions that the protests are aimed at the American flag.

Building a movement
by Tom Sullivan

“There’s something about the fast-moving, ground-shaking political moment we’re in that defies the nomenclature we have,” Sarah Jaffe writes at New Republic. Hers is one of a trio of articles there this week that, as a group, map out the ground on which the left and the Democratic Party are either a) fighting, or b) building.

Bob Moser considers centrist New Democracy as a “risible relic with a fancy budget.” These are mainstream players with enough budget to persist in Washington way past their use-by dates, “a reassertion of the wealth-first economics, go-slow social progressivism, and hawkish foreign policy” that finished off the Democrats’ New Deal legacy in the 1990s. They are also (largely because they attract money) still taken seriously by the Washington establishment.

They are also the ones who, like clockwork, warn the sky will fall if Democrats get the least bit edgy in whom they promote for the presidency. Or else it’s McGovern Redux, as a recent Politico Magazine think(?) piece warned.

Moser writes:

The “no more McGoverns” argument has been recycled and appropriated by anti-liberal Democrats—with nips and tucks to suit the needs of the moment—in practically every presidential election since 1972. They wielded it like a tiki torch against Jesse Jackson’s populist insurgency in 1988, and invoked it to torpedo Howard Dean in 2004. And after its ironclad logic failed to derail Barack Obama in 2008, the “McGovern threat” was revived with a vengeance against Sanders in 2016.

The goal of these disinformation campaigns has always been the same: to frighten the left into falling in line with the moneyed masters of the party. And at a moment when the party is finally abandoning the New Democratic formula—suck up to big business and the military-industrial complex, pander to white supremacy, and win!—fear-mongering is the only thin reed of hope the “moderates” have to retain their supremacy in the party.

Republicans in 1980 “went with their hearts and minds,” Moser writes, in backing Ronald Reagan, and his politics dominated for nearly 30 years. Democrats who advocate caution and timidity now are not going to fare well in 2020.

Graham Vyse examines how Sen. Elizabeth Warren represents the soul of a party that has moved “decisively to the left.” Congressman Jamie Raskin, vice chair of Congressional Progressive Caucus, believes Warren represents a “kind of a return to the progressivism of the early 20th century” and is now “the center of gravity within the Democratic Party.”

Indeed, that was Warren’s declaration to progressive activists at Netroots Nation last August: “We are not the gate crashers of today’s Democratic Party. We are not a wing of today’s Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party.”

The American Prospect‘s Bob Kuttner calls her “the best progressive Democratic politician I’ve seen since Bobby Kennedy.” From blocking Barack Obama’s nomination of Larry Summers to chair the Federal Reserve to her confrontations with bankers, Warren has succeeded in “making pocketbook populism feel mainstream.” Not to mention how she’s become “a great inside player.”

Here again, party centrists sense their Beltway sinecures under threat:

Moderate Democrats won’t all agree that Warren has become the center of the party. But Warren elicits respect from unusual sources, including the man Bloomberg Businessweek once called “Wall Street’s Favorite Democrat”: Congressman Jim Himes, chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. Asked about Warren’s presidential prospects—and Walter’s contention that “the Warren platform” could end up as a litmus test for 2020—he said, “I think it’s possible. There’s a lot of energy on the left wing of the Democratic Party.” Though he hails from a district with “a huge amount of financial services,” the congressman offers plenty of praise for one of Wall Street’s harshest critics. “I’ve never sort of tallied it, but I agree with Elizabeth Warren on much of what she says,” he said. “I agree with a lot of what she puts out there.” He added, “The press desperately wants to foment or preserve the notion that there’s this massive split between the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren gang and the Clinton gang—between the progressives and the moderates—and it’s just not true.“

Third Way’s Jim Kessler is less generous, telling Vyse, “She represents a wing of the party, and she represents it well.” His pick? Joe Biden. But, Kessler admits, Warren might have greater appeal.

That’s why her politics are intriguing to Democrats of many stripes. “The contest between Sanders and Clinton reflected progressive populism and liberal feminism,” Raskin said. “Elizabeth Warren is someone who merges them both. You could view her as the synthesis of the divides in the party we had in the 2016 election—a candidate who would leave nothing out and leave nobody behind.” Polling shows her agenda, which overlaps significantly with Sanders’s, isn’t just popular with Democrats. Most voters supported a $15-an-hour minimum wage, according to Pew survey last year. “Broad, bipartisan majorities support debt-free higher education,” a Demos poll found last October. The notion that the system is rigged in favor of big corporations certainly isn’t out of step with public opinion. Like all progressives, Warren has work to do selling single-payer healthcare, which doesn’t yet have clear majority support. But enthusiasm for Medicare for All is growing among Democrats in Washington and across the country.

Which is to say Third Way and the New Democrat Coalition (New Democracy) are still trying to peddle a politics that is past its use-by date. And why the campaign of “a white, centrist, Harvard-educated war hero” seems so out of touch with the times as to not even evoke a sense of nostaliga.

Sarah Jaffe observes that what we see on the ground since November 8 is something new that horse-race journalism fails to capture. Left-wing activists have begun to win local races in unlikely places. Randall Woodfin, for example, who won a mayoral race in Birmingham, Alabama last week.

But these are not simply Sanders- or Warren-wing victories. The simplifying narratives employed in the press to explain the new energy in the grassroots not only shortchange what work has gone into building a new wave of activism. Jaffe believes “telling the story wrong lessens the chances that these unlikely wins can be replicated elsewhere.”

What is bubbling to the surface is the result of years of activism and movement-building:

Larry Krasner, a civil-rights attorney who won a shocking victory in May’s Democratic primary to be Philadelphia’s district attorney, told The Dig podcast that his work as a lawyer defending movements gave him a campaign army when he decided to run. “I think activists and organizers do politics better than politicians,” he said. “And that means that those of us who have been down with their causes and have supported them for a long time have credibility.”

In some places, newer faces on the scene have established credibility by leading newer movements. Atlanta’s khalid kamau (a Yoruba name, and thus lowercased)—a DSA member and co-founder of Atlanta Black Lives Matter and “fight for $15” stalwart—stunned the local Democrats by winning a city council seat in April.

The more radical demands of the newer movements have shifted the left’s political horizons and sharpened its demands. And its organizing skills and social-media savvy laid a path for activists like Krasner and kamau to move from relative obscurity to national name recognition. “Social movements expand the range of the possible and transform public opinion,” says Joe Dinkin of the WFP. “Larry never could have won had the Black Lives Matter movement not existed these last several years. The Black Lives Matter movement transformed how Americans thought about policing and about mass incarceration.”

People who have been engaged for years now have greater credibility with broader coalitions of support than they have for years. Those coalitions are not impressed by “just some person who has never spoken to these groups before, but all of a sudden is an advocate.”

The movement that supported Sanders in 2016 was simply too broad to lend itself to easy labeling, ranging as it did from the socialists of DSA to left-leaning Democrats who hadn’t been moved to hit the streets under President Obama. “There’s a much larger scale of people who are open to a left politics that’s a bit more moderate than your average DSA member but to the left of the Democratic party mainstream,” says Robertson. There are also those—like Randall Woodfin himself—who backed Clinton in the primary, but are to the left of the Democratic mainstream and have fought since the inauguration against Trump’s policies.

“In the age of Trump, most Democrats are in no mood to wait around and make slow progress when so much is under attack—voters want what they believe in and they want it now,” says Dinkin of the Working Families Party. “Trump has been part of awakening a new fervor and even militancy in voters.”

The problem national Democrats have is still believing top-down organizing will still work for them. All the energy is flowing from the bottom up.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Friday Night Soother

by digby

Friday night soother

It’s not just an old fable kids:

Here’s some fun for you vintage readers:

If you have to license guns, reporters should have to license themselves. Or something.


by digby

If I have to be licensed, so should reporters. Tee hee hee

This is another cutesy gun crusade troll designed to show that the inviolable right to mow down 600 people at a time is just as important and the right to free speech and a free press.  (Here’s another one from a couple of weeks ago trolling voting rights advocates.) Still, in this atmosphere you can imagine some people thinking this is a really good idea. If the press is critical of their Dar Leader, they have to do something, right?

An Indiana lawmaker has drafted a bill that would require professional journalists to be licensed by state police.

Rep. Jim Lucas had the measure drawn up earlier this year and said he may file it to drive home a point about his signature issue: gun rights.

“If you’re OK licensing my Second Amendment right, what’s wrong with licensing your First Amendment right?” he said.

The proposal comes as President Donald Trump continues to feud with national news outlets such as CNN and NBC.

“Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!” he tweeted Wednesday.

Lucas, a Seymour Republican, has been critical of media coverage of his efforts to repeal an Indiana law that requires a permit to carry a handgun. He said reporters, columnists and editorial boards frequently mischaracterize the idea, which is sometimes referred to as “constitutional carry.”

“If I was as irresponsible with my handgun as the media has been with their keyboard, I’d probably be in jail,” he said.

His proposal would require professional journalists to submit an application to the Indiana State Police. Journalists would be fingerprinted as part of the process and would have to pay a $75 fee for a lifetime license. Those with felony or domestic battery convictions would be prohibited from getting a license.

The proposal is almost an exact copy of Indiana’s law requiring a license to carry a handgun, which Lucas has tried to repeal unsuccessfully for several years. A panel of lawmakers is now reviewing the idea ahead of next year’s legislative session.

Adorbs.

.

This man lectures others about proper patriotic behavior?

by digby

Even I know that you’re supposed to STFU when they play “Retreat.”  Not that anyone who isn’t in the military should be required to do it. But he’s the Commander in Chief and he’s the one who is trying to get people fired for failing to stand for the National Anthem:

President Donald Trump clearly had no clue how to properly respect a longstanding military tradition on Wednesday night during his interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

As the president spoke to Hannity at an Air National Guard hangar in Middletown, Pennsylvania, the tune of “Retreat” was heard over the loudspeakers. The song is “part of a firmly rooted tradition that predates the American Revolutionary War; the U.S. military tune signals the start and end of the official duty day,” Task and Purpose reported.

“When the American flag is lowered and raised on US military installations, a bugle blares on loudspeakers as service members and civilians pay their respects to the flag.”

The tune “Retreat” is played at 5 p.m. every day and “is traditionally a time to secure the flag and pay respect to what it stands for,” according to the Defense Logistics Agency.

Trump heard the song on Wednesday, and instead — like everything else — made it about himself.

“What a nice sound that is,” he said, before asking Hannity, “Are they playing that for you or for me?”

But before Hannity could answer, Trump added, “They’re playing that in honor of his ratings. He’s beating everybody.”

Trump has repeatedly bashed and openly called for the firing of professional athletes who engage in a protest of racial injustice and police brutality during the national anthem.

But where was Trump’s respect for the military when he snubbed a longstanding tradition that he evidently had no idea even existed? It’s certainly interesting coming from someone who has claimed to know more than anyone about the military.

What a fucking moron.

In case you were wondering, this is the song:

.