Month: November 2017

Always the victims, no matter whatby digby

So a lot white Southerners believe that nobody loves them. As usual.

Nearly half of white American poll respondents living in the South feel like they’re under attack, a new Winthrop University poll found.

Forty-six percent of white Southerners polled said they agree or strongly agree that white people are under attack in the U.S. More than three-fourths of black respondents said they believe racial minorities are under attack.

And 30 percent of all respondents in the poll agreed when asked if America needs to protect and preserve its white European heritage. More than half of respondents disagreed with the statement.

Sure, their chosen president is in the White House. Conservatives have every branch of government. They have their own news media and it’s very powerful. Their numbers are smaller than in the past but white people are still a majority of the country and their “European heritage” is culturally dominant. But it’s not enough. It’s never been enough. If everyone doesn’t agree with them in word and deed, they are being “attacked.”

One more time, honest Abe said it all:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? … This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them

This sense of grievance is in the DNA of Southern white conservative culture. They fought a bloody war over it. But today only 46% take that attitude. Maybe by 2117, it’ll be under 20.

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Trump stands with his stongman bff, Vladby digby

I wrote about Trump and his new BFFs for Salon this morning:
Donald Trump’s excellent Asian adventure is almost over, and so far he hasn’t blown up the world. He sent Kim Jong-un a mean-girl tweet on Saturday, but it doesn’t seem to have inspired the North Korean dictator to set off any bombs, at least not yet. And Trump managed to get through a big speech in South Korea with just a couple of unintelligible teleprompter mistakes and only a brief digression into advertise his golf courses.

In Japan, Trump bonded once again with his old buddy “Shinzo” and reminisced about the early days of his presidency, when he was was surprised to learn “there were so many countries.” In China, he seemed as wide-eyed and awestruck by the pomp and pageantry as a six-year-old seeing the big Snoopy balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for the first time.

In fact, all the Asian countries went out of their way to put on a really big show for the president, making sure he knew that the show was bigger for him than any other president in history. They clearly saw that he was easily flattered and manipulated by watching his reaction to the trip to the Middle East earlier this year, when Saudi Arabia staged a glittering spectacle on his behalf and Trump glowed with visible pride that they recognized his greatness.

After all, he graciously responded later in June by shrugging off the Saudi-led blockade against Qatar, a longtime American ally, much to the surprise of his own Secretary of State. Saudi flattery is still paying off, with Trump apparently supporting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s arrest of his rivals, sending his right-hand man Jared Kushner to chew the fat with the young prince into the wee hours and later tweeting that he has “great confidence” in Prince Mohammed.

The Chinese clearly took a page from the Saudis’ book, feting Trump like a visiting emperor with nonstop accolades and what they called “state visit plus,” complete with the first tour of the Forbidden City ever offered to a visiting president, as well as parades, formal banquets and visits to the opera. Trump couldn’t have been happier, so much so that he pretty much decided that all of his complaints about Chinese trade practices on the campaign trail were actually the fault of his predecessors.

Trump didn’t come away with anything substantial. But his ego was stroked so masterfully that he believes that his “great chemistry” and “incredibly warm” feelings with Chinese President Xi Jinping are extraordinary accomplishments that solidify his place in the pantheon of great leaders. Indeed, Trump appears to think that all foreign policy rests on his own personal charisma and charm and that because these leaders are treating him like royalty they are all somehow in his power. The opposite, of course, is true.

As Peter Beinart pointed out in the Atlantic, this is a pattern with Trump. He insults foreign leaders mercilessly from afar but becomes obsequious and compliant in their presence. This goes back to his earliest such interaction during the 2016 campaign. Remember when he made that bizarre trip to Mexico to meet with President Enrique Peña Nieto and said it was a “great, great honor,” insisting he had “tremendous feelings” for the people he’d been demeaning for months as rapists and criminals? After that meeting, Trump flew straight to Phoenix and gave one of the most outrageously xenophobic speeches of his outrageously xenophobic campaign, praised by Ann Coulter as “the most magnificent speech ever given.” He is, in other words, a “sniveling coward,” in the words of no less an authority than Ted Cruz (now of course a loyal sycophant). It’s obvious that world leaders have figured this out.

There is one exception to this pattern, however. Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin is different. While Trump is just as unctuous in Putin’s presence as he is with other foreign leaders, he’s equally submissive from a distance. Indeed, he hasn’t said a harsh word about Putin or Russia for years and goes out of his way to defend the Moscow strongman. This trip was no exception.

There was no formal meeting between the two men at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Hanoi, but they reportedly had several informal discussions. Clearly, Trump was once again dazzled by the Russian leader. When the president finally held a freewheeling press conference aboard Air Force One on Saturday, he was asked whether he and Putin had discussed the issue of election interference, and responded this way:

He said he didn’t meddle. He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. Every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that’ and I believe, I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it. I think he is very insulted by it. Don’t forget, all he said is he never did that, he didn’t do that. I think he’s very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country.

Another reporter pressed him, asking, “Do you believe him?” Trump responded, “I think that he is very, very strong in the fact that he didn’t do it” and launched into a rant about John Podesta and the DNC server. He ended up by calling former CIA head John Brennan, former FBI director James Comey and former director of national intelligence James Clapper all “hacks,” before saying, “So you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that.”

Some people have contended that didn’t mean Trump necessarily agreed with Putin. But when you look at the entire quote in context, it’s clear that at the very least they are on the same wavelength on this issue: It didn’t happen, but if it did, neither one of them had anything to do with it.

Trump went even further in this latest round of denials, seeming to take the position that even if Putin is lying, he’s very insulted by the accusation, which is not as important as working with Russia on Syria and North Korea. He went so far as to say that “people will die” because “this artificial Democratic hit job” is getting in the way. In other words, we need to let Putin interfere in our elections, or the world gets it. For a would-be strongman, it’s hard to imagine weaker words than that.

On Sunday, Trump half-heartedly backtracked, saying, “I am with our agencies as currently constituted,” but the damage was done. He has spent the last week demonstrating to the world that the United States is led by a man who is so shallow and vain he can easily be outsmarted by any world leader willing to flatter him and put on a show. Allowing him to go overseas has become a threat to national security.

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Does this feel like freedom?
by Tom Sullivan

“Madness. Madness.”

The Memorial Day service in front of city hall a few years ago blared Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” over loudspeakers at the end of the program. As the song played in the plaza, a woman came out of the crowd holding an American flag and began dancing with it. It was a dervishy, solo flag-team kind of performance. She twirled and dipped and waved around the stars and stripes, gazing upon it as if in religious ecstasy.

“… where at least I know I’m free.”

Yeah, it was a little creepy. It was a preview of what has since become the alternative universe where the coal mines are coming back and everyone packs a pistol to celebrate freedom. We’ve seen over the last few days what else is alternative about that America. Sadly, that’s not the whole of it.

More Americans were displaced by the financial crisis than by the 1930s Dust Bowl. Fewer than one-third may ever own homes again.

Does this feel like freedom?

A generation of young people are unemployed or underemployed at double the national average. Employers pay them disporoportionally less when they do land jobs.

Does this feel like freedom?

“The basic problem,” writes David Leonhardt, “is that most families used to receive something approaching their fair share of economic growth, and they don’t anymore.” Yet few question the economic system they serve that no longer serves them.

Does this feel like freedom?

A gunman murders 59 and wounds over 500 at a country music concert.

Does this feel like freedom?

Innocent black women and men must worry when police approach that even if they comply with requests they might be gunned down, point-blank. Even when they called the police for help.

Does this feel like freedom?

Hate crimes have jumped by nearly 20 percent in major U.S. cities through much of this year, after increasing nationally by 5 percent last year.

Does this feel like freedom?

Police who once carried revolvers acquire grenade launchers, bayonets and large-caliber weapons. They deploy chemical weapons (“the new firehose“) against protesters, wear body armor, and carry military rifles in our streets. Many Americans approve.

Does this feel like freedom?

Bribe world soccer officials and they’ll face arrest for racketeering, bribery, money laundering and fraud. But Wall Street bankers can cheat millions out of billions, crash the world economy, commit systematic securities and foreclosure fraud, throw millions of families into the streets, and they draw a bailout from Uncle Sam and eight-figure bonuses. American justice cannot or will not hold them accountable.

Does this feel like freedom?

Yet authorities will jail you for being too poor to pay a fine, then charge you for your public defender and your upkeep in jail.

Does this feel like freedom?

A climate of fear haunts immigrants, both legal and undocumented, who fear to leave the house, to seek medical care, or to seek American justice for fear of arrest and detention.

Does this feel like freedom?

Blue collar jobs are gone and promises unkept in communities devastated by economic decline and hopelessness.

Does this feel like freedom?

As opioids devastated heartland communities, as “a drug distribution industry … shipped, almost unchecked, hundreds of millions of pills to rogue pharmacies and pain clinics,”
and as 200,000 died over the last decade, Congress and lobbyists covered the industry’s backside.

Does this feel like freedom?

Twenty-six are gunned down in rural Texas — men, women, children — because, we’re told, they didn’t go to church armed for a gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Americans respond by packing heat when they go to pray.

At least they know they’re free.

We just celebrated Veterans Day when, as on Memorial Day, we celebrate common citizens who once put themselves on the line in defense of the Constitution and our supposed freedoms.

But what are we prepared to do now about all this?

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

Politics and Reality Radio: A Trump-Approved Game of Thrones in Saudi Arabia; Paradise Papers Show We’re Being Robbed

This week, Joshua Holland offers a brief rant about one of the more prominent strawmen that’s been deployed to downplay the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

Then we’re joined by Madawi Al-Rasheed, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, to talk about Mohammad bin Salman, also known as “MBS” — the brash, young Saudi Crown Prince who consolidated an enormous amount of power in recent weeks by detaining over a dozen of his royal rivals and other senior Saudi officials. Al-Rasheed will help us understand not only what’s going on within the kingdom, but also the larger regional context of MBS’ dangerous power play.

Finally, we’ll speak with Gabriel Zucman, a professor at UC Berkeley and author of The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, about the so-called “Paradise Papers” — a treasure trove of leaked documents that reveal the tax avoidance strategies of the upper crust of the elite — and what they reveal about how tax havens screw the rest of us.

Playlist:
The Shins: “New Slang”
Rostam: “Bike Dream”
Manu Chao: “Bongo Bong”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.

The Strongman Cultby digby

Early on in the 2016 campaign it became clear to me that not only was Donald Trump in love with global strongmen, he was drawn instinctively to authoritarian style populism. I wasn’t alone, of course. Lots of people saw it. Two months after he joined the race in 2015, I wrote this for Salon.
I was talking about one of his early big rallies in Derry New Hampshire:

There was the standard braggadocio and egomania that characterizes his every appearance and weird digressions into arcane discussions of things like building materials (for The Wall, naturally.) He complained about the press and politicians and declared himself superior to pretty much everyone on earth. But after you listen to him for a while, you come away from that performance with a very unpleasant sense that something rather sinister is at the heart of the Trump phenomenon.

Trump was still talking when Chris Hayes opened his show that night with this comment:

I want to talk about what we are seeing unfold here because I think what we are seeing is past the point of a clown show or a parody. I believe it is much more serious and much darker…You have someone now who is getting huge crowds, who is polling at the top of the GOP field, who polls show is beating Jeb Bush by 44 to 12 percent on the issue of immigration, going around the country calling little children, newborn babies, anchor babies saying that he’s going to use that term which I find a dehumanizing and disgusting term. Talking about giving the local police the ability to “do whatever they need to do to round up” the “illegals”. Building a wall, talking about basically chasing 11 million people out, talking about deporting American citizens to “keep families together”, talking about what would essentially be the largest most intrusive police state in the history of the American republic to go about this task, that is the person that is right now at the head of the Republican party’s presidential contest.

And the delirious crowd applauded all those those things just as they loudly cheered this reference to Bowe Bergdahl, the American soldier held by the Taliban for more than five years:

“We get a traitor like Berghdal, a dirty rotten traitor, who by the way when he deserted, six young beautiful people were killed trying to find him. And you don’t even hear about him anymore. Somebody said the other day, well, he had some psychological problems.

You know, in the old days ……bing – bong. When we were strong, when we were strong.”

It’s that pantomime of him shooting Berghdahl dead and saying “when we were strong, when we were strong” that appeals so much.

Trump repeatedly paints a picture of America in decline — weak, impotent and powerless, in terrible danger of losing everything unless we get a leader who will cast off all this “political correctness,” this effete insistence on following the rules. He promises to “make America great again” by cracking down on the “bad people” and being very, very strong.

He didn’t hide it. He ran on it and he won.

This piece by Fareed Zakaria discusses how this dynamic is playing out all over the world:

The formula was honed by Vladimir Putin after he came to power in Russia. First, amplify foreign threats so as to rally the country around the regime and give it extraordinary powers. Putin did this with the Chechen war and the danger of terrorism. Then, move against rival centers of influence within the society, which in Russia meant the oligarchs — who at that time were more powerful than the state itself. Then talk about the need to end corruption, reform the economy and provide benefits for ordinary people. Putin was able to succeed on the last front largely because of the quadrupling of oil prices over the next decade. Finally, control the media through formal and informal means. Russia has gone from having a thriving free media in 2000 to a level of state control that is effectively similar to the Soviet Union.

Naturally, not every element of this formula applies elsewhere. Perhaps the crown prince will prove to be a reformer. But the formula for political success that he’s following is similar to what’s been applied in countries as disparate as China, Turkey and the Philippines. Leaders have taken to using the same ingredients — nationalism, foreign threats, anti-corruption and populism — to tighten their grip on power. Where the judiciary and media are seen as obstacles to a ruler’s untrammeled authority, they are systematically weakened.

In his 2012 book “The Dictator’s Learning Curve,” William J. Dobson presciently explained that the new breed of strongmen around the world have learned a set of tricks to maintain control that are far more clever and sophisticated than in the past. “Rather than forcibly arrest members of a human rights group, today’s most effective despots deploy tax collectors or health inspectors to shut down dissident groups. Laws are written broadly, then used like a scalpel to target the groups the government deems a threat.” Dobson quoted a Venezuelan activist who described Hugo Chávez’s wily blend of patronage and selective prosecution with an adage: “For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law.”

Classic centralized dictatorships were a 20th-century phenomenon — born of the centralizing forces and technologies of the era. “Modern dictators work in the more ambiguous spectrum that exists between democracy and authoritarianism,” wrote Dobson. They maintain the forms of democracy — constitutions, elections, media — but work to gut them of any meaning. They work to keep the majority content, using patronage, populism and external threats to maintain national solidarity and their popularity. Of course, stoking nationalism can spiral out of control, as it has in Russia and might in Saudi Arabia, which is now engaged in a fierce cold war with Iran, complete with a very hot proxy war in Yemen.

Dobson, however, did end the book expressing optimism that, in many countries, people were resisting and outmaneuvering the dictators. Yet what has happened since he wrote the book is depressing. Instead of the despots being influenced by democrats, it is the democrats who are moving up the learning curve.

Consider Turkey, a country that in the early 2000s seemed on a firm path toward democracy and liberalism, anchored in a desire to become a full-fledged member of the European Union. Today, its ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has eliminated almost all obstacles to total control. He has defanged the military and the bureaucracy, launched various kinds of tax and regulatory actions against opponents in the media, and declared one potential opposition group, the Gulenists, to be terrorists. The rulers of the Philippines and Malaysia appear to be copying from that same playbook.

This is not the picture of democracy everywhere, of course, but these tendencies can be spotted in far-flung areas of the world. In countries such as India and Japan, which remain vibrant democracies in most respects, there are elements of this new system creeping in — crude nationalism and populism, and increasing measures to intimidate and neuter the free press.

I’m sure you can see the formula at work here too.

Trump is a very stupid person without the kind of experience or vision of a Vladimir Putin.He doesn’t seem to be capable of learning on the job. Indeed, his unfitness to the task may be what saves us in the end. But this global trend toward the strongmen is concerning. In fact, it’s terrifying.

Update: This may have already taken on a life of its own. In fact, the US might even be ahead of the curve.

Deadman’s curve:

Steve Bannon has sent two of Breitbart News’ top reporters, Matt Boyle and Aaron Klein, to Alabama. Their mission: to discredit the Washington Post’s reporting on Roy Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct with teenagers.

A story that popped today — splashed over the Breitbart homepage — contains what the website claims is a major hole in the account of Leigh Corfman, who says Alabama Senate candidate, Moore, made sexual advances on her when she was 14 years old.

Klein reports from Birmingham, Alabama: “Speaking by phone to Breitbart News on Saturday, Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71, says that her daughter did not have a phone in her bedroom during the period that Moore is reported to have allegedly called Corfman – purportedly on Corfman’s bedroom phone – to arrange at least one encounter.”

Why this matters: It’s quite a head-scratcher as to why Breitbart thinks this bedroom phone detail matters. As Corfman’s mother told Breitbart “the phone in the house could get through to her easily.” Wells stands by her daughter’s allegations. But the fact Breitbart is running stories like this shows the extremes to which it may go to discredit Moore’s accusers.

Bottom line: This story is about to get even uglier, if that’s imaginable. I expect more counter-attacks will play out in Breitbart News and other outlets over the coming days.

Another hard truth: Many Alabama voters hold the mainstream media in such low regard that they’ve dismissed the Washington Post’s reporting entirely.

For a dose of this reality, check out this man-on-the-street segment from an ABC Alabama affiliate. Political reporter Lauren Walsh said: “Out of all the voters we spoke with Friday in Columbiana, we didn’t find one voter who believed the Washington Post report about Moore.”

And, for more on this theme, read the quotes in this NBC News report from Prattville, Alabama. The most shocking quote: “Inside the store, a man who declined to give his name said, ‘This is Republican town, man. (Moore) could have killed Obama, and we wouldn’t care.'”

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This is why I can’t sleepby digby

“Alt-right” white nationalist fascism is on the rise … everywhere. Maybe it’s just a passing fad. But maybe it isn’t:

Right-wing racists flew in from Slovakia, Hungary, and Spain to join tens of thousands of Poles at a white supremacist rally in Warsaw on Saturday where marchers bore signs with messages like “Europe Will Be White” and “Clean Blood.”

Reporters on hand said the crowd numbered roughly 60,000, citing police estimates. A polish neo-nazi group called The Radical Camp, borrowing its name from a 1930s fascist movement in the country, organized the march.

“A number of people in the crowd said they didn’t belong to any neo-fascist or racist organization but didn’t see a problem with the overall tone of what has become Poland’s biggest independence day event,” the Wall Street Journal noted.

Counterprotesters also showed up in far smaller numbers. One small group in the square held a sign reading “We are Polish Jews” and stood encircled by police. Nearby, a group of 2,000 anti-fascists rallied in opposition to the massive hate march.

Poland’s resurgent fascist youth movement has embraced President Donald Trump, whose campaign manager Steve Bannon worked for years to exploit white ethno-nationalist political energy in western Europe as well as the United States from his position leading Breitbart.com.

The Radical Camp made the slogan of this year’s rally “We Want God,” a line Trump quoted from an old Polish folk song during a state visit to Warsaw in July. In prior years, The Radical Camp was only able to muster a few hundred attendees at its own events on independence day, a national holiday with many official and semi-official mass events to commemorate Poland’s 1918 emergence from a century of foreign rule.

While Poland’s economy largely escaped the scourge of the global financial crisis, islamophobic backlash there against refugees fleeing Syria’s long-running civil war has helped empower fascist political organizers. The annual independence commemoration has become a flashpoint for such groups over the past few years, with civil unrest and flag-burning now common on the day.

The rally was even an international draw for like-minded fascists and white christian nationalists in other European countries. Reporters noted the presence of marchers from relatively nearby Slovakia and Hungary, and from farther flung ultra-rightwing parties in Sweden and Spain.

Poland’s domestic politics have tracked right in recent years as well. Law and Justice, the right-wing party currently leading the government, styles itself after ethno-nationalist political movements in Hungary and elsewhere. The party has pushed Polish policy in a xenophobic direction, giving free rein to ideas that are also stirring in Europe’s largest democracies. Germany’s extreme right had its best electoral showing in decades this fall. Similar nationalist and racist ideologies are growing in influence in Greece, Austria, Switzerland, and numerous other democracies across the continent.

I get the feeling that most people just don’t want to admit that this is a threat. So we are, for the most part, ignoring it. But we shouldn’t pretend that this is all an economic problem for some disaffected white Americans who just need some good manufacturing jobs back and at least be a tiny bit concerned that Foreign Nazis really like Donald Trump too, even the ones from countries that did not suffer particularly badly in the financial crisis. That should tell us something.

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Who wore it better?by digby

She did. Pantsuit Nation FTW.

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Why they stick with himby digby

Sarah Posner wrote a series of tweets this morning about why evangelicals stick with pigs like Trump and Moore. I’ve excerpted some of it below.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a story about sex abuse by the powerful leader of a conservative evangelical ministry. Read it here.

The subject of my story, the evangelist Bill Gothard, was 80 years old when *decades* of abusing women and teenaged girls finally brought him down — but not even completely.

You see, men like him, and Moore, are seen as authority figures that women are expected to submit to. Yes, *submit* to.

He would groom young women (sound familiar) and get them to come work for him. One told me of this grooming, and that Gothard wanted to “counsel” her about her rape as a child.

Gothard’s homeschooling materials, widely used by homeschooling families, including the Duggars of 19 Kids and Counting fame, taught this about sexual assault:

Gothard’s philosophy on sexual assault is detailed explicitly in his publications, including in the Wisdom Booklets. When a woman is attacked, one booklet reads, “She is to cry out for help. The victim who fails to do this is equally guilty with the attacker.” A document Gothard sent to ATI families, “Lessons from Moral Failures in a Family,” purports to be a teenage boy’s meditation on his sexual assault of his sisters, which he blames in part on his mother, for allowing his sisters to run naked after a bath and for asking him to change his sisters’ diapers, something that would not have occurred if the family “had only applied Levitical law.”
 
Wisdom Booklet No. 24 contains a section on why “God’s laws on nakedness begin with modesty in the home,” and that “God’s people are commanded not to ‘uncover the nakedness’ of those near of kin.” The Wisdom Booklet also says that “nakedness arouses insatiable lusts,” lusts that are “neither quenchable nor controllable.”

Recall that Josh Duggar’s fall from grace was a result of revelations that he had sexually abused his own sisters.

Gothard’s take on this may be one of the most extreme views, but certainly idea that women, and even teenage girls, invite their attackers is more commonplace than you’d imagine. Or that they’d lie about it. Or conspire with liberals to lie. Or conspire with the media.

So when you ask, will evangelicals abandon Moore over this? Some will. But Trump admitted assaulting women and still 81% of white evangelicals voted for him. White evangelicals remain his strongest base of support