Month: October 2018

They love white Russians

by digby

I’m not talking about the cocktail…

Today, Stop Online Violence Against Women released a report analyzing the 3,500 ads released by Congress that were bought by the Russian Internet Research Agency on Facebook. This report, using a brand new data visualization, reveals that the race-based focus of the Russian-purchased ads, which has been acknowledged in some reporting and previous studies, were in fact majority-focused on the themes of Black Identity and culture. The Black Identity ads were used in two-fold purpose, to engage in voter suppression of Black voters, while boosting voter turnout of White voters.

“When the ads were released to the public the initial analysis revealed racial division and discord, what wasn’t discovered were the tactics and the targets of these ads, says Shireen Mitchell, Founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women “This report not only puts the targets in perspective but includes a timeline of how long these activities were unnoticed before the 2016 election.”

The data visualization reveals linkages between Black Identity keywords and other topics. The overall positive messages for Black cultural identity on the platform lead to voter-suppression tactics of Black voters while the same messages, connected to other groups, were used to exacerbate racial tensions in order to motivate voters to get out the vote.
[…]
Although many of the ads were documented through Facebook these targeted attacks weren’t only discovered after the election. Twitter, YouTube, Google, Tumblr, Instagram were all participants in the coordination of the overall voter suppression campaign that targeted Black identity.

“What’s striking is the degree to which the importance of the Black vote is understood and was specifically targeted by outside hostile entities in their attempt to sway election outcomes,” says Avis A. Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D., Author, How Exceptional Black Women Lead. “Clearly, Black votes matter. And the integrity of our voting power needs to be protected.”

“IRA content targeting black communities on Facebook showed a clear intent to depress the black vote by suggesting that black voters stay home,” says Renee DiResta, Director of Research, New Knowledge. Statements by tech executives in the Congressional hearings suggested that Russia focused on a wide range of targets; while that’s true, interest-based ad targeting on Facebook focused overwhelmingly on the Black community and Black American culture. This report highlights that disparity, and makes it clear how important it is for tech companies to be vigilant and proactive in engaging Black researchers going forward.”

African Americans voted strongly for Democrats so it didn’t have as much effect on them as the Russian government might have hoped. But conservtive white voters were obviously very susceptible to the message.

I’m reminded of this from a couple of years ago that sheds some light on this and why Trump voters are very po-Russia, even aside from its endering qualities like ant-LGBT laws, locking up the political opposition, legalizing domestic violence and other excellent policies. They are just their kind of people:

While Europe has embraced socialists and Muslims, among other groups, Russia appears a final redoubt of white pride. At least, this is how Russia has portrayed itself to, and is viewed by, many on the new American right—the angry horde, the white-nationalist base who wants their country back. There were glimmers of this in the ‘90s and the aughts, when angry, white men flew to Moscow, and then St. Petersburg and Kiev, and then Tomsk and Omsk and Vladivostok, in search of beautiful, Russian women to replace their feminist wives in America. (I wrote a story about these men, “From Russia with Pre-Nup,” for GQ.) What they loved about Russian women, I learned, was not just that they were gorgeous, but rather that they were submissive. They had their values straight. When these men talked about American women, they always sounded bitter. American women didn’t know how to please a man; they didn’t wear makeup; they didn’t cook; they let themselves go. These men came from Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and the Central Valley of California, and they had fallen in love with Russia because it was full of pretty white girls who acted the way they thought girls should act.

Donald Trump’s choice of female partners reflects the yearnings and inclinations of these angry, white men—many of whom, one imagines, now comprise his base. Two of his three wives come from Slavic, ex-Communist countries. His shortest marriage was to an American. When Trump praises Putin, it’s probably not just because he wants to build a hotel in St. Petersburg or has an ex-campaign manager who allegedly made a bundle in Ukraine. It’s probably because Trump thinks, like many of his supporters may think, that the Russians get it.

All of which sheds some light on why so many Trump supporters are not that put off by news of the F.S.B. or Russian military intelligence tampering with the U.S. elections.

By the way, according to this report, this effort to suppress the black vote and boost the white vote continues.

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The day so far

by digby

There you have it, the formula: Kashoggi was not an American citizen, and Saudis pay Trump’s hotels in American dollars. Pay no mind to claims of autocrats murdering Virginia residents who work for the Post, their money is good here — says the most conflicted president in history https://t.co/zBC3CO7xsT— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) October 11, 2018

Kanye decries "trap door of the 13th amendment" and how his sleep disorder was diagnosed as bipolar disorder. pic.twitter.com/PNwtSkVdSb— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 11, 2018

Kanye explains how lack of male role models and lack of exposure to "male power" led him to embrace MAGA which gave him power and "balls" and also helped him make a ton of money with Adidas. pic.twitter.com/4q7n44vfNB— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 11, 2018

Trump claims he has "lost billions of dollars" as president, but continues to serve because he's "done a great job."

"If I didn't do a great job, I would have said 'wow, that was a mistake,' but I've done a great job." pic.twitter.com/zEy7wK5R9K— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 11, 2018

TRUMP: "I believe in polls — only the ones that have us up, because they're the only honest ones. Other than that they're the fake news polls. Fake news! [boos] Just like their reporting is dishonest, their polls are dishonest." pic.twitter.com/GGqqwbhSQi— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2018

Meanwhile, the Florida panhandle became a pile of rubble yesterday:

Storm damage left behind from #HurricaneMichael in Callaway, #Florida

Courtesy LSM/Gary Schmitt pic.twitter.com/P9m9GBhD6F— ABC 33/40 News (@abc3340) October 11, 2018

This is what it’s come to, folks.

Donald Trump, ratings loser

by digby

The babbling president last night:

President Donald Trump took aim at the Me Too movement once again on Wednesday night, saying he wasn’t allowed to utter certain phrases because they were no longer politically correct.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, was reflecting on his election nearly two years ago and spoke about winning Pennsylvania in the 2016 presidential race. He said that for many years Republicans had been unable to capture those electoral college votes, and then he said there was an expression he wanted to use to describe the state, but he had to censor himself because the media was present.

“Every Republican thinks they are going to win Pennsylvania, but I got it. I’d use an expression, you know there’s an expression, but under the rules of Me Too I’m not allowed to use that expression anymore, I can’t do it,” Trump said. “It’s the ‘person’ that got away.”

How Will De-motivating Voters Help Democrats?

by tristero

I’ve never seen anything like this, not during the 60’s, not during the run up to Obama in 2008.

Everyone I know — I mean everyone — is climbing the walls in frustration. We want to do something, anything, to stop the Trump administration and its allies from irrevocably damaging this country if not blowing up the world. Motivation to defeat Republicans and elect Democrats couldn’t be higher.

You would think that Democrats would want to capitalize on this energy the way Lyndon Johnson did. LBJ didn’t defeat Barry Goldwater by mincing words. His campaign created “Daisy,” an ad with the bluntest possible message: if the Republican wins, your baby will die.

Now that’s motivation to get out and vote. And vote they did: Johnson won in a landslide. But today, for reasons that never fail to mystify me, mainstream Democrats and their enablers in the press have decided that LBJ got it wrong. A strategy of de-motivation is the way to Democratic victory:

[W]e see prominent Republicans, including the Senate majority leader and the head of the Republican National Committee, peddling the idea that if Democrats gain power in Congress, one of their top priorities will be to impeach Justice Kavanaugh. No matter that this claim has no factual basis — it plays perfectly to the Republican base’s enduring sense of victimhood.

Democrats must resist the urge to follow Republicans down this spider hole, or that of any radioactive topic designed to inflame partisan passions.

And what should Democrats do?

In the Senate, they have said they will fixate on health care in the coming weeks, with special attention paid to protections for people with pre-existing conditions… President Trump fibbed about having fulfilled a campaign vow to protect coverage for pre-existing conditions, when in reality his administration has refused to defend such protections. Every single Democratic candidate should be laboring to make sure that every single American voter knows this.

This is a recipe for disaster. Cottle is urging Democrats to take the wind out of voters’ sails by focusing on two generalized, highly abstract and contingent ideas — the president “fibbing” and the coverage of pre-existing conditions in Obamacare. And she’s expecting voters to extrapolate from these vaguely defined ideas to something specific — how it affects themselves – even if voters don’t have a pre-existing condition (many don’t) or Obamacare (ditto).

By contrast, the Trumpists have chosen to focus not on an idea but instead on a highly specific and salient case of victimization – the smearing of Brett Kavanaugh. Then they ask voters to make the simplest of imaginative leaps: what if this highly qualified judge was your son, your father, your husband?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that personalizing the Kavanaugh story will trump a strategy based on complicated, multi-syllabic talk about pre-existing conditions and, fercrissakes, “fibs.” Nor does it take a genius to devise a powerful Democratic counter-strategy that capitalizes on our motivation and frustration without falling down a spider hole.

Focus on the real victims here – Dr. Blasey Ford, Ramirez, etc — and pivot from there to how Republicans victimize everyone but their filthy rich donors. If they win, they’re gonna make life even worse for your mother, your father, your daughter, your son. And you yourself.

Simply create a video of the Nazis marching in Charlottesville and Trump making excuses for them. And state the obvious: these guys are coming for you next.

Because they are, they really are.

Big yellow Uber
by Tom Sullivan

“World order is one of those things people don’t think about until it is gone,” Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post Tuesday. The line could work in a movie trailer voiced by Don LaFontaine. The world is living a slow-paced version of a Roland Emmerich film, and popcorn won’t make it more enjoyable.

The disappearance of Saudi journalist and Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi is another episode foreshadowing the breakdown of the order the United States spent decades building and leading after World War II.

A prominent critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudi government, Khashoggi went missing after entering the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on October 2 to obtain a document certifying his divorce from his ex-wife. Turkish officials believe Khashoggi was killed inside the consulate.

Intelligence intercepts indicate bin Salman himself sent a 15-member “assassination squad” to Istanbul collect Khashoggi.

Bin Salman has denied the allegations.

A foreign affairs columnist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Kagan believes in abandoning its leadership role in the post-war order, the United States has given a green light to “evil actors in the world.” Despots once constrained by a stable international order can act again confident the United States will do nothing:

There have been many other similar warning signs: China’s arrest of the head of Interpol; the Burmese military’s campaign of genocide against the Rohingya; the systematic and deliberate slaughter of civilians in Syria, including by outlawed chemical weapons; the Russian invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea. Nor is the rise of right-wing nationalist forces in Europe and elsewhere unrelated to the loss of strength and vitality among the democratic nations. Doubts about America have been reverberating across the globe for more than a decade, and others have been responding accordingly. When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban spoke out to celebrate the “illiberal state” a few years ago, he claimed he was only responding to new realities: “the great redistribution of global financial, economic, commercial, political and military power that became obvious in 2008.”

Perhaps the popular fascination with zombies reflects an unconscious awareness of what lies not just below the ground but just beneath the thin veneer of civilization:

When the prevailing order breaks down, when the rocks are overturned, the things living beneath them, the darkest elements of the human spirit, crawl out. That was what happened in the first half of the 20th century. The circumstances in which Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini rose to power — a world in which no nation was willing or able to sustain any kind of international order — gave them ample opportunity to show what they were capable of. Had there been an order in place to blunt those ambitions, we might never have come to know them as tyrants, aggressors and mass killers.

Even as the post-war order crumbles, the world faces a climate crisis requiring leadership influential enough to rally the world to address it. The United States, once the guarantor of that order (for better or for worse), is M.I.A. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report described as “a deafening, piercing smoke alarm going off in the kitchen.”

Two-hour films use countdowns to raise viewers’ tension. Current science suggests them planet’s clock ticks down over the next decade. To avoid “mass die-offs of coral reefs, widespread drought, famine and wildfires, and potentially conflict over land, food and fresh water,” the New York Times Editorial Board warned Tuesday, will require that time and a mammoth effort to “to decarbonize global energy systems.”

The problem is, who will lead it?

The sitting president of the United States just spent part of his Tuesday working over New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi for a story puffing his accomplishments and how not-chaotic his White House is. Before she left the grounds, Trump got word she was doing a story on Trump’s displeasure with Chief of Staff John Kelly. Trump summoned her to the Oval Office to set her straight.

Nuzzi sat through Trump’s stream-of-consciousness recitation of how he is the best president the world has ever seen. “Could you give me the list, please?” he called to his secretary. Cameos by multiple White House and cabinet officials punctuated Nuzzi’s solo Oval Office press conference. All definitely not set up in advance, everyone agreed.

The meeting ended with Kelly and Nick Ayers, the vice-president’s chief of staff, “entwined, their arms stretched around each other and their faces pressed close together,” smiling theatrically to prove how well everyone gets along in the Stepford White House.

Look, baby boomers bear responsibility for many of the messes we created. But now the post-war order (such as it was) is coming undone, and at a time inconvenient for the entire planet. As if there is ever a convenient time for a global re-ordering.

But the people who helped create the problems (including the problem occupying the Oval Office) are not going to be the ones to fix them. For that, the world needs a new generation to step up and take on those challenges. Yes, they feel disconnected now, as if their efforts or interest is pointless. But if they don’t build a better world themselves, what they inherit may look like it was built by Weyland-Yutani.

Shocking.

Watch what happened when I asked a bus stop full of CA students if they'd vote in their *key* midterm district.

Bueller?

While Trump's latest fire drill is underway, here's something else to think about: why young Americans don't vote.

More: https://t.co/2VHT1KOdNG pic.twitter.com/v4mJJmsER4— Jacob Soboroff (@jacobsoboroff) October 9, 2018

* * * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

My 2019 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Picks

By Dennis Hartley

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has announced their 15 nominees for 2019, which must be weeded down to 5 for the next induction. Once again, I will dutifully fulfill my mission as an alleged pop culture critic and argue for my 5 picks (while hopefully not enraging fans of the remaining 10). Just remember kids…it’s only rock ‘n’ roll. Relax.

The Hall’s nominees are: Def Leppard, Devo, Janet Jackson, John Prine, Kraftwerk, LL Cool J, MC5, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Roxy Music, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan, Stevie Nicks, The Cure, The Zombies (who I already endorsed last year) and Todd Rundgren. So here’s who I feel should be in the clique…and why:

Devo – Yes, that retro-futurist band with two Bobs and two sets of brothers who made vaguely unsettling videos you could dance to…they must be inducted immediately. They emerged straight outta Akron in 1973, and they were…different. It took them a spell to find an audience, as they initially leaned more toward arch performance art than conventional musicality. Yet they turned out to be quite musical; and with benefit of hindsight, unarguably visionary.

Best 3 albums: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978), Freedom of Choice (1980), and New Traditionalists (1981).

Kraftwerk – In terms of innovation and lasting influence, this German “krautrock” outfit (founded 1970) holds the most import of my 5 selections. While not necessarily the first band to embrace electronica, they were among the first to seamlessly forge the technology with pop sensibilities. Eschewing traditional guitar-bass-drum backup for synths, vocoders, and drum machines, Kraftwerk upped the ante with self-consciously detached, metronomic vocals that caused many to snicker and dismiss the band as a novelty act. They’re not laughing now, as Kraftwerk’s influences continue to flourish in rock, hip-hop and club music.

Best 3 albums: Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), and Computer World (1981).

MC5 – Granted, they may not be as musically innovative as others who are enshrined in the Hall of Fame, but if you consider “attitude” a key component of rock and roll, these Detroit-based rockers had it in spades. Call it what you will, proto-punk, garage, psych…they were loud, fast, and aggressive long before it was fashionable. In fact, they scared the living shit out of the mellow peace love and dope crowd at the time. Perhaps most notably, they were boldly outspoken and overtly political (which got them into a lot of trouble during the Nixon years), paving the way for activist bands like The Clash, Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, System of a Down, and Green Day. This is the fourth time they have been nominated…if there has ever been a time to kick out the jams, it’s NOW, motherfuckers!

Best 3 albums: Kick Out the Jams (1969), Back in the USA (1970), and High Time (1971).

Roxy Music – This English outfit (founded in 1970) had very strange optics for its time. They looked like a hastily assembled jam band comprised of space rockers, 50s greasers, hippie stoners, and goths, fronted by a stylishly continental 30s crooner. But the music they made together was magic. It also defied categorization and begged a question; do we file it under glam, prog, pop or art-rock? The answer is “yes”. They were a huge influence on art punk and new wave, and even their earliest music still sounds freshly original. Let ’em in!

Best 3 albums: Roxy Music (1972), Siren (1975), and Avalon (1982).

Todd Rundgren – It’s shocking to me that the Hall has waited this long to nominate Rundgren, who’s been in the biz for over 50 years (and is still going strong). He is a true rock and roll polymath; a ridiculously gifted singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer extraordinaire. He is also a music video and multimedia pioneer. Granted, his mouth gets him into trouble on occasion (he is from Philly you know), and he does have a rep for insufferable perfectionism in the studio-but the end product is consistently top shelf (including acclaimed albums by Badfinger, The New York Dolls, Meatloaf, The Tubes, Psychedelic Furs, and XTC). Whether he’s performing pop, psych, metal, prog, R&B, power-pop, electronica or lounge, he does it with flair. A wizard and a true star.

Best 3 albums: Something/Anything? (1972), Todd (1974) and Faithful(1976).


— Dennis Hartley

This is a sign of desperation

by digby

They are throwing everything they have at the wall for the midterms, just hoping something sticks: angry mobs of rape survivors, “Deep State!” and now a plot to kill grandma. Most of it is spin and dumb political campaign speak. But Trump writing a policy op-ed takes this to a whole new level:

President Trump wrote an opinion article for USA Today on Oct. 10 regarding proposals to expand Medicare to all Americans — known as Medicare-for-All — in which almost every sentence contained a misleading statement or a falsehood.

He didn’t write it, of course. That’s one of his minions which means they all lie like he does.

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Kavanaugh already showing his Trumpist stripes

by digby

He’s to the right of Neil Gorsuch on immigration, which makes him about where Ann Coulter is on the subject.

Supreme Court argument on Wednesday over the detention of immigrants during deportation proceedings seemed to expose a divide between President Trump’s two appointees, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.

The question in the case was whether federal authorities must detain immigrants who had committed crimes, often minor ones, no matter how long ago they were released from criminal custody. Justice Kavanaugh said a 1996 federal law required detention even years later, without an opportunity for a bail hearing.

“What was really going through Congress’s mind in 1996 was harshness on this topic,” he said.

But Justice Gorsuch suggested that mandatory detentions of immigrants long after they completed their sentences could be problematic. “Is there any limit on the government’s power?” he asked.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer pressed the point, asking a lawyer for the federal government whether it could detain “a person 50 years later, who is on his death bed, after stealing some bus transfers” without a bail hearing “even though in this country a triple ax murderer is given a bail hearing.”

The lawyer, Zachary D. Tripp, hedged, and Justice Gorsuch grew frustrated.

“Mr. Tripp, we’re quibbling,” Justice Gorsuch said. “Justice Breyer’s question is my question, and I really wish you’d answer it.”

Mr. Tripp eventually responded, “This applies regardless of time.” He added that Congress had intended that harsh result.

“Basically, at the end of the day, Congress’s answer was enough is enough,” Mr. Tripp said. “If you’re an alien, you come here, you commit one of these crimes, you’ve effectively forfeited whatever right you have to remain at large in the community.”
[…]
Justice Breyer said the solution was to allow immigrants detained long after release from criminal custody to have bail hearings. He said those would allow immigrants who were not dangerous and who posed no flight risk to return to their communities. “The baddies will be in jail,” he said, “and the ones who are no risk won’t be.”

Justice Kavanaugh disagreed. “The problem is that Congress did not trust those hearings,” he said. “Congress was concerned that those hearings were not working in the way that Congress wanted and, therefore, for a certain class of criminal or terrorist aliens said, ‘No more.’”

He’s going to be a real winner. But we knew that.

Ugh.

“It’s a pretty good racket”

by digby

The Weekly Standard reviews a new conservative book by a very important young up and comer in the Trump Party and gets mad that he’s is nothing but a scammer trying to make money off of knuckleheaded conservatives. Imagine that.

Charlie Kirk has given America another gift, this time a monograph on the university called Campus Battlefield: How Conservatives Can WIN the Battle on Campus and Why It Matters. And the good news keeps getting better, because Kirk somehow convinced Donald Trump (Jr.) to write a foreword for the book. Though, truth to tell, it doesn’t seem like Trump Jr. really gave it his best effort. It’s only five short pages and it reads more or less like direct mail copy: “Please enjoy this book, share it with your friends, support Turning Point USA, and get involved.”

And the rest of the book may not be Kirk’s best work, either. He begins asking: “Who could have imagined that I would need police protection to talk about freedom on a university campus?”

The answer is pretty simple: Anyone who has been paying attention for the last 50 years. You think it’s bad now? In 1969, students at Cornell armed themselves with guns and took over campus buildings. Anyone who has read Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind, or Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education, or any of the dozens of books on campus radicalism that have been churned out, year after year, decade after decade, could have imagined the turn of events that have young Charlie so surprised.

But a blithe ignorance of history is just the beginning of the book’s problems. Kirk talks a lot about how he stands up to threats from liberals because he believes in helping “the students”: “I wasn’t going to cave in. Cancelling the event and letting down the students who came to hear me with open or supportive minds was not an option.” He’s a mensch, you see. Except for the fact that in May, 2018, Kirk would “ bail on college kids to hang out with Kanye West.” Letting down students isn’t an option, except for when it is. Which is whenever there’s a better offer, it seems.

And here’s Charlie recounting an incident where he confronted protestors at a campus speaking event: “As I climbed onto the stage, the wild screaming got louder and louder: ‘Charlie Kirk is a Jerk! Charlie Kirk is a Jerk!’” he writes, “Nice alliteration, that, but I’ve been called worse.”

“Alliteration”? That Kirk doesn’t know the difference between alliteration and rhyme isn’t quite as disturbing as the fact that the book’s editors didn’t feel the need to correct the mistake.

But perhaps we’re going too far in calling Campus Battlefield a “book.” The already-thin text is stuffed with reprintings of his tweets and quotes from others. He used this space-filling technique in his first book, too, and must figure that if he got away with it once, why not do it again? Writing is hard!

Of course, it’s easier when you just quote others. So some of the tweets he reprints are simply cases where he quoted someone else. Or, at least thought he was quoting someone else. For instance, one of the tweets in Campus Battlefield reads: “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”— @charliekirk11, quoting George Orwell.”

Except for that this isn’t an actual quote from Orwell. It’s just a common misattribution.

But really, if you’re the type of reader who expects better from an author who still technically lives with his parents, then the joke’s on you.

And that’s really what Campus Battlefield is: a joke. It’s nothing more a marketing pitch for TPUSA, except that Kirk wants to charge gullible readers $27 for the honor of reading it.

It’s a pretty good racket, actually, and we ought to give Kirk some credit for coming up with the act. His business model is essentially this: Provoke leftist students; take video of their reactions; send the video clips to donors to solicit contributions. Lather, rinse, repeat. Money flows in, the organization expands, and the culture, the campus, the students are naught for the better.

In fact, the worse it gets for everyone else, the bigger Kirk’s following becomes. It’s one big grift, and it’s launched Kirk into the first family’s inner circle. In the book he boasts that he’s met with President Trump more than 15 times since his inauguration. He also brags that he’s the “second most powerful tweeter in conservative politics.”

“But it’s not about me,” Kirk protests. Sure it isn’t.

Though if you look closely at Campus Battlefield, you’ll notice that it’s Kirk’s photograph on the cover. Twice.

I’m sharing this because it’s just so much fun to see the conservatives turning on each other.

Banality of evil, Trump-style

by digby

This story from the New York Times illustrates evidence of Arendt’s classic unfolding in real time:

The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather.

Her feet stuck out from the seat in small gray sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a bursting dam.

The girl, Fernanda Jacqueline Davila, was 2 years old: brief life, long journey. The caseworker, a big-boned man from the shelter that had been contracted to raise her since she was taken from her grandmother at the border in late July, was the only person in the room she had met before that day.

“How old are you?” the judge asked, after she had motioned for the caseworker to return to Fernanda’s side and the tears had stopped. “Do you speak Spanish?”

An interpreter bent toward the child and caught her eye, repeating the questions in Spanish. Fernanda’s mouse-brown pigtails brushed the back of the chair, but she stayed silent, eyes big. “She’s … she’s nodding her head,” the judge said, peering down from the bench through black-rim glasses. This afternoon in New York immigration court, Judge Randa Zagzoug had nearly 30 children to hear from, ages 2 through 17. Fernanda was No. 26.

Judge Zagzoug came to the bench in 2012, around the time children started showing up by the thousands at the border on their own, mostly from Central America. Now that immigration controls have stiffened in response, more children than ever are in government custody, for far longer than they ever have been — weeks turning to months in shelters that were never meant to become homes.

The result is a new wave of children in the immigration courts across America. Though the exact figures are not known, lawyers who work with immigrants said the large number of migrant children now being held in detention has given rise to a highly unusual situation: more and more young children coming to court.

“We rarely had children under the age of 6 until the last year or so,” said Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “We started seeing them as a regular presence in our docket.”

These young immigrants are stranded at the junction of several forces: the Trump administration’s determination to discourage immigrants from trying to cross the border; the continuing flow of children journeying by themselves from Central America; the lingering effects of last summer’s family-separation crisis at the border; and a new government policy that has made it much more difficult for relatives to claim children from federal custody.

At the moment, the government’s rolls include hundreds of children in shelters and temporary foster care programs who were taken from an adult at the border, whether a parent, grandparent or some other companion. About 13,000 children who came to the United States on their own were being held in federally contracted shelters this month, more than five times the number in May 2017.

They are convening tribunals for 2 year olds who are so small they have to be lifted into a chair. They are having them “testify” and are acting as if that’s a perfectly reasonable, normal, legal thing to do.

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
― Hannah Arendt

We’re not there. But bureaucratic show trials for 2 year olds under a pretense of “justice” is certainly a step in that direction.