Month: November 2022

A parallel dimension at war with our own

People who excused torture, defended it as effective, justified it as necessary, now assert their right to lie. They brandish alternative facts or reject them entirely. Make no mistake. It is a basal expression of power. Like rape.

Greg Sargent examines how Donald Trump’s Big Lie has metastasized among the body MAGA. In addition to vile snickers, the conservative response to the hammer attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul has inspired a flood of new lies and conspiracy theories (I won’t repeat here) meant to excuse attempted murder. Or to dismiss it.

“The embrace of political lying as a declaration of power — of the power to say what reality is — has long been studied by academics,” Sargent explains. “Some see it as a harbinger of autocratic political tendencies.”

It worked for the cult of personality in Orwell’s Oceania.

MAGA Republicans’ alternate reality is “constructed to be impervious to outside challenge,” Sargent continues:

But it’s also because the whole point of all the lying is to assert the power to manufacture an alternate story in the face of easily demonstrable facts and outraged condemnation — and, importantly, to assert that power unabashedly and defiantly.

I can’t prove this is what’s driving the response. But prominent right-wing personalities have blithely asserted that the media is spreading misinformation about the attack, trumped up absurd “false flag” theories about it, spewed truly vicious mockery and even turned the hammer into an online meme.

Watching all those figures, it’s hard not to conclude that the key act here is a political faction unshackling itself from even the most minimal standards of public conduct. The louder the shaming and the fact-checking get, the greater the assertion of power in defiance of them becomes.

Status anxiety is a powerful motivator. Factionalists read spreading social diversity as an existential threat. They want their way, and they want it now. If America cannot be theirs and theirs alone, they will burn it to the ground. But it seems first they will construct a MAGA America that exists in the same space but in a parallel dimension at war with our own.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) confirms, “The ability to assert a false reality in the face of empirical evidence is itself an act of power.”

Beautiful wickedness

Freedom, long a tribal shibboleth on the right, has itself been radicalized to include rejection of social norms and responsibilities. Authoritarians, Ben-Ghiat says, place themselves “above the truth” and “above democratic custom.”

At the core of this politics, says Ben-Ghiat, is the flaunting of the ability to “get away with it,” whether the “it” is serial lying, the abandonment of basic norms, or even deliberate cruelty to a longtime colleague and member of the political opposition.

After Charlottesville and Jan. 6, we have reason for concern that eliminationist and denialist rhetoric may spawn more political violence. Sargent concludes that “the mass denial of the violence — and its functioning as a proud marker of political identity — might be just as ominous.”

The Witch of the West gloried in her “beautiful wickedness.” Trump’s MAGA cult glories in its own. One nation, not wholly under them, is one they reject, democracy and all, even as the wave the flag of the republic for which they no longer stand.

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre published “Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate” in 1944, observed Jeet Heer. France had been liberated, but the Holocaust had not reached its peak. Anti-Semites, Sartre observed, enjoy rhetorically toying with opponents as a sadistic child might with a frog:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play.

They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

MAGA believers and their unapologetic propagandists from the Ministry of Lies, spout falsehoods as an expression of freedom from any reality they cannot dominate.

There are four lights. They insist there are five and demand you agree.

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Please go vote and take family and friends.

Surprised?

It’s not looking good for DeSantis’ “voter fraud” arrests. Not that it matters. He got what he wanted. He intimidated legal voters with a criminal history from voting which is what he was trying to do in the first place:

In August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) held a “campaign-style event” and announced that 20 people had been arrested “for breaking Florida’s elections laws.” In a press release, DeSantis’ office set aside the presumption of innocence, branding the group “election criminals.”

The arrests were the result of charges filed by the Office of Election Crimes and Security, a new office created by DeSantis. The announcement successfully generated headlines that would appeal to voters looking for validation of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election

All of those charged were previously stripped of their right to vote after being convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense but voted in the 2020 election. . . .

How were 20 ineligible people permitted to vote? We now know it was because the State of Florida failed to do its job. 

A prospective voter fills out a voter registration form and submits it to their local election supervisor. The local official then transmits the application to the Florida Department of State, which is responsible for cross-checking the application against a criminal database to determine whether the voter is eligible. In all 20 cases, the Florida Department of State did not flag the voter as ineligible. Therefore, local supervisors issued voter ID cards. So DeSantis is touting the arrests of people who believed they were eligible to vote because of the DeSantis administration’s failures. 

As JV Last points out:

Spoiler: These arrests aren’t going to hold up in court. But that’s par for DeSantis, whose governing style is heavily tilted in favor of passing performative, unconstitutional legislation that fails legals tests.

This gambit from DeSantis was particularly low, but then he’s been making quite a play for the biggest asshole in politics prize. It may not pay off for him in the short run however:

For much of the past year, DeSantis has acted like a presidential candidate-in-waiting, leading many to believe he would take on Trump if the former president, as expected, gets in the race. DeSantis pointedly refused to seek Trump’s endorsement for his reelection. And during a debate against Crist last month, he declined to promise he would serve out his full four-year term as governor. DeSantis is also sitting on a campaign war chest of more than $180 million. In a profile of DeSantis for Vanity Fair’s November issue, I reported that DeSantis privately told donors that if he did run, he would launch a full-frontal assault on Trump’s record and competence. 

But according to four prominent Republicans, DeSantis appears to be reconsidering his plans to run. Sources told me DeSantis recently indicated to donors that he would not challenge Trump for the Republican nomination. “He’s led them to believe he will not run if Trump does,” a Republican briefed on the donor conversations told me. Another source told me DeSantis’s calculus is that, at age 44, he can easily wait until the next presidential cycle, so why risk a brutal primary fight against a pugilist like Trump? “He can walk into the presidency in 2028 without pissing off Trump or Florida,” the source said. “What would you rather do? Be the governor of Florida for certain or go run for president?”

He knows Trump will destroy him if he challenges him. So he figures he can wait six years and build up his own asshole bonafides. There’s so much more lib owning he can do right there in Florida. If Trump gets in he’ll be his heir apparent. If he loses he’s finished and DeSantis picks up the torch. He’s young. He can wait.

It’s right in their backyards

Red states and rural folks are hooked on the idea that they are all living in Mayberry RFD or some empty rust belt town with no people, largely because of the way the media talks about urban and rural people. On the one hand you have screeching feminazis and murderous gangsters and on the other you have kindly (white) Christian working folks and hard scrabble military vets.

It just ain’t so:

Actually not so subtle

The "storm" in this is mythology is when his political enemies (for instance, Nancy Pelosi) are rounded up and imprisoned and/or executed. https://t.co/Hp3l2XWKPU

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 2, 2022

In case you were wondering:

QAnon’s core belief is that the world is controlled by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping child molesters whom Trump is secretly battling to stop, and that Q, an anonymous entity, reveals details about the battle online. The cabal is thought to cover up its existence by controlling politicians, mainstream media, and Hollywood. Q’s revelations imply that the destruction of the cabal is imminent but also that it will only be accomplished with the support of the “patriots” who make up the QAnon community. 

This will happen at a time known as “the Event” or “the Storm”, when thousands of people will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or to face military tribunals. The U.S. military will then take over the country, and the result will be salvation and utopia on earth. QAnon beliefs imply the rejection of government officials other than Trump and his closest associates as well as of mainstream institutions and media.

Public figures whom QAnon followers believe to be part of the cabal include Democratic Party politicians like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, businesspeople like George Soros and Bill Gates, religious leaders like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, Anthony Fauci, and entertainers like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Lady Gaga and Chrissy Teigen. Tom Hanks is a special target for QAnon believers; when Hanks went into quarantine at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, they spread a rumor that he had been arrested on child abuse charges. Other similar allegations followed and in July 2021, some QAnon adherents took seriously an article from a parody website that said Hanks had been executed by the U.S. military.

One key tenet in QAnon’s narrative until the 2020 election was the recurring prediction that Trump would be reelected in a landslide and spend his second term bringing about “the Storm” by undoing the deep state, disbanding the cabal and arresting its leaders.

If you wondered where Ginni Thomas got the idea that the “Biden Crime Family” was being sent to Guantanamo now you know.

Trump’s commentary and that of his henchmen these days is all about returning to the White House to dismantle the Deep State and the federal bureaucracy — and wreaking revenge on his enemies. Sometimes when I hear him talk I think he’s bought into this delusion as much as the Q people.

How do we know he isn’t one of them? These past few days had him passing around rumors that are emanating from the deepest reaches of the fever swamps. He’s got a lot of time on his hands. He has a paranoid mindset, watches too much right wing media, is 76 years old and is kind of dumb. Oh, and he’s also a sick narcissist. Why wouldn’t he come to believe that he’s what they think he is?

Remember:

QANON’s followers are said to believe Trump is secretly saving the world from a cult of pedophiles and cannibals. Trump said he hadn’t heard that, but said “is that supposed to be a bad thing? If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it.”

No. 1: Being a total asshole makes you a winner

It works:

The reaction to the assault on Mr. Pelosi among Republicans — who have circulated conspiracy theories about it, dismissed it as an act of random violence and made the Pelosis the punchline of a dark joke — underscores how thoroughly the G.O.P. has internalized [Trump’s] example. It suggested that Republicans have come to conclude that, like Mr. Trump, they will pay no political price for attacks on their opponents, however meanspirited, inflammatory or false.

If anything, some Republicans seem to believe they will be rewarded by their right-wing base for such coarseness — or even suffer political consequences if they do not join in and show that they are in on the joke.

“LOL,” Representative Claudia Tenney, Republican of New York, who is up for re-election in a competitive district, tweeted on Friday night, circulating a photograph that showed a group of young, white men holding oversized hammers beside a gay Pride flag.

On Sunday, Representative Clay Higgins, Republican of Louisiana, who is in line to helm a Homeland Security subcommittee if his party wins control of the House next week, also amplified a groundless and homophobic conspiracy theory hatched on the right about the attack. He tweeted, but later removed, a picture of Ms. Pelosi with her hands covering her eyes, with the caption: “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he thought the federal complaint detailing the break-in and the attack was not telling the entire story.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said suggestively. “You hear the same things I do.”

Mr. Pelosi, 82, remained in intensive care with a fractured skull, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Arizona, the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, made the attack a punchline at a campaign event on Monday, noting that while Ms. Pelosi has security around her, “apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” She smiled as her supporters howled with laughter.

Republican leaders have condemned the violence against Mr. Pelosi and have not shared the conspiracy theories or sinister memes, but they have not publicly condemned those who have done so or done anything to try to tamp down on the stream of lies. And over the past few years, they have consistently demonstrated to their colleagues in Congress that there are no consequences for making vitriolic or even violent statements.

If anything, such behavior has turned those more extreme members into influencers on the right, who carry more clout in Congress.

“They don’t have any fear of reprisal,” said Douglas Heye, a former Republican leadership aide on Capitol Hill. “That’s because our politics have become so tribal that anything that is about owning the other side is somehow seen as a political message, even though it’s not.”

There will be no reprisal. There will be cheers and accolades. They have been given permission to let their freak flags fly and they are joyfully doing that with abandon.

I never knew before just how many would-be schoolyard bullies there were in our culture. I assumed there weren’t that many. I guess I never looked around the playground to see how many of their friends were enjoying what they did, either. It’s a bit late in life to learn this but I guess it’s better late than never.

The same people want the Bible to rule America

Pew Surveys asked whether people think the country should be a “Christian Nation” and 45% said it should. That’s an astonishing number considering that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion. Some of it is attributable to historical ignorance and a misunderstanding of what “Christian Nationalism” means but plenty of these people are on board with the Orban-style definition, which includes xenophobia, antisemitism, anti-feminism and authoritarianism.

Note that 27% of Americans believe the Bible should have more influence than the will of the people. Of course, most of those people also worship Donald Trump, the lying libertine, but they figure he’s their lying libertine so it’s all good. And their definition of “Bible influence” really means doing whatever they say, whether it has anything to do with the Bible or not. Their idea of theocracy is to use religion as a bludgeon to keep everyone else in line.It’s not Biblical for most of them although they’ll insist it is. If it was they wouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump which I would bet the vast, vast majority did.

After all, Ginni was their pen pal

Remember when Ginni Thomas wrote to personal friend and former Thomas clerk John Eastman encouraging him to help overturn the election?

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol has obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and lawyer John Eastman, who played a key role in efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to block the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, according to three people involved in the committee’s investigation.

Right. How about this new information today?

Donald Trump’s attorneys saw a direct appeal to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as their best hope of derailing Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election, according to emails newly disclosed to congressional investigators.

“We want to frame things so that Thomas could be the one to issue some sort of stay or other circuit justice opinion saying Georgia is in legitimate doubt,” Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro wrote in a Dec. 31, 2020, email to Trump’s legal team. Chesebro contended that Thomas would be “our only chance to get a favorable judicial opinion by Jan. 6, which might hold up the Georgia count in Congress.”

“I think I agree with this,” attorney John Eastman replied later that morning, suggesting that a favorable move by Thomas or other justices would “kick the Georgia legislature into gear” to help overturn the election results.

The messages were part of a batch of eight emails — obtained by POLITICO — that Eastman had sought to withhold from the Jan. 6 select committee but that a judge ordered turned over anyway, describing them as evidence of likely crimes committed by Eastman and Trump. They were transmitted to the select committee by Eastman’s attorneys last week, but they have not been publicly released.

Thomas is the justice assigned to handle emergency matters arising out of Georgia and would have been the one to receive any urgent appeal of Trump’s lawsuit to the Supreme Court — a fact that seemed to be part of the Trump legal team’s calculus…

In another Dec. 31 email, Chesebro explicitly laid out this strategy:

“[I]f we can just get this case pending before the Supreme Court by Jan. 5, ideally with something positive written by a judge or justice, hopefully Thomas, I think it’s our best shot at holding up the count of a state in Congress,” Chesebro said.

Recall also that Eastman emailed to one of the other lawyers that he understood there to be “a heated fight underway” in the Court and while nobody knows for sure it seems logical that the only way he would know that is through his pals Ginni and Clarence.

But whatever. It’s totally cool that Thomas didn’t recuse himself from all the 2020 election cases. Who could possibly see a conflict of interest in any of that?

And how we all got here

The NY Times’ Jim Rutenberg did something I’m surprised no one has done before. He went back and looked at the Russiagate scandal and Trump’s first impeachment documents to see how they look in light of the Ukraine war. It’s astonishing how intertwined they all are, although that’s certainly something that’s obvious when you think about it. Essentially, it’s a story about Ukraine trying to become a modern, independent democracy fighting against the tyrannical oligarch with western allies flummoxed by the danger of becoming enmeshed in their struggle. As the new Cold War between Russia and Europe and America developed, Ukraine was caught in the middle.

Rutenberg went through all the documents of the investigations and the trials and they show that Putin had his sights set on taking Ukraine for years and that Trump and his scandals merely solidified his ambitions. When Putin’s handpicked Ukrainian puppets were defeated and his useful idiot in America failed to get another term, he decided it was time for war.

The details on Manafort are particularly interesting especially since the man who hired him and may be president again, pardoned him for his crimes, which included running interference for Vladimir Putin. Manafort and his Russian handler (and who knows who else) were behind the lie that Ukraine had actually interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton which the idiot Trump bought hook line and sinker since it served his purposes. It was one of the main things that made him love and admire Putin so much and made him treat Ukraine like an enemy.

What a tangled web , especially when you think about the fact that Trump stole all those classified documents and he and Kash Patel were plotting something having to do with the Russiagate investigation. God only knows what that was all about.

Read the whole story if you have the time. It’s worth it. It explains why Ukraine has been at the center of American foreign policy for nearly a decade and how Trump made everything worse. But sure, let’s make him president again., What could go wrong?

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“Team Normal” sees the upside

As we gird ourselves for the possibility that hundreds of Republican election deniers will win their races next week, some of them in highly influential positions, it’s important to remember that their party has been crying about “voter fraud” for decades. Republicans began organizing in earnest around the issue back in the 1980s, when Jesse Jackson’s campaign successfully registered many African Americans and younger voters during his Rainbow Coalition campaigns, and sharp-eyed GOP operatives perceived the dangerous potential for a new Democratic majority. After Bill Clinton signed the Motor Voter Bill in 1993, making it easier for those folks to register through the DMV, Republicans really went to work.

By 2000, the GOP had organized partisan election lawyers all over the country, many of whom descended on Florida that November to help George W. Bush’s team press every favorable electoral and judicial lever in the state governed by his brother to ensure a so-called victory. Luckily for them, Florida had taken their advice and “mistakenly” purged the voter rolls of thousands of eligible voters, and after the Supreme Court halted a recount (which might have reversed the outcome all by itself) Bush was successfully installed in the White House.

After that, “voter fraud” became a standard GOP talking point. Long before Trump was anything but a Manhattan real estate gadfly cavorting at Mar-a-Lago with mobsters, mid-level celebrities and child sex traffickers, Republicans were spreading the fictional narrative that elections were routinely stolen by Democrats. They did that even as they themselves ramped up efforts throughout the country to suppress likely Democratic votes and make it harder to get them counted.  

So let’s not forget that the groundwork for doing what Trump did had been laid years earlier, although there’s no doubt that he took it to a more extreme level than anyone could have anticipated. He successfully persuaded tens of millions of voters — with no evidence whatsoever — that a massive fraud was perpetrated in six different states simultaneously, requiring a conspiracy of dozens or hundreds of public officials (many of them Republicans), just by repeatedly asserting that it was so and ordering his accomplices to file a torrent of specious lawsuits. On Jan. 6, Trump incited his followers to stop the peaceful transfer of power by a violent assault on Congress, and followed that up by creating a structural threat of violence against election workers for the foreseeable future.

Following the usual pattern that occurs every time Donald Trump is exposed as the radical nihilist he really is, Republican officials balked at first, expressing the reactions of normal human beings when confronted with such monstrous. Then they settled down, recovered their priorities and focused on the upside. Most came to terms with Trump’s Big Lie within a few months, understanding that their voters were now hooked on propaganda assuring them that the majority of Americans are people “like us” who are being cheated out of their rightful dominance.

Leaders like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy quickly mended fences with Trump, and even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who clearly loathes Trump, said he would vote for the ex-president again if he is the GOP nominee in 2024. There are a few, of course, who have been embraced by the Beltway media as the sane and normal Republicans because they balked at the Big Lie and gained a reputation for courage and fortitude in standing up against the assault on democracy.

Every time Donald Trump is exposed as a radical nihilist, some Republicans have the horrified reactions of normal human beings. Then they settle down, recover their priorities and focus on the upside: winning elections.

Most famous among them is Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, vice chair of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, who lost her seat to a Trumper over her Big Lie apostasy. She has recently endorsed Democrats in races against election deniers, putting her principles where her mouth is. The Jan. 6 committee’s only other Republican member, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, decided to retire rather than face the inevitable and has also endorsed several Democrats. That’s clearly the only sane thing to do if you believe that the 2020 election was not stolen and see grave danger to democracy in perpetuating this lie.

So where are the other “sane Republicans” these days — the “Team Normal” adults in the room who proclaimed boldly that the election was not stolen and were going to challenge the GOP’s extremist faction and set the course for a return to responsible conservative leadership? Well, guess what? As the Washington Post reports, they’re out there stumping for election deniers.

Take, for instance, Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and then Trump’s UN ambassador, who went on TV and promised that everyone she’s helping in 2022 acknowledges that “the elections were real.” Sounds great! Except it’s not true. Haley has campaigned for Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, who was in charge of overturning the election for Trump in that state, and also showed up for GOP extremist Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, a former general who won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate based upon his support for the Big Lie. Those are two of the most critical races in the country; if Democrats lose both, they have virtually no chance of holding a Senate majority.

Or how about the sainted Larry Hogan, governor of Maryland, widely acclaimed for his opposition to Trump and for rejecting claims of election fraud. He too is backing an election denier in New Hampshire. Hogan’s neighbor to the south in Virginia, alleged fleece-vest moderate Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who cagily suggested that he believed the Big Lie just a little bit in order to win election in a purple state, is now lustily backing the worst of the worst among GOP gubernatorial candidates, Kari Lake of Arizona and Tudor Dixon of Michigan, both of whom are all-in on election denialism.

Then there’s New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who declined to run for Senate himself, citing the toxic atmosphere of politics and the paralysis in Washington. He too is also backing Bolduc now, even though the latter repeated fake news about schools putting litter boxes in classrooms for kids who identify as cats, and clearly still believes the election was stolen. Sununu suggests that, heck, nobody really cares about that stuff and he doesn’t have to agree with a fellow Republican on every single issue — as if refusing to accept the results of elections unless you win were just a minor policy disagreement.

Finally, what can we say about former Vice President Mike Pence, the sad man without a constituency? He has campaigned for Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, an election-denying extremist and abortion flip-flopper who recently took a call from Trump advising him that backing the Big Lie is an absolute prerequisite if he actually wants to win. Pence has also stumped for Burt Jones, the Georgia nominee for lieutenant governor, who was involved in that state’s phony elector scheme. Seriously: The guy the Jan. 6 mob wanted to hang is now campaigning for their friends and supporters.

Of course these people all have something in common, besides monumental hypocrisy. Most or all of them are strongly considering running for president in 2024, which accounts for all that attention to New Hampshire. Sure, some of them will back off if and when Trump announces and others will flame out early. (Quite likely all of them, in fact.) But they’re all hedging their bets, in the belief that election denial and fear-mongering about election fraud are now baked into the Republican brand. That’s been part of their game plan for decades, but Donald Trump was the first to make it pay off on a grand scale. 

Salon

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again

I have to admit that when I first glanced at the Twitter account name below, I read it as “The problem with Jon Stewart….” and thought it was attacking Stewart. I didn’t realize it was a streaming TV show, “The Problem (with Jon Stewart).”

Here, Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) explains the disparity in campaign spending between Democrats and Republicans. Plus, ethics rules prohibit her from using in campaign ads C-SPAN footage of her white-board takedowns of financial industry giants. Of Porter doing her job well.

.@RepKatiePorter on the rule stating that she can’t use footage of her white board presentations in her campaign ads. We talk inflation, the midterms, and more tomorrow on @ApplePodcasts! pic.twitter.com/mA060qXlIz

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) November 1, 2022

“But representatives in the House and senators are allowed to use insider information to trade stocks,” Stewart interjects. “THAT, that is allowed.”

“Right, “says Porter. “The House Committee on Ethics is not a committee on morality.”

You are suprised, of course.

After my earlier post about Republicans snickering about violent assaults of political foes, you might need a shot of this.

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Please go vote and take family and friends.