Month: April 2023

Except for all the mountains and Mormons

What a ridiculous thing to say:

After a recent poll put him 13 points behind Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, Ron DeSantis decided to lick his wounds and head to Utah, a state where he might actually be more popular than the former president. On Saturday, the Florida governor spoke at the state’s GOP convention, where, amongst pleasantries, promises, and his trademark attacks on wokeness, he declared, “Florida is the Utah of the Southeast.” (We’re still awaiting word, however, on whether Utah is the Florida of the Mountain West.)

DeSantis, who has not officially announced his bid for the presidency, was met with cheers and applause by Utah’s GOP delegates during his speech, in which he once again slammed Disney and said Florida would “eliminate DEI at all our public universities,” “kneecap ESG” (as he called it, “woke banking”),— and “prohibit for minors, gender surgeries and puberty blockers.” 

DeSantis’ stop in Utah was a predictable one: Last November, 86 Utah elected officials, including Republican lawmakers, signed a letter begging for DeSantis to run for president in 2024. While they didn’t mention Donald Trump by name, KSL News reported that the letter appeared to rebuke Trump and the far-right wing of the Republican Party. 

DeSantis seems to have an identity problem. He said that he’s really a midwesterner because his parents were born there. And just this weekend put out this ad:

"Grandson of a steel worker" is a new wrinkle for a political ad https://t.co/XxyBsXrPn1

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) April 22, 2023

The grandiosity of his ads never fails to amaze me. It’s obvious that he has an epic Napoleon complex. But he also seems to believe that being from Florida makes him some kind of exotic who needs to explain to Real Americans that he’s one of them. He doesn’t need to do that. They know he’s one of them. They just don’t like him all that much.

Still, it’s a long campaign and a year from now he could be on top. I would never write anyone off this early. Why, for all we know, Mike Pence could catch fire and … oh never mind. Some scenarios really are just too ridiculous.

They won’t accept anything but a national abortion ban

Trump has no room to move on this one. None of them do:

A major anti-abortion group blasted former President Donald Trump on the issue Thursday, saying his contention that abortion restrictions should be left up to individual states, not the federal government, is a “morally indefensible position for a self-proclaimed pro-life presidential candidate.”

The Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group was responding to a statement by Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung for a Washington Post story about division among the 2024 GOP presidential field on abortion-related issues. The group has said it would not support any White House candidate who did not at a minimum support a 15-week federal abortion ban.

“The Supreme Court made clear in its decision that it was returning the issue to the people to decide through their elected representatives in the states and in Congress,” the group’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a news release. “Holding to the position that it is exclusively up to the states is an abdication of responsibility by anyone elected to federal office.”

You see he has been frantic about the issue ruining his chances:

SINCE LATE LAST year, Donald Trump has been holding private meetings with religious-right figures in an effort to remind them about his anti-abortion record and ensure their support. But instead of thanking Trump for his role in repealing Roe v. Wade, the leaders are pressing for hardcore commitments that go far beyond what he is comfortable with — and what he thinks voters will allow him to get away with.  

According to two participants and another source close to Trump, the ex-president has warned leaders in off-the-record conversations that Republicans risk “losing big” — in Trump’s words — unless they follow his lead. He has warned the leaders to shift their own messaging, telling them to emphasize “exceptions” to abortion bans, including in cases of rape, incest, or a threat to the life of the mother. In these frank talks, Trump has stressed this is his 2024 plan, saying it’s necessary to prevent Democrats from painting him as an “extremist.”

Privately, Trump is conceding those big losses have already begun. Trump has for several weeks vented to confidants that the GOP is “getting killed on abortion” or on “the abortion issue,” according to three people who’ve heard him use this phrasing on different occasions.

During his meetings, when pressed on what specifically he’d support in a second term, Trump has instead focused on his record as the “most pro-life” president in U.S. history. Among the anti-abortion leaders, religious conservatives, and politically active pastors gathered, Trump’s retroactive focus has left some unsatisfied, including anti-abortion advocates who previously endorsed him. Indeed, during one of these conference calls held around early March, one of the participants gently told Trump that his 2024 policy commitments were vague, requesting clarity and specifics. Trump responded by boasting about his past accomplishments, according to two of the sources.

One recent participant wondered to Rolling Stone: Is Trump “going to try to make us swallow getting next to nothing in return for our support?”

Next to nothing? You’d think they’d be happy with the reversal of Roe vs. Wade but they want it all — a full, national ban. They believe abortion is murder and that women are expendable. We know this. But these evangelical leaders also love Trump for all kinds of reasons, not just that he put three hardcore anti-abortion Justice on the Supreme Court. (They may even realize that he actually had little to do with it.) They are Trumpers for the same reason the non-evangelicals are Trumpers — it’s a cult and many of these people are subject to the kind of thinking that leads to joining one. I think they’ll stick with him even though they know he’s lying.

He got the message:

Trump: I will stand proudly in defense of innocent life, just as I did for four very powerful strong years. Because every child born and unborn is a sacred gift from god. pic.twitter.com/fk6uSRZBp3

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 23, 2023

He was, as usual, a pig

E. Jean Carroll’s rape lawsuit trial starts this week. Trump won’t show up for it apparently so I’m guessing that his deposition will be introduced as evidence. It’s not good. This article is from January:

Questioned for a lawsuit, Trump, the former US president, angrily hurled insults and threatened to sue the columnist who accused him of raping her in the New York upscale department store Bergdorf Goodman in the 1990s, according to excerpts of his videotaped testimony. The tapes were recorded last October and unsealed by a court on Friday.

The New York court on Friday also rejected as “absurd” Trump’s attempt to have dismissed the two lawsuits against him by Carroll, alleging rape and libel. An April trial is planned.

“She said that I did something to her that never took place. There was no anything. I know nothing about this nut job,” he said, according to the transcript of the October testimony.

The excerpts reveal a contentious battle in the civil case, between Trump and Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Carroll, who questioned him as Trump called Carroll, a former longtime Elle magazine columnist, the perpetrator of “a complete scam.”

He accused her of describing the alleged rape as she “was promoting a really crummy book”.

Trump added: “I will sue her after this is over, and that’s the thing I really look forward to doing. And I’ll sue you too,” he told Kaplan.

Trump said he knew it wasn’t “politically correct” to say “she’s not my type” when he previously responded to claims, shortly after Carroll’s 2019 book was published. The writer alleged she was attacked by Trump in a dressing room after they had a chance meeting in the store and she agreed to help him pick out lingerie for a friend.

“But I’ll say it anyway,” he said. “She’s accusing me of rape, a woman that I have no idea who she is. It came out of the blue. She’s accusing me of raping her, the worst thing you can do, the worst charge.”

Trump called Carroll “sick, mentally sick”. And he mischaracterized an interview Carroll had given on CNN, falsely claiming she had talked about enjoying being sexually assaulted. “She actually indicated that she loved it. OK? She loved it until commercial break,” Trump said. “In fact, I think she said it was sexy, didn’t she? She said it was very sexy to be raped. Didn’t she say that?”

Kaplan then tried to elicit from Trump that he had raped her client.

“So, sir, I just want to confirm: it’s your testimony that E Jean Carroll said that she loved being sexually assaulted by you?”

Trump answered: “Well, based on her interview with [CNN’s] Anderson Cooper, I believe that’s what took place. And we can define that … I think she said that rape was sexy – which it’s not, by the way.”

What Carroll had described is that she prefers to use the word fight, not rape because some other people “think rape is sexy”.

He also misidentified a picture of her as Marla Maples which kind of refutes the idea that Carroll isn’t his type…

This trial will be awful, mostly because his lawyers will be nasty piece of work. You know they will.

Be ye forewarned

I mentioned Frank Schaeffer’s Friday appearance with Joy Reid on Saturday but could not find the video. Here it is.

Christian nationalists, Schaeffer strenuously argues, “are authoritarian. They fear democracy. They want to overturn elections. The Christian nationalist movement is a halfway point to a kind of authoritarian fascism.”

He was pulling no punches. My inner ear told me my normally even keel was heeling to starboard. Schaeffer sounded more emphatic than I expect to see on TV, and it was unsettling. But he knows whereof he speaks. I found his rant alarming.

Ordinary American voters, he says, “had damned well stand up and be counted in the next few elections, or we’re going to see these people turn our country into an evangelical Christian version of Iran.”

To repeat: The problem for the left is that too few of us lack the zealot right’s conviction and commitment. Our deer in the headlights approach will end only one way.

Take Schaeffer’s warning seriously. Even David French is unnerved.

One of the people Schaeffer warned about announced Saturday that he’s running for governor in North Carolina. “Christian patriots will own and rule this nation,” North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson declared in 2021. He announced before about 1,000 supporters in Alamance county. My local Democratic delegation warned me just weeks earlier that this guy is popular around the state capitol.

YIKES— NC LT. GOVERNOR @markrobinsonNC: “Tell our enemies on the other side of the aisle that want to drag 🇺🇸 down into a socialist hellhole you’ll have to run past me choking on my own blood — Christian patriots will own and rule this nation." 😳pic.twitter.com/uULfg40k7V

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 1, 2021

The Guardian:

A former factory worker and daycare operator, Robinson gained public attention from a viral video of a 2018 anti-gun control speech. His critics have pointed to speeches in churches and on radio shows that touched on his antipathy toward LGBTQ+ activism and support for banning abortion.

Trump may be fading, but not Trumpism. Ironically, it could be his own movement’s momentum that carries him back to the White House.

Armed and spoiling for a fight

David French, recalls the unsettling incident when his son received a direct message displaying three Klan hoods. The former Republican, former National Review staff writer says his multiracial family (his adopted daughter is Black) began receiving doxxing and death threats after he rejected Donald Trump and Trumpism:

Within moments, my son received another message, a picture of a road several miles from our house. Then another picture arrived. A road sign. This one was closer. Someone seemed to be coming to our home.

No one arrived, but such harrassment had happened before.

French grew up in Alabama, owned guns, etc., etc. But the gun rights movement has morphed into “widespread gun idolatry. ‘Guns’ have joined ‘God’ and ‘Trump’ in the hierarchy of right-wing values.” Worse, more people are walking around armed and spoiling for a fight.

Things seem to have gotten out of hand, maybe:

In recent days we’ve seen a rash of terrible shootings by nervous, fearful or angry citizens. A young kid rings the bell on the wrong door and is shot. A young woman drives into the wrong driveway and is shot. A cheerleader accidentally tries to get in the wrong car and is pursued and shot, along with her friend. A basketball rolls into a man’s yard, and a neighboring 6-year-old girl and her father are shot.

French worries(?) about a backlash:

Moreover, every one of these acts increases public revulsion of gun ownership generally. The cry for legal and moral reform will sweep the land. America will change and gun rights will diminish. And the gun owners and advocates who fail to grasp the moral weight of their responsibility will be to blame.

People might stop walking into the Subway armed to the teeth. Americans might demand “moral reform” (the horror!). And it will be gun owners’ fault. What does that say about gun fetishism that the right has promoted for decades?

Politico this morning examines the nonsensical right’s belief that gun violence is somehow the outgrowth of liberals running large cities.

“Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front.” Colin Woodard is just getting warmed up:

In reality, the region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.

Gun culture is a phenomenon traceable in part to just who colonized America’s various regions. This analysis is not new. (See “Albion’s Seed,” 1989.) But tying it to gun culture is a twist I’ve not seen. Geography matters, Woodard writes of his research with Nationhood Lab.

“[T]he disparities between the regions are stark, but even I was shocked at just how wide the differences were and also by some unexpected revelations.”

The Deep South is the most deadly of the large regions at 15.6 per 100,000 residents followed by Greater Appalachia at 13.5. That’s triple and quadruple the rate of New Netherland — the most densely populated part of the continent — which has a rate of 3.8, which is comparable to that of Switzerland. Yankeedom is the next safest at 8.6, which is about half that of Deep South, and Left Coast follows closely behind at 9. El Norte, the Midlands, Tidewater and Far West fall in between.

But that doesn’t match the right’s preferred narrative of urban (read, Black and brown) areas being left-leaning cesspools of sin. Not that facts ever got in the way of conservative myth-making.

For gun suicides, which is the most common method, the pattern is similar: New Netherland is the safest big region with a rate of just 1.4 deaths per 100,000, which makes it safer in this respect than Canada, Sweden or Switzerland. Yankeedom and Left Coast are also relatively safe, but Greater Appalachia surges to be the most dangerous with a rate nearly seven times higher than the Big Apple. The Far West becomes a danger zone too, with a rate just slightly better than its libertarian-minded Appalachian counterpart.

“Centuries-old settlement patterns” influence gun policies today because they are “downstream from culture,” Woodard argues. But it’s not gun policies alone that account for the variation in death reates.

“New York City is a very diverse place. We see people from different cultural and religious traditions every moment and we just know one another, so it’s harder for people to foment inter-group hatreds,” says Jeffrey Butts, director of the research and evaluation center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “Policy has something to do with it, but policy mainly controls the ease to which people can get access to weapons. But after that you have culture, economics, demographics and everything else that influences what they do with those weapons.”

That reflects something my friend, David Castro, said about growing up in the Bronx. Familiarity tamps down hatreds.

“By the age of 10-12 I’d eaten at everyone’s house, stayed over, went to their churches and synagogues for confirmations and bar mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, listened to their music,” Castro said. Although the foods and religious iconography changed from house to house, he said, growing up none of that was threatening. They were just your friends’ parents.

“You ain’t from around here, are ya?” is a familiar regionalism in more rural parts. It just wouldn’t have the same edge of threat or even work the same in large, melting-pot metros, would it?

Update: Corrected misspelling of Woodard’s name. (h/t RS)

Trump and the Insurrectionist’s have a hit

Here’s the latest on that ridiculous recording by the January 6th criminals:

 The song is simple and tinny, but that hasn’t stopped it from being embraced by former President Donald Trump and his allies in their campaign to rewrite the history of the deadly Capitol riot.

The tune, “Justice for All,” is the Star-Spangled Banner, and it was sung by a group of defendants jailed over their alleged roles in the January 2021 insurrection. Recorded over a prison phone line, the national anthem sounds more like a dirge than celebration and is overlaid with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

Despite its low fidelity, “Justice for All” has garnered a lot of fans. Trump, a Republican, played it at a recent rally in Waco, Texas, as images of Capitol rioters flashed behind him on a big screen, and the $1.29 song last month briefly vaulted to No. 1 on iTunes, supplanting such recording artists as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.

Experts on extremism and propaganda say the song is another example of how Trump and his most ardent allies are trying to gloss over an avalanche of evidence proving the Capitol riot was anything but an act of patriotic resistance.

And it shows how such revisionists have dug deep into authoritarian playbooks that rely heavily on the use of national identity to sway public opinion. In this case, Trump and his allies are ironically relying on America’s most patriotic song in their efforts to whitewash an insurrection that contributed to five deaths and left more than 120 police offices injured, experts said.

“We should not be surprised that this propaganda is effective, but it is shocking to see this in this country,” said Federico Finchelstein, chair of the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York, an expert in authoritarian disinformation. “What they are demanding is that reality be put aside for the loyalty of the leader. And that leader in this case is Donald Trump.”

Law enforcement officials who battled rioters are aghast, calling the song a cynical effort to mislead Americans about the truth of what transpired during the Jan. 6 attack.

“Some of these people are trying to get a rise out of people, and some of these people are just using it to make a buck,” said Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who received the Presidential Citizens Medal for his actions on Jan. 6. “People can believe whatever they want to believe, but this is real life.”

Polls show Americans remain divided by ideology when it comes to their views of Jan. 6. A survey last year from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about half believe Trump’s involvement warranted criminal charges. A second poll revealed that only about 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack as very violent or extremely violent.

Those doubts have been fueled by cable television hosts and far-right podcasters who have spent two years pushing outlandish theories to mitigate the horror of that deadly day.

Jan. 6 defendants, who issued tearful apologies and expressions of remorse in court, are now boasting of their participation or seeking to profit from it. Groups have sprung up to sell T-shirts emblazoned with “Free the Jan. 6 Protesters” and other merchandise that seeks to portray the rioters as principled demonstrators. Many say they are trying to raise money for the Jan. 6 defendants and their families.

That is the case with the groups behind “Justice for All,” or at least what they claim. Just as in other commercial ventures involving diehard Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists, it is difficult to pin down even basic facts about the song’s production and profits.

The song’s producers won’t say how much the song has raised, say how the proceeds will be split among Jan. 6 defendants or identify the vast majority of 20 or so participants on the recording. They have, however, been eager to tout the song’s success.

“Buh Bye Miley, Taylor, Rihanna, and all the rest who spent Millions trying for the coveted Number 1 spot,” one of the producers, Kash Patel, wrote on Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, on March 21. “Hello new Music Mogul @realDonaldTrump. We just took a flame thrower to the music industry.”

Claiming the top spot may provide bragging points, but conquering the iTunes chart isn’t the achievement it once was, as the number of people downloading music has plummeted given the popularity of streaming services like Spotify.

Aside from the $1.29 download, vinyl records of the song are sold online in different color schemes — prices range from $99.99 to $199.99.

Released in early March, the song is associated with The Justice for All Project, Inc., a nonprofit registered the same month with an address in Sarasota, Florida. Ed Henry, a former Fox News personality, is listed as a director of the organization and is credited with Patel as being a producer of “Justice for All.”

Another director of the nonprofit is Tom Homan, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump. He is also the CEO of The America Project, a Florida group that has spent millions of dollars on efforts to undermine faith in U.S. elections. The group has sponsored conferences for election deniers, helped bankroll the partisan and flawed review of Arizona ballots following the 2020 election. It now has chapters in several states.

The America Project was founded in 2021 by Michael Flynn, a former Army general who briefly served as Trump’s national security advisor, and Patrick Byrne, the founder of the online retailer Overstock.com. In a series of text messages, Byrne confirmed to The Associated Press that The America Project helped create the song.

Further obscuring the song’s genesis: Its record label is listed as Mailman Media, a for-profit company that was only registered in Florida in February. It’s unclear which organization receives proceeds from the song. Mailman Media’s involvement was first reported by Forbes.

A spokeswoman for Patel and Henry declined to respond to questions about the song or the irony in using it in such a way. The Star-Spangled Banner was penned by Francis Scott Key after the bombardment of Ft. McHenry by the British in the War of 1812. Just weeks earlier, redcoats had burned the U.S. Capitol to the ground; that was the last time the building had been the scene of such a violent attack.

Others who are working to assist Capitol riot defendants and their families said they also have few insights into how the song will help their cause.

“None of the organizations that are working on this are aware” of how the money will be spent, or how it will help Jan. 6 defendants, said Trennis Evans, a Jan. 6 participant who operates a legal advocacy group for other defendants known as Condemned USA. Evans pleaded guilty last year to a federal misdemeanor for illegally entering the Capitol.

The 20 inmates singing in the J6 Prison choir make up a tiny fraction of the 1,000 people who have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. More than 600 have pleaded guilty or been convicted, and more than 450 have been sentenced, with over half receiving prison terms ranging from seven days to 10 years.

Just one choir member has been identified: Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, now serving four years in prison for his actions during Jan. 6. Hale-Cusanelli is a family friend of Cynthia Hughes, a New Jersey woman who leads a separate organization raising money for Jan. 6 defendants. A spokeswoman for Hughes confirmed Hale-Cusanelli’s participation on the song but said Hughes was too busy to respond to questions.

Before he joined the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol, Hale-Cusanelli was an Army reservist who sometimes styled his mustache like Hitler and who alarmed coworkers with his comments about women and Jews.

Prosecutors alleged the 33-year-old New Jersey man urged other rioters to “advance”; video footage captured him yelling profanities at police and screaming “the revolution will be televised!”

On the witness stand during his trial, Hale-Cusanelli testified he didn’t realize that Congress met in the Capitol or that it was in session that day, to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.

“I know this sounds idiotic, but I’m from New Jersey,” Hale-Cusanelli said. “In all my studies, I didn’t know there was an actual building that was called the ‘Capitol.’ It’s embarrassing and idiotic.”

The judge said Hale-Cusanelli’s claim was “highly dubious.” Prosecutors called it a lie. A jury convicted him of felony obstruction of an official proceeding and four related misdemeanors. An attorney for Hale-Cusanelli did not return messages seeking comment.

At his sentencing in September, like many Jan. 6 defendants, Hale-Cusanelli expressed regret for his role in the attack.

“My behavior that day was unacceptable, and I disgraced my uniform and I disgraced the country,” he told the judge before being sentenced to four years in federal prison.

“If there’s any kind of service that I can provide to rectify the damage done to the Capitol building or to injuries or anything done to the Capitol or Metro Police,” he told the judge, “I stand by to perform whatever that duty might be.”

He has become a performer, of sorts — on a song that seeks to recast himself as a patriot, not a rioter.

They never miss a chance to separate morons from their money. But the attempt to turn January 6th into a patriotic battle or America is truly insidious.

I don’t think Trump can win election in 2024. But I hope we are all prepared for what comes next. It may very well be way worse than what happened on that day.

I don’t think anymore needs to be said.

Someone on twitter referenced this piece by Robert Kagan in the Washington Post from May of 2016, just when Trump was on the verge of winning the Republican nomination. I don’t recall seeing it but it certainly was prescient:

The Republican Party’s attempt to treat Donald Trump as a normal political candidate would be laughable were it not so perilous to the republic. If only he would mouth the party’s “conservative” principles, all would be well.

But of course the entire Trump phenomenon has nothing to do with policy or ideology. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party, either, except in its historic role as incubator of this singular threat to our democracy. Trump has transcended the party that produced him. His growing army of supporters no longer cares about the party. Because it did not immediately and fully embrace Trump, because a dwindling number of its political and intellectual leaders still resist him, the party is regarded with suspicion and even hostility by his followers. Their allegiance is to him and him alone.

And the source of allegiance? We’re supposed to believe that Trump’s support stems from economic stagnation or dislocation. Maybe some of it does. But what Trump offers his followers are not economic remedies — his proposals change daily. What he offers is an attitude, an aura of crude strength and machismo, a boasting disrespect for the niceties of the democratic culture that he claims, and his followers believe, has produced national weakness and incompetence. His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger. His public discourse consists of attacking or ridiculing a wide range of “others” — Muslims, Hispanics, women, Chinese, Mexicans, Europeans, Arabs, immigrants, refugees — whom he depicts either as threats or as objects of derision. His program, such as it is, consists chiefly of promises to get tough with foreigners and people of nonwhite complexion. He will deport them, bar them, get them to knuckle under, make them pay up or make them shut up.

That this tough-guy, get-mad-and-get-even approach has gained him an increasingly large and enthusiastic following has probably surprised Trump as much as anyone else. Trump himself is simply and quite literally an egomaniac. But the phenomenon he has created and now leads has become something larger than him, and something far more dangerous.

Republican politicians marvel at how he has “tapped into” a hitherto unknown swath of the voting public. But what he has tapped into is what the founders most feared when they established the democratic republic: the popular passions unleashed, the “mobocracy.” Conservatives have been warning for decades about government suffocating liberty. But here is the other threat to liberty that Alexis de Tocqueville and the ancient philosophers warned about: that the people in a democracy, excited, angry and unconstrained, might run roughshod over even the institutions created to preserve their freedoms. As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to the arrival of a tyrant, riding to power on the shoulders of the people.

This phenomenon has arisen in other democratic and quasi-democratic countries over the past century, and it has generally been called “fascism.” Fascist movements, too, had no coherent ideology, no clear set of prescriptions for what ailed society. “National socialism” was a bundle of contradictions, united chiefly by what, and who, it opposed; fascism in Italy was anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical. Successful fascism was not about policies but about the strongman, the leader (Il Duce, Der Führer), in whom could be entrusted the fate of the nation. Whatever the problem, he could fix it. Whatever the threat, internal or external, he could vanquish it, and it was unnecessary for him to explain how. Today, there is Putinism, which also has nothing to do with belief or policy but is about the tough man who single-handedly defends his people against all threats, foreign and domestic.

To understand how such movements take over a democracy, one only has to watch the Republican Party today. These movements play on all the fears, vanities, ambitions and insecurities that make up the human psyche. In democracies, at least for politicians, the only thing that matters is what the voters say they want — vox populi vox Dei. A mass political movement is thus a powerful and, to those who would oppose it, frightening weapon. When controlled and directed by a single leader, it can be aimed at whomever the leader chooses. If someone criticizes or opposes the leader, it doesn’t matter how popular or admired that person has been. He might be a famous war hero, but if the leader derides and ridicules his heroism, the followers laugh and jeer. He might be the highest-ranking elected guardian of the party’s most cherished principles. But if he hesitates to support the leader, he faces political death.

In such an environment, every political figure confronts a stark choice: Get right with the leader and his mass following or get run over. The human race in such circumstances breaks down into predictable categories — and democratic politicians are the most predictable. There are those whose ambition leads them to jump on the bandwagon. They praise the leader’s incoherent speeches as the beginning of wisdom, hoping he will reward them with a plum post in the new order. There are those who merely hope to survive. Their consciences won’t let them curry favor so shamelessly, so they mumble their pledges of support, like the victims in Stalin’s show trials, perhaps not realizing that the leader and his followers will get them in the end anyway.

A great number will simply kid themselves, refusing to admit that something very different from the usual politics is afoot. Let the storm pass, they insist, and then we can pick up the pieces, rebuild and get back to normal. Meanwhile, don’t alienate the leader’s mass following. After all, they are voters and will need to be brought back into the fold. As for Trump himself, let’s shape him, advise him, steer him in the right direction and, not incidentally, save our political skins.

What these people do not or will not see is that, once in power, Trump will owe them and their party nothing. He will have ridden to power despite the party, catapulted into the White House by a mass following devoted only to him. By then that following will have grown dramatically. Today, less than 5 percent of eligible voters have voted for Trump. But if he wins the election, his legions will likely comprise a majority of the nation. Imagine the power he would wield then. In addition to all that comes from being the leader of a mass following, he would also have the immense powers of the American presidency at his command: the Justice Department, the FBI, the intelligence services, the military. Who would dare to oppose him then? Certainly not a Republican Party that lay down before him even when he was comparatively weak. And is a man like Trump, with infinitely greater power in his hands, likely to become more humble, more judicious, more generous, less vengeful than he is today, than he has been his whole life? Does vast power un-corrupt?

This is how fascism comes to America, not with jackboots and salutes (although there have been salutes, and a whiff of violence) but with a television huckster, a phony billionaire, a textbook egomaniac “tapping into” popular resentments and insecurities, and with an entire national political party — out of ambition or blind party loyalty, or simply out of fear — falling into line behind him.

He was right about it all except for one this: Trump never got a majority of Americans behind him. In fact, it was the resistance that ended up getting him out of power. If it weren’t for our archaic and undemocratic electoral college, he would have been consigned to the ash heap of history back in 2016.

This is a Republican party illness and a Republican party illness alone. They fell for this charlatan eagerly and it’s because their party had prepared them for his arrival for years. They are the problem and defeating them is the solution. It isn’t going to be easy.

No… it’s a dystopian society

This piece by Mark Sumner at DKos summarizes our current dilemma and it’s horrifying:

The aphorism “an armed society is a polite society” is a frequently used saying among gun supporters on the right. It’s also been featured on banners, buttons, and T-shirts from the National Rifle Association. But no one ever seems to ask what it really means.

This is what it means. All of this. It means in a society with more guns than people, even the slightest provocation ends with someone getting shot.

The origin of the phrase, usually described as “a Robert Heinlein quote,” is actually the dystopian novel “Beyond This Horizon.” The antihero of his novel is a privileged product of eugenics who happily shoots people for the slightest infraction, real or perceived.

The context of the quote—which ends with the character saying, “We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days, but to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both”—rarely makes a T-shirt or bumper sticker. Neither does the novel’s lavish praise of eugenics, telepathic powers, and general weirdness.

But even if it were a fictional quote taken completely out of context, the saying turns out to be true, in a way. In a sufficiently armed society, any small transgression is met with bullets. America is sufficiently armed.

The shooting of Kinsley White and her family—that’s the 6-year-old who tried to chase down a basketball—illustrates this perfectly.

As reported by The Guardian, several neighborhood children were playing basketball when the ball bounced away and rolled into the yard of 25-year-old Robert Singletary. Singletary responded by screaming and cursing at the children. The ages of all the children weren’t given, but this included screaming and cursing directed toward at least one kindergarten-aged girl. In response, one of the fathers told Singletary he needed to stop yelling at children, and that if he had a problem, he needed to come over to the adults and work it out. Instead, Singletary went into his house, got a gun, came back outside, and began shooting.

Somewhere in this process, Kinsley White’s father also grabbed a gun and returned fire. Singletary unloaded at least one full clip, hitting Kinsley’s father, the father of another child present, and leaving Kinsley with bullet fragments in her cheek.

“Why did you shoot my daddy and me?” Kinsley said into the camera in an interview with a local television station. “Why did you shoot a kid’s dad?”

If you were ever a child in this country, or likely any country, you’re bound to have run into a situation like this at some point. The neighborhood asshole who yells at any kid who steps on his perfect grass, or who has some utterly nuts feelings about the inviolability of his patch of earth. The guy who, old or not, screams, “Get off my lawn!” or something worse at the first provocation. Maybe that’s the end of it. Maybe it comes down to two neighbor guys squaring off across the invisible boundary between one patch of green and the next and glaring at each other. Oh yeah? Yeah! That’s not how things work in an armed society.

As USA Today reported in March, the United States is also seeing a sharp increase in “road rage” incidents that lead to shootings. Among the more than 550 incidents last year were a man who was shot while driving kids to a birthday party when he asked another driver to slow down, and a man who was shot while driving his son home from a Little League game. As states drop requirements on concealed carry, these incidents continue to rise.

In an armed society, the perceived insult of being asked not to cuss at a child is a shooting offense. Opening someone’s car door is a shooting offense. Pulling into a driveway where the owner was tired of people using their little stretch of blacktop to turn around is a shooting offense. Asking someone to slow down is a shooting offense. Anything that might have ended with an exchange of fists, or just hot words, a raised finger behind a window, or even with one person just mumbling under their breath is a shooting offense.

That’s the point of the saying. In an armed society, you don’t dare offend anyone, at any time, about anything. Because everything, no matter how trivial, is a shooting offense.

America … is an armed society. We’ve reached that dystopia where a child fetching a basketball, or a cheerleader touching the wrong car on her way back from practice, or a kid stepping onto the wrong porch doesn’t get words or glares. It gets bullets.

Forget for a moment the big shooting sprees, those in which someone decides to show that their wonder weapon is capable of wiping out a school full of children, or a crowded nightclub, or an office packed with former coworkers. These incidents aren’t about plans drawn up by people who spent weeks making those final adjustments to their manifestos.

These are such tiny, ordinary, everyday events that they should be forgotten in a moment. That guy next door? Sorry, I don’t remember. What was his name again? Except they turn into trauma, or injury, that can last a lifetime. Or they cut that lifetime hugely short. The guy who thought you turned in front of him at the stoplight becomes the most important figure in your life, and the life of your family. Because, when you add a gun, every momentary loss of control is a murderous rage.

This is what gun culture has brought us and the people who love their guns more than their children are happy about it. They’ve turned every disagreement into a potentially lethal encounter. How can we live among these people?

NYT:

At a town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday, Chris Christie cited a long list of promises that former President Donald J. Trump failed to deliver on while in office. Above all else, however, he expressed disgust at the idea that Republicans would consider renominating Mr. Trump after he “undermined our democracy” by lying about the 2020 election and inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The event took place on the campus of New England College. After several gray-haired attendees asked Mr. Christie about Medicare, prescription drug prices and the like, a 15-year-old audience member named Quinn Mitchell — who had also heard Mr. Christie strike similar themes a month earlier in New Hampshire — spoke up.

A Question for Chris Christie

“I heard you say that one of the reasons you endorsed Trump is that you really did not want Clinton to be president in 2016. And now, based on recent knowledge that Trump was arrested — Trump was prosecuted on criminal charges — do you think that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton would have been the better bet for democracy in 2016?”

The Subtext

Mr. Christie, who is exploring a 2024 Republican presidential bid, has positioned himself as the one G.O.P. hopeful willing to attack Mr. Trump. But a well-crafted question from Mr. Mitchell got to the heart of a contradiction in Mr. Christie’s posture, forcing him to own his support for the man he had just forcefully denounced.

Chris Christie’s Answer

“Hillary Clinton, in many, many ways, was a huge detriment to our democracy too. The American people had in 2016 the biggest hold-your-nose-and-vote choice they ever had. And so, look, philosophically, some of the stuff that Trump did accomplish is more in line with what I believe than what Hillary would have tried to accomplish. So I still would’ve picked Trump.”

The Subtext

Mr. Christie’s answer was revealing. As much of a threat to democracy as he had just declared Mr. Trump to be, Mr. Christie, the former New Jersey governor, could not bring himself to say that Hillary Clinton would have been the better choice to preserve democracy.

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Mr. Christie’s unwillingness to declare that he would have voted for a Democrat if he had known what was coming gets to the heart of the dilemma for anti-Trump candidates. It’s why true Never Trumpers don’t trust candidates like Mr. Christie, who endorsed Mr. Trump in 2016 and in 2020 and served as an outside adviser while Mr. Trump was president. At the same time, Mr. Christie is making the straightforward political calculation that a would-be 2024 Republican who acknowledged that Mrs. Clinton would have been the better president would be dead in any G.O.P. primary.

The moment also highlighted the challenge that almost every current or potential Republican primary candidate faces against Mr. Trump: Almost all of them, some of whom served in his administration, have a history of praising or supporting Mr. Trump during his presidency — words that can be expected to come back to haunt them.

Hillary Clinton was not a threat to democracy fergawdsakes. And why didn’t they ask if he voted for Biden? Is any Democrat just as much of a threat to democracy? Please.

This is all just Christie posing as a tough guy again when we all know he’s just a second rate bully who is too scared to tell the truth to Trump’s slavering mob. Say what you will about Liz Cheney but she has much bigger balls than this fool.

Here’s another from Mark Liebovich:

“How many different ways are you gonna ask the same fucking question, Mark?” Chris Christie asked me. We were seated in the dining room of the Hay-Adams hotel. It’s a nice hotel, five stars. Genteel.

Christie’s sudden ire was a bit jolting, as I had asked him only a few fairly innocuous questions so far, most of them relating to Donald Trump, the man he might run against in the presidential race. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, was visiting Washington as part of his recent tour of public deliberations about whether to launch another campaign.

Color me dubious. It’s unclear what makes Christie think the Republican Party might magically revert to some pre-Trump incarnation. Or, for that matter, what makes him think a campaign would go any better than his did seven years ago, the last time Christie ran, when he won exactly zero delegates and dropped out of the Republican primary after finishing sixth in New Hampshire.

But still, color me vaguely intrigued too—more so than I am about, say, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. If Christie runs again in 2024, he could at least serve a compelling purpose: The gladiatorial Garden Stater would be better at poking the orange bear than would potential rivals Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley, who so far have offered only the most flaccid of critiques. Over the past few months, Christie has been among the more vocal and willing critics of Trump. Notably, he became the first Republican would-be 2024 candidate to say he would not vote for the former president again in a general election.

Christie makes for an imperfect kamikaze candidate, to say the least. But he does seem genuine in his desire to retire his doormat act and finally take on his former patron and intermittent friend. Which was why I found myself having breakfast with Christie earlier this week, eager to hear whether he was really going to challenge Trump and how hard he was willing to fight. Strangely, he seemed more eager to fight with me.

It was a weird breakfast. Shortly after 8 a.m. on Wednesday, Christie strolled through the ornate dining room of the Hay-Adams, where he had spent the previous few nights. He was joined by his longtime aide Maria Comella. We sat near a window, with a view of the White House across Lafayette Square, and about 100 feet from the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, where Trump had staged his ignominious Bible photo op three springs ago.

I started off by asking Christie about his statement that he would not vote for Trump, even if the former president were the Republican nominee. “I think Trump has disqualified himself from the presidency,” Christie said.

So what would Christie do, then—vote for Joe Biden? Nope. “The guy is physically and mentally not up to the job,” Christie said.

Just to be clear, I continued, this hellscape he was currently suffering under in Biden’s America would be as bad as whatever a next-stage Trump presidency would look like?

“Elections are about choices,” Christie said, as he often does. So whom would he choose in November 2024, if he’s faced with a less-than-ideal choice? “I probably just wouldn’t vote,” he said.

Interesting choice! I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a politician admit to planning not to vote, but it’s at least preferable to that cutesy “I’m writing in Ronald Reagan” or “I’m writing in my pal Ned” evasion that some do.

I pressed on, curious to see how committed Christie really was to his recent swivel away from Trump, or whether this was just his latest opportunistic interlude before his inevitable belly flop back into the Mar-a-Lago lagoon. Say Trump secures the nomination, and most of his formal “rivals”—and various other “prominent Republicans”—revert to doormat mode. (“I will support the nominee,” “Biden is senile,” etc.) What’s Christie going to be saying then, vis-à-vis Trump?

We were exactly seven minutes into our discussion, and my mild dubiousness seemed to set Christie off. His irritation felt a tad performative, as if he might be playing up his Jersey-tough-guy bit.

“I’m not going to dwell on this, Mark,” Christie said. “You guys drive me crazy. All you want to do is talk about Trump. I’m sorry, I don’t think he’s the only topic to talk about in politics. And I’m not going to waste my hour with you this morning—which is a joy and a gift—on just continuing talking, asking, and answering the Donald Trump question from 18 different angles.”

I pivoted to DeSantis, mostly in an attempt to un-trigger Christie. Christie has made a persuasive case that DeSantis has been a disaster as an almost-candidate so far, especially with regard to his feud with Disney. But would Christie support DeSantis if he were to somehow defeat Trump and become the nominee?

“I have to see how he performs as a candidate,” Christie said. “I really don’t know Ron DeSantis all that well … I’m going to be a discerning voter,” Christie added. “I’m going to watch what everybody does, and I’m gonna to decide who I’m gonna vote for.” (Reminder: unless it’s Trump or Biden.)

I had a few more follow-ups. “So, I know you don’t want to talk about Trump …”

“Here we are, back to Trump again,” Christie said, shaking his head.

Trump, I mentioned, has been the definitional figure in the Republican Party for the past seven or eight years, and probably will remain so for the next few. Not only that, but Christie’s history with Trump—especially from 2016 to 2021—was pretty much the only thing that made him more relevant than, say, Hutchinson (respectfully!) or any other Republican polling at less than 1 percent.

This was when Christie lit into me for asking him “the same fucking question.” Look, I said, at least 40 or 50 percent of the GOP remains very much in thrall to Trump, if you believe poll numbers.

Christie questioned my premise: “No matter what statistics you cite, what polls you cite, that’s a snapshot in the moment, and I don’t think those are static numbers.”

“It’s been true for about seven years,” I replied. “That’s pretty static.”

“But he’s been as high as 85 to 90 percent,” Christie said, referring to Trump’s Republican-approval ratings in the past. There will always be variance, he argued, but those approval ratings would be much smaller now. Christie then accused me of being “obsessed” with Trump.

At this point, Christie was raising his voice rather noticeably again, an agitated wail that brought to mind Wilma Flintstone’s vacuum. I was becoming self-conscious about potentially disturbing other diners in this elegant salle à manger.

A waiter came over again and asked if we wanted any food. Christie, who was sipping a cup of hot tea, demurred, and I ordered a Diet Coke and a bowl of mixed berries. “What a fascinating combination,” Christie marveled.

I told Christie that I hoped that he would in fact run, if only because he would be better equipped to be pugilistic than the other milksops in the field. Obviously, it would have been better if Christie had taken his best shots at the big-bully front-runner seven years ago instead of largely standing down, quitting the race, and then leading the GOP’s collective bum-rush to Trump. But he has grown a lot and learned a lot since then, Christie assured me.

“I certainly won’t do the same thing in 2024 that I did in 2016,” Christie said. “You can bank on that.”

“Well, I would hope not,” I said. This seemed to reignite his pique.

“What do you mean, I hope?” Christie snapped. He took umbrage that I would question the sincerity of his opposition to Trump: “How about just paying attention to everything I’ve said over the last eight weeks?”

I told him that I had paid attention to what he said about Trump over the past eight years. Christie nodded and seemed to acknowledge that maybe I had a point, that some skepticism might be warranted.

I asked Christie if he had any regrets about anything.

“I have regrets about every part of my life, Mark,” he said.

Whoa.

“And anybody who says they don’t is lying.”

That said, Christie added, he would not change anything about his past dealings and relationship with Trump. He is always reminding people that he and Trump were friends long before 2016; that they went way back, 22 years or so. Christie told me that he and Trump have not spoken in two years. Did he miss Trump?

“Not particularly,” he said.

Do you think he misses you?

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I do,” Christie said.

“Has he called, or tried to reach out?”

“No, that wouldn’t be his style,” Christie told me. “That would be too ego-violative.” (I made a mental note that I’d never before heard the term ego-violative.)

“But I do think he misses me, yeah. I think he misses people who tell him what the truth is. I think he misses that.

JFC. He’s just trying to get some attention in a world that no longer finds him relevant. He’s pathetic.