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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
An “imprecise analogy”?
“Mad Carolinians,” Samuel Wiley Crawford, 31, called the populace of antibellum Charleston, South Carolina in a letter to his brother after Abraham Lincoln’s election. Even the children were caught up in secessionist fervor, he wrote, and perhaps the women more so than the men, Erik Larson recounts in “The Demon of Unrest.”
Larson sees parallels in the events of January 6, 2021:
Planters who had been wearing ordinary clothing one day turned up the next in elaborate uniforms, red sashes glaring—their “soldier’s toggery,” as Mary [Boykin Chesnut] put it. With so much tension in the city, she wrote, the atmosphere was “phosphorescent.” The streets were full of soldiers in uniform marching and singing; at night she heard the heavy rumble of ammunition wagons moving over cobbled streets—no one could sleep.
Ken Silverstein at The New Republic cites another passage unearthed by Larson in his book “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin.” A diplomatic cable sent from Berlin to the State Department in June 1933 described the atmosphere in the German city under the recently installed Nazi regime:
“Wherever one goes in Germany one sees people drilling, from children of five and six on, up to those well into middle age. A psychology is being developed that the whole world is against Germany and that it lies defenseless before the world.”
“With few exceptions, the men who are running this Government are of a mentality that you and I cannot understand. Some of them are psychopathic cases and would ordinarily be receiving treatment somewhere. Others are exalted and in a frame of mind that knows no reason. The majority are woefully ignorant and unprepared for the tasks which they have to carry through every day. Those men in the party and in responsible positions who are really worth-while, and there are quite a number of these, are powerless because they have to follow the orders of superiors who are suffering from the abnormal psychology prevailing in the country.”
Silverstein recalled the dispatch in the context of the atmosphere in “excerpts from a private WhatsApp group chat established last December” by Erik Prince of Blackwater fame, called Off Leash. “Not all of the group’s members are conspiracy theorists,” Silverstein offers. The more serious members mean “the group can’t be dismissed as merely a collection of harmless cranks.” But the “Bomb the hell out of them” character of some discussions on international relations gives one pause. Plus, the rah-rah for the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the vanquishing of his (and their) enemies.
“It’s Trump or Revolution!” insisted one member. “You mean Trump AND Revolution,” wrote another, a right-leaning Canadian businessman.
With the Democratic Party captured by Islamic terrorists, Marxists, globalists, and other foreign and domestic evildoers, the U.S. was “being destroyed from within,” warned [a former Republican House staffer], whose fears were shared by many among the Off Leash crew.
Silverstein cautions:
Comparing the contemporary United States to Nazi Germany is an admittedly imprecise analogy. Nevertheless, it’s impossible not to be alarmed by the crypto-fascist, off the leash views expressed by Trump’s allies in the group chat about exterminating their foreign and domestic enemies and needing to “find the will to levy the toll.” However imprecise the comparison, as a model political capital, Berlin 1933 is far more compatible with the worldview of Off Leash participants than Washington 2024, and in the event they and like-minded associates gain power in the U.S. or elsewhere, they’ll be pushing backward in that general direction.
And if Nazi Germany is an imprecise analogy, perhaps the domestic one Larson sees in the pre-Civil War South in the aftermath of January 6. Red sashes then. Red ties now.
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Just asking questions
Are you a “conservative” who supports a multiply convicted felon for president, for leader of the free world?
Are you a “believer” who talks big about family values but votes for an amoral, lying, cheating, adulterous huckster?
Are you a “law and order” voter who excuses people convicted of assaulting police and destroying government property during the sacking of the U.S. Capitol as political prisoners?
Are you a “freedom-lover” who calls your neighbors communists while slavishly following a fascistic, wannabe dictator who threatens to execute opponents?
Yeah, thought so.
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“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.” – from The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
“[Donald Trump is] a husband, a father, a grandfather and a friend to a lot of people. When you see that happen to him, and I was standing right next to him today, it’s heartbreaking.” -Donald Trump’s defense attorney, reacting to his client’s conviction on 34 felony counts this past Thursday
To quote The Giant in Twin Peaks, “It is happening again.”
Embracing Donald Trump’s strategy of blaming the U.S. justice system after his historic guilty verdict, Republicans in Congress are fervently enlisting themselves in his campaign of vengeance and political retribution in the GOP bid to reclaim the White House.
Almost no Republican official has stood up to suggest Trump should not be the party’s presidential candidate for the November election — in fact, some have sought to hasten his nomination. Few others dared to defend the legitimacy of the New York state court that heard the hush money case against the former president, or the 12 jurors who unanimously rendered their verdict.
In fact, any Republicans who expressed doubts about Trump’s innocence or political viability, including his former hawkish national security adviser John Bolton or top-tier Senate candidate Larry Hogan, were instantly bullied by the former president’s enforcers and told to “leave the party.” […]
The swift, strident and deepening commitment to Trump despite his felony conviction shows how fully Republican leaders and lawmakers have been infused with his unfounded grievances of a “rigged” system and dangerous conspiracies of “weaponized” government into their own attacks on President Joe Biden and the Democrats. […]
At his Trump Tower on Friday in New York, the former president returned to the kinds of attacks he has repeatedly lodged in campaign speeches, portraying Biden as the one who is a “corrupt” and the U.S. as a “fascist” nation.
Trump called the members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol “thugs” and said Biden was a “Manchurian candidate,” a phrase inspired by the 1960s movie portraying a puppet of a U.S. political enemy.
It should be noted that Mr. Trump did not elaborate any further on the movie reference, to which my reaction was, “Wait…what? Biden is a ‘Manchurian candidate’?!” This unqualified analogy immediately struck me as textbook projection; and there’s at least one noted presidential historian who concurs:
If there is one thing that all historians can agree on, it’s that history is cyclical. Which is why this seemed like a good week to re-post one of my old pieces that is suddenly new again…
(Originally published on Hullabaloo on March 19, 2016)
Synchronicity: Criterion reissues The Manchurian Candidate
Would I block you? I would spend every cent I own, and all I could borrow, to block you. There are people who think of Johnny as a clown and a buffoon, but I do not. I despise John Iselin and everything that Iselinism has come to stand for. I think, if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more to harm this country than he’s doing now.
–from The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
That’s Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver), in response to Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Angela Lansbury), the wife and political handler of Senator John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), who has just asked him if he would have any objection if her McCarthy-esque husband’s name were to be “put forward” at an upcoming political convention.
Thank god that’s from a movie, because, well…could you imagine what kind of chaos would ensue in this country if someone who is widely perceived as a “clown and buffoon” were somehow jockeyed into a position of high office…perhaps even the highest office? I mean, that’s purely something that could “only happen in the movies”, amirite? Anyone?
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat. His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.
-from Mitt Romney’s recent speech regarding Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency
Who said that? Mitt Romney? Really? He denounced his own party’s steamrolling frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nominee? I suppose I see some parallels between Donald Trump and the fictional Senator Iselin, but let’s keep this in mind…director John Frankenheimer’s Cold War thriller was made 54 years ago. And the story itself is set in the early 1950s, at the height of the Red Scare.
Those were different times! Back then, the political climate was informed by fear and paranoia. You actually had politicians publicly calling each other commies, fergawdsakes. What is that line in the film, where Senator Jordan is explaining to Senator Iselin’s stepson Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) the chief reasons for the political enmity between himself and the insufferable tag team of Raymond’s Red-baiting stepfather and control freak mother…?
One of your mother’s more endearing traits is her tendency to refer to anyone who disagrees with her about anything as a communist.
Yes, that was it. See? That was then, but this is now. Donald Trump doesn’t go that far.
Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Saturday blamed supporters of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for protests that shut down his Chicago rally, calling the U.S. senator from Vermont “our communist friend”.
-from The Raw Story (March 12)
Oh. But, in the film, it’s the candidate’s wife who is described as a Red-baiter, so let’s not get carried away. Because if that were the case, this would be getting downright spooky.
[Bernie] Sanders is a communist. I was born in a communist country, so I know when I see them or hear them.
-Donald Trump’s ex-wife Ivana (from Page Six, March 15)
All right…now it’s getting downright spooky.
Speaking of “spooky”, in January of 2011, in my armchair psychologist’s attempt to answer “Why?” regarding yet another mass shooting, I explored the pathology of the perversely “All-American” phenomenon known as the “lone gunman” via what morphed into a rather wordy genre study.
In the piece, I posed some questions. What is the motivation? Madness? Political beef? A cry for attention? What is to blame? Society? Demagoguery? Legislative torpor? The internet? Then, prompted by last year’s horrible Charleston church shooting, I felt compelled to republish a revised version of that piece.
In the intro to that revised posting, I noted an unsettling similarity between something Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said in his official campaign kickoff speech to what the Charleston shooter had allegedly said to his victims just one day later:
“When Mexico sends its people (to America), they are not sending their best… (Mexican immigrants) are bringing drugs and they are bringing crime, and they’re rapists.”
-from Donald Trump’s speech announcing his presidential bid, June 16, 2015
“(African-Americans) rape our women and you’re taking over our country.”
-Charleston shooter’s statement to his victims before opening fire, June 17, 2015
Was it coincidence, or was it cause-and-effect? I drew no conclusions then, nor do I now. At any rate, my point is…one of the films I analyzed in the post was The Manchurian Candidate, which is now available in a newly restored 4K Blu-ray edition from Criterion.
The story is set after the Korean War. Frank Sinatra stars as former POW Major Bennett Marco. Marco and his platoon were captured by the Soviets and transported to Manchuria for a period, then released. As a consequence, Marco suffers from (what we would now call) PTSD, in the form of recurring nightmares.
Marco’s memories of the captivity are hazy; but he suspects his dreams hold the key. His suspicions are confirmed when he hears from several fellow POWs, who all share very specific and disconcerting details in their dreams involving the platoon’s sergeant, Raymond Shaw. As the mystery unfolds, a byzantine conspiracy is uncovered, involving brainwashing, subterfuge and assassination.
I’ve watched this film maybe 9 or 10 times over the years, and I must say that it’s held up remarkably well, despite a few dated trappings. It works on a number of levels; as a conspiracy thriller, political satire, and a perverse family melodrama. Interestingly, each time I revisit, it strikes me more and more as a black comedy; which could be attributable to its prescient nature (perhaps the political reality has finally caught up with its more far-fetched elements…which now makes it a closer cousin to Dr. Strangelove and Network).
Indeed, I found myself laughing out loud at lines like “Yak dung…tastes good, like a cigarette should!” and “…having been relieved of those uniquely American symptoms of guilt and fear, he cannot possibly give himself away” (both delivered by scene-stealer Khigh Dhiegh, as the droll Manchurian brainwashing expert). Sinatra is assigned one of the most quotable lines: “Mr. Secretary-I’m kinda new at this job, but I don’t think it’s good public relations to talk that way to a United States senator…even if he is an idiot.” The intelligent screenplay was adapted from Richard Condon’s novel by George Axelrod.
Good performances abound, but Lansbury is the standout, with a magnificent turn as one of cinema’s greatest heavies. Harvey is heartbreaking as the tortured Raymond. Sinatra is, well, Sinatra (i.e. uneven). It’s been well-documented that he was never a fan of doing multiple takes; frankly it shows and works against him here, particularly whenever he lapses into that Rat Pack patois (he recounts a dream as “one swinger of a nightmare”). It’s not enough to sink the film, but those moments do take Sinatra out of his character.
As usual, Criterion packs in some worthwhile extras. They port over the 1997 commentary track by the director that was done for the original MGM DVD release, as well as an 8-minute round-table between Frankenheimer, screenwriter Axelrod and Sinatra that was recorded in 1987.
New supplements exclusive to this edition include a recent 11-minute interview with Lansbury (engaging as ever at 89), a 21-minute interview with historian Susan Carruthers, and an enlightening 16-minute appreciation by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, who gleans a few subtexts I’ve never picked up on.
That’s one mark of a truly great film-the more times you watch it, the more you’ll see.
Previous posts with related themes:
They Can Always Get Him on Tax Evasion
On Mad Kings, Death Cults, and Altman’s Secret Honor
A Sad Sequel: The American Assassin on Film II
Plus ca change: Criterion Reissues Dr. Strangelove
More reviews at Den of Cinema
President Biden announced a breakthrough in the Gaza war yesterday which seems like good news although it isn’t being discussed much. I thought I share this comment about it from former president Obama, FWIW:
Today, President Biden put forward a clear, realistic and just plan to establish an immediate ceasefire and end the war in Gaza — a plan that ensures Israel’s security, returns hostages taken on October 7th to their families, increases aid into Gaza and relieves the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and engages Israelis, Palestinians, Arab countries and the broader international community in the process of rebuilding Gaza.
A ceasefire alone won’t ease the terrible pain of Israelis whose loved ones were butchered or abducted by Hamas, or the Palestinians whose families have been shattered by the subsequent war. It won’t resolve the longstanding conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, or answer contentious issues surrounding a two-state solution or continuing settler activity in the West Bank. But what it can do is put a stop to the ongoing bloodshed, help families reunite and allow a surge of humanitarian aid to help desperate, hungry people. It can save lives, here and now — and it can lay the foundation for what will be a long and difficult road to a future in which Israel is secure and at peace with its neighbors, and Palestinians finally have the security, freedom and self-determination that they have sought for so long.
As the tragedy in Gaza has unfolded over the past eight months, we’ve witnessed an often fierce public debate here at home — and around the world — regarding how the United States should respond. But no matter where each of us stand in these broader debates, an enduring ceasefire is something we should all support — for the sake of Israelis, Palestinians and the world at large. I am deeply encouraged by the steady, tireless efforts of President Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and our diplomatic team to bring this awful war to an end.
I don’t know what to think but it seems to me that any progress is welcome. It has to end.
The law and order Republicans are very upset:
It’s not just the officials:
Newsmax host Carl Higbie went on a tirade on Friday after former President Donald Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury the day before.
[…]
During Friday’s edition of Frontline on Newsmax, Higbie demanded congressional Republicans drop everything and go after those involved in Trump’s prosecution.
“Where the hell are you guys on this one?” he said. “Stop everything in Congress. Subpoena everyone. Don’t take summer recess. Don’t take weekends. Don’t even get up to go to the bathroom. Get in there and subpoena everyone. This judge, his daughter, everyone affiliated with anything ever, ever! I don’t care if we stop building bridges and highways and stop funding our government. You fight fire with fire. Otherwise, these Marxists are going to keep doing this.”
I’m not just talking. You tyrants are about to awaken a machine you don’t want. You are pushing people to the edge. The same party that is offended by the wrong pronoun is pushing the party that owns 90% of the guns, of which, the majority defends our nation, who mine our minerals, who build our skyscrapers, and drive our trucks.
You weak people have no idea. You people in your cities with your white-shoe consultants, country clubs who thought prosecuting Trump was a good idea. You have never met America.
After talking about how Republicans have most of the guns and making a Braveheart reference, Higbie claimed it is Democrats who want violence.
“They want violence so they can cancel this next election that they know they’re gonna lose,” he baselessly alleged. “Don’t fall for it. And the liberal networks? They want it so bad, they can taste it.”
The host concluded by predicting Republicans will win in a landslide in November and that Trump will prosecute Democrats.
He is very upset. Here he is on Friday comparing Biden to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin:
Oops, wrong video. Here it is:
Trump likes to cite the “evidence” in that piece of garbage “2000 Mules” as part of his Big Lie. Well….
Following the 2020 election, D’Souza released 2000 Mules as an attempt to justify Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden. Trump famously held a screening of the movie at his Mar-a-Lago estate and MAGA supporters promoted the film during it’s release in May 2022.
The film was produced by Salem Media Group, a conservative radio juggernaut that airs the likes of Sebastian Gorka and Charlie Kirk.
In a new statement, Salem apologized for the film and said it would cease distributing it. The move came after a man featured in the movie sued Salem for defamation.
The movie featured video showing the man, Mark Andrews, putting five ballots in a drop box in Lawrenceville, Georgia in 2020. D’Souza falsely claimed in the film that Andrews’ actions were criminal, describing the votes as “fraudulent.”
The statement from Salem blamed D’Souza for the smear.
“In publishing the film and the book, we relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote, Inc. (‘TTV’) that the individuals depicted in the videos provided to us by TTV, including Mr. Andrews, illegally deposited ballots,” the company said in a statement. “We have learned that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has cleared Mr. Andrews of illegal voting activity in connection with the event depicted in 2000 Mules.”
The upshot?
“We have removed the film from Salem’s platforms, and there will be no future distribution of the film or the book by Salem.”
D’Souza is a fellow convicted criminal whom Trump pardoned before he left office. Birds of a feather.
Countries around the world implement stringent entry requirements to protect their citizens and maintain national security. According to the World Population Review, G7 nations Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan have established policies that prohibit entry to individuals with felony convictions. Additionally, Israel and China also impose such bans. These regulations often result in automatic denial of visas or entry permits to convicted felons, potentially impacting Trump’s ability to travel internationally.
Based on data from the World Population Review, here is a list of countries that do not allow convicted felons to enter:
- Argentina
- Australia
- Canada
- China
- Cuba
- India
- Iran
- Israel
- Japan
- Kenya
- Macau
- New Zealand
- South Africa
- Taiwan
- United Kingdom
- United States
Additionally, there are further countries that Trump may now be denied entry to. Not all countries actively check from criminal records at the border, but they will deny entry if a convicted felon is discovered. The following countries implement this:
- Brazil
- Cambodia
- Chile
- Dominican Republic
- Egypt
- Ethiopia
- Hong Kong
- Indonesia
- Ireland
- Malaysia
- Mexico
- Morocco
- Nepal
- Peru
- Philippines
- Singapore
- South Korea
- Tanzania
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Ukraine
- United Arab Emirates
It seems like a bit of an impediment for a president, no?
The first post conviction poll:
Ten percent of Republican registered voters say they are less likely to vote for Donald Trump following his felony conviction for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Friday.
The two-day poll, conducted in the hours after the Republican presidential candidate’s conviction by a Manhattan jury on Thursday, also found that 56% of Republican registered voters said the case would have no effect on their vote and 35% said they were more likely to support Trump, who has claimed the charges against him are politically motivated and has vowed to appeal.
The potential loss of a tenth of his party’s voters is more significant for Trump than the stronger backing of more than a third of Republicans, since many of the latter would be likely to vote for him regardless of the conviction.
Among independent registered voters, 25% said Trump’s conviction made them less likely to support him in November, compared to 18% who said they were more likely and 56% who said the conviction would have no impact on their decision.
The verdict could shake up the race between Trump, who was U.S. president from 2017-2021, and Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of the Nov. 5 election. U.S. presidential elections are typically decided by thin margins in a handful of competitive swing states, meaning that even small numbers of voters defecting from their candidates can have a big impact.
Biden and Trump remain locked in a tight race, with 41% of voters saying they would vote for Biden if the election were held today and 39% saying they would pick Trump, according to the poll, which surveyed 2,556 U.S. adults nationwide.
I don’t know that this means much in any case.A lot will happen between now and election day. But it is striking that only 10% of Republicans think it’s not ok if the president is a convicted felon. Remember when they called themselves the moral majority?
Update—
Here’s another one:
One of the first polls conducted since a New York Jury found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records find that a significant minority of Republicans and Independents want him to drop out and a majority of registered voters approve of the jury’s decision.
The Morning Consult poll conducted on Friday offers some of the first clues about how voters are reacting to the unprecedented situation.
54% of registered voters “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the guilty verdict compared to 34% who “strongly or “somewhat” disapprove. 49% of Independents and 15% of Republicans said Trump should end his campaign because of the conviction.
The polls found the race effectively tied nationally in a 1-on-1 with Biden at 45% and Trump at 44%.
While they may agree with the guilty verdict, the poll found that more voters think Trump should get probation (49%) rather than go to prison (44%) 68% of registered voters said the punishment should be a fine.
Defeating fascism is not someone else’s job
President Joe Biden’s comments on the Trump conviction were in Dan Pfeiffer’s opinion calibrated about right. “He’s a serious person addressing a serious matter.”
However, that doesn’t excuse the rest of us from being surrogates. Big moments matter, Pfeiffer reminds readers. Trump’s cut over the eye. It may be unseemly for Biden to pound him. But not for us. Work the eye. Now (emphasis mine):
One of President Obama’s cardinal rules of politics is that if you don’t talk about the giant elephant in the room, the voters will wonder what you are trying to hide. Trump’s conviction while running for President is a giant fucking elephant.
Just ask yourself, how would Republicans handle it if Joe Biden were convicted of a misdemeanor related to the handling of classified information? Would they turn the other cheek and tell people to respect the verdict before pivoting to inflation or another issue?
Seems unlikely.
The Republicans would use every weapon in their media arsenal to brand the President as a criminal in the eyes of voters. Heck, Trump, the GOP, and the MAGA media have called him ‘Crooked Joe’ absent a conviction, an indictment, or one iota of evidence.
There is simply no need to recite rote talking points about the sanctity of the judicial system. Our opponent in the election was convicted of serious crimes; we should make him answer for it at every opportunity. The Republicans running up and down the ballot are slavishly devoted to defending that criminal. They should explain why they think a former President is above the law.
The media will move on in a matter of days. Other news will intrude. One of the core lessons of communications—especially in a world where the traditional press has a fraction of its previous reach—is that if you want people to know something, you have to tell them and then tell them again and again. Once you are so sick of saying something that you might puke, you probably need to say it a couple more times.
Trump’s bizarre, rambling press conference, where he whined about his plight at the expense of a message that actually persuades voters, is yet another argument for why Democrats should talk about his conviction as often as possible.
Make it news. Keep it in the news.
Marcy Wheeler was on a tear about that last night, albeit spurred by complaints about Merrick Garland.
“The left is losing the fight against fascism politically,” Wheeler added. “That’s not Garland’s fight. It’s yours.”
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