Up From Facebook

  Been reading way too much recently about how we're headed into a Great Depression and/or civil war. Sorry, but I'm data-driven, and relatively resistant to fear-mongering. We are far from metaphysical perfection, but we're not a hellscape, either. Of course, I don't watch Fox News, so there's that. "There are two things we can do about this culture of fear. First, liberals need to avoid going down the same rabbit hole as conservatives. We’re not close to that yet, but there’s not much question that we’ve been moving in that direction. It needs to stop. Second, and most important, we need to mount some kind of broad, aggressive battle against Fox News. This obviously needs to be a fully private battle, and it needs to be waged in every possible way. We can boycott advertisers. We can pressure cable companies. We can air commercials that take on the fear machine. We can even compromise on some of the political positions that conservatives find most unnerving. I...

  As Clauswitz famously declared, war is the continuation of politics by other means. The story told in “Battle Cry of Freedom” by James M. McPherson is dominated by the politics leading up to and continuing through the Civil War. Indeed, the story begins in 1848 and we read through 250 of the >800 pages before the assault on Fort Sumter is recounted. Although the book is over 30 years old, the style is fresh and contemporary. While inevitable descriptions of key battles, replete with black and white maps showing troop movements described in the text, appear at key points in the narrative, the political as well as military circumstances leading up to the battle and the political as well as military consequences of their outcomes are well-integrated. I’m not much into military history, so I was glad to be spared the granular detail that I’ve encountered in other civil war histories. My enthusiasm for reading history for pleasure really began when I read a couple of books by Barba...

  Many times on Facebook, I've pointed out that the right-wing noise machine uses the word "socialism" as an epithet, not as description of an economic system. Glad to see Kevin Drum is on board with this, too: "This is a good example of the way that the right-wing media machine keeps its audience scared witless. To these folks, “socialism” is freighted with connotations: Democrats want to tax your money away. They want to give your money to Black people. They want to crush Christianity. They want government bureaucrats to control every aspect of your life. They want schools to teach your kids that gay sex is good and patriotism is bad. None of this is aimed at liberals or even moderates. Hell, you have to listen to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the others regularly to even understand all these connotations. But make no mistake: “socialist” is just shorthand for high taxes, hatred of white people, zealous secularism, and indoctrination of our kids. It’s a great fear...

  The Trump cult is not new, it is merely the apotheosis of a right-wing expropriation (or assimilation) of the GOP brand that has been going on since FDR. This is the reason we study history, peeps. As usual, Kevin Drum nails it: ". . . every time Democrats come into power, some sort of conspiracy-minded right-wing movement blossoms. It happened with FDR, it happened with JFK, it happened with Bill Clinton, and at the time it was happening with Barack Obama." *snip* "Reading this now, the cult of Donald Trump and his iron hold over the Republican Party seem almost inevitable. All he had to do was take over the machinery that had been steadily developing for more than half a century." https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/the-tea-party-morphed-into-the-cult-of-trump-what-will-it-become-next/

  I've been interviewed on TV twice, both time by the local Fox affiliate. Both interviews had to do with human genetics, and there was nothing political. But at the time, I had a lot of ambivalence. I wanted to communicate science to the lay viewer in a way most of my colleagues couldn't be bothered to do. But at some level, I felt like I was lending legitimacy to a pernicious organization. Now, I really feel bad. Fox News has been a major force in the fake news that led to the Capitol invasion and attempted coup. The right-wing propaganda fueling the divisions in our country is primarily sourced from Fox News. Kevin Drum nails it: "Fox News—not social media, not think tanks—is the primal source of racism, xenophobia, polarization, and reckless lying in American media. Until we somehow put a stop to this, it will be hard to ever recover the country we used to have. Not a perfect country by any stretch, but at least one where we all had a roughly similar idea of what was t...

  There's some consternation out in FB land about the fact that, after the inauguration, there will still be tens of millions of Trump supporters in America. True. Not to go all Godwin here, but I've read that upwards of 90% of Germans supported Hitler and the Nazis, at least until they started losing. Hitler and the Nazis were far more barbaric than Trump and the Republican Party during the past four years, and Trump's approvals were never over 50% at any point in his presidency. If Trump's SA had been like Hitler's SA, there would have been much more destruction and loss of life. Those Germans didn't go away, but most of them accepted the new regime peacefully. Yes, Germany was occupied after the war. The Capitol is currently occupied after the Trump riot (and subway stations closed, and roads closed). The current threats need to be taken seriously, and there are certainly lone wolves out there. But most of the Trumpenproletariat isn't interested in murder...

  There's a lot of folks who imagine that the path to removing Trump runs through the 25th Amendment. This is just as much magical thinking as that he'll be convicted on impeachment charges, and for the same reason. Ultimately, both rely on a 2/3 vote in the Senate, which will require all 50 Democratic votes and 17 Republican votes. This isn't gonna happen, peeps, no matter how much we click the heels of our ruby slippers. Don't take my word for it: "Invoking the 25th Amendment would require Pence and a majority of the Cabinet to vote to remove Trump from office due to his inability to "discharge the powers and duties of his office" -- an unprecedented step. Trump could dispute their move with a letter to Congress. Pence and the Cabinet would then have four days to dispute him and Congress would then vote -- it requires a two-thirds supermajority, usually 67 senators and 290 House members to permanently remove him. On Thursday, sources close to the VP sai...

  A popular meme in social media is that people have to watch Fox News to get a balanced view of the world. That's like saying you need to breathe carbon monoxide as well as oxygen in order to get a balanced experience of respiration. Fox isn't news. It's propaganda. The notion that watching propaganda is instructive would sit well with Stalin, Mao or Castro, but it has no place in America. It is a pernicious influence on the national discourse. Why the GOP continues its mutually parasitic relationship with Fox is a question any patriotic American should wonder and worry about. "So give me a call when the Republican leadership works up the nerve to finally disown Fox News. When they finally admit publicly what everyone else already knows: Fox isn’t a news network, it’s a machine designed to make money by pitting Americans against each other. The First Amendment may give them this right, but it doesn’t force any of us to accept it—not even Republicans. Until they disown...

  Rafael "Ted" Cruz is the poster boy for my observation that in humans, the traits of high intelligence and good judgement are unlinked. Cruz is smart, but he pairs crappy judgement with a smarmy attitude. His attempt to draft history for his project of overturning the presidential election is merely the latest example.   https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/ted-cruz-is-a-big-fan-of-the-compromise-of-1877/