Fascism is Eyeing This Republic Like Lunch

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, writing on Twitter:

Trump's assault on Inspectors General is late-stage corruption. The canary in the coal mine was the government ethics program, which began engaging with the Trump team long before the election. The general public got it, but too many people in positions of influence missed it. /1

Then, there was the open presidential profiteering and clues that hard-to-prove conflicts of interest were significantly influencing policy. But Republicans in Congress ensured that no one could dig too deeply into those, and they enabled it by refusing to conduct oversight. /2

Next came Trump's tests of the enforceability of laws--a little push against the tent wall here and a big jab against it there, followed by even bigger tests and a growing awareness that many laws don't have teeth or depend upon the executive branch to enforce them. /3

Along the way came the firings of the two most critical law enforcement officials precisely because they permitted investigations of Trump. The Attorney General's firing should have triggered his removal from office. But wild-eyed Senators were hot on the trail of more judges. /4

This emboldened Trump and taught him a lesson. He had come into government unaware that "personnel is policy." Now he both understood that and knew the Senate would let him treat the government like The Apprentice: only the most slavishly obedient appointees would survive. /5

Ordinarily, the game of musical appointees would have concerned members of Congress, particularly as Trump began to find replacements who didn't care about their oaths of office. But those judges continued to excite Republican Senators, and Trump's base made them nervous. /6

Oversight began only after the Democrats took the House. But Trump's hold on the Senate was absolute. We don't know what assurances he received behind the scenes, but we saw even longtime Republican Senators abandon previously espoused principles to protect him in plain sight./7

With that protection, Trump engaged in a previously unthinkable level of resistance to congressional oversight. The collapse of this Constitutional safeguard was a potentially mortal wound. It didn't go down without a fight, the House included "obstruction" in his impeachment. /8

But the Senate has the final say. With one exception, Republican Senators didn't even maintain a pretense of honoring their oaths. They ended the sham impeachment trial quickly. The failure of this second constitutional safeguard, moved the republic into a life-or-death crisis./9

What remained was the hope that whistleblowers and witnesses could still come forward. Maybe the people could demand action—if they knew the facts. But Republicans in Congress and their staffs, aided by fringe media outlets, worked to terrorize a suspected whistleblower. /10

Witnesses faired no better. Even some Senators who had spent their careers professing support for witnesses, gave Trump free rein to retaliate against them too. The stakes became high enough that whistleblowers and witnesses would henceforth think twice about coming forward./11

But Trump wasn't done. The White House began to speak of expanding its purge beyond political appointees to include career Feds, whose due process rights exist to prevent politicians from harnessing them for corrupt aims or, at least, silence any who might report wrongdoing. /12

The head of the Office of Special Counsel, which protects career Feds from political retaliation, remained silent—as did Republican Senators. Whether or not Trump follows through, the mere threat pressures career Feds to put loyalty to Trump above loyalty to the Constitution. /13

Individual government officials may have the moral fiber and ethics to resist the pressure. But the legal safeguards that help the federal workforce as a whole remain loyal to the American people and the rule of law over a rogue politician have been weakened. That's dangerous./14

A last line of defense in this war on ethics and law is the Inspector General community. They're the eyes of the American people, objective investigators traditionally freed to pursue accountability by the safeguard of bipartisan congressional protection./15

But the Trump era is a bad time for safeguards. Trump's eye has turned to the IGs, and Republican Senators have forsaken them—no hearings, no media blitz, only a few meek chirps of mild concern. Even the self-anointed patron saint of IGs, Chuck Grassley, has abandoned them. /16

What began with the fall of the ethics program is entering the end game with the potential fall of the Inspector General community. The government is failing us, safeguards that took two centuries to build have crumbled, and fascism is eyeing this republic like lunch. /17

It's down to the people. There is a chance in November to reclaim this land for democracy and reject fascism. But the obstacles are tremendous. Trump has the advantage of incumbency, decades of Republican voter suppression, and a third branch that increasingly seems political./18

A sign of things to come, the Supreme Court ramped up the voter suppression by sending Wisconsin voters into a war zone in our species' fight against an ancient enemy, disease. A global pandemic has ground America to a halt, complicating the upcoming presidential election. /19

Republican Senators are trotting out their Hillary Clinton playbook, hoping to abuse their authority again and wound Trump's leading political rival by Benghazi-Uranium-One-But-Her-Emailsing him. And they've given Trump their blessing for him to solicit foreign interference. /20

Trump's Attorney General has even opened a special channel for Trump's private attorney to funnel information from abroad to the Justice Department. Fascism is having a hell of a day in America, and things will get much worse before November. /21

All is not lost. The American people are fired up. But it'll be hard and the outcome's uncertain. That's why I want you to understand how big a deal it is that Trump is going after Inspectors General. This is a late-stage move in an authoritarian coup against the rule of law. /22

In the News

There's so much to read today, it feels sort of like a feast day.

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First up is a Smithsonian article by John Barry, author of the engrossing "The Great Influenza."  The article is receiving attention today because it details how a government that lies or distorts the facts about an epidemic can make its effects so much worse than they would have been otherwise.

The last five paragraphs are particularly interesting.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/

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Next, Paul Solman for the PBS NewsHour interviews David Enrich about his new book, "Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction."  The bank seems to have been helping launder money far longer than I ever knew.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-book-explores-the-schemes-and-scandals-of-deutsche-bank

Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/us/trump-deutsche-bank-tax-returns.html

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Finally, for me Anne Applebaum's writing is simultaneously dry and overwhelmingly intense.  (After 14 years of trying I still haven't finished "Gulag".)  She has just been to Venezuela.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-book-explores-the-schemes-and-scandals-of-deutsche-bank

The country’s National Assembly, which is controlled by the opposition, passed special measures to address the health crisis; the Supreme Court, which is controlled by Maduro, rejected them.

Most Venezuelans—80 percent according to a recent survey—now rely on boxes of food, containing staples such as rice, grain, or oil, from the government. Agencies known as Local Committees for Supply and Production hand the packages out to people who register for a Patria (“fatherland”) card or smartphone app, which are also used to monitor participation in elections... The hungrier people get, the more control the government exerts, and the easier it is to prevent them from protesting or objecting in any other way.

Like the destruction of [Venezuela's] economy, the destruction of the political culture took some time, because there were several decades' worth of democratic institutions to destroy.

...once in power [Chávez] slowly changed the rules, eventually making it almost impossible for anyone to beat him. In 2004, he packed the Supreme Court; in 2009, he altered the electoral system.

Chávez began to transfer the wealth of the country to his cronies. This process was extraordinarily well documented, in real time, by many people.

And yet it happened anyway.

...the two strongmen [Chávez and Maduro] have made it almost impossible for the independent press to function, undermined the credibility of experts, and distracted supporters,

...Chávez made up names for his enemies...

Over time, Chávez successfully polarized society into groups of fanatical supporters and equally dedicated enemies—warring tribes who felt they had little in common.

Extrajudicial murders... are now common."

Echoing Hannah Ahrendt:

Polarization adds to this cynicism by creating suspicion and mistrust on both sides; people hear politicians shouting diametrically opposing slogans or presenting contradictory facts, and their instinct is to cover their ears.

The second person I met who started to cry was a translator... As the translator put my answer into Spanish, she broke down. “I suddenly thought of my nieces and nephews,” she told me afterward. “All of those hopeful young people, all gone.”

Generation Gulag: How Russia Rewrites its Soviet History

Generation Gulag: How Russia Rewrites its Soviet History:

As a newsroom we’ve [been] tracking rewriting history stories around the world to better understand how distorting the past is serving regimes today as part of our disinformation coverage.

As they note, regimes all around the world are rewriting national histories.

Leadership and Sacrifice - Against Demagoguery

My father served on D-Day. He experienced a leader who spawned hatred. - The Washington Post:

He walked by himself among the gravestones of his compatriots from the 4th Infantry Division, and eventually stopped and stood for a long time at the marker of one of his commanders, Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Later we asked my dad why he spent the most time at Roosevelt’s grave, rather than at the resting places of his fellow infantrymen... he showed us where he had landed on Utah Beach and described seeing the general standing calmly amid the indescribable chaos of battle and firmly directing the troops ashore. He said Roosevelt’s selfless, honorable leadership heartened him and, he presumed, thousands of other terrified young soldiers on that day.

They all were war heroes — the captured, the killed, the wounded, the mentally maimed, the lucky survivors such as my dad — because of circumstance, not desire. They went to war because of what happened when xenophobia and demagoguery supplanted real leadership.

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox:

Sean Illing
I worry a lot of people have trouble connecting the dots between these food supply disruptions and the political chaos that results from them. For instance, you point out how a 2010 heat wave in Russia, which wrecked their grain harvest, led directly to the Arab Spring. How did that happen and what are similar scenarios that could play out in the near future?

Bill McKibben
That happened because the Arab world is the biggest importer of grain from eastern Europe and when the price went way up for a loaf of bread, the predictable trouble ensued. Probably an even more dire example is what happened in Syria. In the early part of this century, we had the deepest drought ever recorded in the Fertile Crescent. That drove an immense number of Syrian farmers, maybe a million farm families, off their land and into the cities.

And there’s been a lot of academic work to establish that that was one of the key things that triggered the civil war (here and here). Syria was already a brutal and unstable place, unable to cope with this massive influx of people. And so many of those people were spun out into the rest of the world where they utterly discombobulated the politics of Western Europe inside of 18 months.

So we can look at what happened in Syria and Europe and expect much more of that in the century ahead. And I think the low end is 200 million climate refugees and the high end approaches a billion. So take the kind of upheaval that the wave of refugees out of Syria created and multiply it by a couple of hundred and ask yourself how that’s going to impact war and peace, or development, or any of the other things we desperately care about?

Empathy

I'm a software developer from the early 1980s - a stereotypical asocial type, not very empathetic, not very well able to understand the world from the perspective of another.

In 2015 an old friend boiled up on social media, aroused by the prospect of Syrian refugees coming to the United States. "Will you fight? I'll fight!" he announced to everyone.

He wasn't alone. Many in the U.S. saw the refugees as terrorists, because of 9/11, Afghanistan, etc., and as cowards, because they were fleeing. "I would stay and defend my home!"

The news at the time carried images of apartment buildings gutted and flattened. What was there to defend? Friends and families lay crushed beneath collapsed concrete or pulped by shrapnel. Who was left to protect?

It was noted even then that climate events had helped trigger the Syrian civil war. A severe drought had killed livestock, raised food prices, made farmers flee from their fields to the cities. The civil war, triggered in part by their government's inability to relieve suffering, had made Syrians of all kinds flee for their lives.

By 2015 I'd traveled a bit. At times I'd lived, very briefly, without heat and running water. That mild experience gave a weak sense of what the world must be like for those refugees. No heat, no water. No food. No shelter from the elements. No place to relieve oneself. No clean clothing - nothing clean.

Try to stop after each of those items. Imagine what your life would be like without that one thing.

I'm lucky: life gave me experiences to compensate a little for my lack of empathy.

This morning the news describes the destruction in California.

Shirley Hertel returned to her Thousand Oaks home Friday morning after watching it catch fire on TV just hours before.

The sight left her in tears.

...

“I don’t even know that I even understand what happened here,” [said Shirley Hertel, a Thousand Oaks resident].

She took the fire — and the water damage she had just fixed in the home last month — as a sign that she should leave the city she’s lived in her whole life, she said. Her other daughters and granddaughter live in Kentucky, she said, and she wants to watch her grow up.

“This will always be my home, but Kentucky is where I’ll live,” she said.

Her home has been destroyed. There is nothing left for her to defend in Thousand Oaks. She is fleeing California for Kentucky.

At least she doesn't need to worry whether Kentucky will let her in.

U.S. citizens are now among the planet's refugees. Will this concrete experience bring us a little empathy?

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The Oakies were also climate refugees. But the dust bowl was a long time ago. It can no longer give us empathy through experience.

What can bring us empathy is just as likely, in this case, to bring us a Malthusian mess, with less food, water and livable earth divided among more people.

Read it, and weep

We have become a heartless, stupid people. 'Vaya con Dios:' the impossible life of a judge on the US immigration frontline | US news | The Guardian:

We just watched a U.S. president acting on behalf of a hostile power - The Washington Post

Max Boot lays it out.

We just watched a U.S. president acting on behalf of a hostile power - The Washington Post: "We are past the point when such statements can be dismissed as naivete — especially when Trump has previously admitted that Russia did hack the election. We are past the point where Trump’s conduct can be ascribed to his belief that it is imperative to improve U.S.-Russia relations. If Trump doesn’t care about the state of U.S.-German relations, U.S.-Canadian relations or U.S.-U.K. relations — all of which he has damaged in the past month — why would he care about U.S. relations with a country that has one-fourteenth of America’s GDP and one-tenth of its defense budget? We are past the point where Trump’s conduct can be ascribed to his general sympathy for dictators. If he is waging a trade war on China’s dictator, why is he cozying up to Russia’s dictator? We are past the point when Trump’s conduct — which leaves future elections wide open to Russian manipulation — can be ascribed to his unwillingness to do anything that will tarnish his glorious victory. It is true but insufficient to point out that that Trump’s unwillingness to acknowledge the Russian attack on America is putting his own interests above the country’s. Even if Trump were thinking only in terms of his own political survival — his usual mode — he would be tougher on Putin, because he must realize that kowtowing to the Russian only strengthens suspicions of collusion. But Trump just cannot bring himself to do it. Is that because he hopes for more aid from Putin in the future — or because he is afraid of what Putin can reveal about him? Either way, he gives every impression of betraying his oath of office. U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3: ‘Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.’ Trump’s own national security adviser said the Russian election attack constituted an ‘act of war.’ So what does that make his boss? Some — including former CIA director John Brennan — now dare call it treason. That conclusion was once unthinkable. No longer."

Ptolemy, Kepler and Fourier walk into a used bookstore...

In which I learn a little modern JavaScript and bemoan my lousy memory: Epicycles Ever After

Food for Thought, and a Digestive

Both from the Washington Post:

To beat President Trump, you have to learn to think like his supporters

The euphemisms I refuse to use in 2018

What a human can endure

Sumiteru Taniguchi, who fought to abolish nuclear weapons after Nagasaki, dead at 88 - World - CBC News

In 1939, I didn’t hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored

This is just one arresting statement from a worrying essay. Harry Leslie Smith | Opinion | The Guardian:

It is as foolish for Americans to believe that their generals will save them from Trump as it was for liberal Germans to believe the military would protect the nation from Hitler’s excesses.

"This Is Not a Drill"

This Is Not a Drill David Frum, 9 May, in The Atlantic:

"He could well resent the search for truth, even without being particularly guilty of anything heinously bad. But we all now must take seriously the heightened possibility of guilt, either personal or on the part of people near him—and of guilt of some of the very worst imaginable crimes in the political lexicon."

"The question has to be asked searchingly of the Republican members of Congress: Will you allow a president of your party to attack the integrity of the FBI? You impeached Bill Clinton for lying about sex. Will you now condone and protect a Republican administration lying about espionage?"

"The question has to be asked of all the rest of us: Perhaps the worst fears for the integrity of the U.S. government and U.S. institutions are being fulfilled. If this firing stands—and if Trump dares to announce a pliable replacement—the rule of law begins to shake and break. The law will answer to the president, not the president to the law."

Twitter weighs in:

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The Comey debacle calls to mind a paragraph from 'On Tyranny.' Democracy is rarely stolen, but given away in a democratic process. Chilling.

Snyder, Timothy. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Kindle Locations 172-177). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition.

"Some of the Germans who voted for the Nazi Party in 1932 no doubt understood that this might be the last meaningfully free election for some time, but most did not. Some of the Czechs and Slovaks who voted for the Czechoslovak Communist Party in 1946 probably realized that they were voting for the end of democracy, but most assumed they would have another chance. No doubt the Russians who voted in 1990 did not think that this would be the last free and fair election in their country’s history, which (thus far) it has been. Any election can be the last, or at least the last in the lifetime of the person casting the vote."

— beth can't with this (@bourgeoisalien) May 10, 2017

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"no longer any serious possibility that he will respect the norms of conduct ... only questions are how far his fellow Rs...will let him go" https://t.co/dmOHUI3BqD

— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) May 10, 2017

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Among the amazing things in this story [Politico: Behind Comey’s firing: An enraged Trump, fuming about Russia].

1. Trump thought firing Comey would help him control the Russia investigation.
2. Trump was angry that Comey would not support his claims that Obama bugged him.
3. The fallout from the firing took WH by surprise. It had no communication strategy.
4. "Trump had talked about the firing for over a week, and the letters were written to give him rationale to fire Comey."

— Jack Goldsmith (@jacklgoldsmith) May 10, 2017

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Sleight of Mouth

In recent days I realized I've been thrown off-track by DJT's wording.

The DoJ and Congressional committees are investigating possible financial ties between Trump and Russia. To this, Trump says (paraphrasing), "I don't have any investments in Russia!"

Eric Trump has said, "We have all the funding we need from Russia." The younger Trump reminds that "financial ties" encompasses not just investments by Trump, but also investments in Trump - among other things.

President-elect Trump's coal con

Coal country can't catch a break. President-elect Trump's coal con:

"...all those politicians and industry officials and career campaign consultants who spent most of the campaign trying to convince the hard-working people of the coalfields that another boom would be just around the corner – Well, I guess we were supposed to take them seriously, but not literally."

A Trump administration thaw with Russia is "unacceptable," McCain says - The Washington Post

A Trump administration thaw with Russia is "unacceptable," McCain says - The Washington Post:

"...plunged his country into tyranny, murdered his political opponents, invaded his neighbors, threatened America's allies and attempted to undermine America's elections"

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see this as a prediction of the future of the U.S.

For Some Value of "Magic": Bradley Manning's Post-Sentencing Statement

For Some Value of "Magic": Bradley Manning's Post-Sentencing Statement:

"Our nation has had similar dark moments for the virtues of democracy—the Trail of Tears, the Dred Scott decision, McCarthyism, the Japanese-American internment camps—to name a few. I am confident that many of our actions since 9/11 will one day be viewed in a similar light. "

Thanks to Steve Holden for posting the statement. It's well worth reading in its entirety.

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Press

Space Exploration Technologies Corporation - Press:

"This marks the first time a commercial company has successfully recovered a spacecraft reentering from low-Earth orbit. It is a feat performed by only six nations or government agencies: the United States, Russia, China, Japan, India, and the European Space Agency."

Congratulations to SpaceX.

Heavenly Intrigue

Danish astronomer's remains exhumed in Prague - Yahoo! News:

"On Monday, an international team of scientists opened [Tyge Brahe's] tomb in the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn near Prague's Old Town Square..."

The book got poor reviews, but the whodunnit isn't done yet.

Rock Recipes

Cooking

Sharp Stone Age spearheads were cooked then flaked - life - 28 October 2010 - New Scientist:

"If you want to make really sharp stone spearheads, do like Stone Age cave dwellers did and cook them first."

Overcooking

Bir Umm Fawakhir: Insights into Ancient Egyptian Mining:

"'The gold-bearing earth which is hardest they first burn with a hot fire, and when they have crumbled it...they continue the working of it by hand..."

Cooking with vinegar

Hannibal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"By Livy's account the crossing was accomplished in the face of huge difficulties.[24] These Hannibal surmounted with ingenuity, such as when he used vinegar and fire to break through a rockfall."

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff - Bloomberg

Via Doc Searls:

U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know It: Laurence Kotlikoff - Bloomberg:

"This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck."

I and my classmates have known this since high school in the early 1980's. But we haven't successfully done anything about it. I voted for Perot and contributed to the Concord Coalition for awhile; nothing more.

How do you visibly alter the momentum of a social system 3.0e8 times larger than yourself?