MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

The outcome of Impeachapalooza 2 is old news by now, I know, but in light of the spectacle of Donald Trump headlining CPAC – which is packed with his minions parroting his election fraud conspiracy theories – I thought I might as well post some thoughts.

1. In regards to Trump’s acquittal, I mean, sure – we knew more or less how this would end. The only real surprise was that seven Republicans voted to convict – which is apparently a US record in terms of bipartisan impeachment. Still, you know, where were most of these people when he was impeached the first time?

2. Apart from those seven, the GOP basically confirmed that they are the Trump Party, and that if he wants to make up stuff about election fraud and whip his MAGA base into a violent frenzy to overturn the election and install him as POTUS for life, then they're totally cool with that.

3. Mitch McConnell’s post-vote speech did not impress me. He can bloviate all he likes about the unconstitutionality of impeaching someone who isn't President anymore (which, let’s not forget, was the result of McConnell intentionally delaying the trial until after Trump was out of office) – the truth is that he knows which way the political winds are blowing, and if he wants to remain the Senate minority leader, he can’t be showing disloyalty to the Trump MAGA cult that comprises most of the Senate GOP now. He’s trying to have it both ways – he wants to be loyal to Trump without looking like he’s actually condoning Trump’s attempted coup.

Ironically, of course, Trump is not having any of that. Which just goes to show.

4. Speaking of which, Trump is now free to start his 2024 campaign. Or whatever it is he plans to do. Whatever it is, he did it at CPAC this weekend, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect – insult comedy, conspiracy theories and a declaration of war against his enemies. Which, notably, includes all disloyal Republicans who didn’t do enough to keep him in office. Whether or not he actually runs in 2024, Trump made it pretty clear that he’s not interested in starting a new political party – he’d much rather complete his takeover of the GOP and purge the anti-Trump heretics, or at least the ones that don’t change their tune permanently. And he’s likely to succeed.

5. On a side note, I would be very surprised if Trump didn't run in 2024. Yes, there’s the possibility that Trump will be in jail by then. However, there’s literally no rule saying you can’t run for President from a prison cell – Eugene Debs and Lyndon LaRouche did it in 1920 and 1992, respectively.

Granted, both lost. Which is why we don't yet know whether you can take office if you win – being in jail might count as “impairment”, which could result in 25^th Amendment proceedings to make Trump’s running mate President. There’s also the question of whether you could be released via pardon or some other mechanism. As I understand it, it’s pretty straightforward if you’re in a federal prison, but harder if you're in a state prison (remembering that if Trump does go to jail, it will be for breaking state laws).

In any case, I think running a campaign from prison would probably help him by feeding the “political persecution by anti-American libs” meme that the MAGA cult thrives on. So yeah, I think Trump is likely to try to get his chair back. And barring any other viable options, I think the GOP will go out of their way to help him get it.

6. As I’ve said before, the key takeaway from all this is that America does not have a viable mechanism for dealing with a crooked authoritarian President. Impeachment and the 25^th Amendment are too political to be effective remedies, and the ballot box option is only available every four years. Trump did plenty of damage in that time, not all of which can be fixed with executive orders.

The challenge is that the Founding Fathers intentionally made it difficult to get rid of a POTUS. If it were easy, the Opposition would spend every waking moment finding some excuse to have him arrested, and we’d have impeachments probably every year.

However, as we just learned over the last four years, as long as we stand by the DOJ concept that a sitting President cannot be indicted, the truth is that a sitting POTUS can commit all manner of high crimes and misdemeanours – to include attempting a coup – with no fear of consequences (apart from maybe losing the election).

We need to have a very serious conversation about whether this is a status quo worth preserving, and whether the alternatives would be worse in the long run.

Crime time,

This is dF

I do keep up with current events. I just can’t blog about them in real time. Blame it on deadlines, moving house and kidney stones.

Anyway:

1. Trump is now the only POTUS to be impeached twice. Which is braggable.

Is it too little too late? Well, we had that discussion during Impeachapalooza 1, where the argument was (1) there was no point impeaching him if the Senate was going to acquit him anyway, or (2) there has to be consequences for Presidential shenanigans or we might as well say the POTUS is above the law and can do anything they want.

Granted, it’s not much of a punishment. Trump probably regards his Twitter suspension as more severe than being impeached. Which is why we do need to rethink our current mechanisms for dealing with criminal presidents.

2. Yes, it damn well was a coup – or, as it’s technically known, a ‘self-coup’. Dr Fiona Hill lays it all out for you here. And there’s little room for doubt that Trump encouraged it, even if he didn’t actively organize it.

Meanwhile, each passing day seems to reveal that while the storming of the Capitol was a mix of planning and improv, at least some of them intended to kidnap and kill people in the name of keeping Trump in power. It was a poorly executed self-coup, but a self-coup nonetheless.

3. Moreover, it also seems clear that the Capitol Police and some GOP Congresspeople were complicit to some degree. Compare the security at the Capitol Building during a nearby BLM protest last year to the security on Jan 6, and it’s hard to believe any of these yahoos got within 50 yards of the entrance, let alone inside. We don’t know the full story yet, but frankly it doesn't look good.

On a related note, it’s pretty clear that after a couple of years of BLM protests – that featured massive police brutality and people being plucked off the streets and hustled into unmarked vans – there’s an obvious double standard in how police handle protests based on the racial makeup and political affiliation of the protesters.

4. As others have pointed out, the bigger problem is the complicity of the GOP. They played along with Trump’s “Democrats stole the election” meme despite zero evidence in the clear hope that it would work. Even after the self-coup, 146 Republicans voted to reject the electoral votes to deny Biden the White House, and most are still parroting the stolen-election meme. Meanwhile, the conservative white evangelical leadership that gives Trump much of his power is generally sticking with him. So.

I’m also not impressed with those Republicans now distancing themselves from Trump and saying the Capitol riot was awful and terrible and that’s not who we are, etc. Well, no – we’ve always known who Trump was and what he stood for, and he spent the entire 2020 campaign making it clear he would accept no result that didn’t result in re-election.

It’s also clear few of them take any responsibility for the coup, whether they're claiming it was really antifa in disguise or that Trump only did what he did because liberals bullied him for four years and it drove him mad, or that they have to overturn the election because Trump’s mob will come after them if they don’t. So pardon me if I doubt their sincerity.

5. The same goes for all of the corporations now saying they won’t support Trump businesses or Republicans who supported overturning the election. I mean, you know, great. But after every awful thing he’s done and said in the last four years, NOW you’re having an epiphany?

Point being, I think it’s worth asking if the people turning on him now would be doing so if the self-coup had actually worked. Maybe a few. But I suspect most of them would have cheerfully strapped themselves to the post-democracy Trump Train, because why wouldn't they?

6. Will there be martial law on Tuesday? No idea. I doubt it, in that Trump needs military support to pull that off, and it’s not clear he has it. I’m also not convinced the MyPillow guy will change that equation, although if he does, it won’t even be the weirdest episode in this sorry excuse for a Netflix series. I’m not saying Trump won't try it – or that his cult won’t try something on their own. I’m saying I think it will fail.

But again, that won’t mean we’ve seen the last of Trump and his MAGA cult. While it will be nice having an adult in the White House again, we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and it’s not going to be a pleasant one. These people are not going to magically go away when Biden is inaugurated. Trump may be out of power, but his legacy will remain a cancer in US politics and society for a long time.

BONUS TRACK: Here’s an interesting local angle to the Capitol mob – not unsurprisingly, HK chief Carrie Lam and Chinese state media are trying to compare the coup to that time in 2019 when HK protesters broke into the LegCo chambers and trashed the place. The objective is a half-assed attempt to call out the US govt as hypocrites: “Oh, you loved it when rioters invaded LegCo – not so much fun now that it’s happened to Congress, huh? So maybe shut up about HK violating everyone’s human rights because now you understand why we are justified in cracking down on them.”

It is, of course, a bad and inaccurate comparison. But then the wonderful thing about state propaganda is that it doesn't have to make sense.

White riot,

This is dF

If you’ve been following this blog for any time at all, you know that I’ve been predicting a Trump re-election in 2020. Now that we’re down to the wire and Trump is down an average of eight (8) points in the polls below Biden, the obvious question is:

Would I care to change my answer?

Well, if that’s not a blog post, I’d like to know what is.

1. As others have pointed out, Hillary Clinton had a pretty comfortable lead around this time in 2016. We saw how that went.

Granted, there are some differences – for one thing, Biden is relatively more well liked than HRC, and the battleground states that Trump won last time appear to be turning against him in 2020. And of course voter turnout may be historically the largest ever – which Republicans openly admit works against them (hence their utterly transparent attempt to keep as many people as possible from voting).

So in that sense, I think a Trump re-election victory is less likely than 2016. But it’s certainly not impossible. An 8-point spread is not all that big – especially when by all rights, given Trump’s record, it ought to be much larger.

2. Consequently, the spectacle of Republican politicians and conservative institutions reportedly turning on Trump is small comfort for me. I have no way of knowing how many of them are sincere, and how many are simply trying to avoid becoming collateral damage. My hunch is it’s a mix that skews towards the latter group, most of whom I’ll bet will still secretly vote for Trump – and if he wins (fairly or otherwise), they will be right back in his corner as though they had always supported him all along.

3. For everyone who is looking around them gesturing vaguely at everything and thinking “HOW CAN HE POSSIBLY STILL WIN AFTER ALL THIS”, hey, welcome to American democracy, where people vote for the damnedest reasons.

Most voters don't deep-dive into this stuff. According to the NYT, somewhere between 80% and 85% of Americans either follow politics casually or not at all. My own anecdotal experience more or less backs this up. I know people who only care about one issue and will vote accordingly. I know others who picked a party ages ago (to include independent parties) and stick with it no matter what. I know others who don’t follow politics because they have more pressing concerns, while others used to follow politics to some degree but now don’t follow it at all because of ALL their hyper-political friends posting nothing but furious political memes on Facebook all the live long day.

So, you know, while it may be obvious to me that Trump is a racist, sexist, fascist trash fire who now primarily sees being POTUS as his only chance of staying out of jail and avoiding his creditors, it’s by no means obvious to everyone else.

And of course, let’s not forget that some people like him precisely because he’s a racist, sexist, fascist trash fire – either because they agree with him, or they want nothing more from a POTUS than someone who rips into every liberal/minority group they hate with insult-comedy routines.

So I wouldn’t count on Trump’s obvious awfulness being a deciding factor in 2020.

4. There is, of course, the additional possibility that Trump will cheat his way into a second term. We know he (and the GOP and his minions in general) are doing everything they can to keep as many people from voting as possible and disqualifying as many ballots as they can. We also know that Trump plans to contest his defeat, and is banking on SCOTUS (which now sports three of his own appointees) to back him up, and even to stop the vote tallies while he’s ahead.

Of course, this could backfire spectacularly if Biden is leading by a landslide at 11:59pm Nov 3. Indeed, any Trump strategy to steal the election hinges on a close race. Also, while the notion of a GOP-heavy SCOTUS handing a Repub candidate victory is not without precedent, it’s not pre-ordained either.

Still, the going wisdom is that with an 8-point spread, Trump’s chances of stealing the election are slim, but it’s by no means impossible.

And Trump has done the impossible once already.

5. So basically it’s hard to say how this will play out – there are too many “what ifs” to contend with.

I can predict two things with confidence: (1) Biden will at the very least win the pop vote, and (2) as welcome as a Biden victory will be, it will not solve America’s most fundamental problem, which is this:

The GOP is a weird white supremacist hate group that lives in an alternate reality and believes (or pretends to believe) every fool word Trump says. It has been totally remade in Trump’s image, and a Biden victory won’t change that.

Moreover, these people have been primed by both Trump and conservative media outlets to expect (and accept) nothing less than a Trump landslide. Any other result will be deemed proof of a Democrat conspiracy to rig the election. Even if that doesn’t result in wholesale violence, this is the opposition party that Biden and the Demos get to deal with. And he can expect the same treatment from the GOP as Clinton and Obama – total obstruction, batshit conspiracies and endless investigations into Hillary’s emails. And they’ll make Trump into a martyr even (and especially) if he ends up in jail. Kamala Harris will have it even worse because – unlike Handsome Joe – she’s both a woman and a black person.

So here’s a prediction: no matter who wins, 2021 is going to be worse. Either Trump wins and drags us further down the plughole into authoritarianism, or Trump loses and his MAGA cult will dial the culture war up to 11, which will inevitably include some level of attempted extralegal violence. The Proud Boys may not get the Boogaloo they imagined, but it won't be for lack of trying.

I have never wanted to be as wrong about anything in my life. But the fact is that America’s two-party democracy is fundamentally broken, and I’m not sure Biden knows how to deal with that – although to be fair, I don’t think any major Demo candidate does.

This interview with political scientist Pippa Norris gives a good breakdown of the problem – along with possible solutions, though again, it all depends on what happens after Election Day. But the point remains that the US flavor of democracy is in really bad shape, and it won’t take much to send it into a fatal tailspin.

Screwed, glued and tattooed,

This is dF

So The Donald and The Melania have COVID-19 now.

Which, as October Surprises go, is a humdinger.

It’s also the kind of ironic plot twist that would get most scriptwriters thrown out of the room, but then that’s 2020 for you.

Commentary:

1. Understandably, there is a lot of talk that Trump is faking it to play the patriotism card, or to get out of the rest of the debates, or to push hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure, or to recover quickly and thus prove he was right that COVID-19 is no big deal, or claim it was an assassination attempt by Biden or Pelosi, something. Or maybe he’s planning to fake his death and disappear to a remote island fortress to avoid jail, his creditors and Putin’s assassins.

And of course – this being Trump – I can’t rule that out.

The obvious problem is that Trump is a well-established pathological liar who hires people to pathologically lie on his behalf, so it’s hard to know if this is true. And even if it is, it will be difficult to trust any info we get from him or the White House on his status. Granted, this would be true with most Presidents a month before their possible re-election. But it’s so much more true with this admin.

But for now I’m assuming it’s legit until someone can prove otherwise.

2. Despite his age and obviously bad physical and mental condition, I think there’s a good chance he’ll survive, if only because he’s the POTUS and thus has access to the best and most expensive healthcare anywhere. Knowing what we know about the coronavirus, the next 10 days will be the most crucial, but we also know that testing positive is not in itself an automatic death sentence.

3. Meanwhile – and I know this is a very unpopular thing to say – I hope he and FLOTUS recover. I don’t gleefully wish death on him, because that would make me more like him, and I want to be as much the opposite of him as possible.

4. That said, if he ends up in the ICU between now and then, I also hope he has some kind of epiphany that will make him a better, wiser and more empathetic person who will finally take COVID-19 seriously and come up with a real policy to deal with it.

Yes, that is very long odds, I know. I do think it’s far more likely that – like Boris Johnson – he’ll get back to being an awful person and milk the sympathy card for everything it's worth while making things tougher for everyone who isn’t his rich friends. Also, all the stuff I mentioned about Trump pretending to get COVID-19 to play the patriotism card,  get out of the rest of the debates, push hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure, claim Obama ordered the Deep State to infect him, etc? Trump will probably do one or more of those even if he really has it.

But that’s why they call it “hope”, you know.

5. As for the election, who knows? There are too many “what if” scenarios at this stage to make any kind of reliable prediction, so we’ll just have to see how this plays out before we can get an idea. But it’s a fair bet that is MAGA cult – which is primed to accept no result other than a Trump landslide – can’t be counted on to take this calmly or rationally.

License to ill,

This is dF

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gone. I have thoughts:

1. I’ve always been amazed and impressed at how RBG became an icon for so many people in the sense that I can’t think of any other Supreme in my lifetime that had a fanbase like hers. Granted, that’s largely to do with the fact that she built up her rep as a champion of gender equality and human rights well before she made it to the SCOTUS bench. Still, it’s hard to imagine people getting this stoked over, say, Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas.

Or even Sandra Day O’Connor, who famously was the first woman ever to make Team SCOTUS. I remember what a big deal it was when her nomination was confirmed, and there’s no doubt she paved the way for RBG, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. And if you believe her biographer, she did more to protect abortion rights than she generally gets credit for. But she doesn't get nearly the love and adoration that RBG gets.

I'm not entirely sure why this is – though I would put good money on the likelihood that social media has something to do with it. RBG was nothing if not meme-able, especially as she seemed to become increasingly indestructible in her old age. (Also, you know you've made it when you become a recurring character on SNL.)

It's also possible the growing urgency of gender issues as the Christian Right (and their mission to overturn Roe v Wade at any cost) grew more powerful also made her presence on the bench more important, especially with the left/right balance of SCOTUS shifting in favor of the right.

Whatever the case, I don’t think we’re going to see a Supreme this famous or beloved for a long time yet – certainly not if Trump gets another four years. 

2. I’ve also found it amusing that her nickname is based on a gangsta rapper that (I would presume) at least some RBG fans may not be fans of, or even have heard any of his songs. I could be projecting there. But we do live in an age where people wear concert t-shirts of bands they have never seen live or even listen to, so, you know.

Anyway, great nickname.

3. As for what happens next, that’s a whole other post and it’s going to take me a little time to get that written – and it seems that particular story is fast-moving. So I’m gonna need a little time on that.

Superstar (that’s what you are),

This is dF

ITEM: The Democrats have staged the first ever Democratic National Convention held entirely on Zoom.

Although I did not watch it, I shall nevertheless blog my opinions about it.

1. Judging from the highlights reels, it went reasonably well. So much so that some people have suggested they should do it this way from now on – or at least the roll call. I don't think that will happen, unless COVID-19 never goes away ever again. But I never watch conventions live anyway (the highlights reel is plenty convention for me … obviously), so it doesn’t make a huge difference to me.

2. Vox has listed the winners and losers of each night here, here and here, if you’re interested.

3. A lot of people have complained about how AOC only got 60 seconds of air time, though she used them well. And they have a point. Matthew Yglesias wrote a good piece about how the Democratic National Convention speaker list was more about celebrating past glories than looking to the party’s future, which has to deal with a far more diverse, complex and polarized voter landscape than ever before. AOC and the Squad are a lot more attuned to that landscape than (say) Bill Clinton.

There are probably decent tactical reasons for focusing on the elder statesmen, and they did balance it out with a lot of more ordinary speakers like Philonise Floyd, Kristin Urquiza and lots of young people.

4. People have also complained that John Kasich got air time at all (and more than AOC did). I do understand the reason for it. Kasich was the only sane guy running against Trump in 2016, and he’s the face of establishment Republicans who are dismayed at the fact that their party has been hijacked by Trump and QAnon, but still need a good reason besides that to swallow their pride and vote Demo.

And, you know, maybe it says a lot that for many Repubs, Trump’s batshit presidency isn’t enough reason to vote Biden/Harris – to say nothing of the fact that the evolution of the GOP to the Trump/QAnon White Party is a monster of the GOP’s own making. So their dismay is kinda disingenuous, but then I’ve learned in the last 20 years never to underestimate people’s capacity for self-delusion.

And anyway, a vote’s a vote, so I can’t blame the Demos for reaching out to every possible voter bloc. Still, I’m not sure Kasich is the person to make that case. Maybe Rick Wilson would have been more fun?

5. Anyway, I have to say that the Demos managed to pull off a remarkable feat – a Zoom convention with no major hiccups and an impressive line-up that arguably worked better in a virtual setting than it would have in a packed convention hall.

6. It will be interesting to see how the GOP convention goes. They’re sticking to a live event, and even with social distancing and masks, I can’t imagine that will end well.

7. Also, it’s interesting to me that both conventions serve as a remarkable metaphor for both parties – one embraces new technology and innovation to adapt to an emergency situation and ensure maximum safety, while the other clings to a decades-old format in denial of the same situation and thus puts lives at risk just so their leader can have an adoring audience to cheer him and feed his ego.

I mean, which one would you trust with the future direction of the country?

Leave meeting,

This is dF

ITEM: The Great Hong Kong National Security crackdown continues, with the police arresting ten (10) people for “collusion with foreign forces”. Notably, one of them was Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Media and publisher of Apple Daily ( the last openly pro-democracy newspaper in HK), and someone who  has been on the Beijing hit list for a very long time.

So here’s some bloggery about that:

1. This is essentially about petty revenge. The HK govt, Beijing and the police hate Lai, and have wanted to punish him for a very long time. Lai has always been a media rabble-rouser, both in HK and Taiwan, and the CCP has always been a favorite target of his. He’s already been arrested for unlawful assembly and related charges, but that’s not enough for BJ – they want him (and people like him) in jail for the rest of his life.

2. No one knows what “collusion with foreign forces” means in this case – and it’s not certain we’ll ever find out – but we do know that Beijing’s definition of such things tends to be very loose. For example, last month the police arrested four kids on NSL charges of secession – where in this case the act of “secession” was literally sharing a pro-independence article on Facebook.

3. With people now convinced that this spells the death of press freedom in HK, at least one Beijing official is trying to spin this by claiming Apple Daily is not a newspaper but a political organization that just happens to print newspapers. So it doesn’t count as curbing press freedom, see?

In other words, you’re a media organization until Beijing decides you’re not a media organization but a rebel political group.

4. Also, the reassurances about press freedom aren’t that convincing when remembering the police didn’t just arrest Lai – they sent a hundred cops to raid the Apple Daily office for “evidence” – and then arbitrarily banned certain media from the press briefing.

The police made an attempt to explain it the following day:

“It depends on the past performance of those media — whether they behaved in a way that the police deemed unprofessional,” the police chief said. “Criteria include whether their reporting is objective, whether they have participated in actions other than reporting, whether they would obstruct officers from performing their duty or if they would pose danger to officers.”

Which isn’t helpful, but it does illustrate a few things: (1) Police chief Chris Tang has a list of media he does not like and will not cooperate with, (2) he clearly thinks press freedom should be limited to news outlets he personally deems worthy, and (3) if the govt ever decides to implement an accreditation system for journalists (which the police have openly advocated for some time), Tang already has a wish list of who he wants rejected.

This is, after all, the same police chief who is obsessed with the idea that some reporters who show up to cover the police  are not actual reporters but protesters disguised as reporters. Or something. I have no idea what he thinks these clandestine fake journalists (if they exist, and he’s never proven that they do) are up to. I suspect he doesn’t either because he’s just making it up to justify police violence against anyone wearing a press vest.

5. It’s also worth remembering the broader context in which this happened. Ever since the NSL was passed, press freedom in HK has been eroding one step at a time.

Rachel Cheung has compiled a list here. But the pattern is clear: the HK govt is working make it very difficult for foreign journalists to work here, and attempting to establish norms in which media is forced to self-censor or stick to stenography if they want to avoid an NSL rap. Loyalist papers like Ta Kung Pao will get access and exclusives because they can be counted on to toe the govt line, and even serve as cheerleader.

For everyone else, the Apple Daily raid and selective came across as theatre that was intended to send a clear message to all other media outlets: watch what you write, or you may be next.

That’s certainly how the local Foreign Correspondents Club is taking it. And, you know, they’re not wrong.

6. Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. For one thing, Apple Daily wasn’t shut down. It’s still in operation. Indeed, it went to press the very next day with a very defiant headline vowing to fight on despite govt oppression and an expanded print run of 550,000 copies (as opposed to the usual daily run of around 70,000 copies).

Result: as far as I know they sold every copy. And the company’s stock price jumped over 700% in two days.

Bet that annoyed the govt no end.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I bought two copies (see photo, above). Which technically means I could be arrested for  helping to fund collusion, should the police or Beijing decide to interpret it that way. But then they’d have to arrest 550,000 people, so it’s probably not worth the effort.

Meanwhile, a restaurant owned by one of Lai’s sons – who was also arrested as part of the same sweep – did awesome business yesterday.

Because this is how we protest in HK now. We can’t march, and even holding up blank signs in a shopping mall is illegal now – but we can find other ways to make our feelings known.

How do you like them apples,

This is dF

Given what I’ve posted about Hong Kong recently regarding the national security law – and what you may have heard/read in the news – it probably sounds like HK has become a totalitarian police state where we’re all forced to worship Xi Jinping and Carrie Lam, we need police permission to do anything, and making any negative comment about Xi, Lam or the police will result in negative feedback – cyberbullying, police harassment, a blast of pepper spray in yr mug, re-education camps, etc.

And, you know, kind of.

To be honest it’s not quite that bad. Not yet.

To be clear, there is definitely a deliberate chilling of speech and a curtailing of speech-related liberties – banning slogans, prohibiting schoolchildren from singing that song, yanking books off library shelves, arresting kids for silently waving blank placards, press self-censorship, etc. And of the 10 people who have been arrested under the NSL to date, most were for speechcrime.

The chief exception is the guy who crashed his motor scooter into some cops – he’s been charged with terrorism, even though available video strongly indicates that it was accidental, although he was also carrying a “Liberate Hong Kong / Revolution Of Our Times” flag, which is considered secession under the same law. (Important clarification:  “trying to hit people with a motorbike” is not an act of terrorism or a violation of any other law when the police do it to protesters.)

So things aren’t good.

On the other hand, it’s worth mentioning that many people here do support the govt and the NSL – or at the very least aren’t bothered by it, whether it’s because of self-interest, business reasons, political apathy or an unshakeable belief that It Can't Happen Here – HK’s rule of law will keep the authorities from abusing their power.

As for everyone else, there’s been talk about how HK is “dead”, the protesters lost, and we’re resigned to either shutting our traps or fleeing the country while we still can. Game over.

But resistance isn’t dead.

You can read this piece from Tom Grundy, co-founder of Hong Kong Free press, who has vowed to go down swinging in terms of media coverage and refusing to self-censor (clearly distinguishing HKFP from other English language outlets, particularly the South China Morning Post, which employs some excellent reporters but also has editors who have loudly celebrated the NSL in editorials).

Meanwhile, indie bookstores like Bleak House Books have vowed to stay open and sell whatever they want until the police come and take them away.

There’s also this op-ed from frontline reporter Karen Cheung, who notes that really, HK has always been a tough place to live, but that we always adapt somehow.

… not everything has disappeared. The bookshop near my flat posted a message on social media: “Life goes on, resist fear.” A reporter I know tweeted, “I’ll just try my best to pretend this law doesn’t exist, keep calm, and carry on.”

I don’t want to downplay how terrifying the national security law is. People were arrested under that law on the first day, some of them just for carrying a flag bearing suddenly “outlawed” slogans. Courts can deny bail and hold secret trials. No one knows how to navigate this new reality.

Yet people are already coming up with cheeky, humorous ways of circumventing the new rules, resisting the temptation to be too obedient and give in to the chilling effect. We will continue to find defiance in unexpected places.

If nothing else, according to Jessie Pang at Reuters, you’ll find it in the young people who voted (and in some cases ran) in the primary. They know that if anything is going to change, it’s up to them. They’re under no illusions that they’ll win, but they know that it’s better to try and fail than to give up, just as they know that the Establishment pan-Demos still tend to see this as a rules-based scenario, and that you can beat Beijing by using its own rules against it. The trouble is that Beijing not only doesn't respect the rules, but rewrites them at will and interprets them randomly to suit its needs.

So, while we can’t realistically do much about the NSL and whatever abuses will inevitably occur (and arguably already are), we can adjust to this reality and resist as best we can. Yes, things are likely to get worse in the coming weeks, and eventually even the pro-gov/BJ supporters will find out the hard way that they are not exempt. But that doesn't mean we might as well give up and accept it. If we can't win in the streets or at the polls, we can always refuse to live in fear.

Because they want us to live in fear. So let’s not do that.

Have a beer with fear,

This is dF

Today marks the 23^rd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the PRC under the One Country Two Systems arrangement.

Alternatively, it’s Year 0 of the second handover to China in which One Country Two Systems has been changed to One Country Two Nearly Identical Systems.

Which means I might go to jail for posting this. Or not. Let’s see, shall we?

1. As expected, Beijing approved and enacted its national security law (NSL) for HK yesterday. Characteristically, they released the text of the national security law last night. In the middle of the night. In Chinese only. And only after the law was already in force.

Several people have already translated it into English. You can read this explainer if you like, or this more detailed translation.

Anyway, for the most part it's as bad as we suspected. And even where it doesn't sound so bad, there are two caveats: (1) the wording is intentionally vague to allow for very loose interpretation of what counts as an offense, and (2) the law basically says that Beijing has final say on what does and doesn't count, and that the law supersedes any HK law it might come into conflict with.

So for all intents and purposes all of the human rights violations that regularly happen in mainland China in the name of national security can now happen here.

Carrie Lam, for one, seems mighty pleased.

As well she should – Beijing has fixed the protest problem she created in the first place, and now she can go around blathering about how HK is harmonious and safe now that all political opposition has been suppressed.

2. The chilling effect is real – even before the details of the law was revealed, some people were taking cover. Which evidently was the point. Anyway, two of the opposition parties founded after the 2014 umbrella occupation have disbanded, some protesters are deleting their Twitter accounts, church leaders who opposed the NSL have deleted their posts, some “yellow economy” (pro-protest) restaurants have closed, and Chickeeduck is being evicted from a mall. And all that before we even knew what was in the law.

President Xi Jinping is smiling so hard right now his face may just freeze that way.

3. The HK police are also happy because why wouldn’t they be? They’ve already been greenlighted to do anything they want to anyone they don’t like.

4. Carrie Lam’s predecessor CY Leung is so happy he’s now offering bounties of up to HK$1 million for anyone who provides clues that aid the arrest of "national security law offenders", or to those who have information on "anyone who has fled the city".

Put another way, CY sees the NSL as his ticket to get revenge on every last pro-Democracy politician and activist who gave him crap while he was CE. (Indeed, a lot of his sideline commentary in the last year has included everything from the usual foreign conspiracy theories and saying the police should use even more violence on protesters to hoping the NSL would be retroactive to the point where anyone who staged a protest during his admin would get life in prison.)

5. Since 2003, we’ve typically marked July 1 with two activities: (1) a flag-raising ceremony that no one attends unless they’re paid to be there and (2) an all-purpose protest march covering whatever grievances the people have that year.

The latter is now illegal under the NSL, although police had already banned this year’s march under the COVID-19 social distancing rules that at this point exist solely for the purpose of enabling police to ban protests. Maybe now that they don’t need that excuse, they’ll drop the rules altogether?

Activists are determined to march anyway. It would be great if 2 million people (or more) showed up, though that’s unlikely. Anyway, the police have already prepared brand new warning flags for them.

 
[The running gag on Twitter is that protesters will be teargassed, beaten and arrested before they can finish reading the warning. Ha ha.]

6. As for what this all means for the protest movement, I suppose that depends on what happens next. There’s been a lot of chatter about how the protesters went too far and ended up accelerating the arrival of 2047 (the year our SAR status was to expire) and gained nothing. Others say the protests have worked in a broader sense because it not only exposed the corrupt violence inherent in the system and proved that the HK govt was always a Beijing puppet, but also forced the sort of crackdown needed to rally international pressure on Beijing, who frankly has been throwing its weight around a lot in recent years since Xi became President.

While we’re waiting for that to happen, I like to think that resistance in HK will take smaller, subtler forms – mini flash mob performances of the alt-national anthem, midnight graffiti, tiny acts of defiance to keep hope alive. But for now I think a lot of people will go silent, if only to regroup and figure out what to do next.

7. Since people have asked:

We are fine, and I don’t expect the current situation to impact us personally for the time being. The general wisdom (such as it is) is that the HK govt/Beijing will slap NSL vengeance on prominent opposition figures first – likely the ones who have already been arrested during the course of the protests. They’re the ones who will be prosecuted and jailed first to serve as examples to the rest of us. The objective is rule of fear, and the authorities will be just as happy if the average malcontents and dissenters either shut up or leave HK altogether – if only because jailing over 2 million people is time consuming, expensive and not the kind of thing you want to be doing when HK’s unemployment rate is as high as it is.

So for the near future, at least, I don’t think I have anything to worry about beyond having the occasional post deleted or flagged. Beyond that, who knows?

Developing (obviously) ….

Under the gun,

This is dF

EDITED TO ADD [3:30pm]: Well that didn't take long. The police have made their first arrest under the NSL. The offense: allegedly carrying a flag saying "Hong Kong Independence". 

The reception to Beijing’s plan to slap a National Security Law (NSL) on Hong Kong in the name of “urgency” – and the HK police’s reaction to that reception – has been about what you’d expect.

Of course, not everyone is freaking out about the NSL. Quite a lot of people welcome it, and have been going around making very conspicuously public statements saying so. Every govt department head has been releasing statements supporting the law – each and every one of them verbatim copies of each other apart from the dept name and corresponding serial number. So you know they’re sincere.

Meanwhile, Beijing officials, HK govt officials and pro-Beijing editors and pundits have spent the last few days making public statements or publishing op-eds assuring everyone (especially the international community) that their fears are unfounded. There is nothing to worry about. All is well.

And so on.

Pretty much all of them boil down to the same basic points:

1. Everyone has national security laws, why can’t we?

2. The NSL will only apply to a tiny, miniscule minority of people. If you are not one of them, you have nothing to fear.

3. The NSL will bring peace and harmony to HK, and all this political turmoil will be a thing of the past, and we can get on with our lives and the economy can recover and everything will be awesome.

I’m not kidding about the last one. Here’s our first CE Tung Chee-hwa saying it. And here’s SCMP columnist Alex Lo calling the NSL a “masterstroke” that means “Hong Kong can now be depoliticised and get back to reviving its economy and improving people’s lives”.

Zounds! Imagine that. Years of polarized politics, frustration at the broken promises of universal suffrage, mistrust of the police, and fears of being “disappeared”, magically wiped away just like that by this one law.

“Well, why didn’t they say so earlier?” etc.

As you might imagine, I find their reassurances rather unreassuring. And one reason (of many) is that not a single one of these people has said exactly HOW the NSL will bring peace and harmony.

Seriously: how? I want one of these people to please spell out for me in detail how NSL will accomplish this in a way that isn't scary or alarming.

None have. I think I can guess why.

I’ve noticed that statements and op-eds opposing the NSL have gone into great detail as to why it’s a bad idea and means the end of One Country Two Systems, giving historical and contemporary context, with numerous examples of how “national security” could be (and already has been) abused in China and elsewhere to stifle and punish opposition.

See for example this column from Cliff Buddle, which ran in SCMP the same day Alex Lo’s column did. He makes a detailed and thoughtful analysis (that saves me a great deal of typing) explaining why there’s good reason to worry about the NSL, and to doubt Beijing’s claims that it will be very narrowly applied.

By contrast, Alex Lo’s column doesn’t back up his assertion at all. He doesn’t explain how the NSL will depoliticize HK, end the protest violence and go back to normal. It simply will. As if the entire problem all along was that we didn't have Draconian enough laws to deal with these punks throwing petrol bombs in the streets. Now that we’re going to have one, problem solved and we can all get along.

There are various reasons for the gaping plot hole in such declarations. For one thing, the people making them are under no obligation to defend their conclusions. It’s not like the law won’t passed if not enough people are convinced that it’s necessary, so why make an effort to back your argument?

For another, the point of these statements is really to be seen publicly declaring sworn loyalty to the new regime. These people know where the power lies, and like good Quislings they’re making sure the Powers That Be point the NSL crosshairs at someone else.

Also, at least for now, no one wants to say the quiet part out loud – the NSL will bring about peace and harmony by using the strong arm of radical law enforcement to terrify the opposition into silence and make examples of anyone who resists.

Voilà: peace and harmony.

This is what China does with its malcontents – this is what the HK govt and its supporters want for HK.

They'll say they don't, of course. And you know, I’m sure many of them imagine in their heads that we’ll still have the same freedoms (or at least they will, because they don't harbour verboten political beliefs, so same thing, really). And maybe some of them actually believe the NSL will be only used against the most violent radicals, and that once those people are dealt with, everyone will be right as rain.

In reality, it's a classic case of trading liberty for security without the slightest understanding just what the price of that security will be. Or maybe they do – and they’re okay with that as long as it’s someone else paying that price.

I wonder how they’ll feel if the price becomes higher than they expected, and where they might draw the line – midnight house raids? Disappearing journalists? Xinjiang-style re-education camps? Tiananmen 2.0?

Welp. We’ll find out.

The price of everything and the value of nothing,

This is dF