MORE SENSELESS ACTS OF BLOGGERY

Yes, it was like five weeks ago, but I’ve been busy. And anyway, it feels like everyone moved on from it pretty quickly – which may either be a comment on how blasé we’ve become about shootings in America (happens every day, and anyway only one person was killed and it wasn’t Trump), or the fact that the news media got distracted by the drama over whether Biden would or wouldn’t drop out.

Also, maybe it’s because I’m unplugged from the 24/7 media circus, but I’ve heard very little about how the investigation is going in terms of just what motivated Thomas Matthew Crooks. Politics? Instagram likes? Impressing Jodie Foster?

Any of these are possible, but in the interim, a lot of people have been filling that vacuum with all kinds of movie-plot conspiracy theories around. Is Thomas Matthew Crooks the new Lee Harvey Oswald? Did Trump do a Bob Roberts? I don’t know, and neither do you. Maybe we will someday.

Anyway, blog:

1. To get the obvious out of the way, I’m glad it failed – partly because I do think murder is wrong, and partly because I shudder to think what the MAGA cult would do in response to honour their glorious martyr.

2. A lot has been said about Trump’s fist-pump – it “proves” the shooting was staged by Trump, it shows that Trump is made of tougher stuff than you thought yada yada.

Well, (1) no, and (2) to me, it looked more like Trump’s media-savvy instinct kicking in. He may not have even been aware he was doing it. Either way, it’s obviously made for great optics that feeds perfectly into the authoritarian strongman image Trump is basically running on. It also inevitably contrasted with Biden’s debate fumble and alleged “frail” age issues, although – like the debate – it didn’t seem move the needle much poll-wise, and of course now it’s a non-issue with Biden out of the picture, much to Trump’s obvious disappointment.

3. The other interesting detail is the minor yet important fact that we don’t really know for sure whether Trump was hit by a bullet or debris created by the bullet’s impact on something. Obviously something hit him, but as Josh Marshall at TPM pointed out, we’ve never seen an official medical report stating what caused his injury (Ronny Jackson arguably doesn’t count), and his now-unbandaged ear looks pretty good for something that was hit with an AR-15 round.

As Marshall has said, the questions surrounding this do not undermine the seriousness of the fact that someone tried to kill Trump, but they do matter in the sense that Trump is going around telling everyone he took a bullet for democracy – which, again, is designed to feed his strongman schtick – when it’s possible he actually didn’t.

4. The GOP were clearly hoping to milk this for all its worth and use it as gasoline to throw on their trash-fire narrative that Biden and the Democrats are murderous criminal thugs out to take over America. Which is kind of ironic given that SCOTUS just ruled that a President could order his rival assassinated and never go to jail for it. But hey ho.

Anyway, that line doesn't seem to have made much difference outside of the cult. Moreover, as far as I’m concerned, the GOP’s claims that Biden incited Crooks by calling Trump a fascist hold no water with me. I will not be lectured on the dangers of inflammatory political rhetoric by a party that has increasingly thrived on it since the mid-90s. And anyway, the stuff Biden and the Demos have said about Trump is mild compared to things Trump and the MAGA cult say daily. (See: North Carolina Lt Gov Mark Robinson saying in a church that “some people need killing” – he says he meant WW2 Nazis and “evil people”, but he was also pretty clear that he includes liberals in that group.)

Hit and miss,

This is dF

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald J Trump has limited immunity from prosecution for stuff he did while he was President. I’ve been too busy to write anything about it, but I got minute now, and you’re all just dying to know what I think, so here you go:

1. Actually, I don’t have much to say about it that Radley Balko hasn’t already said here. His dissection is very long but worth your time to really appreciate what just happened and why it’s probably even worse than you may have heard.

The main takeaway worth highlighting is the uselessness of Chief Roberts’ ruling that immunity only applies to “official acts” related to exercising “core constitutional powers”:

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.”

The problem, Balko notes, is that in practice, the line between official and unofficial acts is so fuzzy that there might as well not be a line at all. And Roberts’ ruling pretty much ensures that by giving no guidelines on how to do that, and also making it illegal to consider the president’s motives:

As both Sotomayor and Jackson point out, the majority has created this distinction between “official” and “unofficial” acts out of thin air, then made it impossible to distinguish one from the other. A president can come up with an “official” reason for just about any crime — from accepting bribes, to arresting journalists and critics, to targeted assassinations. Then — I guess we just take his word for it.

2. Also, as Josh Marshall at TPM correctly points out, this is a big deal because the official acts of presidents are exactly the sort of thing you don’t want to give presidents immunity for – no one cares if the President steals a toaster, but we do care if he orders the military to assassinate a rival, or jails journalists, or orders prisoners to be tortured.

Marshall also agrees that the distinction between official and unofficial acts is meaningless:

… even though this is clearly not blanket or absolute immunity that it’s close enough that with good lawyering you’re all but there.

3. Of course the Republicans are crowing about this, although don’t yet seem to have figured out that President Biden – and any Democrat POTUS that follows him – now has the exact same immunity powers – which hasn’t stopped them from calling Biden be arrested for treason, but then logic and consistency has never really been a thing in MAGA World.

And anyway, it may not matter to them because they figure this election is for keeps – once Trump is back in and Project 2025 is implemented, they hope to fix it do no Democrat ever wins the White House ever again. Problem solved.

4. Which is the other big issue, of course – Project 2025 is nothing short of a declaration of cultural war by the MAGA party against the liberal scourge they fear so much and a permanent takeover of conservative rule with democratic processes preserved largely as window dressing (see: Hungary, Hong Kong, etc). And while most of it could probably be accomplished through technically legal means, whatever legal constraints exist will not be an issue as long as Trump declares them official acts.

Kevin Roberts has famously declared that Project 2025 is “a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” And while maybe he thinks he’s saying that there won’t be any violence unless the left starts it, what it sounds like to me is: “Just roll over and accept this – don’t make us force it on you because we will.” Either way, he knows now that using violence to enforce this is on the table. And there’s a significant chunk of the MAGA cult that is very much looking forward to dishing it out.

5. It’s hard to believe the SCOTUS majority is blissfully unaware of all this (Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas certainly aren’t), although maybe some of them are kidding themselves that the institutions will still hold, and you can always just vote Trump out. But Chief Roberts seems more worried about a vicious cycle of endless prosecutions of presidents than holding them accountable for actual crimes, which suggests at best that his priorities are at odds with reality.

6. Anyway, all of this is basically the latest chapter of an ongoing debate whether any US president can ever realistically be held accountable for any crimes they commit while in office, and whether impeachment is a sufficient solution. As we’ve seen, it’s not.

I’ve posted about that before, and all I can really add to it is that the SCOTUS decision on immunity pretty much seals the deal – Presidents can crime as much as they want as long as they make them look like official acts. And I continue to believe we need to really think long and hard about whether that’s the kind of country we want to live in, and if so, why.

Crime time,

This is dF

As you probably know, Joe Biden and Donald Trump held their first debate of 2024. And everyone is freaking out about it, so I thought I’d better post something, mainly to organize my own thoughts in my head. So:

1. No I didn’t watch it. I rarely watch live debates anymore – partly because I’m in the wrong time zone, but mainly because (1) it’s rare that any candidate says anything of substance that I haven’t heard them say before, and (2) in this case, I already know who is getting my vote – and it’s not the pathological liar who has been convicted of one felony (so far) and literally whipped a mob into trying to overturn the 2020 election results by force. So the highlights reel is usually enough for me.

2. Based on that, I’ll be the first to admit Biden had a bad night, whether it was the cold medication or whatever. That said, I don’t think it justifies either the crowing on the right or the freakout on the left. I certainly don’t agree with the hot takes that Biden lost the debate because he wasn’t as loud and energetic as Trump – which is a silly way to declare the winner of a debate. I’ve actually seen some Demos say “Yes, Trump lied his ass off and made little sense, but he did it with confidence and energy.” Well, okay, but if you think that’s what makes him seem more presidential, then I don’t really know what to tell you.

3. Perhaps understandably, part of the freakout is that it plays into the GOP’s whole “Biden’s too old” meme (despite Trump being just a few years younger and obviously in far worse health, but okay), so now we’re back to the “replace Biden” meme, backed by (1) Demos who are afraid he can’t beat Trump in what’s looking like another close election and (2) hardcore liberals who viscerally hate Biden for his Israel/Gaza policy and have threatened to vote for Trump just to hold Biden accountable unless he drops out.

4. Anyone who knows about how party politics and US elections work will tell you that’s not likely to happen. Biden has won all the primaries and most of the delegates that go with them, and a brokered convention will be too messy and risky. Also, no one seems to agree on the answer to the most important question: replace Biden with who, exactly? Apart from Kamala Harris, there are a few other names being thrown about (none of which are RFK Jr, thankfully). But the fact of the matter is that of the bunch, Biden is the only one with a proven track record of beating Trump in a general election. Throwing that away for someone else over one bad debate performance would be a major gamble. So unless Biden dies or willingly steps down – and there’s currently no reason to believe that he’ll do either – we’re probably stuck with him.

5. This where a lot of people will complain about the party system and DNC mechanisms and the electoral college and whatnot, and that’s fine, but that’s a whole separate set of problems that has no bearing on who gets to be the Demo nominee for 2024, because it’s way too late for that. That’s a discussion for 2028 and beyond, and it’s worth having now, but, well, see above.

6. The bigger question of course is what all this means for November. As the saying goes, five months is a long time in politics, so even if the debate moves the needle in Trump’s favor, Biden has the time and opportunity to turn that around. Meanwhile, we’ve already seen a couple of post-debate talks where Biden was already back on form, and one of the first post-debate polls suggests that Biden’s debate performance didn’t hurt him. So Demos can probably stop panicking now.  

7. However, we’re still looking at a close race that Biden can still lose. And honestly, while I’m not officially calling the election for Trump yet, I have to say, my gut feeling is that he is going to pull this off. Again. And this time with the full backing of the GOP, which is now his party. Trump won in 2016 despite all conventional political wisdom saying it was impossible AND losing the pop vote. There’s no reason to assume he can’t do it again – especially if the far left really can’t bring themselves to vote for Biden and go with Trump, RFK Jr or a blank protest vote.

8. The nihilist in me can’t help thinking that if a slim majority of people is willing to vote for Trump despite being a blithering pathological liar and a wannabe dictator who has been convicted of one felony (so far) and literally whipped a mob etc etc etc – even if the reason is that Biden is too old or whatever – maybe democracy should die?

9. Okay, not really. But for me, there’s no mystery here. We know what a Trump presidency looks like, and that was when the GOP wasn’t fully onboard and things like Project 2025 were just a gleam in Kevin Roberts’ eye. We also know what a Biden presidency looks like, and at least on paper, it’s been reasonably good more often than not and relatively sane compared to the previous admin. Which is why it’s inexplicable to me that people outside of the MAGA party would want to put Trump back in charge.

10. But as I’ve said elsewhere, people vote for all kinds of personal, idiosyncratic reasons, and in the current reality schism, I don’t know what can be done to change that, especially since a complex problem usually requires an even more complex solution. All I can say for now is that if Trump does win, and if we somehow survive his second term, we might want to think long and hard about how we got here and what we should do about it.

I’m not going to debate you Jerry,

This is dF

Well, it doesn’t get more bloggable than this, so …

1. To get the obvious out of the way, of course we don’t know how airtight Bragg’s case is, and it is entirely possible that even Trump’s legal team could find a way to dismantle it enough to get an acquittal, a mistrial or whatever. Some have said it’s the weakest case of the four that have been brewing the last few years. We’ll just have to wait and see. I will say that Trump's tactic of publicly attacking the judge and his family probably isn't going to go the way he thinks.

2. However it plays out, I will be very surprised if it ends with Trump doing time. Billionaires rarely go to jail. At most he may be slapped with hefty fines (which, true to his character, he probably won’t pay). 

3. If we’ve learned anything from this so far, it’s that the GOP is very much Trump’s party. We knew this already, of course, but there was the usual buzz that the GOP has wanted to drop him like 3^rd Period French for awhile now, especially because of his looming legal problems, and an indictment would be the perfect political excuse to finally wash their hands of him.

Turns out, ha ha, no. Just about everyone apart from the handful of dedicated Never-Trumpers (your Romneys and Liz Cheneys and whatnot) has firmly defended Trump as the totally innocent victim of a vicious gay liberal witch hunt/conspiracy to steal the 2020 election and jail/punish all opposition to the resulting Biden Dynasty. Or words to that effect.

4. One big reason for this, of course, is that they’re afraid of the MAGA base, who has made it clear in no uncertain terms that Trump is the second coming of Jesus and that anyone who says otherwise will be dealt with accordingly. Of course, the GOP is largely responsible for enabling that base, so, you know, hey ho.

Which is also why the usual metric the GOP uses for this sort of thing – “Will this cost us the White House in the next election?” – isn’t that reliable. There’s no law preventing Trump from running for office even if he goes to jail, and the MAGA base is very likely to vote for him regardless. So the risk of a split vote is very real. If they can’t convince the base that, say, Ron DeSantis is an acceptable Trump substitute, I think the GOP will have no choice but to rally behind Trump and take their chances.

5. One silver lining, I suppose, is that the MAGA base has not been inclined to take to the streets en masse and rip shit up, despite being urged to do so by Trump himself, as well as the usual lackeys like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the potential for political violence is the highest it’s been since the 1960s, so I’m expecting to see more isolated incidents as the trial goes on.

6. The GOP has also been offering a predictable litany of defenses, my favorite of which is “We don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates in this country!”

… Well, you know, maybe we should?

Seriously, though, it’s worth unpacking that statement, because it basically implies that we don’t arrest former Presidents / current POTUS candidates because it’s not allowed, or it’s an unwritten rule or something.

In the first place, POTUS (and other) candidates have been arrested before, so it’s not unprecedented. Also, one reason former POTUSes haven’t been arrested before is because only a few have ever faced possible criminal charges. Of those, Warren Harding died in office and Richard Nixon was pre-emptively pardoned by his loyal sideman Gerald Ford. As for Bill Clinton, he was successfully sued by Paula Jones while in office, and while he did face possible criminal charges for perjury and obstructing justice, he did what a lot of rich and powerful people do – he avoided indictment by cutting a deal, which in his case resulted in a $25,000 fine and suspension of his law license for five years.

Trump, incidentally, probably could have done something similar to avoid indictment, but that would mean admitting wrongdoing (as Clinton had to do as part of his deal), which he is constitutionally incapable of doing.

7. In any case, I for one refuse to be lectured by the party of “LOCK HER UP!” about the inappropriateness of indicting POTUS candidates and former Presidents.

8. I do think the “We don’t arrest former Presidents” meme raises the question of accountability and to what extent we think Presidents (current or former) should be above the law. Impeachment is supposed to be the preferred remedy of high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House, but it’s a political solution, not a judicial one. And the politics makes it risky, lest we get into an endless cycle of political revenge (as various Repubs are now threatening to do).

The dilemma is: If it’s politically too dangerous to impeach or arrest a POTUS, what incentive remains for a POTUS to follow the law – especially a POTUS who turns out to be a pathological liar with no regard for the law and a willingness to burn the country to the ground if it means staying out of jail?

9. The other big question of course is: what does this mean for his re-election chances? It’s not clear yet, although we’ve already established that (1) you can still legally run for (and win) the Presidency from a jail cell, and (2) the MAGA base will vote for Trump no matter what. And it’s a given that Trump will milk this for everything it’s worth, so I think he’s still just as likely to at least win the nomination. He might not win the general election, but that may have been true before the indictment.

10. The one thing we can be sure of is that the political climate in the US is going to get a lot worse. The indictment will feed the MAGA crowd’s persecution complex and fuel the GOP’s apparent commitment to embrace fascism and turn America into Hungary to save it from the Soros-Backed Woke Trans Antifa Drag Queen Biden Army.

However, in my opinion, that’s no reason not to indict Trump. The fact that he’s been indicted at all speaks volumes – I think few DAs, and no grand jury, would bring a case like this if there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the expense and the extraordinary sociopolitical consequences. And again, this is only one of several cases brewing – Trump has pushed the limits of what the “norms” of not arresting Presidents will accept.

Trump has basically forced the nation to reckon with a major dilemma: When a POTUS unabashedly crimes with impunity, our choices are (1) indict him and uphold rule of law, or (2) accept that any POTUS can crime all they want with no consequences apart from losing their re-election campaign (which they could also claim was stolen and refuse to accept).

Which will it be?

Stormy weather,

This is dF

PRODUCTION NOTE: I wrote a version of this post back in 2008, inspired by this post by John Mark Ockerbloom, a digital library architect and planner at the University of Pennsylvania, on why it matters that we have a Banned Books Week.

And given current events, it seems prudent to update it. –Ed.

As you know, the GOP has been on a book-banning spree, and not just for the usual rationales (i.e. fear of naughty words, nipples and gay people, although these are still very much in play). Now it’s all about getting rid of books that teach that fascism and racism are bad, on the apparent fear that these books will make white people feel guilty about supporting either. Or something.

Anyway, nothing says “we’re not Nazis” than holding a book burning event, right?

The good news is that while efforts to ban books are on the rise, it’s still not as widespread as social media makes it look. At least not right now.

Also, at least some kids aren’t having it, and are going as far as to form Banned Book Clubs to read these books that Republicans are telling them they shouldn’t be reading. And various groups have been buying and sending copies of banned books to people who live in states where they’re being removed from libraries. Meanwhile, Art Spiegelman is going to see a boost in his royalty cheques thanks to the McMinn County School Board.

So, great.

However, this is usually where the GOP and their apologists like to claim that they’re not banning books because all of these books are still for sale and easily accessible via Amazon or whatever booksellers are still left. So all of the dithering over book banning is liberal schadenfreude propaganda to cancel Republicans, etc.

By perhaps no coincidence, this is the same argument that many of the same people use to justify defunding libraries completely in the name of fiscal responsibility. If you can’t ban books, you can at least close the libraries. And again, they say, there’s always Amazon et al.

In both cases, the “there’s always Amazon” argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what libraries are for. Neil Gaiman makes a better case for libraries here than I ever will, and part of it covers why forcing libraries to remove books to protect children is not only a bad idea, but unnecessary.

In short, a primary function of libraries is to foster a love of reading in kids. Not everyone can afford to buy books whenever they want to read one. Libraries ensure every kid can benefit from books, and that people of all ages have equal access to whatever books or other useful information and services libraries offer. And in order for this to work, libraries must be free to offer books that matter to readers of all ages.

Yes, libraries have to make editorial decisions because of limited budgets and shelf space. And yes, patrons of schools and libraries should have the freedom to question those decisions. But as Ockerbloom points out here:

… There’s a world of difference between saying “isn’t this more appropriate for the YA shelves than for the early readers section?” or “Would this title be a better fourth-grade book on this topic than the one currently being used?”, and insisting “None of our kids should be reading about this kind of thing!” when “this kind of thing” is already on the minds of those kids, or something that they should be thinking about.

This is the thing about library book bans – they ensure no one of any age can have access to it. The “just buy it on Amazon” meme is simply arguing that free speech should only be available to those who can pay for it. And again, it’s also beside the point. To paraphrase Ockerbloom, freedom of speech isn’t just about the freedom to write what matters to you, but also the freedom to read what matters to you: “An unread book, after all, has as little impact as an unpublished book.”

Meanwhile, it’s also worth pointing out that while none of this is really new, the current book ban trend is more insidious than the usual handwringing.

Apart from being more coordinated across various states, it’s also happening within the broader context of the current and broader white conservative mindset that they are losing the Great American Culture War against the Evil Gay Black Liberal Communist LGBTQA-CRT Horde, and the only way they can win now (and save America) is to take control of schools and universities – not just with book bans, but also with legislation that censors teachers and restructures curricula along right-wing ideological lines to ensure students are taught their ideology, which will also teach them how to view everyone else’s ideologies.

Which of course is a direct contradiction to the GOP’s stated opposition to Big Govt and Cancel Culture. Also, as a resident of Hong Kong – where book bans and control of education is very much a pillar of Beijing’s current effort to stamp out all dissent and turn us all into unquestioning CCP patriots whether we like it or not – I also find it grimly ironic that the GOP delights in criticizing China for what it’s doing to HK whilst simultaneously trying to employ similar tactics in America.

But if Trump taught us anything, it’s that authoritarianism doesn't have to be consistent, or even make sense – it just has to appear to empower you and your tribe at the expense of everyone you hate.

Anyway, book bans are silly, is what I’m saying.

Read me like a book,

This is dF

Well, we all knew how that was going to go, I suppose.

And I do have a few thoughts that I have time to write down:

1. As is often the case with trials like this, people wanted this case to be about more than what it was. Liberals saw it as a referendum against an increasingly violent right-wing push for fascist white supremacy, while conservatives saw it as a referendum in favor of shooting liberal protesters. In reality, the case wasn’t a referendum on anything – it was a very narrow legal question over self defense. In this case, Wisconsin’s self defense law (like many others across the US) is permissive enough that Rittenhouse’s claim was good enough for the jury – and the prosecution wasn’t able to overcome that. For better or worse, that’s how the judiciary process works – you can’t determine a man’s guilt or innocence solely on what the sociopolitical consequences might be.

2. What Rittenhouse did that night was dangerous, stupid, malicious and likely motivated by racism. Showing up with a gun undoubtedly escalated the violence to the point where he felt he needed to use it – and it’s a fair bet he was counting on that. Like Trevor Noah, I don’t really buy that he went there genuinely hoping to defend a business – I think he went there to play cop, hoping he’d get to use his gun.

The thing is, none of that is illegal in Wisconsin, and in most of the country. Neither is deliberately putting yourself in a position where you will have to shoot people who might attack you.

(The unwritten caveat, of course, is that it helps to be white when you do these things. As much as I hate “what if” alternate-timeline arguments, it is more than reasonable to assume that if a black man showed up in Kenosha with an AR-15 to “help”, he wouldn’t have been welcomed by the police and handed a water bottle. He likely would have been shot on sight.)

So for my money, it’s worth stepping back to ponder about why this is – and why many Americans (most of them white) seem to want to live in a country where it’s legal to do what Rittenhouse did, because they clearly do.

3. Meanwhile, the even bigger problem is that the GOP is generally hailing Rittenhouse as a hero and a victim of liberal media witch hunts, and we all know why – he represents the current GOP fantasy that liberal antifa creeps who stole the election from Trump are out to kill all the white people, and (white) good guys with guns are exactly what we need to stop them. Put another way, they LOVE the idea of ordinary white Americans showing up at BLM protests and killing some of them.

And of course now this is going to get worse, because the Proud Boys and all these other pro-Trump militias and white supremacist groups and the January 6 bunch and whoever are celebrating this as a green light to open fire at the next protest that gets out of control. I take little comfort in the fact that a big chunk of the online support is probably via overseas bot farms – real mainstream conservatives are offering him internships and jobs, while others are chuffed that it’s officially legal to shoot liberal protesters as long as you yell “it’s coming right for us!” before opening fire.

4. As for the obvious question – are we now going to see more right-wing gun violence at liberal protests ? – I think we probably will, though not at the scale some people are imagining. I do think it will be limited in scope initially, similar to the Rittenhouse incident. But some more people are probably going to be killed as a result, and it may well escalate from there, especially as we get closer to the 2024 elections.

The ugly truth is that this has gone beyond the usual fringe groups of far-right extremists and neo-Nazis rattling sabres – as we found out on January 6, the GOP is mainstreaming violent rhetoric in the hopes that the hardcore guys will go out and do some in the name of defending White America from the godless non-white liberal hordes. And the more that deadly political violence becomes socially acceptable (and deemed legal under the right circumstances), the more likely we’re going to see another January 6, only this time it may well be better organized and more heavily armed.

I should add I don’t think the embracing of political violence will be limited to the right wing. The more the GOP endorses political violence, the more likely the left may respond in kind, if only in self defense (ironically). Violence is cyclical because it invites a response. I shoot your guys, you respond by shooting my guys in retaliation self defense, and over and over it goes. 

That will be Rittenhouse’s legacy, whether he understands that or not. And sadly, a guilty verdict wouldn't have changed that.

Guns are drawn,

This is dF

I am not hear to dance upon his grave, as I’m generally not into grave-dancing. Actually I normally wouldn’t post anything at all, but as a political junkie who worked in radio (to include news/talk radio around the time that Limbaugh and conservative talk radio in general was ascending*), I feel compelled to say something.

And that’s only really because of this piece by Conor Friedersdorf dunking on conservatives who have been giving Limbaugh credit for advancing conservatism in America throughout his career. Friedersdorf argues this isn’t true. Many liberals have responded along the lines of “oh yes he jolly well did”.

It’s possible many of the latter group didn’t read past the standfirst. Friedersdorf is specifically referring to “conservatism” as the political and economic ideology championed by the likes of William F Buckley and Milton Friedman – the general ideology of small govt, free trade, balanced budgets and personal responsibility. Friedersdorf argues that conservatism as defined above has been on the decline since Reagan left office, and while Limbaugh kicked off his career pushing a Reaganesque conservative agenda, he eventually abandoned it (as did the GOP in general) in favor of the current GOP ideology of culture wars, manufactured outrage, lib-pwning and the defense of Straight White Christian America at all costs.

Therefore, Friedersdorf says, Limbaugh was never the champion of conservatism that modern conservatives make him out to be.

And ... well ... okay.

But ...

The question, I suppose, is whether conservatism can be fairly and accurately defined strictly as an economy-based political ideology.

I don't think it can.

For one thing, you have social conservatism, which has been around in the US for a long time but became a serious political force in the 1960s and went mainstream during Reagan’s term, thanks in no small part to the rise of the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. From that point on, the GOP spent as much time talking about traditional “family values” (and the alleged left-wing agenda to destroy them in favor of turning American children into gay Commie Satanic baby-killing multicultural dope fiends) as they did about free trade and tax cuts. By the mid-90s, social conservatism was inseparable from economic conservatism as far as GOP ideology was concerned.

While Limbaugh was never a conservative Christian in any meaningful sense, he was definitely onboard with social conservatives in terms of their basic political stances, even if he mainly used them as a way to bash liberals over the head. (Fact: Limbaugh was triggering libs before triggering libs was cool.)

Meanwhile, by the time Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution brought their Contract With America™ to Congress in 1994, the GOP had adopted a noticeably and increasingly more aggressive tone in its rhetoric – they weren’t just opposed to liberal policies, they were ANGRY about them. Anger and indignant outrage increasingly became the default setting for the GOP as the party tapped into (and encouraged) the anger, fear and frustration of their mostly white base that lived in fear of liberals turning the US into Cuba, or whatever they thought the Radical Liberal Agenda™ was. The other side of the aisle was no longer mere opposition – it was the Enemy of America. The GOP became less interested in bipartisanship and more interested in demonization, polarization and obstruction.

By perhaps no coincidence, conservative talk radio was expanding fast by exploiting that particular fear, and Limbaugh was leading that charge. Things took off from there, and now here we are in an era where the GOP is now the Trump Party that lives in a universe of alternative facts where libs are demonic anarchists who stole the election and are out to cancel white culture etc and so on.

So basically I’m not convinced by the argument that Limbaugh didn’t advance “conservatism” in the Buckley/Friedman sense, because that’s too narrow (and slightly dishonest) a definition of what “conservatism” has become. Friedersdorf kinda touches on this, and acknowledges that the GOP is no longer the party of Reagan in an economic-policy sense. But the party of Reagan was also the party of social conservatism, which Limbaugh and the GOP exploited to varying degrees of intensity for the last 30+ years to the point that the resulting culture war is now the dominant ideology. The economic side of GOP conservatism is now limited to ensuring that rich people live as tax-free as possible and this will somehow benefit the rest of us. (Spoiler: it won’t.)

Ironically, of course, many people who call themselves conservatives in the modern 21^st Century sense still tend to fancy themselves as liberty-loving tax-cutting small-govt Reaganites. But at least some of those are from the conservative intellectual crowd who lost their usefulness around the time that Sarah Palin became a household name. They’re also being disingenuous – the GOP hasn’t embraced any meaningful form of economic conservatism or fiscal responsibility for decades. Even Reagan raised taxes, and he also more than doubled both the deficit and the national debt. In my lifetime, the deficit had only even gone down during Demo admins, not Republican ones. (There are complicated reasons for this – I'm just saying.)

Limbaugh himself occasionally complained about this and went after who he considered to be RINOs. But he ultimately went along with it, I think, because the Loud Angry White Populist schtick of the GOP suited his radio style. He was always a demagogue and an outrage merchant, and he delighted in stoking white fear of a black planet under Obama. Trump was the first President to successfully trade in the kind of xenophobic white-identity insult comedy that Limbaugh had pioneered. 

Rush is often credited with countering the alleged liberal narrative of the Mainstream Media™, but it’s more accurate to say he helped create a new conservative narrative for an alternate universe that only ever made sense if you never questioned it. Which of course was part of Limbaugh’s whole brand – his loyal “dittohead” audience openly bragged about believing every word he said without question, if only to make the libs scream in frustration.

Limbaugh didn’t do that on his own, of course – he had help from fellow radio hosts, Fox News, right-wing bloggers and the GOP in general. But his dittohead army was arguably the rock upon which the Trump Party built its alt-realty church.

So in my opinion, Limbaugh didn't just help advance conservatism in America – he played a role in transforming it to the ugly hateful beast it is today.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, etc.

*FULL DISCLOSURE: I worked at a news/talk radio station from 1994 to 1996 in Southern Illinois, but we didn’t carry Limbaugh’s show. Our mainstay was Chuck Harder, who at that time tended towards centrist populism of the kind you typically heard from Ross Perot, Pat Choate and Ralph Nader. He also entertained Clinton conspiracy theories.

Radio silence,

This is dF

It’s a tradition of mine where I write a review of an outgoing US President to assess his accomplishments, failures and overall legacy.

Now it’s Trump’s turn and I’m like, “Man, why bother?”

I mean, seriously. Why bother to assess the legacy of a man who not only was easily the worst and most corrupt POTUS in my lifetime, but also was a POTUS who by most reliable accounts never wanted the job to start with (he apparently went in hoping to raise his brand – and fast cash – to launch his own TV network, not literally win the election) and only really tried to keep it partly out of spite and ego, but mostly to avoid his creditors and stay out of jail. Then spent every day after Election Day screaming that he won by a landslide, the Demos stole the election, and tried everything from batshit lawsuits to an angry mob invading Congress?

In fact, why bother when – after four years of pathological lying, collusion, corruption, racism, pussy grabbing, fake news, brown kids in cages, and COVID-19 – he still got 70 million people to vote for him, after which he convinced some of them to stage a coup on his behalf by pretending the Democrats had already staged one by stealing the election?

I mean, Christ.

To be fair, I’m trying to think of his accomplishments as POTUS, and this is what I have so far:

1. 500,000 dead from COVID-19 (so far)

2.The first POTUS to be impeached twice

3. Successfully transformed the GOP into the Trump QAnon Tea Party

4. Showed us just how complicit the GOP would be if their POTUS successfully staged a coup after losing an election. (Answer: very)

5. Made white supremacy great again

6. Wrecked the economy

7. Covfefe

8. Golf

9. Blew billions on a border wall that doesn’t even work

10. Space Force

11. A dab hand with a Sharpie

You see what I’m saying.

Okay, he also signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, but he almost didn’t, and only did so in the name of pressuring China for a better trade deal that he didn’t understand. And that doesn’t balance out everything else he did.

In the end, Trump was an insult comic who ran as a joke and a publicity stunt, accidentally won and treated the job as the grift opportunity of a lifetime. He used the White House mainly to feed his insatiable ego, insult his enemies, undo every single thing Barack Obama did out of spite, and cozy up to every dictator on the planet who he admired. He surrounded himself with family members and cronies whose only qualifications were agreeing with everything he said. He lied about virtually everything. And he fleeced the taxpayers to prop up his businesses and finance his golf trips.

It's also worth noting that his popularity never cracked 50%. It hovered around the low-mid 40s, and I suspect the only reason it dipped into the 30s right before he left is because his coup failed. Nobody likes a loser, especially when you’re on the losing side.

But let’s be clear – the GOP, for the most part, loved every minute of it. Some Reagan conservatives were horrified, of course, and sure, some were onboard mainly for the tax cuts and the SCOTUS appointments (which, let’s admit, were dumb luck). But the GOP embraced Trump and everything he stood for, because he was (more or less) the desired outcome of 25-30 years of Republicans pushing their Angry White Guy culture war against libs, feminists, LGBTQs, BIPOCs, Muslims, non-white immigrants and everyone else they considered to be the enemy of White Straight Male Christian America. They may have preferred someone a little less obvious about it (or at least less prone to psychotic episodes and batshit conspiracies), but they were on the Trump Train all the way to the bitter end because they wanted to be. If the coup had worked, they’d say he did the right thing. Mike Pence probably would have said it right before the MAGA cult strung him up. 

That is Trump’s chief legacy as POTUS: the GOP is Trump’s party now. The second impeachment vote proves this. So does Trump’s invitation to headline CPAC. So does the fact that Trump proteges like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laurie Boebert and (ironically) Ted Cruz are racking up outrage points as if they’re angling for the 2024 GOP nomination. They know Trump still has a posse – especially at the state and local levels of the GOP – and that as far as the MAGA cult is concerned, he is a POTUS in exile, the true ruler of this land denied his rightful place as emperor by an evil liberal Deep State conspiracy against him.

There’s been talk that Trump might start his own party to challenge Republicans who want to get off the Trump Train, but I’m not sure he needs to, considering the vast majority of Republicans would probably join it – which suggests he already has a new party: the GOP itself.

It’s more likely that Never-Trump Repubs will form their own party. And even that’s doubtful because it’s hard to start third parties in America, and it’s even harder for them to win elections.

And so much for Trump. He may be out of office, but he did a lot of damage in four years, and he will come back for more. Even if he goes to jail between now and 2024 (which I have my doubts about, though it would be nice), his martyrdom will drive the GOP to new levels of batshit hysteria.

And this is the govt POTUS Joe now gets to deal with – a two-party system in which both parties live in completely separate realities and one will not rest until the other is vanquished forever.

Are you not entertained, America?

Next,

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