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therealbeachfox · 9 months ago

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Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.

It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.

To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.

This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.

Join me below, if you would.

2004 was an election year, and much like conservatives are whipping up anti-trans hysteria and anti-trans bills and propositions to drive out the vote today, in 2004 it was all anti-gay stuff. Specifically, preventing the evil scourge of same-sex marriage from destroying everything good and decent in the world.

Enter Gavin Newstrom. At the time, he was the newly elected mayor of San Francisco. Despite living next door to the city all my life, I hadn’t even heard of the man until Valentines Day 2004 when he announced that gay marriage was legal in San Francisco and started marrying people at city hall.

It was a political stunt. It was very obviously a political stunt. That shit was illegal, after all. But it was a very sweet political stunt. I still remember the front page photo of two ancient women hugging each other forehead to forehead and crying happy tears.

But it was only going to last for as long as it took for the California legal system to come in and make them knock it off.

The next day, we’re on the phone with an acquaintance, and she casually mentions that she’s surprised the two of us aren’t up at San Francisco getting married with everyone else.

“Everyone else?” Goes I, “I thought they would’ve shut that down already?”

“Oh no!” goes she, “The courts aren’t open until Tuesday. Presidents Day on Monday and all. They’re doing them all weekend long!”

We didn’t know because social media wasn’t a thing yet. I only knew as much about it as I’d read on CNN, and most of the blogs I was following were more focused on what bullshit President George W Bush was up to that day.

"Well shit", me and my man go, "do you wanna?" I mean, it’s a political stunt, it wont really mean anything, but we’re not going to get another chance like this for at least 20 years. Why not?

The next day, Sunday, we get up early. We drive north to the southern-most BART station. We load onto Bay Area Rapid Transit, and rattle back and forth all the way to the San Francisco City Hall stop.

We had slightly miscalculated.

Apparently, demand for marriages was far outstripping the staff they had on hand to process them. Who knew. Everyone who’d gotten turned away Saturday had been given tickets with times to show up Sunday to get their marriages done. My babe and I, we could either wait to see if there was a space that opened up, or come back the next day, Monday.

“Isn’t City Hall closed on Monday?” I asked. “It’s a holiday”

“Oh sure,” they reply, “but people are allowed to volunteer their time to come in and work on stuff anyways. And we have a lot of people who want to volunteer their time to have the marriage licensing offices open tomorrow.”

“Oh cool,” we go, “Backup.”

“Make sure you’re here if you do,” they say, “because the California Supreme Court is back in session Tuesday, and will be reviewing the motion that got filed to shut us down.”

And all this shit is super not-legal, so they’ll totally be shutting us down goes unsaid.

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We don’t get in Saturday. We wind up hanging out most of the day, though.

It’s… incredible. I can say, without hyperbole, that I have never experienced so much concentrated joy and happiness and celebration of others’ joy and happiness in all my life before or since. My face literally ached from grinning. Every other minute, a new couple was coming out of City Hall, waving their paperwork to the crowd and cheering and leaping and skipping. Two glorious Latina women in full Mariachi band outfits came out, one in the arms of another. A pair of Jewish boys with their families and Rabbi. One couple managed to get a Just Married convertible arranged complete with tin-cans tied to the bumper to drive off in. More than once I was giving some rice to throw at whoever was coming out next.

At some point in the mid-afternoon, there was a sudden wave of extra cheering from the several hundred of us gathered at the steps, even though no one was coming out. There was a group going up the steps to head inside, with some generic black-haired shiny guy at the front. My not-yet-husband nudged me, “That’s Newsom.” He said, because he knew I was hopeless about matching names and people.

Ooooooh, I go. That explains it. Then I joined in the cheers. He waved and ducked inside.

So dusk is starting to fall. It’s February, so it’s only six or so, but it’s getting dark.

“Should we just try getting in line for tomorrow -now-?” we ask.

“Yeah, I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible.” One of the volunteers tells us. “We’re not allowed to have people hang out overnight like this unless there are facilities for them and security. We’d need Porta-Poties for a thousand people and police patrols and the whole lot, and no one had time to get all that organized. Your best bet is to get home, sleep, and then catch the first BART train up at 5am and keep your fingers crossed.

Monday is the last day to do this, after all.

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So we go home. We crash out early. We wake up at 4:00. We drive an hour to hit the BART station. We get the first train up. We arrive at City Hall at 6:30AM.

The line stretches around the entirety of San Francisco City Hall. You could toss a can of Coke from the end of the line to the people who’re up to be first through the doors and not have to worry about cracking it open after.

“Uh.” We go. “What the fuck is -this-?”

So.

Remember why they weren’t going to be able to have people hang out overnight?

Turns out, enough SF cops were willing to volunteer unpaid time to do patrols to cover security. And some anonymous person delivered over a dozen Porta-Poties that’d gotten dropped off around 8 the night before.

It’s 6:30 am, there are almost a thousand people in front of us in line to get this literal once in a lifetime marriage, the last chance we expect to have for at least 15 more years (it was 2004, gay rights were getting shoved back on every front. It was not looking good. We were just happy we lived in California were we at least weren’t likely to loose job protections any time soon.).

Then it starts to rain.

We had not dressed for rain.

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Here is how the next six hours go.

We’re in line. Once the doors open at 7am, it will creep forward at a slow crawl. It’s around 7 when someone shows up with garbage bags for everyone. Cut holes for the head and arms and you’ve got a makeshift raincoat! So you’ve got hundreds of gays and lesbians decked out in the nicest shit they could get on short notice wearing trashbags over it.

Everyone is so happy.

Everyone is so nervous/scared/frantic that we wont be able to get through the doors before they close for the day.

People online start making delivery orders.

Coffee and bagels are ordered in bulk and delivered to City Hall for whoever needs it. We get pizza. We get roses. Random people come by who just want to give hugs to people in line because they’re just so happy for us. The tour busses make detours to go past the lines. Chinese tourists lean out with their cameras and shout GOOD LUCK while car horns honk.

A single sad man holding a Bible tries to talk people out of doing this, tells us all we’re sinning and to please don’t. He gives up after an hour. A nun replaces him with a small sign about how this is against God’s will. She leaves after it disintegrates in the rain.

The day before, when it was sunny, there had been a lot of protestors. Including a large Muslim group with their signs about how “Not even DOGS do such things!” Which… Yes they do.

A lot of snide words are said (by me) about how the fact that we’re willing to come out in the rain to do this while they’re not willing to come out in the rain to protest it proves who actually gives an actual shit about the topic.

Time passes. I measure it based on which side of City Hall we’re on. The doors face East. We start on Northside. Coffee and trashbags are delivered when we’re on the North Side. Pizza first starts showing up when we’re on Westside, which is also where I see Bible Man and Nun. Roses are delivered on Southside. And so forth.

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We have Line Neighbors.

Ahead of us are a gay couple a decade or two older than us. They’ve been together for eight years. The older one is a school teacher. He has his coat collar up and turns away from any news cameras that come near while we reposition ourselves between the lenses and him. He’s worried about the parents of one of his students seeing him on the news and getting him fired. The younger one will step away to get interviewed on his own later on. They drove down for the weekend once they heard what was going on. They’d started around the same time we did, coming from the Northeast, and are parked in a nearby garage.

The most perky energetic joyful woman I’ve ever met shows up right after we turned the corner to Southside to tackle the younger of the two into a hug. She’s their local friend who’d just gotten their message about what they’re doing and she will NOT be missing this. She is -so- happy for them. Her friends cry on her shoulders at her unconditional joy.

Behind us are a lesbian couple who’d been up in San Francisco to celebrate their 12th anniversary together. “We met here Valentines Day weekend! We live down in San Diego, now, but we like to come up for the weekend because it’s our first love city.”

“Then they announced -this-,” the other one says, “and we can’t leave until we get married. I called work Sunday and told them I calling in sick until Wednesday.”

“I told them why,” her partner says, “I don’t care if they want to give me trouble for it. This is worth it. Fuck them.”

My husband-to-be and I look at each other. We’ve been together for not even two years at this point. Less than two years. Is it right for us to be here? We’re potentially taking a spot from another couple that’d been together longer, who needed it more, who deserved it more.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Says the 40-something gay couple in front of us.

“This is as much for you as it is for us!” says the lesbian couple who’ve been together for over a decade behind us.

“You kids are too cute together,” says the gay couple’s friend. “you -have- to. Someday -you’re- going to be the old gay couple that’s been together for years and years, and you deserve to have been married by then.”

We stay in line.

It’s while we’re on the Southside of City Hall, just about to turn the corner to Eastside at long last that we pick up our own companions. A white woman who reminds me an awful lot of my aunt with a four year old black boy riding on her shoulders. “Can we say we’re with you? His uncles are already inside and they’re not letting anyone in who isn’t with a couple right there.” “Of course!” we say.

The kid is so very confused about what all the big deal is, but there’s free pizza and the busses keep driving by and honking, so he’s having a great time.

We pass by a statue of Lincoln with ‘Marriage for All!’ and "Gay Rights are Human Rights!" flags tucked in the crooks of his arms and hanging off his hat.

It’s about noon, noon-thirty when we finally make it through the doors and out of the rain.

They’ve promised that anyone who’s inside when the doors shut will get married. We made it. We’re safe.

We still have a -long- way to go.

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They’re trying to fit as many people into City Hall as possible. Partially to get people out of the rain, mostly to get as many people indoors as possible. The line now stretches down into the basement and up side stairs and through hallways I’m not entirely sure the public should ever be given access to. We crawl along slowly but surely.

It’s after we’ve gone through the low-ceiling basement hallways past offices and storage and back up another set of staircases and are going through a back hallway of low-ranked functionary offices that someone comes along handing out the paperwork. “It’s an hour or so until you hit the office, but take the time to fill these out so you don’t have to do it there!”

We spend our time filling out the paperwork against walls, against backs, on stone floors, on books.

We enter one of the public areas, filled with displays and photos of City Hall Demonstrations of years past.

I take pictures of the big black and white photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue holding banners and signs against segregation and for civil rights.

The four year old boy we helped get inside runs past us around this time, chased by a blond haired girl about his own age, both perused by an exhausted looking teenager helplessly begging them to stop running.

Everyone is wet and exhausted and vibrating with anticipation and the building-wide aura of happiness that infuses everything.

The line goes into the marriage office. A dozen people are at the desk, shoulder to shoulder, far more than it was built to have working it at once.

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence is directing people to city officials the moment they open up. She’s done up in her nun getup with all her makeup on and her beard is fluffed and be-glittered and on point. “Oh, I was here yesterday getting married myself, but today I’m acting as your guide. Number 4 sweeties, and -Congradulatiooooons!-“

The guy behind the counter has been there since six. It’s now 1:30. He’s still giddy with joy. He counts our money. He takes our paperwork, reviews it, stamps it, sends off the parts he needs to, and hands the rest back to us. “Alright, go to the Rotunda, they’ll direct you to someone who’ll do the ceremony. Then, if you want the certificate, they’ll direct you to -that- line.” “Can’t you just mail it to us?” “Normally, yeah, but the moment the courts shut us down, we’re not going to be allowed to.”

We take our paperwork and join the line to the Rotunda.

If you’ve seen James Bond: A View to a Kill, you’ve seen the San Francisco City Hall Rotunda. There are literally a dozen spots set up along the balconies that overlook the open area where marriage officials and witnesses are gathered and are just processing people through as fast as they can.

That’s for the people who didn’t bring their own wedding officials.

There’s a Catholic-adjacent couple there who seem to have brought their entire families -and- the priest on the main steps. They’re doing the whole damn thing. There’s at least one more Rabbi at work, I can’t remember what else. Just that there was a -lot-.

We get directed to the second story, northside. The San Francisco City Treasurer is one of our two witnesses. Our marriage officient is some other elected official I cannot remember for the life of me (and I'm only writing down what I can actively remember, so I can't turn to my husband next to me and ask, but he'll have remembered because that's what he does.)

I have a wilting lily flower tucked into my shirt pocket. My pants have water stains up to the knees. My hair is still wet from the rain, I am blubbering, and I can’t get the ring on my husband’s finger. The picture is a treat, I tell you.

There really isn’t a word for the mix of emotions I had at that time. Complete disbelief that this was reality and was happening. Relief that we’d made it. Awe at how many dozens of people had personally cheered for us along the way and the hundreds to thousands who’d cheered for us generally.

Then we're married.

Then we get in line to get our license.

It’s another hour. This time, the line goes through the higher stories. Then snakes around and goes past the doorway to the mayor’s office.

Mayor Newsom is not in today. And will be having trouble getting into his office on Tuesday because of the absolute barricade of letters and flowers and folded up notes and stuffed animals and City Hall maps with black marked “THANK YOU!”s that have been piled up against it.

We make it to the marriage records office.

I take a picture of my now husband standing in front of a case of the marriage records for 1902-1912. Numerous kids are curled up in corners sleeping. My own memory is spotty. I just know we got the papers, and then we’re done with lines. We get out, we head to the front entrance, and we walk out onto the City Hall steps.

It's almost 3PM.

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There are cheers, there’s rice thrown at us, there are hundreds of people celebrating us with unconditional love and joy and I had never before felt the goodness that exists in humanity to such an extent. It’s no longer raining, just a light sprinkle, but there are still no protestors. There’s barely even any news vans.

We make our way through the gauntlet, we get hands shaked, people with signs reading ”Congratulations!” jump up and down for us. We hit the sidewalks, and we begin to limp our way back to the BART station.

I’m at the BART station, we’re waiting for our train back south, and I’m sitting on the ground leaning against a pillar and in danger of falling asleep when a nondescript young man stops in front of me and shuffles his feet nervously. “Hey. I just- I saw you guys, down at City Hall, and I just… I’m so happy for you. I’m so proud of what you could do. I’m- I’m just really glad, glad you could get to do this.”

He shakes my hand, clasps it with both of his and shakes it. I thank him and he smiles and then hurries away as fast as he can without running.

Our train arrives and the trip south passes in a semilucid blur.

We get back to our car and climb in.

It’s 4:30 and we are starving.

There’s a Carls Jr near the station that we stop off at and have our first official meal as a married couple. We sit by the window and watch people walking past and pick out others who are returning from San Francisco. We're all easy to pick out, what with the combination of giddiness and water damage.

We get home about 6-7. We take the dog out for a good long walk after being left alone for two days in a row. We shower. We bundle ourselves up. We bury ourselves in blankets and curl up and just sort of sit adrift in the surrealness of what we’d just done.

We wake up the next day, Tuesday, to read that the California State Supreme Court has rejected the petition to shut down the San Francisco weddings because the paperwork had a misplaced comma that made the meaning of one phrase unclear.

The State Supreme Court would proceed to play similar bureaucratic tricks to drag the process out for nearly a full month before they have nothing left and finally shut down Mayor Newsom’s marriages.

My parents had been out of state at the time at a convention. They were flying into SFO about the same moment we were walking out of City Hall. I apologized to them later for not waiting and my mom all but shook me by the shoulders. “No! No one knew that they’d go on for so long! You did what you needed to do! I’ll just be there for the next one!”

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It was just a piece of paper. Legally, it didn’t even hold any weight thirty days later. My philosophy at the time was “marriage really isn’t that important, aside from the legal benefits. It’s just confirming what you already have.”

But maybe it’s just societal weight, or ingrained culture, or something, but it was different after. The way I described it at the time, and I’ve never really come up with a better metaphor is, “It’s like we were both holding onto each other in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. We were keeping each other above water, we were each other’s support. But then we got this piece of paper. And it was like the ground rose up to meet our feet. We were still in an ocean, still in the middle of a storm, but there was a solid foundation beneath our feet. We still supported each other, but there was this other thing that was also keeping our heads above the water.

It was different. It was better. It made things more solid and real.

I am forever grateful for all the forces and all the people who came together to make it possible. It’s been twenty years and we’re still together and still married.

We did a domestic partnership a year later to get the legal paperwork. We’d done a private ceremony with proper rings (not just ones grabbed out of the husband’s collection hours before) before then. And in 2008, we did a legal marriage again.

Rushed. In a hurry. Because there was Proposition 13 to be voted on which would make them all illegal again if it passed.

It did, but we were already married at that point, and they couldn’t negate it that time.

Another few years after that, the Supreme Court finally threw up their hands and said "Fine! It's been legal in places and nothing's caught on fire or been devoured by locusts. It's legal everywhere. Shut up about it!"

And that was that.

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When I was in highschool, in the late 90s, I didn’t expect to see legal gay marriage until I was in my 50s. I just couldn’t see how the American public as it was would ever be okay with it.

I never expected to be getting married within five years. I never expected it to be legal nationwide before I’d barely started by 30s. I never thought I’d be in my 40s and it’d be such a non-issue that the conservative rabble rousers would’ve had to move onto other wedge issues altogether.

I never thought that I could introduce another man as my husband and absolutely no one involved would so much as blink.

I never thought I’d live in this world.

And it’s twenty years later today. I wonder how our line buddies are doing. Those babies who were running around the wide open rooms playing tag will have graduated college by now. The kids whose parents the one line-buddy was worried would see him are probably married too now. Some of them to others of the same gender.

I don’t have some greater message to make with all this. Other then, culture can shift suddenly in ways you can’t predict. For good or ill. Mainly this is just me remembering the craziest fucking 36 hours of my life twenty years after the fact and sharing them with all of you.

The future we’re resigned to doesn’t have to be the one we live in. Society can shift faster than you think. The unimaginable of twenty years ago is the baseline reality of today.

And always remember that the people who want to get married will show up by the thousands in rain that none of those who’re against it will brave.

#gay marriage #gay rights #gay history #gay

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mariacallous · 23 days ago

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Like millions of others who lived behind the Iron Curtain, I grew up in the Soviet Union viewing America as a beacon of hope. The difference between free and unfree was readily apparent to me as a young player on the international chess scene, and I began to use my platform to protest repressive practices back home. When I retired from professional chess in 2005, I channeled all of my energy into preventing Russia from sliding back into the hands of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and most sinister spy agency. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful: Vladimir Putin consolidated power and rebuilt an authoritarian state in the image of the Soviet regime under which I was born. Facing imminent arrest, I was forced into exile and have lived in New York since 2013. I never thought I would need to warn Americans about the dangers of dictatorship.

Donald Trump has been breaking down the guardrails of American democracy for nearly a decade now. Generations to come will reap the consequences. His presidency—and his three campaigns for the office—have demonstrated that the institutions so many of us took for granted are, in large part, based on custom and tradition, not written law. As Ronald Reagan famously said, freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” The political system we hold dear is deeply fragile, and depends on our constant commitment to uphold it.

Trump hasn’t even won the election yet—and his victory is far from assured—but we are already seeing signs of preemptive obedience that should look familiar to many refugees from repressive regimes like me. Both the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times canceled endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this month at the behest of their owners, a de facto silencing of two major national newspapers. It should come as no surprise that business owners are careful to avoid upsetting someone who has frequently called for his detractors to be locked up, or in the case of Liz Cheney, have guns “trained on her face.”

Given my experience, I am not willing to stand idly by and watch the beacon of hope that I am grateful to now call home slide into the authoritarianism of my childhood. This election is a choice between a candidate who has vowed to fight for America’s institutions, and one who is deeply dangerous—a candidate who I believe will bring total mayhem and destruction to this country.

I want to speak, now, more specifically about Kamala Harris.

I have never been shy about criticizing administrations, regardless of party. I harshly condemned Barack Obama’s foreign policy—from his fecklessness in Syria to his dangerous Iran deal—as well as George W. Bush’s naivete when he claimed to have seen Putin’s soul after peering into his eyes. My criticism of both Trump and Joe Biden has been far from quiet. Only 28 percent of Americans today believe the country is moving in the right direction, and I understand their frustrations. While the situation at home certainly raises concerns, the geopolitical landscape is disastrous; the worst I have seen in my living memory. America’s prestige abroad is disintegrating. No wonder, then, that Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric is finding purchase.

But the role of the president and the vice president is not the same. With the notable exception of Dick Cheney (and perhaps Mike Pence when it counted the most), no vice president in recent memory played any meaningful role in setting policy. They do not hold the same responsibility as their boss for the direction the country takes. Biden essentially functioned as Barack Obama’s messenger, because his main task as vice president for eight years was to carry out and effectively communicate Obama’s vision—not his own. The same has been true of Kamala Harris for the last four years; her job has been to further Biden’s agenda, not her own. Consequently, J.D. Vance’s constant refrain—as vice president for nearly four years, Harris owns Biden’s policies—doesn’t make sense. It wasn’t Harris’ job to put her ideas into practice. And while she initially hewed closer to the administration’s stance, she has since stepped out from her boss’s shadow, making clear in interviews and on the campaign trail that she will not just follow in Biden’s footsteps. The policy proposals she is offering, whether you agree with them or not, are her own.

In an area particularly close to my heart—foreign policy—Harris’ agenda would represent an improvement from the status quo. Biden has spent many of his 40 years in government during a time when the threat of nuclear war was high, and that experience has undoubtedly informed his approach to foreign policy as president. Harris, on the other hand, doesn’t carry the same Cold War baggage, and has said that she would not allow Ukraine to succumb to Russian aggression. I don’t believe her administration would continue the Biden administration’s policies of betrayal when it comes to Ukraine—and Trump and Vance have obviously made no secret of their plans to essentially give in to Putin’s desire to swallow Ukraine.

Because Harris hasn’t been on the foreign policy scene for decades, my prediction is that she will hew closely to public opinion, which is currently oriented around a consensus that America should stand up to dictators. And on the domestic front, as a new president interested in being reelected—and likely constrained by a divided Congress and conservative Supreme Court majority—Harris would be unlikely to make waves and institute radical progressive policies.

Were Harris up against a Republican other than Trump, disagreements over her limited price controls, tax policy, or stance on social issues might constitute strong arguments against electing her. In this race, however, these arguments are moot. If you disagree with her policies, start challenging her the day after the election. I certainly will.

This election is bigger than policy, as the long list of prominent Republicans who are willing to stand up and support Harris demonstrates. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; former Sen. Jeff Flake; several members of Trump’s own administration, including some of the most senior. Many still align with Republicans on policy issues—some, in the case of Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, even voted for Trump in 2020. Unlike sycophantic outcasts like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who made the reverse journey from the Democratic Party to endorse Trump, these are true, dyed-in-the-wool Republicans.

Legally, we have a choice in this election, but morally, the answer is clear: If we want to preserve America’s institutions and its standing on the world stage, we must elect Kamala Harris on November 5.

Ultimately, I am cautiously optimistic about a Harris presidency. She has the opportunity to normalize a deeply fractured political climate, to bring together the center-left and center-right under a banner of creating real opportunity for all Americans. I look forward to challenging her when we disagree, which I imagine will be often. But if her opponent is elected, the very institutions and traditions that guarantee our right to freely disagree would be under threat. Anyone who has lived in the Soviet Union or in Putin’s Russia will tell you what it’s like to fear publicly condemning the government. In Trump, I hear echoes of Soviet leaders past and Russian leaders present. Kamala Harris’ election is the only way to preserve democracy, at home and abroad. She may not be the best choice. But on November 5, she is the only one.

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 days ago

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 20, 2024

Remember how American voters so hated Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term written by the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing institutions, that Trump said he had nothing to do with it, and then one of its key architects, Russell Vought, told undercover filmmakers that Trump was only running away from the project as political cover?

It appears Vought was right and the story that Trump had nothing to do with Project 2025 was, indeed, just political cover. Ed O’Keefe and Major Garrett of CBS News reported today that two sources close to the Trump transition team have told them that they expect Trump to name Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Vought wrote the section of Project 2025 that covers the presidency, calling for “aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch” to “bend or break the bureaucracy to the presidential will” and identifying the OMB as the means of enforcing the president’s agenda. Vought was Trump’s OMB director during the end of his first term and tried to remove the civil service protections that have been in place since 1883 to protect federal workers from being fired for political reasons. That plan, known as Schedule F, would have affected about 88% of the federal workforce.

One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump’s executive order making that shift.

Like that earlier attempt, Project 2025 leans heavily on the idea that “personnel is policy,” and that idea illuminates the choices the Trump team is making. Trump has refused to sign the official documents required by the 2022 Presidential Transition Act. Those documents mandate ethics commitments and require the incoming president to disclose private donations. They also limit those donations. Without the paperwork, Trump appointees cannot start the process of getting security clearances through the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the team says it is planning to do its own vetting of its candidates instead.

Claiming they have a mandate, Trump’s people have said they are launching “a hostile takeover” of the American government “on behalf of the American people.” But as voting numbers continue to come in, Trump’s majority has fallen below 50% of voters, meaning that more voters chose someone else than chose Trump on November 5. These results are far from being in “mandate” territory.

The U.S. Constitution charges Congress with writing the laws under which the American people live, and the president with taking “care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Since 1933, Congress has created an extensive system of agencies that regulate business and provide a basic social safety net. Congress will say, for example, that the U.S. needs an agency to protect the environment (like the Environmental Protection Agency, established under Republican president Richard M. Nixon), appropriate money for it, oversee its leadership, and then trust those leaders to hire the personnel necessary to carry out its mission.

Regulations and social welfare programs and the agencies that provide them are broadly popular—think how hard it has been for members to get rid of Social Security, for example—so Congress trims at the edges rather than abolishing them. As the U.S. budget has grown, they often bear the brunt of accusations that the government spends too much, although what has really caused the budget to operate deeply in the red is the tax cuts for the wealthy put into place by Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.

Right-wing leaders who want to continue cutting regulations and taxes are newly empowered by Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, and they are turning to a quirk of the government to enable them to work around Congress.

Since the first administration of President George Washington, agencies created by Congress have lived in the Executive Branch. If, as Vought and others argue, the president is the absolute authority in that branch, Trump can do whatever he wants with those agencies and the civil servants—the bureaucrats—who run them.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out their plans for cutting the U.S. government. Neither of them has ever held elected office, but they see that as an advantage, not a downside: “We are entrepreneurs, not politicians,” they write. “We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees.” Trump has named them to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. Despite the “department” name, DOGE is not an official government agency—which would require ethics disclosures—but rather an advisory panel.

Their op-ed begins by redefining congressional authority to create agencies to suggest that agencies are illegitimate. “Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees,” they write, “but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.” This, they say, “imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers.”

“Thankfully,” they continue, “we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.”

While “politicians” have “abetted” an “entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy,” they write, they will work with the OMB to identify regulations that, they claim, Trump can issue an executive order to stop enforcing. “This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy,” they write. Should Trump want to cut things that Congress wants to fund, they claim that Trump will simply refuse to spend those appropriations, challenging the 1974 Impoundment Control Act that declared such withholding illegal.

Musk and Ramaswamy reiterated their support for cutting programs that are not currently authorized, although budget experts note that such a lapse is a tool to permit adjustments to programs Congress has, in fact, authorized and have also pointed out that one of the top items on that list is health care for veterans. Cuts to all these programs will naturally mean extensive cuts to the federal workforce.

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6–3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court,” they write, “DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action.”

They conclude by asserting that “[t]here is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud,” which is one heck of a conclusion to a blueprint for taking the power of American lawmaking from the Congress, where the Framers put it, and delivering it into the hands of an extraordinarily powerful president acting on the advice of two unelected billionaires, one of whom wasn’t born in the United States.

In the vein of getting rid of regulations, today the chief executive of Delta Air Lines said he expected the Trump administration would be a “breath of fresh air” after the Biden administration’s consumer-protection laws that he called government “overreach.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, with the absence of Republican senators making the confirmations easier.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #Project 2025 #Delta Air Lines #deregulation #Congress #unelected billionaires #corruption #Wall Street Journal #Environmental Protection Agency #hostile takeover

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deadpresidents · 1 year ago

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What do you think is the best job to prepare someone for being president?

From everything I've read that former Presidents or people who worked in senior positions in various Administrations have written about the actual job of the Presidency, I don't think there really is anything to prepare someone for being President. If seems that many modern Presidents who took the job seriously and tried to govern in a normal, responsible manner were stunned by how big the job truly was once they got into it.

I think Governors tend to have a bit of an advantage compared to legislators because they were chief executives of their respective states and have a better sense of the structure of the job (on a much smaller scale), with their roles as administrator, commander-in-chief of military forces (Governors are commanders-in-chief of their state National Guard forces), with numerous executive departments reporting to them, etc. But it's still so much more intense than even the most populous states, and every President wants to hit the ground running on Inauguration Day, but they quickly discover that the world doesn't stop spinning just so they can get started. The problems that reach the President's desk usually tend to be those that everyone else has already tried to tackle without success and now the President is often the only person in the country -- and sometimes even the world -- who is left to make a decision about solving them. And those are the things that start popping up as soon as the President takes the oath of office, and they don't stop until the next person takes over.

I imagine that the best preparation for the modern Presidency is having a diverse collection of career -- and real-life -- experiences rather than a certain job. I know he was only a one-term President, but someone like George H.W. Bush probably had a much easier time settling into the job because he was a combat veteran as a fighter pilot in World War II, a businessman, Congressman, a diplomat, a CIA Director, and a two-term Vice President, than his son, George W. Bush or his successor, Bill Clinton, who were both Governors but relatively inexperienced outside of their careers in state politics.

In A Promised Land (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO), Barack Obama writes that one of the challenges about the Presidency is that "It wasn't simply that each decision I made was essentially a high-stakes wager; it was the fact that unlike in poker, where a player expects and can afford to lose a few big hands even on the way to a winning night, a single mishap could cost a life, and overwhelm -- both in the political press and in my own heart -- whatever broader objective I might have achieved."

It takes Presidents a while to understand that -- and some don't ever recognize it in time to get re-elected. They all have their own political ideologies and agendas and hopes and dreams, and when they are elected, they immediately start thinking about all of those things that they plan to do once they are inaugurated. But they also have to practically build and staff an entire branch of the federal government from the ground up-- particularly if they are succeeding an Administration from the opposing party -- in two months that can be ready to run the country from Day One. And then there is everything that is going on or might be going on or will be going on around the world. And they have a Legislative Branch and a Judicial Branch to work with, which will not necessarily be harmonious or even the least bit helpful. And in this century, we're also usually in the midst of at least one war (not to mention the military conflicts of other countries) or a dangerous national/international economic climate -- along with the damaged and rapidly changing actual climate. So, all of the President's plans and hopes and dreams and agendas start taking a backseat to everything else as soon as they raise their right hand and repeat the oath on January 20th. But they still have to accomplish what they set out to do. And if they DO accomplish it, they have to sell it to the country, so that everyone realizes that they actually DID accomplish something. And, again, all this starts the moment they take office and doesn't pause and doesn't end until they move out of the White House.

So, yeah, there's nothing to really get someone ready for that.

#History #Presidency #Presidents #POTUS #Presidential Experience #Presidential History #Being President

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tomorrowusa · 1 year ago

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Never forget.

Some fun facts about how attentive George W. Bush was from his inauguration up to 9/11. From Fred Kaplan at Slate.

A USA Today story, written right before Bush took off, reported that the vacation—scheduled to last from Aug. 3 to Sept. 3—would tie one of Richard Nixon’s as the longest that any president had ever taken. A week before he left, Bush made a videotaped message for the Boy Scouts of America. On the tape, he said, “I’ll be going to my ranch in Crawford, where I’ll work and take a little time off. I think it is so important for the president to spend some time away from Washington, in the heartland of America.” [ ... ] In his CIA days, (former CIA officer Larry) Johnson wrote “about 40” PDBs. They’re usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. “That’s the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace,” Johnson said. And the title—”Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US”—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, “I said ‘Holy smoke!’ This is such a dead-on ‘Mr. President, you’ve got to do something!’ ” [ ... ] Then again, it’s easy to forget that before the terrorists struck, Bush was widely regarded as an unusually aloof president. Joe Conason has calculated that up until Sept. 11, 2001, Bush had spent 54 days at the ranch, 38 days at Camp David, and four days at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport—a total of 96 days, or about 40 percent of his presidency, outside of Washington.

Also, a bit about that famous PDB (Presidential Daily Brief) which Bush got on 06 August 2001 with the heading Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US. From the Washington Post.

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Those bits probably don't make it into most history textbooks, but they're verifiable and reveal a privileged GOP president who who was more interested in vacationing than in the details of running the country.

#9/11 #george w. bush #pdb #Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US #long bush vacations at the ranch #al-qaeda #barack obama

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yourreddancer · 5 days ago

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Heather Cox Richardson

November 20, 2024

Nov 21

One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump’s executive order making that shift.

(NOTE: THAT RIGHT THERE SHOULD PREVENT SHITHEAD FROM BEING ALLOWED TO ASSUME THE PRESIDENCY!!!!)

The U.S. Constitution charges Congress with writing the laws under which the American people live, and the president with taking “care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

Since 1933, Congress has created an extensive system of agencies that regulate business and provide a basic social safety net. Congress will say, for example, that the U.S. needs an agency to protect the environment (like the Environmental Protection Agency, established under Republican president Richard M. Nixon), appropriate money for it, oversee its leadership, and then trust those leaders to hire the personnel necessary to carry out its mission.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, with the absence of Republican senators making the confirmations easier.

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sullustangin · 16 days ago

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I'm old enough to yell at clouds. I've seen political swings from left to right and back again, and yeah, some really sucked (DOMA springs to mind first, because there are still states with DOMA laws that will take effect if key Supreme Court precedents are overturned).

I never had a glowing opinion of George W. Bush, but I never doubted he'd leave office if he was voted out. And he left in 2008 when his time was up. Policies were overturned, re-written, and we dealt with consequences. The Republic survived.

What terrifies me -- and what makes me want to get out -- is that I no longer have the confidence that this man would leave in 2028. I don't have faith in the American electorate to vote him and his ilk out...and I don't know if he'll leave the White House voluntarily, even at the end of 2 terms.

I got Spawn to think about. People can tease me about over-reacting in 2029; I can live with it (in another country).

#personal #woe woe woe my boat

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misfitwashere · 5 days ago

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November 20, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

NOV 21

One of the first things Biden did when he took office was to rescind Trump’s executive order making that shift.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the Senate has been confirming President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, with the absence of Republican senators making the confirmations easier.

—

#heather cox richardson #letters from an american

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arpov-blog-blog · 19 days ago

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"Wealth inequality.

There is little that leaves people as pissed off and frustrated as the feeling that no matter how hard they work, they can’t ever seem to get ahead. And this feeling has been slowly festering since the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and his cadre of supply-side economists launched the first salvos in what would become the great fucking-over of the American middle and working classes.

The frustration was evident in something two very different women in two very different states told me on the very same day in 2022 for a story on how America spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year subsidizing retirement plans mostly for rich people: “I’m going to have to work until I die.”

The great fucking-over commenced with President Reagan’s gutting of unions and the wealth-friendly tax cuts he signed into law in 1981 and 1986. The trend continued with George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and culminated with the Trump tax cuts of 2017—which, like all of those other Republican initiatives, failed to generate the degreee of growth and prosperity the supply-siders promised. They did, however, make the rich richer as wages stagnated and the middle class shriveled.

We talk a lot about income inequality, but wealth and income are different beasts. Income is what pays your bills. Wealth is your security—and in that regard, most American families are just not feeling sufficiently secure.

In January 1981, when Reagan took office, the households of the Middle 40—that’s the 50th to 90th wealth percentiles—held a collective 31.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. Fast-forward to January 2022: Their share of the pie had dwindled to 25.7 percent, even as the combined wealth of the richest 0.01 percent of households soared from less than 3 percent of the total to 11 percent.

Put another way, 18,300 US households—a tiny fraction—now control more than a tenth of the nation’s wealth.

And what of the bottom 50 percent? How have they fared over the past four decades or so? When Reagan came in, their average household wealth was a paltry $944. (All figures are in 2023 dollars.) Today they have even less—just $659 on average, according to projections from Real Time Inequality, a site based on data from the Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. All told, those 92.2 million households now hold less than 0.05 percent of the nation’s wealth—which rounds down to zero. In short, half of the people living in the richest nation on the planet have no wealth at all.

They’re not doing so hot income-wise, either. In September, the Congressional Budget Office reported that average income of the highest-earning 1 percent of taxpayers in 2021 was more than $3.1 million, or 42 times the average income of households in the bottom 90 percent, according to the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness. That’s the most skewed income distribution since CBO began reporting this data in 1979, the group noted. Back then, the disparity was only 12 to 1.

And the billionaires? I’m glad you asked. Based on Forbes data, from January 1, 2018, when the Trump cuts took effect, to April 1 of this year, the nation’s 806 billionaires saw a 57 percent gain in their collective wealth—after adjusting for the inflation that has plagued working families.

“It’s a class and inequality story for sure,” Richard Reeves, the author of 2017’s Dream Hoarders, concurred when I ran my premise by him. “But it’s also a gendered class story.” (His latest book, Of Boys and Men, examines how “the social and economic world of men has been turned upside down.”) And he’s right.

But are you starting to see why the broader electorate, race and gender notwithstanding, might be just a little fed up?

I suppose, having also written a book about wealth in America, that I know enough to assert that wealth insecurity is fundamental.

But why, you might ask, would someone living on the edge vote for Republicans, whose wage-suppressing, union-busting, benefit-denying policies have only tended to make the poor and the middle class more miserable?

And why in the name of Heaven would they vote for Trump, a billionaire born with a silver spoon in his mouth who has lied and cheated his way through life? A man whose latest tax-cut plans—though some, like eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security income, can sound progressive—will be deeply regressive, giving ever more to the rich and rationalizing cuts that will hurt the poor and middle class and accelerate global climate chaos.

The reason, my friends, may well be that those on the losing end of our thriving economy don’t see it as thriving. Historically, every election cycle, when reporters fan out to ask low-income voters in swing states what they are thinking, the message has been roughly the same: Presidential candidates, Democrats and Republicans, come around here every four years and talk their talk, and then they leave and forget about us when it comes to policy."

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back-and-totheleft · 5 months ago

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“Making a documentary means much less work, much less money, much less stress”

Oliver Stone (b. 1946) is a legendary American film director, producer, screenwriter and author. He’s known and praised for his ‘dramas about individuals in personal struggles,’ as he describes his films on his website, and considers himself a ‘dramatist rather than a political filmmaker.’

During the past fifty years—give or take a few years—the outspoken, rabble-rousing, highly acclaimed and three-time Academy Award winning film director tackled various subjects. He directed a trilogy on the Vietnam War (“Platoon,” 1986; “Born on the Fourth of July,” 1989; “Heaven & Earth,” 1993) and did three films about U.S. Presidents (“JFK,” 1991; “Nixon,” 1995; “W.,” 2008—on George W. Bush while he was still in office). He also made crime dramas and, in recent years, a series of solid and, to some, controversial documentary features. For the first one, on Fidel Castro, entitled “Comandante” (2003), he went to Cuba.

His latest documentairy features include “The Putin Interviews” (2017), a four-part, four-hour television series with interviews conducted with Putin between 2015-2017, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2021) with newly declassified information about JFK’s assassination, and his latest documentary, “Nuclear Now” (2022), stating that nuclear energy is the best solution to combat the climate change crisis.

Mr. Stone, a Vietnam War veteran who distinguished himself in combat and earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star, first broke into Hollywood as a screenwriter with his Oscar-winning screenplay for Alan Parker’s prison drama “Midnight Express” (1978), based on the 1977 memoir of Billy Hayes. The film established him as a dynamic stylist and tough-minded writer who pulled no punches. A few years later, he brought the same intensity to his screenplay for Brian De Palma’s remake of “Scarface” (1983) and his career-changing directorial debut films “Salvador” and “Platoon” (both 1986)—the latter earning him an Academy Award for Best Director. Although working mostly independently, “Wall Street” (1987), which earned Michael Douglas an Academy Award as Best Actor, became his first and one of his few big-budget films.

Throughout his career, Mr. Stone remained one of the most accomplished raconteurs and politically-charged directors of his generation. He made several exceptional and compelling films that cemented his place as one of Hollywood’s most versatile film directors.

He also authored a semi-autobiographical novel “A Child Night’s Dream” (1997), his captivating memoir “Chasing the Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving ‘Platoon,’ ‘Midnight Express,’ ‘Scarface,’ ‘Salvador,’ and the Movie Game” (2020), and “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2022, based on the documentary; written by James DiEugenio, with an introduction by Mr. Stone).

The following one-on-one interview with Mr. Stone was conducted in Brussels. As the guest of honor during the Millenium Documentary Film Festival Brussels—which runs from March 15 until March 22—to present his documentaries “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” (2021) and “Nuclear Now” (2022), and a masterclass as well, I got to sit down with him in a Brussels hotel for a conversation on his craft that he knows inside out. With his approval, this interview didn’t focus on his two documentaries, but rather dealt with general topics and his work as a filmmaker.

Mr. Stone, after your last feature film, “Snowden” [2016], you changed your modus operandi and became a documentary filmmaker. Why did you do that?

Documentaries are different. When you make documentaries, they’re not consuming your life. You don’t have to build the sets, you don’t have to hire actors or paint walls. You don’t have to think about a hundred different things. That also means you’re no longer ceating an artificial world. A documentary is something real, you have witnesses, people who went through it or who were around when it happened. So the preparation for a documentary is very different; it’s a living environment parallel to you and you’re joining it. My documentaries are a lot about political ideas and about the country, so it’s something entirely different. Making a documentary means much less work, much less money and much less stress. It’s simpler to be a documentarian.

Several of your films are based on true events, and “JFK” [1991] and “Snowden” are documentary-like features. Were they maybe your most difficult films to make?

They are difficult in the sense that you have to check everything and authenticate it. Obviously, fantasy gives you a lot more freedom: if you’re doing films like “Natural Born Killers” [1994], “U Turn” [1997] or “Savages” [2012], those are fictional. They give you more freedom, and you can f*ck around. When you’re doing “JFK” [1991], you really have to pay attention. There’s so much out there, and the film is so difficult to authenticate because it’s not like a book. The dialogue is difficult because those are real people and you don’t know what they really said. So you’re taking dramatic liberties.

When you did “Snowden,” you met Edward Snowden in unusual circumstances. What was he like?

He was very straightforward; he remindend me of a very bright boy scout. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t do drugs. He’s quiet, shy, polite and pleasent. He had one woman in his life at that time. He’s a serious man; I was very impressed with him and he’s not a celebrity type attention seeker. Not at all. Some people said that I made him a white knight in the movie, but they don’t know who he really is. If they knew him, they’d realize he is very sincere, very articulate, and he really believed that his oath was to the constitution—which it is—and not to the NSA or to the CIA. He was a whistleblower at twenty-nine, so I wanted to know and explore how and why he did that at such a young age.

What film or filmmaker gave you the passion to become a filmmaker?

I went to the New York Film School and the message came from Martin Scorsese who was a teacher. I had done a short film of fourteen minutes, “Last Year in Viet Nam” [1971] and he liked it. He praised it and took it to class. That didn’t happen too often; short films were mostly criticized. That was the method; it was like a Chinese commune where you showed your work to the class and everyone went bla bla bla. But this time he threw it in the class and said, ‘This is a filmmaker.’ And he said, ‘Keep it personal.’ That’s what you have to do, keep it personal. That was very good. I felt very inspired by that and then I just kept going.

So then you began making personal films, and with “Midnight Express” [1978] and “Salvador” [1986], for example—not to mention your Vietnam War trilogy—you immediately put yourself on the map with message films. That reminds me of the films Stanley Kramer or Fred Zinnemann did, for example. Is that an accurate comparison?

That’s a tough question to answer, whether they are personal or not. You don’t know how Stanley Kramer really felt. He was an emotional man with a great conscience, and you know he was passionate about nuclear war; so he did “On the Beach” [1959] with that passion. And you know he wanted to be funny when he did a comedy [“It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” 1963] with a lot of car crashes. He wasn’t funny, but he did make a point. “Judgement at Nuremberg” [1961] was about justice, bringing justice to the Nazis and America did the Nuremberg trials—the one good thing they did. And even then, it was compromised, but still he made the point of the Holocaust very clear. So I think we owe him because of the many films he did. They were motivated by passion. They weren’t motivated by politics, I don’t think so. It was in his heart. Of course, my interpretation of him may be different than critics who say, ‘He was just a producer.’ But I saw an early film he did with Frank Sinatra, “Not as a Stranger” [1955], and that was a very interesting film. Sinatra was great; he played the second doctor and Robert Mitchum was the first doctor who starts a relationship with a nurse who gives him the money to finish school. He uses her and then dumps her. But she comes back and plays a very good scene…

But you asked a tough question. Zinnemann, I don’t relate to him the same way you do. I don’t. I knew him, I met him, but I don’t regard him in the same way. Kramer was special, although he made some stinkers too [laughs]. He also did a beautiful movie, “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” [196] with Anna Magnani, beautifully scripted, beautifully done. Anthony Quinn plays the major of this Italian town and nobody trusts him. He’s a layabout and Anna Magnani is his angry wife. That was a great movie and he should have gotten more credit for it, right?

Did it ever happen to you that you should have gotten more credit for a film you did?

Yeah. “Snowden” [2016]. I couldn’t finance it in the U.S. We moved the production to Germany because we thought we might be at risk in the United States. We had no idea what the NSA might or could do. So we financed it abroad, and that’s very disturbing: you make a film about an American and it’s not possible to finance it in the U.S.

Generally speaking, has it been easy for you to be an independent filmmaker and make most of your films without the financial support of the major studios?

I can’t rely on the studios, so I have always been independent. I bounce around with different independents. A lot of my films are owned by bankrupt corporations and sell-of assets. I work a lot with guys who get bankrupt [laughs]. I have been both ways and when I work with studios, the experience can be good. “Wall Street” [1987] was good, but the second Wall Street [“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” 2010] was not because that was made by [executive] Tom Rothman. He acted like a head and would tell you what to do. It’s a whole different attitude. We give studios the power, we entitle them—every filmmaker in some way has a relationship with the studios so he’s always thinking about them because he’s gotta deliver his film and they have the money. Sometimes you’re the slave of that money, and sometimes… f*ck ’em [laughs]. Some filmmakers are always fighting against the studios; it’s a tedious relationship because it’s a slave relationship. Unless you prefer independent. But then, of course, you have to go to them for distribution.

Alain Parker once told me he always wanted a production deal and at the same time a distribution deal, otherwise you have to go shopping with your film. Did you ever have to do that?

Of course. A lot. With “Nuclear Now” we were invited to Cannes where you can get a lot of publicity, but they wanted to hold the film for America in October, and by that time it was not noticed. But it’s okay; that’s the business and I get tired of promotion anyway. Besides, documentaries don’t need that. You just throw them out there and f*ck ’em. You know what I mean; you have to be a showman and you have to care. A showman cares about the results. To go through that again, watching box office, counting numbers,… all that stuff is pretty tiring.

Have you always been able to cast the actors that you wanted?

No, but I had pretty much freedom. I mean, it’s always a deal pressure kind of thing. They mention a few names and things happen. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, but somehow you have to be the master cook [laughs].

Does that mean you have to compromise?

Always. But you don’t have to say yes. I never say yes to an actor overnight. I have never done that. I have made mistakes, but I have never said yes to an actor right away.

When you write a screenplay, do you have certain actors in mind?

Yes, but that’s more elusive because by the time you go through the casting process, you have seen different interpretations and you may prefer an actor’s interpretation to your own. I had many actors reading for me—that helps—or I have them read on tape with a casting director and then I see the tape. You don’t have to be there always. Sometimes if you’re in the room, you’re the gorilla, you know.

In your films you always have a great cast of supporting actors, such as Sylvia Miles, Millie Perkins, Haing S. Ngor, Paul Sovino, E.G. Marshall, Eli Wallach, Madeline Kahn… Mel Brooks recently said that ‘Madeline Kahn was maybe the single best comedian that ever lived.’

Casting your supporting actors is always very special. Most of what you’re doing is picking supporting actors. The main actors line up on money deals; it’s a money situation with agents and lawyers. Whereas the supporting actors, that’s a different story, that’s really where the casting process kicks in.

How closely do you collaborate with your casting directors?

A lot because he or she will make suggestions and knows who is out there working or not. You don’t know and you can’t remember everything. Sometimes you have a thought in mind, like, ‘I want a Cary Grant type for this.’

You have a long and rewarding career as a filmmaker, with a string of highlights. Is there a secret, or is it always a challenge?

Well, it’s been okay. Is it a challenge? I would say yes. It’s a challenge to stay relevant, it’s a challenge to be interested in society but that naturally comes to me. My ideas may not be popular at the moment, but they are fresh—at least, to me, they are. I don’t talk like most directors, and I can’t stand most directors’ irresponsibility about political situations. Most directors want to be friends with everybody and avoid all controversy. But that’s not the way you should speak. You should speak your mind. But then you risk ostracism.

Did you ever have any problems with your actors?

Yeah sure. Some got drunk, some were uncommunicative and stubborn, some dropped out. Bill Paxton, for example, dropped out of “U Turn” [1997] and was replaced by Sean Penn because he didn’t understand his character.

How important are your three Oscars to you?

They look good in the corner. Memories. I think I’ve passed the level of merit. I see myself as a better filmmaker, although others may not agree. But the Oscars, it’s a game, you know. Oscar chasing is like high school politics where they want to be president of the class. I don’t like any of that.

You worked with a lot of great actors and big stars. Have you ever been starstruck?

Yes. When I was forty, I won an Oscar for [directing] “Platoon” [1986]. Liz Taylor presented me the Oscar on stage and then she kissed me. She was my sweetheart, my dream girl, during the 1950s and 1960s, so that was a special moment for me.

-FilmTalk interview with Oliver Stone, March 19 2024

#oliver stone #filmmaking #Brussels #casting #nuclear now #documentaries #documentarian #Fred zinneman

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dankusner · 7 months ago

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NCIC — missing persons .... Ariel Castro kidnappings — Ohio & Dubya

Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus

Michelle Knight, held captive since 2002, removed by Cleveland police from FBI database 15 months after disappearance

DALLAS PD — Standard Operating Procedure.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland police removed Michelle Knight's missing person entry from an FBI database 15 months after she was reported missing in 2002 -- and nearly a decade before she was rescued from her captor's home on Cleveland's West Side.

City spokeswoman Maureen Harper said Thursday that police followed proper procedures by removing Knight's name from the database in November 2003 because they were unable to contact Knight's mother by telephone to verify that her then-22-year-old daughter still was missing.

youtube

However, the police department's written policy on investigating missing adults, at the time of Knight's disappearance on Aug. 23, 2002, describes a different verification process.

It states that an officer must go and see that a missing person has been found, then inform the FBI within two hours for removal from the National Crime Information Center database.

"ENTER" v "REMOVE"

If the missing person is under the age of 18 years, it is required that agencies enter the missing person record within two hours of the time of receipt of the report

per 42 USC 5779 a) In general Each Federal, State, and local law enforcement agency shall report each case of a missing child under the age of 18 reported to such agency to the National Crime Information Center of the Department of Justice.

42 USC 5780

(3).

[Tribal agencies do not fall under this requirement.]

In 2003 former President George W. Bush signed into law “Suzanne’s Law,” requiring police to notify the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) when someone between 18 and 21 is reported missing, as part of the national “Amber Alert” bill. Previously police were only required to report missing persons under the age of 18. Any person under the age of 21 is considered a missing child.

Suzanne Lyall, a State University of New York at Albany

Kym Pasqualini, a national advocate for missing adults, said in an interview Thursday that the removal of Knight's name and description from the database helped the case fall through the cracks.

Michelle Knight in a 1999 family photo. Knight's mother, Barbara, this week contended that police did not give the same attention to her daughter's case as to the disappearances of Gina DeJesus, 23, and Amanda Berry, 27, all of whom escaped Monday from a West Side home where they had been held captive for a decade.

The NCIC database, which the FBI refers to as "the lifeline of law enforcement," is an electronic clearinghouse of crime data. When a missing person's descriptive information is entered, it becomes available to law enforcement agencies nationwide. Knight's case would have needed an NCIC number if her family had sought assistance from Pasqualini's organization or any other non-profit agency that deals with missing person cases, Pasqualini said.

Pasqualini, founder of the National Center for Missing Adults, an agency that helped track thousands of missing person cases until its federal funding was cut in 2005, said a confidential source tipped her to what Cleveland police had done. She, in turn, informed The Plain Dealer.

While confirming Pasqualini's tip, Harper provided police reports that show officers continued to inquire about Knight's whereabouts for years after her name was removed from the database.

Most of the entries show that officers tried to reach Knight's mother by phone, and through May 2003, successfully verified that Knight was still missing.

On Nov. 13, 2003, a detective tried again to contact Knight's mother on a land line and left a message.

"No new info available at this time," the detective wrote. "This report will remain invalid until new leads develop."

A half dozen similar notations appear throughout the rest of the file.

In one instance, an officer attempted to reach the missing woman, herself, by phone.

"I tried to reach Michelle Knight … with negative results," the officer's Dec. 1, 2004, report states.

While the disappearances of Berry and DeJesus were widely publicized and police pursued nearly every lead during a decade-long search, Knight's mother, Barbara, said in an interview this week, that police did little to investigate the disappearance of her daughter, instead theorizing that she probably left of her own accord.

Until Monday, DeJesus' and Berry's cases were still featured in Cleveland police's own online missing person database, among the very oldest of more than 100 unsolved cases. Knight's was not.

Pasqualini acknowledged Thursday that DeJesus' and Berry's inclusion in the NCIC database did not help law enforcement officials locate them sooner than Knight. But she said that the overall invalidation of Knight's case points to a larger systemic problem -- that missing juveniles are a higher priority than missing adults.

"If a missing person is in the NCIC system, it instantly legitimizes the case," Pasqualini said. "Had Michelle's mother called us for help, we would have had to say no."

On Wednesday, two days after their escape from the house on Seymour Avenue, DeJesus and Berry were released from the hospital and reunited with their families.

Knight remained in the hospital Thursday.

Photograph of President George W. Bush signing into law the AMBER Alert package, which would create a system to help find kidnapped children and impose tougher penalties on child abusers, kidnappers and pornographers.

In January 1996, Amber Haggerman was abducted and killed in Arlington, Texas.

Amber's mother, Donna Whitson, with her hand on Amber's brother, Ricky, observe the signing.

This photo was taken at the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. Also in the photo is Elizabeth Smart standing behind Amber's brother, Ricky, with her parents.

Fourteen year old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her Salt Lake City, Utah, bedroom June 5, 2002. Smart was found alive nine months later in Sandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home.

The AMBER Plan is known as America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.

youtube

NCIC tlets manual

crim history DPD SOP https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:171f37cf-8e7a-4d12-b3a0-8474f742e225

LESS THAN FULL ACCESS

#Youtube

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mariacallous · 1 year ago

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Fake democracies take power by controlling who gives orders to public officials. During Hungarian elections, local polling station committees count the votes. Our research found that in 2018, committees that only had government members on them were far more likely to have irregularities in the count than those composed of both government and opposition. Surprising? Not especially. But it’s also the same reason that Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin wants to prevent the committee that appoints new judges from meeting. And it’s why the Israeli Supreme Court needs to hold the line to defend democracy.

In democracies, citizens elect people to make laws and also to supervise their execution. The catch is that in a parliamentary democracy, such as Israel’s, the same people take on both roles. When the people elected to make the law ignore that distinction and execute the laws they would like to have rather than the ones that exist, it amounts corruption or malpractice, and the judiciary is supposed to hold wayward officials to account. When the laws those officials would like to have concern the rules by which laws themselves are made—that is, when they are constitutional, or in the Israeli terminology, Basic Laws—conflating both roles threatens the survival of democracy itself.

Governments depend on appointed officials: civil servants, police, and soldiers to put laws into practice. These people depend for their livelihoods on a government paycheck and for promotion on a bureaucratic hierarchy. In a real democracy, their tasks are governed by the law, and they are protected from dismissal and reprisals if they follow it. In a fake democracy, the executive leadership takes control. That way, corrupt officials can intimidate opposition-aligned or simply foreign businesses (as happens in Hungary), or police officers taking orders from anti-democratic ministers can use excessive force against demonstrators (as they recently did in Israel).

Officials who don’t want to support the government line can resign, as Air Force reservists, soldiers, and even nuclear scientists have threatened to do in Israel. But resignations can never be enough because an honest official’s resignation gives the corrupt government a chance to appoint an obedient replacement. Officials who want to uphold democracy need to be able to do it when it matters—while they are still in their jobs.

The current crisis in Israel will come to a head in September, when the Supreme Court hears challenges to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent judicial coup law. The law was written to change the way the Supreme Court interprets government actions by preventing it from blocking them by applying a test known as “reasonableness.”

Although Netanyahu—a man with a tenuous relationship to the truth—denies it, the new law would apply to decisions to fire the attorney general (Israel’s chief public prosecutor and an independent office, unlike in the United States) or not to convene the judicial appointments panel, where the government doesn’t have enough allies to exert control, or to dismiss the police chief on the grounds that he was insufficiently repressive.

The Supreme Court needs to be able to instruct officials not to obey illegal government orders, and to order security forces to protect officials from reprisals, which means the court needs to invalidate the law. (Such conflict is not unheard of in constitutional states: It nearly occurred in the United States under the administration of former President George W. Bush)

Unlike in Hungary, where constitutional weaknesses (the interaction of a majoritarian electoral system and the ability to change the constitution with a two-thirds majority of a unicameral parliament) gave Prime Minister Viktor Orban the formal constitutional authority to dismantle checks and balances, Israel’s constitution, like the United Kingdom’s, is uncodified. In Israel, the Supreme Court can test legislation against the country’s fundamental values (as expressed in the declaration of independence) and strike down incompatible laws.

In Hungary, the courts cannot review constitutional amendments, and European Court of Human Rights judgements, which are theoretically binding on Hungary, are often not implemented. The Hungarian judiciary did not ask the European Court of Justice to review Orban’s constitutional changes, even though the EU now thinks they have damaged judicial independence so much that it has demanded that Hungary undo them in order to be trusted with EU funds. Because of the timidity of the Hungarian judicial system, the EU had to wait several years, until the Polish government attempted a similar judicial coup, before it could develop the jurisprudence needed to stop takeovers of the judiciary.

Israel’s courts must not be so timid. Although it has never struck down a Basic Law, the Supreme Court has prepared the ground by developing jurisprudence that could be used to do so. It could question whether this reform really is a Basic Law or if it was just called one without justification. Alternatively, it could argue that the law breached the core values of the Israeli legal system by destroying the separation of powers. (Either something is so fundamental that it undermines the system; or it is only notionally, but not actually, fundamental. It can’t be both). In a tactic borrowed from major British constitutional cases, Israel’s court has now said it will meet as a full bench of 15 justices when it hears challenges to Netanyahu’s law.

Netanyahu has said that he would ignore the Supreme Court if it blocks the law. The court must not be deterred by his bluster. Indeed, this is the most serious constitutional crisis in Israel since June 1948, when the Irgun, a militia affiliated to those parts of the Zionist movement that would evolve into the Likud party, sought to import weapons on a ship called the Altalena for its own use in the War of Independence rather than channeling all military equipment to the recently established Israel Defense Forces.

After a tense standoff, then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion ordered the ship sunk. Future Prime Minister Menachem Begin, then the head of the Irgun who was aboard the ship as it was shelled, ordered his men not to fight back in order to prevent civil war from breaking out in the nascent Israeli state. Sixteen Irgun members and three Israel Defense Forces soldiers died.

Today, Israel faces another constitutional crisis. Justice Minister Yariv Levin is at the helm of an effort that threatens to splinter Israeli society just as the ship commanded by his great uncle Eliahu Lankin did in 1948.

The Supreme Court must command officials to disobey any attempts that Netanyahu or Levin might make to instruct them to ignore the court. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister and a Likud member, has made clear he would take inspiration from Begin’s statesmanship and “act according to law” if the Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu’s legislation.

The power is in the court’s hands: When it hears the case, it will be the last constitutional bulwark of democracy in Israel. It is the court that must decide whether to hand over power to Netanyahu or order him to cease his attacks on Israeli democracy.

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college-girl199328 · 10 months ago

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A case with the potential to disrupt Donald Trump’s drive to return to the White House is putting the Supreme Court uncomfortably at the center of the 2024 presidential campaign.

In arguments Thursday, the justices will, for the first time, wrestle with a constitutional provision adopted after the Civil War to prevent former officeholders who “engaged in insurrection” from reclaiming power.

The case is the court’s most direct involvement in a presidential election since Bush v. Gore, a decision delivered a quarter-century ago that effectively delivered the 2000 election to Republican George W. Bush. It comes to a court that has been buffeted by criticism over ethics, which led the justices to adopt their first code of conduct in November, and at a time when public approval of the court is diminished, at near-record lows in surveys.

The dispute stems from the push by Republican and independent voters in Colorado to kick Trump off the state’s Republican primary ballot because of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, culminating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Colorado’s highest court determined that Trump incited the riot in the nation’s capital and is ineligible to be president again as a result and should not be on the ballot for the state’s primary on March 5.

A victory for the Colorado voters would amount to a declaration from the justices, who include three appointed by Trump when he was president, that he did engage in insurrection and is barred by the 14th Amendment from holding office again. That would allow states to keep him off the ballot and imperil his campaign.

A definitive ruling for Trump would end efforts in Colorado, Maine, and elsewhere to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot.

The justices could opt for a less conclusive outcome, but with the knowledge that the issue could return to them, perhaps after the general election in November and in a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The court has signaled it will try to act quickly, dramatically shortening the period in which it receives written briefing and holds arguments in the courtroom.

Trump is separately appealing to the state court a ruling by Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, Shenna Bellows, that he was ineligible to appear on that state’s ballot over his role in the Capitol attack. Colorado Supreme Court and the Maine Secretary of State’s rulings are on hold until the appeals play out.

The former president is not expected to attend the Supreme Court session this coming week, though he has shown up for court proceedings in the civil lawsuits and criminal charges he is fighting.

Whatever the justices decide, they see more of Trump, whose criminal charges related to Jan. 6 and other issues. Other election-related litigation was possible.

In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court and the parties were divided over whether the justices should intervene.

The conservative-driven 5-4 decision has been heavily criticized ever since, especially given that the court cautioned against using the case as precedent when the unsigned majority opinion declared that “our consideration is limited to the present circumstances.”

Trump’s campaign declined to make anyone available for this story, but his lawyers urged the justices not to delay.

Donald Sherman, the top lawyer at the group behind the ballot challenge, said voters and election officials need to have an answer quickly.

Justice Clarence Thomas is the only sitting member of the court who was on the bench for Bush v. Gore. He was part of that majority.

But three other justices joined the legal fight on Bush’s side: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Bush eventually put Roberts on a federal appeals court and appointed him chief justice. Bush hired Kavanaugh to White House jobs before making him an appellate judge.

Kavanaugh and Barrett were elevated to the Supreme Court, which appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Thomas has ignored calls by some Democratic lawmakers and ethics professors to step aside from the current case. They note that his wife, Ginni Thomas, supported Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Ginni Thomas repeatedly texted White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after that election, once referring to it as a “heist,” and she attended the rally that preceded the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. Nearly two years later, she told the congressional committee investigating the attack that she regretted sending the texts.

Trump lost 60 different court challenges to his false claims that there was massive voter fraud that would have changed the results of that election.

The Supreme Court ruled repeatedly ruled against Trump and his allies in 2020 election-related lawsuits, as well as his efforts to keep documents related to Jan. 6 and his tax returns from being turned over to congressional committees.

But the conservative majority Trump’s appointees cemented has produced decisions that overturned the five-decade-old constitutional right to abortion, expanded gun rights, and struck down affirmative action in college admissions.

The issue of whether Trump can be on the ballot is just one among several matters related to the former president or Jan. 6 that have reached the high court. The justices declined a request from special counsel Jack Smith to rule swiftly on Trump’s claims that he is immune from prosecution, though the issue could be back before the court soon, depending on the ruling of a Washington-based appeals court.

In April, the court will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against Trump.

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deadpresidents · 2 years ago

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If a stand-up comedy contest featuring every president were held, who would win?

Great question.

It's hard to say about the earlier Presidents, although we do have some idea of which ones had a notable sense of humor (like Lincoln) and which ones very much did not (particularly John Adams, John Quincy Adams, James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Benjamin Harrison). So I'll stick with the more modern Presidents.

With the modern Presidents -- and by modern, I'm talking about the Presidents since FDR -- we have actually seen most of them do a form of standup comedy via the Gridiron and White House Correspondents' Dinners over the years. It's safe to say that none of the Presidents were writing their own material when it came to events or speeches where they were trying to be funny; some just had better deliveries than others. LBJ was said to be an incredible mimic (as was Woodrow Wilson, believe it or not!) and hilariously impersonated many of the political figures of his time in private, but he almost never showed that side of himself publicly and he never had the ability to deliver speeches or jokes as naturally as someone like JFK. As his viral friendship with Michelle Obama has shown, George W. Bush is apparently very funny, super easy-going and supposedly really well-liked by people who know him personally -- including rivals adamantly opposed to his politics like the Obamas and the Clintons. But that side of his personality wasn't as apparent (and many of us weren't willing to accept it) until after he left office and he's never been the strongest public speaker or demonstrated the comedic timing of some of his fellow Presidents.

I don't think there's much argument that the Presidents with the best comedic timing were Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Reagan, of course, was an actor by trade and he seemed to know exactly how and when to say something funny, even if the words weren't necessarily written by him. But Reagan could also be genuinely funny off-the-cuff, like with his legendary quote about Walter Mondale's "youth and inexperience" when Reagan's age was brought up as a potential issue in a 1984 Presidential debate. Obama was also naturally funny at times, especially when he was in relaxed settings like late-night television shows or unique interviews. And he had great timing and sharp delivery of material written for him at events like the Correspondents' Dinner or the Al Smith Dinner. Plus, Obama was willing to do stuff like have his anger translator, Luther (Key & Peele's Keegan-Michael Key), join him onstage at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

#Presidents #Presidential Humor #Presidential Personalities

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foreverlogical · 4 years ago

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Donald Trump’s descent into madness continues.

The latest manifestation of this is a report in The New York Times that the president is weighing appointing the conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell, who for a time worked on his legal team, to be special counsel to investigate imaginary claims of voter fraud.

As if that were not enough, we also learned that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was pardoned by the president after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, attended the Friday meeting. Earlier in the week, Flynn, a retired lieutenant general, floated the idea (which he had promoted before) that the president impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election in several closely contested states that voted against Trump. It appears that Flynn wants to turn them into literal battleground states.\

None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.

Given Trump’s psychological profile, it was inevitable that when he felt the walls of reality close in on him—in 2020, it was the pandemic, the cratering economy, and his election defeat—he would detach himself even further from reality. It was predictable that the president would assert even more bizarre conspiracy theories. That he would become more enraged and embittered, more desperate and despondent, more consumed by his grievances. That he would go against past supplicants, like Attorney General Bill Barr and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and become more aggressive toward his perceived enemies. That his wits would begin to turn, in the words of King Lear. That he would begin to lose his mind.

So he has. And, as a result, President Trump has become even more destabilizing and dangerous.

“I’ve been covering Donald Trump for a while,” Jonathan Swan of Axios tweeted. “I can’t recall hearing more intense concern from senior officials who are actually Trump people. The Sidney Powell/Michael Flynn ideas are finding an enthusiastic audience at the top.”

Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.

In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.

And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.

COVID-19 is now killing Americans at the rate of about one per minute, but the president is “just done with COVID,” a source identified as one of Trump’s closest advisers told The Washington Post. “I think he put it on a timetable and he’s done with COVID ... It just exceeded the amount of time he gave it.”

This is where Trump’s crippling psychological condition—his complete inability to face unpleasant facts, his toxic narcissism, and his utter lack of empathy—became lethal. Trump’s negligence turned what would have been a difficult winter into a dark one. If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.

“My concern was, in the worst part of the battle, the general was missing in action,” said Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the very few Republicans to speak truth in the Trump era.

In 30 days, Donald Trump will leave the presidency, with his efforts to mount a coup having failed. The encouraging news is that it never really had a chance of succeeding. Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.

But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.

”During the past four years, the right-wing ecosystem became more and more rabid. Many prominent evangelical supporters of the president are either obsequious, like Franklin Graham, or delusional, like Eric Metaxas, and they now peddle their delusions as being written by God. QAnon and the Proud Boys, Newsmax and One America News, Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson—all have been emboldened.

These worrisome trends began before Trump ran for office, and they won’t disappear after he leaves the presidency. Those who hope for a quick snapback will be disappointed. Still, having Trump out of office has to help. He’s going to find out that there’s no comparable bully pulpit. And the media, if they are wise, will cut off his oxygen, which is attention. They had no choice but to cover Trump’s provocations when he was president; when he’s an ex-president, that will change.

For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.Beyond that, and more fundamental than that, we have to remind ourselves that we are not powerless to shape the future; that much of what has been broken can be repaired; that though we are many, we can be one; and that fatalism and cynicism are unwarranted and corrosive.

There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.

”There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.

Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.

Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

#ideas

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